by Stuart Woods
“At a place that’s new to me, called Patroon. It’s not all that far away.”
“Then why did you bring your car?”
“I would be nervous taking you out on the street, since the last time you were here someone was gunning for you. The car is armored, so you will be protected.” He led her out and down the stairs.
“Oh, you have a new car, a Bentley?”
“Yes,” Stone said. “My Mercedes came to a bad end last year. Mike Freeman at Strategic Services had this in his fleet and sold it to me. Their armoring division had done a lot of work on it.”
“Why do you have armored cars?” Felicity asked, getting into the rear seat.
Stone got in beside her. “Accidental in both cases. I went into the Mercedes showroom to buy the first one, and they had it on the floor. It had been ordered by someone of shady reputation, and it arrived one day late. Somebody got to him, so I bought it from the widow. When I smashed it up, Mike was there to help.”
“You are the most fortunate man,” she said.
“If I were more fortunate I wouldn’t have totaled the Mercedes. By the way, thank you for your kind note after Arrington’s death.”
“It was the least I could do,” she said.
They arrived at the restaurant and were seated.
“This is very nice,” she said, looking around.
Stone ordered them drinks, and they were visited by the owner, Ken Aretsky. They chatted briefly, then the drinks arrived and he moved on to another table.
“Is this your new Elaine’s?” she asked.
“It’s one of them. Dino and I have learned that Elaine’s cannot be replaced—there is just no other place like it.”
“To a better future,” Felicity said, raising her glass.
“I’ll drink to that.”
“So you have a son now?”
“You’re keeping up, aren’t you?”
“What is the point of being in the intelligence game if you can’t spy on your friends?”
Stone laughed. “You’ll meet Peter and his girlfriend, Hattie, as well as Dino’s son, Ben, and Dino’s new girlfriend, Viv. They’ll all be on the airplane.”
“Why are you going out there in advance of the actual opening?” she asked.
“Well, I’m an investor and on the board, as is Mike Freeman. We both want to have an opportunity to look the place over before the guests swarm in.”
“What with having two presidents in residence, you and Mike must have some security concerns.” She didn’t look directly at him when she said this.
Stone caught something in her statement; he wasn’t sure what. “Yes, the Secret Service will be there in strength, and so will the Strategic Services people.”
“Good,” she said.
“Felicity, is there something you want to tell me?”
“Want to but can’t,” she replied, looking into her martini.
“Suppose something terrible happens, and you didn’t warn me?”
“Then I would feel very guilty,” she replied.
“Come on, unburden yourself.” But the menus arrived, and they took time to study them. “I’m not letting you off the hook,” he said when the waiter had taken their orders and gone.
“Something did come across my desk,” she said, “but I don’t want to raise the alarm over what might be nothing.”
“Do you recall that a couple of years ago you forced me to sign your Official Secrets Act?”
She brightened. “That’s right, I did, didn’t I? Prescient of me.”
“Yes, it was. Now give, please.”
“Oh, all right.” She looked around to be sure no one was within earshot. “Our signals people have picked up a series of oddly signed messages,” she said.
“Would the signatures be from a nursery rhyme?”
Felicity’s jaw dropped. “Now you must tell me how you know that.”
“No, I mustn’t.”
“I have to know if there was a leak on my end.”
“There was no leak. Those messages were picked up by the NSA.”
Her eyes widened. “And they circulated that information to you, a private citizen?”
“Actually, they probably don’t know that I was in the loop. Let’s just say they circulated it to someone I know.”
“Someone at the CIA?”
“No.”
“Well, if I were in charge around here, I’d have this person you know taken out and shot!”
“You may recall that I am still under contract to the Agency as a consultant,” Stone said, “and I have the appropriate security clearance—in spite of my friendship with you.”
“But do you have a need to know? I believe that’s the phraseology they use.”
“I have a very definite need to know,” Stone said, “since a substantial chunk of my inheritance from my late wife and of my son’s trust fund are invested in the hotel mentioned in the signals you referred to.”
“Oh, all right, I suppose you’re not a security risk.”
Their dinner arrived, and the subject changed.
“How are you . . . coping since becoming a widower?” she asked.
“You needn’t be so delicate,” Stone replied. “I plan to take you home and ravish you as soon as you’ve finished your Dover sole.”
She giggled. “Oh, good. But where is your son?”
“He occupies his own flat on the top floor of the house,” Stone said, “and he’s probably there, in the sack with his girlfriend, as we speak.”
“Goodness, his generation starts young, don’t they?”
“How old were you on the occasion of your first time?” Stone asked.
Felicity blushed deeply.
“Oh, come on, you can tell me. Official Secrets Act, remember?”
“Sixteen,” she said. “With a young gamekeeper on my father’s estate.”
“Shades of Lady Chatterley!”
“It was only afterward that I read the novel,” she said. “But he was very sweet. He was twenty-two, and he seemed like much the older man. What about you? When was your first time?”
Stone laughed. “I was sixteen, too, and she was nineteen. Much the older woman, and I was grateful to her for her experience.”
“So we were both precocious.”
“And will be again,” Stone said. He waved at a waiter. “Check, please!”
31
There was sunlight filtering through the shutters in Stone’s bedroom when he looked over and found Felicity next to him. Their hips were touching, and she had a wisp of her red hair across her face. Gingerly, he brushed it away, and she opened her eyes.
“My goodness,” she said, turning toward him. “How long it’s been since I awoke to find a man in my bed!”
“In actual fact,” Stone said, “you awoke to find yourself in a man’s bed.”
“Even better,” she said, placing a hand on his cheek and kissing him lightly.
“More, please,” he said, and they did it again. From there it was but a short hop to an embrace and a joining of flesh.
When they had finished and lay panting in each other’s arms, Felicity said, “What will your sleeping arrangements be at the hotel?”
“I’ll be staying in a four-bedroom cottage with its own garden and pool that was part of the original deal for the building of the hotel. The master bedroom, where I will sleep, has a private, walled patio off the back garden, to which I will give you a key, so that you may steal in and out at will.”
“What a lovely arrangement,” she said.
“Of course, you may encounter a Secret Service agent or two along the way, since we’re next door to the presidential cottage, but they are very discreet people.”
She sighed. “From what you’ve told me, I won’t be able to move without rubbing elbows with either the Secret Service, the Mexican protective detail, a team of Strategic Services guards, or all of the above.”
“That’s about the size of it, but as long as you don’t come to
me naked, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I suppose I can stand to wait until I’m in your bedroom before disrobing.”
“A good policy. How many other Brits will be in residence?”
“I’m the only one, except for a few private citizens and one journalist,” she said. “I’m meant to be consulting with Kate Lee on some security matters, among them the signals you and I talked about last night.”
“I’m reliably informed that Kate already knows about the signal traffic. The NSA figure in charge of all that, Scott Hipp, is politically connected, and he just loves sending little items like that to the White House.”
“To which Kate is well connected,” Felicity said. “I wonder what it would be like if I were married to the prime minister.”
“Does he interest you?”
“Oh, no, I was just talking about having that connection. I wonder if Kate and her husband talk about work in bed.”
“You’ve got me there,” Stone said. “Would you like some breakfast?”
“May I have a full English breakfast?” she asked. “Eggs over easy, sausage, bacon, grilled tomato, tomato juice, and very strong coffee?”
Stone picked up the phone, buzzed Helene in the kitchen, and placed their orders.
“May I have a bath while we’re waiting?” Felicity asked.
“Of course. May I watch?”
“That might get dangerous,” she said, getting out of bed and walking across the bedroom to her bath. “I won’t be long.”
Stone’s phone rang. He looked at his watch: seven-thirty. Who the hell? He picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s Mike.”
“Good morning, Mike. You’re an early riser.”
“I’m getting reports that someone has completed the computer work that High Cotton’s Mr. Chang began, and that it’s in use.”
“Anything specific?”
“Someone called Algernon is communicating with the three men in a shoe or a boat, or whatever they’re in.”
“What sort of communications?”
“They’re meeting—we don’t know where.”
“This is the first we’ve heard of an Algernon, isn’t it?”
“It is. It sounds as though he’s running the three, and I’ll bet he’s hot off a plane from the Middle East.”
“Maybe you should speak with the Secret Service about this.”
“I have already done so, directly to Rifkin, who’s the AIC at The Arrington. Are you still on schedule to arrive tomorrow?”
“We’re wheels up at ten o’clock Teterboro tomorrow morning.”
“Good.”
“Oh, one other thing,” Stone said. “MI-6 is picking up the same traffic NSA is.”
“And you know this because?”
“I had . . . dinner with Felicity Devonshire last night.”
“Ah, Felicity!”
“She’s flying out with us to take a meeting with Kate Lee.”
“I wonder if she knows anything else of interest to us.”
“I wonder, too. I’ll press her on that subject.”
“Never hurts to triangulate on something like this.”
“I guess not.” The bell rang that signaled that the dumbwaiter was on the way up from the kitchen. “I gotta run,” Stone said.
“I’ll see you at the hotel.” Mike hung up.
Felicity came out of the bathroom in a terry robe with a towel around her hair. “I smell sausage,” she said.
Stone took the tray from the dumbwaiter, set it on the bed, and whisked away the covers.
“This is the best hotel I know,” Felicity said, picking up a sausage with her fingers and biting into it.
“Mike Freeman just called,” Stone said. “There’s further news of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”
“Do tell.”
Stone told her about the defection of Chang from High Cotton and the work he did in Palo Alto. “His work has now been completed, and someone code-named Algernon is communicating with the trio, setting up a meeting. Mike thinks Algernon may have arrived in California to run the trio.”
“I think that’s a sensible conclusion to draw,” she said. “I’ll check with my people this morning to see if they have anything new to add.”
“We would all appreciate that,” Stone said.
She set the plate of eggs and bacon in her lap and started to work on it. “One way we might be able to help is to go back into our files and see if we’ve ever had an Algernon operating anywhere.”
“Excellent idea. If we knew who he was it might be easier to track them all down.”
“I think we can guess where they’re heading,” Felicity said.
32
When Hamish went to the kitchen for breakfast, Mo was looking very nervous. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing is wrong, it’s just that the material has arrived, and I’m excited. The doctor has been working most of the night.”
Hamish went into the dining room where Dr. Kharl was working and found him on his knees before the open Vuitton trunk, tightening some screws. He was wearing heavy gloves.
The doctor looked up. “Welcome back,” he said.
“Is it finished?” he asked.
“All done, except for completing the three small devices and what you have to do.”
“I?”
“Or whoever will activate the device,” Kharl said. He stood up and retrieved an object resting on top of the trunk. It was made of metal and was a flat plate about half an inch thick, with a teat-shaped closed tube attached to its bottom. “Some of the material is in here,” Kharl said, tapping the teat. He unscrewed the top of the plate. “There is a layer of plastique here, with a threaded hole on top that will admit a detonator.” He dropped the teat end into the tube and screwed it tightly into place, then screwed a small metal tube containing the igniter into the top. “Then close this panel”—he pointed—“insert this key”—he held up one like the ones he had seen for the smaller devices—“then tap into the keypad the elapsed time to ignition, up to ten hours, then turn the key to the right. When the digital clock reaches zero, the blasting cap will set off the plastique, which will fire the tube containing a bullet of enriched uranium into the fissionable material at the bottom of the trunk, creating what is known as a critical mass. You must be many, many miles away by that time.”
Hamish unrolled a map of Los Angeles and pointed to The Arrington’s location with a draftsman’s compass. “What sort of damage can we expect from this device?”
Kharl took the compass and placed it on the scale at the bottom of the map, adjusting it to the correct distance. “Each kiloton of explosive force will decimate everything inside a radius of one nautical mile, or about six thousand feet. This device has an explosive power of about two and a half kilotons, and thus, a destructive range of about two and a half nautical miles, or a little over three statute miles.” Kharl placed the point of the compass on The Arrington’s location and drew a circle around it.
“Now, you see what lies in the path of complete destruction: inside the circle are all of the Bel-Air neighborhood and all of Beverly Hills, to the edges of West Hollywood. To the west, much of the blast will be contained by the Santa Monica Mountains, but there are dense residential neighborhoods within the circle. To the south, complete destruction reaches to about Santa Monica Boulevard, including practically the entire campus of UCLA, and much of Centurion Studios, where movies are made. To the north the mountains will absorb much of the blast, but the dams of both the Stone Canyon upper and lower reservoirs will be breached, allowing something like three and a half billion gallons of water to rush down the mountainside. This will, of course, create its own fairly narrow path of destruction, but it will wash an enormous amount of debris far past Santa Monica Boulevard. You get two catastrophes for the price of one!” Kharl giggled at the thought. “Of course, there will be terrible damage and fires well beyond the three-and-a-half-mile circle of complete destruction, not to mention
the deaths caused by radiation poisoning. It will take Los Angeles decades to recover.”
Hamish’s breath was taken away for a moment; he had not fully comprehended what the device would do.
“Now,” Kharl said, “do you understand what you must do?”
Hamish repeated the process to the doctor. “Is that correct?”
“It is perfectly correct,” the doctor said. “You may stop the process if you insert the key and turn it to the left.” Kharl looked at his wristwatch. “My flight to Dubai departs San Francisco International in three and a half hours,” he said. “I must leave immediately.” He closed the trunk, locked it, and handed the key to Hamish.
Mo spoke from the doorway. “There is a car waiting downstairs to drive you to the airport, Doctor. Come, I’ll take your luggage.”
Kharl laid his gloves on the table. “You will not need these,” he said. “I will leave it to you to dispose of them.” He shook Hamish’s hand, then Mo’s, then followed Mo and his suitcase out of the apartment.
Hamish put both keys into his pocket and went to breakfast. He was eating his muffin when Mo came back into the flat. Jasmine came out of her room and joined them at the table.
“The doctor is on his way,” Mo said. “I am uncertain why you allowed him to go.”
“I let him go because we may need him again,” Hamish said, sipping his coffee. “There are plans for London being discussed.”
—
When they had eaten, they stacked the three small cases onto a hand truck, along with the two Vuitton cases holding Hamish’s clothes, wheeled them downstairs to the building’s garage, and stowed them in a rented van, then went back for the trunk. Mo tilted it and got the hand truck under it. “It’s surprisingly light, considering its contents,” he said.
“Lightweight was one of my specifications,” Hamish replied. “The metal parts are of aluminum and titanium—only the material at the bottom is heavy.” They took it down in the elevator, muscled the trunk into the van, then Jasmine got behind the wheel, and Hamish got into the passenger seat and rolled down the window. “Our work is done here,” he said to Mo. “Pack your things into my empty cases, dispose of your canvas luggage, and get your flight back to London.” They shook hands, and Jasmine drove out of the garage.