*
Ariel’s mobile is still not getting a signal. She suspects that the CIA is jamming service in this room, forcing Ariel to use their landline, ensuring their access to her conversations. Ariel knows that neither her own cell nor the burner will be safe enough for the next call she needs to make, not nearly. And it would be patently irresponsible to make that call from the embassy’s line; it might even be illegal. No matter the extenuating circumstances, Ariel can’t relax her vigilance now. Especially not now.
CHAPTER 17
DAY 1. 8:48 P.M.
Ariel gazes out the car window. The sun hasn’t yet fully set, and golden light is washing the fa?ades of the buildings at the very tops of hills. But down here in the central valley, without direct sunlight, everything has fallen into dimness, muting the colors. Streetlights have come on, casting their sharp-edged cones. Ariel can feel darkness descending quickly, the way it does in cities, with buildings that block the sun’s last low rays. In the country, night comes on slower.
“Thanks,” she says to Griffiths, “you can drop me here. I want to get something at the snack kiosk.” This is not true.
“You sure? I can wait.”
“No thanks,” Ariel says. “But I appreciate the offer.”
“Wait.” Griffiths thrusts a business card at Ariel. “Please let me know if you hear anything?”
Ariel takes the card, climbs out of the car. She surveys the square, packed with people, eating and drinking and strolling and sitting, there must be a hundred people, no way to scrutinize all of them. She walks slowly, her head moving left to right and back, trying to identify the men who are loitering alone. She can see six of them, but two are too old, one is too young, and one is too ridiculous looking, wearing a garish outfit that demands more attention than any tail would choose. That leaves two men who might be watching her; she memorizes their outfits.
For appearance’s sake, she buys a juice at the kiosk, then resumes crossing the twilit square, continuing to look around but losing energy fast, her concentration flagging. Ariel feels like her nerves have been flayed, her emotions rubbed raw, her spirit exposed and beaten by the futility of all those meetings today, the phone calls, the failure of every single interaction.
Night is falling. She’s about to be all alone, in the dark, in a foreign city, very far from home, a place whose language she doesn’t speak, where her husband is missing, where she doesn’t know anyone. She feels the weight of all this pressing down on her shoulders, on her psyche, on her everything, it’s an overwhelming weight, one she may not be able to bear. What will it look like, getting crushed by this weight?
It will look like this: standing on a sidewalk, sobbing.
Ariel lets it happen, she doesn’t try to stop the flow that’s streaming down her face, her shoulders convulsing. She allows herself to feel the fullness of it, her whole body racked by intense sobs. Let it come. What does she care if all of Lisbon sees her crying? She welcomes it.
She cries until she is all cried out, for now. She takes a deep quavering breath, pushes her shoulders back, chest out, head up. Then she resumes walking through the last of Lisbon’s light, as dusk gives way to night.
*
Griffiths listens to the recording of Ariel Pryce talking to her ex-husband, Bucky Turner, via a phone that’s connected to the car speakers. Their voices surround Griffiths; the final click that ends the conversation sounds like a needle being removed from vinyl.
“My God,” she says to Jefferson, who emailed the playback from her computer at the embassy. Every once in a while, Griffiths is amazed at all the technology, the everyday ordinariness of these extraordinary things that were unthinkable when she’d started at the Agency.
“What the fuck was that?”
“I know, right?”
“Let’s hear that bit again about the other man.”
“—anyone else who could help?”
“Anyone? You know I do. But I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go to him.”
“Of course I don’t, Bucky. But can you think of any other option?”
There’s a long pause before the ex-husband asks, “What makes you believe he’d have this type of cash lying around?”
“Please. You don’t think he has numbered accounts somewhere like Luxembourg? Or maybe uncut diamonds in a safe-deposit box in Zurich?”
“I don’t know anything about any of that, Laurel. And neither do you.”
“Oh you know that he’s every type of tax dodger. Not to mention a criminal in other ways.”
“You shouldn’t be making accusations like this, especially not if you’re going to ask for his help.”
Griffiths turns this exchange over in her mind.
“What are you thinking?” Jefferson asks.
“They’re both definitely scared of the man they’re discussing. My first thought was organized crime, but that phrase a criminal in other ways makes it sound like he’s not a criminal professionally. Just a—I don’t know—occasional lawbreaker. An amateur.”
“Maybe he’s a business associate of the ex-husband?”
“It’s possible. Whoever this man is, Pryce hates him. Are we up on her phones yet?”
“Yeah. Her mobile, and the burner, and the landline in her hotel room. Everything.”
“Good. Now let’s take a look at the kidnapped husband too.”
“What about him?”
“Everything.”
*
“I need to make a call,” Ariel says to the night clerk, Alexandra, according to her name tag. “And I don’t want to use the phone in my room.”
“I’m sorry?” Alexandra is a lean, muscular young woman who looks like she runs ten miles every day plus on Saturday nights goes kickboxing.
“My husband has been kidnapped.”
“Meu Deus.”
“And I’m worried that my phone”—Ariel holds up her cell—“might be bugged. People might be listening. And if they bugged my mobile, then maybe they bugged my room phone too. Do you understand?”
The young woman has clearly understood all the words that just tumbled out of Ariel’s mouth—language isn’t the barrier—but not what the hell is wrong with this crazy American.
“So I want to use yours”—pointing at the landline console—“to make a very important call. To try to save my husband’s life.”
Ariel knows that the clerk is going to accede. She doesn’t really have a choice, working in a place like this. “Of course,” she says, smiling placidly. “My pleasure.”