Free Twice a Spy by Keith Thomson Page B

I’m Eleanor Parker Atchison, forty-seven and proud to admit it, a partner at Lerner, Marks and Hopkins, the law firm about which I’ll go on ad nauseam before it occurs to me to mention that I also have been married for seven years, to you, dear, Colin Wesley Atchison, CFO of GleamCo, anindustrial cleaning products conglomerate and a topic that gets your juices flowing much more readily than any aspect of
your
personal life, save golf. It is for your beloved pastime that we are currently en route to shop for a condo within a chip shot of Les Trois-Îlets’ Empress Joséphine course, designed by the incomparable Robert Trent Jones. We already own an adorable hundred-and-twenty-eight-year-old farmhouse in Litchfield, Connecticut, like every Tom, Dick, and Harriet in our Park Avenue social set, but we rarely use it because we prefer the office on Saturdays, when the phones are quiet, people don’t stick their heads through our doorways, and we can get things done.”
    Stanley was impressed with her command of her cover. Even better was her ability to act the part: During the remaining hour of the flight, as they wove additional legend to fit their operational goals, Hadley turned into Eleanor Atchison before his eyes. He particularly liked the way her speech became clipped the moment conversation shifted to their domestic life—this was a woman with more important things on her mind. Yet when it came to the circumvention of Internal Revenue property tax codes, she was effusive, as if narrating a grand adventure.
    As the DC-8 began its descent to Martinique, she argued that the quality of the material and the stitching made her handbag worth the extra nine hundred dollars. Although the argument was preposterous, her conviction left Stanley convinced.
    He found himself admiring the play of the silk suit pants on her long legs, like gift wrap. Glimpsing her diamond ring and her wedding band, he felt a twinge of disappointment, before realizing that, like his own gold band, it was just cover.

“Not exactly an ideal airport for fugitives,” Charlie said.
    Night had settled over Martinique as Bream dropped the Gulfstream onto the runway. Ahead blazed a seaside airport as large as those in most American cities, or about a hundred times larger than Charlie had originally expected.
    “The area for private jets is actually damn-near perfect,” Bream said, taxiing away from the main airport. “Otherwise we would’ve just hit Dominica or Saint Lucia and gotten a boat.”
    They rolled perhaps a mile to the dimly lit “Executive Airport,” as the general aviation area was called. It included four single-aircraft hangars, a handful of charter service offices, and a red-roofed terminal that if it were any tinier wouldn’t qualify as a building. Beside the little terminal was a bar, where undulating pink lights revealed two people at the tables. On the tarmac, among the three dozen parked propeller planes, there was no sign of life.
    Using a small motorized platform, Bream towed the Gulfstream into a rickety hangar that was equal parts rust and peeling silver paint. Once the jet was parked, he leaped off and lowered the hangar’s garage door, the cue that it was safe for Charlie and Drummond to come out of the cabin.
    As they descended the stairs, Charlie was enveloped by air seemingly composed of droplets of hot water. Despite hard strains of jet fuel and exhaust, a light breeze carried a pleasing tropical scent.
    Behind him, Drummond inhaled deeply and smiled. “Lily of the Valley.”
    “It’s nice.”
    “An interesting piece of information is that it’s poisonous.”
    “Great.”
    “I just got a text message,” said Bream, peering out the door’s grease-smeared plastic porthole. “There’s a coupla folks paying me a drop-by visit right now, so I’m gonna call an audible.” He tilted his head to a dark corner at the back of the hangar, his eyes flashing urgency. “You’d best get to know that storage closet in