“Next week perhaps. I’ll call you.”
“Do that.” He kissed her and she left.
Two minutes later, his cell phone rang. “Hello?”
“It’s Felicity.”
“Good morning, did your people get anything?”
“They got a great deal,” she said, “but not much of value. You didn’t ask the right questions.”
“You didn’t give me a script,” he replied, “and I didn’t want to appear to be grilling her. I did the best I could.”
“Yes, well, we’re all aware how well you did,” she said.
“You’re smirking,” Stone replied. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean the video was extraordinarily good. We had half a dozen angles, too.”
“Video? What video?”
“Oh, there are cameras everywhere. Would you like to know what you had for breakfast, or what wine you drank last night?”
“You didn’t tell me that, Felicity. You said there was only audio.”
“I said no such thing. I said the suite was wired. We even got good footage of your time in the shower this morning.”
Stone checked his memory against that statement. “Shit,” he said. “I won’t do that again without some agreed ground rules.”
“Oh, come on, my dear. You came off beautifully — so to speak.”
“Now what?”
“Now you are free to wander London as you will. And there won’t be a bill from the Connaught — our treat.”
“What’s your next move with Rose?”
“Well, we’re following her taxi as we speak, and we’ll check out the Ennismore Mews address. Would you like to have lunch a little later?”
“Why not?”
“I’ll be in your neighborhood. Shall we do it at the Connaught? One o’clock?”
“Fine.” He hung up
Stone got dressed and left the hotel. He stopped into his tailor’s, Huntsman & Sons, and had a fitting of some things he had ordered earlier, then he stopped by Turnbull & Asser and chose some neckties and a couple of nightshirts. He arrived back at the Connaught and found Felicity waiting for him in the restaurant.
“What did you do with yourself this morning?” she asked, as he sat down and tucked his shopping bag under the table.
“Tailor, shirtmaker. My goal is to have a complete enough wardrobe here that I don’t have to travel with luggage, except a briefcase.”
“An admirable goal,” she said. They ordered. “Would you like to hear what our surveillance produced?” Felicity asked.
“Yes, please.”
“She went to the Ennismore Mews address, changed clothes, then went shopping. While she was gone, her mail was read by MI-6. Just some catalogs and a couple of utility bills.”
“In what name?” Stone asked.
“Margot Balfour,” Felicity said.
“Nice name.”
“The deed for the mews house is in that name, too, so she owns it.”
“Has it occurred to you that she may be renting from Ms. Balfour?”
“Don’t be annoying, Stone, and don’t underrate us.”
“So, you know that her name is Margot Balfour?”
“We do. She is a real person, as opposed to Dr. Rose McGill. And people named Balfour own a farm in the county of Rutland, and the name appears on the medical register.”
“Where else did she go besides home?”
“Harvey Nicks, Harrods, a couple of shops in Beauchamp Place.”
“Perhaps you can answer me this, without violating the Official Secrets Act,” Stone said. “Can a woman employed by MI-6 afford to shop at those establishments?”
Felicity rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she replied. “If she has a private income.”
“And are the Balfours of Rutland County well enough off to endow her thus?”
“They are important landowners in that county and have been for two hundred years.”
“So, Daddy and Mummy don’t feed the chickens and milk the cows?”
“Her father is the cousin of a local duke and is a member of White’s and the Garrick Club. Her mother is a bulwark of half a dozen Rutland charities. She has a sister who seems to be edging toward an aristocratic marriage.”
“My goodness,” Stone said. “Ms. Balfour seems to be too good for MI-6, doesn’t she?”
“No one is too good for MI-6,” Felicity replied. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go and see if that institution is still where it was this morning.”
“Lunch is on me,” Stone said.
“Of course it is,” she said, opening her handbag and fishing out a computer thumb drive. “Here is the recording of your escapades of last night,” she said. “It’s the only one.”
With that, Felicity flounced out to her waiting car.
18
Stone had nothing further to keep him in London for the remainder of the day, so he got his things and asked for his car. On the drive down to Windward Hall he reviewed his evening and morning and decided he knew not much more than he had the day before, save a new name. Everything else he knew was the same.
Back at Windward Hall he gave the car and luggage to Stan, then went to the library. Dino was asleep on the Chesterfield sofa, a light blanket over his feet. Stone found his book on the mantel — a new biography of Winston Churchill by Andrew Roberts — and sat down to read, pleased to see that he had passed page five hundred in a book of more than one thousand pages. He was immediately sucked back into the existence of the greatest Englishman as he became prime minister during World War II.
He had read another twenty-five pages when Dino stirred, then sat up, rubbing his eyes, seeming surprised to find Stone there. “How did you sneak in here without waking me up?”
“I didn’t sneak in, but I did try not to wake you, and I didn’t.”
“Then why am I awake?”
“You are awake of your own volition, since I’ve been sitting here for an hour. Is Viv still in London?”
“Yes. How long were you in the bugged suite?”
“Yesterday afternoon and evening. We ordered dinner from room service. Rose left before nine this morning.”
“Now, let me get this straight,” Dino said. “You agreed to have yourself filmed while fucking Rose?”
“Dino...”
“You can’t tell me that you spent hours with Rose in a room with a bed without fucking her and vice versa.”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“So, MI-6 now has what most people would call a ‘compromising sex video’ of you and Rose together?”
“They do not.”
“What did you do? Pull the covers over your head?”
Stone retrieved the thumb drive from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Dino. “This is the only copy. Felicity gave it to me.”
“And you believed her?”
“Believed what? It’s all right there in your hand.”
“You believed there are no copies?”
“If there were, I don’t believe Felicity would have bothered to lie about it.” Stone stood up. “Excuse me a minute.” He went into the attached powder room and used the facilities. When he came out, Dino was gazing at his iPhone and laughing. “This is hot stuff, Stone!”
“Dino, you can’t watch a thumb drive file on an iPhone.”
“You can watch this one,” he said. “It has a compatible fire-whatchacallit-plug.”
Stone walked over to where Dino sat and looked over his shoulder, then he snatched the phone away from him, unplugged the thumb drive, and gave him back the phone. “You’re disgusting!”
“Some folks would say that what I just watched was disgusting, but not I. I thought it was great!”
Stone put the thumb drive into his pocket, sat down, and picked up his book. It wasn’t all that easy, because the book must have weighed ten pounds.
“I especially liked the part where your head disappears between her legs,” Dino said.