The Collectors cc-2 Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER 7

  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.

  Stone’s musings were interrupted by the entrance of Alex Ford, a veteran Secret Service agent who’d played an instrumental role in helping the Camel Club in the past and been named an honorary member of the club for his heroics.

  Ford stayed for half an hour and was relieved to find that Caleb would be okay.

  He said, “Take care of yourself, Caleb. And call me if you need anything.”

  “How are things at WFO?” Stone asked him, referring to the Service’s Washington Field Office.

  “Way too busy. The criminal elem
ents have kicked it into overdrive.”

  “Well, I hope you’ve recovered fully from our little adventure.”

  “I don’t call a potential global apocalypse a little adventure. And I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover.”

  After Alex Ford had left, Caleb turned to the others. “It was truly horrible,” he said. “There he was just lying on the floor.”

  “And you fainted?” Stone asked, his gaze fixed on his friend.

  “I must have. I remember turning the corner, looking for my sweater, and there he was. God, I almost stumbled over him. I saw his eyes. My mind went blank. My chest tightened. I felt so cold. I thought I was having a heart attack. And then I just passed out.”

  Reuben put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “A lot of people would’ve fainted.”

  Milton piped in, “The National Psychiatric Foundation reports that finding a dead body ranks as the second most traumatic event a human being can experience.”

  Reuben raised his eyebrows at this comment. He said, “What’s the number one traumatic experience? Finding your spouse in bed with a monkey holding a can of expired Cheez Whiz?”

  “Did you know DeHaven well?” Stone asked Caleb.

  “Yes. It’s tragic, really. He was in excellent shape. He’d just had a complete cardio workup at Hopkins. But I guess anyone can have a heart attack.”

  “Is that what it was, a heart attack?” Stone said.

  Caleb looked uncertain. “What else could it be? Or a stroke perhaps?”

  “Statistically speaking, it was probably a heart attack,” Milton added. “It’s the leading cause of so-called instant death in this country. In fact, any of us could drop at any moment and be dead before we hit the floor.”

  “Damn, Milton,” Reuben retorted, “do you have to be so bloody cheerful?”

  “Until the autopsy results come back we can only speculate,” Stone pointed out. “But you didn’t see anyone else in the vault area, did you?”

  Caleb stared up at his friend. “No.”

  “But you passed out pretty quickly, so you wouldn’t have necessarily noticed anyone else around on the fourth floor?”

  “Oliver, you can’t get in the vault without using your pass card. And there’s a camera right there at the main door.”

  Stone looked thoughtful. “First, the Speaker of the House is murdered, and now the director of the Rare Books Division dies under somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

  Reuben eyed him warily. “I doubt terrorists are targeting book peddlers these days, so don’t work this into another grand conspiracy with the fate of the world in the balance. I can only take one Armageddon per month, thank you very much.”

  Stone’s eyes twinkled. “We’ll table the issue for now until we know more.”

  “I can give you a ride home, Caleb,” Reuben said. “I have my motorcycle.”

  Reuben’s pride was his fully restored 1928 Indian motorcycle with the very rare left-hand sidecar.

  “I don’t think I’m up to that, Reuben.” Caleb paused and added, “Frankly, that contraption of yours terrifies me.”

  A nurse bustled in, took the patient’s vitals and stuck a temperature reader in Caleb’s left ear.

  “Can I go home soon?” he asked.

  She took the reader out and looked at it. “You’re almost up to normal. And yes, I think the doctor is preparing the discharge orders now.”

  As arrangements were made for Caleb’s release, Stone drew Reuben aside.

  “Let’s keep an eye on Caleb for a while.”

  “Why? You think he’s really hurt?”

  “I don’t want him to get hurt.”

  “The guy died from a coronary, Oliver. It happens every day.”

  “But probably not for someone who’d just been given a clean bill of health by Johns Hopkins.”

  “Okay, so he popped a blood vessel or fell and cracked his skull. You heard Caleb: The guy was all alone in there.”

  “As far as Caleb knows, he was, but he couldn’t possibly know for sure.”

  “But the security camera and the pass card,” Reuben protested.

  “All good points, and they may very well confirm that Jonathan DeHaven was alone when he died. But that still doesn’t prove he wasn’t killed.”

  “Come on, who’d have a grudge against a librarian?” Reuben asked.

  “Everyone has enemies. The only difference is for some people you just have to look harder to find them.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “HOW’S IT CHECK OUT?” LEO Richter said into his phone headset as he punched in some numbers on the keypad. He sat in his car in front of a drive-through ATM in Beverly Hills. In a van parked across the street Tony Wallace, until recently a felonious boutique store clerk, examined the video feed on the screen in front of him. “Sweet. I’ve got a perfect frame of your fingers inputting the PIN. And I’ve got a tight shot of the face of the card going in. With the zoom and the freeze I can read everything on it.”

  The night before, they had switched the metal box containing bank brochures that was bolted to the side of the ATM with a box of Tony’s manufacture. He’d earlier stolen a box from another ATM and built an exact replica in the garage of the rental house Annabelle had them staying at. Inside the fake brochure box, Tony had placed a battery-powered video camera with wireless feed pointed at the keypad and card slot for the ATM. The camera could send the picture up to two hundred meters away, well within range of the van.

  As a backup they’d also placed a skimmer Tony had built over the ATM’s card slot. It was such a perfect replica that not even Annabelle could find fault with it. This device captured all the numbers on the cards, including the embedded verification code on the magnetic stripe, and fed them wirelessly to a receiver in the van.

  Annabelle was sitting next to Tony. Across from her was Freddy Driscoll, who’d been plying his trade selling fake Gucci and Rolexes on the Santa Monica pier until he’d run into Annabelle and Leo. Freddy was manning another video camera aimed out the heavily tinted side window of the van.

  “I’ve got a clear shot of the cars and license plates going through,” he reported.

  “Okay, Leo,” Annabelle said into her headset. “Move out of the way and let the real money through.”

  “You know,” Tony said, “we don’t really need the camera at the ATM because we’ve got the card skimmer. It’s redundant.”

  “Transmission from the skimmer gets garbled sometimes,” Annabelle said, staring at the TV screen in front of her. “And you miss one number, the card’s useless. Plus, the camera gives us info the skimmer doesn’t. We’re only doing this once. No mistakes.”

  Over the next two days they sat in the van as the ATM camera and skimmer captured debit and credit card information. Annabelle methodically matched this information with the cars and their license plates going through the ATM lane, loading it all on a laptop in a spreadsheet format. Annabelle was also prioritizing.

  She said, “Bugatti Veyrons, Saleens, Paganis, Koenigseggs, Maybachs, Porsche Carrera GTs and Mercedes SLR McLarens get five stars. The Bugatti sells for one and a quarter million, and the others sell for between four and seven hundred thousand. Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Aston Martins get four stars. Jags, BMWs, regular Mercedes get three stars.”

  Leo jokingly said, “What about Saturns, Kias and Yugos?”

  At the end of the two days they regrouped at the rental house.

  “We go quality over quantity,” Annabelle said. “Thirty cards. That’s all we need.”

  Leo read through the spreadsheet. “Perfect, because we’ve got twenty-one five stars and nine four stars all matched to their card numbers.”

  “Only in L.A. would you see two Bugatti Veyrons going through the same ATM,” Tony commented. “A thousand horsepower, top speed of two-fifty and gas over three bucks a gallon. I mean, where do they get that kind of money?”

  “Same way we do, they rip people off,” Leo answered. “Only the law says the way they do it is legal fo
r some reason.”

  “I fought the law and the law won,” Tony crooned. He eyed Annabelle and Leo. “You two ever done any time?”

  Leo started shuffling a deck of cards. “He’s a real funny guy, isn’t he?”

  “Hey, how come you took down their license plate numbers too?” Tony asked.

  “You never know when it might come in handy,” Annabelle answered vaguely.

  She looked at Freddy, who was going over some equipment he’d arranged on a large table in the adjoining room. This included a stack of blank credit cards and a thermal dye printer.

  “You have everything you need?” she asked.

  He nodded, looking over his tools with satisfaction while running a hand through his cottony hair. “Annabelle, you run a first-class operation.”

  Three days later Freddy had built thirty counterfeit cards, complete with colored graphics and a magnetic stripe encoded with the verification code on the back and embossed with the victim’s name and account number on the front. The finishing touch had been the hologram, a security measure banks have been using since the early 1980s. The only way to tell the difference was that real holograms are embedded in the card while the fake clung to the surface, something an ATM wouldn’t be able to distinguish.

  “You can buy all the credit card numbers you want off the Internet,” Tony pointed out. “That’s where the real pros go.”

  Annabelle replied, “And I guarantee you that none of those ‘quick’ cards belong to anyone who owns a Bugatti, other than by luck.”

  Leo quit shuffling his cards and lit a cigarette. “It was probably a pro who told you that, kid, so you wouldn’t start doing it the smart way and competing with him. Sizing the mark up right is Con 101.”