“Got it.”
Stone drove the car out, left it in the parking lot, then went inside and handed over the keys and paid his bill. While he was doing that the lineman came inside. “Have we got any string?” he asked.
“Sure,” his colleague replied, “there’s some on the shelf behind the desk.” The lineman got the string and went back outside.
Stone signed the bill and put it in his pocket, then started back to the airplane. Dino was standing halfway between the building and the airplane, and the landing light was not yet turned on. The luggage had been removed from the airplane and was piled next to him. As he got nearer to Dino, he noticed that the ball of string the lineman had asked for was at his feet, and that he was holding the string, which led into the cockpit.
“What are you doing?” Stone asked.
Dino handed him a piece of green-jacketed copper wire about three inches long. “Do you recognize that?” he asked.
“No, where’d you get it?”
“It was on the carpet at the top of the airstair, just inside the door.”
“And that caused you to unload the airplane?”
“Call me crazy,” Dino said. “We’ll see.” He tugged hard on the string, and the airplane’s landing light came on.
“I don’t get—” Stone started to say. Then the front end of the airplane exploded. Stone and Dino dove behind the piled luggage, and small pieces of airplane rained down around them. When they looked up again, the cockpit and everything ahead of it had disappeared. The nose gear, amazingly, was still intact.
Then, slowly, the airplane sat down on her tail, making a crunching noise.
“Holy shit!” Stone said, getting to his feet.
Across the ramp, Pat and her client were cowering next to the CJ4. “Are you two all right?” she shouted.
“Fine,” Stone yelled back. “My airplane isn’t so good, though.” He turned to Dino. “What did you do?”
Dino looked sheepish. “The wire made me suspicious, so I tied some string to the master switch and rigged it so that I could turn it on from here. I guess I didn’t really believe that there was a bomb, and I didn’t want to call the bomb squad.”
“Well, I congratulate you on still being alive — and on saving our luggage, too.”
“I’m sorry about the airplane,” Dino said.
“That’s what insurance is for,” Stone replied, and got out his cell phone. “I’d better call them now. You can deal with the cops.”
“I think I’ll call Sir Martin Beveridge,” he said. “It’s better to deal with these things from the top down.”
The police were there in minutes with a chief inspector in charge, and a van full of men and equipment; they were soon crawling over Stone’s M2 like ants.
Stone was about to call his travel agent to book himself and Dino on a flight to New York, when Pat came over. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve talked with my client, and if you like, you and Dino can fly back with us.”
“What a great idea!” Stone said. “Saves us a trip to Heathrow and a lot of hassle.”
“We’ve got some very rare favorable winds today, so we’ll fly to Presque Isle, Maine, and clear customs there. Do you think you can get a charter to meet you and take you to Teterboro?”
“We can do that,” Stone replied. “Where’s Presque Isle?”
“Just south of the Canadian border. We can clear customs there much faster than Bangor, where we’d have to mix with commercial passengers.”
“Good to know.”
Pat pulled him aside, looking embarrassed. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re still my attorney, right?”
“Correct.”
“I didn’t tell you the whole reason why Paul and Kevin have behaved the way they have, but this business with your airplane changes things.”
“Go on.”
“In the beginning, when they were just trying to frighten me, it was because I know a lot more about Paul’s business and his relationship with Kevin than I’ve told you.”
“Tell me now, then.”
“I was a part of what they were doing. I flew Paul to various meetings with briefcases full of money, and I knew what it was for. I wasn’t exactly a partner, but I was an accomplice.”
“I see.”
“When Kevin fired those shots at us on Dartmoor, he wasn’t warning you, he was warning me, because he thought I might tell you about them. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to testify against them.”
“And now?”
“I still don’t want to testify against them, but if you advise me to, I will. The bomb on your airplane was a convincer.”
“I understand, and I’ll keep you as much out of it as I can. The New York DA will be more interested in the murders than in their past.”
They rejoined Dino, and the chief inspector approached. “Commissioner,” he said to Dino, “my men tell me it was something like half a pound of plastique, wired to the master switch. Very simple, really.”
Dino thanked him. “Do you need us for anything else?”
“No, we’ve talked to everybody. Mr. Barrington, what do you want done with your airplane?”
“My insurance agent will be in touch with you about that,” Stone replied. “He’s in California and not open yet, but I’ve left a message for him.”
The captain gave him a card. “We’ve checked, and this Mr. Reeves in the Mustang didn’t head for Reykjavik, as you said he might. He filed for Cork. Nothing beyond that. We’re still checking.”
“I hope you catch up with him,” Stone said.
“Mind you, we’ve nothing to connect him to your airplane, except your suspicions. At least, not yet.”
“I understand. Thank you for your help, Captain. We’ll be off now.” He shook the man’s hand, and he and Dino carried their luggage over to the CJ4 and stowed it. Five minutes later, Pat was taxiing the airplane to the runway, with her client in the right cockpit seat and Stone and Dino buckled into passenger seats.
They landed at Shannon, and Stone used the refueling stop to call his insurance agent again. “Larry?”
“Yes, Stone, I got your message. Have you had a problem?”
“You’re not going to believe it, Larry.”
55
The MI6 car picked up Quentin and Millie at the Connaught at seven AM and drove them to headquarters, where they were escorted to the ground floor and a large conference room, with an office to one side for Quentin. His team was already there, unpacking equipment and dealing with the locals about the voltage differences.
Ian Rattle turned up. “Good morning. When can your people start installing your gear in Regent’s Park?”
“Not in broad daylight,” Quentin said. “It’s a black bag job, and they don’t know the territory yet.”
“Have a look at our monitors — we’ve got some aerial shots of the area, and a couple of cameras on the ground.”
“Please take away your ground cameras now,” Quentin said. “We’ll cover all the angles we need, and half our job is not getting spotted. I do want to see the aerial shots, though. For God’s sake don’t have any more overflights, especially with choppers.”
Ian led him over to a large monitor. “Put up the shot from yesterday afternoon,” he said to a tech. An aerial view of a large house surrounded by parkland came into view. “Zoom in to the delivery entrance.”
Quentin peered at the closer shot. “I see a delivery truck unloading some large crates,” he said.
“Three or four of them.”
“Anything longer than, say, four feet?”
“No, there are no air-to-ground missiles in those boxes, if that’s what you’re thinking, unless they’re building them from scratch in the house.”
“Doesn’t seem likely. Do you have or have access to any drones?”
“Possibly,” Ian replied.
“I’d like to know what could be available, by type, range, load, et cetera, and especially hang time.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ian said, then excused himself.
“What do you have in mind?” Millie asked him.
“We’re going to try for the same level of surveillance we have on the Washington site, but that will depend on how difficult it is to get inside. It would be a great help if you could ask Ian or somebody around here if it’s possible to get the plans for this house — maybe from whatever authority issues building permits over here. It’s an old house, so it must have been occasionally updated along the way, especially after the sultan bought it. I’d bet that they did a major renovation at that time.”
“I’ll go find somebody,” Millie said.