Unintended Consequences

you first.”
    “All right: a man in a car has been following us with his headlights off since we left Lasserre. Don’t look back, check the reflection in the shop window coming up.”
    She did so. “And you think he’s following me?”
    “Tell me what you think.”
    “I don’t know what to think.”
    “Do you have any reason to fear for your safety?”
    “Not until just a moment ago. I see the car now.”
    “Anyone you know?”
    “I can’t see the driver—glare on the windscreen.”
    “Do you think we should run for it?”
    “I’ve a better idea: my hotel, the San Régis, is a few yards ahead. You can drop me there and take your chances with the assassin, if that’s what he is.”
    “You would deny me shelter from an assassin?”
    “I would deny you my bed, at least for the moment. I have a prejudice against first-date performances. You can wait in the lobby until he moves on.”
    They reached the hotel. “Good night,” he said. “I hope to live to see you again.”
    She laughed. “Somehow, I think you’ll manage.” She pecked him on the cheek and went inside.
    Stone left the hotel and walked back in the direction he had come. The car sat idling, its lights off. Stone grasped the front passenger door handle, opened the door, and got in. “You’re a very clumsy surveillant,” he said to Rick LaRose. “Your trainers at the Farm would be ashamed of you.”
    “Promise not to tell them,” Rick replied, putting the car in gear and driving away.
    “Why are you following me?”
    “What makes you think I’m following
you
?” Rick asked.
    “Is there something about Ms. Hurley that I don’t know?”
    “A great deal,” Rick replied. “Almost everything, in fact.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Tell me what she told you.”
    “Small-town girl, Harvard, the Met, Sotheby’s, art world, curator.”
    “That’s all true, as far as it goes.”
    “What did she leave out?”
    “The part about her recruitment in college, her extensive training, her clandestine service in the art worlds of London and Paris.”
    “Recruitment by whom?”
    “Us.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yes, oh. If she didn’t mention that, then she certainly didn’t mention the suspicions that arose about her—that she was fucking a member of the opposition and might have been turned.”
    “Was she booted out of the Agency?”
    “You might say she resigned under a cloud after failing two polygraphs. Charges were never brought, either administrative or criminal. She is, however, on the watch list of every airport security team and major intelligence service in the world, and she will never again go anywhere or do anything that a lot of people won’t know about.”
    “Is she dangerous?”
    “Only to your reputation.”
    “Is she
in
danger?”
    “Only from you.”
    “Why from me?”
    “Because we’re not the only ones keeping track of you. Twice I’ve spotted a tail. And you will have made them interested in her.”
    “By whom am I being tailed? Apart from you, I mean.”
    “We were never able to make an ID. But I expect we’ll have other opportunities.”
    “Am I a threat to someone?”
    “That remains to be seen.” The car came to a halt outside the Plaza Athénée. “Good night, sleep tight,” Rick said.
    Stone got out of the car. “Should I look over my shoulder?” he asked through the open window.
    “Never look over your shoulder. Look at the reflections in the shop windows. Elementary tradecraft.”
    He drove away.

11
    S tone had finished his breakfast and was working on the
International Herald Tribune
crossword, which is to say the
New York Times
crossword, when the phone rang.
    “Hello?”
    “I’m relieved to find that you are still alive,” Amanda Hurley said.
    “So am I.”
    “Did you have any further trouble?”
    “The car was gone when I left the hotel.”
    “Good. Thank you for a lovely dinner. I haven’t been to Lasserre in years, and it’s good to find that it hasn’t changed. Everything else has.”
    “I am in complete agreement with both your points.”
    “Do you enjoy art?”
    “I do.”
    “If you’d like to see some, I’ll buy you lunch and we’ll visit some galleries.”
    “Sounds good.”
    “Do you know Brasserie Lipp?”
    “I do.”
    “There at one o’clock?”
    “You’re on.”
    “Bye.” She hung up. His cell phone began ringing.
    “Hello?”
    “It’s Holly.” Something was strange in her voice.
    “Hi. Is something wrong?”
    “I just read a cable from our