“Does Lance still believe you’re dead?”
“No, certainly not. We ran into each other in Paris last year, so that was that. Lance left the Company shortly after the Cairo debacle and went private.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he used the contacts he’d made in the Middle East while serving the Company to serve himself. He began trading in arms, drugs, Japanese automobiles, whatever he could get his hands on, buy or sell. He’s still dealing with the two operatives who nearly killed me.”
“I can see how your people might be unhappy with him.”
“Unhappy, yes, but officially, he can’t be touched.”
“Why not?”
“Because he can’t be proved to have committed a crime, or even to have sold me out. Contrary to popular belief, the Company no longer blithely assassinates people who have annoyed it. Never did, really.”
“But you still want to hurt him.”
“I want him out of circulation. He’s a danger to people he once served with, like me, and he’s not exactly working in his country’s best interests.”
“So you’re doing this privately, without Company cooperation?”
“Why do you think I hired you?”
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve thrown a monkey wrench into my investigation of Lance.”
“How so?”
“There were two retired cops working for me, remember? They were taking turns surveilling you and Lance. Now one’s in the hospital, and the other has quit. He’s the one who wants to meet up with you in a dark alley.”
“I’m really very sorry about the whole thing with the man being hurt,” Hedger said, sounding sincere. “In my business, you do not deal kindly with strangers who follow you and pick your pocket.”
Stone felt a pang of guilt. That was something he should have considered. “In any case, I don’t see how I can be helpful to you after all that’s happened. Lance knows who I am; we’ve socialized. I can hardly sneak up on him. And I’ve used my only police contact to hire these two men, one of whom is now badly hurt. I don’t feel I can go back to my contact and ask him for more help.”
Hedger looked thoughtful. “You say you and Lance have become friendly?”
“ ‘Friendly’ may be too strong a word. We know each other; I like his girl and her sister.”
“Oh, yes, Monica took you down to Lord Wight’s place, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew Wight’s daughter from New York?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Rather well.”
“So you have a plausible social history, as far as Cabot is concerned?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t continue to investigate him, but more from the inside.”
“For one thing, I mentioned your name to him yesterday.”
“What?”
“I asked him if he knew someone called Stanford Hedger; he said no, then walked away.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“I was still trying to figure out who you were, remember? If you had told me the truth—”
“Does he know why you asked about me?”
“No.”
“All right, here’s what you do: At the first opportunity, tell Lance everything that’s happened—about my hiring you, and all that, right up to this meeting. But you tell him you quit, that you were disgusted with my lying to you.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“It would disarm his suspicions. Don’t tell him that you know anything about Cairo or his having been in the agency; just tell him our conversation stopped at the point where you handed me back my money and quit.”
Stone thought about this. It was an intriguing situation, and he did not like Lance for doing the kind of business he was doing.
“You’d be doing a good turn for your country, if that means anything to you,” Hedger said, pushing the hook in a little deeper.
“I don’t know.”
“Give it another week,” Hedger said. He removed another, fatter envelope from his pocket and tossed it into Stone’s lap. “Live it up a bit; see more of London and Monica, Erica, and, above all, Lance. I just want to know what he’s up to, so I can stop him doing it.”
“Tell me the truth; do you intend to kill him?”
“Stone, if I’d intended that, he’d have been dead two years ago.”
“All right,” Stone said finally. “Another week, and that’s it.”
“It’s all I ask. How about a drink, now, and some dinner downstairs? Have you ever visited this club? Know anything about it?”