“Since I don’t represent her anymore, I can say candidly, absolutely not. Both she and her husband deserve worse than being where they presently are, and the country is better off for having them there.”
The president chuckled. “We are of one mind,” he said. “Stone, someone is going to ask you to go back to St. Marks for…a visit.”
“That would not be unpleasant duty, Mr. President. It’s a beautiful island.”
“I hope you can take the time to go.”
“I was requested to pack my bags, Mr. President, and I have done so. May I ask why you want me to go back?”
“Oh, I haven’t asked you to go back,” the president said. “Someone else will, but I will not. And I must ask you to recall this meeting, this room, this bourbon and this conversation as wholly imaginary.”
“As you wish, Mr. President.”
“Stone, I’m sure you know that I am up for reelection in the autumn, and I wanted to tell you personally that your visit to St. Marks may, in one way or another, have a profound effect on my chances. Since, in light of your campaign contributions in the past, I have some reason to believe you think it might be important for me to finish my administration’s work, I wanted to tell you personally that you may soon be in a position to contribute to my campaign in a larger way than you imagine, and I want you to know, in advance, that you have my deep gratitude for your help.”
Stone was too baffled to speak, and he was relieved of that obligation when a door behind him opened and a woman’s voice said, “Will, honey, it’s time for us to go in.”
Stone sprang to his feet and turned to see the first lady, who was also the Director of Central Intelligence, standing in the open door.
“Kate, darling, this is Mr….” the president started to say.
“I know who he is, Will,” she replied, walking over and shaking his hand. “And I’m glad to have the opportunity to thank you for your efforts in solving the death of your cousin, Dick Stone, last summer. Dick was about to assume an important post at the Agency, and I had hopes that he might one day succeed me, when I’ve played out my string. Lance Cabot has told me how helpful you were to him during the investigation.”
Funny, Stone thought, and I was laboring under the apparent illusion that Lance was helping me. “You’re very welcome, ma’am.”
“Good luck on St. Marks, Mr. Barrington.” She turned and walked out the way she had come in.
“I must go,” Will Lee said, shaking Stone’s hand. “And by the way, the woman you just met was entirely imaginary, too. Have a seat; someone will come for you.”
The president followed his wife out the door, closing it behind him.
Stone stood in the center of the Oval Office, alone with its ghosts. He recognized the President’s desk as the one John Kennedy had used, and he remembered a photograph of John-John playing under it. He took in the portraits and the model of a yacht on one side of the room, and the rug under his feet with the Great Seal of the United States woven into it.
Then the door through which he had entered opened and Lance Cabot walked in.
“Oh, shit,” Stone muttered to himself.
3
Lance smiled and extended a hand. “So nice to see you, Stone.”
Stone had not seen Lance for several months, and that had been all right with him. Every time he saw Lance he found himself in the middle of some sort of problem, and it seemed to be happening again. He shook the hand. “Hello, Lance,” he said. “What the fuck am I doing in the Oval Office, about to go to St. Marks?”
Lance arranged himself in a chair and motioned for Stone to sit. “Relax, Stone, all is about to be revealed.”
Stone couldn’t wait. “Please start revealing.”
“Have you ever heard of a man named Teddy Fay?”
“Of course; everybody’s heard of him. He killed several right-wing political figures a couple of years ago, and when they were about to catch him, he killed himself by exploding the small airplane he was flying.”
“You’re half right,” Lance replied.
“Which half?”
“The first half. Teddy didn’t die in the aircraft explosion. He got out, made his way to New York and spent some time last year killing Middle Easterners whom he believed to be enemies of the United States.”
“That was Teddy Fay?”
“Indubitably, it was.”
“Was he the guy who died in the collapse of the building he bombed, then?”
“Not quite. At the time there was every indication that the body found in the ruins of the building was that of Teddy, but a woman who had reported her homeless father missing gave the NYPD a DNA sample last week, and it matched that of the body we found.”
“So Fay is still alive?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know, but we have no conclusive evidence that he’s dead.”
“And what does this have to do with my going to St. Marks?”
“Let me begin at the beginning, Stone, since there’s a lot you may not know about Teddy from press reports.”
“Please do.”
“Theodore Fay was a career employee of the CIA, joining in his twenties and retiring at age sixty-five. He worked in Technical Services, which is the rather bland name of the department that supplies all sorts of things to agents going into the field: clothing, disguises, false passports, driver’s licenses, insurance cards, credit cards and other documents an agent requires to establish a legend—that is, a false identity—in the field. The department also supplies weapons—some of them quite exotic—communications equipment and, well, you get the picture.”
“I do. What did Teddy do there?”
“Teddy, over the course of his long career, did everything. He was the most skilled technician and inventor the Agency has ever employed. Twice, he was offered the job of heading his department, and he turned it down both times, because he enjoyed his work too much to become a manager.
“For the last twenty years of his career Teddy ran one of several teams that supplied the tools of their trade to, for want of a better word, spies. He was expert in virtually every area of his work, and he trained other specialists.”
“So that would make him able to change his own identity with documents, et cetera, with some ease?”
“It would, which is why it has, so far, proved impossible to catch him.”
“Is he on another rampage now?”
“No, not that we know of. My guess is that he is living quietly in retirement.”
Stone frowned. “In St. Marks?”
“Perhaps. That is what we want you and Holly to learn.”
“Why St. Marks?”
“There is another Agency employee named Irene Foster living there. She retired after twenty-five years, shortly before Teddy’s most recent vanishing. Another former Agency employee has told us that many years ago, she and Teddy had a rather torrid affair. We’ve not been able to establish that there has been any contact between them since then, but still…”
“That’s a pretty slim connection, isn’t it?”
“Irene’s last post was as Assistant Deputy Director for Operations, and she was in a position, had she chosen to do so, to provide Teddy with a great deal of information that he would have needed to conduct his campaign in New York.”
“Wasn’t she investigated at the time?”
“There was a full internal investigation into who, if anyone, might have been helping Teddy.”
“And?”
“No culprit was discovered. Irene Foster conducted the investigation.”
“Oh.”
“Irene told her colleagues at the time of her retirement that she had bought a house on the island of St. Barts, but not long after her retirement, she sold the house and left the island.”
“For St. Marks?”
“We’ve only recently learned that she bought another house on St. Marks.”
“Why Holly and me?”
“Three reasons: one, Holly was the only membe
r of the New York team who thought Teddy was still alive after the building collapsed, and she has actually seen him twice, though he was disguised; two, you are under contract to us as a consultant, and you are an experienced investigator with some experience of St. Marks; and three, a couple would excite less interest in such a setting than a single person, and you are the only man Holly would agree to share…ah, quarters with.”
“I have a feeling there’s another reason,” Stone said.
“Ah. Yes. I take it you have a personal interest in seeing President Lee reelected.”
“I support him, yes.”
“You did not know that Teddy Fay had survived the aircraft explosion, did you?”
“No.”
“Neither does anybody else outside the FBI director’s office, my director’s office and those designated by the current occupant of this room. The president was persuaded to conceal his knowledge of Teddy’s survival, in the interest of helping catch him. He shared that knowledge with only three other people—all members of Congress.”
“So?”
“Since we now believe that Teddy may still be alive, and since the president knows this, he is vulnerable if it should become known. In effect, he has kept from the public, on two occasions, the knowledge that a wanted criminal is still at large. His wife, as director of Central Intelligence, shares this vulnerability. Should Teddy’s continued existence become known in the months remaining before the election, Katharine Rule Lee would be forced to resign from the Agency. Since she was always an unpopular choice with the political opposition, they will make much of it, and the ensuing uproar might very likely torpedo the reelection of the president.”
“I’m uncomfortable with this,” Stone said.
“Everyone is uncomfortable with it,” Lance replied, “not least the president and the first lady, but there it is, and we have to deal with it.”
There was a knock on the double doors. “More of this tomorrow.” Lance called out, “Come in.”
The door opened and a tall, very slim woman with shoulder-length red hair wearing a striking evening gown entered the room. “Hello, Stone,” she said. Stone and Lance got to their feet.
It took Stone more than a moment to absorb the change. “Holly?”
“Amazing what losing a little weight, a dye job and a tan will do, isn’t it?”
“You look gorgeous.” Stone had hardly noticed the man who had followed her in, but now he did. “Dino? What the hell are you doing here?” He had never seen Dino in a tuxedo before.
“I got the same invitation you did, pal.”
Lance spoke up. “I forgot to mention that Dino will be going along, too.”
“I believe we’re due at dinner,” Holly said.
“That we are,” Lance replied. “There’ll be a further briefing for you and Dino tomorrow, Stone, but right now, the president awaits.” He led the way out of the Oval Office and from the West Wing to the White House proper, where they joined a receiving line. When Stone was introduced to the president and first lady, they greeted him without reference to their earlier meeting.
Shortly, they were seated at one of many tables in the East Room, sipping California champagne. Stone looked around. “Who are all these people?” he asked Lance. “I don’t see any familiar faces.”
Lance smiled. “In fact, this is probably the most anonymous group ever to dine at the White House. These are the approximately hundred and fifty highest-ranking people at the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and their spouses. This is the first time such an event has occurred, and it appears on the White House daily schedule as a personal dinner party given for friends of the president and first lady.”
“Wow,” Dino said. “If a bomb went off here…”
“Don’t even think that,” Lance said.
4
Stone woke slowly, momentarily disoriented by the strange surroundings. He lifted his head and saw a naked, red-haired woman coming out of the bathroom.
“Good morning,” Holly said. “You’d better shower and shave; Lance and the others will be here in forty-five minutes. I’ve ordered breakfast.”
Stone continued to watch her; he liked the changes. “Why red hair?” he asked.
“You’ll find out at the briefing; now get moving!” She goosed him in the ribs, then dodged his grasp and started dressing.
Stone and Holly were just finishing their coffee when there was a knock on the door. Holly let them in: Lance, Dino and Genevieve James.
Stone gave Genevieve a kiss. “You’re in on this, too?”
“I would do anything for a vacation on a tropical island,” she said. “And don’t worry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
“Genevieve just came to say hello,” Lance said. “She’s going shopping now.”
“I believe I’ve been dismissed,” she said, and with a little wave, left the suite.
“Anybody want coffee?” Lance asked.
Nobody spoke.
“Good. Now, let’s get started; you have a plane to catch this afternoon.”
Everybody took a seat.
“Stone, let’s begin with you: tell us—briefly, if you will, since there’ll be time to fill in details later—about your experience in St. Marks, and especially, about the people you know there.”
Stone took a deep breath. “I was on vacation there several years ago, when a yacht entered English Harbour, sailed by a woman alone, causing something of a kerfuffle. The following day, she was charged with killing her husband at sea and shoving his body overboard. I somehow got involved and defended her at her trial. I lost, and she was hanged—or at least I thought she was. She turned up later, alive in Florida, but that’s a different story.”
“Tell us who you know on St. Marks,” Lance reminded him.
“I spent most of my time at the English Harbour Inn, near the harbor, run by a retired NYPD cop named Thomas Hardy, who was born and raised on St. Marks.”
Dino spoke up. “I met him a couple of times on the job, years ago.”
“Right. He’s a good guy; I think we should stay there, if he has room.”
“You’ve already been booked into a cottage there,” Lance said. “The four of you. Who else did you know?”
“An elderly barrister named Leslie Hewitt was assigned to work with me on the trial; he may be dead by now.”
“He is not,” Lance said.
“And there was Sir Winston Sutherland, the minister of justice on the island, who decided to prosecute the case himself.”
“Sutherland is now prime minister,” Lance said, “so you know people in high places.”
“Sir Winston would have a poor opinion of me,” Stone said, “since I made him look bad a number of times during the trial, and since I cast him as the villain in the considerable publicity we managed to generate, in an attempt to save my client’s neck.”
“Duly noted,” Lance said. “You should make a point of not running afoul of the law in St. Marks, partly because of Stone’s unsatisfactory relationship with Sir Winston and partly because, as prime minister, he has run the island in a more authoritarian manner than the previous administration did. Questions?”
“Why does Holly have red hair?” Stone asked.
Lance smiled. “I think I told you that Holly has seen Teddy Fay twice, although he was heavily disguised, but that means that he has also seen her twice, so I thought that a change of appearance was a good idea, and a change of identity, too. Teddy may still have computer access to the Agency mainframe computer, and he probably read Holly’s personnel file at the time he met her. She is taking the identity of Virginia Heller, her father’s girlfriend, whom you met on Islesboro.”
“Why Ginny?”
“Because it’s faster than creating a legend for Holly. Since Ginny is a real person, she can be researched by Teddy. We’ve changed the photographs on Ginny’s website and substituted Holly’s—Ginny runs a flying school in Florida—and in
the Florida driver’s license database and the U.S. Passport database. This should hold up, because should Teddy become suspicious of her, he doesn’t have any resources on the mainland to investigate Ginny. He’ll have to be content with electronic investigation. Any other questions?”
Dino spoke up. “What do we do when we get to St. Marks?”
“Find Irene Foster, and go from there. You should know, Dino—all of you—that this is not an official Agency operation; it’s purely a seat-of-the-pants thing to learn whether Teddy Fay still exists. It’s being paid for through a front travel agency operated by the Agency, and the funds will be untraceable. Just be who you are when you get there, except for Holly, who will be Ginny. Any other questions? No? Then I’ll give you some basic info on St. Marks.”
Lance set up a large laptop computer and began displaying maps of the island and photographs of the terrain. “The island is made up of a central, dormant volcano, known as Black Mountain, surrounded by tropical forest and fine beaches. St. Marks is a former British possession that gained its independence about twelve years ago. Since that time, one political party has held power, and Sir Winston is only the second prime minister. It is, ostensibly, a parliamentary democracy, although Sir Winston, as previously noted, wields more personal power than most elected officials.
“The government is stable and the island safe for tourists. Ninety percent of the population is black, as are all the people Stone knows there; the rest are mostly descendants of the former British settlers, whose accents are British. There are a few dozen expatriates who’ve bought homes there because of the stable political atmosphere and the moderate real estate prices.”
“So finding Irene Foster shouldn’t be hard?” Stone asked.
“No,” Lance replied.
“Why did she leave St. Barts for St. Marks? I mean, the real estate prices on St. Barts would have been higher, but she already owned a property there. What made her move?”
“We investigated her existence in St. Barts thoroughly, before she left the island. What we picked up was that she didn’t speak any French, which is the local language, and she preferred an English-speaking island. Also, she got an unsolicited offer for her house, and she jumped at the chance to move. Incidentally, before she moved, we had a close look at the inside of her house, and we found no indication of a co-habitor—only one toothbrush, et cetera. She had a local reputation for picking up suitable men at local bars and having them over for a night or two—always tourists, who would be leaving in a few days. From that, we deduced that she was not being sexually satisfied by a regular lover—i.e., Teddy.” Lance looked at his watch. “You have a flight from Manassas, Virginia, in three hours, and you have to get packed. Any other questions?”
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