The Short Forever(46)

“I can’t tell you everything just yet,” Lance said.

“Let me know when you can, and then we can talk about it,” Stone replied. “Whatever you tell me will be bound by attorney-client privilege as long as it’s legal, and if we should agree to disagree, you’d have nothing to fear from my talking about your deal.”

Lance stared at him for a moment. “You’re not a very trusting person,” he said.

“Let’s see,” Stone said. “What I know about you so far is that you’re ex-CIA and that you’re involved in, shall we say, unconventional business dealings. And you have a serious enemy who is still inside the Company and who wishes to see you in jail or, perhaps, worse. Does that about sum it up so far?”

“You’re taking Stan far too seriously,” Lance said.

“I’m not sure you’re taking him seriously enough,” Stone said.

“I assure you, I’m giving him the attention he deserves.”

Stone shook his head. “I’m not willing to talk about this, until you’re ready to talk to me a lot more.”

Lance considered this. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be back to you as soon as I can.” He got up and left the room.

Stone wondered if he wasn’t getting near the time when he should be calling Detective Inspector Throckmorton. Not just yet, he decided finally.





Chapter 28



STONE ARRIVED BACK AT THE CONNAUGHT and checked his mail and messages, among which was one from Doug Hayward to come back for a fitting. Quick, he thought.

He changed clothes, then left the Connaught and walked up Mount Street toward Hayward’s shop. In the middle of the block he stood, waiting for traffic to subside enough for him to cross, but before he could move, a large black car pulled up in front of him and stopped. He could not see through the darkened windows, and as he tried, a rear door opened and a large man reached out, took him by the lapels, and jerked him forward into the commodious rear compartment of the car. Before he could say anything, he was on the floor, with large feet holding him down, one on the nape of his neck.

“What is this about?” Stone managed to croak, even though his neck was held at an odd angle.

“Shut up,” a man’s deep voice said.

Stone shut up.

The car drove for, maybe, twenty minutes. Stone tried to keep track of the time and the turns, but he couldn’t see his watch, and, not knowing the street plan well enough, he couldn’t figure out where they were going. They seemed to drive around three or four traffic circles, and shortly after the last one, they made a right turn and stopped. The two men in the rear seat hustled Stone through an open door in a narrow back street and into a darkened hallway. They marched Stone along, making a couple of turns, then he was propelled forward into a small room, bouncing off the rear wall, and the door was slammed behind him.

“You have one minute to strip off all your clothes, or we’ll do it for you,” the deep voice said.

Stone thought about this for half a minute, then he got out of his clothes and laid them neatly on a bench along one wall. His eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and he could see that he was in a windowless room with a steel door. There was a bucket in a corner and the bench, no other furniture. A moment later, a small door in the larger one opened, then closed, then the two men came into the cell, took away his clothes, and slammed the door behind them.

Stone thought about it. These people did not seem like the police. Surely the London police had procedures about arrest and detention, just as the New York department did, and what he was experiencing did not seem to conform to any set of procedures in any civilized country. This was more like something out of a World War II film about the Gestapo, or a spy novel.

Perhaps three minutes passed, then the cell door opened again, and someone threw his clothes at him.

“Get dressed,” the deep voice said. “You have one minute.”

Stone was tying his necktie when the door opened again and he was half escorted, half dragged down another series of hallways, then pushed into a brightly lit room, the door slamming behind him.

Blinking rapidly, he discovered that all the room was not brightly lit, just the part containing a wooden stool. The other side of the room, some twelve or fifteen feet away, contained a table behind which sat three men. They were in deep shadows and he could see only their forms, not their faces. It seemed to be arranged as some sort of Stalinist tribunal.

“Sit down, please, Mr. Barrington,” a smooth male voice said.

Stone went and sat down on the stool. There was something odd about the man’s voice, but he couldn’t figure it out.