Stuart Woods - Below the Belt

Holly pocketed the key. “Dinner in an hour.” She kissed him and went back to the kitchen.

Stone got out his iPhone, turned on the sound system, found some jazz, and went back to his crossword.

In the dead of night, when they were sound asleep, Stone was wakened by a noise. He couldn’t figure out what he’d heard, then it came again: a chime. Then he noticed that his iPhone was lit up and the word “Safe” was flashing on the screen.

Stone picked up the phone, went to the Lutron app, and hit the switch for “all on.” Lights in every room came on. He opened his bedside drawer and took out his little custom.45, racked the slide, put the safety on, and got out of bed.

He found his slippers and padded out of the bedroom into the bigger rooms and down the hall where the safe was in a closet. One of the double doors was open. He looked inside and found the safe intact, then he began a search of the house, ending up back at the safe closet. He used his code to open the safe and found the strong case where he’d left it, undisturbed. He closed the safe and then, as he was closing the closet doors, he felt a cool breeze on his cheek.

He followed it back to its source: a circle had been cut out of a windowpane, and that window was now unlocked. He looked through the hole and saw the circle of glass lying on the ground near the bottom of the window. Then he checked the alarm system on his iPhone and found he had forgotten to turn it on.

He went back to the bedroom and found Holly sitting up in bed, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“You distracted me last night and I forgot to set the alarm system. Somebody got in and had a go at the safe, but he didn’t get anywhere because the safe alarm went off and I went to check on it. I found a windowpane cut out and the window unlocked. I’ll replace the pane in the morning.”

“And you’re blaming me for this?”

“Certainly — you distracted me.” He got into bed. “Would you like to distract me again?”

“Is the alarm system set now?”

“It is.”

“So we can expect not to be interrupted?”

“We can.”

She shucked off her nightgown. “Then what are you waiting for?”

Stone did not wait.

Sometime after dawn the doorbell rang, and Stone picked up the phone to answer it. Who the hell would be calling at six AM? “Hello, who’s there?”

“It’s Maria,” she said. “My key doesn’t work.”

Stone got up, let her in, and gave her a new key. “I’m sorry about that, Maria, all the locks were rekeyed yesterday.” He gave her the new alarm code. “Now you’re all set.” He went back to bed, then, at the stroke of seven, Maria came in with breakfast and left them to it.

They were on coffee when Holly said, “What do you think is in the strong case?”

“I don’t know,” Stone said. “It all has something to do with Ed Rawls. Remember him?”

“How could I forget? We saw him at Dark Harbor a while back. I got kidnapped that summer, remember?”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten you were there.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I mean, I’d forgotten you met Rawls.”

“Him and his bunch of Old Farts, as I recall they named themselves. All old Agency hands, retired. What would Rawls have to do with the strong case?”

“Will thinks it’s some sort of dirt that might hurt Kate’s run for reelection, and it may have come from Rawls.”

“How could a disgraced CIA officer have something on Kate?”

“I don’t think he has anything against Kate; he was her mentor when she was at the Agency.”

“And she got him sent to prison. That could have annoyed him and made him less protective of her.”

“If he’d wanted to hurt her he could have done it when she ran the first time.”

“Well, there is that.”

“Also, Will pardoned him.”

“I’d heard that, but I didn’t believe it. Why would Will do that?”

“Ed was very helpful to Will when he ran the first time. He kept coming up with stories of planned attacks on his campaign, and Will was able to head off some of them.”

“Wasn’t Rawls in a federal prison at the time?”

“He was, which made his help very surprising. Ed seemed to know everybody of any importance — politicians, journalists, et cetera.”

“Other Agency officers, too,” Holly offered.

“Were there people at the Agency who would hold grudges against Kate?”

“She was a very popular director, when she got the job, but then there were the people who wanted the job and didn’t get it. They and the people they might have promoted didn’t like her much.”

“Who would have been the most important one on that list?”

“Hugh English. He was director of operations, ran the clandestine side. Everybody expected him to get the job.”

“But he reckoned without Will Lee.”

“Right, he wouldn’t have expected Will to appoint his wife. I mean, he needed the acquiescence of Congress to get that done.”

“Must have been a real shock to her competitors.”

“You bet your sweet ass. I expect they voted Republican that year, to a man.”

“Where is this Hugh English now? Do you know?”

“He’s teaching at a small liberal arts college somewhere in New England — Connecticut, maybe.”

“Would he be in touch with people in his old circle at the Agency?”

“Of course. The Agency is a very select club, and when you leave it you find yourself among people who don’t know as much as you do. The people who know are your old colleagues, and they tend to stick together. Look at Ed and his Old Farts.”

“Would English and his old crowd tend to cluster, like Ed and his bunch?”

“They tend to find each other jobs — teaching at colleges or corporate consulting — often with defense contractors.”

“Is that considered ethical?”

“Sure, as long as they aren’t using their knowledge of the Agency’s workings to make money.”

“Then what do they do for defense contractors?”

“They use their knowledge of the Agency’s workings to make money.”

“Oh, well, I guess that’s all right then.”

“There’s a fine line between giving advice based on what you know about the Agency and giving away operational secrets.”

Stone picked up his iPhone and looked up a number and dialed it.

“Who are you calling?”

“Ed Rawls.”

Stone put the phone on speaker so Holly could hear the conversation. The phone rang once, then went straight to voice mail.

“You have reached the person you were calling,” Ed Rawls’s gruff voice said. “At the tone, don’t bother leaving a message because he’s not going to call you back.” The beep came. “Ed, it’s Stone Barrington. Break your rule and call me.” He left his cell number and hung up.

“Sounds like Ed’s gotten a little antisocial,” Holly said.

“I wonder why? I always thought of him as being on the gregarious side.”

Stone looked up another number.

“Who are you calling now?”

“Jimmy Hotchkiss, who runs the Dark Harbor Store. Jimmy knows everything about everybody on the island.”

Stone pressed the speaker button again. This time the phone was answered on the first ring.

“Dark Harbor Store, this is Jimmy.”

“Hey, Jimmy, it’s Stone Barrington. How you doing?”

“Well, we had quite a winter — ninety inches of snow on the island, first one of those in a long time. How ’bout you, Stone?”

“I can’t complain,” Stone replied. “Well, I guess I could complain, but it wouldn’t do any good.”

“I know the feeling. What can I do you for?”

“Jimmy, I just tried to call Ed Rawls, and his voice mail message was not what you would call responsive.”