Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 12 by Dark Harbor Page B

suicides, and I know the difference.” Stone sipped his coffee. “And what are you retired from, Mr. Rawls?”
    â€œYou call me Ed and I’ll call you Stone, all right?”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œI’m retired from the State Department,” Rawls said. “Dick and I used to work together.”
    â€œEd,” Stone said, “I know who Dick worked for, and it wasn’t the State Department.”
    â€œOh, yeah?”
    â€œOh, yeah. And why do you have all this security and why are you walking around in this lovely place with a Sig P220 in your hand?”
    â€œWell,” Rawls said, “I reckon the folks who got Dick Stone might be coming for me, too.”

10
    S TONE THOUGHT FOR a minute about what Ed Rawls had just said. “So you think Dick’s death was work related?”
    Rawls nodded gravely. “Certainly.”
    â€œWhy?”
    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?”
    â€œOn all three points,” Stone said.
    â€œAnd the weapon was silenced, right? This was a pro hit,” Rawls said, sitting back in his chair. “No doubt about it.”
    â€œThe weapon was Dick’s own,” Stone said.
    â€œWell,” 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.”
    â€œThat 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.”
    â€œWhich ones did Dick make?”
    â€œIrish? Russian mafia? Islamics? Take your pick.”
    â€œSo you have no idea?”
    â€œNot specifically.”
    â€œWho would want to kill you, then?”
    â€œAh,” Rawls chuckled. “The field broadens. With me, you have to consider domestic sources.”
    â€œDomestic? The Agency deals only in foreign matters, doesn’t it?”
    â€œWell, not anymore…not since 9/11, anyway. It did in my day, though, at least mostly.”
    â€œYou fear your own countrymen, then?”
    â€œMore than anybody else.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œLet’s just say that my countrymen were not always happy with the way I did my work.”
    â€œI’ve heard your name before, haven’t I?” He knew he had, but he couldn’t place it.
    Rawls shrugged. “Possibly.”
    â€œWhy would I have heard it, Ed?”
    Rawls shrugged again but said nothing.
    â€œCome on, Ed. I can run a check on you half a dozen ways. Hell, I can probably get most of it by Googling you.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œI remember now,” Stone said. “You’re supposed to be in prison, aren’t you?”
    â€œI 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