Griffiths is back in the conference room with Ariel, waiting for Bucky to call back.
“Bucky? God, it was so long ago. I went to a fundraiser with an old friend, we’d come to New York at the same time, fresh out of college, trying to break into the theater. She ended up making it, I didn’t, but we stayed friends. She bought this table at a luncheon, and invited me as her plus-one, and Bucky was at our table. Because of this way we met—fundraiser at a fancy club on the Upper East Side, introduced by a well-known actor—he assumed that I came from that world.”
“What world? Money?”
“Money is part of it, but it’s more. It’s fancy colleges, European vacations, Aspen and Palm Beach, luxury hotels, Michelin restaurants, running into friends and family wherever you go, the whole world one big club populated by—in Bucky’s phrase—people like us.”
“Huh.”
“As it turned out, though, I’m not people like us.”
“Is that why the marriage ended?”
Was it? “Yeah,” Ariel says. “It was complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Ariel knows that Nicole Griffiths must be a spy. The CIA would probably need to be involved in a kidnapping sooner or later, and Barnes was obviously the sooner, Griffiths the later. This CIA officer might already know plenty about Ariel, about Bucky, about everything. Griffiths might be fishing for contradictions, trying to draw lies out of Ariel. She needs to be careful.
“In the end, Bucky wasn’t the man I thought he was. Hoped he was.”
Griffiths waits for Ariel to elaborate, but then accepts that she won’t. “You miss that lifestyle?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
Especially when things are broken, when life isn’t functioning properly, Ariel misses the way sharp edges could be smoothed, when assistance was never more than a phone call away, there was always someone who knew someone, the best orthopedic surgeon, the tailor with twenty-four-hour turnarounds, the driver who’d take you anywhere at two in the morning, sure, I’ll be there in ten, no questions asked.
Except of course for the biggest problems. There was no one who could be paid to solve those, for which the opposite was closer to the truth: Those most serious problems were created by the wealth itself, by the entitlement, by the immunity from consequences. By the very idea that any problem could be solved with money.
“But you pay a price for everything, don’t you?” Ariel stares down at the table. “In shops and restaurants and hotels, the price is on the tag, on the menu, the rate card, right there for anyone to see.”
She still has a few physical remnants of that life, almost talismans: the burled-wood umbrella from the shop in Bloomsbury, the paisley scarf from the rue Saint-Honoré, the Tank watch, the bone-handled hairbrush. Almost no one ever sees these things, and those who do don’t recognize their provenance. No one in her new life was ever in that old club.
“But some prices are hidden, invisible. Sometimes the price doesn’t become apparent for a very long time. Sometimes you never even recognize it, never understand that you already paid it.”
Ariel turns her gaze back up to this CIA officer. “Sometimes,” she says, “you yourself are the price.”
*
The landline rings, and Ariel and Griffiths both turn to look at it, then at each other.
“I’ll wait outside,” Griffiths says, getting up. “Just open the door when you’re finished.” She leaves, and Ariel picks up the handset.
“Hello? Bucky?”
“Hi. What’s wrong?”
She’d been married to this man; she’d loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone. And this is the first time she’s heard his voice in fourteen years. She doesn’t know what to expect from him; she doesn’t know how he feels about her, all these years later.
“Oh Bucky, it’s horrible.” Ariel takes a deep breath. “I’m in Portugal, and my husband has been kidnapped, and they’re demanding three million euros, in cash, within forty-eight hours.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Less now, forty-seven hours, whatever. And there’s no way I can get that type of money, Bucky. Nowhere near.”
Bucky doesn’t respond immediately. He has always been someone who weighs all the options carefully before committing to anything. That’s why he didn’t get married until he was forty.
“I wouldn’t be calling you if I had any other choice, but I don’t. Can you help?”
“Help? How can I help?”
“How do you think? I need the money, Bucky.”
“Oh Christ, all of it? I don’t have that type of cash lying around, not even close. Plus it’s the Fourth tomorrow, US banks aren’t open …”
Ariel is surprised to find herself crying. She wipes a tear from her cheek.
“Are you okay?” Bucky asks. “Are you in danger?”
“I don’t think so. But I’m really worried about my husband, and I just don’t see how I’m going to …” She trails off with a sob. “This is so bad, Bucky. So bad. I really need help. Do you maybe have money somewhere else?”
Bucky is silent for a second before he asks, “What do you mean?”
Now it’s Ariel’s turn to take a careful pause. “You should know that we’re speaking on a landline at the US embassy in Lisbon.”
He at first doesn’t appear to understand this non sequitur, then does. “Oh,” he says.
Ariel doesn’t want to ask him explicitly about assets he might be hiding in tax shelters over a phone that could be—that is—being monitored by federal agents.
“No,” he says. “I don’t.”
“I could pay you back, Bucky. Eventually. I’m sure this is covered by John’s insurance.”
“You’re sure? I’m not. But that doesn’t even matter. There’s just no way I could come anywhere near that amount, not in any time frame that would do you any good.”
“They’re going to kill him,” Ariel pleads.
“Oh, Laurel, you don’t know that. There’s no way to know that.”
Ariel waits a few seconds. “Bucky,” she says. “Do you know anyone else who could help?”
“Anyone?” She can hear him take a deep breath. “You know I do. But I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go to him.”
Neither of them is going to utter the man’s name on a nonsecure phone.
“Of course I don’t, Bucky. But can you think of any other option?”
*
“After this call,” Griffiths says, “we’ll be finished. I’ll take Pryce back to her hotel.”
Jefferson raises her eyebrows. CIA station chiefs don’t tend to serve as personal drivers for American civilians in distress.
This is Nicole’s problem with the gender imbalance within the Agency. It’s not always a political one; not always an issue of feminism, or equity. It’s a practical consideration. Situations often call for women, and there simply aren’t enough of them around.
“Have you worked a lot of kidnappings?” Jefferson asks.
“Not here. This is the first in my four years in Lisbon. And kidnapping is usually not an Agency thing. Probably won’t be this time either. Though that depends on who these people are.”
“These people? You mean the kidnapped guy and … ? Who?”
“And the wife, Jefferson. Married couples are always a team. Except when they’re enemies.”