The camera switched back to the reporter.

“Regina,” Matt Lauer said, “has anyone reported a car missing from an airplane?”

“Not as far as we know, Matt,” the woman replied. “We’ve called every cargo transporter in the phone book, and they’re as baffled as we are.”

“Keep us up to date on this story,” Lauer said. “I’m dying to know what happened.”

The phone rang. “Hello?” Stone said.

“Stone, it’s Lance. What the hell happened last night?”

“It’s all as Holly said,” Stone replied. “I watched a movie in the trailer with Estancia, and I got sleepy and went to bed. When I woke up Estancia wasn’t there. Then we heard the rear platform open and all ran aft. I saw Estancia at the wheel of the car, and I could see the shoulder straps of a parachute. Mike had briefed us earlier about where they were stored. Estancia started the car, put it in reverse, and disappeared into the night. There was just a story on the Today show about the car landing in somebody’s swimming pool in Rye, but there was nobody in it.”

“I saw that just now,” Lance said. “Thank God it didn’t fall on a school or hospital.”

“Looks like you’ve bought Estancia a very expensive airline ticket to the United States,” Stone said. “Are the police looking for him?”

“Ah, no,” Lance replied.

“Why not?”

“To call in the FBI or the police would attract too much notice. We can hardly put out an APB on him.”

“Doesn’t he owe the IRS millions? Let them find him.”

“I don’t want to wrestle the IRS for possession,” Lance said. “We’ll have to find another way.”

“Well, good luck,” Stone said. “Goodbye, Lance.” He hung up.

Pablo Estancia had arrived at his Park Avenue apartment, had breakfast, showered and shaved, then phoned his barber and made an appointment for mid-morning.

The man arrived at ten o’clock, set a dining chair in Estancia’s dressing room, and had a look at his head. “The usual?” the barber, who had not seen him for more than a year, asked.

“I’d like it shorter, please, and I’d like to lose most of the gray.”

“Of course,” the man said, and went to work.

After the barber left, Estancia looked in the mirror and thought he looked ten years younger. He looked in a dresser drawer and came up with a box containing various bits of false hair. He selected a couple of pieces, brushed them carefully, and applied a thin coat of rubber cement.

Holly Barker sat next to Todd Bacon in Lance Cabot’s office at the Agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters and let Lance vent.

“This is a total fiasco,” he said. “I thought you had this extraction planned down to the last detail.”

“We did,” Holly said, “but in our planning we somehow missed the possibility of the extractee driving a car out of the airplane and into a Rye, New York, swimming pool. I think Todd and I now realize that was an oversight,” she said wryly, “but I have to point out that, in approving the extraction, you didn’t spot that flaw in the plan, either.”