Lucid Intervals

34

Stone was at his desk the following morning when Joan buzzed him. “Mr. Jim Hackett on one,” she said.

Stone picked up the phone. “Good morning, Jim,” he said.

“A perfectly wonderful dinner last night, Stone, and with very fine company.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it, Jim. We were happy to have you.”

“Dame Felicity turned out to be much more… approachable than I had surmised from our first meeting.”

“A couple of glasses of Champagne will do that.”

“Well, thanks again. Now to business: you’re mine for the next two, two and a half weeks. I’ve cleared this with Bill Eggers, so clear your decks.”

“All right. What do I do?”

“Someone is sitting in your outer office at this moment who will explain everything. I probably won’t speak to you again until you’ve completed your assignment, so have a good time.”

“I’ll try,” Stone said, but Hackett had already hung up.

Joan buzzed. “A Ms. Ida Ann Dunn to see you, representing Mr. James Hackett.”

“Send her in,” Stone said.

A handsome woman of about fifty entered his office carrying a satchel and followed by Joan, who was carrying two other cases. “Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” she said, dropping her heavy satchel on his desk and opening it.

“Please call me Stone.”

“And you may call me Ida Ann,” she replied, hefting a large three-ring notebook from her satchel and dropping it with a thump before him. “Over the next five days or so, you will memorize this,” she said. The cover read Operators Manual, Cessna 510. “And this,” she said, placing a smaller book on top of it, the title of which was Garmin G-1000 Cockpit Reference Guide.

“After the five-day study period with me, you will meet Mr. Dan Phelan, who will instruct you in the actual flying of the Cessna 510. After thirty or forty hours in the airplane, you’ll take a check ride with an FAA examiner, who will issue you a type rating for the 510. Any questions? No, never mind. I’ll ask the questions; you start reading.”

Stone opened the operator’s manual. “Why am I doing this?” he asked.

“If you’ll forgive me, Mr. Barrington-Stone-that’s a rather stupid question. You are doing this because Mr. Hackett is paying you to do so.”

“Of course,” Stone replied. He picked up the phone and buzzed Joan.

“Yes?”

“Clear my schedule for the next two weeks,” he said. “Make that two and a half weeks.”

“That will be easy,” Joan replied. “The only thing we have scheduled for the next two and a half weeks is a visit from the Xerox man and, probably, several visits from Herbie Fisher.”

“You deal with the first fellow, then tell Mr. Fisher I’ll be unavailable. And hold all my calls, except those of Felicity Devonshire.”

“You betcha,” she replied and hung up.

Ida Ann Dunn now had a laptop projector set up on the conference table and a screen hung on a wall. “Come over here, please, Stone, and bring the operator’s manual with you.”

Stone took a seat at the conference table, and Ida Ann began. By the time Stone was allowed to have a sandwich at the conference table, she had covered structural systems, electrical systems and lighting with slides and animation, while he kept up the pace in the manual. She ate wordlessly, flipping through her notes.

After lunch, Ida Ann covered the master warning system, the fuel system, auxiliary power system and power plant. Promptly at five p.m., Ida Ann switched off the projector and handed Stone several sheets of paper.

“Quiz time,” she said. “As you will note, the examination is multiple choice. You have forty minutes.”

“May I be excused to go to the restroom?” Stone asked.

“Be quick about it,” she replied.

Stone was quick, and then he tackled the exam.

Ida Ann ran quickly through it. “You missed a question,” she said. “Let’s review the fuel system again.”

Twenty minutes later, satisfied that he understood his error, she dismissed him, said she would see him at nine the following morning, then was gone.

Stone stood up and stretched, rubbing his neck.

“And what was that all about?” Joan asked from the doorway.

“I’m being taught to fly a jet airplane,” he said.

“At the conference table?”

“First, ground school, then flying.”

“And Hackett is paying you to do this?”

“He is. Call Eggers’s office later this week and find out how much to bill him.”

“Will do. Oh, Felicity called and said she’d meet you at Elaine’s at eight-thirty.”

“Then I have time for a nap,” Stone said, heading upstairs, exhausted.

STONE ARRIVED AT Elaine’s to find Dino already there, as usual, and the two ordered drinks while they waited for Felicity.

“How was your day?” Dino asked amiably.

“You won’t believe it,” Stone replied. “I spent it in ground school, learning to fly a Cessna Mustang.”

“Isn’t that a jet?”

“It is.”

“But you don’t own a jet.”

“I do not.”

“Are you planning to buy one?”

“I have a new client, Jim Hackett, who says that if I come to work for him, I’ll be able to buy one next year.”

“You’re leaving Woodman and Weld?”

“No. Hackett is hiring me through the firm for special projects.”

“And the first special project is learning to fly a jet?”

“You guessed it.”

“And he’s paying you for this?”

“You guessed it again.”

“How long will it take?”

“Two, two and a half weeks.”

“You can learn to fly a jet that fast?”

“You forget, I already know how to fly; I’m just learning a new airplane.”

Felicity made her entrance forty minutes late. “Apologies,” she said. “Drink.”

Stone waved at a waiter and secured a Rob Roy.

“How was your day?” she asked.

Stone gave her a brief account of it.

“And it takes only two weeks to learn?”

“If I’m lucky.”

“I’m not flying with you,” she said. “Let me know when you have a hundred hours.”

“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.