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following us since we left. He’s across the street in a doorway now, pretending to look at a piece of sculpture.”
    “Well, shit,” she said. “On the other hand, why do you think he’s following
me
?”
    “You’re the ex-spook. Why would he follow me?”
    “Maybe because he’s seen you at Lipp on two consecutive days, in the company of people he believes to be CIA?”
    “Well,” Stone said, “I’m going to have to start hanging out with a better class of people.”

15
    S tone got back to the Plaza Athénée and checked his messages: Holly had called. He went upstairs to his suite, and as he opened the door he found the place dark. That surprised him, because the maids always threw open the curtains to his terrace. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he started. A man was sitting in one of the comfortable chairs across the room. Stone felt for a light switch and turned it on. Lance Cabot was sitting in the chair, his chin on his chest, apparently dead.
    Stone went to the windows and pulled the curtains open.
    The corpse moved a little, then opened its eyes. “Hello, Stone,” it said.
    “Lance, what the hell are you doing here? Aren’t you in the middle of Senate hearings on your appointment as director?”
    “The hearings are over,” Lance replied, stretching. “We expect a favorable result in a couple of days.”
    “Why are you in Paris, then? Shouldn’t you be getting sworn in or something?”
    “Yes, I should, but until I am sworn in I’m still deputy director for operations, and I have to deal with the unbelievable mess you’ve made in Paris.” He stood up and began pacing.
    “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    “You managed to get yourself drugged on an airplane, and you’ve thrown my Paris station into a frenzy.”
    “Well, your first statement is apparently true, but how have I thrown your station into a frenzy?”
    “Let’s see,” Lance said, holding up a finger. “First, you turn up semiconscious at the embassy and cause my medical officer to have to save your life, instead of doing what he’s supposed to be doing. Then you’ve got my station head worrying about your activities in Paris instead of confounding his country’s enemies. You’re taking up most of the time of one of my best officers, who has apparently adopted you as a role model and has stuck me with a forty-thousand-dollar bill at Charvet. You’ve interfered with his approach to Marcel duBois, whom I had hoped he could make into an asset for us. You’re fucking another very effective operative of ours, who should be paying attention to others, and wasting the time of yet another, who is dawdling at lunch and in galleries with you instead of doing her work. You’ve also brought her to the attention of a Russian named Majorov, who was previously unaware of her existence, which is the way I like it, and somebody has already taken a shot at her.”
    “A shot? At Amanda? I left her only twenty minutes ago.”
    “And she was shot at ten minutes ago, no doubt by Majorov or one of his operatives.”
    “And all of this is
my
fault?”
    “Certainly it is. If you weren’t in Paris, none of this would have happened. How the fuck do you happen to know Marcel duBois?”
    “I’m not entirely certain of that,” Stone said.
    “Has the drug wiped out all memory of the man?”
    “Well, yes, now that you mention it.”
    “You don’t even remember meeting him in New York?”
    “I was drugged,” Stone said defensively. “You said so yourself.”
    “You weren’t supposed to be. The woman who dropped the stuff in your drink was supposed to put it in the drink of a man in the row behind you, but she was drunk and screwed up, because Amanda was talking to you and not the target. You were simply an unintended consequence of our plan.”
    “Is the woman who drugged me one of your operatives, too?”
    “Not anymore, she isn’t. She’s now doing clerical work in a windowless basement office at Langley,