They dined on Caesar salad and two sliced porterhouse steaks, with haricots verts and roasted fingerling potatoes, and dessert was apple pie à la mode.
The ladies went to the powder room and Dino took a turn around the deck. Perce Willard came and sat down next to Stone, and they were served coffee and brandy. “I can’t figure out who the hell you are,” he said. “You’re sitting here on this gorgeous yacht, with a stickpin in your tie that says you’re a member of the Squadron, and a bakery heiress on your arm. I know you have a fancy title at the Agency, but you don’t really work there. And nobody I know has any idea what you do. What the hell do you do, Stone?”
“What do you do for the Agency, Perce?” Stone parried.
“Whatever Lance Cabot asks me to do,” Perce answered.
“Same here,” Stone replied. “And she’s not an heiress, she’s a working woman who got poisoned recently by somebody on that yacht outside the harbor.”
“I know what I get out of this,” Perce said. “I’m seventy, and I get to stay on salary instead of taking my pension, and Lance gives me the title of station chief, which bumps up my civil service grade a notch or two, and I get to fuck his beautiful cousin two or three times a week. What are you getting out of it?”
“Pretty much what you get, except for the part about the beautiful cousin,” Stone said. “And, of course, like you, I get the opportunity to serve my country now and then.”
“Just what service are we providing our country right now? Are we supposed to do something to that giant yacht with the Russian name? I mean, I’ve got an Agency-owned Colt 1911 in my sock drawer, but they haven’t issued me a limpet mine, yet. And even if they did, one of those people aboard is the acting secretary of state, so we can’t blow him up.” He thought for a moment. “Can we?”
“Not unless Lance tells us to,” Stone replied. “But let me bring you up to date: the acting secretary and his wife, who has an important job at the Pentagon, may very well be active Russian spies, and Betty Baker, Vanessa’s mother, may very well be who’s running them.”
Perce stared at him. “A Russian mole is running State?”
“Very possibly.”
“So what are these people doing here—planning a Russian invasion of Martha’s Vineyard?”
Stone laughed. “Probably not, Perce. Suffice to say, they’re up to no good, and Lance wants to know just what that is.”
“Oh, is that all? It sounds like we’re going to have to make something up, just to keep Lance happy.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Stone said. “I think all we can do is to report their actions, if any, to Lance, and let him figure it out.”
“Well, my guess is that, right now, they’re doing pretty much what we’re doing. Maybe we should anchor out there next to them, then we can watch each other do it.”
“I believe that you and I are not the only ones who are observing them,” Stone said. “Let’s wait and see what our invisible colleagues turn up. Maybe it will be something we can act on.”
“Well,” Perce said. “‘Let’s wait and see’ has always been my personal credo. What’s yours?”
“I think maybe I’ll adopt yours, Perce,” Stone replied. “It has the virtue of being optimistic—and not requiring any immediate action.”
Dino came back from his stroll, the women reappeared from the powder room, and they all sat down to wait and see.
Vanessa came and sat next to Stone, snuggling up. “I think you’re not very happy with me,” she said.
“Au contraire,” Stone replied, searching for a place to rest his hand and finding an attractive thigh. “Just being with you makes me happy. You are, however, withholding something from me that, if I knew what it was, might make it easier to protect you from whatever you’re frightened of.”
“I understand,” she replied, squeezing his hand and moving it farther up her thigh. “Let me explain as well as I can, while still keeping a promise.”
“Please do.”
“Not long after I was moved home from the hospital, before I could speak, I found I could listen and understand what others were saying, even though I appeared unconscious to them. During that time, Mother had a visitor, Yevgeny Chekhov. He came into my room, looked at me, and pinched me—hard. I did not respond, because I couldn’t even wince. I then heard Mother come in and Chekhov said, ‘Perhaps I should send someone around to complete this task.’
“Mother said, ‘Not necessary. Her doctors have told me she can neither hear nor see, nor understand anything said to her.’ There was a little tremor in her voice that he didn’t catch, but I know well. It is always there when she is lying.
“There was a very long silence, then he said, ‘As you wish, but if that turns out not to be the case, you will have to personally deal with the consequences.’”
“Do you think, then, that Betty is somehow in cahoots with Chekhov?” Stone asked.
“I’m sorry,” Vanessa said. “Did I not mention that this conversation was conducted in Russian?”
“Betty speaks Russian?”
“Fluently. She studied the language and literature at Harvard, and she encouraged Mac McIntosh to study there, too.”
“And you speak Russian?”
“Schoolgirl Russian. But I understand it quite well.”
“Does Chekhov know that?”
“No. They often spoke Russian when together, and he took no notice of me when they did.”
“Could you hear what they said to each other on that visit?”
“I could and did.”
“Can you tell me the contents of that conversation?”
“No, I can’t. It must have occurred to Mother that I heard them, because the next day, when I was beginning to speak a little, she extracted a promise from me not to tell anyone what she and Chekhov said to each other—on pain of death, hers and mine.”
“Did what they said to each other constitute a threat to this country?”
“That’s a sneaky question,” she said.
“I’m a sneaky guy,” he replied.
“No, not really.”
“Not a good answer.”
“Then no, they did not threaten the country. It was more benign than that.”
“I should tell you that your government is treating their presence on this island as a very serious threat.”
“I have no knowledge that it is their intention to threaten my country.”
“And yet . . .”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it at that,” she said.