Stuart Woods - Lucid Intervals

“After the five-day study period with me, you will meet Mr. Dan Phelan, who will instruct you in the actual flying of the Cessna 510. After thirty or forty hours in the airplane, you’ll take a check ride with an FAA examiner, who will issue you a type rating for the 510. Any questions? No, never mind. I’ll ask the questions; you start reading.”

Stone opened the operator’s manual. “Why am I doing this?” he asked.

“If you’ll forgive me, Mr. Barrington-Stone-that’s a rather stupid question. You are doing this because Mr. Hackett is paying you to do so.”

“Of course,” Stone replied. He picked up the phone and buzzed Joan.

“Yes?”

“Clear my schedule for the next two weeks,” he said. “Make that two and a half weeks.”

“That will be easy,” Joan replied. “The only thing we have scheduled for the next two and a half weeks is a visit from the Xerox man and, probably, several visits from Herbie Fisher.”

“You deal with the first fellow, then tell Mr. Fisher I’ll be unavailable. And hold all my calls, except those of Felicity Devonshire.”

“You betcha,” she replied and hung up.

Ida Ann Dunn now had a laptop projector set up on the conference table and a screen hung on a wall. “Come over here, please, Stone, and bring the operator’s manual with you.”

Stone took a seat at the conference table, and Ida Ann began. By the time Stone was allowed to have a sandwich at the conference table, she had covered structural systems, electrical systems and lighting with slides and animation, while he kept up the pace in the manual. She ate wordlessly, flipping through her notes.

After lunch, Ida Ann covered the master warning system, the fuel system, auxiliary power system and power plant. Promptly at five p.m., Ida Ann switched off the projector and handed Stone several sheets of paper.

“Quiz time,” she said. “As you will note, the examination is multiple choice. You have forty minutes.”

“May I be excused to go to the restroom?” Stone asked.

“Be quick about it,” she replied.

Stone was quick, and then he tackled the exam.

Ida Ann ran quickly through it. “You missed a question,” she said. “Let’s review the fuel system again.”

Twenty minutes later, satisfied that he understood his error, she dismissed him, said she would see him at nine the following morning, then was gone.

Stone stood up and stretched, rubbing his neck.

“And what was that all about?” Joan asked from the doorway.

“I’m being taught to fly a jet airplane,” he said.

“At the conference table?”

“First, ground school, then flying.”

“And Hackett is paying you to do this?”

“He is. Call Eggers’s office later this week and find out how much to bill him.”

“Will do. Oh, Felicity called and said she’d meet you at Elaine’s at eight-thirty.”

“Then I have time for a nap,” Stone said, heading upstairs, exhausted.

STONE ARRIVED AT Elaine’s to find Dino already there, as usual, and the two ordered drinks while they waited for Felicity.

“How was your day?” Dino asked amiably.

“You won’t believe it,” Stone replied. “I spent it in ground school, learning to fly a Cessna Mustang.”

“Isn’t that a jet?”

“It is.”

“But you don’t own a jet.”

“I do not.”

“Are you planning to buy one?”

“I have a new client, Jim Hackett, who says that if I come to work for him, I’ll be able to buy one next year.”

“You’re leaving Woodman and Weld?”

“No. Hackett is hiring me through the firm for special projects.”

“And the first special project is learning to fly a jet?”

“You guessed it.”

“And he’s paying you for this?”

“You guessed it again.”

“How long will it take?”

“Two, two and a half weeks.”

“You can learn to fly a jet that fast?”

“You forget, I already know how to fly; I’m just learning a new airplane.”

Felicity made her entrance forty minutes late. “Apologies,” she said. “Drink.”

Stone waved at a waiter and secured a Rob Roy.

“How was your day?” she asked.

Stone gave her a brief account of it.

“And it takes only two weeks to learn?”

“If I’m lucky.”

“I’m not flying with you,” she said. “Let me know when you have a hundred hours.”

“I already have three thousand hours,” he said.

“A hundred hours in type.”

“Right. What have your day’s investigations produced?”

And she began to complain.

Felicity took a sip of her Rob Roy. “Turns out that the records of the Parachute Regiment at the time Hackett alleges he was a member are stored in an army warehouse in Aldershot, south of London.”

“So?” Stone asked. “Are they available?”

“They are available,” she replied, “but they are a sodden, mold-infested mess, having been placed in a corner of the warehouse that has been flooded twice by huge rainstorms in the past two years.”

“What can you do about that?”

“I’ve been able to spare two document specialists who are trying to dry and extract the relevant pages,” she replied, “but quite frankly, if I had a dozen people to spare for a year, that might not be enough manpower or time to find Hackett’s and Timmons’s records.”

“In this country,” Stone said, “if you are fingerprinted for anything-military service, for instance-your prints end up in the FBI database. Is the same true in Britain?”

“Yes, and we’ve already been to the police, but that far back, none of the records have been computerized, so a search of paper records has to be done by hand. The problem that arises is that hardly anyone with the police is old enough to know how to accomplish such a search, as opposed to a computer search. We are being defeated by the lack of old skills among younger employees. What’s more, the records from that time have also been stored in a warehouse in boxes that were poorly labeled.”

“So you have no hope of finding a record of Hackett’s fingerprints?”

“Very little hope. It’s just barely possible that we might get lucky.”

“I have a suggestion,” Stone said.

“Please make it a good one.”

“Hackett is a naturalized American citizen,” Stone pointed out. “He would have been fingerprinted at the time of submitting his application for citizenship, and the State Department would have his application on file.”

Felicity brightened. “That is a very good suggestion, Stone. I’ll have the ambassador make inquiries tomorrow.” She wrinkled her brow. “I wonder what the State Department would make of a foreign ambassador inquiring about the fingerprints of an American citizen.”

“Good point,” Stone said. “It might be better to have your police make the request through the FBI.”

“Perhaps so,” she said. “I’ll phone the commander of the Metropolitan Police tomorrow and make the request.” She took another sip of her drink. “Why do you suppose Hackett wants you to learn to fly a jet aeroplane?”

“I can only guess,” Stone said. “When he was trying to persuade me to come to work for him he told me that, in a year, I’d be able to afford my own jet.”

“That must be very alluring for you,” Felicity said.

“It’s interesting, but not alluring.”

“I’ll bet you’ve had little-boy fantasies for years about flying your own jet.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Stone admitted.

“Then why don’t you go to work for him?”

“That’s what I’m doing right now; Woodman and Weld has assigned me to Hackett.”

“So what’s the difference?”