Below the Belt Page 4
“Do they know where you live?”
“I’m not sure. The phone isn’t listed in my name here yet, and we didn’t notice the two Toyotas until we were downtown, so I don’t think they followed us from the house. Certainly, they didn’t follow us back, since our driver had lost them, and we returned home in my new car.”
“How long do you intend to remain there?”
“We’ve no definite plans.”
“If you receive any further unwanted attention, I think you should relocate.”
“Relocate where?”
“Anywhere but there.”
“Is there a number where I can reach you?”
“No, I’m on someone else’s cell phone. If you want to get in touch, call the White House switchboard and leave a message, and I’ll call your cell number on a secure line.”
“All right.”
“Are you armed?”
“There’s always something in my bag, since I don’t have to bother with airport searches.”
“Perhaps you should keep it within reach.”
“Do you think someone might get rough for the item?”
“I’ve no idea, since I don’t know who’s interested. I’m just erring on the cautious side. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you on my account. Neither would the lady of the house.”
“I’m grateful for your concern, but remember, I have an ace bodyguard here.”
Will laughed. “That’s right, you do, don’t you? Give her my love and tell her to enjoy her extra week off.”
“I’ll make a point of it.”
Will hung up.
“What’s going on?” Holly asked.
“Someone got to Joe for a few minutes’ conversation, and Joe apparently thought the man was me.”
“And you think that’s why we were followed today?”
“Will seems to think so, but he has no idea who they might be.”
She kissed him. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
8
THEY GRILLED SOME STEAKS for dinner and found a good cabernet in the wine closet. “Gala did a great job of stocking up for us,” Stone said, “but we’re going to have to eventually do some grocery shopping.”
“I won’t mind that,” Holly said. “It’s one of those things I never have time to do in Washington. I usually eat in the White House Mess.”
“So, you’re going to cook?”
“I love cooking, and I never get the chance.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place.”
Holly did the dishes while Stone walked around the house making sure all the doors were locked and that the front gate was closed. “There are a hell of a lot of doors in this house,” he said when he returned. “I think I’m going to get Mike Freeman’s people from Strategic Services to survey the security system and maybe put in some cameras. I’ll call him in the morning.”
They turned out all the many lights, then repaired to the master suite, where a large TV rose from the floor when the remote control was used. They got into bed and found a movie, but it didn’t last long. Soon they were making love, and when they were exhausted they turned off the TV and fell asleep.
In the wee hours, Stone came half awake. There was a distant rumble coming from somewhere and there was a light on outside that filtered into the bedroom. He got out of bed, found his slippers with his toes, and went to the door that opened onto the master suite portal. He unlocked it and went outside. The hot tub, set into the ground a few feet away, was on, and so were its underwater lights. He found a switch on the instrument panel and turned it off, then pulled the cover over it. He went back to the door and found that it had locked behind him.
“Well, shit!” he muttered to himself. He knocked on the door to summon Holly, but got no response. He found a stone and rapped hard on the glass with that. Finally, a sleepy Holly got the door open.
“What happened?”
“The hot tub came on—it must be on a timer. I went out to turn it off, and the door locked behind me.”
“What time is it?”
“Around two o’clock, I think.” He secured the door again.
“Who would set a hot tub to come on in the middle of the night?”
“Good question. I’ll look into it tomorrow.”
They got back to sleep, until they were wakened by bright sunlight streaming into the room. Stone got up and closed the blinds, but they were both awake now.
“It’s six o’clock,” Holly said. “That makes it eight o’clock where my stomach lives. I’ll make breakfast.”
She was back in half an hour with breakfast and a New York Times.”
“Where’d you get that?” Stone asked.
“It was on the kitchen doorstep. Apparently, you’re a subscriber.”
Stone turned on his recording of Morning Joe. Then, at seven o’clock—nine in New York—he called Mike Freeman.
“Where are you?” Mike asked.
“In Santa Fe, where I’ve just bought a house, and I need the security system checked out and, if necessary, beefed up.”
“Hang on.” He came back after a minute or so. “What’s your address?”
Stone gave it to him.
“I’ve got a team in Albuquerque. They’ll be there before noon, your time.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing them.”
“What created the urge for more security?”
“Paranoia. See you, Mike.” Stone hung up. “There’ll be people here later this morning.”
Then a strange woman’s voice called out, “Hello?”
“Who is it?” Stone shouted.
“It’s Maria.” Maria was Gala’s housekeeper.
“Come in, Maria.”
A middle-aged woman wearing an apron came into the bedroom.
“I’m very glad to see you,” Stone said.
“Miss Wilde said you might need me.”
“I certainly do. You go right ahead and do whatever you think needs doing.”
“Yes, Mr. Barrington.”
“Oh, and this is Ms. Barker.”
Holly gave her a wave.
“You already ate breakfast?”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Holly said.
“Tomorrow I’ll have your breakfast ready. Seven o’clock?”
“That’s fine,” Stone said, and she went on her way.
“I wonder what other services we have here,” Stone said.
A little after eleven a large green van pulled into Stone’s drive and two men knocked on the door.
Stone opened it. “Strategic Services?”
“Mr. Barrington?”
“Come right in.”
“Mr. Freeman said you need a survey.”
“There it is,” Stone said, waving an arm. “Check it out.”
An hour later, the men came into the study, where Stone was working on the Times crossword. “What did you find?”
“You’ve got a pretty good system here,” the man said. “I can recommend some additions, though.”
“Shoot.”
“I think you need some cameras around the place, about a dozen.”
“Good idea. Go ahead.”
“Also, your door locks are already wired, but I can put an app on your iPhone that will let you lock them all at once.”
“Another good idea. Can you do the same with the lights?”
“May I see your iPhone?”
Stone handed it to him. He switched it on and began tapping things into it. “You’ve got a Lutron system installed here. I can download the app, and you can turn all the lights on and off at once. You also have a built-in Sonos sound system. I can set that up for you, too. Give me a password.”
Stone gave it to him and went back to his crossword.
Late that afternoon the men found him again. He showed Stone two apps on his iPhone. “One is for the Sonos system and the other for the outside cameras.” He sat down and gave Stone a tutorial on both systems. Holly came into the room in time to hear it all.
“You also have an intercom to the gate and to the front door, and a camera at both.” He showed them how to answer both and how to operate the gate from the phone. He held up a plastic bag of keys. “I’ve rekeyed all your locks and made you some spares, too.”
“Wonderful, we had only one key.”
“Then throw that one away. There, I think you’re all fixed,” he said. “Anything else I can do?”
“Not a thing,” Stone said.
“Oh, I put an alarm on your safe. If anybody messes with it, it will tell you on your phone. And all this stuff will work anywhere in the world where there’s Internet access.”
Stone thanked him, gave him money for drinks, and the men left.
“You feel safe and secure now?” Holly asked.
“What with all this gear and you here to protect me, I feel just fine,” he said. “Here’s a key to everything for you.”
Holly pocketed the key. “Dinner in an hour.” She kissed him and went back to the kitchen.
Stone got out his iPhone, turned on the sound system, found some jazz, and went back to his crossword.
9
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, when they were sound asleep, Stone was wakened by a noise. He couldn’t figure out what he’d heard, then it came again: a chime. Then he noticed that his iPhone was lit up and the word “Safe” was flashing on the screen.
Stone picked up the phone, went to the Lutron app, and hit the switch for “all on.” Lights in every room came on. He opened his bedside drawer and took out his little custom .45, racked the slide, put the safety on, and got out of bed.
He found his slippers and padded out of the bedroom into the bigger rooms and down the hall where the safe was in a closet. One of the double doors was open. He looked inside and found the safe intact, then he began a search of the house, ending up back at the safe closet. He used his code to open the safe and found the strong case where he’d left it, undisturbed. He closed the safe and then, as he was closing the closet doors, he felt a cool breeze on his cheek.
He followed it back to its source: a circle had been cut out of a windowpane, and that window was now unlocked. He looked through the hole and saw the circle of glass lying on the ground near the bottom of the window. Then he checked the alarm system on his iPhone and found he had forgotten to turn it on.
He went back to the bedroom and found Holly sitting up in bed, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You distracted me last night and I forgot to set the alarm system. Somebody got in and had a go at the safe, but he didn’t get anywhere because the safe alarm went off and I went to check on it. I found a windowpane cut out and the window unlocked. I’ll replace the pane in the morning.”
“And you’re blaming me for this?”
“Certainly—you distracted me.” He got into bed. “Would you like to distract me again?”
“Is the alarm system set now?”
“It is.”
“So we can expect not to be interrupted?”
“We can.”
She shucked off her nightgown. “Then what are you waiting for?”
Stone did not wait.
—
SOMETIME AFTER DAWN the doorbell rang, and Stone picked up the phone to answer it. Who the hell would be calling at six AM? “Hello, who’s there?”
“It’s Maria,” she said. “My key doesn’t work.”
Stone got up, let her in, and gave her a new key. “I’m sorry about that, Maria, all the locks were rekeyed yesterday.” He gave her the new alarm code. “Now you’re all set.” He went back to bed, then, at the stroke of seven, Maria came in with breakfast and left them to it.
They were on coffee when Holly said, “What do you think is in the strong case?”
“I don’t know,” Stone said. “It all has something to do with Ed Rawls. Remember him?”
“How could I forget? We saw him at Dark Harbor a while back. I got kidnapped that summer, remember?”
“That’s right, I’d forgotten you were there.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I mean, I’d forgotten you met Rawls.”
“Him and his bunch of Old Farts, as I recall they named themselves. All old Agency hands, retired. What would Rawls have to do with the strong case?”
“Will thinks it’s some sort of dirt that might hurt Kate’s run for reelection, and it may have come from Rawls.”
“How could a disgraced CIA officer have something on Kate?”
“I don’t think he has anything against Kate; he was her mentor when she was at the Agency.”
“And she got him sent to prison. That could have annoyed him and made him less protective of her.”
“If he’d wanted to hurt her he could have done it when she ran the first time.”
“Well, there is that.”
“Also, Will pardoned him.”
“I’d heard that, but I didn’t believe it. Why would Will do that?”
“Ed was very helpful to Will when he ran the first time. He kept coming up with stories of planned attacks on his campaign, and Will was able to head off some of them.”
“Wasn’t Rawls in a federal prison at the time?”
“He was, which made his help very surprising. Ed seemed to know everybody of any importance—politicians, journalists, et cetera.”
“Other Agency officers, too,” Holly offered.
“Were there people at the Agency who would hold grudges against Kate?”
“She was a very popular director, when she got the job, but then there were the people who wanted the job and didn’t get it. They and the people they might have promoted didn’t like her much.”
“Who would have been the most important one on that list?”
“Hugh English. He was director of operations, ran the clandestine side. Everybody expected him to get the job.”
“But he reckoned without Will Lee.”
“Right, he wouldn’t have expected Will to appoint his wife. I mean, he needed the acquiescence of Congress to get that done.”
“Must have been a real shock to her competitors.”
“You bet your sweet ass. I expect they voted Republican that year, to a man.”
“Where is this Hugh English now? Do you know?”
“He’s teaching at a small liberal arts college somewhere in New England—Connecticut, maybe.”
“Would he be in touch with people in his old circle at the Agency?”
“Of course. The Agency is a very select club, and when you leave it you find yourself among people who don’t know as much as you do. The people who know are your old colleagues, and they tend to stick together. Look at Ed and his Old Farts.”
“Would English and his old crowd tend to cluster, like Ed and his bunch?”
“They tend to find each other jobs—teaching at colleges or corporate consulting—often with defense contractors.”
“Is that considered ethical?”
“Sure, as long as they aren’t using their knowledge of the Agency’s workings to make money.”
“Then what do they do for defense contractors?”
“They use their knowledge of the Agency’s workings to make money.”
“Oh, well, I guess that’s all right then.”
“There’s a fine line between giving advice based on what you know about the Agency and giving away operational secrets.”
Stone picked up his iPhone and looked up a number and dialed it.
“Who are you calling?”
“Ed Rawls.”
10
/> STONE PUT THE PHONE ON speaker so Holly could hear the conversation. The phone rang once, then went straight to voice mail.
“You have reached the person you were calling,” Ed Rawls’s gruff voice said. “At the tone, don’t bother leaving a message because he’s not going to call you back.” The beep came. “Ed, it’s Stone Barrington. Break your rule and call me.” He left his cell number and hung up.
“Sounds like Ed’s gotten a little antisocial,” Holly said.
“I wonder why? I always thought of him as being on the gregarious side.”
Stone looked up another number.
“Who are you calling now?”
“Jimmy Hotchkiss, who runs the Dark Harbor Store. Jimmy knows everything about everybody on the island.”
Stone pressed the speaker button again. This time the phone was answered on the first ring.
“Dark Harbor Store, this is Jimmy.”
“Hey, Jimmy, it’s Stone Barrington. How you doing?”
“Well, we had quite a winter—ninety inches of snow on the island, first one of those in a long time. How ’bout you, Stone?”
“I can’t complain,” Stone replied. “Well, I guess I could complain, but it wouldn’t do any good.”
“I know the feeling. What can I do you for?”
“Jimmy, I just tried to call Ed Rawls, and his voice mail message was not what you would call responsive.”
Jimmy laughed. “It pretty much tells everybody to go to hell, doesn’t it?”
“Pretty much. What’s up with Ed?”
“Well, these days, he greets callers with a shotgun in his hand, that’s what.”
“How come?”
“Nobody knows for sure. He used to do his grocery shopping here. Now he calls in his order and we leave that and his newspapers in a plywood box he’s built at his gate. The kid who delivers it has never seen him.”
“Is he ill?”
“He hasn’t had the doctor in, far as we know.”
“Have you talked with anyone who’s actually had a conversation with him?”
“Nope. I don’t think anybody has. When you coming back to the island, Stone?”