by Stuart Woods
8
Stone woke up with his head in “Ginny’s” lap, and he took a moment to investigate how thorough the Agency’s makeover of Holly had been. He was impressed to find that she was a redhead all over. Lance was not taking any chances.
“What are you doing down there?” she asked.
“Easy, Ginny; just checking out your disguise.”
She laughed. “Check it out all you like,” she said, pushing his head down.
They had breakfast on the cottage’s patio, overlooking the beach. Stone and Dino were particularly interested to see that there was, apparently, no prohibition of nudity on the strands of St. Marks.
“Try looking at your eggs,” Genevieve said to Dino.
“As an investigator, I’m expected to be aware of my surroundings at all times,” Dino replied.
“Me too,” Stone added.
“Now you understand why Lance insisted that my disguise be complete,” Ginny said.
“I won’t ask,” Dino said.
“You won’t need to,” Ginny replied. She stood up, dropped her robe and ran for the water.
Stone swallowed the last of his coffee and followed her, just as naked. He caught up with her a few yards off the beach, and she splashed water in his face. “I didn’t think you’d do it,” he said.
“Well, Ginny is just full of surprises, isn’t she?”
Stone heard splashing and saw Dino and Genevieve running into the water. “You know, for as long as I’ve known Dino, I’ve never seen him naked?”
“I’m a little disturbed that you’re looking at him instead of Genevieve,” Holly said, ducking him.
Stone sneezed salt water and headed back for the beach. He walked back to the cottage, passing a naked couple along the way, and stood under the outdoor shower, washing off the salt. Holly joined him after a moment, and they soaped each other.
“So,” she said, “how do you like being a spy so far?”
“I’m not the spy, you are. I’m here under my own name, remember.”
“So you are.” She grabbed a towel and began drying herself, while Stone dried her back.
“What do you want to do today?”
“I want to have a look at Black Mountain,” she said, “from the top.”
They borrowed Thomas’s station wagon and drove out of the resort and along the beach. When they came to a fork in the road, with a sign pointing to Black Mountain, Holly said, “Stick to the beach; let’s not be too obvious. You have to be sneaky when you’re a spy.”
“Whatever you say.” Stone drove along the beach road, and they entered and left a small village.
After half an hour of sightseeing Holly said, “Okay, now let’s head for Black Mountain.” She looked up at the mountaintop. “The old man seems to be shedding his gray hair.”
Stone made his way back to the fork and took the other route. The road rose quickly as they made their way, and soon it was more humid, and the vegetation changed. “St. Marks seems to have a rain forest,” Stone said. “I never knew that.”
They passed a construction crew working on the road. “Looks like they started at the top and worked their way down,” Holly said as the road wound back and forth toward the peak over new tarmac.
They passed a few houses, most of them set close to the road, but as they climbed, the houses got larger and were set farther back. Near the top of the mountain they came to a roundabout with a parking area. Stone pulled over, and they got out of the car and looked at the view. They could see all the way back to English Harbour and could have counted the yachts in the marina if they had wished.
Holly put a hand on Stone’s shoulder. “Don’t turn around, but there’s a gate on the other side of the roundabout, and a driveway going up a little higher. When we walk back to the car, follow the road with your eye, and you’ll see a bit of rooftop in the trees. I’ll bet that’s Irene Foster’s place.”
“Does Irene have money?” Stone asked. “Because this has got to be prime real estate up here, and Thomas said she renovated the place. I wouldn’t think she could do that on a government pension.”
“I’ll ask Lance when I talk to him later today,” she replied. “Why, do you think she’s getting money from Teddy?”
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Teddy has never been strapped for funds. He’s an inventor, has a bunch of patents on various things, including some of that stuff you see sold on the television shopping channels, choppers and slicers. Word is that over the years, he’s gotten nice royalty checks every year, and after his so-called death, they were paid to an offshore bank.”
“You said Teddy has a history of always having an escape route?”
“That’s right. When they found him at the cottage in Maine, he got out through a tunnel and made his way to the little airport there before they could catch up to him. That’s why the navy fighters were ordered after him.”
“Well, as far as I can tell, there’s only one way up and down this mountain, and that doesn’t augur well for an escape plan.”
“Good point.”
They looked at the view for a few more minutes, then drove back down Black Mountain.
“I’ll ask Thomas about other routes up and down the mountain,” Stone said. “He’ll know.”
Back at the cottage, Holly produced a satellite telephone and went outside to call Lance. She returned after a few minutes. “Irene has some savings besides her pension and an inheritance from her father, for a total of a little over two million dollars,” she said.
“That ought to be enough to buy a house here and renovate it,” Stone said. “We’ll ask Thomas; he probably knows what she paid; he seems to know everything else around here.”
They had lunch served by Jacob on their terrace, and in the middle of it their telephone rang.
Jacob came out of the house with a cordless phone. “It’s Mr. Hardy for you,” he said, handing the phone to Stone.
“Hello?”
“I thought you’d like to know that Irene Foster just came into the dining room for lunch,” Thomas said, “and she’s with a man I’ve never seen before.”
9
Stone and Holly walked into the dining room, took seats at the bar and, without looking around, ordered piña coladas. They made a point of gazing into each other’s eyes and touching a lot, then Holly turned toward the tables and leaned against the bar.
“See them?” Stone asked.
“Give me a minute,” she said. “It’s crowded.” She looked some more. “Don’t turn around, but I’ve got ’em. I think.”
“Well, is it they, or is it not?”
“Okay, it’s Irene. I’ve never seen the guy before.”
“Describe him.”
“Don’t know about height; he’s sitting down. Mid-fifties, reddish brown hair, gray at the temples. It’s like that color when men use something to cover the gray? I don’t know why they bother, it’s so noticeable. He’s heavier than Teddy.”
“People gain weight.”
“They don’t grow hair,” she said. “From here, it doesn’t look like a wig, and the first time I saw Teddy-both times, I guess-he was wearing wigs. But his colleagues at the agency said he had been going bald for years, and the last time they saw him, he was nearly completely bald on top.”
“Hair transplants?”
“On St. Marks? Before that, I don’t think he had the time; he was a busy fellow, killing people.”
“Did he really kill the speaker of the house, Efton?”
“The FBI thinks so, but there was no physical evidence to connect him to the crime. The Agency thinks he killed that Supreme Court justice, the young one who died in the auto accident.”
“The one who drove off a mountain in Maryland?”
“Right.”
“And a Secret Service agent was driving his car?”
“An SUV.”
“Why does the Agency think he was murdered? I never read anything about that in the papers. It was an
icy road in the mountains.”
“It took nearly a year to figure it out, but the secret was in the chip that controlled the car’s electronic stability system.”
“A faulty chip?”
“Not faulty; altered.”
“Altered how?”
“The stability system works by applying the brakes selectively to the wheels when it senses a skid. It does it faster than a human can, and it can brake just one wheel. The chip had been altered so that when it sensed the skid, it applied the brakes not to the correct wheels but to the opposite wheel or wheels. So instead of defeating the skid, it made it immediately worse. The driver couldn’t keep up with it.”
“Are they sure it wasn’t a manufacturing fault?”
“No, but this sort of thing had never happened before.”
“That the chip company would admit.”
“Right.”
“Well, it’s a very clever way to murder somebody, but that kind of attempt would have a very low success rate. I mean, the killer would have to know that the car would be in conditions conducive to an accident.”
“It was public knowledge that the justice had a house in the mountains, and the weather report for the day is all the information Teddy would need.”
“Okay, I buy it. Can I turn around and look at these people now, please?”
“You can look at the guy up close; he’s headed this way.”
Stone turned and looked at the man, who had come up to the bar on the side opposite from Holly. She was right about his hair; colored, but real.
“Morning,” the man said to everybody.
“Good morning.”
“Bartender, do you have any Alka-Seltzer back there?” the man asked.
“Yes, sir.” A glass of water was placed on the bar and two tablets began to fizz.
“I’ve got to stop eating my own cooking,” the man said. His accent was mildly southern.
“You’re eating your own cooking on vacation?” Stone asked, grateful for the opening.
“I came in on a boat last night,” the man said. “Sailed it down from Lauderdale.”
“Singlehanded?”
“Yep. A lot of fun.”
“I’ve done a little of that. I sailed a fifty-footer from here to Lauderdale a few years back.”
“Mine’s smaller than that,” the man said. It’s a Hinckley Bermuda Forty.”
“Nice boat. Easy to singlehand?”
“Well, I improved the deck layout a little for singlehanding, and GPS sure makes the navigation easier.”
“How’d you pick St. Marks?”
“Well, I was going sailing, anyway, and…” He stuck out his hand. “By the way, my name is Harry Pitts.”
Stone shook the hand. “Stone Barrington.”
“Lady I used to go out with has a place here, so I dropped in to see her, thought I’d rest up for a week or two. Where you from?”
“New York.”
“I’m from a little town in Virginia you never heard of. What business you in?”
“Attorney. You?”
“I had a very nice home improvement business; sold it a couple of years ago and retired. Bored out of my skull, until I went sailing. A friend took me out on the Chesapeake, and I kind of went nuts about it. Excuse me.” He picked up the glass, drank the fizzy liquid, belched, and set the glass down. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “I’d better rejoin my lady. If you’re around later, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I’d like that,” Stone said.
“You staying here?”
“Yes, cottage number one, down on the beach. Why don’t you both join us for a drink around six?”
“That’s mighty nice of you; let me check with Irene, and I’ll get back to you.” He gave a little wave and went back to his table.
“What do you think?” Stone asked.
“He’s not Teddy, but that was good about asking them for a drink; at least we’ll get to talk to Irene. He’s waving at you.”
Stone looked over at the table. Harry Pitts was making a circle with his thumb and forefinger and nodding, then held up six fingers.
Stone gave an acknowledging wave and turned back to his piña colada. “It would be a plus if they didn’t turn out to be awful bores,” he said.
“I don’t see how anybody who rose as far in the Agency as Irene could turn out to be a bore,” Holly replied.
“Any way you slice it,” Stone said, “she was a bureaucrat.”
10
Their guests arrived at ten minutes past six, laughing. It seemed that they had already had at least one drink, but Stone poured vodka gimlets that he had made the night before and stored in the freezer. Introductions were made.
“So,” Stone said, “are you both from Virginia?”
“How did you know that?” Irene Foster asked.
“Harry said he was from a small town in Virginia that I never heard of.”
“Well, I’m from Virginia, but not from a town you never heard of, or from any other town,” Irene replied, taking a big sip of her gimlet. “I’m a country girl.”
Harry Pitts laughed. “She’s the slickest country girl you ever met,” he said. “She worked for the CIA for more than twenty years.”
“Harry!” Irene exclaimed.
“What’s the matter? Is it still a secret?”
“Sort of,” she muttered.
“It wasn’t a secret when you worked there,” he said. “Why is it a secret now?”
“I’m sorry,” Stone said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re not prying,” Irene said. “It’s just that when you work for the Agency for so long, you get used to not discussing your work. I used to tell people I worked for the Agriculture Department; that usually stopped the conversation in its tracks.”
Everybody laughed.
“This is one hell of a good drink,” Harry said, taking another sip and savoring it. “How do you make it?”
“Pour six ounces out of a fifth of vodka, replace it with Rose’s sweetened lime juice, and put it in the freezer until it hurts to hold the bottle. If you make it in a cocktail shaker, you just water it down.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Harry said. “So easy!”
“Certainly is.”
Dino jumped in. “What part of the CIA did you work for, Irene? Were you a spy? Or is my question a no-no?”
“It’s not a no-no,” Irene said. “I worked in the operations section, but I wasn’t a spy; I just worked with spies. I was an administrator.”
“Was it exciting?” Genevieve asked.
“Sometimes it was dull as dishwater,” Irene replied. “And sometimes it was way too exciting. It was kind of fun doing work that nobody knew about, only the people you worked with. It was sort of like a club.” She held up her glass. “May I have another of these?”
“Of course,” Stone said and went to the freezer for the bottle. He came back and poured both Irene and Harry a drink.
“Did you ever work with that guy who killed all those people?” Holly asked. “I forget his name; something about a Teddy Bear.”
Stone tried to keep a straight face. “I know the one you mean,” he said. “He got blown up in an airplane explosion.”
“Oh, yes,” Irene said. “Teddy Fay. Teddy worked with people all over the Agency; he was a technical expert. I knew him, but mostly ten or fifteen years ago.”
Harry chimed in. “What does a technical expert do?”
“All sorts of things: communications, documentation, weapons-you name it.”
“I would have liked to do something like that,” Harry said wistfully. “After you’ve been in the home improvement business for a few years, there aren’t any surprises; one kitchen or bathroom looks pretty much like all the others.”
“You make it sound boring, Harry,” Stone said. “Was it?”
“Well, not really. Once I was doing well enough to hire people it wasn’t so repetitive. After that I just went around and worked up estimates, then
inspected the work. I like to think I had a reputation for quality.”
“That’s hard to come by these days,” Stone said. “I did most of the work on the renovation of my house, and every time I hired somebody else, I had to watch them like a hawk to make sure the work got done right.”
“You’re good with your hands, then?” Harry asked.
“You’re pretty good with your hands, too, Harry,” Irene said, leering at him.
Harry seemed embarrassed.
“My father was a carpenter and a cabinetmaker and a furniture builder, to his own designs,” Stone said. “I worked in his shop part-time as a kid.”
“You can learn a lot from the right man,” Harry said.
“He started out by slinging his tool kit over his shoulder and going around, door to door, in Greenwich Village, asking people if they had any odd jobs. He could fix anything. I still have some of the furniture he made.”
“I would have liked to know him,” Harry said. “I admire people like that.”
“Irene,” Genevieve said, “is it true that the CIA can listen in on just about anybody’s phone conversations and read their e-mail?”
“You’re thinking of the National Security Agency,” Irene said. “They’re the electronics wizards. Most of what the Agency does is just collect information, sort it and analyze it. Of course, there are actual spies, some of them in embassies around the world, pretending to be diplomats, others out on their own spying on people and cultivating sources in foreign governments and societies.”
“I would have liked to be a spy,” Genevieve said.
“Well, you’re beautiful enough,” Dino responded.
“What kind of law do you practice, Stone?” Harry asked.
“I’m of counsel to a large law firm in New York, but I work out of a home office.”
“Why is that?”
“I handle the stuff the firm doesn’t want to be seen to handle, a lot of it personal, for their clients.”
“That sounds as interesting as the CIA,” Irene said.
“Probably not. I had a cousin who was in the CIA, but I didn’t know that until after his death.”