Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 12

for me later. So did Kate Rule.” Katharine Rule Lee was the president’s wife and the Director of Central Intelligence.
    â€œYou are well connected, aren’t you, Ed?”
    â€œI know quite a few folks; not all of ’em want to know me.”
    â€œBecause of your indiscretions?”
    Rawls nodded. “Stone, I can see you’re here with the idea of tracking down Dick’s killer and putting him in jail, but that’s not how it works in this particular game.”
    â€œHow does it work?”
    â€œWe find out who gave the order, and after a while, we make something happen to him in such a way that doesn’t seem connected to the Stone murders.”
    Stone noted the “we.” “And how do we make that happen?”
    â€œOh, somebody has an auto accident on an icy road, or maybe he has a few sips of a dioxin cocktail. Satisfaction comes slow in this game.”
    Stone looked at his watch. “I’d better be going; I have to make some calls, and I still have quite a lot of work to do on Dick’s estate.”
    â€œTell you what, let’s play golf tomorrow morning—nine holes at, say, ten and then I’ll take you to lunch at the yacht club. Pick you up at Dick’s at nine-forty-five?”
    â€œSounds good,” Stone said. He shook hands with Rawls and went to his car. As he drove back up Ed Rawls’s drive, the gate was open again. Then, in his rearview mirror, he saw it close behind him.

11
    S TONE DROVE BACK TO the house and called Lance’s cell phone.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIt’s Stone.”
    â€œEverything all right?”
    â€œSo far. Tell me about Ed Rawls.”
    There was silence for a moment, while Lance thought about it. “Oh, God,” he said. “Ed lives up there, doesn’t he? I’d forgotten.”
    â€œTell me about him.”
    â€œWhat do you want to know?”
    â€œEverything you’ve got time for.”
    â€œAll right. Ed was a second-generation guy; his father worked for Bill Donovan in the OSS during World War Two and was with Dulles when the Agency was created. Ed became a star in Operations; he initially made his name as a new agent in Vietnam. He had a talent for recruiting, even people whose language he didn’t speak, but it didn’t take him long to learn the language. He ran teams of South Vietnamese into Laos and the North to gather intelligence, take and interrogate prisoners and destroy weapons stockpiles; he jumped out of airplanes into the jungle, got what he was after and walked home if a chopper couldn’t get to him without attracting too much attention.
    â€œBy the time the war was over, he was a near legend, and by the time I met him, when I was in training, he was the actual thing. He was a great mentor, and everybody loved him, except the colleagues who had to compete with him.
    â€œAfter the Farm, he was posted to Berlin and made a whole new name for himself then. He preceded Dick in running the London station, then he got caught in bed with somebody’s wife and got sent to Stockholm, which was a demotion. Ed never could keep his cock in his pants, and the cold winters didn’t slow him down.
    â€œUnfortunately, one of his girls was a setup of the Soviets, and they took the usual embarrassing photographs. He was up against it, due to retire in a couple of years, and exposure would have gotten him fired, after his debacle in London. He began feeding them information, probably harmless stuff. Two of our people were designated to follow him to a possible meet with the Soviets, and they were both shot. Kate Rule, herself, found him out and got him sent to prison. He spent four or five years in the Atlanta Federal Prison, until the Agency got some backdoor information from a former source that seemed to clear him.
    â€œHe was also the source of a tip that put somebody we were looking for in a cottage on North Islesboro. That, apparently, tipped the balance, and the top echelon at Langley, including Kate Rule, recommended a presidential pardon. He also got a million-dollar reward and repaired to his ancestral home in Dark Harbor to amuse himself as best he could and await death. That’s about it.”
    â€œIs he somebody I can trust?”
    â€œTrust to what?”
    â€œTell me the truth.”
    â€œProbably, especially if it’s in his interest to do so. Why do you ask?”
    â€œRawls told me he thinks Dick’s