Before long he rested his head against the chair and dozed off.

51

Stone was dreaming of Election Day in the United States. He was in a large hall with a movie-theater-sized television screen, and Kate Lee was making a gracious, very affecting concession speech. “In the end,” she was saying, “it was all the fault of someone named Stone Barrington, who I had never heard of until last week. . . .”

Stone tried to speak, but someone put tape over his mouth and something black over his eyes, and his hands were taped to the arms of his chair.

“There,” a man’s voice said. “He will be most comfortable.”

Stone, still half in his dream, tried to protest that Kate’s loss was not his fault, but he stopped himself. This part with the tape and the blindfold and the chair was no dream. He reoriented to the extent that he could. First, he wondered if he had been drugged, but he decided that was impossible, since the only thing he had eaten or drunk since yesterday had been given to him by Holly.

“Mmmph!” he said, wanting to speak.

“Just rest quietly, my friend,” a soothing voice said, in an accent that was not British or American but was otherwise not immediately identifiable. “He will be here soon, and then you will know everything.”

Stone was not looking forward to knowing everything, beyond the point where he had been so rudely awakened. He wondered if Holly really had drugged him, and if this event were part of what had been discussed at her meeting at the Paris station. He was still drowsy, and gradually he nodded off again, surprised at how relaxed he was.

He was awakened by a woman’s voice, speaking in French, apparently coming from another room. There was protest in her words, whatever they were.

Then someone untied the blindfold, and Stone blinked in the unaccustomed light. A man stood in front of him; he had a very good look at a silver belt buckle before the tape was ripped from his face. “Shit!” he said.

“Sorry, Mr. Barrington, it was the most humane method,” the belt buckle said. Then the man backed away from him and sat down in the chair opposite Stone’s. He slowly recognized Jacques Chance, prefect of Paris police, brother of Mirabelle.

“Thank you for your humanity,” Stone said.

“Jacques!” the woman in the next room said insistently.

“Silence, ma chère,” Jacques replied. “We will be done here soon.”

“Done with what?” Stone asked, honestly curious.

“That remains to be seen, Mr. Barrington. If you are cooperative, you will autograph some papers for me, and then I will be gone, and you will still be alive.”

Stone didn’t like what he imagined as the alternative. “Let me guess,” he said: “You want me to sign over my interests in the Arrington hotels?”

“Quite right,” Jacques replied. “But you will be handsomely compensated. I have in my possession a banker’s check for thirty million euros, with your name on it. I should think that would be a very happy alternative to what the Russian gentleman would have me subject you to, should you fail to sign.”

“I suppose this is what you would call the carrot or the stick,” Stone said.

“Be happy it is not the frying pan or the fire,” Jacques said. “It could easily have been so, were it not for Mirabelle’s persuasions.”

“Merci beaucoup, Mirabelle!” Stone called out, so that she could hear him in the kitchen.

“Sign the papers, dummy!” she called back.

“All right,” Stone said, “I’ll sign the papers. If you will be kind enough to untape me.”

“Of course,” Jacques said, rising and coming toward him with a pocketknife. “I should mention that there are two strong and dangerous men standing behind you, who would take it amiss if you did not behave properly.”

“I will be the soul of propriety,” Stone said.

Jacques cut through the tape holding both wrists, and Stone removed what remained and tossed it into the fireplace. He turned his head to see another man sitting at the desk with a stack of papers before him. “Here, please,” he said, indicating the chair next to him.

Stone got up, walked across the living room, and sat down at the desk. The man uncapped a Mont Blanc pen and handed it to him, then he riffled through a few pages of the stack. “Here,” he said, pointing to a blank space. Stone signed. “Here,” the man said at another page. Stone signed. This continued until Stone had signed a dozen times, then the man extracted an envelope from his inside coat pocket, produced a check, made out as Jacques had indicated, and a sheet of paper, where he indicated Stone was to sign once more. Stone signed.

The man returned the check to the envelope and handed it to Stone. “You may deposit it into your account at any bank in the world,” he said. He picked up the stack of papers, put it into his briefcase, and snapped it shut. He retrieved his pen, capped it, and placed it in an inside pocket. “My business is concluded here,” he said to no one in particular. “I bid you good day.” He left by the front door.

“Mr. Barrington,” Jacques said, “I wish to thank you for being compliant in these circumstances. It would have been unpleasant for me to watch someone of whom my sister is fond be subjected to great harm and, very likely, a painful death. Now my business is also concluded here, and I, too, wish you a good day.”

Jacques went into the kitchen and came back holding Mirabelle’s hand.

“I am so sorry for all of this, Stone,” Mirabelle said, then she was whisked out of the house by her brother. She came back a moment later. “I want you to know that these stupid rumors about Jacques and me are ridiculous lies!”

“I never doubted it for a moment.”

She left again.

Stone got out his cell phone and called Marcel duBois. He was connected immediately.

“Hello, Stone.”

“Marcel,” Stone said, “I have just been compelled, under duress, to sign away my ownership in the Arrington hotels. Or at least, I think that’s what I signed—it was in French.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Stone, as I have just done the same thing, and under duress, as well.”

“Are you safe now?”

“I believe so.”

“Then call your attorney, explain things to him, and have him take every legal action to stop the sale. And don’t cash the check.”

“Stone,” Marcel said, “I don’t know if that is the right thing to do.”

“Marcel, right or wrong, it is the only thing to do.”

“They have made very serious threats.”

“Ignore them. I’ll call Mike Freeman and have you removed to a safe place at once.”

Marcel sighed. “All right, Stone, if you insist,” Marcel replied. “But I am very much afraid that you and I are out of the hotel business.”

“We’ll see about that,” Stone said.

52

Stone called Yves Carrier at the Paris Woodman & Weld office and explained what had happened. “I should tell you that I signed the papers ‘Steve Ballington.’”

Carrier laughed loudly. “Nevertheless, I will take immediate steps to stop any transfer of title to the company in every country in Europe. You should have the New York office stop transfer in the United States. Someone might not notice the discrepancy in the signatures.”

Stone hung up and called Bill Eggers, the managing partner in New York, and brought him up to date.

“I can’t imagine how they think they can get away with that,” Eggers said. “Whatever you do, don’t cash the check.”

“Right,” Stone said. He hung up and called Mike Freeman and asked him to reinforce Marcel’s security. “That’s twice they’ve gotten to Marcel,” he said. “You’ve got to move him.”

“I don’t have a safe house at my disposal,” Freeman said.

“Then bring him to me here,” Stone said. “There’s plenty of room. We’ll need more security, though. Jacques Chance has already gotten into the house.”