Lucid Intervals (Stone Barrington 18)

Stone opened the envelope and extracted a photograph-two photographs, actually, a head-on shot and a profile-of a man, apparently in his thirties, with short, dark hair and an aquiline nose. “He’s pretty nondescript, isn’t he?”

“My service has always preferred nondescript types,” Felicity replied. “Perhaps that is why I haven’t married.”

“Are you required to marry someone in your service?”

“No, but that is the preferred arrangement. It makes security so much simpler if both spouses are employed; then they can tell the same lies about their work to their acquaintances.”

“How old is this photograph?” Stone asked.

“Twelve years,” she said.

“So he could look quite different now?”

“I would be very surprised if he didn’t,” she said. “It was one of his gifts to look different when required.”

“And what did Mr. Whitestone do to make you willing to pay a hundred thousand pounds to get your hands on him?”

“Quite simply, he betrayed us,” she said. “Oh, not to the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China but to Mammon.”

“So he liked money. What else is new?”

“What’s new is that he did not retire from our service to make a fortune in the City,” she said, referring to London’s financial district. “Instead he remained in the service for years while selling information that made him very wealthy.”

“To whom?”

“To whomever would pay him for it, presumably.”

“I see. And why didn’t you have him arrested and tried?”

“He vanished a moment before we knew what he had done,” she said, “and, in any case, a trial would have been out of the question.”

“A great embarrassment?”

“A great humiliation,” she replied. “He had risen to near the top. A public recounting of his sins might have destroyed the service.”

“Destroyed it? How could that happen?”

“Believe me, it could have happened. Actually, it still could.”

“What other information do you have about this man?” Stone asked.

“He has been seen twice only a few blocks from here: in the lobby of the Seagram Building, at Park Avenue and Fifty-second Street,” she said.

Stone was well acquainted with the building, since the law firm for which he was of counsel was housed there, as was one of his favorite restaurants, the Four Seasons.

“What does he do there?” Stone asked.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “He could work there, he could have been visiting someone who worked there-we just don’t know.”

“Who saw him?”

“A member of Parliament who once worked for our service.”

“And what description did he give you?”

“None,” she replied.

“I don’t understand. If he saw the man, why didn’t he describe him?”