Distant Thunder

3

Stone slept longer than usual, and so did Holly. He got up and looked out a window: it was still raining, but not as much, and occasionally, a bit of blue sky could be seen. He switched on the TV, muted it to let Holly sleep, and looked at the weather radar. “Oh, good,” he said to himself.

Stone was at breakfast when Holly came down, dressed, but looking a bit bleary. “What’s happened?” she asked, sitting down. “Why is the rain gone?”

“Are you complaining?” Stone asked.

“No, just disoriented. I’ve grown accustomed to wind, rain, and thunder.”

“God changed his mind. Live with it.” He sipped his coffee. “We may be able to fly today.”

“Lance said I can’t go back to New York,” she said.

“Where does he want you to go?”

“He wants me to stay here, until he says I can return to Washington.”

“I guess I can stand one more day here,” Stone said, “but tomorrow we’re flying or you’re enjoying Maine on your own.”

“There’s a reason he doesn’t want me to return yet.”

“What reason?”

“He didn’t say. But Lance never gives suggestions without a reason. Has anybody checked on John Collins?”

“Still dead, and Seth has refreshed his ice packs.”

“Good.”

“Which part?”

“The ice packs.”

“You said Lance knows Collins?”

“He said he does, but he may not.”

“Either I’m confused, or Lance is.”

“What I heard on the phone yesterday was Lance being baffled. He told me he may know Collins, because he doesn’t want us to know he doesn’t know him.”

“Now I’m baffled,” Stone said.

“Lance cultivates an air of knowing everything.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Stone said.

“Sometimes, if he doesn’t, he pretends to. When we next hear from him he will have had time to find out what he doesn’t know. I sent him the photograph of the corpse. Maybe that will help him order his mind.”

They heard a distant ringing.

“That’s the phone in the little office.” Holly got up and trotted in that direction. She had been spending a couple hours a day tending to White House business and dealing with various issues.

“Hello?”

“It’s Lance.”

“Good morning.”

“Is it? Has the torrential rain gone away?”

“Sort of. Have you learned anything new about Mr. Collins?”

“I have. Mr. Collins doesn’t exist.”

“That’s fairly obvious. I mean, he hasn’t complained about the ice.”

“You misunderstand. There is no one by that name employed by the Agency in any capacity. I ran the photo you sent through our identity recognition software, which is the best in the world, and he apparently doesn’t exist anywhere.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

“Early on, when we were still getting the bugs out of the software, but not recently. There is no record, anywhere, of his fingerprints, either.”

“I didn’t send you his fingerprints.”

“The Maine State Police did.”

“Shall we return the corpse to them? It’s technically in their custody, anyway.”

“They’ll send a chopper down as soon as they can. In the meantime, keep him iced.”

“Don’t worry.”

“You can come back to Washington tomorrow. I’ll tell the Cabinet to expect you.”

“Fine.”

“You may be interested to know that Islesboro has had twenty-one inches of rain during the last two days. It’s a record.”

“I’ll alert the media, such as they are.”

“They already know. I read it in the Bangor newspaper.”

“You’re a subscriber?”

“We subscribe, in one way or another, to every news source in the world.”

“I had forgotten.”

“For shame.” Lance hung up, and Holly went back to the table and reported the news to Stone.

At midday, a police chopper set down at the airfield and an ambulance met them there, the ferry service having been restored. They came to Stone’s house, removed the corpse, then flew it away.

Seth, without being told, disinfected and pressure-washed the garage floor, then left the outside door open to hurry the drying. Mr. Collins was no longer a houseguest.