David Baldacci - Stone Cold

“Would you have really killed my grandkids?” Himmerling asked in a quavering voice.

“Just be glad they don’t have to find out.”

AFTER STONE LEFT, Max Himmerling breathed a sigh of relief; it caught in his throat. The guards. They’ll know someone came. They’ll contact.. . He ran to pack a bag. He had long ago worked out a doomsday scenario of having to flee. Ten minutes later he was on his way out the door, boarding pass printed out, fake ID in his pocket. The ringing phone made him stop. Should he answer it? Something told him to. He picked it up. The voice on the other end was very familiar to him.

“Hello, Max. What did you tell him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Max, you’re a brilliant man, but a very bad liar. I don’t blame you. I’m sure he threatened you, and we both know what a dangerous man he is. So what did you tell him?”

Once more Himmerling spilled his guts.

“Thank you, Max, you did the right thing.” The line went dead.

Himmerling dropped the phone as the back door opened.

“Please,” he said. “Please.”

The silenced gun fired and the bullet hit him in the forehead. The body was placed into a black bag. In a minute the truck had carried it away. Officially Himmerling would be reassigned to a foreign post on short notice. When the next American chopper went down anywhere in the world, it would be recorded that Max Himmerling had been on it, his body burned beyond recognition. Thus would end the man’s near forty years of service to his country.

At least he would no longer have to worry about outliving his pension.

In his bunker Carter Gray smacked his fist into his palm. The loss of Himmerling was a heavy if unavoidable one. Gray knew he should have anticipated it, but he hadn’t.

He looked back at the computer screen in front of him. He had received the birth records from hospitals in major Canadian cities for the year in question. Even electronically they were voluminous. He had to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, he had known Rayfield Solomon well. They had been good friends, and friendly rivals. Indeed, it could be said that Solomon was the only man of his generation who could match Carter Gray in ability. Gray had to concede that in the field, Solomon might well have been his superior. So uncovering the man’s tracks wouldn’t be easy, but he did have the advantage of knowing him intimately.

He had focused his efforts on the name of the father listed in the birth records. Lesya would not have used her own name, of course. The name of the son would not help either, since Gray was sure that it would be different today. So it came down to the father. Rayfield Solomon was very proud of his Jewish heritage. Though the demands of his work did not allow him to practice his religion in a traditional fashion-critical missions could not be interrupted even for the exercise of his faith-Solomon had been an ardent scholar of his religion. He and Gray had had numerous discussions about theology. Gray’s wife had been a devout Catholic. Gray had not been particularly religious until his wife and daughter had been killed on 9/11. Solomon had often told him, “Find something to believe in, Carter, other than your work. Because when you leave this life, you leave work behind. If that’s all you have, then you have nothing. And eternity is a long time for nothing.”

Wise words the man had uttered, though Gray had not necessarily believed them back then.

His fingers skimmed over the computer keys, trying this and that search combination. The list of names was further and further reduced. He continued to scan the names until he came to rest on one proud father.

David P. Jedidiah, II.

He smiled. You blundered there, Ray. You let personal trump professional . Over the years since his family’s death Gray had also become a keen reader of the Bible, so the name of this father had particular relevance for him.

Solomon was the second son of David, his first legitimate child with Bathsheba. Jedidiah was the name that Nathan, the future King Solomon’s teacher, called him. And in Hebrew Solomon means “Peace,” hence the middle initial, P . Rayfield Solomon had used the name David P. Jedidiah, II, in the birth records. Carter Gray looked at the mother’s name, and then at the son’s. He picked up the phone and relayed this information. “Trace the son,” he ordered.

He put the phone down and said aloud, “So where are you now, son of Solomon?”

IT WAS MORNING, with a chill in the air. Harry Finn stood by himself, hands in pockets, and stared at it: the empty hole in the ground at Arlington National Cemetery, where John Carr was supposed to be resting, for all eternity. That had been a lie. And why was Finn surprised? The government always lied about the most important things.

Even though he previously believed the man was dead, Finn had researched John Carr’s background. As a Navy SEAL he had done joint intelligence work with the CIA. Using the same skills that he made his living with today, he had slowly unearthed much of the history of his father’s last days, and also the pasts of the men who’d been involved in killing him.

Judd Bingham’s, Bob Cole’s and Lou Cincetti’s histories were pretty much the same. They had worked for the CIA, seemed to relish their duties in fact, until they’d retired to a life of comfort and leisure. Retirements that Finn had abruptly ended.

Only Carr was different. Officially, he had been killed while a member of an army unit, in the type of skirmish that popped up from time to time around the world and to which the United States was morally if not technically required to respond. Before becoming a member of the CIA’s Triple Six Division, John Carr had been one of the most decorated veterans of the Vietnam War, including four Purple Hearts, and none of them for hangnails. There was even talk of his receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military award of all. Every soldier who earned it had instantly attained a place of immortality in the eyes of professional warriors, though many had been awarded the honor posthumously. This had led some to dub it “The medal you’ll never get to see.”

Carr had certainly seemed an ideal man for the military equivalent of an Olympic gold medal. Finn had read the official report with both thrill and horror. Carr had single-handedly saved his ambushed platoon of soldiers in a murderous firefight with a far larger mass of North Vietnamese backed by artillery support. Sergeant John Carr had personally carried four wounded men to safety on his back, repeatedly going back into harm’s way to do so. He had been hit twice by enemy fire and still somehow managed to kill a dozen Viet Cong, three of them in hand-to-hand fighting, while shooting several more out of trees with a marksman’s skill that the report described as nothing short of supernatural.

Finally, manning a machine-gun post, Carr had repelled repeated attacks, survived multiple mortar rounds exploding all around his position and still managed to call in an airstrike that had driven the enemy back, allowing his men to safely retreat. He had walked off the field of battle under his own power despite his uniform being soaked in his blood. Finn could not help feeling a certain level of respect for the man. He had always considered himself to be a soldier of the highest level, but he was thinking that John Carr had perhaps surpassed him on the ability scorecard that all professional military people kept in their heads.

Yet Carr had not been given the medal. Finn didn’t know that it had to do with politics rather than heroics on the battlefield. He didn’t know that John Carr’s growing ambivalence about the war had turned his superiors against him. His CO had not even recommended him for the medal until others had stepped in. Yet somewhere along the line, folks even higher up the command chain prevented a deserving soldier from receiving the military’s highest honor.