Stone opened his briefcase and dug into the envelope of paperwork that his secretary, Joan Robertson, had put there for him, next to his new flask. He looked up at Gala, who was already asleep, a light cashmere blanket tucked around her. He checked the moving map display for their routing, which took them over Newfoundland, south of Greenland and Iceland, making landfall in Scotland. From there they would be cleared to the old World War II bomber strip on Stone’s property, near Beaulieu (pronounced “Bewley”), seven thousand feet of well-kept concrete runway. They were flying higher and faster than the airlines, and with a tailwind of more than a hundred knots, their time en route would be only another five hours and change. Stone settled down to work, e-mailing his responses to letters, with a copy to Joan, all handled by the on-board Wi-Fi.

—

They were off the southern tip of Greenland, in severe clear weather, when the flight attendant brought him a cordless phone. “Satphone for you,” she said.

“Hello?”

“It’s Joan.” She sounded breathless.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so. We just had a . . . disturbance here.”

“What kind of disturbance?”

“A man walked through the street door—I hadn’t locked it—and demanded to see you.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know—fiftyish, thick gray hair, some sort of accent.”

“Boris Tirov.”

“If you say so. Who is he?”

“Gala’s ex-husband.”

“Not another one of those. You have a collection.”

“What happened?”

“I told him you were not available, and before I could stop him, he barged into your office. I went after him with my .45.” Joan kept the pistol in a desk drawer. “He was trying to take it away from me when Fred walked in from the garage and saw what was going on. He kicked the guy in a knee, bringing him down, and I got in a lick to his head with the .45. Fred got him in some sort of armlock and hustled him out onto the street, where the guy made a run for a car, as best he could with a sore knee. I called Dino and left it with him.”

“That was exactly the right thing to do,” Stone said. “You and Fred handled yourselves perfectly. I doubt if he’ll come around again, but he does have some muscle at his disposal, so keep the street door locked, and don’t let anyone in you don’t know.”

“I already figured out that part.”

“I hope you didn’t mention where I was.”

“Nope, just that you were unavailable.”

“He’ll probably have somebody keep an eye on the house. If you see anybody suspicious, call Dino. Tirov’s people tend to be big Russian guys with bald heads, though some of them I’ve seen have hair.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Joan?”

“Yes?”