David Baldacci - Stone Cold

FOR ONE OF THE FEW TIMES in his career, Carter Gray screamed in uncontrolled fury after being told that Alex Ford had escaped.

With a disgusted look he dismissed the stone-faced men standing in front of him. They’d missed Carr, Lesya and her son, and now this! Such incompetence never would have happened in the old days, he told himself. When he had men like John Carr…

Three deep breaths later and Gray was all business again. It was a setback, but only a setback. He had gotten another intelligence breakthrough barely thirty minutes ago. He’d discovered over the years that they tended to come in bushels.

They had matched the man’s face to a database. The gentleman with Carr and Lesya was named Harry Finn, a former Navy SEAL who now performed consulting work with the Department of Homeland Security as a member of a red cell team. Or he did such work. Gray couldn’t envision the man’s career continuing, because he was undoubtedly Lesya Solomon’s son. And that meant he was a murderer. And he had to die before he ever came to court.

Gray had already dispatched a team to Finn’s home. He lived in a cozy place in the suburbs; had a lovely wife and three darling children. He coached soccer in his spare time and from all accounts was a model citizen. And Gray was sure that when his men got to the house it would be empty. A phone call he received ten minutes later confirmed this.

However, his team didn’t come away entirely empty-handed. In a safe in the garage they discovered some interesting details. They also found some paperwork about a storage unit. When they got there, they hit the treasure trove. It was filled with the histories of Bingham, Cole and Cincetti. And Carter Gray and Roger Simpson. And finally John Carr. Though nary a scrap of information could be found about Rayfield and Lesya, Harry Finn was undoubtedly their man. Only where was he now? And where were his wife and children? In hiding, of course. And it was up to Carter Gray to flush them out. He only hoped he would have better luck.

Yet he sensed that he would. It was completely counterintuitive for them to do it, but for some reason Gray felt as though Stone, Lesya and Harry Finn were very close by. And if they were, they would succumb to a mistake at some point. It would not necessarily be their mistake. There was another factor to be put into the equation: Finn’s very ordinary family.

He lifted his phone. “Put a trace on every credit and debit card and every cell and hard-line phone registered to the Finn family. You know where he works, so put surveillance on all his co-workers and his office. Watch the kids’ schools and Mom’s book club group. If they show themselves, take them. Move heaven and earth, but get them.”

THEY HAD PASSED ANOTHER DAY sitting in the cellar and now the darkness was settling in. Stone, Finn and Lesya had spent the time developing a plan of action. The next night Stone’s team would assemble and they could execute that plan.

Finn, who’d been pacing in increasing agitation suddenly said, “I have to see my family. Now.”

Lesya started to protest but Stone asked, “Where are they?” Finn told him.

Stone turned to Lesya. “You stay here. I’ll go with him.”

“You’re going to leave me here, alone?” the old woman said.

“Just for a little while,” Stone added. “You’ll be safe.”

The two men left the cellar.

“How bad is your wife?” Stone asked once they were outside.

“Bad! And who the hell can blame her?”

“We can get to them on the Metro and then it’s a bit of a walk.”

“You were Army Special Forces in Nam,” Finn said. “I looked it up.”

“And you?”

“How do you know I was anything?”

“I can just tell.”

“SEAL. Look, we need weapons. They’ll have searched my house by now. I have a storage unit with some stuff in it, but they’ll have found that too.”

“I have a place with guns,” Stone replied.

Thirty minutes later, Stone waited outside while Finn entered the motel room in a run-down area of south Alexandria.

His children immediately flew to him, nearly crushing him against the wall. Even George the Labradoodle got in the act, barking and jumping on his master. As Finn hugged his kids tightly, all their tears mixing together, he saw his wife through a tiny crevice between David and Susie. Mandy was sobbing too but made no move toward him.

After a few minutes of hugs and cries, Finn managed to get his kids to sit down on a bed. Susie clutched the bear her grandmother had given her, tears trickling down her plump cheeks. Patrick nervously chewed on his bloody, bitten-down nails. He did that before every test and every ball game, Finn knew. And it pained him that his son was now doing it because of something his father had done.

David eyed his dad nervously. “Pop? What’s going on?”

Finn took a deep breath. He could no more tell them the truth than he could jump to the moon. On the way over he had thought of the lie he would use, but it didn’t seem so plausible now. He could never say, “I’m a killer, kids, and the cops are after me.” No he could never say that, because these were his children. They and Mandy were all he had. Mere justice didn’t constitute an adequate defense of what he’d done.

“Something happened at work, Dave,” he began as Mandy looked on. In her eyes was stark fear, but also something else that devastated Finn: distrust. He put his hand out to her, but she drew back a little.

He decided to abandon his cover story. He rose and leaned against the wall. When he was finally ready to speak he looked directly at them.

“Everything you know about your grandparents, my mother and father, is a lie. Your grandfather didn’t come from Ireland and die in a car accident a long time ago. Your grandmother wasn’t from Canada. And she’s not in a nursing home because she belongs there.” He took another deep breath, trying not to focus on his family’s collective astonishment.

And he told them. Their grandfather’s real name was Rayfield Solomon. He’d been a spy for the Americans. Their grandmother’s name was Lesya, a Russian, who’d been a spy for her country until coming over to the American side with Solomon and also marrying him.

“They were framed by some people at the CIA,” he said. “Rayfield Solomon’s picture hangs on the wall at Langley, the ‘Wall of Shame’ they call it. But he doesn’t deserve to be there. He was killed by these same people so the truth would never come out. Your grandmother survived but has been in hiding ever since.”

To their credit and Finn’s relief, his children seemed to readily accept his explanation, even be excited by the revelations. “But what is the truth?” David asked. “What were they framed for doing?”

Finn shook his head. “I can’t tell you, son. I wish I could, but I can’t. I only found out a short time ago.”

“Where’s Grandma?” Patrick asked.

“I’m going back to her after I leave you.”

Susie flung herself around Finn’s leg. “Daddy, you can’t leave. You can’t leave us,” she wailed. The sounds were cracking Finn’s heart in half. He could barely breathe as the tears streamed down his daughter’s face. He lifted her up and held her. “I’m sorry, baby, but I promise you one thing. Are you listening? Can you listen to Daddy for just a minute? Please, baby, please?”

Susie finally stopped crying. She and her brothers stared at their father. They were so still, it didn’t seem like any of them were actually breathing.

“I promise you this: that Daddy will fix everything. And then I’m going to come and get all of you and we’re going to go back home and everything will be like it was. I promise you. I swear to you that it will.”