“You overestimate my powers,” Felicity said. “It certainly explains the source of Jennifer’s net worth, and the new flat and new car. I rather think the girl might be in love.”

“Given what I know of the brigadier, I find that surprising. Perhaps you can give me a female’s perspective on the attractiveness of Roger to the opposite sex?”

“Medium, I should think,” Felicity replied. “Some women are as attracted to military rank as to money, and I imagine Roger has taken advantage of that over the years.”

They were called to dinner. Stone tasted and then poured the wine. “Something else,” Stone said. “Roger disappeared from anyone’s sight for, what, three days? We wonder where he went.”

“I believe I can shed some light on that,” Felicity said. “We lost him in the south London suburbs, and we deduced that he might have been headed to one of the airports south of London. We did our due diligence and discovered that a Falcon Jet departed Biggin Hill on that day with three passengers, filed for Copenhagen. Halfway there, however, the pilots changed their destination to Sevastopol International Airport, in Crimea.”

“Ah, a holiday in the sun,” Stone said.

“We had no track of him on the ground, but he was, no doubt, taken to a house on the sea, of which there are many, dating back to tsarist times. I expect he was made comfortable there while they indoctrinated him to a satisfactory degree.”

“Do you think Roger has inclinations toward the Russians?”

“I think Roger has inclinations toward money, and they have plenty of it to throw around, not to mention Jennifer’s fortune.”

“So, Roger has found both love and money.”

“It would seem so,” Felicity replied. “I wonder what it’s going to cost him.”

“Something else we might give some thought to,” Stone said.

“What might that be?”

“They’ve invested so much in Roger in a short time, and taken such pains to give him a new identity.”

“They certainly have,” Felicity admitted.

“The question arises: Why? What are they readying him for that would require so much effort? And why Roger rather than some clerk?”

“Yes,” Felicity said, “we will have to give that some thought.”

51

With sunlight streaming through the windows, Stone looked up at Dame Felicity, who was astride him and lacked only a whip in her inventory of inventiveness, for which he was grateful. She was smiling, and then her face became beatific, as she issued the noises of pleasure.

Finally she fell sideways into bed, limp. Stone was limp, too.

“Something we forgot last evening,” Felicity said, turning to face him.

“I didn’t think we forgot anything,” Stone said.

“Forgot to discuss,” Felicity said, giving him a light slap across the chops to focus his attention.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.”

“What?”

“If our suppositions are correct, Roger has already performed a task for his Russian betters.”

“I forget,” Stone said. “What task?”