“Anything else?” Griffiths asks.
“Yeah: Just a few minutes ago, she had a really weird phone conversation with I think an employee of hers.”
“Really weird? How so?”
“You’re going to want to listen to it.”
*
“Hi again Mr. James, this is Laurel Turner. I just realized that I have a small problem with the paperwork. I’m no longer Laurel Turner, I changed my name, I don’t have any ID in that name. So the notary can’t endorse my signature of this agreement.”
“I see.”
“Can you please redraft with my new name?”
“I’ll have to check with my client.”
“Please,” Ariel says, “can you hurry this up?”
Ariel wonders if James knows his client’s identity, or if this lawyer is just another unaware cutout, a subcontractor of a subcontractor, anonymous outsourced legal help buffered by multiple layers of insulation.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on here?” Ariel asks.
“Listen, Ms., um, whatever you say your name is. That’s really none of my concern.”
*
Twenty minutes later, Ariel can barely keep herself from launching across the desk to throttle the notary, who seems to be purposefully turning the pages in slow motion, double-checking who the hell knows, eyes back and forth between Ariel’s passport and the agreement. As if inventing new ways to waste time, like a taxi driver running up the fare on a tourist.
“Very well,” the notary says abruptly, signing with a dramatic flourish. “We are finished.”
“Oh thank God.”
Ariel gathers up her pages. Is this woman a possible leak? Is she bound by confidentiality? Did she as promised attend to nothing except her specific responsibility, which was verifying Ariel’s identity, ensuring that the person signing the paperwork is the person referred to in it? Is she obligated to turn a blind eye to everything else? Has she? Will she?
The triggering event’s details—the very existence of it—are all omitted from this paperwork, all buried deep in the past. But this document could certainly be a start. It could be a shovel.
*
“Thank you for taking the time to see us.”
“Of course,” Jorge Vicente says. “How can I help you?”
Detective Carolina Santos looks around the wood-paneled walls hung with gilt-framed oil paintings: a hunting scene, a whaling boat in action, farmers tending an orchard. All pictures of men in the process of exploiting the earth. She sighs at the obviousness of it.
“We have a few questions about John Wright,” Moniz says.
“This is just terrible.” Vicente looks from one detective to the other. “I feel—I do not know—embarrassed about this happening to an American here. As if it is our fault.”
“I agree,” Moniz says. “It is humiliating when crime happens here to foreigners, especially to Americans. As if their worst prejudices are justified. We police take this personally.”
“I can imagine.”
“We do not want to take up too much of your time.” Moniz opens his notepad. “What is the purpose of Mr. Wright’s visit to you?”
“He is here to help us prepare for a round of financing.”
“Financing for what? If you do not mind the question.”
“It is no secret. We want to raise four hundred million euros to purchase a tract of land from one of our competitors that has fallen on hard times, and is thus willing to sell. This purchase would be a big change to the scale of our business.”
“Would this purchase generate any ill will? Are there other competitors who also want to buy this land?”
“Yes. They too are welcome to make bids. But this is a size of investment that is not appropriate for everyone. Though maybe I do not understand what you are asking, exactly?”
“Would any of your competitors be desperate to stop your deal from going through?”
“Oh, I see.” Vicente shakes his head. “No. Certainly not desperate enough to kidnap a consultant to—what?—delay our financing?” He shakes his head more vigorously. “No.”
“Can you imagine anyone else who might want to kidnap this American? For any reason at all?”
“No.”
“Does he strike you as a natural target for kidnapping?”
“That is the strange thing. When your colleague told me about the kidnapping, I thought, why would anyone kidnap him? You have seen the wealth on display here, especially the British and the Russians with their yachts, their villas in the Algarve. There are so many foreigners in Portugal who look like lucrative kidnapping targets. But John Wright? He is not one of them.”
“Thank you,” Moniz says, then turns to Santos, giving her a chance to ask follow-ups.
“Is there anything unusual about Mr. Wright’s visit?” she asks.
“Such as?”
“I do not know. Anything. Is it last-minute? Did he make any special requests about the dates, or the schedule, or accommodations, or dining? Anything?”
“Well, now that you mention it: This visit of his, I think it is not one hundred percent necessary. Mr. Wright was here just a couple of months ago, and also a few months before that. We have already done the important work, and we are now at a very final stage of preparing our materials, which I think we could easily do by telephone and email. He does not need to be here.”
“Perhaps this visit is more for the purposes of relationship-building?”
“Yes, perhaps. But our relationship is well-established at this point.”
“Is it celebratory?”
“That would be premature.”
“Do you have a guess of why he wanted to come?”
“No.”
“Maybe something to do with his wife?” Santos suggests.
“His wife?” Vicente makes a face: It’s possible. “Maybe. I was surprised to learn that he was planning to bring her along on this visit.”
“Surprised? So her presence was not your idea?”
“My idea? Why would I want him to drag his wife across the ocean? In truth I was a little bothered by it. This wife necessitates organizing a dinner, with my wife, and my colleagues, and their spouses …” Vicente waves his hand, it just goes on and on, the pain in the ass.
Santos smiles: There is the first confirmed, definitive lie.
“Thank you for your time,” she says.
*
“Well, now we know,” Santos says. They are back on the sidewalk, where it is very hot, and very bright.
“What do we know?”
Santos is squinting, fishing around in her bag for her sunglasses, which are nearly as big as ski goggles, darkening every corner of her field of vision, from every angle. Moniz suspects that those giant things, meant to protect her, probably make it harder to actually see clearly.
“We know that Wright lied,” Santos says in her most sanctimonious tone. “He claimed to his wife that it was the client who wanted her to come with him here. And the client just denied it.”
“Perhaps,” Moniz says.
“Perhaps? What do you mean? Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps it was Wright who lied. Perhaps not. We do not know for certain.”