Unintended Consequences

pay grade.”
    “And find somebody who has a good haircut and ask him where he got it.”
    “Good idea,” LaRose said, making a note. “I’ve been cutting it myself.”
    “What are you doing here, Richard, if I may ask?”
    “It’s Rick, and I’m here on business.”
    The butler’s voice rang out. “Ladies and gentlemen, my lords and ladies, dinner is served.”
    The group began streaming out the doors and across the hallway to the dining room, where a long table had been elegantly set. Stone estimated twenty-four chairs. He found his place card near the center, next to his host, and a moment later, Helga took his other side. “I’m sorry to have stuck you with that rather strange gentleman,” she said. “There was someone I just had to speak to. Who was that man?”
    “Richard LaRose, commercial attaché at our embassy. He was more interesting than you might have thought.”
    “He was dressed rather oddly.”
    “His luggage was lost, and he had to make do.”
    “Ah,” she said, nodding. “His Swedish was commendable, though. I don’t think he could have learned it simply by working in the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm.”
    “I imagine he went to a rather good language school,” Stone said.
    “I suppose the State Department has such a school,” Helga said. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”
    It hadn’t occurred to Stone that Helga was Swedish, not German.
    “Are you from Stockholm?”
    She shook her head. “From a small town north of there, on the Baltic.”
    “Do you live permanently in Paris?”
    “My legal residence is in Monaco, for tax reasons, but I keep a flat here in a hotel.”
    “What do you do, Helga?”
    “I was married for a living for some years. Now I’m divorced for a living.”
    Stone smiled. “Congratulations.”
    She shrugged, emphasizing her cleavage. “The work suits me.”
    The waiter poured Stone some white wine, and he caught sight of the label: Le Montrachet, with ten years in the bottle. He sipped it, rolled it on his tongue.
    “Do you like the wine?” Marcel duBois asked.
    “As we say in New York, ‘What’s not to like?’ Le Montrachet would be my favorite white, if I had it often enough to remember.”
    “The secret to drinking good wine is to buy it on release, or in futures, then lay it down until it’s ready to drink. You can save hundreds of dollars a bottle by doing that.”
    “Very good advice,” Stone replied. “I have a cellar in my house, but I’m a bit slapdash about stocking it on any regular basis.”
    “Then you are condemned to drink wines of the second and third rank,” duBois said. “Find yourself a good wine merchant in New York and place some standing orders with him.”
    “Perhaps you’re right. I’ll mend my ways.”
    DuBois laughed. “I hope so for your sake.”
    “Marcel, I’d like to thank you for seating me with Helga. She’s absolutely spectacular.”
    “There was a time when I would have thought it dangerous to introduce you to her, but now she’s happily and profitably divorced, so she’s no longer a threat to your net worth, though perhaps to your liquidity.”
    Stone laughed. “Was she really so predatory?”
    “She arrived in Stockholm from some rural village and knocked the town on its ass, as you Americans would say. She attracted the industrialist son of a very big industrialist father, who had the grace to die in his sixties and leave the boy a very large fortune, comfortably tucked away in various tax havens. When she’d had enough of him and requested a divorce, he was reportedly so grateful to her for establishing his reputation as a ladies’ man that he wrote her a very large check as a farewell gift—rumor has it for forty million euros, which hardly dented his fortune.”
    “An enterprising woman,” Stone said. There was a tap on his shoulder, and Stone turned to find Helga looking at him curiously. “Are you two talking about me?”
    “Only in the most admiring terms,” Stone replied.
    A waiter heaped a large portion of beluga caviar on their plates, ending their conversation. Stone observed that the table was much quieter while the diners contemplated their good fortune.

6
    T hey were served three more courses after the caviar, and Stone had to restrain himself. Then, just when he thought the dining was over, footmen with large trays of cheeses appeared. He accepted a chunk of Pont l’Évêque and found it to be
à point
. A decanter of port was passed from his right; he poured