Stone spoke up. “My information is a revenge killing, in return for the Agency’s busting up a drug ring in East Germany.”
“Your information?” Don Brown asked, with laconic incredulity.
Stone shrugged.
“Details?” Brown asked.
“I answered Dick’s office phone, and somebody used a code word, Kirov, which turned out to be a warning.”
“Okay,” Brown said.
“Problem is, the caller may have thought I was Dick.”
“So,” Harley Davis said, “if they think Dick is still alive, somebody may make another house call.”
Stone nodded. “So I’m told.”
“Are you armed, Stone?” Rawls asked.
“I will be tomorrow.”
“That may not be soon enough. I’ve got a shotgun in the car you can borrow until you’re equipped.”
“Thanks.”
Their sandwiches arrived, and everybody ate in silence for a while.
“For what it’s worth, Ed,” Stone said, “Lance didn’t think any of this had spilled over on you.”
“It’s nice that Lance thinks that,” Rawls said, “but he don’t know everything.”
“Who knows everything?” Mack Morris observed.
There were affirmative grunts around the table. Then Rawls’s three cohorts began to grill Stone.
“How come you’re Dick’s first cousin and we never heard of you?” Harley Davis asked.
“There was a rift in the family,” Stone said. “I spent a summer up here when I was eighteen, and that was about the only contact we had with the Boston branch. I had a great aunt who lived in New York. She was the only one who was friendly.”
“What was the cause of the rift?” Don Brown asked.
“My father left Yale to become a carpenter in New York. He was also a member of the Communist Party for a little while.” He watched the four men exchange glances.
“How little a while?” Harley asked.
“A couple of years. His family disowned him, and my mother’s family disowned her for marrying him.”
“She was a Stone?”
“Yes, Matilda.”
Don looked up from his sandwich. “She a painter?”
“Yes.”
“My wife was a painter; she thought your mother was the greatest artist since Rembrandt.”
“My father thought so, too.”