Stealth

63

Stone awoke the following day feeling much more himself, which condition, he felt, was mostly due to the ministrations of Rose and Felicity late in the previous evening.

A nurse came in with a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs, toast, and sage sausages, which he wolfed down. She came back for the tray.

“Looks like you’re getting the boot this morning,” she said. “One of the ladies brought you some clothes, and I’ve hung them in your closet. The doctor will be in shortly to approve your discharge, and someone from administration will have your release documents to sign, then you’re out of here.”

“I’ll miss you,” Stone said.

“I doubt that,” she said, “given the attentions you got from others overnight.”

“You’re a Peeping Tom,” he said.

“No, there just happens to be a camera over there,” she said, pointing to a high corner of the room. “Dame Felicity had someone in this morning to erase the tape.”

“Oh, I would have liked to see it,” Stone said sadly.

“Why? You weren’t doing anything but lying there.” She left the room.

There was a knock on the door, and a man carrying a clipboard entered and closed the door behind him. He was dressed in a necktie and shirtsleeves and wore a pocket protector that sported an array of writing instruments. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Assistant Administrator Willis. I have some forms for you to sign, so that we can discharge you.” He had an owlish look because of his heavy black spectacles, and he also sported a Vandyke — mustache and goatee — as if to make up for his receding hairline. “I hope you’re feeling up to it.”

“I’m feeling very well, thank you,” Stone said. “Where do I sign?”

Willis walked over and set his clipboard on Stone’s rolling hospital tray. “There are four,” he said, extracting a fat Mont Blanc fountain pen from his shirt pocket and handing it to Stone.

“This is the first actual fountain pen I’ve seen for years,” Stone said. “Very handsome.”

“I’m a bit old-fashioned,” Willis said. “I like the old ways.”

Stone unscrewed the cap and pushed it onto the other end of the pen. Then he thought of something Lance had said. They had found a fountain pen in Wilfred Thomas’s workshop, one that administered a poison, much like one the CIA has developed. It also occurred to him that there was something, he wasn’t sure what, familiar about Mr. Willis. “Oops!” he said, allowing the pen to slip from his fingers and bounce off his tray table to the floor. “I’m sorry, that was clumsy of me.”

“Not to worry,” Willis said, taking some tissues from Stone’s bedside and walking around to the other side of the bed to retrieve the pen.

Then Stone remembered something he had forgotten: he had seen Wilfred Thomas in the video that Lance’s people had made of the party at the Russian embassy, and without the glasses and the Vandyke, Willis could be Thomas. It was the hairline that pegged it for him. Stone slipped out of bed and stood facing the man. “Your mustache is slipping,” he lied.

The man reflexively raised a hand to stick it back on.

“Only joking, Mr. Thomas,” Stone said, looking about him for a weapon. “By the way, my compliments on the handsome bindings on The Short OED.” The only weapons Stone could use were the rolling tray table and a visitor’s chair, and he wasn’t sure he could lift the table, since one arm was out of action. “I’m glad your bomb-making talent doesn’t match your binding skills.”

Thomas picked up the pen, holding it between two fingers with tissues.

Was he going to shoot poison at him? Bullets? Would it explode? Stone looked for the button to call the nurse, but it was on Thomas’s side of the bed.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Thomas said, seemingly uncertain of his next move.

Stone got hold of his visitor’s chair at the end of the bed and was pleased that it weighed much less than the table. He placed it on the bed, between him and Thomas, and held it, lion-tamer style. “I think your best bet is to make a run for it,” Stone said, hoping the man would take his advice.

Instead, Thomas got a grip on the end of the pen and held it before him, as if it were a knife.

There was a knock on the door. “Come in!” Stone yelled.

The door opened, and Felicity stood there, wearing a business suit with her handbag over her left arm.

“How good to see you, Felicity,” Stone said. “May I introduce you to the Earl of Chelsea, aka Wilfred Thomas? I believe you are armed. Would you shoot him, please?”

Felicity began digging into her handbag, and Stone picked up the chair and threw it at Thomas’s head, which connected, knocking him to the floor, sending his glasses flying, and putting his mustache genuinely askew.

“What’s taking you so long?” Stone asked Felicity. “The man has a poisoned pen!”

Felicity finally came up with a small, semiautomatic pistol and pointed it at Thomas. “Kindly stay where you are and do not move, Mr. Thomas,” she said. “And let go of the pen, or I’ll kill you where you stand. Or sit, as it were.”

Thomas looked carefully at her, then tossed the pen on the floor between them. It rolled a couple of times, leaving behind a thin trail of clear liquid.

Felicity reached into her bag again with the other hand and did something, Stone couldn’t see what. There were running footsteps from the hallway, and she stepped aside to let two large young men into the room. “Mind the pen,” she said, “it’s dangerous. But please take charge of the gentleman on the floor. Handcuff him and search him for other weapons, including pens.”

The two young men went to work and got Thomas out of the room, denuded of pens.

Felicity walked over to the Mont Blanc pen on the floor and looked down at it. “My word,” she said.

Stone and Lance sat in the Rose & Crown, near the gates of Windward Hall, consuming a lunch of sausages and Cornish pasties.

Lance washed down his food with a draught from his pint of Guinness. “Well, Stone,” he said, “I’m sorry you have had to go through two attempts on your life — no, three, isn’t it?”

“I’ve lost count,” Stone replied, sipping his pint of bitter.

“How are your wounds?” Lance asked.

“I can’t see my back, but it hurts. My arm, too. But Rose has found me a physiotherapist, who is moving into the house this afternoon, so I won’t have to go to the hospital for rehab.”

“Excellent,” Lance said. “By the way, this episode has had the salutary effect of silencing comment at the Agency on your appointment.”

“I’m not surprised there was comment,” Stone said. “Frankly, I thought it might blow up in your face.”

“Stone,” Lance replied reprovingly, “I’m too careful for that to happen.”

“I suppose you are.”

“Oh, I almost forgot.” He reached down, took a gift-wrapped package from a shopping bag and set it on the table. “This is for you, by way of my thanks.”

Stone regarded the package with suspicion. “Will this blow up in my face?”

“Not this time,” Lance said. “The earl is safely housed in one of MI-5’s secret places, where he is being interrogated. His diplomatic passport seems to have been misplaced.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Stone pulled the bow on the ribbon and tore open the package, revealing volumes one and two of The Short Oxford English Dictionary, beautifully bound by Wilfred Thomas. “I trust the bombs have been removed?”

“They have, but the spaces where they once lived remain. Who knows, you might one day wish to hide something in plain sight.”

“All the time,” Stone said.