STONE THOUGHT FOR a minute about what Ed Rawls had just said. “So you think Dick’s death was work related?”

Rawls nodded gravely. “Certainly.”

“Why?”

Rawls held up a finger. “One: This island has a population of fifty or sixty in the winter and maybe six hundred in the summer. All of them, local and summer folk, have known each other for years-generations, some of them-and the atmosphere on Islesboro is not the sort to engender grudges that end in multiple homicides. Two: Dick Stone was not the kind of guy that anybody could hold a grudge against. And three: I’m just guessing, of course, but I’d be willing to bet that there wasn’t a trace of any kind of evidence in the house. Am I right?”

“On all three points,” Stone said.

“And the weapon was silenced, right? This was a pro hit,” Rawls said, sitting back in his chair. “No doubt about it.”

“The weapon was Dick’s own,” Stone said.

“Well,” Rawls said, sitting back again, “if you were a pro staging a murder-suicide, you’d use the victim’s own gun, wouldn’t you? Lends plausibility.”

“That brings us to who sent the pro,” Stone said. “Any ideas, Ed?”

Rawls sipped his coffee contemplatively. “You make enemies in that line of work.”

“Which ones did Dick make?”

“Irish? Russian mafia? Islamics? Take your pick.”

“So you have no idea?”

“Not specifically.”

“Who would want to kill you, then?”

“Ah,” Rawls chuckled. “The field broadens. With me, you have to consider domestic sources.”

“Domestic? The Agency deals only in foreign matters, doesn’t it?”

“Well, not any more… not since 9/11, anyway. It did in my day, though, at least mostly.”

“You fear your own countrymen, then?”

“More than anybody else.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say that my countrymen were not always happy with the way I did my work.”

“I’ve heard your name before, haven’t I?” He knew he had, but he couldn’t place it.

Rawls shrugged. “Possibly.”

“Why would I have heard it, Ed?”

Rawls shrugged again but said nothing.

“Come on, Ed. I can run a check on you half a dozen ways. Hell, I can probably get most of it by Googling you.”

“I suppose you could,” Rawls said. “I was running the Scandinavian station out of Stockholm some years back, looking forward to retirement. I got involved with a lovely Swedish creature who turned out to be a lovely Russian creature. This was before the fuckers all became democrats. They blackmailed me, and I gave them some fairly useless information, but a meet went south, and a couple of my people bought it. I was blamed, and they hung me out to dry.”

“I remember now,” Stone said. “You’re supposed to be in prison, aren’t you?”

“I was, until a few months ago, but a couple of nice things happened. One: The former KGB station chief in Stockholm told the Brits that I had nothing to do with the two deaths, that it was an accident not related to me, and the Brits told our people. Two: Even in the Atlanta pen I was able to do my country a valuable service, and a combination of the two things got me a presidential pardon. And a very nice cash reward, I might add.”

“I didn’t hear about the pardon.”

“Almost nobody did. I think they announced it in the middle of the night. It probably won’t be out until Will Lee isn’t president anymore.”

“And how’d you end up on Islesboro?”

“Oh, I’m a fourth-generation islander; my great-grandfather built this house, and I’ve owned it for more than twenty years.”

“How did the islanders react to your, ah, problems?”

“Pretty well. I actually got some encouraging mail in prison, and when I came back, it was like I’d never left. During the whole business I was never asked to resign from the yacht club or the golf club. You play golf?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Let’s do that soon. I’ll introduce you to some islanders.”

“Ed, are you convinced that nobody who lives here had anything to do with the murders of Dick and his family?”

Rawls nodded. “I am. Nobody knows this place and these people better than I do, and, believe me, it’s just not in the cards.”

“But you can’t suggest exactly who might have been involved?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got some feelers out. You’ll have to be patient; these things aren’t on the clock.”

“You’re making me feel helpless,” Stone said. “I’m out of my depth with the kind of people you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, but you know people who can help, Stone.”

“Do I?”

“Well, until yesterday, you were up here with Lance Cabot, weren’t you?”

“There is a local grapevine, isn’t there?”

“Sure, there is.”

“You know Lance?”

“I helped train him,” Rawls said. “He worked for me later. So did Kate Rule.” Katharine Rule Lee was the president’s wife and the Director of Central Intelligence.

“You are well connected, aren’t you, Ed?”

“I know quite a few folks; not all of 'em want to know me.“

“Because 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.”

“How does it work?”

“We 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?”

“Oh, 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.”

“Tell 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?”

“Sounds 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.

STONE DROVE BACK TO the house and called Lance’s cell phone. “Yes?”

“It’s Stone.”

“Everything all right?”

“So 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.”

“Tell me about him.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything you’ve got time for.”

“All 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 Viet Nam. 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…

“By 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.

“After 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.

“Unfortunately, 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. ”He 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.“