“Tomorrow we start on engine-out procedures: approaches, missed approaches and landings, all on one engine. It’ll be fun.”
Stone shook the man’s hand, walked back to his car, got in and rested his head on the steering wheel. He felt as though he had been machine-washed and fluff-dried; every muscle ached. He got out his cell phone and called Mei, a Chinese lady, and scheduled a massage before dinner.
BY THE TIME Mei had finished with him, he felt human again and hungry.
Dino was waiting for him at Elaine’s. “You look like shit,” he said pleasantly.
“Let me tell you how I got that way,” Stone said, taking his first, grateful sip of his Knob Creek.
37
When Stone walked into his bedroom, he found Felicity sitting up in bed, reading from a folder with a red stripe stamped across it. She closed the folder and put it into her briefcase, which was next to her on the bed. “How goes the flying?”
“Pretty good, but I’m exhausted,” he said, peeling off his clothes and getting in bed beside her.
“No playtime tonight?”
“I’ll do better in the morning,” he said. “How’s the search for Hackett’s Paratroop Regiment records going?”
“Extremely slowly,” she replied. “If my documents people don’t find something soon, I’m going to have to pull them off the job.”
“How about the search for his fingerprints with the State Department?”
“Oh, we found those,” she said. “They’re the same as Hackett’s current prints.”
“I hate to let the air out of your balloon, Felicity,” Stone said, “but when Hackett came to this country twenty-five years ago, Whitestone was still working in your service, was he not? And he couldn’t be in two countries at once.”
“Don’t you think we’ve thought of that?” she asked. “It’s funny, but the more convinced I become that Whitestone is Hackett, the more convinced you are that he’s not. Could that be because he’s letting you fly his jet airplane? Could that be because you like him?”
“I do like him,” Stone confessed, “and I suppose that could mean I have a bias in his favor, but it doesn’t affect the facts of the situation, and you have a lot of facts that you just can’t reconcile.”
“Yes, we do,” she admitted, “but you don’t have any facts to support Hackett’s innocence.”
“Of course I do. Whitestone could simply not have worked for your service on a full-time basis while simultaneously establishing a fabulously successful business in this country. That is a fact.”
“No, it’s not; it’s a factoid.”
“What’s a factoid?”
“Something that seems to be true, but isn’t what it se
ems, like a humanoid in a sci-fi movie?”
“Well, I don’t know what else to do to help you. As it is, I’m spending all my time getting type-rated in an airplane I’m never going to be able to own or even fly, except with or for Jim Hackett. How is that helping you?”
“You’re gaining his confidence,” Felicity said, “and he’s paying you to do it. That sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
“Maybe for me, but not for you.”
“When you’ve earned his confidence it will be easier to poke holes in his legend.”
“When are you going to tell me why your people still care about Whitestone?”
“When I’m allowed to but not before,” she replied. “And I may never be allowed to.”
Stone pulled the covers up. “I can’t think about this anymore,” he said.
“See you in the morning,” she replied and switched off her bedside lamp.