“I’ll just wait while you think,” Stone said, then sat there silently.

“All right,” Lance said finally, “he may have inferred that from something I said to him.”

“Lance, we had a firm and very clear agreement that the existence of those meetings would be kept within a very tight circle of your people.”

“Yes, we did.”

“Did you intend that very tight circle to include the Mossad?”

“Of course not, Stone. It was just a slip of the tongue over lunch.”

“It must have been a very big slip of the tongue, since Aarons knew that the meetings took place at my house and that I was in touch with Pablo.”

“I have to go now,” Lance said. “There are people waiting to see me.”

“Lance—” But Lance had hung up.

Stone looked up to see a man he didn’t recognize standing in his doorway. He was tall, with a dark, heavy beard and black horn-rimmed glasses.

“Good morning, Stone.”

“Yes? Have we met?”

The man came across the room and sat down in the chair opposite Stone. “My disguise is better than I thought.”

“Pablo?” Stone said with astonishment.

“Don’t make me take the beard off; it took me too long to get it right. You were talking with Lance?”

“Yes, just now.”

“I heard you mention his name.”

“He called to tell me you had disappeared.”

“He’s quite right, I have,” Pablo said.

“Why?”

“Moishe Aarons wants me either in a Mossad interrogation facility or dead, and I don’t think he cares very much which.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because early this morning I walked down to the lake—I take a walk every morning—and I saw a boat being driven by Moishe himself. I don’t think he saw me, since I was partly behind a tree.”

“Oh, shit,” Stone said.

“Exactly,” Pablo replied.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Stone tried to think of what to do. “Pablo, how did you get away from the Washington market?”

“One of my security people met us out back with a rental car and drove us here. He’s gone, now, to return the car.”

“Then Lance will soon find out about the rental car. What happened to the other one?”

“My other security guard returned it to Newburgh.”

“Where do you want to go, Pablo?”

“To Switzerland.”

Stone shook his head. “No, Aarons knows about that house; he told me so. I imagine he already has people there.”

Pablo thought about that. “I have a friend who has a country house in the south of England. I have not been there for some years, so I have no noticeable connection to it.”

“You’re sure that Aarons isn’t aware of it?”

“I can’t see how he would know about it,” Pablo said. “As I said, I haven’t been there for a long time, and Aarons’s interest in me is very recent.”

“Where is your airplane?”

“At Gulfstream, in Georgia, having some avionics issues resolved.”

“How soon could you get it to the Northeast?”

“Tomorrow morning.”