Stone sat at the window of his study in Turtle Bay and watched the season’s first snow fall on the gardens behind his house. The phone rang, and he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“It’s Arrington.”

His voice warmed. “How are you?” He had not talked with her in months, because she didn’t want him to.

“I’m okay. How did the business in L.A. turn out?”

“Ippolito goes on trial shortly after the first of the year; I’ll be going back out there to testify.”

“There was certainly enough in the papers about it. I think theWall Street Journal was more upset than anybody.”

There was something in her voice that bothered him; she seemed to be straining for small talk.

“I still find it hard to believe that David Sturmack was involved; he and his wife were always so sweet to me.”

“They haven’t found her yet,” Stone said. “She apparently got to Panama after cleaning out the safe at their house, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

“Imagine, a woman like her on the run.”

“She’s very rich, so don’t worry about her; I’m sure she’s making some gigolo very happy.”

“Vance told me he sent you a tape ofOut of Court; he had it cut especially, so you could see yourself in the movie.”

“Yes, he did. It was very embarrassing to look at.” He couldn’t take the chat anymore. “What’s happening, Arrington?”

Her voice changed. “Stone, there’s news.”

Stone flinched. He had an awful feeling he knew what was coming.

“Vance’s child was born last night.”

Stone let out the breath he had been holding. “Congratulations to both of you,” he managed to say.

“The blood tests left no doubt,” she said. “I want you to understand that; there was no need to go to DNA tests.”

“I understand,” he replied. A memory flooded over him: he was walking through F.A.O. Schwarz, the big toy store, looking for a first gift for a new baby. He snapped himself out of it. “I understand what you have to do.”

“I’m glad you do,” she said, then she started to cry.

“It’s all right, Arrington,” he said. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“I have to,” she said.

“I know.”

“Vance did pay your bill, didn’t he?” she said, incongruously.

“He reimbursed all my expenses,” Stone said. “I didn’t send him a bill; I didn’t do it for him.”

“Stone, I will never be able to thank you enough for what you did.”

“Don’t worry about that…”

“Really, Vance and the baby and I owe you so much.”

Stone was extremely uncomfortable with this. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Seven pounds, one ounce.”

“She’ll be beautiful, like you.”

“Let’s hope she looks like her father.”

“I have to go,” Stone said. “I have an appointment.” If he talked to her any more he’d make an idiot of himself.

“I do love you, Stone,” she said, then hung up.

Stone hung up the phone and, to his astonishment, he began to cry. A moment later, he had control of himself. He dialed Dino’s direct extension.

“Lieutenant Bacchetti,” Dino said.

“Dinner tonight?”

“Sure.” Dino listened to the silence for a moment. “You’ve had some news?”

“Yeah. Elaine’s, at eight-thirty?”

“Sure.”

“You’re going to have to drive me home.”

“What are cops for?” Dino asked, then hung up.

Stone sat and looked out the window at the snow. He sat there most of the day.

Washington, Connecticut

July 23, 1997

I am grateful to my editor, HarperCollins vice president and associate publisher Gladys Justin Carr; her associate editor, Elissa Altman; and all the people at HarperCollins who worked so hard for the success of this book.

I am also grateful to my agent, Morton L. Janklow; his principal associate, Anne Sibbald; and their colleagues at Janklow amp; Nesbit for their continuing enthusiasm in the management of my career. I am in good hands.

Stuart Woods was born in the small southern town of Manchester, Georgia on January 9, 1938. His mother was a church organist and his father an ex-convict who left when Stuart was two years old, when it was suggested to him that, because of his apparent participation in the burglary of a Royal Crown Cola bottling plant, he might be more comfortable in another state. He chose California, and Stuart only met him twice thereafter before his death in 1959, when Stuart was a senior in college.

After college, Stuart spent a year in Atlanta, two months of which were spent in basic training for what he calls “the draft-dodger program” of the Air National Guard. He worked at a men’s’ clothing store and at Rich’s department store while he got his military obligation out of the way. Then, in the autumn of 1960, he moved to New York in search of a writing job. The magazines and newspapers weren’t hiring, so he got a job in a training program at an advertising agency, earning seventy dollars a week. “It is a measure of my value to the company,” he says, “that my secretary was earning eighty dollars a week.”

At the end of the sixties, after spending several weeks in London, he moved to that city and worked there for three years in various advertising agencies. At the end of that time he decided that the time had come for him to write the novel he had been thinking about since the age of ten. But after getting about a hundred pages into the book, he discovered sailing, and “…everything went to hell. All I did was sail.”

After a couple of years of this his grandfather died, leaving him, “…just enough money to get into debt for a boat,” and he decided to compete in the 1976 Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR). Since his previous sailing experience consisted of, “…racing a ten-foot plywood dingy on Sunday afternoons against small children, losing regularly,” he spent eighteen months learning more about sailing and, especially, ocean navigation while the boat was built at a yard in Cork.

He moved to a nearby gamekeeper’s cottage on a big estate to be near the building boat. In the summer of 1975 he sailed out to the Azores in a two-handed race, in company with Commander Bill King, a famous World War II submarine commander and yachtsman, who had done a round-the-world, single-handed voyage. Commander King then flew back to Ireland, and Stuart sailed back, single-handed, as his qualifying cruise for the OSTAR the following year.

The next couple of years were spent in Georgia, dividing his time between Manchester and Atlanta, while selling his grandfather’s business, a small-town department store, and writing two non-fiction books.Blue Water, Green Skipper, was an account of his Irish experience and the OSTAR, andA Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland, “was a travel book, done on a whim.

He also did some more sailing. In August of 1979 he competed in the now notorious Fastnet Race of 1979, which was struck by a huge storm. Fifteen competitors and four observers lost their lives, but Stuart and his host crew finished in good order, with little damage. That October and November, he spent skippering his friend’s yacht back across the Atlantic, calling at the Azores, Madiera and the Canary Islands, finishing at Antigua, in the Caribbean.

In the meantime, the British publisher ofBlue Water, Green Skipper had sold the American rights to W.W. Norton, a New York publishing house, and they had also contracted to publish the novel, on the basis of two hundred pages and an outline, for an advance of $7500. “I was out of excuses to not finish it, and I had taken their money, so I finally had to get to work.” He finished the novel and it was published in 1981, eight years after he had begun it. The novel was calledChiefs.