Is this something she can do herself—just start calling notaries? Or would that take forever?
Ariel tries to think of who else might help. The US embassy is, of course, closed. What about the Lisbon detectives? Would they know of an English-speaking notary who’d be available now? That seems unlikely. And all those CIA people, they too are out of the question, Ariel can’t knowingly let spies anywhere near this agreement she’s going to sign, which would basically violate the very terms of the agreement ipso facto.
Of course it’s possible that the CIA has already found her old name, and her old husband, and her old life in its entirety—her old friends and old foes, her old accusations. Maybe they’ve found her old evidence, her old audio recordings. Her old legal settlements. Maybe they can already diagram the relationships, the phone calls, the demands, the extortion, the consequences. Maybe they already know exactly what happened, how, why, where, when. And who.
Even if so, Ariel still can’t volunteer any of this information to anyone, and she can’t do anything that could be construed as willingly disclosing privileged information.
“Give me a sec, okay?” She marches into reception. Duarte, who has obviously become fearful of this mercurial American, smiles weakly. “Yes senhora? How can I help?”
“I need to find an English-speaking notary as soon as possible. Do you know of any?”
The desk clerk is clearly reluctant to admit that he can’t help a guest, no matter what the request. The truthful answer would be no, but instead he says, “I can find one.”
“How specifically would you begin to look for this?”
“I …” Duarte looks like he might actually cry. “I will call colleagues who are working at the larger hotels with more business travelers.”
Better than nothing, but barely. This might take the young man one minute, but it could also take all day. Duarte doesn’t sound very confident, and his plan doesn’t sound very promising.
But a reporter? That’s tough to rationalize. And it might end up being tough to justify. But does she really have any other sensible option?
“No thanks,” Ariel says to the clerk, and returns to the stairwell.
“Listen,” she says to Wagstaff, “I appreciate your help. But just so we understand each other very clearly: I cannot talk about the details of this situation with you.”
“I understand.”
Does he? She hopes so. Some men have a hard time understanding vulnerability, and she can’t risk any misunderstandings.
*
“I have her phone records.” Jefferson is standing in Griffiths’s doorway, holding a few sheets of paper.
“Come on in,” Griffiths says. “Let’s have a look.”
Jefferson has been annotating a list of Ariel Pryce’s phone calls: ER for a half-dozen hospitals, and WRIGHT CELL and WRIGHT OFFICE DIRECT and WRIGHT OFFICE GENERAL for the husband’s lines, and Ariel Pryce’s own numbers at home, her bookshop, her mother. Jefferson has also drawn helpful lines across the page that indicate Pryce’s movements and presumed activity during the course of the past few days—when the woman visited the police station, when she returned to the hotel, the three times she visited the embassy.
“And these pages here”—Jefferson hands over a different sheaf—“these are her text messages.”
Griffiths glances at today’s, all increasingly urgent entreaties to her husband, except for one to her son. Nothing jumps out. She turns the page. “This is the past thirty days.”
“Yup.”
“Nothing international, except when she was actually here in Lisbon. Maybe let’s go back further? Let’s look at everything over the past year.”
Jefferson nods.
“Is this copy for me?” Griffiths asks.
“Yeah. And within the hour, I hope to have the same thing for the husband. His carrier is slower to respond.” Jefferson lingers in the door. “So are you thinking that this is some sort of a hoax, and Pryce is in on it?”
“Not impossible. What do you think?”
“Nothing’s impossible,” Jefferson admits. “Or almost nothing. But I don’t see it.”
“Why’s that?”
“The money,” she says. “These are not desperate people, neither of them. They both earn decent livings, legally. Although they’re not exactly rolling around in piles of dough, nor do they need to engage in a massive international fraud just to make a buck.”
“Though maybe they do,” Griffiths says, “and we can’t yet see why. Maybe they’re deep into something. Loan sharks. Betting. Drugs.”
Jefferson bounces her head side to side: good but not great point.
“Or maybe their predicament is not even nefarious,” Griffiths continues. “Maybe Wright’s sister is the one in trouble; maybe Pryce’s son needs a new kidney; maybe her mom is about to lose her retirement condo to an online scam. Plenty of ordinary law-abiding people find themselves in sudden need of cash, and do desperate things to get it.”
Jefferson nods.
“The truth is that I don’t actually believe that’s what’s going on here,” Griffiths admits. “But I’m pretty sure something is.”
CHAPTER 27
DAY 2. 1:47 P.M.
This was a mistake, wasn’t it? Ariel shouldn’t have allowed this reporter to help her, to accompany her to this law firm’s reception room. She should’ve found an English-speaking notary some other way.
Ariel perches in a leather chair, and sets down her contract on the coffee table, which already holds a potted succulent and a pile of magazines and newspapers. She can’t help but glance at the front page, a headline in Portuguese that she can’t decipher, but doesn’t need to, it’s clear just from the picture. She’s surprised that this is front-page fodder for a European daily. What will happen when the story actually gets interesting? It will be a global event, nonstop coverage.
She feels her chest getting tight. She takes a deep breath, trying to beat back the budding panic attack. Not now, please.
Pete Wagstaff is continuing to negotiate a conversation in Portuguese with the receptionist, who has a lot of questions. Finally the reporter walks over to Ariel. “It’ll be a few minutes.”
Ariel nods. She should take this opportunity to read through the agreement carefully. All she’d done back at the hotel was skim, note the numbers, find the places to sign. But she’d failed to notice that she needed a notary, and what else had she neglected? Cursoriness is irresponsible here. If anything ever has demanded close attention, it’s this document.
She reads slowly, carefully, trying to cut through the dense legalese, references to the prior agreement from long ago, its date, its parties. This new NDA is an amendment to that old one, the same terms and penalties and remedies, the same everything still in effect. None of which she has in front of her. None of whose specifics she can recall. And none of which can be provided by anyone—not this notary, not the lawyer in Paris, not even her original lawyer, with whom she hasn’t been in touch in fourteen years, a woman who’s no doubt spending July Fourth on some beach— Fuck, she thinks, and “Damn,” she mutters, slamming down the small sheaf.