“I’m sure you’re working on that.”
“We’ll get what we need when Tom Donnelly is mayor.” Donnelly was Dino’s old boss, who was running for office.
“Then you’ll have a free rein.”
“We’ll see. How’s your evening looking?”
“Mirabelle is taking me to some restaurant in the country.”
Dino looked at his watch. “Gotta run, there’s a car waiting for me.”
“What’s Viv doing with her time?”
“Sitting at Mike Freeman’s elbow at all the meetings, absorbing knowledge.” Dino grabbed his briefcase, gave a little wave, and departed.
Stone got up and dressed—he wasn’t sure what he was dressing for. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s Rick. The ambassador would like to meet you.”
“What on earth for?”
“I think she’s curious about you. She doesn’t really understand your relationship to the Agency.”
“Neither do I,” Stone said. “When?”
“How about right now? Your tank awaits.”
“I’ll go right down.” He hung up, got into his suit jacket, went downstairs, and got into the waiting van. Twenty minutes later he was being escorted into the ambassador’s office.
Her name was Linda Flournoy, he knew, and she was a billionaire’s widow who had given a lot of money to the Democratic Party. About all else he knew about her was that she was said to throw great dinners and was fluent in French. She was already on her feet when he walked in.
“Good morning,” she said, extending a hand. She was tall, elegantly dressed and coifed, and looked ten years younger than her fifty-five years.
Stone shook the hand. “Madame Ambassador, how do you do?”
“Call me Linda,” she said, waving him to a sofa and taking a seat at the other end.
“Linda, it is.” He sat. “And I’m Stone.”
“I’ve heard good words about you from the president and the first lady.”
“They have always been kind to me.”
“I witnessed the effects of what I heard was your influence at the convention,” she said. “To hear some tell it, you were instrumental in Kate’s getting the nomination.”
“Reports of my influence are exaggerated. I was happy to help where I could. I would very much like to see Kate win the presidency.”
“So would I,” she said. “I’m having a good time in Paris, and I wouldn’t mind being reappointed.”
“You’ve been here, what, a year?”
“Fourteen months. Not long enough. Tell me, Stone, why is everybody trying to kill you?”
“I hope not everybody, but I seem to have run afoul of a bunch of mad Russians.”
“So I hear. What do they have to gain by your death?”
“They want the Arrington hotels, but they won’t get them, no matter what they do to me. There’s an element of revenge involved, too.”
“Revenge for what?”