Stone picked up. “Good morning.”
“You were kind of down last night. Feeling better?”
“I was just tired—a good night’s sleep did the trick.”
“First one for a while, huh?”
“Don’t start.”
“I thought you’d like to know about Frank and Charlie.”
“I certainly would.”
“They were both carrying, but they had permits. I’m going to see what I can do about getting those revoked.”
“Good idea.”
“When my guys searched the car they found what they called a kidnap kit: black hood, duct tape, plastic ties, et cetera.”
“Is that illegal?”
“I’m afraid not, but it says something about their intentions.”
“Can you hold them?”
“They lawyered up immediately. They’re already on the street.”
“Not my street—not yet, anyway. Parisi hasn’t forgotten about me, though. Ryan and Al Parisi are parked on my block again.”
“I’ll see what, if anything, I can do about that.”
“Thanks. We’re on for tomorrow night. Holly Barker is coming in from Washington, and she’s bringing a Brit from MI6 that I have to hide for a while.”
“Hide from what?”
“Evildoers of some sort, I guess. She promised to explain tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you attracting enough evildoers of your own, without some Brit drawing more?”
“Oh, what the hell, another chunk of bait in the house can’t hurt. Listen, I’ve got to go to Queens for Perado’s closing. See you tomorrow night.” They hung up.
He grabbed his briefcase and buzzed Joan. “I’m headed to Queens for my closing. Please buzz Fred and ask him to meet me in the garage.”
“Will do.”
Stone went to the garage and got into the Bentley. Fred got in and entered the address into the navigator, buzzed the door open, and backed into the street. The garage door closed behind them, and Stone got a glimpse of two uniforms, who were bent over the hood of a car, talking to Ryan and young Parisi. “I don’t think we’ll have a tail this morning,” Stone said.
“I hope I don’t fall asleep, sir,” Fred replied.
—
The closing was held in a conference room in Marty Winkle’s offices, and it went smoothly. Winkle and Pepe Perado signed a stack of documents, a cashier’s check with a lot of zeros changed hands, and the two men shook on it. Cerveza Perado was officially a New York presence.
Stone walked out of the building with Pepe. “Can I give you a ride to the airport?”
“Thanks,” Pepe said, “but my two guardians are taking care of that. They’ll walk me all the way to the gate. I’m sending my son to New York next week to manage the new company. Marty and his son are staying on for a month, maybe two, to help with the transition, and I gave Brad Kelly’s brother-in-law a nice check as a finder’s fee. He’ll get a promotion soon, too.”
“I know you’ll be glad to get home, Pepe.”
“Not all that glad. I’ve enjoyed New York. I’ve already got a realtor looking for an apartment. I’ll be back often, I expect, once Gino Parisi is dealt with.”
“That’s two of us who want Parisi dealt with.”
“How are you going to manage that?”
“I’ve got an idea, but it’s half-baked—I’ve got some more thinking to do on that subject.” Then Stone looked up and saw Frank and Charlie’s car waiting in the street. He shook Pepe’s hand, and his two guards appeared and took him to their car.
Stone got back into the Bentley. “We’ve got a tail again,” he said to Fred. “How the hell did they know where we were?”
Stone was waiting in his study when Holly Barker arrived with Ian Rattle. Stone shook Rattle’s hand. “Please excuse Holly and me for a few minutes. Fred will show you upstairs to what used to be my son’s rooms, before he moved to Los Angeles. You’ll have a sitting room and a study.”
“Thank you, Stone,” Rattle said, then turned and followed Fred.
Stone embraced Holly and kissed her.
“Mmm,” she said, “you make me sorry I’m not staying the night.”
“Anytime,” Stone said. “What can I get you to drink?”
“I seem to recall vodka gimlets being constantly on hand.”
He poured her one and himself a Knob Creek, then he sat down beside her on the sofa. “So, what is Major Rattle running from?”
Holly took a deep breath and started. “While you were in England a few weeks ago, dealing with your own problems, like the destruction of your airplane, I—and especially Millie Martindale—were dealing with an entirely different kind of problem that you were not a party to.”
“I recall being asked to leave Felicity Devonshire’s dinner table, along with the ladies, so that Millie and Rattle could brief the prime minister and half his Cabinet on something important.”
“It certainly was something important. They were dealing with a group who were planning to simultaneously assassinate the prime minister and the president.”
“Good God!”
“I recall using those exact words when I learned about it.”
“Did the attempt take place? If it did, I certainly heard nothing about it.”
“It did, and it was rather brilliantly nipped in the bud in an operation that was conducted on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was kept very, very quiet. The problem began after the culprits were taken—diplomats in D.C. and London, a pair of them twins. They were declared persona non grata in both countries and shipped back to their home country—a tiny Arabian sultanate called Dahai—in one of the sultan’s fleet of jets, escorted by British and American jet fighters. Nearly all the way.”
“Nearly?”
“The fighter pilots were ordered to break off the escort once the jet was over the Arabian Sea. At that point, Lance Cabot took it upon himself to intervene.”
“Intervene how?”
“I was assigned by the president to investigate the incident, and I managed to get an admission out of Lance that he called the CIA station head in neighboring Yemen and suggested that he might prevail upon the head of an organization called Freedom for Dahai, who oppose the sultan, to station some men on the beach near the approach end of the runway, equipped with a Russian-made, shoulder-fired, laser-guided ground-to-air missile.”
“With what result?”
“The jet was blown out of the sky, a couple of miles out to sea, killing all aboard. Freedom for Dahai then issued a statement, claiming responsibility for the event.”
“Well, that was all neatly tied up, wasn’t it?”
“From Lance’s point of view, yes. He was doing what he believed the president would do, while giving her airtight deniability. From MI6’s point of view, however, things got messy fairly quickly.”
“How?”
“The twins aboard the jet were said to be the sons of the sultan by a member of his harem, and the third diplomat was the sultan’s nephew. Somebody in Dahai intelligence got wind of Ian Rattle’s involvement—he led the team that squelched the assassination attempt in London, extracted the twins, and shipped them back to Dahai. There were subsequently two attempts on Ian’s life in England—one in London and one at what was thought by MI6 to be a safe house in the country. Both narrowly failed, and Felicity thought it advisable that he be spirited out of the country and made to vanish, until they could track down the leak in MI6 and make England safe for him again. They smuggled him aboard a diplomatic flight out of an RAF base, and he landed at Dulles this morning. The Agency transferred him to my custody for the flight to Teterboro. Now here we are, and you can blame me.”