by Stuart Woods
“I already have three thousand hours,” he said.
“A hundred hours in type.”
“Right. What have your day’s investigations produced?”
And she began to complain.
35
Felicity took a sip of her Rob Roy. “Turns out that the records of the Parachute Regiment at the time Hackett alleges he was a member are stored in an army warehouse in Aldershot, south of London.”
“So?” Stone asked. “Are they available?”
“They are available,” she replied, “but they are a sodden, mold-infested mess, having been placed in a corner of the warehouse that has been flooded twice by huge rainstorms in the past two years.”
“What can you do about that?”
“I’ve been able to spare two document specialists who are trying to dry and extract the relevant pages,” she replied, “but quite frankly, if I had a dozen people to spare for a year, that might not be enough manpower or time to find Hackett’s and Timmons’s records.”
“In this country,” Stone said, “if you are fingerprinted for anything—military service, for instance—your prints end up in the FBI database. Is the same true in Britain?”
“Yes, and we’ve already been to the police, but that far back, none of the records have been computerized, so a search of paper records has to be done by hand. The problem that arises is that hardly anyone with the police is old enough to know how to accomplish such a search, as opposed to a computer search. We are being defeated by the lack of old skills among younger employees. What’s more, the records from that time have also been stored in a warehouse in boxes that were poorly labeled.”
“So you have no hope of finding a record of Hackett’s fingerprints?”
“Very little hope. It’s just barely possible that we might get lucky.”
“I have a suggestion,” Stone said.
“Please make it a good one.”
“Hackett is a naturalized American citizen,” Stone pointed out. “He would have been fingerprinted at the time of submitting his application for citizenship, and the State Department would have his application on file.”
Felicity brightened. “That is a very good suggestion, Stone. I’ll have the ambassador make inquiries tomorrow.” She wrinkled her brow. “I wonder what the State Department would make of a foreign ambassador inquiring about the fingerprints of an American citizen.”
“Good point,” Stone said. “It might be better to have your police make the request through the FBI.”
“Perhaps so,” she said. “I’ll phone the commander of the Metropolitan Police tomorrow and make the request.” She took another sip of her drink. “Why do you suppose Hackett wants you to learn to fly a jet aeroplane?”
“I can only guess,” Stone said. “When he was trying to persuade me to come to work for him he told me that, in a year, I’d be able to afford my own jet.”
“That must be very alluring for you,” Felicity said.
“It’s interesting, but not alluring.”
“I’ll bet you’ve had little-boy fantasies for years about flying your own jet.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Stone admitted.
“Then why don’t you go to work for him?”
“That’s what I’m doing right now; Woodman and Weld has assigned me to Hackett.”
“So what’s the difference?”
“The difference is, if you can prove that Hackett is Whitestone, you’re going to do something terrible to him, and Strategic Services would probably come crashing down without him to run it. Then where would I be?”
“Not at Woodman and Weld.”
“Exactly.”
“If that happened,” Dino pointed out, “you could sell your hypothetical jet and live on the proceeds.”
“Sell my hypothetical jet?” Stone asked. “Never!”
Felicity managed a laugh.
“You should do that more often,” Stone said. “You’ve been working too hard.”
“No harder than usual.”
“Who’s minding the store in London while you’re here?”
“I have a very competent deputy who handles the administrative side. The rest I am doing from the office here.”
“Don’t you ever have to make an appearance?” Dino asked.
“Eventually,” Felicity replied. “It’s not as though I’m the prime minister or some other public figure. I don’t have to appear in the newspapers or on television every day or be interviewed by anyone.”
“How much longer can I count on having you as my houseguest?” Stone asked.
“At least until we get to the bottom of the Hackett/Whitestone riddle,” she replied.
“Then I’ll have to work more slowly,” Stone said.
36
Stone submitted to the tender ministrations of Ms. Ida Ann Dunn for the remainder of the week. Felicity was little seen and reported no further progress on substantiating the identity of James Hackett.
On Friday afternoon Ida Ann closed the operator’s manual, switched off her projector and handed Stone a thick sheaf of papers. “Your final examination,” she said. “You have three hours.” She tucked the manual in one of her cases. “So you can’t cheat,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
Ida Ann disappeared and came back in two and a half hours. “Are you done?” she asked as she walked into Stone’s office.
“You said I have three hours,” Stone replied.
“I didn’t say you had to take three hours.”
“Give me a minute, all right?”
“Take your time,” she sighed.
Ten minutes later, Stone handed her the completed answer sheet. She placed a template over it and ran down the columns with a finger. “My, my,” she said.
“That bad?”
“That good. One hundred percent.”
Stone sagged with relief, because he knew that if he had missed any answers he would have had to undergo a further lecture on the misses.
Ida Ann tucked the answer sheet into her briefcase and offered her hand.
Stone shook it.
“Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, please meet Mr. Dan Phelan, your flight instructor, at Jet Aviation at Teterboro Airport. And take along your logbook, license and medical certificate.”
“But tomorrow’s Saturday,” Stone complained. “Don’t I get the weekend off?”
“You do not,” she replied, and with a little wave over her shoulder she departed.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING at eight, Stone walked into the pilot’s room at Jet Aviation and looked around. Various uniformed corporate crews sat around gazing blankly at CNN on a large television set. A man in a battered leather flight jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt stood up and walked over.
“Stone Barrington? I’m Dan Phelan.” They shook hands.
“I guessed.”
“Let’s go sit down in a quiet corner for a few minutes.” They took a vacant table and two chairs. “Let me see your license, your medical certificate and your logbook.”
Stone handed them over, and Phelan started with the license. “I understood you’ve been flying a JetProp,” he said. “How come you have a multiengine rating?”
“I got it in anticipation of buying a Beech Baron twin, but then I changed my mind and bought a Malibu, and later had it converted.”
“So the only twin time you have is your training for the rating? Six hours?”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, by the time you take your check ride for your Mustang-type rating, you’ll have a lot more.” He examined Stone’s medical certificate and handed it and the license back to him, then he began flipping through the logbook. “I see you’ve flown in and out of Teterboro a lot over the past few years.”
“I’m based here,” Stone replied.
“That will stand you in good stead,” Phelan said. “Teterboro is the busiest general aviation airport in the country; if you can handle an airplane here, you can handle it anywhere.” He handed Stone a sheaf o
f copies of New Jersey instrument approaches. “Today, we’re going to fly out west of here to a practice area and do some air work: steep turns, slow flight and stalls. Then we’ll grab some lunch and fly some approaches at other airports. When we’re done, we’ll come back here and fly whatever approach is in use. Got it?”
“Got it,” Stone said.
Phelan opened his briefcase and unfolded a very large photograph of the Garmin G-1000 instrument panel in the Mustang. “I understand you’ve already got a couple of cross-country flights in with Mr. Hackett, so you must be a little familiar with this.”
“Jim did all the avionics operation,” Stone said. “I just flew the airplane. I have read the cockpit reference guide, though.”
Phelan produced a checklist for the airplane and had Stone go through it step-by-step and show him where the controls were for each item. Then they did it again. An hour and a half later, Phelan said, “Okay, let’s go flying.”
They took over an hour to do a detailed preflight inspection of the aircraft, then go through the checklist of the startup procedures, entering the weights of people, baggage and fuel to be carried; getting a clearance; and entering a flight plan into the G-1000. Finally, they were ready to taxi, and fifteen minutes later they were in the air, climbing to 10,000 feet and headed west.
Phelan explained each air-work procedure they would do and then gave Stone the throttle settings and speeds for each. Stone performed them twice—a little shaky on the first try but much more confidently on the second—then they flew an instrument approach into an airport, had a hamburger and got back into the airplane. They flew another half-dozen approaches into various airports, a couple of them by hand without the help of the autopilot, then headed back to Teterboro and flew an instrument landing system to a full-stop landing.
They put the airplane to bed and walked back into the terminal. “You did well,” Phelan said. “You’re clearly up-to-date on your instrument procedures, and you did a pretty good job of hand-flying the airplane.”
“Thank you.”
“Tomorrow we start on engine-out procedures: approaches, missed approaches and landings, all on one engine. It’ll be fun.”
Stone shook the man’s hand, walked back to his car, got in and rested his head on the steering wheel. He felt as though he had been machine-washed and fluff-dried; every muscle ached. He got out his cell phone and called Mei, a Chinese lady, and scheduled a massage before dinner.
BY THE TIME Mei had finished with him, he felt human again and hungry.
Dino was waiting for him at Elaine’s. “You look like shit,” he said pleasantly.
“Let me tell you how I got that way,” Stone said, taking his first, grateful sip of his Knob Creek.
37
When Stone walked into his bedroom, he found Felicity sitting up in bed, reading from a folder with a red stripe stamped across it. She closed the folder and put it into her briefcase, which was next to her on the bed. “How goes the flying?”
“Pretty good, but I’m exhausted,” he said, peeling off his clothes and getting in bed beside her.
“No playtime tonight?”
“I’ll do better in the morning,” he said. “How’s the search for Hackett’s Paratroop Regiment records going?”
“Extremely slowly,” she replied. “If my documents people don’t find something soon, I’m going to have to pull them off the job.”
“How about the search for his fingerprints with the State Department?”
“Oh, we found those,” she said. “They’re the same as Hackett’s current prints.”
“I hate to let the air out of your balloon, Felicity,” Stone said, “but when Hackett came to this country twenty-five years ago, Whitestone was still working in your service, was he not? And he couldn’t be in two countries at once.”
“Don’t you think we’ve thought of that?” she asked. “It’s funny, but the more convinced I become that Whitestone is Hackett, the more convinced you are that he’s not. Could that be because he’s letting you fly his jet airplane? Could that be because you like him?”
“I do like him,” Stone confessed, “and I suppose that could mean I have a bias in his favor, but it doesn’t affect the facts of the situation, and you have a lot of facts that you just can’t reconcile.”
“Yes, we do,” she admitted, “but you don’t have any facts to support Hackett’s innocence.”
“Of course I do. Whitestone could simply not have worked for your service on a full-time basis while simultaneously establishing a fabulously successful business in this country. That is a fact.”
“No, it’s not; it’s a factoid.”
“What’s a factoid?”
“Something that seems to be true, but isn’t what it seems, like a humanoid in a sci-fi movie?”
“Well, I don’t know what else to do to help you. As it is, I’m spending all my time getting type-rated in an airplane I’m never going to be able to own or even fly, except with or for Jim Hackett. How is that helping you?”
“You’re gaining his confidence,” Felicity said, “and he’s paying you to do it. That sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
“Maybe for me, but not for you.”
“When you’ve earned his confidence it will be easier to poke holes in his legend.”
“When are you going to tell me why your people still care about Whitestone?”
“When I’m allowed to but not before,” she replied. “And I may never be allowed to.”
Stone pulled the covers up. “I can’t think about this anymore,” he said.
“See you in the morning,” she replied and switched off her bedside lamp.
THE NEXT DAY Stone and Dan Phelan were taking off from Teterboro with Stone at the controls, when Phelan pulled the left throttle back to idle and said, “You’ve just lost an engine; handle it.”
Stone applied right rudder and used the rudder trim to take the pressure of holding it off his leg.
“Very good,” Phelan said.
“The airplane doesn’t really handle any differently on one engine as long as the rudder is neutralized,” Stone said.
“That’s right; the airplane is very benign. Now let’s go fly some single-engine instrument approaches and missed approaches.”
AFTER THEY LANDED at Teterboro and secured the airplane, Phelan said, “You’re doing well, but you’re going to have to pay a lot more attention to your heading, airspeed and altitude when you’re hand-flying the airplane. Your FAA check ride will be to Air Transport Pilot standards, and that means plus or minus five degrees of heading, ten knots of airspeed and a hundred feet of altitude.”
Stone nodded wearily. “I know,” he said.
FOR THE FOLLOWING three days Phelan ordered Stone around the sky while he honed his skills in every phase of piloting the airplane. On the fourth day Stone arrived at Teterboro to find Dan Phelan talking with a tall, slim, red-haired man.
“Stone,” Phelan said, “let me introduce you to Craig Bird.”
Stone shook the man’s hand.
“Craig is an FAA examiner, and he will be conducting your check ride today.”
“Today?” Stone asked, astonished. He had not prepared himself mentally for this.
“Today,” Phelan said. “I’ll leave you two to get on with it.” He walked to the other side of the pilot’s lounge, picked up a newspaper and began to read it.
“Let’s sit over here,” Bird said, and they settled at a table. “I gather you weren’t expecting this, but Dan feels you’re ready, and we’ve already completed the paperwork for your check ride. You’ll probably do better for not having worried about it.”
“I hope so,” Stone said.
Craig Bird began asking him questions about the Mustang’s systems, and Stone supplied the correct answers that had been ground into his brain by Ida Ann Dunn. An hour later, Bird said, “All right, you seem to know the airplane well; let’s go fly it.”
Bird watched as Stone performed the thirt
y-minute preflight inspection that he had performed for every day of his training. Then they got into the airplane and closed the door.
Stone picked up his voluminous checklist and turned to the first page. Bird took it away from him. “We’re not going to use the checklist,” he said. “Don’t worry if you forget something, I’ll remind you. I’m not going to break your balls. I just want to know if you can fly this airplane well and safely.”
Stone worked his way across the instrument panel from left to right, putting them in their proper positions from memory, then started the engines.
THREE HOURS LATER Stone performed the best landing he had made during all his training. “Congratulations,” Craig Bird said, “you’re now single-pilot type-rated in the Cessna 510 Mustang.”
Back at Jet Aviation, Phelan greeted them in the pilot’s lounge. “How did it go?”
“He did just fine,” Bird replied. He got on his computer and produced a document that was Stone’s temporary license and type rating, pending receipt of his new license from the FAA. Bird shook his hand and left.
“I told you you’d do all right,” Phelan said. He handed Stone a key to the airplane. “Mr. Hackett asked me to congratulate you and give you this,” he said. “He said to use the airplane whenever you like. Just check the schedule with his secretary first.”
Stone drove home with his type rating and the key burning a hole in his pocket. He wanted to fly somewhere.
38
Stone arrived home, garaged his car and walked into his office to find Felicity and Joan sitting on the leather sofa, sipping tea. Felicity looked shaken.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
Joan spoke up. “Felicity had an encounter with Dolce,” she said. “I was getting out of the Rolls,” Felicity said. “My driver was holding the door open for me, and suddenly this woman appeared out of nowhere with a knife in her hand. She swung it at my throat, but my driver got an arm in the way and took a bad cut on his forearm. Fortunately, the woman ran away.”