The Short Forever

                 Chapter 49

                        STONE DROVE BACK TO LONDON AND Chester Street; as soon as he was in the house, he called Mason’s cellphone. No answer; he left a message. As an afterthought, he called Carpenter’s number.

                        “Yes?” She sounded harried.

                        “It’s Stone Barrington. Did you get it?”

                        “Hold on,” she said, and covered the phone, so that he could hear only muffled voices. She uncovered it in time for Stone to hear her say, “Find out why, and do it now.” There was real authority in the voice. She came back to Stone. “Are you in Chester Street now?”

                        “Yes.”

                        “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

                        Stone was going to ask what the hell was going on, but she had already hung up.

                        Dino let himself in through the front door; he was carrying two large Harrod’s shopping bags. “Hey,” he said.

                        “I take it you got Mary Ann something.”

                        “Yep; how’d your lunch go?”

                        “Just as it was supposed to, I think.”

                        “Good.” Dino stretched. “I think I’m going to take a nap.”

                        “It’s jet lag,” Stone said.

                        “I never get jet lag.”

                        “Whatever you say. You want me to wake you up later?”

                        “Not unless it gets to be dinnertime. Do we have any plans?”

                        “Not yet; I’ll call Sarah later.”

                        Stone read the papers for ten minutes, then the doorbell rang. He let Carpenter and Mason into the house.

                        “Come and sit down,” she said. “We have a lot to ask you.”

                        They all went into the drawing room and took seats.

                        “Did you get everything?” Stone asked.

                        “We got almost nothing,” Carpenter replied.

                        Mason seemed uncharacteristically quiet; usually, he did the talking.

                        “Your brand-new bug didn’t work?”

                        Now Mason spoke. “There was something in the neighborhood interfering with it,” he said petulantly. “As soon as you left the restaurant, we could clearly hear the sound of your car; it was just in the restaurant that it didn’t work. Must have been something in the walls.”

                        “We lunched outdoors,” Stone said. “It sounds as if Lance Cabot is smarter than you gave him credit for.”

                        “What do you mean?” Mason demanded.

                        “He searched me for a wire,” Stone replied, “which means he was suspicious. My guess is he had something in his car that would interfere with any radio transmissions in the immediate vicinity.”

                        “Shit,” Mason said, with disgust.

                        “Don’t worry about it,” Carpenter said. “We have Stone to tell us.” She turned to him. “Tell us.”

                        “Someone who works in what sounds like the factory of a defense contractor has made a duplicate of the device he builds every day. He’s going to sell it to Lance for half a million dollars in cash, and Lance is going to resell it to an unknown party for two million, two.”

                        “What details did he give you about the device?”

                        “The device is something that requires exotic metallurgy and special machine tools to make. It’s made to extremely tight tolerances. Sounds as though it’s small enough to carry around.”

                        “What else did he tell you about this man?”

                        “He has worked in the same facility for nearly thirty years and is about to retire. Apparently, he’s frittered away his savings on the ponies, and he wants to sell the device to make his retirement comfortable.”

                        “Ponies?” Mason asked, baffled. “Polo?”

                        “Horse racing,” Carpenter said to him sharply.

                        “This gives us nothing to go on,” Mason said. “There are factories and laboratories all over the country doing classified work. How are we going to find this man?”

                        “Lance said that the facility was very secret, and that it’s south and west of the restaurant, in Wiltshire,” Stone replied.

                        “Oh, Christ,” Carpenter said, turning pale.

                        “Eastover?” Mason asked.

                        “Shut up!” Carpenter said sharply.

                        Stone had the distinct impression that, for some reason, Carpenter was now in charge. Perhaps she had been from the beginning.

                        “What’s Eastover?” Stone asked.

                        “You don’t need to know,” Carpenter replied. She turned to Mason. “Listen to me very carefully: I want you to call someone in our tech department and have him call someone eminent in the related sciences that we know well. Have that person call the director at Eastover and tell him that someone is coming to see him for some advice on a technical matter. I don’t want the director to have any idea what’s going on, until you get there.”

                        “I understand.”

                        “When you arrive and are alone with the director, ask him who fits this description: long-time employee, highly classified work, a builder of devices rather than a designer, close to retirement. If he can’t come up with answers based on his own knowledge, have him call in his director of security to go through the personnel files, until you’ve identified the man. This must be done softly, softly, in such a way that does not create any alarm or gossip in the labs.” She turned to Stone. “When is the buy supposed to take place?”

                        “Within forty-eight hours of the time I transfer my funds to a Swiss account, which Cabot has already opened.”

                        Carpenter turned back to Mason. “We have forty-eight hours, probably less, to place our suspect under the most stringent surveillance—electronic, sonic, anything we can scrape up, but I don’t want any bodies anywhere near him or his residence, because if Cabot is as smart as he appears to be, that might alert him. Now, get on the phone.”

                        Mason whipped out a cellphone and walked into the dining room, pressing buttons.

                        Carpenter turned back to Stone. “When did you say you would transfer the funds?”

                        “Before the day was out.”

                        “Have you done it?”

                        “No.”

                        “Then you’d better get moving, hadn’t you?”

                        Stone went into the kitchen and used the phone there to call his broker in New York.

                        “Richardson.”

                        “Hank, it’s Stone Barrington.”

                        “Hi, Stone, what’s up? Got some more money for me?”

                        “No, I’m taking some out.”

                        “How come?”

                        “I can’t explain right now. How much have I got in my money market account?”