by Stuart Woods
Stone repaired to the bathroom for a quick shower and the use of a hotel toothbrush. He brushed his wet hair back and got into the robe, and when he arrived back in the bedroom, the waiter had come and gone, leaving a large tray table laden with breakfast. He sat down, and Helga served him eggs Benedict and champagne, a Krug ’90. He couldn’t bring himself to mix it with his orange juice.
“What does your day hold?” Helga asked.
“I have a dinner engagement,” he replied. “And I hope to get some work done.”
“How long will you be in Paris?”
“I don’t know, but probably not more than a few days.”
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow evening?”
“Of course.”
“Tour d’Argent at eight o’clock?”
“Perfect.”
They finished breakfast, then returned to bed for another hour. Finally, Stone got into his tuxedo, kissed her, and returned to his suite.
It was after ten, and when he opened the door he found another envelope, addressed in the same calligraphy as before. It contained a brief note from Marcel:
Stone, it was a great pleasure to have you as my guest last evening. Enclosed are the pertinent documents for your car. My customs agent in New York will clear the car at JFK airport and deliver it to your home. It is my hope that you will enjoy it for many years to come.
Stone found an invoice among the papers. He wrote a check for $225,000, then e-mailed Joan to move the cash to his checking account. Then he wrote a note of thanks to Marcel for his hospitality and for the privilege of buying the car. He phoned down for a bellman and sealed the check in an envelope addressed to Marcel’s offices, as per the invoice. “Please have this delivered by messenger,” he said to the man, slipping him twenty euros along with the envelope.
Stone shaved and dressed in a tweed jacket and open-collared shirt, then left the hotel and walked for a while. It was a crisp autumn day with clear skies, a perfect time to be in Paris. The trees along the sidewalks were beginning to change their colors.
A car pulled up beside him, and a window rolled down. “Good morning,” Rick LaRose said. “Hop in.”
Stone got into the car. “Good morning.”
“I trust your evening continued to go well after the dinner,” LaRose said.
“It did indeed.”
“I have an appointment at Charvet. Will you come with me? I’ll need advice.”
“Sure,” Stone said. “Then I’ll buy you lunch.”
8
LaRose was being measured by the tailor while Stone flipped through fabric swatches. At Rick’s insistence, he chose six suit patterns, two tweeds for jackets, cavalry twills for odd trousers, cashmere for a blue blazer, and a lightweight Italian worsted for a tuxedo. Then he turned to shirt swatches, picking Sea Island cotton for the whites, and Egyptian cotton for the stripes and checks. A dozen neckties, then, their business done at Charvet, they stopped into Berluti for shoes, then went back to Rick’s car.
“Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” Stone said. “Do you know it?”
“Yes, I think,” Rick replied, slipping the car into gear.
“How long have you been in Paris, Rick?” Stone asked.
“Not quite a month.”
“And before that?”
“Postings in Africa and the Middle East.”
“That would explain your need for better apparel.”
“It would, and I managed to combine the clothing allowances for three postings with some poker winnings, just managing to cover the Charvet bill. The shoes came out of my pay.”
“The clothes should last you for many years, if you don’t wear them for black bag jobs.”
“What do you know about black bag jobs?” Rick asked. “You’re a corporate lawyer.”
“Surely you read my file more closely than that.”
“All right, you were a cop, but you didn’t do black bag jobs, did you?”
“No, I caught people who did.”
“Sometimes I think I’d rather hold that end of the stick,” Rick said.
“There, grab that parking spot,” Stone said, pointing.
Rick swung into it, then they got out and walked fifty yards down the boulevard to Brasserie Lipp.
“What is this place?” Rick asked.
“Alsatian food and a slick clientele,” Stone replied. He was surprised that the headwaiter recognized him after a three-year absence and gave them a favored table on the ground floor instead of sending them upstairs with the tourists. Stone introduced Rick to the headwaiter, explaining that he was an American diplomat. The man gave Rick his card, and they sat down, Stone with his back to the wall at Rick’s insistence.
“For many years I hung out at a restaurant called Elaine’s in New York.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Lipp is the closest thing Paris has to Elaine’s. You’ll want to try the choucroute, and beer is good with it.”
“Order for me,” Rick said.
“Is ‘commercial attaché’ your usual handle when you’re out and about?” Stone asked.
“It is if I’m to be with businesspeople. If I’m with the artsier types, then I’m the cultural attaché. Whatever works.”
“That could be the Agency’s motto,” Stone observed.
“And a good one at that.” Rick’s eyes flicked to the mirror above Stone’s head. He was sitting with his back to the room.
“See someone you know?”
“Someone I’d like not to see me. The man in the pin-striped suit.”
Stone glanced across the room. “Who is he?”
“Opposition.”
Stone offered his sunglasses. “Will these help?”
“Thanks,” Rick said, slipping them on. “You don’t want him to see me with you—that might cause unwanted attention to be paid to you.”
“You’ve been here less than a month, and already you know the opposition and they know you?”
“I read the files on all of them as soon as I hit Paris,” Rick said, “and I expect they’ve had a look at my file, too. It’s par for the course. It’s also interesting that that guy is frequenting this particular place—the headwaiter seemed to know him. I’ll put that in my report.”
“You write a lot of reports, do you?”
“It’s a big part of what I do.”
“Try and keep me out of them, will you?”
“Are you kidding? You float in over our transom in a drug-induced coma, and you don’t want anybody to notice?”
Stone shrugged. “I guess that was naive of me.”
“It was.”
The choucroutes arrived—a bed of sauerkraut covered with slices of pork and veal.
“Very, very good,” Rick said after a couple of bites.
“Don’t eat it all, you’ll sleep through the afternoon.”
“Good advice.”
“Rick, can you run a name through your computers for me?”
“Does it relate to this trip?”
“Yes. The name is Amanda Hurley.”
“Who is she?”
“I’ve no idea. She called the hotel and said we met on the airplane and invited me to dinner. I can’t even give you a description, except of her accent, which was mid-Atlantic.”
Rick produced a smartphone and typed for thirty seconds, then put it away. “Soon,” he said.
“How’d you get into this racket?” Stone asked.
“I had a misspent youth,” Rick said. “I left home at sixteen and got into all sorts of trouble, did a little local time, nothing felonious. A guy came to see me, said his name was Jim. I got the impression that a detective who had busted me a couple of times had said something to him about me. He asked me if I spoke Spanish—asked me in Spanish—so I conversed with him in that language
. He knew that I’d just barely gotten through high school and asked where I’d picked up the tongue. I told him on the street, and he seemed impressed.”
“He was Agency?”
“He must have bailed me out, because when I hit the street he was waiting for me. He bought me some clothes—even then I dressed unsuitably—and took me to dinner at a big-time steak house, where the conversation ranged over everything I had ever done—crimes, sports, hobbies, whatever—then it turned to what I was going to do with my life.”
“How old were you at the time?”
“Nineteen, going on forty-five.”
“Did he make you an offer?”
“He asked me if I’d give him a few weeks of my time, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I said sure. I figured I owed him. He asked me if there was anything in my rented room that I couldn’t walk away from, and I thought about it and told him no.”
“What happened then?”
“When we left the restaurant there was a car and driver waiting for us. We were driven to JFK, and Jim gave me some cash and a ticket, said I’d be met at the other end. Next morning I found myself in Monterey, California, at a language school, learning Russian. I aced that, and after a couple of weeks they tried me with Arabic. Turns out I had a gift. I was there for fourteen months and left conversant in half a dozen languages, including Swedish and French.
“During my time there, people came to see me, people with only first names. I filled out a lot of forms, wrote my biography, and was given three polygraph exams. On my last day, when I had no idea where I’d go next, I was offered a trainee’s position with the Agency. I flew to D.C., where somebody met me and delivered me to Fort Peary, Virginia.”
“The Farm.”
“That’s the place. I learned enough new skills there to make a very fine living as a burglar, a safecracker, a con man, or an assassin, and then I found myself in Africa, never mind where. I loved it. Four years of that, then two Middle Eastern postings, where my Arabic was an advantage, then I think they decided I was getting a little too wild and woolly, so they sent me here to get me civilized. One of the things they’d been after me about was clothes, so I appreciate your guidance this morning. I think I could learn a lot from you.”
“I’m at your disposal while I’m in Paris,” Stone said. “In the daytime, anyway.”
Rick fished his smartphone from his pocket and read an e-mail. “Your Amanda Hurley is interesting,” he said, then his eyes flicked at the mirror behind Stone. “What’s that passage to my left?”
Stone looked at it. “Men’s room,” he said.
“My man just went in there, and I don’t want to be here when he gets back. Thanks for a terrific lunch.” He got up and started out.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Stone called after him. “What about Ms. Hurley?”
“Later,” Rick said, and he was gone.
9
Stone arrived at Lasserre at eight sharp, was taken up in an elevator to the dining room and seated at a table for two. The other chair was empty. He looked around and admired the room, as he had on his earlier visit some years before.
It was essentially square with a sunken center, and the seating was arranged so that everyone could see everyone else. The decor was simply beautiful, and overhead was a frescoed ceiling. As he watched, it slid open to reveal a rose arbor and the night sky. That happened periodically, he recalled; it let out hot air and, in the old days, French cigarette smoke. A pianist played old tunes.
A waiter was taking his drink order when he looked up to see the maître d’ leading in an attractive woman. Stone stood to receive her. “Good evening, Amanda,” he said as the maître d’ seated her. “Would you like a drink?”
“Champagne fraise des bois, please,” she replied.
“Two,” Stone said, and they were left alone with the menus and each other. She was a slender, attractive woman with chestnut hair and beautiful skin. She wore an Armani dress—black, since that seemed to be about all Armani sold.
“How nice to see you again,” she said.
“Indeed. How have you occupied yourself since you arrived in Paris?”
“Museums and galleries, mostly.”
“Is art your business?”
“I have degrees in art history,” she said, “and I work as the curator for a couple of corporate collections in New York. I come to Paris to refresh my eye and to buy for my clients.”
“Sounds like interesting work.”
“I learned on the airplane that you are a lawyer, but then you passed out—and after only one drink. Does alcohol disagree with you?”
“Alcohol and I normally get along very nicely, thank you, and don’t take it personally—I assure you, it wasn’t the company. I suppose I must have been very tired.”
“What kind of law?”
“Over the years, a bit of everything. Currently, mostly corporate work.”
“Is it enough to keep the mind alive?”
“Quite enough.”
“Actually, I know a good deal about you,” she said.
“How?”
“I read the book.”
“Book?”
“Golden Couple,” she said, “by someone called Kelli Keane?”
Stone took a quick breath. “God, is that out?”
“Didn’t you know? I picked it up in the airport bookstore.”
“I knew it was coming—the pub date must have slipped my mind.” Now he had at least one reason for leaving New York for Paris: so no one could find him.
“My condolences on the death of your wife.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you duck out of town because of the book’s publication?”
“That may have had something to do with it.”
“It got a very good write-up in The New York Times Book Review, Wall Street Journal, too.”
“Well, that means that everybody I know has read or is reading it.”
“And a great many other people, too—looks like it’s going to be a bestseller.”
“Ah, fame.”
“Are you upset about this?”
“Not exactly—after all, I cooperated with the author. I wanted to be certain she had her facts straight.”
“If it matters, she treated you sympathetically.”
“I suppose that’s better than getting slammed.”
“At all times. Did you have a publicist representing you?”
“No.”
“How many times did you speak with her?”
“Four or five, I suppose, an hour or two at a time.”
“You were lucky to get out with your skin. One should always have representation in such situations.”
“Sounds like you’ve had some experience.”
“Not personally, I’ve seen friends go through it. They didn’t always fare as well as you, especially the ones without professional help.”
“I hope that by the time I get home people will have forgotten about it.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
They ordered, and Stone redirected the conversation away from him. “Give me your concise bio,” he said.
“All right. Born in a small town in Georgia called Delano—you’ve never heard of it.”
He had, but he let it pass.
“Moved to Atlanta as a child, did well in school, scholarship to Harvard, where I stretched the experience to three degrees. I loved it there. Got an entry-level job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, left there for Sotheby’s, worked as a freelance adviser to people with a lot of money and no taste, got a corporate client, then another, and here I am.”
“Ever married?”
“Once, foolishly. The divorce was more fun.”
“Where do you live?”
“At Park and Sixty-third. I bought
a little co-op with a big commission on an important sale. I do quite well, actually.”
“Congratulations.”
“Tell me, since your wife’s death have you been attracting flies?”
“Flies?” He was baffled.
“Young things with ambitions to marrying money without benefit of prenup.”
“Oh, those. No, not really.”
“Things will change in that regard because of the book.”
“I’ll have to get some bug spray.”
“Yes, you will.”
“What else did we talk about on the airplane before I dozed off?”
“Not all that much. You asked me to dinner and told me where you were staying. I was just across the aisle, and after you slipped into the land of nod, I read the book. I was first off the airplane, so I didn’t see you again.”
“Question: who served me the drink?”
She looked at him oddly. “A stewardess, I guess. Excuse me, flight attendant. I don’t know why they’d rather be called that.”
“Neither do I. Did the, ah, flight attendant pay special attention to me?”
“You’re an attractive man, Stone, what do you think?”
“Was there anything about her that caught your attention?”
“Like what?”
“Like anything unusual?”
She cocked her head and gazed at him. “Are you asking me if she put something in your glass besides bourbon?”
“I suppose I am.” He returned her level gaze. “The second choice seems to be you.”
Her mouth fell open. “Do you really think you were drugged?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“And you think I drugged you?”
“From your own account, it had to be the attendant or you. Or was there another alternative?”
She furrowed her brow. “There was that woman.”
“What woman?”
“She came down the aisle, looking a little drunk, a glass in her hand. She seemed to spill her drink on your arm and apologized profusely. You were dabbing at your shirtsleeve with a handkerchief, and she was bending over you.”