Pablo and his wife hurried out of his office, and Stone asked Joan to send in Mr. Beck.
Moishe Aarons walked in, followed by two large young men.
'Mr. Aarons,' Stone said sarcastically, 'what a nice surprise.'
'Where is Pablo?' Aarons asked.
'Are you going to start that again?' Stone asked, opening his center desk drawer and extracting a pad and pen. He left the drawer open.
'Mr. Barrington,' Aarons said, 'you have exhausted my patience.'
'And you, mine,' Stone replied.
'Search the house,' Aarons said, motioning the two men forward.
Stone produced a.45 semiautomatic from his desk drawer. 'Hold it right there,' he said.
'You're not going to fire at us,' Aarons said, but he didn't move.
'I can shoot all three of you dead before you can move, and nobody will blame me. You are intruders and I am licensed for the weapon.'
'I'm licensed, too,' Joan said from the door, and she racked the slide on her own.45.
The three men turned and looked at her. She had assumed a firing stance.
Aarons turned back toward Stone. 'I want Pablo,' he said.
'Well, you can't have him,' Stone replied. 'At least, not from me. Try Lance Cabot again; he seems to be a productive source for you.'
'I don't have time,' Aarons replied.
'And I don't have any more time for you,' Stone said. 'Now, hear this: from this moment I am going to consider you and your people a threat to my life and act accordingly, and I am a very good shot.' That was a lie, but he doubted if Aarons had perused his range record at the NYPD. Dino was always needling him about his mediocre shooting performance.
'Place your hands on your head, turn and walk out of the building,' Stone said. 'If you call again I'll hang up on you, and if you come back I'll fire on you. Is that clear?'
The three men did as Stone had ordered, and Joan locked the door behind them.
'Very good,' Stone said from his office door. 'I particularly liked your firing stance.'
'That's what they taught me at the range,' Joan said, 'but I doubt if I could have hit any of them with this thing; it weighs a ton.'
'Only thirty-nine ounces,' Stone said.
'That's two and a half pounds,' Joan pointed out, 'and I'm a small girl.'
The phone rang, and Joan answered. 'Mike Freeman for you,' she said.
Stone walked back to his desk and picked up the phone. 'Hello?'
'It's Mike.'
'Hello, Mike. It must be a beautiful day on Lake Waramaug.'
'I'm in New York,' Mike said.
'A pity; it's gorgeous up there.'
'You know, don't you?'
Stone now had to decide between his two clients. 'Lance called,' he said, avoiding the decision.
'I'm embarrassed,' Mike said. 'I've already fired the two men who let it happen.'
'I wouldn't be too hard on them,' Stone said. 'After all, we have to assume he's still safe, just not in custody, so to speak.'
'We checked all the airports in the area,' Mike said. 'No sign of Pablo.'
'I wouldn't try too hard to find him,' Stone replied. 'He doesn't seem to want protecting anymore.'
'I can't argue with that,' Mike said. 'We'll stand down.'
Stone hung up. Now, he thought, if I could just be sure that the Mossad and Al Qaeda have stood down.
FIFTY-NINE
Stone was at Elaine's with Dino when Lance Cabot walked in and, without a word, sat down, waving at a waiter. He did not speak until an icy martini sat before him.
Stone and Dino exchanged a glance.
'Good evening, Lance,' Dino said.
'Is it?'
'It was until a moment ago,' Stone said. 'What do you want?'
'Peace on Earth,' Lance replied, speaking into his martini, 'or at least in this little corner of the earth.'
Stone had never seen Lance so dejected, and he fought the tendency to feel sorry for him. 'All right, what has disturbed the peace of your corner of the earth this evening?'
'I did it to myself,' Lance said.
Dino spoke up. 'This man is an impostor. The real Lance Cabot would never say a thing like that.'
'I agree,' Stone said. 'Are you feeling bad about sending that nice young fellow Todd Bacon off to the Aleutians?'
Lance brightened visibly. 'No, I didn't send him to the Aleutians after all,' he said. 'Instead, I sent him back to the Farm for torture-resistance training. That way, he will actually be tortured.'
'Oh,' Stone said, reluctantly admiring the way Lance's mind worked.
'I'm feeling better,' Lance said, downing the remains of his martini and waving for another.
'I'm glad we could be of help,' Stone said.
'Where is Pablo now?' Lance asked.
'Why do you want to know?'
'Frankly, I thought I had overreacted to the idea of a threat against him when I assigned those Strategic Services people to protect him, but it turns out there really is a threat.'
'Uh-oh,' Dino said.
'Funny, that's what I said when I heard,' Lance said.
'Heard what?' Stone asked.
'The boys over at NSA have picked up more satphone chatter about him.'
'And what was the source of the chatter?'
'Northwestern Pakistan,' Lance replied. 'Less than forty miles from the former cave facility at Tora Bora.'
'Speaking of Tora Bora, any more news?'
'Estimates are that we killed about two hundred of the bastards in the bombing raid,' Lance said, 'and not a few mules.'
'Does any of them have a name?'
'That will take time; we'll have to count noses-or rather, missing noses.'
'Anything on the condition of bin Laden's nose?'
'Nothing, as yet.'
'Let's get back to the chat about Pablo,' Stone said.
'Oh, yes. It seems they have made the connection between Pablo and the bombing raid, and they're even more furious than usual.'
'And how did they make that connection?'
'I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions.'
'And what do you suspect?'
'I suspect that Moishe Aarons-or one of his people-frustrated with their lack of success in laying hands on Pablo, may have leaked the connection to someone who knows someone in that part of the world. News travels fast, even over there.'
'I suppose it does,' Stone said, trying to figure out how to deal with this.
'Mind you,' Lance said, 'that is very Machiavellian, even for Moishe.'
Stone was beginning to regret that he had spoken so harshly to Aarons. 'Lance,' he said, 'do you think that
