Дэвид Балдаччи - The Collectors

When he saw the body of Jonathan DeHaven lying on the floor, Caleb Shaw gasped once, choked and then fainted.

The tall, wiry man walked out of the plain cottage and into the small cemetery where he worked as caretaker. There was a lot of work to be done in making sure that the homes of the dead were maintained properly. Ironically, he himself “officially” resided in a grave at Arlington National Cemetery, and most of his former mates in the government would have been surprised to learn that he was still alive. In fact, it still surprised him that he wasn’t dead. The agency where he’d worked had tried its best to murder him for no reason other than his no longer wanting to kill for his government.

He saw the creature’s movement from the corner of his eye and checked to make sure no one was watching from the nearby apartment building. Then with a fluid motion he slipped the knife from the sheath on his belt and turned. Creeping forward, he aimed and let the blade fly. He watched as the copperhead writhed, the knife pinning it to the ground through the snake’s head. The damn thing had almost bitten him twice over the last week while hiding in the high grass. After it was dead, he pulled the knife free, wiped it off and disposed of the serpent in a trash can.

While he didn’t often use his old skills, they sometimes came in handy. Thankfully, though, the days where he would lie in wait for a target to enter his killing range were long in the past. Yet his present life had certainly been impacted by the past, starting with his name.

He had not used his real identity, John Carr, in over thirty years. He’d been known for decades now as Oliver Stone. He had changed his name partly to foil attempts by his old agency to track him down and partly as an act of defiance against a government that he felt was less than honest with its citizens. For decades he’d maintained a small tent in Lafayette Park across from the White House where he was one of a handful of “permanent protesters.” The sign next to his tent read simply “I want the truth.” In pursuit of this goal he headed up a small, informal watchdog organization called the Camel Club that had as its purpose keeping the American government accountable to its people. And he had been known to harbor a few conspiracy theories from time to time.

The other members of the club, Milton Farb, Reuben Rhodes and Caleb Shaw, held no positions of power and wielded no influence; and yet they kept their eyes and ears open. It was remarkable what could be accomplished when one was steadfastly observant and then acted on those observations with both courage and ingenuity.

He gazed at the sky that promised rain later. A wind from an approaching front rustled his close-cropped white hair, which used to be down to his shoulders, along with a thick, disheveled beard that had once covered his chest. Now the most he sported was a couple days’ worth of growth before shaving it off. Both hair and beard had been altered to keep him alive during the Camel Club’s last adventure.

Stone threw some weeds into a garbage pail and then spent some time shoring up an old tombstone that marked the resting place of a prominent African American preacher who’d lost his life in the fight for freedom. Odd, thought Stone, that one had to fight for freedom in the freest land on earth. As he gazed around Mt. Zion Cemetery, once a stop on the underground railroad shepherding slaves to freedom, he could only marvel at the remarkable persons that lay in the ground here.

As he worked, he was listening to the news on a portable radio he’d set on the ground beside him. The news anchor had just launched into a story about the overseas deaths of four State Department liaisons in Iraq, India and Pakistan in separate incidents.

State Department liaisons? Stone knew what that meant. U.S. intelligence operatives had gotten their cover blown and been murdered. The official spin would hide that fact from the public; it always did. Yet Stone prided himself on keeping on top of current geopolitical events. As part of his salary the church that employed him provided three daily newspapers. He cut out many articles and pasted them in his journals. At the same time, he used his experience to discern the truth behind the spin.

His ringing cell phone disturbed these thoughts. He answered, listened briefly and asked no questions. Then he started to run. His friend and fellow Camel Club member Caleb Shaw was in the hospital, and another man who worked at the Library of Congress lay dead. In his haste Stone forgot to lock the gates as he rushed through them.

The dead would have no doubt understood that the living took priority.

Caleb Shaw lay in a hospital bed slowly shaking his head. Around him were the other members of the Camel Club. Reuben Rhodes was nearly sixty years old, over six foot four with the build of a football lineman. He had curly black hair that touched his shoulders and brooding eyes and an unkempt beard that made him appear quite mad at times; which, on occasion, was nearer the truth than not. Milton Farb was five-eleven and thin with longish hair and a cherubic, unlined face that made him look much younger than his forty-nine years.

Reuben was a much-decorated Vietnam War vet and former Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who currently worked at a loading dock after his military career had been derailed by booze, pills and his outrage over the war that he’d indiscreetly vented. He dried out with the help of Oliver Stone, who’d happened upon him at Arlington National Cemetery where Reuben had been unceremoniously lying stoned under a maple tree.

Milton had been a child prodigy of boundless intellectual ability. His parents had worked in a traveling carnival where their son’s mental prowess was exploited in a freak show atmosphere. Despite that, he had gone to college and been employed at the National Institutes of Health. However, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and other destructive mental ailments, his world had eventually come crashing down around him. He became destitute and fell into such debilitated mental shape that a court ordered him institutionalized.

Again Oliver Stone came to the rescue. He’d worked as an orderly at the psychiatric hospital where Milton had been a patient. Recognizing the man’s remarkable abilities, which included a pure photographic memory, Stone managed to get a sedated Milton on Jeopardy! where he defeated all comers and earned a small fortune. Years of dedicated counseling and drug therapies had allowed him to live quite normally. He now had a lucrative business designing Web sites for corporations.

Stone leaned his six-foot-two-inch body against a wall, his arms crossed in front of him as he looked down at his friend in the bed.

Possessing twin doctorates in political science and eighteenth-century literature, Caleb Shaw had worked at the Library of Congress’ Rare Books reading room for over a decade. Unmarried and childless, the library, aside from his friends, constituted the passion of his life.

Caleb had run into some hard times as well. He’d lost an older brother in Vietnam, and his parents had died tragically in a plane crash over fifteen years ago. Stone had met Caleb at the depths of his despair, when the librarian had seemingly lost his desire to keep going. Stone befriended him, introduced him to a bookstore owner in desperate need of help, and Caleb was gradually drawn out of his depression by his love of books. I seem to collect hopeless cases, Stone thought to himself. Though I used to be one myself. Indeed, Stone owed as much to his friends as they did to him, if not more. But for Caleb, Reuben and Milton, Stone knew, he wouldn’t have survived either. After years of performing only destructive acts, Stone had spent the last thirty years of his life seeking a measure of personal redemption. By his count, he still had a long way to go.