Stuart Woods: Shoot Him If He Runs

Shortly, they were seated at one of many tables in the East Room, sipping California champagne. Stone looked around. “Who are all these people?” he asked Lance. “I don’t see any familiar faces.”

Lance smiled. “In fact, this is probably the most anonymous group ever to dine at the White House. These are the approximately hundred and fifty highest-ranking people at the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and their spouses. This is the first time such an event has occurred, and it appears on the White House daily schedule as a personal dinner party given for friends of the president and first lady.”

“Wow,” Dino said. “If a bomb went off here…”

“Don’t even think that,” Lance said.

Stone woke slowly, momentarily disoriented by the strange surroundings. He lifted his head and saw a naked, red-haired woman coming out of the bathroom.

“Good morning,” Holly said. “You’d better shower and shave; Lance and the others will be here in forty-five minutes. I’ve ordered breakfast.”

Stone continued to watch her; he liked the changes. “Why red hair?” he asked.

“You’ll find out at the briefing; now get moving!” She goosed him in the ribs, then dodged his grasp and started dressing.

Stone and Holly were just finishing their coffee when there was a knock on the door. Holly let them in: Lance, Dino and Genevieve James.

Stone gave Genevieve a kiss. “You’re in on this, too?”

“I would do anything for a vacation on a tropical island,” she said. “And don’t worry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

“Genevieve just came to say hello,” Lance said. “She’s going shopping now.”

“I believe I’ve been dismissed,” she said, and with a little wave, left the suite.

“Anybody want coffee?” Lance asked.

Nobody spoke.

“Good. Now, let’s get started; you have a plane to catch this afternoon.”

Everybody took a seat.

“Stone, let’s begin with you: tell us-briefly, if you will, since there’ll be time to fill in details later-about your experience in St. Marks, and especially, about the people you know there.”

Stone took a deep breath. “I was on vacation there several years ago, when a yacht entered English Harbour, sailed by a woman alone, causing something of a kerfuffle. The following day, she was charged with killing her husband at sea and shoving his body overboard. I somehow got involved and defended her at her trial. I lost, and she was hanged-or at least I thought she was. She turned up later, alive in Florida, but that’s a different story.”

“Tell us who you know on St. Marks,” Lance reminded him.

“I spent most of my time at the English Harbour Inn, near the harbor, run by a retired NYPD cop named Thomas Hardy, who was born and raised on St. Marks.”

Dino spoke up. “I met him a couple of times on the job, years ago.”

“Right. He’s a good guy; I think we should stay there, if he has room.”

“You’ve already been booked into a cottage there,” Lance said. “The four of you. Who else did you know?”

“An elderly barrister named Leslie Hewitt was assigned to work with me on the trial; he may be dead by now.”

“He is not,” Lance said.

“And there was Sir Winston Sutherland, the minister of justice on the island, who decided to prosecute the case himself.”

“Sutherland is now prime minister,” Lance said, “so you know people in high places.”

“Sir Winston would have a poor opinion of me,” Stone said, “since I made him look bad a number of times during the trial, and since I cast him as the villain in the considerable publicity we managed to generate, in an attempt to save my client’s neck.”

“Duly noted,” Lance said. “You should make a point of not running afoul of the law in St. Marks, partly because of Stone’s unsatisfactory relationship with Sir Winston and partly because, as prime minister, he has run the island in a more authoritarian manner than the previous administration did. Questions?”

“Why does Holly have red hair?” Stone asked.

Lance smiled. “I think I told you that Holly has seen Teddy Fay twice, although he was heavily disguised, but that means that he has also seen her twice, so I thought that a change of appearance was a good idea, and a change of identity, too. Teddy may still have computer access to the Agency mainframe computer, and he probably read Holly’s personnel file at the time he met her. She is taking the identity of Virginia Heller, her father’s girlfriend, whom you met on Islesboro.”

“Why Ginny?”

“Because it’s faster than creating a legend for Holly. Since Ginny is a real person, she can be researched by Teddy. We’ve changed the photographs on Ginny’s website and substituted Holly’s-Ginny runs a flying school in Florida-and in the Florida driver’s license database and the U.S. Passport database. This should hold up, because should Teddy become suspicious of her, he doesn’t have any resources on the mainland to investigate Ginny. He’ll have to be content with electronic investigation. Any other questions?”

Dino spoke up. “What do we do when we get to St. Marks?”

“Find Irene Foster, and go from there. You should know, Dino-all of you-that this is not an official Agency operation; it’s purely a seat-of-the-pants thing to learn whether Teddy Fay still exists. It’s being paid for through a front travel agency operated by the Agency, and the funds will be untraceable. Just be who you are when you get there, except for Holly, who will be Ginny. Any other questions? No? Then I’ll give you some basic info on St. Marks.”

Lance set up a large laptop computer and began displaying maps of the island and photographs of the terrain. “The island is made up of a central, dormant volcano, known as Black Mountain, surrounded by tropical forest and fine beaches. St. Marks is a former British possession that gained its independence about twelve years ago. Since that time, one political party has held power, and Sir Winston is only the second prime minister. It is, ostensibly, a parliamentary democracy, although Sir Winston, as previously noted, wields more personal power than most elected officials.

“The government is stable and the island safe for tourists. Ninety percent of the population is black, as are all the people Stone knows there; the rest are mostly descendants of the former British settlers, whose accents are British. There are a few dozen expatriates who’ve bought homes there because of the stable political atmosphere and the moderate real estate prices.”

“So finding Irene Foster shouldn’t be hard?” Stone asked.

“No,” Lance replied.

“Why did she leave St. Barts for St. Marks? I mean, the real estate prices on St. Barts would have been higher, but she already owned a property there. What made her move?”

“We investigated her existence in St. Barts thoroughly, before she left the island. What we picked up was that she didn’t speak any French, which is the local language, and she preferred an English-speaking island. Also, she got an unsolicited offer for her house, and she jumped at the chance to move. Incidentally, before she moved, we had a close look at the inside of her house, and we found no indication of a co-habitor-only one toothbrush, et cetera. She had a local reputation for picking up suitable men at local bars and having them over for a night or two-always tourists, who would be leaving in a few days. From that, we deduced that she was not being sexually satisfied by a regular lover-i.e., Teddy.” Lance looked at his watch. “You have a flight from Manassas, Virginia, in three hours, and you have to get packed. Any other questions?”