CHAPTER 63
MAX HIMMERLING closed his book, yawned and stretched. Ever since his wife, Kitty, had died of cancer two years ago, his routine rarely varied. He worked, he came home, he ate a simple meal, he read a chapter in a book and he went to bed. It was an unexciting life, but his life at work was exciting enough. He had grown bald and fat in the service of his country. A nearly forty-year veteran of the CIA—he’d started there right out of college—his job was totally unique. Blessed with the most orderly of minds, he was like a central clearinghouse for the most diverse sort of matters. How would a coup in Bolivia or Venezuela orchestrated by the U.S. impact on the West’s interests in the Middle East or China? Or if oil dropped another buck a barrel, would it behoove the Pentagon to open a forward military base in such-and-such country? In a time of supercomputers and servers filled with trillions of bytes of data and spy satellites that stole your secrets from outer space, it made Max feel good that there was still a strong human element in the work of his agency.
He was unknown outside the corridors of Langley, was considered only a low-level bureaucratic grunt within it, and would receive neither wealth nor honors. Yet to the people who mattered, Max Himmerling was an indispensable asset to the world’s most elite intelligence-gathering agency. And that was enough for him. Indeed, after his wife’s passing, it was all he had left. His importance to his agency was represented by the two armed men who guarded the exterior of his house when he was home. Himmerling would retire in two years and dreamed of traveling to some of the places he’d analyzed all these decades. He was worried, though, that his money would run out before his life did. The government provided a good package and first-rate health care, but he hadn’t saved much on his own, and to continue living in this area, which he very much wanted to do, was expensive. He supposed he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He lifted his tired, fleshy body from his easy chair and started up the stairs to his bedroom. He never made it.
The figure came from nowhere. The shock of the man standing in his living room nearly gave Max a heart attack. That was nothing compared to the shock he received when the intruder spoke.
“It’s been a long time, Max.”
Max put a hand against the wall to steady himself. He said in a shaky voice, “Who are you? How’d you get past the guards?”
Stone stepped into the small wash of light from a table lamp. “You remember the Triple Sixes, don’t you, Max? How about John Carr? That name ring any bells for you? If it does, even after all these years, you can pretty much figure out how I got past the two idiots lying unconscious outside that you call guards.”
Max stared up fearfully into the face of the tall, lean man standing across the room from him. “John Carr? It can’t be. You’re dead.”
Stone stepped closer to him. “You know everything that goes on at CIA. So you knew John Carr wasn’t in that grave they dug up.”
Max slumped back down in his chair and looked pitifully at Stone. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You’re the great brain. You always figured out the best logistics for our missions. They almost always went off without a hitch. And when they didn’t you were always thousands of miles away. So what the hell did you care? It was our asses on the line, not yours. So tell me, great brain, why am I here? And don’t disappoint me. You know how I hate to be disappointed.”
Max drew in a sharp breath. “You want information.”
Stone glided forward and put a vise grip on Max’s arm. “I want the truth.”
Max grimaced from the pressure on his arm, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. His strength was mental, not physical. “About what?”
“Rayfield Solomon. Carter Gray. And anyone else you know who had his finger in that debacle.”
Max had shuddered at the mention of Rayfield Solomon. “Gray’s dead,” he said quickly.
Stone’s long fingers tightened on the man’s arm until a bead of sweat broke over Max’s forehead. “That’s not what I meant by being truthful.”
“His home was blown up, damn it!”
“But he wasn’t in it. Now he’s out there, plotting and planning, just like he always did. Only I’m the target. Again. And I don’t like it, Max. Once was enough.” Stone squeezed harder.
“Look, you can crush my arm if you want, but I can’t tell you things I don’t know about.”
“I’m not going to crush your arm.” Stone let go and slid a knife out from his coat sleeve.
Max wailed, “John, you’re not a killer anymore. You got out. You were always different. We all knew that.”
“That didn’t seem to help me back then. My wanting to get out almost cost me my life.”
“Things were different back then.”
“So people keep telling me. But once a killer, always a killer. I did it very recently, in fact. In self-defense. But I still killed a man. Slit his throat from ten feet away. And he was a former Triple Six. I guess they’re not making ’em like they used to.”
“But I’m defenseless,” Max pleaded.
“I will kill you, Max. And it will be in self-defense. Because if you don’t help me, I’m a dead man. But I’m not going alone.” He placed the edge of the blade against Max’s quivering carotid artery.
“For God’s sake, John, think what you’re doing. And I lost my wife recently. I lost Kitty.”
“I lost my wife too. I didn’t have her nearly as long as you had your Kitty. But then you probably were the one who worked the logistics of the hit on me out on
your nice, neat paper.”
“I had nothing to do with that. I only learned about it after the fact.”
“But you didn’t go running to the authorities about it, did you?”
“What the hell did you expect me to do? They would have killed me too.”
Stone pressed the blade harder against the man’s flesh. “For a genius you sometimes say stupid things. Tell me about Rayfield Solomon before I lose my patience. Because this is all about Solomon, isn’t it?”
“He was a traitor and you killed him, on orders.”
“We did kill him, as ordered. Roger Simpson said it came right from the top. But there’s obviously more to it. A lot more. Was Solomon innocent? And if he was, why were we ordered to kill him?”
“Damn it, John, just let it go! The past is dead.”
Stone’s knife cut into Max’s skin a millimeter beside the artery, and a drop of blood appeared. “Was Solomon innocent?” Himmerling said nothing. He just sat there with his eyes closed, his chest heaving.
“Max, if I sever this artery, you will bleed to death in less than five minutes. And I will stand here and watch while you do.”
Himmerling finally opened his eyes. “I’ve kept secrets for nearly forty years, and I’m not going to start talking now.”
Stone swung his gaze around the room and stopped at the pictures on the mantel. A young boy and girl.
“Grandkids?” he asked with an edge to his voice. “Must be nice.”
A trembling Max followed the man’s gaze. “You . . . you wouldn’t dare!”
“You people killed everyone I loved. Why should you get any better treatment? I’ll kill you first.” He pointed at the pictures. “And them next. And it won’t be painless.”
“You bastard!”
“That’s right. I am a bastard. CIA-built, owned and operated. You know that as well as anyone, don’t you?” Stone looked once more at the photos. “Your last chance, Max. I won’t ask again.”