At a quarter to eight the following morning, Stone opened his garage door, walked out to the sidewalk and looked around. His street was uncharacteristically empty, and he was grateful for that. He backed out of the garage, closing the door with the remote, drove up to Park Avenue and took a right.

He turned left in the East Sixties and saw the awning with Pablo’s street address on it. He did not stop, but drove slowly around the block, checking both sides of the street for loitering men and his rearview mirror for a tail. Nothing.

He circled the block and pulled up in front of Pablo’s building, pressing the button that unlocked the doors. Pablo and his wife hurried from the building, each carrying only a small duffel, and jumped into the rear seat.

“Put your luggage on the front passenger seat,” Stone said, again watching both sides of the street, “and keep an eye out for trouble.”

He turned up Madison Avenue, then left on East Sixty-sixth. A moment later they were crossing Central Park. Stone took the opportunity to check his rearview mirror again, and he did not like what he saw. “Black Range Rover behind us,” he said. “Three men.”

“That’s my car,” Pablo said, “with my two security men and my butler, who will return to the city with the car when we are gone.”

Stone took a few deep breaths and tried to get his pulse to return to normal. “How are your men’s driving skills?” he asked.

“Excellent,” Pablo said, “particularly the one now driving.”

“Good. I don’t want to have to worry about them if we have to evade something.” Leaving the park, he turned right on Central Park West, then left on West Seventy-second Street. A few blocks later he turned north on the West Side Highway and increased his speed to seventy miles an hour.

Soon they were on the Henry Hudson Parkway, with its well-engineered curves and its beautiful stone bridges, constructed by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. He drove north for another three-quarters of an hour, then joined I-684, heading north. Traffic was light, and they were making good time. Stone chose this time to tell Pablo about the events of the day before.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Pablo said. “It was a very beautiful house. I feel I should pay for it.”

“Let Lance Cabot worry about that,” Stone said. “He has deep enough pockets, and it was his fault anyway. He knows that.”

“There’s something else I feel I should do,” Pablo said, “that I would like you to do for me.”

Stone heard the sound of a check being ripped from a checkbook, and it was handed forward. It was made out in the amount of $100,000, to the doctor in Rye into whose swimming pool the Agency’s Mercedes had landed.