Strategic Moves (29 page)

Stone shook his head. “No, Aarons knows about that house; he told me so. I imagine he already has people there.”

Pablo thought about that. “I have a friend who has a country house in the south of England. I have not been there for some years, so I have no noticeable connection to it.”

“You’re sure that Aarons isn’t aware of it?”

“I can’t see how he would know about it,” Pablo said. “As I said, I haven’t been there for a long time, and Aarons’s interest in me is very recent.”

“Where is your airplane?”

“At Gulfstream, in Georgia, having some avionics issues resolved.”

“How soon could you get it to the Northeast?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“There’s an airport near Washington called Oxford. It has a five-thousand-foot runway.”

“Wouldn’t Lance’s people be watching it?”

Stone shook his hand. “They will check it today, but Lance doesn’t have enough people around there to watch every airport. Anyway, since you have opted out of the surveillance he arranged, you have relieved him of the necessity to protect you. I’ve seen a G-Four take off from there, but probably not with full fuel.”

“I think we would need at least six thousand feet with full fuel.”

“Then have your people fly up from Georgia and land at Oxford but not refuel. That way, they won’t even have to stop the engines. You can land at Gander, in Newfoundland, and top off there.”

“That seems a good plan,” Pablo said.

“Can you get in touch with your friend in England?”

“I’ll call him now,” Pablo said. He produced a cell phone and made the call. A conversation in French ensued, then he hung up. “All arranged,” he said. “We can land at Blackbushe, in southern England, and he’ll have us met.”

A woman came into Stone’s office, and Pablo introduced his wife, a petite, beautiful woman about twenty years Pablo’s junior.

“I’ll drive you to Oxford tomorrow,” Stone said. “You two can stay here tonight.”

“I think we’ll be fine at our New York apartment,” Pablo said. “I’ve never told anybody about it, and my security people will be there.”

Joan buzzed. “A Mr. Aaron Beck to see you,” she said.

“Quick,” Stone said to the couple, “out the back. You know the way through the garden, Pablo.”

Pablo and his wife hurried out of his office, and Stone asked Joan to send in Mr. Beck.

Moishe Aarons walked in, followed by two large young men.

“Mr. Aarons,” Stone said sarcastically, “what a nice surprise.”

“Where is Pablo?” Aarons asked.

“Are you going to start that again?” Stone asked, opening his center desk drawer and extracting a pad and pen. He left the drawer open.

“Mr. Barrington,” Aarons said, “you have exhausted my patience.”

“And you, mine,” Stone replied.

“Search the house,” Aarons said, motioning the two men forward.

Stone produced a .45 semiautomatic from his desk drawer. “Hold it right there,” he said.

“You’re not going to fire at us,” Aarons said, but he didn’t move.

“I can shoot all three of you dead before you can move, and nobody will blame me. You are intruders and I am licensed for the weapon.”

“I’m licensed, too,” Joan said from the door, and she racked the slide on her own .45.

The three men turned and looked at her. She had assumed a firing stance.

Aarons turned back toward Stone. “I want Pablo,” he said.

“Well, you can’t have him,” Stone replied. “At least, not from me. Try Lance Cabot again; he seems to be a productive source for you.”

“I don’t have time,” Aarons replied.

“And I don’t have any more time for you,” Stone said. “Now, hear this: from this moment I am going to consider you and your people a threat to my life and act accordingly, and I am a
very
good shot.” That was a lie, but he doubted if Aarons had perused his range record at the NYPD. Dino was always needling him about his mediocre shooting performance.

“Place your hands on your head, turn and walk out of the building,” Stone said. “If you call again I’ll hang up on you, and if you come back I’ll fire on you. Is that clear?”

The three men did as Stone had ordered, and Joan locked the door behind them.

“Very good,” Stone said from his office door. “I particularly liked your firing stance.”

“That’s what they taught me at the range,” Joan said, “but I doubt if I could have hit any of them with this thing; it weighs a ton.”

“Only thirty-nine ounces,” Stone said.

“That’s two and a half pounds,” Joan pointed out, “and I’m a small girl.”

The phone rang, and Joan answered. “Mike Freeman for you,” she said.

Stone walked back to his desk and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s Mike.”

“Hello, Mike. It must be a beautiful day on Lake Waramaug.”

“I’m in New York,” Mike said.

“A pity; it’s gorgeous up there.”

“You know, don’t you?”

Stone now had to decide between his two clients. “Lance called,” he said, avoiding the decision.

“I’m embarrassed,” Mike said. “I’ve already fired the two men who let it happen.”

“I wouldn’t be too hard on them,” Stone said. “After all, we have to assume he’s still safe, just not in custody, so to speak.”

“We checked all the airports in the area,” Mike said. “No sign of Pablo.”

“I wouldn’t try too hard to find him,” Stone replied. “He doesn’t seem to want protecting anymore.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Mike said. “We’ll stand down.”

Stone hung up. Now, he thought, if I could just be sure that the Mossad and Al Qaeda have stood down.

Stone was at Elaine’s with Dino when Lance Cabot walked in and, without a word, sat down, waving at a waiter. He did not speak until an icy martini sat before him.

Stone and Dino exchanged a glance.

“Good evening, Lance,” Dino said.

“Is it?”

“It was until a moment ago,” Stone said. “What do you want?”

“Peace on Earth,” Lance replied, speaking into his martini, “or at least in this little corner of the earth.”

Stone had never seen Lance so dejected, and he fought the tendency to feel sorry for him. “All right, what has disturbed the peace of your corner of the earth this evening?”

“I did it to myself,” Lance said.

Dino spoke up. “This man is an impostor. The real Lance Cabot would never say a thing like that.”

“I agree,” Stone said. “Are you feeling bad about sending that nice young fellow Todd Bacon off to the Aleutians?”

Lance brightened visibly. “No, I didn’t send him to the Aleutians after all,” he said. “Instead, I sent him back to the Farm for torture-resistance training. That way, he will actually be tortured.”

“Oh,” Stone said, reluctantly admiring the way Lance’s mind worked.

“I’m feeling better,” Lance said, downing the remains of his martini and waving for another.

“I’m glad we could be of help,” Stone said.

“Where is Pablo now?” Lance asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Frankly, I thought I had overreacted to the idea of a threat against him when I assigned those Strategic Services people to protect him, but it turns out there really is a threat.”

“Uh-oh,” Dino said.

“Funny, that’s what I said when I heard,” Lance said.

“Heard what?” Stone asked.

“The boys over at NSA have picked up more satphone chatter about him.”

“And what was the source of the chatter?”

“Northwestern Pakistan,” Lance replied. “Less than forty miles from the former cave facility at Tora Bora.”

“Speaking of Tora Bora, any more news?”

“Estimates are that we killed about two hundred of the bastards in the bombing raid,” Lance said, “and not a few mules.”

“Does any of them have a name?”

“That will take time; we’ll have to count noses—or rather, missing noses.”

“Anything on the condition of bin Laden’s nose?”

“Nothing, as yet.”

“Let’s get back to the chat about Pablo,” Stone said.

“Oh, yes. It seems they have made the connection between Pablo and the bombing raid, and they’re even more furious than usual.”

“And how did they make that connection?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions.”

“And what do you suspect?”

“I suspect that Moishe Aarons—or one of his people—frustrated with their lack of success in laying hands on Pablo, may have leaked the connection to someone who knows someone in that part of the world. News travels fast, even over there.”

“I suppose it does,” Stone said, trying to figure out how to deal with this.

“Mind you,” Lance said, “that is
very
Machiavellian, even for Moishe.”

Stone was beginning to regret that he had spoken so harshly to Aarons. “Lance,” he said, “do you think that this translates into an immediate threat against Pablo?”

“Oh, yes,” Lance said, as if he had been misunderstood. “If what happened at my brother’s Lake Waramaug house is any indication.”

Stone waved for another bourbon. “All right, what happened at Lake Waramaug?”

“The house was set afire by unknown arsonists about an hour ago. It’s still burning.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, but the house is going to be a total loss, and I’m going to have to find the money to pay for its rebuilding and the replacement of certain valuable antiques. God, it may take an act of Congress.”

Stone was appalled. “No insurance?”

“Well, yes, but filing a claim would just provoke a lot of unwanted questions from a claim adjuster, and those might find their way to a congressional committee.”

“I see,” Stone said.

“Stone,” Lance said, “if you know where Pablo is, you’d better get him out of the country, and pronto.”

“Pronto,” Stone repeated tonelessly.

“Yes,” Lance said.

“Excuse me for a minute,” Stone said. He went into the empty dining room next door, the one Elaine used for big parties, and called Pablo.

“Yes?”

“It’s Stone.”

“Good evening.”

“What time can your airplane be at the place we discussed?”

“I’m told by the pilot ten a.m. tomorrow morning.”

“Then I need to pick you up at eight a.m. sharp. Where can we meet?”

Pablo gave him an Upper East Side address. “We will be standing just inside the door of the building promptly at eight. What will you be driving?”

“A black Mercedes E55 sedan,” Stone said.

“You sound very concerned,” Pablo said.

“I am, but I can’t tell you any more now. I’ll explain everything on the way to the place.”

“All right,” Pablo said. “Should I be armed?”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Stone said. They said goodbye and hung up.

Stone returned to the table, where Lance and Dino were ordering dinner. “Spinach salad, chopped; rib eye, medium rare,” Stone said to the waiter.

“Did you manage to make contact?”

“Yes,” Stone replied.

“Did you impress upon him the danger he’s in?”

“No,” Stone said, “it would have just made him nervous, and I don’t want him nervous.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Lance asked.

“Please, Lance,” Stone said, “don’t help any more.”

At a quarter to eight the following morning, Stone opened his garage door, walked out to the sidewalk and looked around. His street was uncharacteristically empty, and he was grateful for that. He backed out of the garage, closing the door with the remote, drove up to Park Avenue and took a right.

He turned left in the East Sixties and saw the awning with Pablo’s street address on it. He did not stop, but drove slowly around the block, checking both sides of the street for loitering men and his rearview mirror for a tail. Nothing.

He circled the block and pulled up in front of Pablo’s building, pressing the button that unlocked the doors. Pablo and his wife hurried from the building, each carrying only a small duffel, and jumped into the rear seat.

“Put your luggage on the front passenger seat,” Stone said, again watching both sides of the street, “and keep an eye out for trouble.”

He turned up Madison Avenue, then left on East Sixty-sixth. A moment later they were crossing Central Park. Stone took the opportunity to check his rearview mirror again, and he did not like what he saw. “Black Range Rover behind us,” he said. “Three men.”

“That’s my car,” Pablo said, “with my two security men and my butler, who will return to the city with the car when we are gone.”

Stone took a few deep breaths and tried to get his pulse to return to normal. “How are your men’s driving skills?” he asked.

“Excellent,” Pablo said, “particularly the one now driving.”

“Good. I don’t want to have to worry about them if we have to evade something.” Leaving the park, he turned right on Central Park West, then left on West Seventy-second Street. A few blocks later he turned north on the West Side Highway and increased his speed to seventy miles an hour.

Soon they were on the Henry Hudson Parkway, with its well-engineered curves and its beautiful stone bridges, constructed by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. He drove north for another three-quarters of an hour, then joined I-684, heading north. Traffic was light, and they were making good time. Stone chose this time to tell Pablo about the events of the day before.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Pablo said. “It was a very beautiful house. I feel I should pay for it.”

“Let Lance Cabot worry about that,” Stone said. “He has deep enough pockets, and it was his fault anyway. He knows that.”

“There’s something else I feel I should do,” Pablo said, “that I would like you to do for me.”