Unintended Consequences (6 page)

“By whom am I being tailed? Apart from you, I mean.”

“We were never able to make an ID. But I expect we’ll have other opportunities.”

“Am I a threat to someone?”

“That remains to be seen.” The car came to a halt outside the Plaza Athénée. “Good night, sleep tight,” Rick said.

Stone got out of the car. “Should I look over my shoulder?” he asked through the open window.

“Never look over your shoulder. Look at the reflections in the shop windows. Elementary tradecraft.”

He drove away.

11

S
tone had finished his breakfast and was working on the
International Herald Tribune
crossword, which is to say the
New York Times
crossword, when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“I’m relieved to find that you are still alive,” Amanda Hurley said.

“So am I.”

“Did you have any further trouble?”

“The car was gone when I left the hotel.”

“Good. Thank you for a lovely dinner. I haven’t been to Lasserre in years, and it’s good to find that it hasn’t changed. Everything else has.”

“I am in complete agreement with both your points.”

“Do you enjoy art?”

“I do.”

“If you’d like to see some, I’ll buy you lunch and we’ll visit some galleries.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do you know Brasserie Lipp?”

“I do.”

“There at one o’clock?”

“You’re on.”

“Bye.” She hung up. His cell phone began ringing.

“Hello?”

“It’s Holly.” Something was strange in her voice.

“Hi. Is something wrong?”

“I just read a cable from our station in St. Marks.” This was a Caribbean island where she and Stone had spent some time a few years back.

“Yes?”

“There was a crash at the St. Barts airport late yesterday afternoon. Our station head’s name was on the passenger list. No survivors.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You knew him. You met him when we were in St. Marks.”

“I remember. I recall that there’s a very short runway at St. Barts.”

“There’s more,” she said. “The names of Mr. and Mrs. D. Bacchetti were also on the passenger list.”

Stone froze, unable to speak.

“They were in St. Barts on their honeymoon, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Stone said. “Do you have any way of confirming this?”

“I’ve dispatched someone from our station in St. Marks to St. Barts to make an identification of our man, and I’ve asked him to confirm the other names, too.”

“Will you let me know?” Stone asked.

“Of course I will. I’m not going to believe any of this until our officer has investigated thoroughly.”

“Thank you for calling,” Stone said. They both hung up.

This was impossible, Stone thought; this couldn’t be happening. He thought about what he should do, and he knew that Dino’s son, Ben, would have to be told. But not yet. Not until the confirmation came in. He called the concierge.

“Concierge desk.”

“This is Mr. Barrington.”

“Yes, Mr. Barrington. How may I serve you?”

“I need a seat on the next flight to St. Barts, in the Caribbean.”

“Of course. There is a flight in the early afternoon. May I call you back?”

“Yes, please.”

Stone was experiencing tiny flashbacks of his friendship with Dino—their time together as partners on the NYPD, their travel together, their hundreds of nights at Elaine’s. It couldn’t end like this.

The phone rang. “Yes?”

“Mr. Barrington, it’s the concierge. The daily Air France flight to St. Martin is fully booked, and there is a considerable waiting list. I took the liberty of booking you on tomorrow’s flight. It departs de Gaulle at two
P.M.
and arrives in St. Martin at five
P.M
. You have to take a short flight from there to St. Barts, and I have you a tentative reservation on the first flight the day after tomorrow.”

“Tentative?”

“Apparently, the regular flight to St. Barts crashed yesterday, and the service has been temporarily disrupted because of a shortage of aircraft to cover all their flights. Their spare airplane is out of service.”

“You’d better get me a hotel room in St. Martin, then.”

“I have already taken the liberty of doing that. Will you be returning to Paris?”

Stone thought for a second. “I don’t know yet.” He still didn’t know
why
he was in Paris, and he wanted to know.

He went and stood in the shower for a long time.

12

S
tone got dressed and sat on the edge of his bed for a few minutes, trying to think of every way this news could be wrong. He knew Dino and Viv were in St. Barts; their names were on the passenger manifest. But why? They should have arrived in St. Barts days ago. Could they have gone to another island for some reason, then returned? He could not get his mind off what he was going to have to say to Ben Bacchetti.

He called Amanda Hurley’s hotel to break their luncheon date: no answer at her room, and he didn’t have her cell number. There was a strange buzzing noise, and he suddenly realized that his cell phone was dancing across the glass desktop. He ran for it; had to be Holly, maybe with good news.

“Hello?” He was short of breath.

“Stone?” A man’s voice.

“Yes?” Why didn’t he hurry up and talk?

“It’s Dino.”

“What?”

“It’s Dino. What’s the matter, do we have a bad connection?”

His brain thrashed through the gears of recognizing the voice. “Dino?”

“I told you twice.”

That was Dino. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“And Viv?”

“Just fine. Did somebody call you?”

“Holly called, said you were on the passenger manifest of the airplane that crashed yesterday.”

“I heard about that. It was a Mr. and Mrs. David Bacchetti, of Denver, Colorado, no relation that I know of.”

“There are two Bacchettis?”

“There are lots of them, but mostly in Italy.”

“Then you’re alive?”

“Do I sound dead?”

“No more than usual.”

“Somebody called our hotel and told me to call you. Are you in New York?”

“I’m in Paris.”

“Why the fuck are you in Paris?”

“I have no idea.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, and it’s too early in the day for you to be drunk. I mean, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I was hoping you could tell me what happened after your wedding.”

“Stone, I haven’t talked with you since the wedding. How would I know why you’re in Paris?”

“I lost four days.”

“What did you do with them?”

“All I know is that I spent one night on a flight to Paris. The rest is a blank.”

“Are you feeling all right, Stone?”

“I am now, but I was drugged when I got to Paris.”

“Who would want to drug you in Paris?”

“I mean, on the airplane. Somebody drugged me then. I apparently managed to get through the airport and into a cab under my own steam, then I passed out, and the driver went through my pockets, then took me to the American Embassy, where Holly’s people took care of me.”

“You need me to come to Paris?”

“Hell, no! I want you to enjoy your honeymoon!”

“Okay, I’ll be sure and do that. What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to try to find out what happened during those four lost days.”

“And you think sleeping with a few Parisiennes is going to make that happen?”

“Come on, Dino.”

“Well, that’s your usual solution to any problem. What’s the matter, aren’t there enough women in Paris?”

“More than enough.”

“Well, eventually one of them will enlighten you.”

“Funny you should mention that, it’s what I hoped would happen.”

“How many have you tried so far?”

“Only two.”

“You’d better get your ass in gear, then.”

“I’ll do that. I’m glad you’re not dead, Dino. I already had a plane to St. Barts booked.”

“That’s sweet of you, kiddo, but what I’m doing here, I don’t need any help. Call me if you need me.”

“Will do.” They hung up. Stone couldn’t seem to get enough air in his lungs. He walked around the room taking deep breaths, swinging his arms and mopping his sweaty face on his sleeve. He looked at his watch: a quarter to one.

He went downstairs and asked the concierge to cancel his travel plans, then he got a cab to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Before he entered Brasserie Lipp, he leaned against a streetlamp, pressing his forehead against the cool metal, then he took a few more deep breaths and went inside.

13

A
manda was already sitting at a good table. Stone sat down, his back to the room, and patted his forehead with his napkin.

“I saw you outside leaning against the pole,” she said. “You looked as though you were screwing up your courage to come in here. Is it me?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

“What was that, then?”

“I just got some good news.”

“That’s how you react to good news? I’m glad it wasn’t bad news.”

“I got the bad news earlier and had to sweat it out until I got the good news.”

“What was the good news?”

“That the bad news wasn’t true.”

“What was the bad news?”

“That a friend of mine—no, my best friend in the world—and his new wife were killed in an airplane crash in St. Barts on their honeymoon.”

“But the good news fixed that?”

“Yes, the couple killed had the same surname.”

“And how did you hear about this?”

“A friend called me from the States.”

“So everything is all right now?”

“Yes, everything.”

“I gave the maître d’ your name, and he didn’t put me upstairs with the tourists. I’m impressed. How long since you were here?”

“Yesterday.”

“Oh. I should have suggested someplace else.”

“This is just fine—in fact, it’s my favorite place in Paris.”

“And you have a high tolerance for choucroute?”

“I do.” Stone flagged down a waiter and ordered the dish for both of them. “And a beer?” he asked Amanda.

“That’s good.”

The waiter went away and came back with two of the big round glasses with their creamy heads.

Stone took a deep draught.

“Feel better now?”

“Much.” Stone glanced up at the mirror and saw the reflection of the man Rick LaRose had described as “opposition” taking the same seat he had the day before.

“See somebody you know?”

“Not know, just familiar.”

“The guy with the shaved head and the hooked nose?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a Russian spy.”

“You think he’s after Lipp’s choucroute recipe?”

She laughed. “Isn’t everybody?”

“He was here yesterday, too, that’s why he looks familiar.”

“Who were you with yesterday?”

“A friend from the embassy.”

“The American Embassy?”

“Yes. I passed out in a cab at the airport, and the driver took me to the embassy, where they . . . I don’t know what they did. I woke up there.”

“Passed out on the floor?”

“No, in a kind of hospital room.”

“They have hospital rooms at the American Embassy?”

“Just the one, as far as I know. It wasn’t a very nice room.”

“How long were you there?”

“I don’t know, exactly, maybe twenty-four hours.”

“What kind of drug were you given?”

“Something called hypno something or other.”

“Hypnotol?”

“That’s it.”

“Jesus Christ, that stuff can kill you. It was only on the market for about ten minutes before the FDA yanked it. People were dropping like flies.”

“How do you know about this?”

“I read something about it in the science section of
The New York Times
.”

Their choucroute came and they attacked it.

“What part of the embassy was your hospital room in?”

“I don’t know,” Stone lied. He regretted having told her about the embassy.

“When you left, did you leave by the front door?”

“No, there was some sort of side entrance, through a garden.”

She put down her fork and looked at him hard, chewing. “You were in spookville,” she said.

“Beg pardon?”

“In the CIA offices, one floor down from the main entrance.”

“If you say so.”

“Why would they put you in a room in spookville?”

“When I passed out in the cab, the driver went through my pockets and found the card of a friend of mine who works for them. He showed it to a marine guard, and they took me there.”

“Did they grill you when you woke up?”

“Not the way I’m being grilled now,” Stone said with some irritation.

She held up a hand. “Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out what happened to you.”

“So am I.”

“Was the friend you were here with yesterday a spook?”

“He’s the commercial attaché.”

“That means he’s a spook. How do you know him?”

“I met him at a party in the Bois de Boulogne the other night.”

“At the racing club?”

“No, at someone’s home.”

“If you know someone who owns a house in the Bois, then you’re mixing with a high-altitude crowd.”

Stone shrugged. “He sold me a car.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, you were at Marcel duBois’s house?”

“How did you know that?”

“He’s been working on this supercar for years, and the papers say it’s ready to hit the market, and he lives in the Bois.”

“That’s the one.”

“The Blaise?”

“Yes.”

“It’s named after his son, Blaise, who was killed in a racing accident several years ago.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“How do you know Marcel duBois?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s one of the things you don’t remember?”

“Yes. I got a dinner invitation, and I was curious, so I went.”

“Who else was there?”

“
Tout le monde
,” Stone replied. “Or at least, that part of it that counts. There were twenty-four at the table.”