“My hint that I might discuss the situation with those outside my service seemed to do the trick.”
“You mean your betters are afraid of being exposed?”
“Exactly. I don’t think anyone in my position has ever even hinted at a public discussion of any matter.”
“You got their attention, then,” Stone said. “I congratulate you. I tried that with the NYPD once, and it got me early retirement.”
“I’m too young to retire,” Felicity said, “but my betters are not. I think visions of questions in Parliament followed by lurid headlines finally did the trick.”
“Should I let my client know?”
“I think you may do so,” she said. “Do you know how to reach him?”
“Now that you mention it, no.”
“Well, next time he reaches you, then.”
“Will do.”
“Tell me, did you tell him that his little trick with the cemetery plot didn’t work?”
“I can’t divulge a conversation with a client,” Stone said, “or even that such a conversation has taken place, but I have reason to believe that he is aware that that little jig is up.”
“Good. I shouldn’t like him to think that he can fool me so easily.”
“If I should ever speak to him again,” Stone said, “I will convey that thought to him.”
“Yes, please.”
WHEN STONE GOT home, the message light on his bedside phone was blinking. He pushed the necessary buttons to get the recording and heard the now-familiar voice from a barrel.
“A flight plan will be filed for you tomorrow morning for a departure at ten a.m. local,” Hackett said. “You may get your routing from Teterboro Clearance Delivery. Pack for two nights.” Hackett hung up.
“Was that your client?” Felicity asked from the other side of the bed.
“If it were, I couldn’t tell you,” Stone replied.
“Well, if you’re finished with your telephonery, would you kindly devote your attention to me?”
Stone got out of his clothes and did so, taking her in his arms and kissing her.
“I received payment from the Foreign Office today,” he said between kisses.
“I’m so glad our business has been concluded,” Felicity said, moving his hand to a receptive part of her anatomy, while taking a part of his in her hand. “Is there lubricant available?” she asked.
Stone reached for a bedside drawer and produced a small bottle, squirting it at the appropriate places.
“Much better,” she said, moving her hand.
They continued until both of them had achieved a satisfactory conclusion.
“By the way,” Stone said before they fell asleep, “I’m going to be away for the next couple of nights.”
“I have only a few days left in New York,” Felicity said, “so don’t be away too long.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Stone drove to Teterboro, did a thorough preflight inspection on Hackett’s Mustang, then got into the cockpit and started the engines. When he had run through the lengthy checklist, he called Clearance Delivery. The controller gave him a routing that took him north for a few miles, then northeast across Connecticut and Massachusetts and into Maine. To his surprise, his destination was Islesboro, where his own Maine house was.
He got taxi instructions to runway 1, then took off and followed his routing. An hour later he was lined up for landing on the little paved airstrip on Islesboro. As he touched down and began to roll out, applying the brakes, he saw a car parked beside the runway.
He got the airplane stopped, then taxied back toward the car. As he shut down the engines, a window rolled down, and Hackett beckoned.
Stone secured the airplane, then locked it and tossed his bag into the rear seat of the car and got into the passenger seat.
“How are you?” he asked Hackett.
“I’m very well, considering that I’m cut off from all my usual contacts,” Hackett replied. “Let’s not talk now; I’ll devote my attention to driving.”
He drove into the village of Dark Harbor and turned toward the Tarrantine Yacht Club.
For a moment, Stone thought he was driving to his own home, but Hackett turned into a driveway a mailbox short.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Stone said, getting out of the car before a shingled cottage. “We’re next-door neighbors, but from my house I can’t see this place for the trees.”
“I couldn’t go to my own home on Mount Desert,” Hackett said, “so I chose your location instead, almost.”
“Who would have thought it?” Stone asked, getting his bag from the rear seat and closing the door.
Inside, Hackett directed him to an upstairs room. “I’ll see how lunch is doing,” he said.
Stone went upstairs, hung his jacket in the closet and unpacked his bag. His room was small but comfortable, and he had his own bath.
Hackett called from downstairs, “Lunch is ready!”
“Be right down,” Stone called back.
51
They sat at the kitchen table, where a housekeeper served them a lobster salad, Stone’s favorite, and Hackett cracked a bottle of good California chardonnay.
“I have news for you,” Stone said.
“Good news, I hope.”
“Yes, indeed. You’re off the hook.”
Hackett stopped eating and looked at him. “The Whitestone thing?”
“That very thing.”
“Tell me all.”
“It is my understanding that the people in London…”
“The home secretary and the foreign secretary?”
“Yes, those people-have called it off.”
“Do they accept that I’m not Whitestone?”
“I don’t know about that, but I am reliably informed that they have no further interest in you.”
Hackett put down his fork and rested his forehead in a hand, his elbow on the table. “Thank God,” he said.
“Congratulations.”
“I was beginning to think I’d be on the run for the rest of my life.”
“Not anymore. Tell me, do you really think that British intelligence has the wherewithal to track you anywhere and cause your demise?”
“Well, they’re not the CIA, but they do have a long arm. As you have seen, finding one man is not all that hard, especially if he has as many business interests as I do.”
“Somehow I think of them as a smaller, cozier operation.”
“Again, compared to the CIA, perhaps they are. But over the years they have built up very good resources. Remember, they were in business before the United States had any kind of intelligence service.”
“I suppose so,” Stone said, “seeing that ours only goes back to World War II and the OSS.”
“Which became the CIA after the war,” Hackett pointed out.
“Do they have assassins on the payroll?” Stone asked.
“I should imagine so, though that service would be used rarely enough that they could rely on contract agents.”
“Are there really contract assassins in the world of intelligence?”
“Oh, yes,” Hackett replied. “I could put you in touch with two or three, should you ever require their services. Not that I have ever used them, of course.”
“Jim, from what you and Mike Freeman have told me about Strategic Services, you seem to be running your own private intelligence agency.”
“Yes, we are, but not on a governmental scale. And no national intelligence service would have our divisions for manufacturing, like our armored vehicle operation and our electronics section. Just between you and me, those divisions sell to several intelligence services on a regular basis.”
“Things like the telephone scrambler that we’ve been using?”
“Yes, but we still have a little more work to do on that,” Hackett replied. “In a few weeks we should have a prototype with much-improved sound quality on the level of, say, a cell phone.”
“I would imagine there would be a big demand for that from the business community,” Stone said.
“Indeed, yes. We’re already drawing up marketing plans. And it will work just as well on a single hotel room line as on an office system like yours. Also, the final prototype will be smaller than the unit you have.”