Стюарт Вудс - Stealth

“I say, Roger,” a voice said. “Is that you?” A man in a business suit sat down on the stool next to him.

Fife-Simpson turned and looked at him. A colonel of his acquaintance. “Hello, Nigel,” he said.

“You’re looking a bit damp, there, you know? Surely the valet will press your uniform for you.”

“Yes, he would, if I chose to spend an hour in his steamy back room. I don’t believe they’d allow me to drink here in my skivvies.”

“Ho, ho, ho, I imagine not. I read of your promotion in the Telegraph ,” Nigel said. “What have they got you doing now?”

“Well, I commanded Station Two, MI-6’s training camp, for six months. Then I was made deputy director of MI-6. Mind you, that’s between you and me and the lamppost. They don’t like us talking.”

“And is that good work?”

“Not really. Not enough to do, so I packed it in — today.”

“I hadn’t realized you’d cracked the thirty-year mark.”

“I hadn’t, but the board made an exception,” Fife-Simpson replied, then realized that he had just told this very talkative man that he had been sacked. “They offered me a command,” he said quickly, “but I decided to pack it in.”

“Oh? What did they offer you?”

Fife-Simpson scrambled for a plausible story, then gave it up. “What are you doing with yourself, Nigel?”

“Oh, I’ve got number 44 Commandos,” he replied. “Not that we have a lot to do these days, except train.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, God, my wife is standing on a street corner at Harrods. I must flee.” He clapped the brigadier on the back. “Cheerio,” he said and then fled, leaving the brigadier to himself.

Fife-Simpson poured the remainder of Nigel’s whisky into his own glass. Must be frugal from now on, he thought.

Then he thought again. With his pension and the income from his father’s estate, he would be doing rather nicely — better than half again his pay as a brigadier. He polished off his drink. “Another,” he said to the bartender. He could afford it.

He took his drink to a chair beside the fire and fell into it. He’d dry faster here.

Sometime later, someone shook his shoulder. “Excuse me, Brigadier, will you be having dinner?”

Fife-Simpson took a moment to reorient himself. It was dark outside, and still raining. “Yes, thank you. I’ll go right in.” He got unsteadily to his feet, and looked for the lavatory, then he went into a stall and threw up. He went to a sink and splashed water on his face, then regarded it in the mirror. He seemed to have aged since yesterday.

He went into the dining room and took a table alone, avoiding the common table where the unaccompanied dined.

As he picked at his steak and kidney pudding, clearheaded now, he began to look back on the past few months. He had put a foot wrong somewhere, and he tried to pinpoint when.

On consideration, he decided he should have stayed at Station Two. God knew it was not comfortable, but it was better than having nothing to do at MI-6 and a damn sight better than the Falklands. It was the gambit that got him made deputy director that had been his downfall, he reckoned. That and the business with the attack on the station and the wrecking of Dame Felicity’s goddamned Aston Martin. He should have smoothed that over and stayed where he was for at least another year, before he prodded Tim Barnes to promote and reassign him.

Then, he realized, there was something else: that fellow Barrington, who had lost control of the car. That was the precipitating factor of his slide. It had shone too much attention on him at the wrong time. He felt nothing but hostility for Dame Felicity, too.

He began to think: there must be a way to make the bastards pay.

Stone’s phone rang late in the day on Thursday. “Fifteen minutes,” Holly said, “and no fond embraces when I alight. They’ll be watching us.” He took the golf cart down to the strip and watched the skies. He didn’t see the Gulfstream until it turned for the final runway approach. It set down gently as if it and the strip were old friends. Holly was at the top of the airstair door when it dropped, and a steward followed her with her luggage.

They drove back to the house, with Holly making all the ooh and ahh noises appropriate to the landscape and the house. Geoffrey took charge of her luggage and, once inside the front door, they shared a warm embrace and a wet kiss.

“Do you want to freshen up?” he asked.

“I did that on the airplane,” she said. “It has wonderful facilities.”

He gave her a tour of the main floor, finishing up in the library.

“This is marvelous,” she said. “It’s like the big brother of your study in the New York house.”

He poured them each a Knob Creek, and they sat down before the fire. “Now,” he said, “tell me everything.”

“Well, I’ve been doing most of my usual work and campaigning myself to a frazzle the rest of the time. The polls are favorable, so what else can I tell you? Why don’t you tell me about Lance instead?”

“All right, Lance came and stayed for a few days, and yesterday he sat me down and made me an offer before he left.”

“What sort of offer?” she asked.

“A vague one that involved me becoming a full-time employee of the Agency with the rank of deputy director, but remaining in New York and pretending to do what I’ve been doing since I passed the bar.”

“So he wants to turn you from a consultant into a... Well, let’s call it an operative.”

“Pretty much.”

“Do you think you might enjoy that?”

“I think I might, but I need your advice. If I should take this on, is Lance going to drive me crazy?”

“No, Lance is too smart to do that, unless he wants to get rid of you. Lance is a good judge of people, and he’ll understand what he can ask for and expect to get. Does a contract exist?”

“He’s faxing one from London, he says.”

“Let me read it — especially between the lines.”

“Good idea.”

“What do you hope to gain from accepting?” she asked.

“I hope that what I’m asked to do will be both personally satisfying and good for the country. I’ve always felt a little guilty about not serving in some capacity.”

“You served New York City for fourteen years. Wasn’t that enough?”

“Apparently not. There’s still an itch, otherwise I wouldn’t have become a consultant to the Agency.”

“Have you enjoyed what you’ve done as a consultant?”

“I have, I’ll have to admit.”

“Then you might enjoy being an operative even more.”

“You really think so?”

“I think Lance is bending way over backward to entice you, and that’s a good sign. There are, after all, only two other deputy directors, one for intelligence and one for operations. Will they know you’re aboard?”

“Good question. Lance didn’t say.”

“That’s one of the things you should know. You don’t want to start by stepping on powerful toes.”

“There was something else in our discussion, just as vague as the rest. I had the impression that Lance thinks he might be moving onward and upward before too much longer. Will that be the case, if you’re elected president?”

“As far as I’m concerned, Lance could have any intelligence or foreign policy job he wants, and I’d feel lucky to have him. But I haven’t been elected yet, and Lance is going to have to be very careful not to incur the wrath of my Republican opponent, whoever he might be, if he wants to remain director of Central Intelligence in the event I lose.”

“Wheels within wheels,” Stone said.

“You have no idea,” Holly replied.