Stuart Woods - Dirty Work

"How'd La Biche come to be in Elaine's at exactly the time you were?" Stone asked.

"She came in looking for you."

"What?"

"I kid you not. She came in, took a seat at the bar, ordered dinner, and whipped out that Page Six clipping about you representing Herbie Fisher. Asked the bartender who you were."

"Did he tell her?"

"I don't know. I was pretty busy. Elaine called me at home and told me somebody was asking about you, so I disappointed my wife, who was snuggled up to me at the time, and got my ass over there in a hurry. There she was, sipping a brandy."

Stone thought about this.

"So why'd you want to have lunch? I had the feeling you had something on your mind."

"Something's brewing with our British friends," Stone said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"The big cheese arrived from London and has called a meeting of his people."

"Why do I care about this?" Dino asked.

"Because I think there's about to be a rumble on your turf."

"What kind of rumble?" Dino asked.

"Think about it."

"What, I have to guess?"

"That's what I'm doing. Anybody call you this afternoon? Any Brits, I mean?"

"Nope. Should I expect to hear from them?"

"I don't think so," Stone replied.

"Come on, Stone, what has Carpenter told you?"

"Only that there's a meeting."

"And what do you think is going to be the subject of that meeting?"

"Don't be obtuse, Dino."

"Okay, I know the subject. What are they going to do?"

"I think they're going to hunt her down and kill her," Stone said.

"Right here in New York City?"

"Yes. Of course, they may only want to kidnap and torture her, but I think the chances of taking the lady alive are nil."

Dino chewed his salad and thought about it. "Okay," he said finally.

"What do you mean, okay?"

"I mean, it's okay with me if they hunt her down and kill her, or just kidnap and torture her."

"Jesus, Dino, you're a New York City police lieutenant. Are you going to let that happen?"

"Yep," Dino said, sipping his wine.

"We're talking about murder, Dino. You're supposed to take a dim view of that."

"You're such a wuss, Stone," Dino said.

"No, I'm not. I'm just opposed to murder in the streets of my hometown."

"Well, I'm sure that when the murderers hear about that, there'll be a dramatic drop in the homicide rate," Dino replied.

"Dino, you've got to do something."

"What am I going to do?" Dino asked. "These people are not visiting policemen. They're fucking spies. They do things in secret. You think they're going to let me in on their plans?"

"Maybe I can find out something."

"I don't want to know," Dino said. "And if you want to keep rolling around in the hay with Miss Felicity Devonshire, you'd better not want to know, either."

"You want to know why there are no charges against La Biche in Europe?" Stone said.

"No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"Because the Brits got their information on her by torturing and killing her friends, so there's nobody left to give evidence against her."

"I didn't want to know that," Dino said.

"It's how they work. These people don't arrest criminals and try them. They put them in cellars while they extract information from them with tools, and when they're done, their captives are done, too. They're outside the law. They're above the law."

"Well then, if I were you, I wouldn't piss off Carpenter."

"When you and I were cops together, we had a common view of the law," Stone said. "We believed in doing it by the book."

"Well, not always strictly by the book," Dino said.

"All right, we slapped around a few people, frightened a few guys, but we didn't murder anybody."

"And I'm not going to start now," Dino said.

"But you're going to turn a blind eye to what these people are planning?"

"Stone, in this case, a blind eye is all I got."

"You don't want to see it."

"You're right, because, unlike you, I understand that there are two whole different worlds existing right alongside each other: There's your world and mine, then there's their world, where a crazy woman holds a grudge against their people and goes around killing them, plus a few other people along the way. How do we prosecute that? There's never any evidence. And suppose I could, somehow, stop them from killing La Biche? What would I do with her? Pat her on the head and send her back to Europe to kill a few more people? I don't have any evidence against her. Jesus, somebody's got to stop her, and it ain't going to be me."

"This is depressing," Stone said.

"It's not depressing if you don't think about it," Dino replied.

Carpenter rushed into the building, went to her temporary office, deposited her coat, and picked up her notes. She made it to the conference room just as Architect took his seat.

His name, as everyone who worked for him knew, was Sir Edward Fieldstone, but when he had chosen a code name, his bent for carpentry and building came to the fore. He had a huge workshop at his country home in Berkshire, and his large estate was dotted with barns, sheds, workmen's houses, and other structures that he had either built himself or supervised. He had come to the intelligence services by way of the Army and the SAS, and he was known to be partial to officers who had served in that unit, especially in Northern Ireland, where he had commanded it. His reputation from that time was one of being soft-spoken and completely ruthless.

Carpenter sometimes felt at a disadvantage for not having served in the Army. Her credentials in the service were, at the outset, hereditary, since her paternal grandfather and her father had both been intelligence officers – the former, during World War II, when he had been repeatedly parachuted into France to arm and train Resistance fighters, and the latter, who had been a specialist in dealing with Irish terrorists in mainland Britain. Those were considered historic credentials in the service, and Carpenter had worked hard to live up to them.

"Good morning," Architect said softly, causing an immediate hush to fall on the room. He gazed around the table at the two dozen faces, a third of them women. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said finally.

"The subject – the only subject – of this meeting is one Marie-Therese du Bois, known also as La Biche, an aptly assigned sobriquet, if I may say so." A tiny smile twitched at a corner of his mouth.

"I am sure that you have all read the dossier compiled on this woman, a dossier appalling in its nature and, especially, in its bearing on the members of this service. I need hardly tell you that she must be stopped."

There was a murmur of assent around the table.

"Carpenter," he said.

All eyes turned to her, and she felt her ears burning.

"Yes, sir?"

"Give us a little recap of her activities in this city over the past few days."

Carpenter did not need notes for this. "She has murdered a former officer of this service, a serving officer, an Arab diplomat known to be an intelligence officer, and an innocent female civilian. She has also seriously wounded a serving officer of this firm."

"And how is Thatcher?" Architect asked.

"He has suffered partial paralysis of both legs as a result of an ice pick wound to his spinal cord, but he is out of danger and is responding to treatment and showing signs of improvement. The prognosis is for a complete or nearly complete recovery."

"Good, good. Is he being well taken care of?"

"He is, sir."

"Good. Now, Carpenter, please give me your assessment of the current situation regarding La Biche. I'd especially like to know about her detention and release by the New York City Police Department. How were both these things accomplished?"