“There is a company west and south of here, in Wiltshire, a very secret company that makes very, very high-tech parts for the British military. We’re talking very specialized metallurgy, machine tools, incredibly tight tolerances, and computerized design. For the past year, a man who works there, making these parts, has managed to make a duplicate of one extremely important component.”

Stone interrupted. “Surely parts of that kind are stringently catalogued and accounted for.”

“This man has been working in this facility for nearly thirty years, and he has accumulated a reservoir of trust, which leads his employers and colleagues to give him wide latitude. He’s brilliant, and he’s crotchety, and nobody likes to piss him off, so they leave him pretty much to himself.”

“I see.”

“This gentleman is nearing retirement, and he feels that his pension plan and what he has managed to save are insufficient to keep him in the style to which he would like to become accustomed. You see, he has a little horse-betting habit, which, over the years, has taken its toll on his nest egg.”

“Do you mean to tell me that an important employee of a high-security facility could be betting the ponies and losing and not be noticed?”

“Apparently, he has been very discreet, and he has not been noticed,” Lance replied. “In any case, he has made it known to someone who knows someone I know that he has built this very special device, and that it is for sale. I have bid on it, and he has accepted my offer. All that remains to be done is to meet with him, retrieve the device, pay him half a million dollars in cash, and pass the device on to someone else.”

“It sounds too simple,” Stone said.

“Believe me when I tell you, there has been nothing simple about it. I have known about this for seven months, and it has taken nearly every day of that time to set this up—retrieval of the device, payment, shipping, and finally, collecting payment.”

“And with all that time to prepare, why do you suddenly need my money?”

“Because the investor who was to have provided it last week met with a fatal accident, and his funds are no longer forthcoming. You happened to arrive at a moment when you could be useful.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re here,” Lance said emphatically. “The people to whom I’m to deliver the device are not the kind who take disappointment lightly; they get ugly quickly. I have given them a schedule, and they expect me to keep it.”

“Why don’t they deal directly with your man? Why do they need you?”