by Stuart Woods
“It actually saved my life, once. Somebody took a shot at me from the back of a motorcycle. It needed a new window, a windshield and a couple of other parts, but it kept me safe.”
“I love an endorsement like that,” Hackett said. “Usually we get those from Africa or the Middle East; nice to have one at home. Seems we have more and more in common, Stone.”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”
“Have you ever flown a jet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“One day soon, let’s go out to Teterboro and take a little trip. I’ll let you fly left seat.”
“I’d love to do that.”
THEY FINISHED LUNCH, Hackett signed the check, and they walked a couple of blocks together.
“I’m sorry you won’t think of joining me full-time,” Hackett said, “but I will find some projects for you.”
“It might be politic to arrange things through Bill Eggers,” Stone said.
“Of course. By all means, let’s be politic.” He stopped, and they shook hands.
“Thank you for a very good and interesting lunch,” Stone said. “I’ll have Bill arrange a meeting for you.”
“I’ll look forward to it, Stone,” Hackett said. He turned and walked toward Fifty-seventh Street and his offices.
“Oh, Jim,” Stone called.
Hackett turned back. “Yes, Stone?”
“Something I meant to ask you: have you ever heard of a man named Stanley Whitestone?”
Hackett scratched his nose. “I have. He got cashiered out of MI6 some years back, dabbled in business with Lord Wight, I believe. Why do you ask?”
“I recently heard the name, and I was curious.”
“Would you like to meet him tomorrow?”
Stone sucked in a breath. “Yes, thank you, I would.”
“You’re in Turtle Bay, aren’t you?”
Stone gave him a card.
“I’ll pick you up at one tomorrow,” Hackett said. “You’ll be home by dinnertime.”
“Thanks, Jim.”
“Don’t mention it.” Hackett turned and walked away.
STONE WALKED A little farther, then took out his cell phone and called Eggers.
“Stone? How did it go?”
“I believe I made a little rain for you, Bill.”
“How so?”
“Hackett would like to meet with your best patents people about a business he owns, making armored private cars.”
“Sounds good,” Eggers said.
“It’s better than that,” Stone said. “Please him, and he’ll give you all of that company’s legal work. He says they paid their attorneys a couple of million last year.”
“Very good indeed, Stone. Did you and Hackett come to any sort of private arrangement?”
“No, we didn’t,” Stone replied. “He offered me some projects, and I asked him to arrange them through you.”
“Good man,” Eggers said. “Do you want to attend the patents meeting?”
“Not unless I need a good nap,” Stone said. “Bye-bye, Bill.”
28
When Stone got home from lunch, Joan caught him as he came through the door. “Felicity called, said she won’t be home tonight; something’s come up.”
“I’ll call her on her cell,” Stone said.
“She said you won’t be able to reach her.”
“Okay,” Stone replied. He got some work done that afternoon, and by the following morning he still had not heard from Felicity, so he called her cell. For his trouble, he got a loud squawk and a recorded message saying the number was not in use.
AT ONE O’CLOCK Stone was standing out on his front stoop when a large, black SUV pulled up in front, and a rear window slid down. Jim Hackett waved him into the car.
“Is this one of your armored specials?” Stone asked.
“Top of the line,” Hackett replied. “It will repel the hottest fire, even a roadside bomb.”
“I hope you don’t run into a lot of those,” Stone said. “Where are we going?”
“To see Stanley Whitestone,” Hackett replied. Then his cell phone rang and he talked for the next half-hour, while the car rolled through the Lincoln Tunnel and all the way to Teterboro Airport, where Stone kept his airplane.
They stopped at a gate, Hackett spoke some words into an intercom, the gate slid open and they drove through.
“They won’t let me drive onto the ramp,” Stone said.
“They would if you worked for me,” Hackett replied. The car stopped at a Cessna Citation Mustang, which was painted in a red, white and blue livery, with stars and stripes on the tail.
A man in coveralls stood by the door of the airplane. “Your preflight inspection is all done, Mr. Hackett,” the man said. “The ground power unit is connected, and the air-conditioning is on.” He opened the door and let down a set of steps. “I’ve entered your clearance into the onboard flight plan.”
“Hop in,” Hackett said to Stone. “Take the left seat.”
“I’ve never flown a jet,” Stone protested.
“Then it’s about time you did,” Hackett said, pushing him aboard.
Stone got into the left seat and found three large glass displays lit up.
“I’ll do the radios and the avionics,” Hackett said, putting on a headset and indicating that Stone should do likewise. “You just fly the airplane.”
Stone picked up the light headset hanging on the yoke before him and put it on.
Hackett was already on the radio, requesting permission to taxi. “Okay,” he said to Stone, “release the parking brake there, do a one-eighty turn and follow the taxi line around to the left.”
Stone adjusted his seat and then did as instructed. They stopped at the threshold for runway 1 and were told to wait for final clearance.
“Watch,” Hackett said. He pressed a button on one of the throttles, and a set of command bars popped up. He flipped up a switch on the panel. “Pitot heat on,” he said. “Now on clearance, taxi onto the runway and stop. Press the heading button and the switch above it, there.” He pointed. “We’ve been given the Teterboro Five departure. That means we fly heading 040 after takeoff and at fifteen hundred feet turn left toward Patterson VOR and climb to two thousand feet.” He turned a knob on the autopilot, and “2,000 feet” appeared in a little window on the primary flight display. They were cleared for takeoff, and Stone taxied onto the runway and stopped.
“Hold the brakes and push the throttles all the way forward,” Hackett said.
Stone did so, and the engines came to a roar.
“Release the brakes, and I’ll call the speeds for you,” Hackett said.
Stone released the brakes, and the airplane leapt down the runway.
“Airspeed’s alive,” Hackett said. “Seventy knots, V1. Put both hands on the yoke and… rotate. Keep the flight director at the command bars.”
Stone rotated and watched the screen, then did as he was told.
“Seven hundred feet, autopilot on,” Hackett said, “heading 040. Fifteen hundred feet, turning left.” He turned the heading knob, and the airplane followed its instructions. “Two thousand feet, leveling off, reducing power,” Hackett said. “Pull the throttles back to sixty percent.” He tapped a gauge.
Air traffic control came on and gave them 6,000 feet and direct Brezy, which Stone knew from his own experience was an intersection near the Carmel VOR.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Fly the airplane and don’t ask questions,” Hackett said, dialing in the new direction and altitude. Soon they were over Connecticut and handed off to Boston Center. They were given 35,000 feet for a new altitude, and Hackett made the control changes. “The autopilot has the airplane,” he said to Stone. “Now you can talk.”
“Where are we going?” Stone asked.
“To Bar Harbor, Maine,” Hackett replied. “We’ll find Whitestone near there.”
The airplane climbed to 35,000 feet and leveled off. “This is awfully eas
y to fly,” Stone said.
“It is, once you’ve been trained. You already know how to fly; learning to operate the new avionics and handle emergencies is the hard part.” Hackett began giving Stone a lesson in using the switches and displays. The logic was much the same as that on Stone’s airplane, since the avionics manufacturer of both was Garmin. Shortly, they were given direct Bar Harbor, and Hackett showed him how to accomplish that.
“There’s nothing else to do but monitor the gauges until we descend.” An hour later they were descending into Bar Harbor Airport in gloriously clear weather. Hackett talked Stone through the landing, and shortly they were at the ramp.
Stone followed Hackett to the parking lot, where another of his black SUVs was waiting, but this time Hackett drove. They crossed a short bridge onto Mount Desert Island and, ignoring the turn for Bar Harbor, drove toward the village of Somersville.
Once in the tiny eighteenth-century clapboard village, Hackett drove past a church and then pulled over. “Follow me,” he said, getting out of the car.
They walked along a well-tended path through a cemetery, and Hackett stopped and looked around. “Would you say we are alone?” he asked.
Stone looked around. They were out of sight of the road now. “I’d say we are,” he replied.
“Let’s keep going, then.” Hackett strode off with Stone behind him trying to keep up. Then Hackett abruptly stopped.
“STONE,” HE SAID, “may I present Mr. Stanley Whitestone, late of London, England, but resident in this country for some years.”
Stone looked down and saw the granite headstone with Whitestone’s name and dates on it.
“I buried him nearly two years ago,” Hackett said.
29
They returned to the car, and Hackett drove on for another mile. Then he turned left onto a paved road that became gravel, continued to the end and through a gate and stopped in front of a shingle-style house. They got out of the car and entered through the front door, which was not locked.
“This way to my study,” Hackett said.
Stone followed him down a hallway and into a large, paneled room filled with books, with a computer desk built into one corner.
Hackett began rummaging through filing cabinets, muttering to himself. “I know they’re here somewhere,” he said. Finally, he extracted an envelope. “Have a seat and inspect these,” he said, pointing to a chair before the fireplace. He switched on a lamp so that Stone could see better.
Stone opened the envelope and extracted some eight-by-ten color photographs. A naked man lay on a gurney with a cloth laid over his crotch. His chest was badly bruised, and there was a cut on his chin. He looked very much like an older version of the Stanley Whitestone photograph Felicity had given him.
Hackett sat down on the sofa next to Stone’s chair. “Whitestone was my guest up here two years ago. I loaned him a car so that he could see some of the island. We had a dinner reservation, and when he had been gone for several hours I called the police to report him missing. I was passed on to an officer who asked me to describe Stan and the car he was driving. I did so, and he told me that Stan had been badly injured in a head-on collision with a fully loaded dump truck, a few miles from here.
“I went to the Bar Harbor Hospital and found that he had died only a moment before my arrival. I took those photos with a pocket camera I occasionally carry.”
Hackett sighed. “I knew that he wasn’t married and that his parents were dead. There were no siblings, either, so there was no one I knew of to inform. Finally, after the body had been in the hospital morgue for a couple of days, I called Lord Wight, who had recommended that I interview him for an open position in my firm, and he couldn’t help, either. He did tell me that the man, who I had been told was named Robert Foster, was Stanley Whitestone. I had heard something of him on the grapevine. I made arrangements with the local funeral directors and bought a plot in the churchyard. Apart from the funeral director, I was the only person at the burial. There’s another envelope inside the envelope in your hand.”
Stone extracted a smaller envelope, opened it and found a death certificate. “Had you ever met him before he came to see you?”
“No, he called from New York and flew commercial up here, and I put him in the guesthouse. We talked for a while over lunch the following day, and I was impressed and had about decided to offer him the job. Then he went sightseeing, and I didn’t see him again until he was dead.”
“What did he tell you of his background?” Stone asked.
“He was the son of a career Royal Army officer, a colonel, educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, served for some years in the army as an intelligence officer, rose to the rank of major, then left and traveled for several years. He had an inheritance, I believe.”
“What impressed you?”
“Intelligence, wit, knowledge of the political situation in a number of countries, especially in the Middle East. I needed someone to work out there, to be based in Saudi Arabia.”
“Did he tell you where he had traveled?”
“Middle East, North Africa. I believed he lived in Morocco for a while.” Hackett looked at his watch. “I said I’d have you back by dinnertime. You can keep the photographs if you like. I expect Dame Felicity would like to see them.”
Stone didn’t reply to that. He stuffed the items back into the envelope and took it with him.
Back in the airplane, he followed Hackett’s instructions again and flew them back to Teterboro, where he flew an instrument approach into the airport. “I’m very impressed with the airplane,” he said, as they shut down the engines. “Thank you for letting me fly it.”
“Come to work for me, and you’ll have one of your own next year,” Hackett said.
“I don’t think I could afford to run it,” Stone replied.
“I’ll see that you can,” Hackett said as they deplaned. The man who had seen them off was there to tend to the airplane.
Back in the car, Hackett pressed a switch, and a thick glass window between the front and rear seats slid up. He turned toward Stone. “You think I’m Stanley Whitestone, don’t you?”
“It crossed my mind,” Stone said.
“I invite you to check out my background as thoroughly as you like,” Hackett said. “I’m sure Dame Felicity would want you to.”
Stone still didn’t acknowledge the reference.
“Have you known her for long?”
Stone said nothing.
“Oh, come, Stone,” Hackett said. “The two of you were together at the ambassador’s dinner, and you introduced her to Wight. You can’t deny that you know her.”
“I don’t deny it,” Stone said.
“How did you meet?”
“In London some years ago. I was doing some work for a client there.”
“Did you know what she was at the time?”
“She didn’t talk about her work. Ours was a social relationship.”
“Interesting that Whitehall is still interested in Whitestone,” Hackett said. “I’m sure that’s where the inquiry originated, not with Dame Felicity. Whitestone was before her time. I mean, they may have overlapped, but she would have been in the field when he was in Cambridge Circus.”
“Cambridge Circus?”
“That’s where their offices are, or were at the time of Whitestone’s departure.”
“What did you hear about the reasons for his departure?” Stone asked.
“Some sort of row occurred in the higher reaches of the firm, I think, and Whitestone lost. His position became untenable as a result, and he left.”
“Why would Whitehall want to find him now?” Stone asked.
“Interesting question,” Hackett said. “I’m curious enough to want to know the answer. Would you like to find out for me?”
“I don’t think so,” Stone said.
“Oh, right: conflict of interest.”
Stone didn’t address that.
“Shall I drop you at home?” Hackett aske
d.
“Eighty-eighth and Second Avenue, if it’s not inconvenient,” he replied.
The car deposited him at his corner, and he walked the few feet to Elaine’s. Dino was there, and so was Felicity.
30
Stone sat down, and a Knob Creek on the rocks was placed before him. “Evening, all,” he said, placing the envelope on the table. He turned to Felicity. “Where have you been?”
“Away,” she replied.
“I tried your cell phone and got a message that it was not in service.”
“It’s back in service,” she said. “Where have you been?” She took a sip of her Rob Roy.
“Meeting Stanley Whitestone,” he replied.
Felicity choked on her drink, and Stone had to pat her firmly on the back. “Start at the beginning,” she said, dabbing at her watering eyes with a napkin.
Stone started at the beginning and gave her a blow-by-blow account of his afternoon.
Dino spoke up. “Hackett let you fly his jet?”
Stone ignored him. He handed Felicity the envelope and watched as she opened it and peered at the photos.
“It could be Whitestone,” she said. “And he could have died as a result of a motorcar accident.” She looked at the death certificate and the fingerprint card.
“Run the prints,” Stone said. “That should settle it.”
“Was he cremated?” Felicity asked.
“Hackett didn’t mention cremation. I shouldn’t think he’d have bothered with buying a cemetery plot if the body had ended up in an urn. And it’s unlikely that there’s a crematorium anywhere near the island.”
Felicity put the photos and documents back into the envelope and stuffed it into her briefcase.
“That will be a hundred thousand pounds,” Stone said.
“You haven’t earned your fee yet,” she replied.
“Well, I’m not performing an autopsy. Hackett didn’t say if the body was embalmed, but if it wasn’t, it’s either mush or dust by now.”
“I want everyone involved in Maine to be talked to: the hospital doctors and nurses, the police, the undertaker, the lot.”