Unintended Consequences - By Stuart Woods

2





Dr. Keeler returned to the little room. “Come with me,” he said. Stone got into his blazer and followed.

They walked down a corridor, then into a large room divided into cubicles where men and women were at work. There seemed to be an unusually large number of monitors on their desks. They passed half a dozen glassed-in offices, then stopped at a closed door. Keeler rapped on it, then looked up at the ceiling, where a camera peered back at him. The door made a clicking noise and Keeler opened it.

They stepped into a large, comfortably furnished office where a man in his mid-forties with thick, graying hair spilling into his eyes was talking with a man and a woman. Stone reflexively appreciated that the woman was in her mid-thirties and quite beautiful.

“Mr. Barrington,” Keeler said, “this is Whit Douglas, our station chief. The lady is Rose Ann Faber, our chief of analysis, and the other gentleman is Richard LaRose, who does God-knows-what around here.”

Stone shook their hands, and the group moved to a seating area with a sofa and some comfortable chairs.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Barrington?” Douglas asked.

“It’s Stone, please, and I’m feeling reasonably well, I guess, sort of jet-lagged.”

“It’s the drug,” Keeler said. “Your state of consciousness for the past few days would have prevented jet lag.”

“Have I really been unconscious for four days?”

“No,” the doctor said, “as I mentioned before, you were walking and talking for part of the time. You probably weren’t drugged until the day before yesterday.”

“Why do you say that?” Stone asked.

“You would have had to be reasonably sober in order to make the decision to travel to Paris, not to mention getting through security and onto an airplane.”

“But I can’t remember getting on the airplane.”

“The drug has obliterated four days of your memory,” the doctor explained, “which may or may not return. The obliteration need not occur at the time of receiving the drug—it can work backwards and erase earlier memory, too. There have been cases where people have lost several weeks.”

“We hope your memory returns,” Whit Douglas said, “because we want to know how a consultant to the Agency happened to get ahold of a giant Mickey Finn, and we want to know why.”

“So do I,” Stone replied.

“Do you remember talking to anyone on the airplane?”

“I don’t remember being on the airplane,” Stone said. “If my memory returns, when will that start happening?”

“At any time,” Keeler said. “You could start getting flashbacks immediately or in a couple of days. If you don’t get anything back in that time, you’re probably faced with the permanent loss of those four days.”

There was a rap at the door. Douglas pressed a button on the coffee table and let in a young man, who walked across the room, Stone’s airline ticket in his hand. “Mr. Barrington, we’ve found your luggage. It was in the tank at De Gaulle.”

“Tank?”

“A pressure chamber that limits the effect of an explosion. The airlines get nervous these days when there’s unclaimed baggage. Would you like the bags sent to your hotel?”

Stone thought about it. “I don’t know if I have a hotel.”

“Where did you stay the last time you were in Paris?” Douglas asked.

“At the Bristol, but I didn’t like the location, so I don’t think I would have booked in there.”

“Can we book a room for you somewhere?”

“Okay, how about the Plaza Athénée?”

Douglas nodded to the young man, and he left.

Stone dug out his iPhone. “I should call my secretary,” he said. “Maybe she can help with the memory.” His phone was dead.

“Use the one on my desk,” Douglas said. “Give the operator the number.”

Stone did as he was told, and Joan, his secretary, picked up the phone.

“Woodman & Weld,” she said. “Mr. Barrington’s office.”

“Hi, it’s Stone.”

“Well, where the hell have you been? Your hotel said you never checked in, Dino’s on his honeymoon, and Holly has vanished.”

“What hotel is that?”

“The Plaza Athénée. That’s where you said you were staying.”

“I had to make a detour,” Stone said. “Listen, I need your help. Describe to me what I did between Dino’s engagement party and right now.”

Joan thought this over for a moment. “You want me to tell you what you were doing?”

“Exactly. Pretend I don’t know.” Stone pressed the speaker button so the others could hear.

“All right, you got to your desk late the day after the party, then you had lunch with Bill Eggers and had a meeting at the firm, then you got back here around five, and I went home.”

“How about the next day?”

“The same, pretty much. With Dino gone and Holly moved out, you didn’t have anybody to play with.”

“And the day after that?”

“You got a call from somebody in the middle of the afternoon, then said you were going to Paris for a few days. An envelope arrived by messenger with a first-class, round-trip ticket on Air France, and a note saying a car would pick you up at seven that evening. There was no return address on the envelope. You were due into Paris at nine the next morning.”

“Did I see anybody in my office?”

“No.”

“Did anybody call that you didn’t know?”

“No, but I was in the ladies’ when the afternoon call came, and you picked up.”

“Can you think of anything else? What did I do in the evenings?”

“Like I said, you didn’t have anybody to play with, so I guess you dined at home alone.”

“Thanks, we’ll talk again later.” Stone hung up and went back to the sofa. “Not much help, huh?”

“Rose Ann,” Douglas said, “find out who called Stone’s office in the afternoon day before yesterday.”

Stone gave her his business card, and she went to the phone on Douglas’s desk, then returned. “They’ll have it in a few minutes,” she said.

The phone rang, and Douglas picked it up and listened, then hung up. “You’re booked into the Plaza Athénée. They were expecting you yesterday. We got you an upgrade.”

“Thank you,” Stone said. “There’s something missing.”

“What?”

“My briefcase. I always travel with a briefcase.”

Douglas got up. “Oh, I forgot.” He walked behind his desk, came back with Stone’s briefcase, and handed it to him. “We couldn’t open it. Three zeros didn’t work.”

“The CIA couldn’t get into a briefcase?” Stone said. “What’s the world coming to?” He unlocked the briefcase and opened it. “Euros,” he said, holding up a thick envelope containing a stack of notes secured by a rubber band.

“That reminds me,” Douglas said. “We gave the cabdriver a hundred.”

Stone extracted a hundred-euro note from the stack, handed it to him, then put the rest into his inside pocket with his passport. “Nothing unusual in the case,” he said. “My iPad and charger, some stationery, no business papers.” He closed the briefcase.

“Well, we won’t keep you,” Douglas said, rising.

Stone got to his feet and shook hands with everybody.

“We’d like to know if and what you start remembering,” Douglas said, handing him a card. “That’s my direct line and cell number. Doc, will you walk him to our side entrance? There’s a car and driver waiting for you there, Stone.”

“Thank you, Whit, and I thank all of you for taking me in.”

Keeler led him on a short walk to an exterior door and opened it for him. “The car’s through there,” he said, waving Stone through the door and pointing at the walkway to a wrought-iron gate. “Right down the garden path. Call me if there’s anything I can do for you.”