“Why would I do that?”
“I knew about the security upgrades to this house that the Agency undertook when you were experiencing difficulties with a Russian mob a while back, and it was my suggestion to the president that yours would be a perfect safe house.”
“I’m flattered that you thought of me, and, of course, I’m glad to have Ian as a guest for as long as this takes.”
“I knew you would be gracious, Stone, that’s the other reason I recommended you. MI6 is now going through an autoproctological examination more extensive than anything since they were trying to root out the Soviet mole Kim Philby in the late fifties and early sixties. In that instance, they knew who the culprit was, but they couldn’t prove it. In this case, they’re starting from scratch.”
“As I recall, the Philby effort ended badly.”
“Right. They were unable to get a confession and unable to produce other than circumstantial evidence against him, and he was cleared by a Foreign Office and parliamentary investigation. They satisfied their betters by booting him out of MI6. A decade later, after things had cooled off, the service took Philby on again as a freelancer in Beirut, where he remained until they got some more evidence. His best friend extracted a confession from him, then looked the other way, so that Philby could escape to Moscow, where he lived the last twenty years of his life as a celebrated nobody.”
“Has MI6’s investigation produced a suspect?”
“If so, they haven’t shared that information with me. Understandably, Dame Felicity is playing her cards very close to her lovely chest.”
“Is Millie in any danger in all this?”
“We don’t think so, but nevertheless, precautions have been taken. I thought of shipping her up here, too, but I’m not sure she would be entirely safe in your house.” Her lip curled a bit.
“That was a very unattractive smirk.”
“I should have said, safe from Ian Rattle.”
“Had they been an item when she was in London?”
“No. In fact, she had an FBI beau during the operation, and she continues to see him. However, Ian has a reputation as a ‘bit of a lad,’ as the Brits like to put it, so why complicate things by shutting them up here together?”
“I can see how that might complicate.”
“Which brings me to ask, whom have you paired him with for dinner this evening?”
“Her name is Caroline Woodhouse. She’s a graphic designer at an ad agency and very attractive. I have a feeling that she and Ian might find each other interesting.”
“Stone, forgive me for saying so, but it sounds as though you might be looking to turn Ms. Woodhouse’s attentions away from you.”
Stone was groping for a reply to that when the doorbell rang. “Ah, my guests,” he said, rising.
The group was too large for Stone’s study, so they had drinks in the living room. Fred poured the champagne and the drinks and by the time the last guests, Herbie Fisher and his beautiful new girlfriend, Heather, arrived the party had upshifted from cordiality to conviviality, though nobody was wearing a lamp shade yet.
At the stroke of eight o’clock, Fred rang the silver dinner gong that Stone had found at a shop in the King’s Road, London, some years before, and the guests began looking for their place cards. Stone had put Ian Rattle and Caroline at the far end of the table from where he sat with Holly on his right and Heather to his left. For insurance, in case Caroline did not find Ian sufficiently attractive, he had placed Herbie on her other side.
“What brings you to New York, Ian?” Bill Eggers asked.
“Oh, a bit of housekeeping at our UN embassy,” Ian replied smoothly. “Very boring, but periodically necessary.”
“You’re with the Foreign Office, then?”
“For my sins.”
That received a chuckle, and no one probed further.
“Holly, what’s your excuse to get out of Washington?” Eggers’s most recent wife, Eleanora, asked.
“I’m speaking at a luncheon tomorrow at the Foreign Policy Association.”
“And your subject?”
“The Middle East, what else?”
“Are you for it or against it?” Stone asked.
“You’ll have to sit through a rubber chicken lunch to find out,” she replied, then turned to Dino. “Dino, I hear that you somehow were recently appointed police commissioner, or is that just an ill-founded rumor?”
“I’m afraid it is so,” Dino said.
“Next, you’ll be running for president.”
“If that should ever happen, Stone has promised to shoot me.”
“And I will keep that promise,” Stone said.
“Dino,” Herbie said, “you’ve been getting remarkably good press since you moved into One Police Plaza. How do you do that?”
“By keeping my mouth shut,” Dino replied. “If you don’t say anything, they can’t quote you.”
“I’ve been telling him to shut up for years,” Stone said.
The dinner moved from a foie gras course, through a duck course and a soufflé course to a cheese course. Fred had decanted two bottles of port Stone had been saving for a special occasion, and a perfect Stilton was served with it.
“My God,” Ian exclaimed after tasting the wine. “What is this?”
“It’s a Quinta do Noval Nacional ’61.”
“I know Noval, but what is Nacional?”
“It’s a tiny area in the Noval vineyard, planted with ungrafted, pre-phylloxera vines, and virtually unobtainable, unless you know somebody. Fortunately, I know Marcel du Bois, our French partner in the Arrington hotels, who gave me four bottles for Christmas last year.”
“This wine is older than my parents!” Heather said, getting a laugh.
When the guests moved to leave, not a drop of the port had been wasted.
—
When the last guest had left, Stone invited Ian into his study and gave him a glass of very old Armagnac.
“That was a perfect dinner,” Ian said. “I didn’t know California wines could be that good, and the port, of course, was nothing short of sensational.”
“We try to keep our royalist cousins entertained when they cross the pond,” Stone said. “Especially when they’re chased across the pond.”
“Holly explained, did she?”
“She did. How does it feel to be quarry?”
“Hot. Their first attempt was a car bomb that killed a parking attendant. The second was a silenced bullet through a sixteenth-century glass pane at a country house during dinner. That last one put the wind up Dame Felicity. I mean, it was supposed to be a safe house, you know?”
“Holly says Felicity is sparing no effort in her investigation. She compared it to the Philby foofaraw.”
“Oh, that was an aggravated case of old-boyism. They couldn’t believe that someone of their own class could be working for the opposition. In this case, well, I’m a military brat—no family connections. The culprit will probably turn out to be a cleaning lady or a driver, or some such person, no doubt for money.”
“I don’t know much about Dahai.”
Ian shrugged. “It’s a sultan’s palace perched on a lake of oil, not much else.”
“And why do they think Millie Martindale is in no danger?”
“Oh, greater London has a large Middle Eastern immigrant population that can conceal an operative. Washington doesn’t. They’d have to go at her through the Dahai embassy there, and since the outing of their chargé d’affaires, they can’t operate quite so freely. In fact, I’m surprised the State Department hasn’t shut them down and shipped them home. That’s what our Foreign Office did.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a bit of a target myself, at the present time.” Stone told him about the Perado affair and Gino Parisi’s hoods.