“What’s Bacon’s story?” Stone asked.

“All I can tell you is, he’s one of Lance’s people, he’s, at least, the titular CEO of Airship Transport, and he’s in charge of the extraction.”

“What’s Holly here for?” Stone asked.

“I get the impression that she’s here to watch Bacon,” Mike replied.

The airplane was already rolling down the runway, using a lot more of it than on previous takeoffs. The pilot rotated, and the airplane began to climb steeply. Stone looked out a side window and saw something flying toward them, leaving a trail of smoke. Before he could speak someone yelled, “Missile at two o’clock!”

Stone was thrown hard against his seat belt, and the airplane picked up speed and turned first right, then left.

“Clean miss!” the copilot yelled, and they began climbing again.

“Holy shit!” Stone said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been shot at in the air!”

“Me too,” Mike said. “I think ‘holy shit’ pretty much covers it for me, as well.”

“Are we safe yet?”

“Who knows?” Mike replied.

The airplane continued its steep climb, and gradually Stone’s grip on the armrests of his seat relaxed.

Todd Bacon appeared in the cockpit. “Okay, everybody in the trailer,” he said.

TWENTY-THREE

Stone, Mike, Holly, and Todd Bacon sat in the reclining chairs, and Todd unfolded a map. The first thing that struck Stone was that it was not an aeronautical chart but a Michelin road map.

“All right,” Todd said. “We’re going to land in northern Spain to extract a longtime fugitive and return him to United States jurisdiction.”

“By extract,” Stone said, “do you mean extradite?”

“Extradition is impossible,” Todd replied.

“How come?” Mike asked.

“All right, I’ll tell you the whole story,” Todd said, “or at least as much of it as I know.”

“We’re all ears,” Mike said.

“The man’s name is Erwin Gelbhardt, born in Germany sixty-eight years ago, brought to the U.S. at age eight and later naturalized. His father was a German diplomat, and the child grew up as his father served in Egypt, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the U.S., where he retired and remained. As a result the boy, who had already displayed an affinity for languages, picked up those four languages, as well as his native German and English. He learned French in school.”

“A bright kid,” Mike said.

“Very bright. He was educated at Choate, Yale, and Harvard Business School, graduating at each school near or at the top of his classes. After getting his MBA he took a little over a million dollars, inherited from his mother, and during the next decade, turned it into more than a hundred million dollars made from various businesses in North, South, and Central America. Wherever he did business he specialized in corrupting local officials, up to and including intelligence officials and heads of state. He had a lot of cash to throw around, since he paid little or no taxes in the United States, despite his American citizenship.