They flew south for ten minutes across Penobscot Bay, then the helicopter descended and set down on a small island. The engines were cut, and the rotor spun down, then Lance and his two aides, along with Stone, got out and walked toward a large house fifty yards away.
“What is this place?” Stone asked. “And what the hell am I doing here?”
“I thought we’d have a chat,” Lance said as they climbed the steps to the front porch. They shed their coats in the entrance hall and Lance led Stone to a paneled library overlooking a rocky beach. He poured them both a brandy, and they sat down.
“Whose place is this?” Stone asked, grateful for the warmth of the brandy.
“It’s a rental, sort of,” Lance replied. “Belongs to an alumnus of the Agency. We use it for various tasks in the off-season. Right now there’s a Chinese agent upstairs in one of the bedrooms, being turned, I should expect.”
“Is this where you called me from?”
“Yes. As we flew in yesterday, I saw Jim Hackett’s little Mustang at the Islesboro field, so I knew you were here.”
So Lance was not all-knowing, after all, Stone thought. “You shouldn’t have told me that,” he replied. “I was terribly impressed with your knowledge of my whereabouts. And, by the way, the airplane is mine now. Hackett left it to me in his will.”
“You are a great inheritor of things, aren’t you, Stone? Your house in New York is from an aunt, I believe.”
“Great-aunt.”
“Then Dick Stone’s house, and now a jet airplane. You’re a fortunate fellow.”
“I suppose I am at that,” Stone said.
“Well, if you’re a nice fellow, nice things happen to you, don’t they?”
“If you say so,” Stone replied warily. He had the feeling something not so nice was about to happen to him.
“I expressed my displeasure with you yesterday, on the phone,” Lance said. “Now I want to expand on that a little.”
“You don’t need to expand, Lance; I’m well aware of your displeasure.”
“I thought it might help if I gave you a little background.”
“All right.”
“Will Lee, as you know, is now in his last term as president, and that means his wife, the lovely Katharine Rule Lee, is in her last years as our director.”
Stone nodded and sipped his brandy.
“Things are always changing in the intelligence game, but because of the president’s two terms and what turned out to be Kate’s calming presence, we at the Agency have had a rather long period of stability. There have been blips along the way, of course, among them various problems associated with the work of outside contractors.”
“Yes, I’ve read about those in the papers,” Stone said. “Particularly about the murder trial of a few of your mercenaries.”
“We do not accept that term,” Lance said. “These people are patriotic Americans, not simply hired guns. They actually save us money by performing many chores peripheral to our actual missions. We don’t have to train their people, you see; most are ex-military or ex-Agency or ex-something else, so they arrive with the requisite skill set.”
Stone continued to sip his brandy, which had warmed him down to his fingertips by this time.
“Because of some of the difficulties raised by previous contractors,” Lance said, “I am particularly interested in having Strategic Services on our team.”
“Because they’re clean?” Stone asked.
“Precisely. Jim Hackett has always operated in a highly ethical manner, and his reputation, and that of his company, is, as a result, impeccable.”
“And Mike Freeman wants to keep it that way,” Stone said.
“Of course, of course,” Lance replied, “and yet it is Mike himself who is the greatest threat to the company’s reputation.”
Stone stopped sipping brandy. “What do you mean by that?” he asked carefully.
“I think you may already know,” Lance said. “But I’m going to tell you anyway, just so all our cards will be on the table.” He took a sip of his brandy, then continued.
FIFTEEN
Lance sniffed his brandy and took another sip. “Freeman is not his real name,” he said, “or, at least, not the name he was given at birth. He was then called Stanley Whitestone.”
Stone sipped his brandy and waited.
“Mike was a well-brought-up young Englishman when he was recruited for MI6, which is, as you know, the Brits’ foreign intelligence service. He excelled there and many said he was headed for the top. Then he fell in love with a much younger woman. She was twenty-two or so, a student at Cambridge, and Mike was in his mid-thirties and married. Her father, who was an important member of Parliament, was not amused. He came down rather hard on the girl, who had, by this time, found herself pregnant. Mike stepped up; he left his wife and became engaged to the girl, but she decided to have an abortion. Afraid of calling attention to herself because of her father’s position, she did not go to a hospital. Instead, she called on her best friend at Cambridge, a medical student, to perform the procedure. The boy was gay and the son of another important MP.
“The young man got through the procedure at his boyfriend’s country cottage and left her there overnight alone. When he returned the following morning she had contracted an infection and was very ill. He got her to a hospital, but she died later the same day. Mike Freeman knew nothing of any of this at the time.
“The boy was arrested, charged with performing an illegal abortion, and did a plea bargain for six months in prison. His medical career was ruined. While in prison he was raped and murdered by another prisoner, leaving two angry and powerful fathers to mourn the two young people.
“Time passed, the two MPs rose in the political world, and when their party won the next election, the girl’s father joined the cabinet as foreign secretary and the boy’s father as home secretary. Thus empowered, they set out to avenge their unlucky children and destroy Stanley Whitestone.
“By this time, under pressure created by the two fathers, Whitestone, fearing for his life, had left MI6, changed his name to Michael Freeman, and vanished. Eventually, he acquired an altered face, a Canadian passport, and a slight Montreal accent. Then he met Jim Hackett, went to work for him, and rose to number two in Strategic Services. With me so far?”
Stone shrugged noncommittally.
“Then your friend Felicity Devonshire, head of MI6, at the behest of the two fathers, employed you to find Mr. Whitestone. Felicity did not know the backstory, and the fathers had fabricated charges of treason, or worse, against Whitestone. The rest you know, am I right? In fact, you were with Jim Hackett when the sniper got him. I am prepared to believe that you knew nothing of that.”
“I won’t confirm or deny any of your story,” Stone said.
“You are so stubborn, Stone,” Lance said, laughing and shaking his head. “But I respect your loyalty and your rectitude, which is why I am now formulating a new approach to Mike Freeman and Strategic Services.”
“I’m sure he’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say,” Stone said, “as will I.”
“Properly noncommittal,” Lance said. “I’m going to make Mike an offer he can’t refuse, as the Godfather used to say.”
“I hope the content of your offer will be different from those of the Godfather,” Stone said.
“Don’t you worry, Stone; it will all be legal, proper, and aboveboard. Well, perhaps not entirely aboveboard, given the business we have chosen. Aboveboard is not really what we do, is it?”
“Finally, something we can agree on,” Stone said.
There was a sharp rap on the door of the study.