Divine Justice by David Baldacci Read Free Book Online Page A

father never discussed his work with them, or anyone else. They knew he traveled the world, often on very little notice, and was gone for long periods of time. This was explained as him serving his country in a minor capacity with the State Department.
    He had once told Melanie, “I’m unimportant enough to where they can call on me whenever they like, and I just go.”
    That line had worked all the way through middle school. But once his precocious daughter had reached high school Knox could tell she no longer believed it, though she never tried to uncover the truth. His son had just accepted his father disappearing from time to time as the way life was. Now, as a Marine lance corporal serving overseas and trying to stay alive day by day, Kenny Knox had more on his mind, his father hoped, than worrying about what his old man did for a living.
    “When you called to cancel,” Melanie began, “I was sure you’d be on a plane somewhere. I got the idea of cooking dinner when you said you’d be back home tonight.”
    Knox simply nodded at this, while he sipped his wine and stared out at the trees in his backyard as they were whipsawed by yet another approaching storm.
    “So everything going okay at work?” she asked tentatively.
    “Just looking over some old papers. Not that enlightening actually.”
    It was hard, he knew, for her. Most kids knew exactly what their parents did for a living and consequently could have cared less. While his children were growing up Knox had declined all invitations to parents’ career day at school. After all, what would he have said?
    “Given any more thought to retiring?”
    “I pretty much already am. One foot in the professional grave.”
    “I’m surprised the
State Department
can function without you.”
    Father and daughter exchanged a brief glance and then each looked away, focused on their wine and last bites of roast beef and potatoes.
    As she was leaving Melanie let her hug linger around her father’s broad shoulders. She whispered in his ear, “Take care of yourself, Dad. Don’t push the envelope too hard. Dangerous times out there.”
    He watched her walk to the cab she’d called to take her home to her condo in D.C. As it drove way, she waved to him.
    He waved back, fleeting images of the last thirty years racing through his mind and ending with the image of Macklin Hayes telling him to tread carefully.
    His brilliant daughter was right. It
was
dangerous times out there.
    He would call Hayes in the morning. Early. The general was on rooster time. And like the rooster, he believed the sun rose because he did too. He had no answers and many questions. How the general would react to that he didn’t know. In the military Macklin had the rep of always getting the job done, by any means possible, which often included excessive losses. After becoming a battalion commander in Vietnam, Hayes still held the record, Knox believed, of having the highest casualty count of any field officer in the war. Yet because those losses often came with victories, at least victories measured in the taking of small hills or even yards of turf, sometimes only for hours, Hayes had swiftly moved up the command chain. Still, Knox did not intend on becoming one of the man’s statistics on his way to yet another triumph. The best he could hope for was to thread his way through the minefield, keeping his eye firmly on the target and watching his back at the same time. Macklin was a superb infighter, connected in all the right ways, and a man who excelled at putting other people’s necks at risk while protecting his own flanks with skillful dexterity. Competitive past all reason, he reportedly thrashed men half his age in racquetball at the Pentagon’s courts. What he lacked in speed, quickness and stamina he more than made up for with sheer guile and peerless vision.
    His exact title in America’s intelligence empire was unknown to Knox. The man performed a curious—and as far as Knox was aware