6 Stone Barrington Novels (186 page)

STONE SAT
in his study with Lance. They were on their second Knob Creek.

“Don't worry,” Lance said. “These fellows are very good; when they're through, not even luminol will pick up the bloodstains.”

“That's a great comfort,” Stone replied. He stared at Lance, who seemed perfectly calm, even a little bored. “I don't understand you,” he said. “Two of your men are dead, and you're just sitting there, calmly drinking bourbon.”

“What else is there for me to do?” Lance asked. “I've alerted my people to look for Billy Bob. I'm here now, only to see that the cleanup people do a good job, so you won't think I left a mess.”

“The two dead guys are a mess.”

“They've been cleaned up, too.”

“What about their families? Shouldn't you be contacting them?”

“They don't have families,” Lance said, “and they didn't seem to love anyone, except each other. It's one of the reasons I chose them, along with their special-operations backgrounds.”

“So, they were trained killers?”

“Indeed.”

“It seems that Billy Bob was even better trained.”

“I've been pondering that,” Lance said. He must have had a knife they didn't find when we picked him up. When they untied him to undress him, well . . .”

“So, where did Billy Bob get good enough to kill two of your former special ops guys with a knife?”

“He had the advantage of surprise.”

“There are only two ways somebody could do that—training or experience. Or both.”

“There's always luck,” Lance said.

“You don't believe that for a moment.”

“No, I don't. We're doing a records check on Harlan Wilson; if that's his name, and if he was ever in some special unit, we'll find out. We're also questioning the driver of the Hummer and going over the car for fingerprints. One way or another, we'll find out who he is and where he sprang from.”

“Let's get back to you,” Stone said.

“Me?”

“Who the fuck are you, and how did you get to be this cold and hard?”

Lance shrugged. “I am who you know me to be. As you said, training, experience. Both, actually. And commitment. You lack commitment, Stone.”

“Commitment to what?”

“To anything.”

“I'm committed to the law and to . . .” Stone stopped.

“Yes? Finish that statement, please.”

“No, you tell me what you're committed to.”

“I,” Lance said, “am committed to the preservation and success of my country and its way of life, and to the means my people have contrived to ensure that state of affairs.”

“Well, that's succinct. Do you have no doubts about the means?”

“Not so far,” Lance said. “Perhaps one day I'll run into a situation that might cause doubts. If so, I'll deal with them as best I can.”

“Where do you draw the line? Murder? Mass murder?”

“The people who oppose us have no line,” Lance said. “Otherwise, the World Trade Center would still be standing and three thousand dead people would still be alive. We cannot fight this enemy with reservations and qualms. If we do that, they will win.”

“And how long must we do that? A year? A century?”

“For as long as it takes; forever, if necessary. Until we kill them or until they crawl back into their holes and pull the dirt in after them.”

“There are hundreds of millions of potential recruits for them, standing in line, waiting their turn.”

“They'll tire of their sport, when they don't win. Anyway, perhaps our leaders and diplomats will eventually find a solution someday. Until then, there is only me—and people like me—to stand between them and my country, between them and you.”

“And what about Billy Bob? Is he worth the effort you're making, the price you've paid?”

“Billy Bob is one of an army of ants, and the only way to stop ants is to kill them all. He's a particularly harmful ant, since he's found a way to help that army use our own deadliest weapons against us. By the way, he took back the two grenades we found on him, so he has all thirty-six again. Do you want to see them used in Times Square on New Year's Eve? Isn't it worth whatever we have to do to Billy Bob to keep that from happening?”

”I wish I knew,” Stone said.

“And what are you willing to do to him, Stone, to keep him from killing you? That seems to be his most immediate plan.”

“Yes, he told me. I'm willing to kill him, if I have to, to keep him from killing me, but I'm not willing to torture him to death.”

“Would you be willing to torture him to death to keep him from causing the deaths of those thousands in Times Square?”

“I don't know. I envy you your certitude, Lance; it relieves you of conscience or ethics. You're like those religious fundamentalists who believe that they know all the answers.”

“Who knows?” Lance said. “Maybe they do.”

“People who believe they have all the answers are
always
wrong,” Stone said.

“I know my position may seem harsh, but I wouldn't trade places with someone who can't decide what his position is.”

A man Stone hadn't seen before came up the stairs from the basement, carrying a wooden box, half the size of a briefcase. “They're about done down there,” he said, “and they did a good job. You want to check?”

“Yes,” Lance said, standing up.

“And you asked me to bring this.” The man held out the box.

Lance took it and handed it to Stone. “This is for you.”

Stone opened the box and found a Keltec .380 pistol, a silencer, three loaded magazines, one in the gun and two in a pouch, and a small holster.

“This is my personal advice to you, Stone, off the record,” Lance said. “When you encounter Billy Bob again, shoot him twice in the head immediately. If you try to take him or reason with him or wound him, he'll kill you. My people don't want him dead, and that's supposed to be what I want, but I'm fond of you, in my way, and I wouldn't want to lose your life because you underestimated Billy Bob, as I have tonight.”

Lance went down the stairs, leaving Stone alone with his conscience.

STONE SLEPT,
or rather, didn't sleep, with a .45 under his pillow, cocked and locked. As his mind raced through the night, considering alternatives, he considered Arrington. He had been out with her in public twice, and had perhaps been photographed or videotaped in her company, and that troubled him. He waited until after 7
A
.
M
. to call her.

“Hello?” she said sleepily.

“Hi, it's Stone.”

“Good morning,” she said, her voice husky with sleep and, maybe, something else. “Did you conclude your business last night?”

“Not really,” he said. “May we have breakfast together in your suite?”

“All right.”

“Order me some bacon and eggs; I'll be there by the time room service delivers.”

She gave him the room number. “See you then.” She hung up.

Stone grabbed a shower and threw some things in a bag, then packed a Halliburton aluminum case with a couple of guns and ammunition. Then, with considerable reluctance, he went down to the garage. The place looked as it had before two men had been
murdered there, but cleaner and neater. He got the car started and backed into the street, checking all around him, fore and aft, for any strange vehicle.

He pulled away and turned up Third Avenue, watching to see if a car, any car at all, followed him. None did. He drove up to the Carlyle on the Upper East Side, parked his car in the hotel's garage and walked next door to the lobby, again watching his back.

Arrington answered the door in a beautiful nightgown with a matching pegnoir, her blond hair brushed back but with no makeup. “Good morning.”

“I'm sorry to get you up so early,” he said, “but it's important.”

The doorbell rang. Stone sent Arrington back to the suite's living room and looked through the peephole. A room-service waiter gazed blankly back at him. He let the man in and let him set up the rolling table; Arrington signed for their breakfast, and he left.

Arrington raised her orange-juice glass. “Remember the old Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times.' ”

“It's appropriate,” Stone said.

“What's going on?”

“I'm going to tell you this as concisely and as straight as I can,” Stone said. “None of what I have to say is hyperbole.”

“All right.”

“A week or so ago, Bill Eggers introduced me to a new client, who he said had asked for me. His name was Billy Bob Barnstormer.”

“And you believed that?”

“It doesn't matter. For reasons we needn't go into, Eggers talked me into putting him up at my house. He was there for several days, then he left, leaving a dead prostitute in my guest room.”

Arrington's eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing.

“He arranged things so that I would be considered a suspect in her murder, then he vanished. Then I was introduced to Barbara Stein, a
wealthy widow who had come to see Eggers, because she had seen a photograph of her husband, who was supposed to be out of the country, in
Avenue
magazine, with the mayor, and the same prostitute. It was Billy Bob, though she knew him as Whitney Stanford.”

“I know that name,” Arrington said. “Someone from Dallas recommended him to me as some sort of a financial whiz.”

“You didn't meet him, I hope.”

“No, but we talked on the phone. He was supposed to call me when I got to New York, but he hasn't.”

“Good. He bilked a number of people in Dallas out of millions, and Barbara, as well, though you must keep that to yourself—client confidentiality, and all that. Did I mention that Billy Bob also murdered an investment banker in New York a couple of weeks ago?”

“No, you didn't.”

“Well, he did. Now, about last night: As Dino mentioned, Lance is CIA.”

“I knew him when I was a freshman at Mount Holyoke, and he was a senior at Harvard. I lost track of him after that.”

“Some months ago, I signed on as a consultant to the Agency, and that is why Lance commandeered me. Last night.”

“Did he also put a bullet hole in your trousers?” she asked. “I thought that looked odd.”

“Yes, he did. When I declined to go with him, he became . . . persuasive.”

“Where did you go?”

“Turns out, Lance's people had caught Billy Bob, waiting outside my house, apparently for me. He was armed with a silenced pistol and two explosive devices. Lance took him into my garage to interrogate him, and for some reason, he thought Billy Bob might talk to me more easily, since we had somehow formed this relationship where he wanted to kill me.”

“That doesn't make any sense at all,” Arrington said.

“A lot of what the CIA does doesn't make any sense to me,” Stone replied. “I chatted with Billy Bob for two or three minutes, during which time he confirmed that he intended to kill me.”

“But why?”

“I honestly don't know. He says I inconvenienced him by getting his wife to throw him out, but it's got to be more that that, I just don't know what.”

“Well, you're safe from him, now that Lance has caught him.”

“I'm afraid not. Lance and I left him alone with two of Lance's men, large men, who were supposed to, well, soften him up for interrogation. During the short time we were gone, Billy Bob managed to free himself and kill both men with a knife he had, apparently, concealed on his person.”

“By kill, you mean, dead?”

“Very.”

“In your garage?”

“Yes.”

“With a knife?”

“Yes.”

“I can't imagine what your garage must have looked like.”

“Lance's people cleaned it very thoroughly, and did God knows what with the bodies.”

“So Billy Bob is on the loose again?”

“He is.”

“Which is very dangerous for you?”

“Well, yes.”

She looked at him narrowly. “Are you here to tell me that
I
am in some sort of danger?”

“You are, possibly, in some sort of danger.”

“And what do you recommend I do about that?”

“I have the house in Connecticut, and Billy Bob doesn't know about it. I think you should come up there with me, and . . .”

“When?”

“Right now, or as soon as we finish breakfast.”

“Has Billy Bob seen the two of us together?”

“Possibly, I don't know. He had cameras in my house, but they had been removed by the time you arrived. He might have seen us at the Four Seasons, or at Elaine's.”

“And if he did, he knows who I am?”

“Again, possibly. After all, he had your name, and you spoke to him on the phone.”

“Stone, you must remember that, when Vance was murdered, my photograph was in every newspaper in this country.”

“I do.”

“So, if he saw us together, he might very well know who I am?”

“Perhaps. In any case, if he had been planning to con you out of money, he would have researched you thoroughly.”

“And he would know that I have a child?”

“Yes.”

Arrington got up and started for the phone. “I'm going home to Virginia,” she said.

“I don't think you should go there, or to L.A., either.”

“My little boy is there.”

“Sit down and listen to me.”

She sat, the frightened-deer look in her eyes.

“I think you should come to Connecticut with me. My car is downstairs; you should pack and send your luggage down. Do you still have access to the Centurion Studios airplane?”

“Yes, whenever I want it.”

“I think you should ask them to send the airplane to Virginia and have Peter brought to Connecticut. There's an airport twenty-five minutes' drive from my house. It will take the GIV. We'll meet Peter and take him to my house. No one will know we're there, so Billy Bob can't find us.”

Arrington was quiet for a moment, but it was obvious that she was thinking fast. “What's the name of the airport?”

“Waterbury-Oxford. It has a five-thousand-foot runway and jet fuel.”

“All right,” she said. She got up and went to the phone again. She made two calls and returned. “We're in luck; the Centurion airplane is landing in Washington in an hour, after a flight from L.A. They'll refuel and go directly to Charlottesville, where Peter and his nanny will be waiting for them.”

Stone shoveled down the last of his eggs. “Then let's get moving.”