by Stuart Woods
“How did the islanders react to your, ah, problems?”
“Pretty well. I actually got some encouraging mail in prison, and when I came back, it was like I’d never left. During the whole business I was never asked to resign from the yacht club or the golf club. You play golf?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Let’s do that soon. I’ll introduce you to some islanders.”
“Ed, are you convinced that nobody who lives here had anything to do with the murders of Dick and his family?”
Rawls nodded. “I am. Nobody knows this place and these people better than I do, and, believe me, it’s just not in the cards.”
“But you can’t suggest exactly who might have been involved?”
“Not yet, but I’ve got some feelers out. You’ll have to be patient; these things aren’t on the clock.”
“You’re making me feel helpless,” Stone said. “I’m out of my depth with the kind of people you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, but you know people who can help, Stone.”
“Do I?”
“Well, until yesterday, you were up here with Lance Cabot, weren’t you?”
“There is a local grapevine, isn’t there?”
“Sure, there is.”
“You know Lance?”
“I helped train him,” Rawls said. “He worked for me later. So did Kate Rule.” Katharine Rule Lee was the president’s wife and the Director of Central Intelligence.
“You are well connected, aren’t you, Ed?”
“I know quite a few folks; not all of 'em want to know me.“
“Because of your indiscretions?”
Rawls nodded. “Stone, I can see you’re here with the idea of tracking down Dick’s killer and putting him in jail, but that’s not how it works in this particular game.”
“How does it work?”
“We find out who gave the order, and after a while, we make something happen to him in such a way that doesn’t seem connected to the Stone murders.”
Stone noted the “we.” “And how do we make that happen?”
“Oh, somebody has an auto accident on an icy road, or maybe he has a few sips of a dioxin cocktail. Satisfaction comes slow in this game.”
Stone looked at his watch. “I’d better be going; I have to make some calls, and I still have quite a lot of work to do on Dick’s estate.”
“Tell you what, let’s play golf tomorrow morning—nine holes at, say, ten and then I’ll take you to lunch at the yacht club. Pick you up at Dick’s at nine-forty-five?”
“Sounds good,” Stone said. He shook hands with Rawls and went to his car. As he drove back up Ed Rawls’s drive, the gate was open again. Then, in his rearview mirror, he saw it close behind him.
Chapter 11
STONE DROVE BACK TO the house and called Lance’s cell phone. “Yes?”
“It’s Stone.”
“Everything all right?”
“So far. Tell me about Ed Rawls.”
There was silence for a moment, while Lance thought about it. “Oh, God,” he said. “Ed lives up there, doesn’t he? I’d forgotten.”
“Tell me about him.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything you’ve got time for.”
“All right. Ed was a second-generation guy; his father worked for Bill Donovan in the OSS during World War Two and was with Dulles when the Agency was created. Ed became a star in Operations; he initially made his name as a new agent in Viet Nam. He had a talent for recruiting, even people whose language he didn’t speak, but it didn’t take him long to learn the language. He ran teams of South Vietnamese into Laos and the North to gather intelligence, take and interrogate prisoners and destroy weapons stockpiles; he jumped out of airplanes into the jungle, got what he was after and walked home if a chopper couldn’t get to him without attracting too much attention..
“By the time the war was over, he was a near-legend, and by the time I met him, when I was in training, he was the actual thing. He was a great mentor, and everybody loved him, except the colleagues who had to compete with him.
“After the Farm, he was posted to Berlin and made a whole new name for himself then. He preceded Dick in running the London station, then he got caught in bed with somebody’s wife and got sent to Stockholm, which was a demotion. Ed never could keep his cock in his pants, and the cold winters didn’t slow him down.
“Unfortunately, one of his girls was a setup of the Soviets, and they took the usual embarrassing photographs. He was up against it, due to retire in a couple of years, and exposure would have gotten him fired, after his debacle in London. He began feeding them information, probably harmless stuff. Two of our people were designated to follow him to a possible meet with the Soviets, and they were both shot. Kate Rule, herself, found him out and got him sent to prison. He spent four or five years in the Atlanta Federal Prison, until the Agency got some backdoor information from a former source that seemed to clear him. ”He was also the source of a tip that put somebody we were looking for in a cottage on North Islesboro. That, apparently, tipped the balance, and the top echelon at Langley, including Kate Rule, recommended a presidential pardon. He also got a million-dollar reward and repaired to his ancestral home in Dark Harbor to amuse himself as best he could and await death. That’s about it.“
“Is he somebody I can trust?”
“Trust to what?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Probably, especially if it’s in his interest to do so. Why do you ask?”
“Rawls told me he thinks Dick’s death was work related.”
A brief silence. “Did he give you any details?”
“He said he had some feelers out, and I’d have to be patient. He’s also afraid whoever killed Dick and his family may have a go at him as well, and he’s taken security precautions at his house. I wandered down his drive, exploring, and he trapped my car and drew down on me.”
“Well, assuming prison didn’t send Ed around the bend, there may be something to it. We all have a certain amount of paranoia trained into us, and Ed would be no exception. Did he seem to make sense to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d take ham seriously and find out what, if anything, he has to offer. How could it hurt?”
“Well, it’s not like I have anything else to go on.”
“You’ll find Ed an entertaining character, full of stories, and he’s very smart. You could do worse than to have him on your side.”
“I didn’t see any evidence of a wife.”
“She bailed out when Ed was arrested, took half of everything and bought a house in Florida. Last I heard, she’d remarried.”
“Tell me, Lance, in what sort of repute is Rawls held by his former colleagues?”
“Some are sympathetic; some hate his guts. Hugh English, whom Dick was succeeding as Deputy Director for Operations, was one of the haters, but he signed off on the pardon recommendation. Incidentally, I don’t know if Ed mentioned it to you, but there are a few other retired spooks living out their years on that island. I understand they do some drinking together and call themselves the Old Farts.”
Stone laughed. “Thanks for the information, Lance.”
“Call me when I can help.” Lance hung up.
It suddenly occurred to Stone that he had a golf date the following morning, and he didn’t have any golf clubs. He saw Seth Hotchkiss working in the back garden, and he walked outside.
“Hey, Stone,” Seth said.
“Hey, yourself. Tell me, Seth, did Dick have any golf dubs?”
Seth nodded. “There’s a big cupboard in the garage, next to the MG.”
“I noticed, but I didn’t look inside.”
“There’s a lot of sports stuff in that cupboard.” Then Seth nodded toward a sailboat resting at the end of Dick’s dock. “There’s that, too, got delivered from the yard this morning, and there’s a picnic boat, ought to be delivered from the yard this afternoon.
You’ll get a big bill for the maintenance and storage.”
“What’s the sailing boat?”
“It’s a one-off. Dick designed it himself maybe ten years ago and had it built over at Hinckley’s, in Southwest Harbor. They built the picnic boat, too, but Dick got that last year.”
“Thanks, Seth.” Stone went back into the house and then to the garage, where he opened the large cupboard. It was a veritable sporting goods store: There was a set of titanium Callaway clubs, tennis racquets, a croquet set, fishing equipment and more. Dick was nothing if not well equipped; he had spent his wife’s money well.
Stone went back into the house, opened the safe and read Dick’s will again. The bequest of the use of the house to Stone included outright ownership of all its “appurtenances.” Stone read that to include the cars and boats and whatever else he hadn’t discovered yet.
“Holy shit,” he muttered to himself.
Chapter 12
STONE WAS STANDING in front of the house with his golf clubswhen Ed Rawls pulled into the driveway in a shiny, new Range Rover. Stone put his clubs in the back and got into the passenger seat “Morning.”
“Good morning,” Rawls said. “Looks like we’ve got a good day for it.”
“Yep.”
“I had a call from Lance Cabot last night. We had a nice chat, and he offered me any support I might need in helping you with the Stone murders.”
“That’s good. Take him up on it.”
“He gave me a name at Langley as a liaison. I talked with her this morning, and she’s running down some things for me.”
“You want to tell me about the things?”
“Nah, it would take too long, and it wouldn’t help you. The information she gets might help, though, and I’ll tell you about that when I get it.”
“Okay.”
They drove through Dark Harbor and out to the golf course, where they unloaded their clubs. There was a wait while a foursome teed off before them.
“Let’s give them a good head start,” Rawls said. He looked down at Stone’s loafers. “What kind of golf shoes are those?”
“Oh, Dick’s were too small, and I didn’t have any of my own. I’ll have to send for some, I guess.”
Stone looked around; there were no carts. “We going to walk?” he asked.
“Oh, sure; it’s how I get my exercise.”
They teed off, and Rawls set a rapid pace down the fairway. Stone followed as best he could, but his loafers were not built for this.
TWO HOURS LATER they sat at a table at the Tarrantine Yacht Club, which was a modest building with a big dock and a lot of moorings, waiting for cheeseburgers. Stone took off his ruined loafers, which were soaking wet after a few tramps through the rough, and rubbed his feet.
“You gotta get some better shoes,” Rawls said, sipping his Coke.
“Tell me about it.” He had to replace the loafers, too. It had been an expensive round of golf.
“What did you shoot, finally?” Rawls asked.
“Don’t ask.”
“How’m I going to play you for money, if you won’t tell me your score?”
“All right, I shot a fifty-two. How about you?”
“Forty, a little off my handicap.”
“Which is…?”
“Six.”
“Jesus, Ed, how the hell are you playing to that kind of handicap at your age?”
“I practice a lot. There’s fuck-all else to do around here, if you don’t sail or play tennis. What’s your handicap?”
“I don’t know, probably around twenty-five.”
“You need to practice more.”
“Well, if I spend enough time up here, I might do that. Golf is tough when you live in the city. I have a place in Connecticut, and I belong to a club there, but I don’t get up there often enough.”
“You going to be spending any time around here?”
“Maybe. Dick left me his house.”
“No kidding? That’s a very tidy inheritance. You know what that place is worth?”
“I get to use it, and so do my heirs, but if it’s sold, the proceeds go to the Samuel Bernard Foundation.”
“You know what that is?”
“Yes. Bernard was a mentor of mine in law school.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t recruit you.”
“He tried to, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was many years later he told me he thought I might not have been suited for the life. Lance signed me as a consultant, though.”
“That speaks well of you; Lance is a good judge of talent.”
Stone shrugged.
“Well, if you’re going to be spending some time here, we’d better get you in the yacht club and the golf club. I’ll work with you, and we’ll bring your handicap down.” Rawls raised a hand and waved over two men who were standing in line for hamburgers. He introduced both men.
“I hear you’re Dick Stone’s cousin,” one of them said.
“That’s right.”
“How does that work? I thought I knew all of Dick’s family.”
“His father and my mother were brother and sister. I grew up in New York.”
“This your first time in Islesboro?” the other asked.
“No, I spent a summer up here with Dick’s family when I was eighteen.”
“Hey, I remember you,” the man said, laughing. “You’re the kid who knocked Caleb Stone on his ass.”
“I remember that, too,” the other man said. “It was the talk of the club for a week. Why did you never come back?”
“Caleb’s mother didn’t take the news as well as everybody else did. After that, I was persona non grata.”
“Welcome back,” the man said, then they excused themselves and went to get their food.
“Well done,” Rawls said.
“Well done what?”
“The tall guy was the commodore, and the other was the chairman of the membership committee. The commodore is on the golf club board, too. I’ll get forms and propose you today.”
“You think the business with Caleb will hurt?”
“Are you kidding? Everybody hated that kid; judging from their reaction, you were a hero.”
Stone glanced toward the door and nearly dropped his Coke. A ghost from his past had just walked in the door. He had a rush of deja vu in which he and Dick were sitting in this club at this table when Dick’s brother, Caleb, entered the room. His gut tightened, just as it always had when Caleb was around, teasing and bullying the two younger boys. Now Caleb, aged twenty or so, was back, young again.
“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked.
Stone had trouble speaking. “Who is that?” And as he asked the question, he began to see double.
“Oh, those are the Stone twins, Caleb’s boys, Eben and Enos. I can never tell which is which.”
Stone breathed a little easier. “God, I thought I was going crazy for a moment; they’re both the image of Caleb at that age.”
“I guess they are, at that,” Rawls said.
The twins were loud, too, just like their father. They approached a table of teenagers, and the noise level went up with their arrival.
“I haven’t seen those boys since they were about twelve,” Rawls said. “I didn’t like them then; they were bullies, always picking on some younger kids. They’d double-team them.”
“Thank God there was only one of their father,” Stone muttered. He could not imagine what his summer in Islesboro would have been like if there had been two of Caleb. But now there were, and he didn’t like the idea much. He decided not to go over and introduce himself as Cousin Stone.
Chapter 13
DINO BACCHETTI’S UNMARKED CAR pulled up in front of the Palatine mansion in the outer reaches of Brooklyn, the home of his father-in-law, Eduardo Bianchi. “Wait here,” Dino said to his driver. “My guess is, this won’t take long.”
Dino got out of the car and trudged toward the front door, dreading every step. He had never had lunch alone with Ed
uardo, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. The meeting with Mary Ann and her lawyer yesterday had been a disaster that had ended in shouting and harsh words, and Dino thought he had probably been summoned here to be disciplined. He was well aware that Eduardo had only to lift an eyebrow and some obedient servant would slip a stiletto between his ribs.