Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 14

you.”
    The president followed his wife out the door, closing it behind him.
    Stone stood in the center of the Oval Office, alone with its ghosts. He recognized the President’s desk as the one John Kennedy had used, and he remembered a photograph of John-John playing under it. He took in the portraits and the model of a yacht on one side of the room, and the rug under his feet with the Great Seal of the United States woven into it.
    Then the door through which he had entered opened and Lance Cabot walked in.
    â€œOh, shit,” Stone muttered to himself.

3
    L ance smiled and extended a hand. “So nice to see you, Stone.”
    Stone had not seen Lance for several months, and that had been all right with him. Every time he saw Lance he found himself in the middle of some sort of problem, and it seemed to be happening again. He shook the hand. “Hello, Lance,” he said. “What the fuck am I doing in the Oval Office, about to go to St. Marks?”
    Lance arranged himself in a chair and motioned for Stone to sit. “Relax, Stone, all is about to be revealed.”
    Stone couldn’t wait. “Please start revealing.”
    â€œHave you ever heard of a man named Teddy Fay?”
    â€œOf course; everybody’s heard of him. He killed several right-wing political figures a couple of years ago, and when they were about to catch him, he killed himself by exploding the small airplane he was flying.”
    â€œYou’re half right,” Lance replied.
    â€œWhich half?”
    â€œThe first half. Teddy didn’t die in the aircraft explosion. He got out, made his way to New York and spent some time last year killing Middle Easterners whom he believed to be enemies of the United States.”
    â€œ That was Teddy Fay?”
    â€œIndubitably, it was.”
    â€œWas he the guy who died in the collapse of the building he bombed, then?”
    â€œNot quite. At the time there was every indication that the body found in the ruins of the building was that of Teddy, but a woman who had reported her homeless father missing gave the NYPD a DNA sample last week, and it matched that of the body we found.”
    â€œSo Fay is still alive?”
    â€œI’m afraid we don’t know, but we have no conclusive evidence that he’s dead.”
    â€œAnd what does this have to do with my going to St. Marks?”
    â€œLet me begin at the beginning, Stone, since there’s a lot you may not know about Teddy from press reports.”
    â€œPlease do.”
    â€œTheodore Fay was a career employee of the CIA, joining in his twenties and retiring at age sixty-five. He worked in Technical Services, which is the rather bland name of the department that supplies all sorts of things to agents going into the field: clothing, disguises, false passports, driver’s licenses, insurance cards, credit cards and other documents an agent requires to establish a legend—that is, a false identity—in the field. The department also supplies weapons—some of them quite exotic—communications equipment and, well, you get the picture.”
    â€œI do. What did Teddy do there?”
    â€œTeddy, over the course of his long career, did everything . He was the most skilled technician and inventor the Agency has ever employed. Twice, he was offered the job of heading his department, and he turned it down both times, because he enjoyed his work too much to become a manager.
    â€œFor the last twenty years of his career Teddy ran one of several teams that supplied the tools of their trade to, for want of a better word, spies. He was expert in virtually every area of his work, and he trained other specialists.”
    â€œSo that would make him able to change his own identity with documents, et cetera, with some ease?”
    â€œIt would, which is why it has, so far, proved impossible to catch him.”
    â€œIs he on another rampage now?”
    â€œNo, not that we know of. My guess is that he is living quietly in retirement.”
    Stone frowned. “In St. Marks?”
    â€œPerhaps. That is what we want you and Holly to learn.”
    â€œWhy St. Marks?”
    â€œThere is another Agency employee named Irene Foster living there. She retired after twenty-five years, shortly before Teddy’s most recent vanishing. Another former Agency employee has told us that many years ago, she and Teddy had a rather torrid affair. We’ve not been able to establish that