Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 14

telling him that I would do anything I could to help him.”
    â€œYes, well…”
    â€œSo what I should be doing right now is picking up the phone and calling London to report our suspicions.”
    â€œTechnically speaking, yes.”
    â€œTechnically?”
    â€œSort of. I mean, we’re working on a firm identification of the guy, and if he turns out to be the British robber, then you can call your limey buddy.”
    â€œAre we talking minutes, days, weeks or longer?”
    â€œMaybe days. If we’re lucky.”
    â€œSo now I have another slice of green pepper on my metaphorical pizza.”
    â€œFor only a short time, I hope.”
    Will spat out another sliver of green. “Kate—and this is a direct order from your president—fix this.”
    â€œThe green peppers?”
    â€œThe metaphorical green peppers.”
    â€œYes, sir,” she replied.

28
    H olly took a seat on the cottage patio and poured herself a glass of whatever was in the icy pitcher. She sipped it. “Mmmm, what is this?”
    â€œSome kind of rum punch, I think,” Stone said. “Thomas sent it over.”
    â€œIt’s delicious, but it doesn’t taste alcoholic.”
    â€œDon’t you believe it,” Dino said. “I’ve had two, and it ain’t iced tea.”
    â€œI think we should ask Irene to dinner,” Holly said. “To repay her kindness in inviting us.”
    â€œWhatever you say,” Stone replied. “Do you hope to learn more from her?”
    â€œI think this Robertson guy could be Teddy. Or maybe, Pemberton or Weatherby.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œRobertson owns the Cessna 140; Weatherby and Pemberton are the Englishmen who bought the cottage that used to be Irene’s guesthouse and the one next door to that.”
    â€œAnd why do you think one of them is Teddy?”
    â€œBecause Pemberton and Weatherby have the paper trail—passport, driver’s license, credit reports, et cetera that any innocent citizen would have.”
    â€œAnd that causes you to suspect them of multiple murders, not to mention making a fool of the FBI, the CIA and everybody else who was after him?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause Robertson doesn’t have a paper trail, and Teddy would never use an identity that couldn’t be verified. He would look upon that as unprofessional.”
    â€œWhat profession are we talking about?”
    â€œYou know—master criminal and all that.”
    â€œI didn’t know master criminal was a profession. That kind of waters down the pool of professionals, doesn’t it?”
    â€œOh, stop it, Stone, you know what I mean.”
    â€œCan I ask you a question?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œHow many expatriate Brits do you suppose live on this island?”
    â€œI don’t know; hundreds, maybe a few thousand.”
    â€œAnd how many of them do you think might have perfectly ordinary paper trails floating in their wakes?”
    â€œHow the hell should I know?”
    â€œAll right, for the sake of argument, let’s say that ninety-five percent of them are who they say they are, and an investigation would back them up, and the other five percent are fleeing criminals with false passports.”
    â€œWhat’s your point?”
    â€œThat would mean that the ninety-five percent—hundreds, perhaps thousands—would satisfy your criteria for thinking that they are Teddy Fay. Do you see where I’m going here?”
    â€œThe ninety-five percent don’t live next door to Irene Foster.”
    â€œAll right, I’ll give you that. Now you’ve isolated one criterion that doesn’t apply to the great mass. But it’s not an incriminating criterion, and it hardly resonates like, say, a DNA match.”
    â€œStone, Teddy through maybe years of careful preparation has ensured that we are never going to get a match of anything—DNA, fingerprint, photo, anything —because he has erased all those things from every computer that might harbor them.”
    â€œWell, then, we’re left with kidnapping the three of them, locking them up somewhere and torturing them until one of them admits he’s Teddy—the George W. Bush method of extracting admissions from people we hate. And, of course, under torture, anybody will admit to anything, so all three of them might admit to being Teddy.”
    â€œNo, no, we’re