Stone Barrington?”
“Yes, sir. The man has so many interests that more information is coming in all the time. He is a lawyer with many irons in the fire. He is a partner with Woodman & Weld, yet he operates alone out of his own town house. He is also a member of a five-man group of lawyers who handle a few elite clients, including the President of the United States.”
“Really?”
“He owns several houses, including an English country manor, and is the owner or co-owner of a string of high-end hotels. He also owns and flies his own jet plane.”
“What kind?”
“I’m researching that now. But he keeps it at the airfield in Teterboro, New Jersey.”
Fahd snatched up the phone and called his contact in New York. “Is your man staking out Stone Barrington’s house?”
“Yes, he is. So far there’s been no movement.”
“Stone Barrington owns a jet. It’s at Teterboro airport. Keep monitoring flight reservations, but be advised our quarry may head for Teterboro.”
“Do you want him stopped there?”
“No, just confirm the takeoff. We’ll pick him up in Paris.”
Fahd slammed down the phone and turned to the techie at the computer. “Still dead?”
Joram, wearing headphones, wasn’t sure what he’d been asked. It barely registered that Fahd was talking to him. “Sir?”
“Lance Cabot’s line. Is it still dead?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fahd snatched up the phone again and called his contact in D.C. “We have a problem with your agent.”
“What about her?”
“I think her cover may be blown.”
16.
LANCE LIKED WENDY. They’d met at a fund-raiser for Congressman Wilkerson, and she’d been so casual. Not pushing an agenda, like everyone else in Washington. Not impressed by his position, but not scared off. Her response, “Oh, is that an interesting job?” had been so beautifully understated they both wound up laughing at it.
He’d walked her home. Her apartment wasn’t that far from the party. She told him about her job, as a secretary, as if it wasn’t something to apologize for, or merely a rung up the corporate ladder. She was happy being a secretary, she found it a perfectly meaningful line of work.
He’d been seeing her for six months.
He didn’t call her now, probably wouldn’t have, even if he’d had a phone. Instead he walked to her apartment, just as he’d done so many times before, though not usually during the day.
Wendy lived in a small third-floor walk-up. It was a railroad flat, actually, though Lance never thought of it that way. Her bedroom was cozy, intimate. He liked it, though he never stayed the night. He didn’t want to go from there to work in the morning.
Lance went up to the third floor and knocked. He didn’t expect a response. She would be at work.
She’d given him a key, though he’d never used it. He felt guilty using it now, but he had to do it. Someone had bugged his phone, and he had to find out who. Wendy was, regrettably, a person of interest. She’d had opportunity. She could have taken his phone apart while he was in the shower and inserted the chip.
Lance didn’t want to think it was possible. Not Wendy. Not her. And yet he had to go into her apartment when she wasn’t there and search through her belongings, violating her privacy and betraying her trust, to try to find the least little thing to incriminate her.
Lance felt guilty as he opened the door.
Until he saw the apartment had been cleared out.
17.
TEDDY WATCHED OUT the back window as Fred Flicker drove him out of Stone Barrington’s garage. A gray Lexus pulled away from the curb and fell in behind them.
“Fred, we’re being followed. Can you take care of that?”
“Do you care if he knows that we’re doing it?”
“I’d prefer that he didn’t, but sometimes it can’t be helped.”
“It usually can,” Fred said. He squeezed by a bus, hit the corner, and swung a left turn just as the light was changing, leaving the other car trapped in a snarl of traffic.
“Nicely done,” Teddy said. “Now I can get a new cell phone. Drop me at the shop and cruise around until I call you on it.”
Fred dropped Teddy off and sped away, just in case the man he ditched was looking for his car.
The clerk in the cell phone store was confused.
“You want to upgrade your system?”
“No, I just want another phone.”
“But this phone works.”
“Yes, it does. I want to transfer the data on it to another phone. Can you do that?”
“Of course, I can. But to what phone?”
“The one I