or the Penguin publicity department with the request.
If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Sara Minnich at Penguin’s address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.
A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.
Keep reading for an exciting excerpt from the next Stone Barrington novel, STEALTH
1
Stone Barrington woke earlier than he should have and was, for a moment, disoriented. Sunlight was streaming through a two-inch gap in the drawn curtains of the room, and he never slept with curtains drawn. Except in England.
He sat up in bed. He was, indeed, in England, in the house called Windward Hall that he had owned for some years. He had landed in the early evening in the Strategic Services Gulfstream 600, on which he had caught a ride from Teterboro, New Jersey. The company jet was in England or Europe on almost a weekly basis, and the private runway on his land was long enough to accommodate it for landing and takeoff. It was a convenient way to commute between his New York residence and his house in England.
He looked at the bedside clock: a little after six AM. He fell back onto his pillow, tried for another hour of sleep and failed. He had come alone to England, so there were no opportunities of an erotic nature to keep him occupied until the kitchen was open for business—and he was hungry. He got out of bed, flung open the curtains in the room, and then got back into bed with yesterday’s crossword puzzle, which he had not finished.
He regretted not inviting a companion on this trip, but his mind turned to the beautiful woman whose country house was just across the Beaulieu River from his. At that moment, his cell phone rang. “Hello?”
“Good morning,” she said with a husky voice. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Good morning, Felicity. I wish you were here to wake me properly.”
“I’m nearly there, darling,” she replied, chuckling, “just across the river.”
“Then come and have breakfast with me.”
“I’d like to have you for breakfast, but I have to be in London at nine-thirty for an important meeting at the Foreign Office.” Felicity was the director of MI-6, the British foreign intelligence service, which came under the purview of the foreign minister.
“What a pity,” Stone said.
“Not to worry. I’ll be down tomorrow afternoon for the weekend. Why don’t you host a dinner party?”
“Well, I didn’t bring any guests with me, so I guess it will just have to be the two of us.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “I will assemble the guests for a table of, say, eight?”
“What a good idea. You’re better acquainted with the locals than I.”
“Consider it done. I’ll bring the place cards with me, so don’t bother about that. Shall we say seven for eight?” In British parlance, this meant dinner at eight, and show up at seven, if you’d like a drink first.
“Perfect. I’ll get the cook to work on a menu and I’ll unearth some good bottles from the cellar.”
“I will look forward to it,” she said.
“And bring your toothbrush. We’ll make a weekend of it.”
“What a good idea!” She made a kissing noise and hung up.
Stone went back to his crossword, a happier man.
* * *
—
The following evening, in his Royal Yacht Squadron mess kit—essentially, a tuxedo with a short, naval-style jacket and the appropriate insignia—Stone inspected the beautifully set table in the small dining room, then went to the library where drinks would be served. It was about three minutes past seven when he heard the doorbell, and a couple of minutes later, Dame Felicity Devonshire entered the library, followed by three couples. One, he recognized as Felicity’s boss, the foreign minister, Sir Oswald Towne, and his wife, Lady Towne; another was a younger man in a proper naval mess kit, sporting quite a lot of braid, and his apparent wife; the third couple looked familiar.
“Stone,” Felicity said, “Of course you know Sir Oswald and