Santos doesn’t believe it. “Text us the nearest address to the alley.” She turns to her partner. “Dispatch uniformed officers to interview anyone nearby, immediately. Ring every doorbell. Everything very fast.”
Moniz obeys, gets on the phone to the station.
Should Santos order the whole area to be closed down? She has only seconds to make this decision, to try to cordon off a three-or four-block perimeter, something that would require—what?—two dozen officers who’d need to arrive inside of two minutes or it would be a complete waste of effort.
Is that even possible? Yes, if the justification was that police needed to close in on the assassin of the president. But for this? For the kidnappers of a low-profile American businessman? No, it’s out of the question. Even if the tactic were successful—big if—Santos would be excoriated for the waste of resources, for the inconvenience to the populace, for the intrusion of mass interrogations on a quiet Tuesday evening, with no immediately apparent emergency—no gunfire, no hostages, no bank robbery, no large-scale threat to anything. Portugal’s long history of authoritarianism is still a fresh memory for many, especially among those who now wield the reins of power, people who have very little tolerance for anything that smacks of a police state. The dictator Salazar didn’t die until 1970, after having been prime minister for thirty-six years.
No: Closing off this corner of Chiado is much more likely to get Santos reprimanded than praised. Maybe even fired. Her chief was a teenager back in ’74 when the military coup finally overthrew the Estado Novo; he often mentions his memory of the soldiers who put carnations in the muzzles of their guns.
“Okay Tomas,” Santos says, “stay with her until the next corner, then Erico, you step in.”
But her heart is not in it. Santos is fairly certain that they already missed the ransom handoff. Was it in the taxi? The tram? The bar? Or maybe this whole thing has been a ruse? Maybe the money was left back at the hotel, and the entire countersurveillance route was just a way to draw the police away, a complex misdirection. Maybe the police have been looking the wrong way the entire time.
*
With each step, Ariel is increasingly aware of the pain in her knee from her tumble out of the tram. She’s limping under the weight of this pain and this duffel filled with yesterday’s news, and her adrenaline level is falling, her energy flagging, her middle-aged body breaking down. She’s feeling like she can barely take another step, she’ll never be able to reach the next corner. But she does.
As she waits for a traffic light, Ariel looks back. She can see a few people—a couple who are a block behind, and a lone man even farther. But at this point it doesn’t really matter who’s following her.
It has been five minutes since the handoff, then ten, and now she enters a different-looking neighborhood on the far side of a hill, and the low sun is directly in her eyes, forcing her to squint while she limps, feeling like she’s going to collapse.
But she has to keep going.
*
“Jefferson. That was fast.”
“I suspect that Anton Dupree, recent GW dropout, is engaged in some low-level illegal activity. Enough to be intimidated when I told him that we know what he’s doing, and we’re willing to look the other way, we just need a small piece of information in exchange.”
“Good thinking. And what is it that Anton is doing?” Griffiths asks.
“I have no clue. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s street-level dealing of recreational drugs. But anyway, he was quick to give up the name of the passenger he took to and from the convenience store, as well as the address where the round trip originated and ended. I just sent the coordinates to you. You’re going to want to be sitting down for this.”
Ping.
Griffiths opens the map, zooms in, and her mouth falls open.
“Holy shit,” she mutters. “I knew I recognized that voice.”
*
The street ends.
“What the—?”
Ariel stands there, seeing no obvious next move. She retrieves the burner, and calls back the last number that dialed her, the only number that ever called this phone. No answer; it doesn’t even ring. That device probably no longer exists.
The street she has been walking has ended at a perpendicular avenue. She glances in both directions, down the hill toward the river, uphill toward the city’s sprawling untouristed interior. Neither direction makes more sense, nor less.
Ariel looks around at the apartment buildings; nothing screams out at her. She’s standing next to a ten-foot-high concrete wall with a large metal sliding door, the sort of door that looks like the gateway to a parking lot, with a small window at eye level, for safety. From one side, you can look through and see the other, make sure no one is lying in wait.
She looks through.
*
“There’s no father listed on George Pryce’s birth certificate.”
“None? So the birth certificate doesn’t say unknown for father?”
“Nope, it doesn’t say nothing. That line is just blank.”
Pete Wagstaff mulls this over. “That means Ariel Pryce knows who the father is, but for some reason did not name him.”
“Sure, that’s possible,” Myron says, though it doesn’t sound like he agrees. “It’s also possible that she did not know who the father is, but also did not want to commit to that uncertainty on a legal document.”
Wagstaff feels like he has learned something important here, but he doesn’t know what exactly. “Maybe we can come at this from a different direction.”
“How’s that?”
“We know what NDAs are for, right?”
“Uh …”
“NDAs exist to hide bad acts. Things that might be subject to criminal prosecution, or at least civil judgments.”
“That’s one reason. But there are others. Like to protect proprietary information in business, or science, or the terms of any contract in any field. Or to enforce silence about illegally obtained information without resorting to criminal prosecution. Or simply to keep a secret that’s embarrassing but not illegal. There are plenty of NDA scenarios that don’t involve crime, and plenty that might be to the mutual benefit of all the parties involved.”
“You’re right, Myron. But what’s the most common?”
“I don’t know. And I’m pretty that sure neither do you.”
“Certainly the most well-known involve inappropriate or illegal sexual relationships.”
“You’re getting way out in front of the facts, Pete.”
“Maybe. But look at this combination of events. Fifteen years ago—”
“Fourteen.”
“—this woman must have been spectacular looking. I mean, she’s a knockout now, so I can only imagine. Tell me how many NDAs signed by beautiful young women don’t involve sex?”
“Well, sex, that’s pretty broad, isn’t it? Sex encompasses a lot of different relationships.”
“NDAs signed between beautiful young women and anonymous entities.”