He led Freeman and Felicity into the living room and switched on the lights and the big flat-screen TV.

“Earlier today,” the anchorman was saying, “James Hackett, the head of the worldwide security firm Strategic Services, was shot to death by a sniper at a friend’s home on an island in Maine.”

There followed an interview with Captain Scott Smith. “We have no suspects at this time,” he said, “but the case bears the earmarks of a professional killing.”

They watched as various experts were interviewed. All suggested a contract murder. The news show moved on to other stories.

Freeman turned to Felicity. “What about you?” he asked. “Any idea who might be responsible for this?”

“Listen,” Stone said, pointing at the TV.

“This breaking news just in,” the anchorman said. “A London newspaper is reporting that the director of MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, is charging that Foreign Minister Douglas Palmer and Home Secretary Eric Prior are jointly complicit in the murder of James Hackett. The paper goes on to say that Palmer and Prior believed that Hackett was a former MI6 agent named Stanley Whitestone, who disappeared twelve years ago, and that the two cabinet ministers held him responsible for the deaths of Palmer’s daughter and Prior’s son at that time. We hope to have more on this before the program’s end.”

Felicity turned toward Stone. “Can I get to your fax machine in Dick’s office?” she asked. “It’s late in London; I may have something by now.”

Stone unlocked his cousin’s little office. Felicity went to the fax machine and came back with a couple of sheets of paper. The headline screamed:

FOREIGN MINISTER AND HOME SECRETARY BLAMED BY MI6 IN MURDER OF U.S. SECURITY FIRM CHIEF

Felicity handed the other sheet to Freeman.

Freeman read it. “And I thought Jim was being paranoid,” he said. “He predicted what would happen.”

Stone spoke up. “You mean, when he told you about this you didn’t believe him?”

“Jim had a way of drawing worst-case implications from any problem,” Freeman said. “It worked for him in business a lot of the time, but I’ll admit, this sounded a bit far-fetched to me. Obviously, I was wrong.”

“You can take some comfort in the fact that he acted on his instincts by coming up here,” Stone said. “Have you any idea how the assassin might have located him?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Freeman said. “How did he contact you and ask you to come up here?”

“He gave me a prototype of a phone scrambler your people are working on,” Stone replied. “I got a call from him last night.”

“Then that has to be it,” Freeman said.

“You mean a scrambled message was intercepted? Didn’t the thing work?”

“It worked between landlines and landlines,” Freeman replied, “but I just learned this morning that some cell towers have not yet been equipped with the requisite electronics to scramble every call when one end of the conversation is from a cell phone.”