by Stuart Woods
Lance turned back to Rick. “If or when any attempt is made to tow the airplane from the hangar, tell your guy to shoot out the nosewheel tire, employing stealth, preferably with a silenced weapon. He should not fire at any person, even if fired upon.”
Rick transmitted the order. “Tell me when you want me to go,” he said to Lance.
“I want to know if any passengers are on that aircraft before I make any decisions.”
“My guy is working on it.”
Lance sat very still and waited, his eyes closed. Stone thought he might be napping.
Presently, Rick’s radio squawked, and he put an ear to it. Then he leaned into the van. “Two large vans just arrived at a door on the other side of the hangar. Six men and two women went inside, and their luggage is being taken into the hangar, as we speak.”
“Tell your guy to do his work on the nosewheel, then report back.”
A minute passed, and the radio squawked. “The tire is out,” Rick said.
“Right,” Lance said. “How many men do you have at your disposal?”
“Eleven,” Rick replied, “not including you, Stone, and Holly.”
“That should be enough. Let’s get over there, and I want your men to cover the large doors at the front and any other egress. No one is to leave the hangar—should anyone try, shoot to wound, not kill. Go!”
“Now, driver,” Lance said, “give their vehicles a two-minute head start, then drive over to the hangar they are covering and park this van to the right of the main door, where there’s a smaller door in the big door.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
They all sat and waited for two minutes, by Stone’s watch. “Lance,” he said, “what is your plan?”
“Plan?” Lance asked, as if surprised. “I plan to be reasonable, if I can.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then all hell will break loose,” Lance said. “Time to go,” he called to the driver.
The van began to move toward the hangar.
55
As the armored van rolled across the tarmac toward the hangar, the huge doors began to rise and fold, and from the left, a tow tractor appeared from the darkness and moved toward the big jet.
The van pulled up to the position Lance had ordered. They had a very good view of the front of the Gulfstream, to just past the main door. Lance produced an iPhone, tapped the Contacts icon, then tapped in a name. “Ah,” he said, then tapped the resulting phone number. He put the instrument to an ear and listened for several rings, then he apparently got an answer. “Yevgeny!” he said, smiling, as if the man were an old friend. “It’s Lance Cabot here. Good morning! Yes, I know it’s rather early, but I wanted to speak to you before you abandoned Paris.” He listened. “On your way, are you? Well, not quite. If you will be kind enough to send someone to inspect your nosewheel, you’ll find that it’s in no condition to roll, and thus, neither is that beautiful Gulfstream of yours. Go ahead, I’ll wait.” He held the phone a few inches from his ear, and shouting in Russian could be heard. The door of the airplane swung down, and a uniformed pilot ran down the air stair and to the nosewheel, which was quite flat. He ran back up the stairs into the aircraft.
“Had a look, have you?” Lance said into the phone. “Did your pilot explain to you that, with a deflated tire, your airplane cannot move? Good, now let’s have a little chat. I’m sitting outside your hangar in an armored personnel carrier”—he winked at Stone—“and the prefect of the Paris National Police is here along with, I don’t know, perhaps fifty of his men, all suited up for combat, armed with automatic weapons and raring to go. He’s asked me to speak to you, since you, your family, and I are, well, old acquaintances, sort of. Prefect Michel Chance would like for you, your traveling companions, and your airplane’s crew to walk down your air stair into the hangar, and he would very much appreciate it if none of you were holding a weapon or anything else in his hand.” He held the phone away from his ear, and Stone could hear more shouting in Russian. “Now, now, Yevgeny, we don’t want that beautiful airplane of yours all shot full of holes, and the hangar burning down with the airplane inside it and you and your friends inside the airplane—do we? Of course we don’t, but I’m very much afraid that that is exactly what will happen if all of you are not down the stairs in, say, sixty seconds. Let me make it easy—I’ll count down for you: sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight . . .” Lance continued to count.
Stone turned to Holly. “What do we do if Lance gets to zero?”
“Duck,” Holly said.
“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen—running out of time, Yevgeny! Twelve, eleven, ten, nine—hurry up, now, trigger fingers are getting itchy! Eight, seven, six, five, four”—the count slowed—“three, two and a half, two, one and a half, one . . .”
A woman’s hand was stuck out the door, waving a handkerchief.
“Come along, now, Yevgeny, nobody’s going to shoot a woman waving a lace handkerchief. Let’s get them all out.”
One by one, people appeared and walked down the airstair, the men with their hands in the air. Finally, Yevgeny Majorov came out the door and followed them to the shiny white concrete floor of the hangar.
Rick’s men spilled into the hangar, weapons at the ready, and began securing the group’s hands with plastic ties.
Lance was making another phone call. “Prefect Chance, please,” he said. “I apologize for the hour. Just tell him it’s Lance Cabot on an urgent matter.” He covered the phone. “I think he must be asleep,” he said. “His wife sounded very grouchy.” He smiled. “Good morning, Michel. I’m terribly sorry to call at such an ungodly hour, but I have some very good news for you that just won’t wait for the sun to come up. I’m out at Le Bourget, and some of my people and I have detained Yevgeny Majorov, just as he was about to fly off to Saint Petersburg. You see? I told you it was good news, didn’t I? Well, I suppose we could deliver them all—there are about a dozen, including some air crew—to a police station of your choice, but I thought for appearance’s sake that you might want to run out here with a contingent of France’s finest and take them into custody. After all, we’re guests in your country, and we don’t want to presume upon your hospitality. Good, Michel. We’ll look forward to seeing you and your people in an hour or so. Au revoir.” Lance hung up. “Ah,” he said, “that was very satisfying.”
“It was satisfying to me, too,” Stone said.
Rick LaRose walked up, smiling. “All accounted for,” he said.
“Good, good,” Lance replied. “Prefect Chance and his merry men will be here fairly soon. In the meantime, why don’t you turn their pockets out and then have a look in their luggage. You never know what you might find.”
Rick turned to his work.
Lance put his hands on Stone’s and Holly’s shoulders. “Now, since we have a few minutes on our hands, why don’t I have a chat with Comrade Majorov?”
56
Stone said to Lance, “Mind if I sit in on your conversation?”
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind,” Lance said, “but I think Mr. Majorov is likely to be more forthcoming if it’s just the two of us.” He strode over to Majorov, took him by the arm, and marched him up the airstair into the Gulfstream.
“Well,” Holly said, “that was almost exciting.”
“Don’t complain—nobody got hurt,” Stone said. They stood around for a few minutes watching Rick’s men go through the passengers’ pockets and luggage, and apparently not finding anything worth their attention.
Then a white truck rolled into the hangar. Two men in white coveralls got out and produced a tire, a toolbox, and a tank of compressed nitrogen.
“That was fast,” Stone said. “I once had to replace a tire and it took half a day.”
“Gulfstreams get better service than Mustangs, I suppose,” Holly replied.
The two mechanics went to work
changing the tire. They jacked up the front of the airplane, removed the wheel, removed the tire from the wheel, then worked the new tire onto the rim. That done, they inflated it with nitrogen, bolted it onto the airplane, and departed in their truck.
“Wow,” Stone said.
Lance appeared in the doorway of the airplane and beckoned to Rick, who ran up the stairs and conferred with his boss. For a moment, he seemed to disagree with Lance, but Lance seemed to speak firmly to him, and he backed down. He started back down the stairs, but Lance stopped him with a word. Rick took something small from a pocket, handed it to Lance, then continued down the stairs. He had a few words with his men, and they began, rather haphazardly, repacking the passenger luggage, then reloading it, under the direction of one of the pilots.
Then, to Stone’s astonishment, Rick’s men began cutting the plastic ties from the passengers’ wrists, and they all reboarded the aircraft.
Lance reappeared without Majorov, came down the stairs and had a word with the pilot, who got on his phone, then handed Rick his pocketknife. Lance came over to Stone and Holly. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, and waved to the van’s driver, who drove into the hangar.
The FBO’s tow tractor reappeared, hooked up to the aircraft, and began rolling it out of the hangar. Someone inside the airplane retracted the airstair and locked the door.
“Lance, what’s going on?” Stone asked.
“Into the van, both of you, if you please.”
Stone and Holly climbed into the van. When Stone took a breath to protest, Holly squeezed his knee and shook her head.
From outside came the sounds of jet engines spooling up; lights at the Gulfstream’s wingtips began to flash, and a red beacon at the top of the tail began to rotate. The airplane began to move toward a taxiway.
“Lance,” Stone said, “where are Michel Chance and his gendarmes?”
“Asleep in their beds, I should think,” Lance replied.
The van stopped on a taxiway for a moment, then, with a very loud roar, the Gulfstream rolled past them down the runway and left the ground.
Stone was angry. “What the hell just happened?”
“What just happened,” Lance replied, “was that a solution to a very sticky problem was negotiated to the satisfaction of nearly everyone involved.”
Stone was flabbergasted.
“I think, Stone, that you and your business partners will not be hearing from or dealing with Yevgeny Majorov or his friends again, and they will make no attempt to enforce the agreement you signed. Oh, by the way, may I have that banker’s check for thirty million dollars that Jacques Chance gave you?”
Stone produced the check from an inside pocket and handed it to Lance, who deposited it in his own inside pocket. “There,” Lance said, making a dusting motion with his hands, “all done.” He smiled a little smile. “And we won’t be discussing these events again. With anyone, not even each other. A matter of national security, don’t you see?” Then he closed his eyes, sat back in his comfortable seat, and took another of his little naps.
—
STONE AND HOLLY were deposited back in the mews as the sun began to rise. There were no guards present at the gates or on the roof.
They went upstairs, undressed, and climbed back into bed.
“Can you tell me what happened out at Le Bourget?” Stone asked her.
“I should think it’s obvious,” Holly said. “Apparently, an accommodation was reached with Comrade Majorov.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Lance want an accommodation with Majorov?”
“Apparently, because it’s in Lance’s interest to do so. Apparently, it’s in your interest, too, since Majorov, apparently, won’t try to kill you anymore.”
“And no gendarmes showed up, so that wasn’t a real call that Lance made to Michel Chance?”
“Apparently not,” she replied.
“Why do you keep saying ‘apparently’?”
“Because all this is only speculation on my part,” Holly said. “But it makes sense, if Majorov is an asset of Lance’s—part-time, of course. Yevgeny does have a business to run. The good news is, he appears to be out of the hotel business.”
“If all Lance had to do to fix this was to call Majorov, why didn’t he call him a long time ago, instead of waiting until Majorov was trying to leave the country?”
“Apparently, because tonight he had leverage he didn’t have before. Majorov was desperate to leave the country, Lance had prevented that and he thought the gendarmes were on the way.”
“This is all too complicated for me.”
“That’s because your mind is not devious enough for intelligence work.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, sweetheart.” She leaned over and gently bit a nipple, and Stone’s thoughts of Majorov were replaced by other thoughts.
57
Stone was having a sandwich in the mews house the next day, while Holly attended yet another meeting at the CIA station, when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s Ann.”
“I thought you were submerged in work, never to surface again.”
“Actually, that’s a pretty good description of what has happened to me over the past couple of weeks. When are you coming home?”
“Tomorrow night is the grand opening of l’Arrington, and we’re going from that directly to the airport, so I’ll be home early the following morning. I’ll take a day to rest, then, on Election Day I’ll borrow a Mustang from Strategic Services and fly down to Washington. Can I give you a lift?”
“What time of day?”
“What time of day would you prefer?”
“Five-ish?”
“As long as the ‘ish’ doesn’t run too late. I believe we’re both expected for dinner at the White House family quarters—that, and a lot of TV, until we know the result.”
“Okay, pick me up at four sharp. I’ll have a car meet us at, where, Manassas?”
“Right. Given the traffic, I should think we’ll be there by seven.”
“Perfect.”
“How are things going?”
“We’ve been slightly ahead inside the margin of error on most polls. A couple have shown Honk creeping up, but I’m ignoring those.”
“So, you’re in a horse race, then?”
“I wish we weren’t, but we are. I keep expecting something explosive from Honk’s campaign, but it hasn’t happened yet, and if he’s going to pull something, he’s running out of time.”
“I hope there’s no chance of my name coming up again.”
“So do I. It was after the paternity rumors that the polls started getting tight. Your name will not pass my lips until the polls have closed on the West Coast, maybe Hawaii.”
“That’s just fine with me,” Stone said. “I hate getting phone calls from reporters.”
“You seem to have charmed the last one you talked to,” Ann said.
“Wasn’t I supposed to?”
“Well, yes, but I’m jealous anyway. Since the apology by and disappearance of Howard Axelrod, she’s been slyly complimentary about you to a couple of people I know, and the news reports following Axelrod’s exit from the scene have been good to you. Even the evening news shows have gone out of their way to point out that you and Kate were defamed, and Rush Limbaugh expressed regret that he didn’t have you to kick around anymore.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t around to hear all this,” Stone said. “It would have made me nervous.”
“What have you been doing with your time the last few days?”
“Oh, consulting with Marcel duBois on the grand opening, kibitzing with our board on last-minute details, that sort of thing.”
“No grand meals at expensive restaurants?”
“Nope, I’m lunching on a
ham sandwich as we speak.”
“No company of gorgeous women?”
“Of course, every chance I get!”
“I knew that—you didn’t have to tell me. After all, I set you free, didn’t I?”
“Caged no more!”
She laughed. There was a noise from her end like a door opening, people talking, then the door closing again. “Hang on a minute, will you?”
“Sure.” Stone took another bite of his sandwich and tried to listen to the muffled conversation at the other end, which went on for three or four minutes.
“I’m back,” she said, “and this is not going to make you happy.”
“What isn’t going to make me happy?”
“A reporter just came in here and said he’d heard a rumor out of the CIA—that means he’s got a source inside—that the Agency has spent a lot of money protecting you from those Russians that hate you so much while you’ve been in Paris.”
“My goodness, am I supposed to be that important?”
“According to his source, Lance Cabot thinks you are.”
“I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that any report of anything positive Lance Cabot has ever said about me would be grossly overblown and should be dismissed out of hand.”
“But you are a consultant to them, aren’t you?”
“I had a cousin, now deceased, who was a rival of Lance’s at the Agency, so I’ve had dealings there at widely separated intervals.”
“Nothing you can talk about, I suppose.”
“I wouldn’t talk about it, even if I could. The inconsequential nature of the me/Agency relationship would be an embarrassment. I’d rather people thought it was more important.”
“So I don’t have to worry about anything coming out of Honk’s campaign about you and Lance Cabot?”
“They can always make up something, I guess. I can’t stop them.”
“I pointed out to the reporter who was just in here that sullying your name backfired on them last time—resulting in the resignation of a high campaign official. I think he’ll print that.”
