by Chris Pavone
She stared at him but didn’t say anything or do anything.
“Show me.”
“You’re not doing this.”
“I have to.”
She was surprised at how invasive this felt. But of course this is what someone like him would do. So this is what he had to do.
Kate removed her blouse. She’d gone a long time without being strip-searched. And here it was, twice within one week. She unzipped her skirt, stepped out of it. Dexter pawed around the lining, the zipper. He wouldn’t know a bug if it was stinging him on the nose.
Dexter handed her clothes back.
These days, transmitters could be anything, anywhere, any size. The one she was wearing now, for example: a small disk affixed to the underside of her wristwatch. The present Dexter had given her just a couple weeks ago, on Christmas morning in the Alps, primly wrapped in earth-tone plaid with a staid silk ribbon by the jeweler on the rue de la Boucherie. The Swiss-made watch that had been trucked to a distributor in the Netherlands and then collected in a van by the boutique in Luxembourg, then flown by Dexter back to Switzerland to be unwrapped by Kate in France, thirty miles from where it had been manufactured, then flown back to Luxembourg, where in the men’s room of a downtown brasserie it had been upgraded by an undercover FBI agent, and eventually overlooked by an American semi-criminal here in this silver-wallpapered restroom, now.
Kate started buttoning up, zipping up.
Dexter opened her handbag, rummaged around: lipstick and compact and phone, pens and keys and packet of gum, who the hell knows what, all of it possibly recording or transmitting. Impossible for this bag to get a clean bill of health in such a cursory checkup.
She’d left the Beretta in the apartment.
“I’m going to put your bag in the car,” Dexter said. “Meet me back at the table.”
SHE STUMBLED OUT of the restroom, into the hall. Steadied herself against the wall before taking another step on the plush carpet.
This was much harder than she’d expected. She’d been in similar situations before. But never with her husband. For many reasons, she thought it would be easier this time.
Kate tried to stay composed. She took a sip of wine, then a sip of water. She wiped her mouth with her napkin, and fiddled with her fork, and massaged the bridge of her nose.
Dexter returned to the dining room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that.”
The waiters slid immense white bowls onto the white tablecloth. The soup course. A few tablespoons of liquid, topped with what looked like lobster meat.
“Do you understand? That I had to?”
Kate stared into her soup.
“First of all,” Dexter said, “I don’t know anything about twenty-five million euros.” As they’d agreed the night before on their cold balcony, scripting out this dialog, there would be three large lies in this conversation. This was the first. “And I haven’t actually stolen any money from anyone.” And this was the second.
“But the way I’ve been making my living, I admit that not all of it is entirely legal.”
“So you’re not a security consultant?”
“No, not anymore. I’m a day trader, in securities. I’d been dabbling for a few years, a hobby. Then a year and a half ago, I had a string of successes, and I was fed up with my work, so I … Kate, I’m sorry … I quit.”
A busboy cleared their plates, smoothed the linen, retreated. “So what do you do that’s illegal?”
“I hack into corporate computers, to access inside information. Which I use to ensure that my trades are profitable.” This was the third lie, delivered steady and calm. Well-performed.
A waiter visited to find out if everything was okay. A preposterous question.
“How much money have you made?”
“I’ve made about six hundred thousand euros from this, um, activity.”
Kate gave Dexter a small smile, an encouraging nod. The past two minutes had been the hardest part of the conversation, the biggest challenge to the performance. Dexter had handled it well. The rest would be much easier. Much closer to the truth.
THE WAITERS CEREMONIOUSLY lifted more domes, little breasts of some bird underneath, lacquered skin, viscous brown sauce in a glistening slick, little baby vegetables, a whole nursery school’s worth.
“Who is this Marlena woman? They showed me pictures of you with a terrifyingly beautiful woman.”
“She’s a prostitute. She helps me by seducing men, and accessing their computers, which is how I hack into their systems.”
“That’s horrible.”
He didn’t defend himself.
“So you have no actual job. But I found an employment contract hidden away in a file. That’s a fake?”
He nodded.
“But you have a work permit? We’re here legally?”
“Yes. I own a business here.”
“There was some problem, though? Back when we first arrived, at the U.S. embassy?”
“The problem was that I’d applied for the work permit much earlier than when we arrived here. And in the meantime—”
“The meantime being about a year?”
“Correct. In that year, the Luxembourg government started automatically sending copies of new work permits to the foreign embassies. I didn’t know about this change in protocol. So in the normal course of affairs, in September, the embassy should’ve received a copy of my work permit, if I’d’ve received it when they—when you—thought I had; when I was claiming I had. But that’s not when I received it.”
“WHAT DO WE do about them?” Kate asked.
“Who, the Macleans?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no evidence for them to find twenty-five million stolen euros, because I didn’t steal twenty-five million euros. So there’s nothing to worry about.”
“How do we make them leave us alone?” Kate asked. “Make them go away?” She contemplated the second meat course, two tiny little lamb chops, perfectly pink, the Frenched bones arranged like crossed swords. New wine, glasses the size of a child’s head, with a dark depth of red liquid, a horror film’s bloody swimhole in an abandoned quarry.
“I think they’re about to,” Dexter picked up. “That’s why they confronted you, after—how long have they been here? Four months?”
“What do you think they were waiting for?”
“To unearth evidence. For us to spend huge sums of money. To buy cars, boats, big houses on the Riviera. Luxury hotels, first-class plane tickets, helicopter tours of Mont Blanc. To do any of the things that we would do, if we had twenty-five million euros.”
“So tell me how you think this ends.”
“I don’t think we need to do anything special,” Dexter said. “Except I imagine we should stop having any relationship with Bill and Julia.”
“What are the reasons?”
“We don’t need to give them any reasons. They know exactly why.”
“No, not for them: reasons for our other friends.”
Dexter shrugged. He didn’t care; he didn’t really have any friends. “Bill made a pass at you?” he suggested. “Or Julia at me? Which do you prefer?”
Kate’s mind flashed back to the embassy Christmas party, Dexter and Julia coming out of the kitchen. “Julia hit on you,” Kate said. “It’s more important for there to be a rift between her and me than between you and him.”
“Makes sense.”
Kate stared at the multi-component chocolate extravaganza that had appeared in front of her. “Okay. So we don’t talk to them anymore. What else?”
“Sooner or later—probably sooner—they’ll give up. They have no evidence. They’re not going to find anything, because there’s nothing to find.”
Kate drove her fork down into the chocolate-encrusted torte, revealing layers upon layers of textures and colors, all hidden within the hard dark shell, looking for all the world like the simplest of concoctions.
“So they’ll go away,” Dexter said
, himself breaking the smooth brown shell, sweetness spilling across his plate. “And we’ll never see them again.”
TODAY, 7:03 P.M.
The man is the first one Kate notices, crossing from the other side of the intersection, from a bigger and busier and less exclusive café, a tourist place. Sunglasses are propped on his head, and he’s wearing a bushy beard, in the current style of men in New York and Los Angeles; Kate has seen pictures in magazines. An actor in a candid photograph, Sunday morning on Beverly Drive, clutching a macchiato in a to-go cup with a sip-top.
Kate realizes that these two were sitting there in that other café, hiding behind sunglasses, watching her and Dexter arrive and wait. Kate is impressed, and marginally intimidated, by the thoroughness. After all this time, and they still have the energy.
It’s a good thing Kate was careful with the sugar container when she sat down. It always pays to be prudent.
“Bonsoir,” the man says. The woman initiates phony kisses all around.
The waiter arrives instantly, attentive to Monsieur Moore and his guests, as ever. M. Moore always leaves very large tips here. Everywhere, in fact.
“So how have you been?” Dexter asks.
“Not bad,” Bill says. “Not bad at all.”
The waiter arrives, presents the bottle to Dexter for inspection. Dexter nods. The waiter pulls out his corkscrew, and begins to peel away the foil around the bottle’s neck.
“You live here now?” Bill asks.
Dexter nods.
The cork comes out—ploop—and the waiter pours a taste for Dexter, who obliges, nods. The waiter pours the wine, four glasses half-full, at the silent table.
The four Americans glance at one another, each in turn, unable to start a conversation. Kate is still wondering what this meeting could be for, and how she might make it fit her particular needs. She has her own agenda. She knows that Julia and Dexter probably have a different agenda, shared between the two of them and possibly Bill. Or maybe Bill has a completely separate agenda. Or maybe none.
“So,” Dexter says, looking at Julia, then Bill. “I received a message. About the Colonel.”
Julia rests her hands on the table, fingers crossed. The diamond of her engagement ring catches the light, twinkles. Who will Julia be marrying? Or is this ring just another prop, for a new cover?
“Yes,” Bill says. He crosses his legs, getting comfortable to tell a story. “You know of course how someone stole a fortune from him during a transaction.”
Kate notices that Bill doesn’t mention the specific amount of money.
“I heard about that,” Dexter says.
The two men maintain firm eye contact. A poker game, both of them bluffing. Or pretending to.
“Well, the Colonel’s supplier in that transaction, a Russian ex-general named Velten, was livid about the failure of an immense amount of money to arrive in his Swiss bank account by the end of business.”
“I can imagine.”
“So the Colonel passed an unpleasant night in West London. Or rather it looked to the naked eye pretty damn pleasant, at a three-star restaurant with a spectacular Russian hooker named Marlena. But I’m sure it was angst-ridden, his night.”
Bill swirls the wine around in his glass, takes a sip, letting the liquid sit in his mouth before swallowing.
“So,” puckering his lips, “the Colonel woke in the morning, and started transferring his wealth—cars, jewels, yacht; chattel—to the General. Within weeks he’d sold his London flat, passed that money along to the General. Then he—”
“Where was it?”
Both men look at Kate, surprised at the interruption.
“Where was what?”
“The London apartment.”
“Belgravia,” Bill answers, turning back to Dexter.
“Where exactly?”
“Wilton Crescent.”
Kate shoots a look at her husband, and he responds with a tiny shrug, guilty as charged, perfectly willing to accept the penalty of having a lot of money. Kate now understands why they stood on that curved street off Belgrave Square, in front of all those white mansions, fantasizing about where they’d live one day, when they were rich. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to Kate that there could’ve been any meaning in the street address. Another of her husband’s silent lies.
“The Colonel also sold a New York apartment. But the market was bad, especially in this rich-person pied-à-terre bracket. And he was short on time. So he had to accept a lowball.” Bill turns to Kate. “I believe this was on East Sixty-eighth Street. Off Fifth.”
“Thanks for that detail.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
“So now he was out of assets,” Dexter says, trying to get the story back to the story. “But he still owed a lot of money.”
“Yes. The Colonel had been scrambling to put together another deal—a cache of surface-to-air missiles—but word had gotten out about his debacle in the Congo. So he was having difficulties. The General, meanwhile, had been a lot more patient than anyone could’ve expected him to be. This was a year after the debt was incurred.”
“Why so patient?” Dexter asks.
“Because Velten wasn’t out any actual money. It wasn’t like he had to pay any type of retail for the MiGs; he stole them. So he was up quite a bit on this deal. Even so, he wanted the balance paid. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. Finally the Colonel did put together another deal. Which fell apart at the last minute.”
“How?”
“I believe someone in U.S. law enforcement leaked word to the supplier that the Colonel was being closely monitored.”
“Interesting,” Dexter said. “What a bad piece of luck.”
“Awful.”
“Now the Colonel was out of assets,” Dexter says, “and out of options.”
“That’s right,” Bill agrees. “So what do you think he did?”
“I think he disappeared.”
“Absolument. He hid out in Bali, or Buenos Aires, or wherever. Who knows where an illegal arms dealer ducks his angry, murderous supplier? But then after a few months he rather stupidly showed up in Brighton Beach. You know where this is?”
“New York City. The Russian neighborhood.”
“Exactement. So he was visiting Brighton Beach, or staying there, or living there, whatever. I don’t know all the details of his housing situation. But what I do know is that last Friday night, about eleven o’clock, he walked out of a restaurant with two companions, both middle-aged men like himself. A cheap joint, locals only.”
Bill takes another sip of wine. Kate notices that Julia hasn’t touched hers.
“The Colonel, he was never a particularly handsome man. But for a lot of his life, he had money and power, and with these assets he was able to attract some women. Or at least afford them. Now, though, nothing doing. So he and his similarly unappealing comrades were out on Brighton Beach Ave., in front of the restaurant, trying to pick up a couple young girls who were waiting for a taxi to take them into Manhattan, to go to a club, where they were planning to drink Cristal from some hedge-fund manager’s bottle service before going home to screw professional basketball players. These were hot girls, claiming to be twenty-one years old. Which made them seventeen, eighteen.”
“The Colonel and his friends were out of their league.”
“Totally different sport. But they were persistent fuckers. The hostess was watching this harassment go down from inside, wondering if she was going to have to round up some waiters and busboys to intervene, or even call the cops. Then a plain white van pulled up. The side door slid open while the vehicle was still moving. Two masked men jumped out, and pop-pop, a bullet each for the Colonel’s friends, both in the middle of their foreheads, blood splattering all over the girls. They were screaming their skinny little asses off. The hostess started screaming too. It was mayhem.”
“And the Colonel?”
“Punched in the face, picked up off the sidewalk, dragged into the van,
door slammed, tires screeching as the van tears away.”
“I’m guessing there were no license plates on this van.”
“Rien.”
“Then?”
“Then nothing, all weekend.”
“It was a long weekend for the Colonel,” Dexter offers.
“Vraiment.”
“What’s with all the French, Bill?” Kate interrupts.
“It’s a nice language.”
“And?” Dexter is impatient.
“And so I’m practicing.”
“No, not and-what-more-can-you-tell-me-about-French, you idiot. And what-happened-next-to-the-Colonel?”
“Gotcha. So Monday morning, a big Labrador retriever, off leash on the beach part of Brighton Beach, refused to come out from under the boardwalk.”
“The Colonel.”
Bill nods. “His arms?” he asks, rhetorically. “Cut off.”
Kate gasps, taken by surprise.
“Legs are gone too.”
“My God.”
“The Colonel is now just a torso, attached to a head. And his eyes?”
“Yes?”
“They’re open.” Bill takes a sip of expensive red wine. “You know what this means?”
Everyone does, but nobody answers.
“He had to watch,” Bill says. “The Colonel was forced to watch his own arms and legs, while they got cut off.”
28
Dexter looked at Kate’s note, then her face, then the clock. It was 4:06 A.M., the night before they would go to the restaurant.
Kate had been avoiding this, or looking forward to this, anticipating this, dreading this, ignoring this for what seemed like forever. Now that it was finally here, she wasn’t surprised to find herself still reluctant to start it. Reluctant to end the part of her life when this conversation hadn’t happened yet. Reluctant to find out what her life would look like after it.
She walked down the stairs slowly. She bit into her lip, suddenly on the verge of tears. In all her interior deliberations about this conversation, her main emotions had been anger and fear. Not sadness. But that was what was overcoming her, now that the moment was here.
