Criminal Mischief

37

They dined on a thick slab of country pâté, then thinly sliced veal, then blueberry pie for dessert. They moved to the sofa for cognac.

“That was delicious,” Brio said.

“You look delicious,” Stone replied, kissing her behind the ear. “Shall we find out?”

“I don’t suppose I can persuade you to wait a little longer,” she said.

“That’s very perceptive of you.”

“Here, on the sofa, or shall we make a move?”

“Let’s make a move,” Stone replied, and they did.

She disappeared into the guest dressing room while Stone simply stripped off and got into bed. When she came out, she was wearing the guest terry-cloth robe.

“May we have the lights off?” she asked.

“If you prefer. I was looking forward to looking at you.”

She flicked off the bedside lamp, shucked off the robe, and got into bed with him.

“I’m sure this is improper,” she said.

“I hope so. It’s more fun that way.”

Then she seemed, finally, to make a decision and turned into his arms. Things moved more quickly after that, and they were soon enjoined, with her on top.

“You enjoy being on top, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Not just in bed, in general.”

“This seems to be working rather well,” she breathed. “Would you prefer something else?”

He rolled them over, emerging on top. “I’d prefer this, for the moment. Then we can explore, if you like.” As he began there was a terrible buzzing noise. “What is that?” he asked.

“It’s my cell phone, and that particular noise means it can’t go unanswered under any circumstances.”

He rolled off her. She ran for her bag and picked up the phone. “Special Agent Ness,” she said, then stepped into the dressing room and closed the door behind her. By the time she returned, Stone had cooled down markedly.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

“Was it really that important?”

“That was a Zanian alert,” she said. “His airplane just took off from Santa Maria, in the Azores.”

“Refueling stop,” Stone said. “Do they know his destination?”

“No, not yet.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

“How could you possibly do that?”

“By telling you, possibly, his destination.”

“All right, what’s your best guess?”

“The Sultanate of Saud,” Stone said. “And it’s not a guess. It’s an informed judgment.”

“Why not Saudi Arabia? We’ve no extradition treaty with them.”

“Zanian unwisely took a large investment from an important prince and failed to return it when he fled.”

“How could you know that?”

“That’s not important, but my source says it’s true, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Then your source must be in the Saudi government.”

“It is not.”

“Then it must be in the highest echelon of American intelligence.”

Stone opened the bedside drawer, fished out a card, and handed to her.

She looked at it. “Associate director and adviser to the director? Don’t be ridiculous! Do they print those down at your cigar stand?”

“I don’t indulge in cigars, and the card is genuine, as is the information upon it.”

“Good God! You’ve been spying for the Agency all this time?”

“I’m not a spy, and you had only to ask, if you wanted to know what my connections were.”

“Well, I had heard that you are a close, personal friend of the president,” she said, “whatever that means.”

“It means that we are close, personal friends,” Stone said. “It would be a mistake to read anything else into it.”

“Good God!”

“I think you would be less anxious if you could simply believe that anything I tell you is true, instead of a lie.”

“Can you prove your connection to the president?”

“Yes, but I decline to do so. You are a high official of our nation’s most important investigative agency, and that you didn’t know these things means that you are either negligent or uninterested or both. Surely you have read my file.”

“What makes you think you’re important enough to even have a file with us?”

“You’ll know that after you’ve read my file.”

“Excuse me,” she said. She got up, left the room, and soon, Stone could hear the clicks of a laptop keyboard. After a few minutes of this, he drifted off to sleep.

He woke after sunup and realized that he was alone in bed. He got up and went to the guest bedroom next door and found the bed made and her luggage gone. The bell sounded that meant breakfast was on the way up in the dumbwaiter. He went back to his suite, took the tray and set it on the bed, then adjusted the bed’s angle, got into it and began to eat.