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“Oh, I don’t know, maybe. Mr. Freeman will be here—he loves your cooking.”
Helene blushed.
Stone went upstairs and sat in his study while Holly changed for dinner. At a quarter to seven, the front doorbell rang. He picked up the phone: “Yes?”
“Hi, Stone, it’s Mike. I’m early, I know. Will you let these guys in the SUV know not to shoot me?”
“Sure, Mike, I’ll buzz you in. I’m in the study.” Stone called the phone in the car and eased the minds of the two Agency security men.
Mike made his way to the study, and Stone poured him a drink. “Have a seat, Mike. What’s up?”
“I wanted to talk with you about something, and this seems like a good time.”
“Sure.”
“It occurs to me that, since Kate Lee has only a few months left in office, it might be good if we asked her to join the Strategic Services board.”
“What a good idea!”
“Do you think she’d consider it?”
Holly spoke up from the doorway. “I think she’d jump at it.” She poured herself a drink, allowed Mike to peck her on the cheek, and sat down.
“Why jump?” Mike asked.
“I think she’s nervous about having enough to do when the president has left office. I know for a fact that she doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on his family cattle farm. She has a horror of anything agricultural.”
“I hope you’re right,” Mike said.
“And,” Holly continued, “it would give her an excuse to spend some time in New York. She likes it here, and so does her husband.”
“Then I’ll broach the subject,” Mike said. “There’s something else: I had lunch with the AIC of the New York FBI office today, and we tiptoed around the subject of Jasmine Shazaz and her friends.”
“Oh?” Holly asked. “Anything I should know about?”
“Nothing specific, but he gave me the impression that he wasn’t much interested in cooperating with your people and the NYPD in the hunt. The Bureau has always been a credit hog, and I think they would prefer not to share it with anybody in this instance.”
“Did he give you any indication of what his plan is?”
“Only that they’re bringing in something like fifty more agents to work on it.”
Stone spoke up. “I’ll bet they won’t be distributing flyers on the West Side.”
“Anything else?” Holly asked.
“Only that, in my opinion, the AIC would do anything he could think of to derail your efforts in his favor. Did you see the piece in The New York Times Magazine about the Bureau’s bu
mbling in intelligence matters over the years?”
“I did. Bumbling seems to be a tradition at the Bureau.”
The doorbell rang, and Stone picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“This is Special Agent Carmichael with the Secret Service,” a male voice said. “The director will arrive in two minutes.”
“Thank you,” Stone said. “I’ll be right down to meet her. Did you identify yourself to the two men in the black SUV?”
“They insisted,” the man replied.
