“Thank you.” She punched off. She walked over to Madison Avenue and window-shopped for half an hour, then walked back to her chosen spot. She stood in the little recess, leaning against the building, and looked downtown, from whence her quarry would be coming. Ten minutes passed before she saw him, a block away. She did not see the motorcycle.

“Right on time,” she said aloud to herself. “Let’s hope my transportation arrives as promptly.” She watched the man approach, now half a block away, waiting to cross the street. As he stepped off the curb, she saw the motorcycle. She knelt beside her handbag and checked the weapon, then she stood up and slung the bag over her shoulder and put her hand inside. She turned to look uptown, then down again. He was walking quickly, and the nearest pedestrian was half a block from him. The motorcycle stopped at the corner, idling.

She pressed her back against the downtown side of the recess, so that he couldn’t see her. Then he appeared. She stepped out of the alcove with a last look around, took the weapon from the bag, and fired once at the back of his head from a distance of six feet. He fell like a butchered animal. She stepped closer and fired two more rounds into his head, then returned the pistol to her bag.

The motorcycle came to a stop a few feet away. She hopped onto the pillion seat, sidesaddle. “Drive to Seventy-second Street and turn left,” she said.

The driver followed instructions.

“Now, straight ahead, and into the park.”

He drove into the park.

“Stop here,” she said, “and thank you.”

He stopped, she hopped off, and he drove away without a word. From his size, and in spite of the helmet, she thought he was Ali, the man who had given her the pistol.

She strolled south in Central Park, found a bench, and waited, her hand in her bag, on the pistol, to see if anyone pursued her. No one did.

28

Stone left the interstate north of Danbury and turned onto narrower country roads.

“It’s beautiful up here,” Carpenter said as they crossed a bridge over a long lake. “Like England, but with a great many more trees.”

“It’s not called New England for nothing,” Stone said.

“England would have looked like this in the eighteenth century,” she said, “before we denuded the country of forests.”

They drove alongside a creek and passed an old mill. “Now that’s my idea of New England,” she said, “taken mostly from picture postcards.”

They drove through Bridgewater. “Another twenty minutes,” he said.

“Take as long as you like,” she replied. “I’m enjoying it.”

They came to Washington, and Stone turned left, then, after a short distance, left again. A couple of hundred yards along, he turned into his driveway.

“Oh, it’s lovely!” They got out of the car, and Stone took their luggage from the trunk.