CHAPTER 16
DAY 1. 7:43 P.M.
Ariel is again led through the embassy’s corridors, but this time the people leading the way are very different from Saxby Barnes, gentleman-douchebag. One is the badly dressed middle-aged guy whom just a few minutes ago Ariel was kicking with all her might out on the Lisbon sidewalk. The other is the young Black woman who showed up at the wheel of an SUV, which she handled like a race-car driver back to the embassy, whose halls are now empty and pin-drop quiet.
“In here, please,” the young woman says, leading Ariel into a conference room where another woman rises from the table and walks toward Ariel, hand extended.
“Hi, my name is Nicole Griffiths.”
“Ariel Pryce.”
“Thanks guys,” Griffiths says to her colleagues, and they recede, shutting the door behind them. Ariel takes a seat at the conference table, which is already set with a pitcher and a couple of glasses of water. Ariel helps herself. She’s parched.
“So I’ll get right to it, Ms. Pryce: Has your husband been kidnapped?”
Ariel doesn’t answer.
“Did they tell you not to talk to anyone?”
Ariel just looks at the woman.
“Of course they did. Kidnappers always say that. Why wouldn’t they? But if you do talk, what are they going to do?”
“Oh I don’t know, maybe kill my husband?”
“But then what? Then their hostage is dead. Then there’s no motivation for anyone to pay any ransom. Then they have nothing to bargain with. Then they’ve committed murder, they’ve killed an American citizen—” The woman stops herself. “Your husband is American?”
Ariel nods.
“Then they’ve killed an American, so they have the wrath of the United States to contend with. All with no upside. Who wants that?”
“Maybe they’re psychos.”
“That’s not really the way this works.”
“How do you know the way this works?”
The woman just smiles.
“They told me, specifically, no police and no embassy.”
“How did they get in touch?” Griffiths is just going to ignore Ariel’s objections. “Did they call on your cell?”
How much should Ariel share with this woman? What’s the downside? Sooner or later, someone has to take her seriously. Maybe that someone is Nicole Griffiths.
“A guy on a motorcycle delivered a phone to me.”
“Interesting. How much are they asking?”
“Three million euros.”
Griffiths takes this in stride. “Do you have three million euros?”
Ariel snorts.
“Is there any reason for anyone to think you do?”
Is there? She did fly business class, the type of indulgence that most people would never even contemplate, a cost that’s equivalent to a new top-of-the-line boiler for her house, fully installed—twenty winters’ worth of warmth—or vet bills for a dog’s lifetime, or even a serviceable used car. But it also seemed like the logical choice. Was she going to sit in steerage while John slept fully reclined at the front of the plane? And Ariel’s ticket, though exorbitant, would be their only out-of-pocket expense for this trip; everything else is on John’s corporate account.
“No,” Ariel says. “We’re not …” She doesn’t know how to explain how obvious it is that she and John are not rich. “My pickup has nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.”
Griffiths smiles. “But what about here in Lisbon? Do you look different here?”
“Sure,” Ariel admits. “We’re staying in a nice hotel. We’re eating in nice restaurants. It’s a business trip. So we’re not driving around in my rusty pickup. On the other hand, we’re not riding in chauffeured limousines.”
Status signifiers: We’re processing them all the time, the high end and the low, the frequencies on which we broadcast our strata, those we receive, the way we’re perceived. The season’s It handbag, the safari vacation, the open button on the sleeve of a man’s dinner jacket. Calling it a dinner jacket.
Their driver from the Lisbon airport had been polite and eager for future business—“Please,” he said, handing John a business card, “any time, to go anywhere”—but he wasn’t wearing a suit, he was just a guy with a clean Mercedes. Relatively clean.
“We’re not hopping from one exorbitant experience to another, private tours and exclusive access, superluxury everything. We’re not going shopping in those stores”—Ariel flicks her wrist dismissively at all the overpriced boutiques of the world, where people kill time buying shoes and neckties when they can’t think of anything better to do with their time and their money.
“Is your husband successful in his career?”
Ariel shrugs. “It’s a good job.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what does that mean, income-wise?”
“It fluctuates with bonuses, but the average is a few hundred thousand a year.”
Griffiths nods: not nothing, but also not three-million-euros-in-cash money. “And your life back in America, does that give any appearance of wealth? Besides your rusty pickup?”
“No, I can’t see how. I live with my son on a small farm a couple hours outside of New York City. John’s job is in the city, so he sleeps there most weeknights in a modest apartment. He comes out to the country for weekends.”
“You said your son? Not John’s?”
“George is thirteen. I met John a year ago.”
“I see. And what about how John looks online? Is there anything to suggest that he might be important? Or well-connected? Or wealthy?”
There are a lot of people who go to extraordinary measures to look rich on social media, especially those who are not. Taking selfies on fake private jets, for the love of God.
“No, John doesn’t look like anything. He doesn’t participate in social media. We’re both anti.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I think social media is ruining the world. John agrees.”
“That’s pretty cynical.”
“Cynical,” Ariel says, “is a na?ve person’s word for clear-eyed.”
Griffiths lets a smile creep up her lips. “Maybe we’ve gotten a little sidetracked.”
“Anyway, my husband and I are both virtually nonexistent, virtually.”
“Is it possible that he was kidnapped because of some business reason?”
“I have no idea. Believe it or not, this is my first experience of kidnapping.”
“What size of deals does your husband work on?”
“Ten million? Twenty? Somewhere like that.”
“Twenty million dollars is a lot of money.”
“Yes, in a pile of cash. But not necessarily as an investment from a VC firm.”
“Fair enough. Is there any chance that your husband is involved in a criminal enterprise?”
“I can’t imagine what that would be. He’s a consultant.”
“What about you?” Griffiths asks. “Would anyone think you’d have three million euros squirreled away somewhere?”
There’s only one person who could possibly think that, and he’s definitely not the kidnapper.
“No.”
“Do you know anyone with that sort of money? Friends, relatives …”
Ariel hesitates before she lies: “No.”
“So what are you planning to do?”