by Stuart Woods
Adele had been listening on her headset from the copilot’s seat. “Kennebunk? That’s in Maine, isn’t it? Are we going to Maine?”
“We are,” Stone replied. “To an island in Penobscot Bay called Islesboro and a village called Dark Harbor.”
“It sounds wonderful,” she said.
The countryside was mostly white beneath them and got whiter as they flew east and north. Stone showed Adele Islesboro on the chart, then he ran through his descent and landing checklists, to stay well ahead of the airplane. They had only just reached their cruising altitude of thirty-three thousand feet when Boston Center started their descent.
Soon Stone could point out Islesboro and the landing strip.
“The strip looks awfully small,” Adele said.
“It will look larger as we approach,” Stone replied, “and the airplane is very good at short field work. Now, excuse me, I have to concentrate on landing.”
His checklist called for a final approach speed of 88 knots, and he concentrated on reaching and holding that speed while extending the flaps and landing gear. He put the airplane exactly where he wanted it and right on the speed number, then applied the brakes.
“Very good brakes,” Adele said. “I didn’t think we’d be able to stop so quickly.”
“There’s Seth Hotchkiss,” Stone said, pointing at the restored 1938 Ford station wagon parked beside the runway. “He and his wife, Mary, take care of the place.”
“How long have you owned the house?” Adele asked.
“I don’t own it. It was built by my first cousin Dick Stone, who died a while back. He left me lifetime use of the house, and on my death it will go to a foundation he set up.”
“That was very nice of him,” she said.
“It was indeed,” Stone agreed.
Seth greeted them and put their bags into the back of the wagon, while Stone installed the engine plugs and pilot covers and disconnected the battery. Then they drove away.
“Are you having a quiet winter, Seth?” Stone asked.
“Quiet as usual,” Seth replied. “We got some snow last week.”
“It’s very pretty,” Adele commented as they drove through the village.
At the house, Mary greeted them, and Seth took their luggage upstairs.
“I’ve got some clam chowder on the stove,” Mary said. “Would you like some?”
They agreed and had a good lunch in the kitchen, then moved to the living room.
“What’s that sound?” Adele asked.
Stone listened. “Phone,” he said. He took his house key and opened the locked door that concealed Dick Stone’s study. Dick had been about to be promoted to the job now held by Lance Cabot at the CIA when he, his wife, and daughter had been murdered, but Stone didn’t want to tell Adele that they had been killed in the house.
Stone picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“Good afternoon, Stone.”
“How on earth did you know I was here, Lance?”
“Stone, are you forgetting where I work? I always know everything. I thought you knew that.”
“I keep forgetting,” Stone replied. He had told his secretary where he was going, but she wouldn’t have told Lance.
“A bit chilly up there, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Stone replied.
“You don’t sound very happy to hear from me,” Lance said.
“Why should I be happy to hear from you, Lance? It’s a weekend, and I’m away from my office.”
“Ah, yes; I forgot that you are a nine-to-five office worker.”
“What do you want, Lance?”
“Well, Stone, first of all I want to tell you how unhappy I was with your performance in my meeting with Mike Freeman.”
“Performance? What the hell does that mean?”
“I expected you to take the Agency’s position in our conversation.”
“I’m counsel to the company,” Stone said. “I take their position in all meetings, with you or anybody else.”
“Stone, you’ve been on the Agency’s payroll for some time now.”
“I’m not on your payroll,” Stone said. “You pay me when I work for you, like any other client. It’s not like I’m on salary.”
“Still.”
“Lance, perhaps it would be better if you just released me from my contract with the Agency.”
“Oh, no, I don’t want to do that. There are times when I need your particular talents.”
“Well, don’t try to employ them when I’m representing Strategic Services.”
“Mike called me yesterday and declined to be involved in the situation I outlined to him.”
“Good. That was my advice.”
“Actually, that situation was entirely hypothetical, designed to test Freeman’s willingness to be involved with us. I expect we’ll find other ways for him and his company to be useful to us.”
“You were never able to get Jim Hackett to play ball with you, were you, Lance?” Stone was guessing now.
“That was a different time. Jim is gone now.”
“Well, you should expect Mike Freeman to treat your offers with equal skepticism.”
“I certainly hope not, Stone, for your sake as well as his.”
Stone was rendered speechless by this remark, and by the time he recovered himself, Lance had hung up. Stone went back to the living room.
“You don’t look very happy,” she said.
“I had a business phone call at a time when I didn’t want one,” Stone replied. “How about a walk? I’ll show you around.”
Adele went to get her coat and boots, while Stone tried to put Lance Cabot out of his mind.
FOURTEEN
They walked along the water, carefully picking their way over rocks on the shore. The harbor was empty of boats, and the Tarratine Yacht Club was closed and shuttered.
“It’s beautifully desolate, isn’t it?” Adele said.
“Well-chosen words.”
“I like it that you brought me up here,” she said. “Most men would have taken me south to someplace warm.”
“I wanted you all to myself,” Stone said. “Up here I don’t have to compete with your friends and the tourists and the shops for your attention.”
“You have my undivided attention,” she said, squeezing his hand.
They were gone an hour, and when they returned Mary made them hot buttered rum, and that warmed them up.
At dinnertime Mary had managed to produce lobster Thermidor, and they ate it with a bottle of good white Burgundy from Dick Stone’s cellar.
Back in the living room, Adele stood at the window and watched the moon rising. “Are these windows tinted?” she asked. “The moon is a funny color.”
“Let me tell you about the house,” Stone said. “My cousin Dick was a lifelong employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, something I didn’t know until shortly before his death. Dick finally got the job he’d wanted all his life, deputy director for operations, but he died before he could assume the office. When he built the house, the Agency, in consideration of Dick’s importance to it, added many security features, among them thick, armored glass in all the windows. That’s why the moon’s color may seem a little odd.”
“Dick Stone was from your mother’s side of the family?”
“Yes, he was her brother’s son.”
“How did he die?”
“He was murdered, along with his wife and daughter.”
Adele looked shocked. “Was this in connection with his work?”
“No, it was a family matter. Say, can I show you the bedroom?”
She laughed and kissed him. “I’d love to see it,” she said.
He led her upstairs, and they helped each other undress, then plunged under the eiderdown duvet and clung to each other for warmth.
“I’m glad we’re not in Palm Beach,” she said, throwing a leg over his.
“I’m glad, too,” Stone said, then he turned his attention entirely to her needs.
The sun was well up, though, and what snow there may have been on the airframe had melted. Stone was about to get back into the old Ford when suddenly there was a helicopter over the runway. It was black, and he noticed that there was no registration number on the fuselage.
The chopper settled slowly, then a rear door opened and someone beckoned for him to approach. Stone walked over to the helicopter, and Lance Cabot leaned forward from a rear seat and offered his hand. Stone shook it, then other hands grabbed him and hoisted him aboard the aircraft. The door slammed, and the chopper rose straight up, then banked and turned south.
“What the hell is this?” Stone shouted over the noise of the rotor.
Lance pointed at his ear and mouthed, “Can’t hear you,” then he motioned for Stone to sit back in his seat, and another man buckled his seat belt.
They flew south for ten minutes across Penobscot Bay, then the helicopter descended and set down on a small island. The engines were cut, and the rotor spun down, then Lance and his two aides, along with Stone, got out and walked toward a large house fifty yards away.
“What is this place?” Stone asked. “And what the hell am I doing here?”
“I thought we’d have a chat,” Lance said as they climbed the steps to the front porch. They shed their coats in the entrance hall and Lance led Stone to a paneled library overlooking a rocky beach. He poured them both a brandy, and they sat down.
“Whose place is this?” Stone asked, grateful for the warmth of the brandy.
“It’s a rental, sort of,” Lance replied. “Belongs to an alumnus of the Agency. We use it for various tasks in the off-season. Right now there’s a Chinese agent upstairs in one of the bedrooms, being turned, I should expect.”
“Is this where you called me from?”
“Yes. As we flew in yesterday, I saw Jim Hackett’s little Mustang at the Islesboro field, so I knew you were here.”
So Lance was not all-knowing, after all, Stone thought. “You shouldn’t have told me that,” he replied. “I was terribly impressed with your knowledge of my whereabouts. And, by the way, the airplane is mine now. Hackett left it to me in his will.”
“You are a great inheritor of things, aren’t you, Stone? Your house in New York is from an aunt, I believe.”
“Great-aunt.”
“Then Dick Stone’s house, and now a jet airplane. You’re a fortunate fellow.”
“I suppose I am at that,” Stone said.
“Well, if you’re a nice fellow, nice things happen to you, don’t they?”
“If you say so,” Stone replied warily. He had the feeling something not so nice was about to happen to him.
“I expressed my displeasure with you yesterday, on the phone,” Lance said. “Now I want to expand on that a little.”
“You don’t need to expand, Lance; I’m well aware of your displeasure.”
“I thought it might help if I gave you a little background.”
“All right.”
“Will Lee, as you know, is now in his last term as president, and that means his wife, the lovely Katharine Rule Lee, is in her last years as our director.”
Stone nodded and sipped his brandy.
“Things are always changing in the intelligence game, but because of the president’s two terms and what turned out to be Kate’s calming presence, we at the Agency have had a rather long period of stability. There have been blips along the way, of course, among them various problems associated with the work of outside contractors.”
“Yes, I’ve read about those in the papers,” Stone said. “Particularly about the murder trial of a few of your mercenaries.”
“We do not accept that term,” Lance said. “These people are patriotic Americans, not simply hired guns. They actually save us money by performing many chores peripheral to our actual missions. We don’t have to train their people, you see; most are ex-military or ex-Agency or ex-something else, so they arrive with the requisite skill set.”
Stone continued to sip his brandy, which had warmed him down to his fingertips by this time.
“Because of some of the difficulties raised by previous contractors,” Lance said, “I am particularly interested in having Strategic Services on our team.”
“Because they’re clean?” Stone asked.
“Precisely. Jim Hackett has always operated in a highly ethical manner, and his reputation, and that of his company, is, as a result, impeccable.”
“And Mike Freeman wants to keep it that way,” Stone said.
“Of course, of course,” Lance replied, “and yet it is Mike himself who is the greatest threat to the company’s reputation.”
Stone stopped sipping brandy. “What do you mean by that?” he asked carefully.
“I think you may already know,” Lance said. “But I’m going to tell you anyway, just so all our cards will be on the table.” He took a sip of his brandy, then continued.
FIFTEEN
Lance sniffed his brandy and took another sip. “Freeman is not his real name,” he said, “or, at least, not the name he was given at birth. He was then called Stanley Whitestone.”
Stone sipped his brandy and waited.
“Mike was a well-brought-up young Englishman when he was recruited for MI6, which is, as you know, the Brits’ foreign intelligence service. He excelled there and many said he was headed for the top. Then he fell in love with a much younger woman. She was twenty-two or so, a student at Cambridge, and Mike was in his mid-thirties and married. Her father, who was an important member of Parliament, was not amused. He came down rather hard on the girl, who had, by this time, found herself pregnant. Mike stepped up; he left his wife and became engaged to the girl, but she decided to have an abortion. Afraid of calling attention to herself because of her father’s position, she did not go to a hospital. Instead, she called on her best friend at Cambridge, a medical student, to perform the procedure. The boy was gay and the son of another important MP.
“The young man got through the procedure at his boyfriend’s country cottage and left her there overnight alone. When he returned the following morning she had contracted an infection and was very ill. He got her to a hospital, but she died later the same day. Mike Freeman knew nothing of any of this at the time.
“The boy was arrested, charged with performing an illegal abortion, and did a plea bargain for six months in prison. His medical career was ruined. While in prison he was raped and murdered by another prisoner, leaving two angry and powerful fathers to mourn the two young people.
“Time passed, the two MPs rose in the political world, and when their party won the next election, the girl’s father joined the cabinet as foreign secretary and the boy’s father as home secretary. Thus empowered, they set out to avenge their unlucky children and destroy Stanley Whitestone.
“By this time, under pressure created by the two fathers, Whitestone, fearing for his life, had left MI6, changed his name to Michael Freeman, and vanished. Eventually, he acquired an altered face, a Canadian passport, and a slight Montreal accent. Then he met Jim Hackett, went to work for him, and rose to number two in Strategic Services. With me so far?”
Stone shrugged noncommittally.
“Then your friend Felicity Devonshire, head of MI6, at the behest of the two fathers, employed you to find Mr. Whitestone. Felicity did not know the backstory, and the fathers had fabricated charges of treason, or worse, against Whitestone. The rest you know, am I right? In fact, you were with Jim Hackett when the sniper got him. I am prepared to believe that you knew nothing of that.”
“I won’t confirm or deny any of your story,” Stone said.
“You are so stubborn, Stone,” Lance said, laughing and shaking his head. “But I respect your loyalty and your rectitude, which is why I am now formulating a new appr
oach to Mike Freeman and Strategic Services.”
“I’m sure he’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say,” Stone said, “as will I.”
“Properly noncommittal,” Lance said. “I’m going to make Mike an offer he can’t refuse, as the Godfather used to say.”
“I hope the content of your offer will be different from those of the Godfather,” Stone said.
“Don’t you worry, Stone; it will all be legal, proper, and aboveboard. Well, perhaps not entirely aboveboard, given the business we have chosen. Aboveboard is not really what we do, is it?”
“Finally, something we can agree on,” Stone said.
There was a sharp rap on the door of the study.
“Come in!” Lance commanded.
The door opened and a large man in hunting clothes filled the doorway. “The gentleman has said he is ready to speak to you now, sir.”
“Tell him I’ll be right with him,” Lance said, and the man closed the door.
“Did someone make him an offer he can’t refuse?” Stone asked.
“Well, yes,” Lance replied.
“I suppose that involved what you people like to call ‘enhanced interrogation’?”
“His interrogation was certainly enhanced,” Lance said, “but not in the way you might imagine. The offer he couldn’t refuse involved a new life for himself and his family, certain protections, and a considerable sum of money. He will be a very happy ex-spy.”
“More likely a double agent,” Stone said.
“That, while covered by your security clearance, is on a need-to-know basis, and you most definitely do not need to know.”