by Stuart Woods
“How transparent of you,” Stone said. “So now you’re a farmer’s daughter again?”
“I always was.”
“The only McGill in the county of Rutland is a bookmaker.”
“That must have confused your nosy friends.”
“Momentarily.”
“Do you have any other names besides Stone and Barrington?”
“My middle name is Malon, which was my father’s Christian name, but I never used it, because each time I did I had to explain that it was pronounced May-lon.”
“Good thinking.”
The table was set, and they were called to lunch. “Where are Dino and Viv?” Rose asked.
“They went riding and took a picnic lunch with them.”
“Good. I have you all to myself.”
“Entirely.”
“Any other questions?”
“How does MI-6 list your name in their records?”
Rose sighed. “I suppose they would have listed it somewhere as Balfour. I was a student at the time. Mind you, if they knew you knew that, they’d take you out and shoot you.”
“That’s what they’d like you to think,” Stone said. “What did you do for them as a student?”
“Watched out for communists, of course. They still haven’t recovered from that nest of spies at Oxford and Cambridge. Kim Philby is a name that still raises temperatures at MI-6.”
“Did you report any communists?”
“Only two, and they were both well-known to be members of the Young Communist League, so I wasn’t really giving anything away.”
“Did they ever call on you for other services?”
“They keep a list of medical types that they believe to be reliable. Once, at their request, I removed a bullet from a young man’s arse.”
“One of theirs or one of yours?”
“I never asked, and they never told me. As soon as I had stitched him up and given him a dose of antibiotics, they spirited him away. I never saw his face, since I was working at the other end.”
“How did you fall into the clutches of Roger Fife-Simpson?”
“I met him at Station Two a week before I met you. The service asked me to go up there and give some basic wound-repair instruction to a small group of spies-in-training—applying tourniquets, setting broken limbs, stitching up oranges, that sort of thing—nothing an Eagle Scout couldn’t handle.”
“What do you think of the man?”
“I think of him very little. I don’t suppose I spoke to him or was spoken to more than three or four times, including dinner here.”
“Felicity thinks you are his creature,” Stone said.
“Hardly. He’s not the sort I’d like to be the creature of. There was talk about him in the mess. He’s apparently a very efficient killer with almost any sort of weapon. There was a story about him dealing with some IRA types in Belfast.”
“I heard that story. Impressive, if true. Do you know what he did before landing at MI-6?”
“Not a clue. I had the impression at dinner that the landing wasn’t Felicity’s idea.”
“I have that impression, too.”
“He must have some connections in the government, though—probably the Foreign Office, since someone there foisted him upon Felicity.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I didn’t. I just figured it out. Perhaps I’m wrong.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Do you see Dame Felicity often?”
“When we’re both in residence down here.”
Rose leaned forward on her elbows. “Is she very good in bed?”
Stone was saved from that question by Dino and Viv, returned from their picnic, joining them for coffee.
23
Lance Cabot was in a meeting with an operations team about to embark on a mission when he was handed a note. A Brigadier Fife-Simpson to see you, it read.
“Tell him to wait,” he said, then continued with his meeting.
Forty minutes later the meeting broke up, and he buzzed his secretary. “Send in the brigadier,” he said.
A moment later they were shaking hands. Fife-Simpson was dressing a lot better than the last time he had seen him, Lance thought.
“Lance, how are you?”
“Very well, Roger,” Lance replied, waving him to a seat. “Coffee?”
“I had some while I was waiting,” Roger replied.
“Yes, sorry about that. I was sending a couple of young men off to their deaths.”
“I don’t suppose you could tell me about their mission.”
“You ‘don’t suppose’ correctly,” Lance said. “First, we’d have to clear you from your birth to this date, and you know how long that sort of thing takes.”
“Well, yes, I suppose I do,” Roger replied.
“Tell me, how long did it take to clear you at MI-6, after Admiral Sir Timothy Barnes shoved you down their throats?”
“Well, I don’t think it was quite like that,” Roger replied uncomfortably.
“Of course it was, Roger,” Lance replied. “You don’t actually think Dame Felicity was glad to see you, do you?”
“Dame Felicity has been very cordial,” Roger said stiffly.
“You and Sir Tim were at some school or other at the same time, weren’t you?”
“Yes, we were midshipmen at Dartmouth. He chose the Royal Navy, I chose the Royal Marines.”
“And now he’s First Sea Lord, I believe?”
“That is correct.”
“In a perfect position to throw a bone to an old midshipman chum.”
“I suppose you could put it that way.”
“The way I heard it was that you were about to be passed over for promotion for the second time, which would have necessitated retirement, when Sir Tim saved your ass, pulled you back from the brink. Did you once save his life, or something?”
“Something like that,” Roger replied.
“No, no, not his life, his career, wasn’t it? Sort of the same thing, I guess.”
“I’d rather not go into that.”
“Why not? Being queer isn’t a crime in Britain anymore—though it is, perhaps, a no-no for a high-ranking military member of the government. Whose arm did old Tim twist? The foreign minister’s, perhaps? After all, MI-6 comes under his purview.”
“Lance, I don’t think you should bandy about notions of that sort,” the brigadier said. “They might come back to bite you on the arse.”
“Of course, you’re right, Roger, and I try to keep my ass out of the way of people like Sir Timothy.”
“Good. I’m looking forward to seeing a bit of your shop,” Fife-Simpson said, desperately trying to change the subject.
Lance scratched his head. “There was another incident in which you and Sir Tim participated, I believe. Let’s see, what was it?”
Lance’s phone buzzed, and he picked it up. “Send her in, please.” He hung up and turned to Fife-Simpson. “One of our brilliant young ladies is going to be your shepherd in our meadow.”
Fife-Simpson was vastly relieved that Lance had been interrupted.
There was a rap on the door, and a middle-aged woman with a cropped haircut and dressed in a baggy tweed suit entered the room.
“Ah, here we are,” Lance said. “Meg Tillman, this is Brigadier Sir . . . Excuse me, I’m getting ahead of myself . . . Brigadier Roger Fife-Simpson, the shiny new deputy director of MI-6, an organization that has never had a deputy director until the brigadier came along and impressed everybody. Roger, Meg is known around our shop as one of our brightest minds, and she is an expert on our history and mission. She’s going to give you the two-and-a-half-dollar tour of both Langley and Camp Peary, our training facility, and answer all your questions.”
Lance stood up. “Oh,
I remember the other thing now. You and Sir Tim served in Belfast together, didn’t you?”
“We did. We were both young lieutenants at the time.” He made to move toward his guide, but Lance held him back.
“Let’s see, as legend has it, you two young fellows were in search of—how shall I put it?—just the right sort of bar . . . weren’t you? And you somehow got it wrong and ended up in a nest of IRA vipers and were set upon. You managed to occupy their attention long enough for Lieutenant Tim to fetch a squad of British military policemen, and they got to you in the nick of time, just before the Irish would have cut your balls off.”
“That’s not quite the way it happened,” Roger said, blushing.
“Oh, of course it was. I was in Belfast at the time, at the Royal Ulster Hospital’s casualty ward, getting a flesh wound attended to, when they brought you in. You were a mess. Sir Tim was very upset about it, I recall, and you spent a few days in hospital, closely attended by your friend.”
“It was quite different . . .”
“Well, Meg,” Lance interrupted, “off with you both, and don’t skip anything. I expect the brigadier would love to see our technical services shop—the Brits always love that.” He leaned over and whispered, “In your travels, be sure and introduce the brigadier to Mr. Wu at Camp Peary.” He shooed them out the door and shut it behind them, then heaved a great sigh of satisfaction.
Lance dug out his cell phone and looked up a number. “Hello, Stone?”
“Yes, Lance,” Stone replied.
“Where are you?”
“In England,” Stone said.
“Oh, that’s right, that’s why I’m calling. I’m headed to London this evening, and I wondered if I could drop down to the Beaulieu River and see your magnificent house there this weekend. Can you put me up?”
“Of course, Lance. Call me from London and give me your arrival time, and I’ll have you met at the station.”
“Not to worry, I’ll be driving, or, rather, driven. Look for me in time for drinks on Friday. Shall I bring a dinner suit?”
“I suppose so. Shall I invite Felicity?”
“Please do. I’ll have some amusing stories to tell you both about a mutual friend who’s visiting us as we speak.”
24
On Friday, a Strategic Services Gulfstream 4 picked up Dino and Viv for the trip back across the Atlantic. “This is a bit of a demotion from the G-600, isn’t it?” Stone needled Viv.
“I’m told it will go the distance, and that’s all we require,” she replied, kissing him goodbye. “I feel better leaving you in the clutches of Rose, since we made an honest woman of her.”
“Come now, she was always an honest woman. We just had to find it out.” He gave Dino a hug, slapped him on the back, and followed him aboard the aircraft. “Nicer than I thought,” he said, looking around the cabin, “and you have only a couple of companions to share it with.” There were two other Strategic Services executives aboard.
“I’ll live,” Dino said. Then Stone deplaned and drove away with Rose in his golf cart, as the G-4 taxied to the end of the runway for takeoff.
“Viv must be pretty high up in her company,” Rose said, “to be picked up at a private airstrip for a transatlantic flight.”
“She is the number-two person, after Mike Freeman, who is chairman and CEO. It doesn’t hurt that Dino is the New York City police commissioner, and as such, he’s the sort of person worth doing favors for.”
“Did you build the airstrip?”
“No, the Royal Air Force was kind enough to do that during World War II. They used it to test new bombers and fighters, and to launch aircraft flying to France to parachute members of the Special Operations Executive into that country, to execute skullduggery against the Nazis.”
“Did the Germans ever bomb it?”
“No, it didn’t appear on any aeronautical charts, and it was heavily disguised in the daytime by fake farmhouses and hayricks on wheels that could be rolled away after the sun went down. Clever people, you Brits.”
“What shall I wear to dinner this evening?”
“It’s black tie for me, so dress accordingly.”
“Do we have guests?”
“We do: Dame Felicity and a gentleman named Lance Cabot, who some say is not a gentleman. He is the director of Central Intelligence for the U.S. and, as such, the director of the CIA.”
“Spooky dinner,” Rose said.
“Well put.”
* * *
—
Brigadier Roger Fife-Simpson stepped into a large, well-lit room that appeared to be a laboratory, except for the many objects lining its countertops. He was introduced to the director of technical services by his escort, Meg, and handed a small black case. “Open it,” the director said. Fife-Simpson released the two latches and found inside a clarinet, broken down into its pieces. “I’m afraid I don’t play,” he said.
“Now press down firmly on the mouthpiece in its cap.”
The brigadier did so, and the inside of the case flipped up to reveal another compartment underneath. Inside were a small pistol, a magazine, three metal tubes, and a slim telescopic sight. The director screwed the three pieces together, snapped the sight into place, and then handed the assembled weapon to Fife-Simpson. “There you are,” he said, “perfectly equipped for an assassination.”
The brigadier sighted around the room. “How accurate is it?”
“To a hairbreadth,” the director replied. “Oh, and here’s something else we’ve developed.” He handed his visitor a handsome fountain pen.
Fife-Simpson unscrewed the cap, inspected the pen closely, then felt the nib. He snatched his hand away. “It stung me,” he said.
“Sorry about that,” the director said. “Don’t worry, it’s not the cyanide version.” He turned to an assistant. “Antidote, please,” and the young man began rummaging through drawers.
“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” he said to the brigadier. “I expect you’re feeling drowsy.”
Fife-Simpson responded by sagging into Meg’s arms. She and the director transferred the limp form to a sofa on one side of the room. “I’m afraid he’ll be out for half an hour or so,” the director said.
“Oh, good. I can use the rest,” Meg said.
The director received a capped syringe from his assistant and handed it to Meg. “Stick him with that when you’re ready to have him back. It works quickly on any part of the body and can be administered through clothing.” He went back to work, and Meg sat down on the unused end of the sofa, glad for some rest from the brigadier.
* * *
—
Lance arrived at Windward Hall from London as evening fell. Stone and Rose came out the front door to greet him. Stone introduced Rose to Lance. “We’re just going down to fetch Dame Felicity,” he said. “Come with us.”
They got into the golf cart and drove the quarter mile to the dock, where her boatman was just making fast the boat’s lines. Stone helped Felicity ashore, and since everyone now knew everyone, introductions were unnecessary.
* * *
—
Back at the house, Geoffrey served them drinks.
“Thank you for taking the brigadier off my hands for a bit,” Felicity said to Lance.
“Speak of the devil,” Lance said. “I had a call a few minutes ago saying that Fife-Simpson was just rendered unconscious in our technical service department by a sting from a hypodermic disguised as a fountain pen—inadvertently, of course.”
“Of course,” Felicity replied.
“They’ll bring him around soon.”
They were called to dinner, and an old claret was uncorked, tasted, decanted, and poured.
“You said on the phone that you had met Fife-Simpson before?” Felicity asked.
“Yes. The first instance occurred in the c
asualty ward of a Belfast hospital. I had been observing the work of the Army and Royal Marines in the city and received a superficial bullet wound for my trouble, and while I was being treated, Fife-Simpson—a lieutenant at the time—was brought in. He had been badly beaten, and a friend, another lieutenant, was very concerned. The friend told me that he and a squad of military policemen had extracted young Roger from the clutches of an IRA scrum. The lieutenant said that Fife-Simpson had asked to be taken to a gay bar, but there was a mix-up. The lieutenant, by the way, was to become Admiral Sir Timothy Barnes, now serving as the First Sea Lord.”
“Oh, is the brigadier gay?” Felicity asked.
“I don’t think so. Rather, he is a gay basher, or, as some say, a gay trasher, who has helped along his career in the military by forming friendships with homosexual officers. Then, when it suited him, to gently blackmail his way into better fitness reports and promotions.”
“That is disgusting,” Felicity said.
“Do you know, Stone,” Rose suddenly interjected, “the brigadier asked me if you were gay.”
Felicity and Lance burst out laughing.
“Don’t worry,” Rose said, placing a hand on Stone’s arm, “I’ll give you a good report.”
More laughter.
25
They were on port and Stilton when Lance surprised Stone, and possibly everyone else, by asking Felicity, “Do you wish the brigadier returned to your service in one piece?”
“My desires conflict with my duty,” Felicity said without missing a beat, “as it is seen to be by my betters.”
“You surely must not wish to have your service used as a dumping ground for the unsuitable,” Lance said.