“So why has all this come up twelve years later?”

“Because both Palmer and Prior were later elected to Parliament, and two years ago, with a Conservative victory in the election, both received cabinet posts, Foreign Office and Home Office. They have become the two most powerful cabinet secretaries in this government and, one might say, drunk with power. They were now able to use their positions to avenge the loss of those two young people.”

“But first,” Stone said, “they had to find Stanley Whitestone, and they enlisted Felicity Devonshire.”

“Yes,” Hackett said, “but it’s uncertain if she ever knew why.”

“She knew how serious they were, though,” Stone said, “and she did everything she could to stop them.”

“How did she, at last, stop it?” Hackett asked.

“I believe she threatened to give someone in the press the story, if it wasn’t stopped.”

“God, that was brave of her,” Hackett said.

“She risked being removed from her post,” Stone agreed.

“No, not that; if they’d sacked her she could still have talked to a reporter,” Hackett said. “My guess is, had they managed to kill Whitestone, they would have killed her, too.”

Hackett picked up the half-empty bottle of wine and his glass. “Come on, let’s finish this on the porch; it’s such a lovely day.”

Stone picked up his glass and followed him outside.

“Oh,” Hackett said, “given the favorable course of events, we can return to New York tomorrow morning. I’ll fly back with you.”

“Fine with me,” Stone said, taking a rocker and sipping his wine.

Hackett walked to the porch railing and leaned against it, facing Stone.

Stone looked past him out over the water. It was a perfectly windless day, so much so that the towering cumulus clouds were reflected on the water. The boats in the harbor floated with their mooring lines slack.

Hackett took a sip of his wine. “Something I’d like you to know, Stone: except for that business about the Whitestone grave in the Somersville churchyard, I never lied to you about anything.”

Stone was about to reply when there was a noise, a thud, and Hackett made a peculiar jerking motion. He looked down at his chest, surprised, where a hole the size of a golf ball had appeared, then he sank to his knees, dropping his wineglass, and fell forward onto his face. There was another hole, smaller and neater, in his back.

Stone hit the deck, which was splattered with Hackett’s blood. He waited for more shots, but none came. He felt Hackett’s neck for a pulse, but there was nothing.

With no wind, it was deathly quiet for a moment—then Stone heard an engine start in the distance and raised his head from the floor long enough to see a boat leaving the harbor, seemingly in no particular hurry.

Stone clawed at his cell phone.

53

Felicity was working in her temporary office on Sutton Place when her cell phone went off. “Excuse me,” she said to her agent, Smith, who sat across her desk with some files. “Yes?”