So Lance was not all-knowing, after all, Stone thought. “You shouldn’t have told me that,” he replied. “I was terribly impressed with your knowledge of my whereabouts. And, by the way, the airplane is mine now. Hackett left it to me in his will.”
“You are a great inheritor of things, aren’t you, Stone? Your house in New York is from an aunt, I believe.”
“Great-aunt.”
“Then Dick Stone’s house, and now a jet airplane. You’re a fortunate fellow.”
“I suppose I am at that,” Stone said.
“Well, if you’re a nice fellow, nice things happen to you, don’t they?”
“If you say so,” Stone replied warily. He had the feeling something not so nice was about to happen to him.
“I expressed my displeasure with you yesterday, on the phone,” Lance said. “Now I want to expand on that a little.”
“You don’t need to expand, Lance; I’m well aware of your displeasure.”
“I thought it might help if I gave you a little background.”
“All right.”
“Will Lee, as you know, is now in his last term as president, and that means his wife, the lovely Katharine Rule Lee, is in her last years as our director.”
Stone nodded and sipped his brandy.
“Things are always changing in the intelligence game, but because of the president’s two terms and what turned out to be Kate’s calming presence, we at the Agency have had a rather long period of stability. There have been blips along the way, of course, among them various problems associated with the work of outside contractors.”
“Yes, I’ve read about those in the papers,” Stone said. “Particularly about the murder trial of a few of your mercenaries.”
“We do not accept that term,” Lance said. “These people are patriotic Americans, not simply hired guns. They actually save us money by performing many chores peripheral to our actual missions. We don’t have to train their people, you see; most are ex-military or ex-Agency or ex-something else, so they arrive with the requisite skill set.”
Stone continued to sip his brandy, which had warmed him down to his fingertips by this time.
“Because of some of the difficulties raised by previous contractors,” Lance said, “I am particularly interested in having Strategic Services on our team.”
“Because they’re clean?” Stone asked.
“Precisely. Jim Hackett has always operated in a highly ethical manner, and his reputation, and that of his company, is, as a result, impeccable.”
“And Mike Freeman wants to keep it that way,” Stone said.
“Of course, of course,” Lance replied, “and yet it is Mike himself who is the greatest threat to the company’s reputation.”
Stone stopped sipping brandy. “What do you mean by that?” he asked carefully.
“I think you may already know,” Lance said. “But I’m going to tell you anyway, just so all our cards will be on the table.” He took a sip of his brandy, then continued.
FIFTEEN