Dirty Work

40

Stone walked back to his house, deep in thought. He did not trust Sir Edward Fieldstone’s intentions, and the man’s word was not enough. He had visions of some sniper drawing a bead on Marie-Thérèse’s head as she and Sir Edward negotiated in some public place. He got out his cell phone and dialed the number.

She answered immediately. “Yes?”

“It’s Stone Barrington.”

“Be brief. I don’t want to be scanned.”

“I need to meet with you again. I have news.”

A brief silence. “Go to Rockefeller Center again, at six o’clock this evening. I’ll be in touch.” She hung up without waiting for a reply.

Stone pressed the redial button.

“Yes?”

“Be very careful. Do you understand? I don’t know if I’m being followed.”

“I’m always very careful.” She cut the connection.

Stone was at the skating rink on time. Ten minutes passed before his cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Were you followed?”

“Not by anyone I could spot.”

“Are you any good at spotting a tail?”

“Fairly good.”

“Walk to Central Park. Go up Fifth Avenue, against the traffic. Cross the street at least three times, checking for a multiple tail. There’ll be at least four of them. Once in the park, sit on a bench outside the Children’s Zoo.” She hung up.

Stone walked briskly up Fifth Avenue, stopping now and then to check the reflection in a shop window. He crossed the street four times, looking for a repetition in the faces around him, but he saw none. He strolled slowly through the park to the Children’s Zoo and sat down on a bench. His cell phone rang immediately. “Yes?”

“Walk to the Wollman skating rink.” She hung up.

Stone walked to the rink, stopping frequently to look at the zoo’s animals and checking for a tail. He still saw no one. At the rink, his cell phone rang again. “Yes?”

“Go to the carousel, buy a ticket. Don’t ride a horse, you’ll look ridiculous. Sit on a bench.” She hung up.

Stone did as he was told, mixing among the children and their nannies. The carousel had made three revolutions before she sat down beside him. Her hair was long and dark, and she wore a tweed suit and bright red lipstick.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Good evening. I assume I wasn’t followed.”

“Only by me. There was no one else on you. Why did you call?” Her accent was American now.

“Do you know who Sir Edward Fieldstone is?”

“Architect? Of course.”

“I had lunch with him today, at his request.”

She looked surprised. “And how did this come about?”

“A friend of mine works for him. I told her I had spoken to you.”

“I suppose that is not a breach of client confidentiality.”

“He wants to meet with you.”

She laughed. “I’ll bet he does.”

“I think you should consider this carefully. He says he’s willing to meet you, alone, in a place of your choosing, as long as it’s a public place. I expect you’re thinking there’ll be a sniper on a rooftop.”

“You’re psychic, Stone. What does he want?”

“He wants a truce.”

She blinked a few times. “He actually said that?”

“To the extent that you can get an upper-class Englishman to say anything explicit, yes.”

“On what terms?”

“You stop killing his people, his people stop trying to kill you. He’ll remove all traces of you from British and European intelligence computers, keeping only backup files, in case you renege.”

“What if he reneges?”

“I asked him that, but I didn’t get a straight answer. Presumably, you could go back to killing his people.”

“I don’t get it. Why would he stop trying to kill me?”

“So far, you’ve killed, what, half a dozen of his people? And he hasn’t even killed you once. He’s losing, and he knows it.”

“It’s unlike him to relent,” she said. “In Northern Ireland he had a reputation of never giving up until he got his man. Or woman.”

“Maybe he’s getting old. He’s got to be in his mid-sixties. Maybe his fires are cooling.”

“Maybe. I doubt it.”

“Marie-Thérèse, how long do you think you can continue like this before you end up in somebody’s gunsights?”

“As long as I want to.”

“Don’t you ever get a hankering for a more normal life?”

“What, husband? Children?”

“Whatever you want—being able to live your life without changing your identity every other day; being safe, with no one hunting you.”

“Sometimes I think about that, but you don’t understand what I’d be up against if I stopped this. There are other people who would not be pleased if I gave up my work.”

“I can understand that, but they don’t have the sort of facilities at their disposal that the intelligence services have. Granted, they may have large networks of people, but they don’t have computers that scan your face every time you cross a border. You could disappear, find a haven where you could live a more normal life—whatever you’d like that to be.”

She sighed. “You make it sound very attractive.”

“Look, the people you’ve been working with are going to lose, eventually. They’re being hunted, too, and that’s not going to stop. They’re going up against a group of big nations that have virtually unlimited resources, and they’re going to be ground down. Even the countries that have been sheltering them are going to start pulling away, because the cost to them is going to be too great. Eventually, they’re going to see that it’s easier to do business with the Western powers than trying to destroy them. This is inevitable. When that happens, where do you want to be?”

“You have a point, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow. And in the meantime, I’m quite enjoying myself.”

“I don’t believe that. I think you’re getting tired, and if you’re tired, you’re going to start making mistakes. And you can’t afford to make mistakes.”

“I may meet with Sir Edward, under the right circumstances, and you’re authorized to negotiate those for me. Tell him that if we do meet, it would be a very great mistake to make any move on me.”

“I’ll relay that.”

“Call me when you have something like an agreement, in writing.”

“Agreements like this don’t get put into writing.”

She sighed. “All right, do the best you can, but I want an immediate truce while we’re negotiating.”

“I’ll tell him that.”

She stood up, holding on to a bar to keep her balance. “You free for dinner this evening?” she asked.

“Not this evening or any evening,” Stone replied. “It’s dangerous to be around you.”

“Well, if we can make it less dangerous with this deal, maybe later.”

“Maybe later,” Stone said. But he didn’t mean it.