“But you still want to hurt him.”
“I want him out of circulation. He’s a danger to people he once served with, like me, and he’s not exactly working in his country’s best interests.”
“So you’re doing this privately, without Company cooperation?”
“Why do you think I hired you?”
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve thrown a monkey wrench into my investigation of Lance.”
“How so?”
“There were two retired cops working for me, remember? They were taking turns surveilling you and Lance. Now one’s in the hospital, and the other has quit. He’s the one who wants to meet up with you in a dark alley.”
“I’m really very sorry about the whole thing with the man being hurt,” Hedger said, sounding sincere. “In my business, you do not deal kindly with strangers who follow you and pick your pocket.”
Stone felt a pang of guilt. That was something he should have considered. “In any case, I don’t see how I can be helpful to you after all that’s happened. Lance knows who I am; we’ve socialized. I can hardly sneak up on him. And I’ve used my only police contact to hire these two men, one of whom is now badly hurt. I don’t feel I can go back to my contact and ask him for more help.”
Hedger looked thoughtful. “You say you and Lance have become friendly?”
“ ‘Friendly’ may be too strong a word. We know each other; I like his girl and her sister.”
“Oh, yes, Monica took you down to Lord Wight’s place, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew Wight’s daughter from New York?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Rather well.”
“So you have a plausible social history, as far as Cabot is concerned?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t continue to investigate him, but more from the inside.”
“For one thing, I mentioned your name to him yesterday.”
“What?”
“I asked him if he knew someone called Stanford Hedger; he said no, then walked away.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“I was still trying to figure out who you were, remember? If you had told me the truth—”
“Does he know why you asked about me?”
“No.”
“All right, here’s what you do: At the first opportunity, tell Lance everything that’s happened—about my hiring you, and all that, right up to this meeting. But you tell him you quit, that you were disgusted with my lying to you.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“It would disarm his suspicions. Don’t tell him that you know anything about Cairo or his having been in the agency; just tell him our conversation stopped at the point where you handed me back my money and quit.”
Stone thought about this. It was an intriguing situation, and he did not like Lance for doing the kind of business he was doing.
“You’d be doing a good turn for your country, if that means anything to you,” Hedger said, pushing the hook in a little deeper.
“I don’t know.”
“Give it another week,” Hedger said. He removed another, fatter envelope from his pocket and tossed it into Stone’s lap. “Live it up a bit; see more of London and Monica, Erica, and, above all, Lance. I just want to know what he’s up to, so I can stop him doing it.”
“Tell me the truth; do you intend to kill him?”
“Stone, if I’d intended that, he’d have been dead two years ago.”
“All right,” Stone said finally. “Another week, and that’s it.”
“It’s all I ask. How about a drink, now, and some dinner downstairs? Have you ever visited this club? Know anything about it?”
Then Bartholomew/Hedger, who was suddenly not such a bad guy after all, launched into a history of the Garrick Club and a list of its famous members.
Stone was charmed, a little, and he accepted Hedger’s dinner invitation.
Chapter 24
STONE WOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING with a hangover, the result, he was sure, of the great quantity of port that he and Hedger had shared at the Garrick Club. They had dined in the club’s main dining room, a long, tall hall with acres of walls filled with fine portraits, the room’s red paint browned by decades of tobacco smoke. Stone had spotted a former American secretary of state and half a dozen well-known actors, and Hedger had pointed out government officials, barristers, and journalists among the crowd. Stone had been impressed.
Now he was depressed. He made a constant effort not to overindulge; he had failed, and the result was worse than jet lag. The phone rang—more loudly than usual, he thought. “Hello?”
“Good morning, it’s Sarah,” she said brightly. It was the first time they had spoken since the funeral.
“Good morning,” Stone struggled to say.
“You sound hungover.”
“It’s jet lag.”
“No, you’re hungover, I can tell. You always sounded this way when you were hungover.” She had him at the disadvantage of knowing him well.
“All right, I’m hungover.”
“And how did this happen?”
“How do you think it happened? The usual way.”
“And in whose company?”
“A business associate’s—not a woman—and at the Garrick Club. And don’t start coming over all jealous.”
“I am jealous, but the Garrick is my favorite London men’s club, so I’ll forgive you.”