Lucid Intervals (Stone Barrington 18)

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Stone drove to Teterboro, did a thorough preflight inspection on Hackett’s Mustang, then got into the cockpit and started the engines. When he had run through the lengthy checklist, he called Clearance Delivery. The controller gave him a routing that took him north for a few miles, then northeast across Connecticut and Massachusetts and into Maine. To his surprise, his destination was Islesboro, where his own Maine house was.

He got taxi instructions to runway 1, then took off and followed his routing. An hour later he was lined up for landing on the little paved airstrip on Islesboro. As he touched down and began to roll out, applying the brakes, he saw a car parked beside the runway.

He got the airplane stopped, then taxied back toward the car. As he shut down the engines, a window rolled down, and Hackett beckoned.

Stone secured the airplane, then locked it and tossed his bag into the rear seat of the car and got into the passenger seat.

“How are you?” he asked Hackett.

“I’m very well, considering that I’m cut off from all my usual contacts,” Hackett replied. “Let’s not talk now; I’ll devote my attention to driving.”

He drove into the village of Dark Harbor and turned toward the Tarrantine Yacht Club.

For a moment, Stone thought he was driving to his own home, but Hackett turned into a driveway a mailbox short.

“Well, this is a surprise,” Stone said, getting out of the car before a shingled cottage. “We’re next-door neighbors, but from my house I can’t see this place for the trees.”

“I couldn’t go to my own home on Mount Desert,” Hackett said, “so I chose your location instead, almost.”

“Who would have thought it?” Stone asked, getting his bag from the rear seat and closing the door.

Inside, Hackett directed him to an upstairs room. “I’ll see how lunch is doing,” he said.

Stone went upstairs, hung his jacket in the closet and unpacked his bag. His room was small but comfortable, and he had his own bath.

Hackett called from downstairs, “Lunch is ready!”

“Be right down,” Stone called back.

51

They sat at the kitchen table, where a housekeeper served them a lobster salad, Stone’s favorite, and Hackett cracked a bottle of good California chardonnay.

“I have news for you,” Stone said.

“Good news, I hope.”

“Yes, indeed. You’re off the hook.”

Hackett stopped eating and looked at him. “The Whitestone thing?”

“That very thing.”

“Tell me all.”

“It is my understanding that the people in London…”

“The home secretary and the foreign secretary?”

“Yes, those people-have called it off.”

“Do they accept that I’m not Whitestone?”

“I don’t know about that, but I am reliably informed that they have no further interest in you.”

Hackett put down his fork and rested his forehead in a hand, his elbow on the table. “Thank God,” he said.

“Congratulations.”