Dirty Work (Stone Barrington 9)

“Architect will not be amused.”

“Well, no. Get some sleep, Mason. We’ll speak in the morning.”

“Where are you?”

“At Barrington’s house.”

“I’ll send some people over.”

“Don’t bother. I think we’re safe for tonight.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

Stone and Carpenter hung up.

“I loved your house in Connecticut,” she said.

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Marie-Thérèse let herself into the twenty-four-hour-a-day storage facility, went to her closet, and unlocked the door, closing it behind her. The space was about eight by ten feet, much like a prison cell, she thought. She stripped down to the skin, took a fur coat from a rack of clothes, and spread it on the floor. She found another coat and wrapped herself in it, then lay down on the fur coat.

Now she had used her most valuable, most hoarded resource: her own identity. She would not be able to use it again. Not, she thought, unless they were so stupid as not to enter it into their computers and send it to Interpol.

She fell asleep thinking of the baby she had held in her lap all the way across the Atlantic.

34

Five men and four women got off a Concorde flight at JFK and got into two waiting vans. The driver of one handed one of the men a cell phone. “Just hold down the number one, sir.”

He held down the number one, then put the phone to his ear.

“Trading Partners,” a woman’s voice said.

“Do you know who this is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re en route. I want a meeting in one hour, with everybody, and I mean everybody.”

“I understand, sir. I’ve been holding the conference room.”

“Good.” He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to the driver.

“It’s yours, sir, while you’re here,” the driver said.

Architect put the phone in his pocket and turned his attention to The New York Times.

The phone rang in Stone’s bedroom. “Hello?” he said sleepily, glancing at the clock.

“Miss Carpenter, please,” a woman’s voice said.

Stone shook Carpenter awake. “Call for you,” he said.

“What time is it?” Carpenter asked, rolling over and picking up the extension.

Stone hung up his phone. “A little after two P.M. We slept pretty good.”