Lucid Intervals (2010)

amiably.
    “You won’t believe it,” Stone replied. “I spent it in ground school, learning to fly a Cessna Mustang.”
    “Isn’t that a jet?”
    “It is.”
    “But you don’t own a jet.”
    “I do not.”
    “Are you planning to buy one?”
    “I have a new client, Jim Hackett, who says that if I come to work for him, I’ll be able to buy one next year.”
    “You’re leaving Woodman and Weld?”
    “No. Hackett is hiring me through the firm for special projects.”
    “And the first special project is learning to fly a jet?”
    “You guessed it.”
    “And he’s paying you for this?”
    “You guessed it again.”
    “How long will it take?”
    “Two, two and a half weeks.”
    “You can learn to fly a jet that fast?”
    “You forget, I already know how to fly; I’m just learning a new airplane.”
    Felicity made her entrance forty minutes late. “Apologies,” she said. “Drink.”
    Stone waved at a waiter and secured a Rob Roy.
    “How was your day?” she asked.
    Stone gave her a brief account of it.
    “And it takes only two weeks to learn?”
    “If I’m lucky.”
    “I’m not flying with you,” she said. “Let me know when you have a hundred hours.”
    “I already have three thousand hours,” he said.
    “A hundred hours in type.”
    “Right. What have your day’s investigations produced?”
    And she began to complain.

35
    F elicity took a sip of her Rob Roy. “Turns out that the records of the Parachute Regiment at the time Hackett alleges he was a member are stored in an army warehouse in Aldershot, south of London.”
    “So?” Stone asked. “Are they available?”
    “They are available,” she replied, “but they are a sodden, mold-infested mess, having been placed in a corner of the warehouse that has been flooded twice by huge rainstorms in the past two years.”
    “What can you do about that?”
    “I’ve been able to spare two document specialists who are trying to dry and extract the relevant pages,” she replied, “but quite frankly, if I had a dozen people to spare for a year, that might not be enough manpower or time to find Hackett’s and Timmons’s records.”
    “In this country,” Stone said, “if you are fingerprinted for anything—military service, for instance—your prints end up in the FBI database. Is the same true in Britain?”
    “Yes, and we’ve already been to the police, but that far back, none of the records have been computerized, so a search of paper records has to be done by hand. The problem that arises is that hardly anyone with the police is old enough to know how to accomplish such a search, as opposed to a computer search. We are being defeated by the lack of old skills among younger employees. What’s more, the records from that time have also been stored in a warehouse in boxes that were poorly labeled.”
    “So you have no hope of finding a record of Hackett’s fingerprints?”
    “Very little hope. It’s just barely possible that we might get lucky.”
    “I have a suggestion,” Stone said.
    “Please make it a good one.”
    “Hackett is a naturalized American citizen,” Stone pointed out. “He would have been fingerprinted at the time of submitting his application for citizenship, and the State Department would have his application on file.”
    Felicity brightened. “That is a very good suggestion, Stone. I’ll have the ambassador make inquiries tomorrow.” She wrinkled her brow. “I wonder what the State Department would make of a foreign ambassador inquiring about the fingerprints of an American citizen.”
    “Good point,” Stone said. “It might be better to have your police make the request through the FBI.”
    “Perhaps so,” she said. “I’ll phone the commander of the Metropolitan Police tomorrow and make the request.” She took another sip of her drink. “Why do you suppose Hackett wants you to learn to fly a jet aeroplane?”
    “I can only guess,” Stone said. “When he was trying to persuade me to come to work for him he told me that, in a year, I’d be able to afford my own jet.”
    “That must be very alluring for you,” Felicity said.
    “It’s interesting, but not alluring.”
    “I’ll bet you’ve had little-boy fantasies for years about flying your own jet.”
    “I’m afraid you’re right,” Stone admitted.
    “Then why don’t you go to work for him?”
    “That’s what I’m doing right now; Woodman and Weld has assigned me to Hackett.”
    “So what’s the