It was clear to Teddy that, based on her career in the military, plus her very successful career as a police chief, Holly Barker was a very smart and motivated woman. If he had needed further evidence of that, her training report from the Farm showed plenty of guts and initiative. He would have to be careful to limit his contact with her in the neighborhood, and if she showed any interest in him, he would have to pull up stakes and find a new place to live.
THERE WAS A NOTE on Holly’s new desk: “See me-Lance.” She went and knocked on the door that connected their offices.
“Come in,” he said.
She found him at his desk, looking at photographs. “You wanted to see me?”
“The team had a sighting of a man who may have been following you for a couple of blocks.”
“When?”
“In the last hour. He went in your direction until you entered the park, then he got on a bus downtown.” He beckoned her to his side of the desk.
Holly looked at the photographs; they were taken from more than a block away with a low-resolution digital camera. ”He’s a blur,“ she said.
“That’s as much as we could enhance it,” Lance said. “Don’t believe everything about surveillance you see on TV.”
“I can’t make him from these,” she said, shuffling through the prints. “Did anybody follow him when he broke from me?”
“The team lost him when he got on the bus. We’re going to have to add vehicles, obviously.”
“I feel guilty about soaking up this much manpower,” Holly said.
“Have a seat,” Lance said, walking around the desk and sitting next to her on his sofa. “I’m concerned about you.”
“Why?”
“You look depressed.”
Holly laughed. “So do you.”
“I guess we’re all a little depressed about how this is going.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that we may be the wrong people for this work?” Holly asked. “I mean, my class’s training was cut short, and not much of it has been useful to me on this assignment. A few years as a cop in Florida was better training for this.”
“It occurs to me every day,” Lance said, “but what can I do? I can’t call Langley and tell them to shut us down. That would be admitting failure, and the failure would go into the personnel file of everybody in this station. The Agency culture can tolerate a certain amount of failure, because operations frequently don’t pan out, but the culture would look askance at admitted failure, especially of a project and a unit commissioned directly by the president of the United States. We don’t really have a choice; we’re going to have to catch Teddy Fay or die trying. If we can do that, praise will rain down upon us, good things will be said about us in our fitness reports and we will be princes in our realm.”
“Well, I guess that’s better than admitted failure,” Holly said.
FORTY-FOUR
ON A THURSDAY NIGHT Holly called the duty officer and asked him to pull the team off her for the night. Then, she dressed in a cashmere sweater and slacks that showed off her ass in a favorable light, put on her coat and got a cab to 88th Street and Second Avenue. She got out, took a deep breath and walked into Elaine’s.
Thursday was the busiest night of the week, she knew, and she reckoned it was her best chance to “bump into” Stone Barrington. She hoped to God he wasn’t with someone else.
Gianni, the headwaiter, spotted her and came and kissed her on the cheek. “Holly! Long time! You meeting Stone?”
“Well, no, but if he’s here, I’ll say hello.”
Gianni turned and pointed at a table along the wall. Stone and Dino Bacchetti, his former partner on the NYPD, were having drinks and arguing about something. “Let’s break this up now,” Gianni said, taking her arm and walking her back to the table. “Look who’s here,” he said to Stone.
Stone was on his feet, looking surprised, and so was Dino. Everybody hugged and kissed. “Join us?” Stone asked.
“Sure,” Holly replied.
“Gianni, bring Holly a Knob Creek on the rocks,” Stone said, and Gianni departed for the bar. Stone was a lawyer who was counselor to a prestigious New York law firm, Woodman amp; Weld, and his specialty was handling the cases Woodman amp; Weld did not want to be seen to be handling. He was also one of Lance’s recruits as a consultant to the Agency. So was Dino.
“Excuse me a minute,” Dino said, apparently giving them a moment. “Be right back.” He walked toward the men’s room.
“So, you and Dino were really going at it when I came in. What’s going on?”
“Oh, Dino and Mary Ann have been having some problems, and I was just counseling him.”
“Counseling him? It looked more like you were yelling at him.”
“He needed yelling at.”
“You aren’t exactly qualified to be a marriage counselor.”
“All right, all right. What are you doing in New York? I thought Lance had shipped you off to some place in Virginia to be remolded by the Agency.”
“I was already a deadly weapon and performed brilliantly, so they graduated me early and assigned me to New York.”
“How’d the rest of the class do?” Stone asked suspiciously.
“Well, they did brilliantly, too,” she said.
“So he brought your whole training class to New York?”
“Everybody who survived the training,” Her drink arrived, and they clinked glasses.
Stone leaned in close. “You’re on that Teddy Fay thing, aren’t you?”
She was surprised he knew. “Sorry, that’s classified.” She took a deep sip of her drink.
“Come on, Dino’s been reporting to Lance about a bunch of murders around the U.N.,” Stone said. “And I think Lance let something slip.”
“That doesn’t sound like Lance,” she said, keeping her guard up. “But if anybody lets anything slip about anything, it ain’t going to be me.”
“Okay, okay. God, it’s good to see you; it’s been months.”
“Has it?” she asked, feigning indifference.
“You know very well how long it’s been. I tried to call you in Orchid Beach, and I got some young lady who’s house-sitting for you. That’s when I knew you must be in Virginia.”
“You’re so clever, Stone; how could I ever hide anything from you?” she said, batting her eyes theatrically.
“So, how’s life as a spy?”
She looked around to be sure nobody could hear. “Actually, I appear to be still a cop, the way things are going. I’m looking forward to this thing being over.”
“He’s a very smart guy,” Stone said. “It may never end.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said, “but the thought of it never ending is more than I can bear. Let’s talk about something else.”
Dino came back to the table and sat down. “So,” he said, sipping his drink, “how’s it going on the Teddy Fay thing?”
Holly sighed. “Dino, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”
“I get your drift,” Dino said, “but I still want to know what’s going on.”
“Then you’d better have dinner with Lance,” she said, “and you’d better not tell him you even mentioned the subject to me.”
A waiter brought them menus.
“Shouldn’t you be getting home to your wife?” Stone asked Dino pointedly.
“I haven’t had dinner yet,” Dino said indignantly. “You want me to starve?”
“As I recall, Mary Ann is a very fine cook.”
“Yeah, well the last time she cooked for me was so long ago that I can’t put a date on it.”