He nods.
“I’ve been keeping a big secret for a very long time,” she says. “The hardest part is the beginning. Remember that. It will get less hard.”
*
The three CIA officers are all in the same position, sitting with their elbows on their thighs, leaning forward, listening intently. For good measure, Griffiths has her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to be distracted by Antonucci’s workspace, which is so irresponsibly disorganized that it sends shivers of unease down her spine; this is the stuff of nightmares. It’s extremely important to Griffiths for workspaces—for everything—to be organized. This is one of the things that makes her an effective manager of intelligence operatives and assets. It’s also maybe why she has never been married, not even close, and is pretty sure that she never will be.
Now there’s silence over the speaker. The American couple has apparently ended their private conversation away from the Portuguese cops.
Kayla Jefferson has been scribbling madly during this interview; there’s a lot of intel to follow up on. Guido Antonucci has taken fewer notes. He’s the muscle, despite the evidence of his beaten-up face. He closes his notepad and stands.
“You know what to do, right?” Griffiths asks.
“I’m going down there to keep an eye on them.”
“Hit the head first. And definitely bring something to eat and drink. You’ll probably be there all night. Or at least we hope so.”
Antonucci leaves his cubicle; the women stay, to continue to eavesdrop on the police interview.
“Have you made a decision yet?” Jefferson asks, quietly. She wants to know what Griffiths is going to do with the revelation about the owner of the LLC. Which is a revelation about everything.
“It’s not my decision,” Griffiths says. “So I’ve started to run it up the chain. I’ll let you know. Or maybe I won’t. That too may not be my decision.”
*
“Listen.” Ariel looks both cops in the eye. “We appreciate all your help, we really do. But I’m exhausted, and my husband is exhausted, and we really need this day to end. I’m sure you understand. We’ll come to your station first thing in the morning to answer any other questions you might have.”
Ariel hasn’t sat down again. Moniz takes the hint, and rises, followed by Santos, who says, “Just one last question, Senhor Wright.”
After just a couple of days, Ariel knows how these cops operate. Both of them are staring intently at John. Ariel doesn’t know what this question is going to be, but she braces herself for something catastrophic.
“Your sister”—Santos says—“is she left-handed?”
CHAPTER 39
DAY 2. 10:04 P.M.
Ariel shouldn’t say it aloud. John already knows it, and she already knows it, so actually saying it would serve no purpose other than to create antagonism.
John does it for her: “Well,” he says, “you certainly did tell me so.”
Despite the tension of the moment, despite the exhaustion, despite the fear, Ariel smiles. She’s surprised at how much love she feels for this man.
“That was fucked-up,” he says.
“It was,” she agrees. From behind the sheer linen curtain, she watches the detectives step out onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
“They really think I staged my own kidnapping?”
“I don’t know.” Ariel scans the square again, another inventory. “Maybe they don’t actually believe it, but are just poking around to see if your story holds up, on the chance that it doesn’t.”
She moves to the dining table, opens his laptop. “Can you log in, please?”
“Sure. What are you doing?”
“I’m going to see if we can get on an earlier flight.”
There’s no debating the suspicion that was coming off the police tonight; there’s no reason to expect that things will be any better tomorrow. Just because today was awful doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be worse.
“So we’re not going to the police station in the morning?”
“Are you out of your mind? We’re going to the airport in the morning.”
*
Ariel woke after just a few hours of sleep. She struggled to rise from the couch, in physical pain at various sensitive spots, and in mental anguish in every corner of her consciousness, and utterly exhausted. She walked in a stupor through the fully furnished McMansion rental, filled with things she didn’t need or want, the deluxe and oversize everything, the cathedral ceilings and walk-in closets and en suite bathrooms with double vanities and soaking tubs.
She took another shower, maybe the longest of her life, but she still didn’t feel clean; maybe she never would again. She swallowed a couple of painkillers, stared at herself in the mirror. What are you going to do?
She found her husband’s hastily scrawled note on the kitchen counter:
LEFT FOR GOLF, HOME FOR LUNCH, LET’S HEAD BACK TO CITY MID-AFTERNOON
—LOVE, B
Golf: Bucky would be playing with three other guys. One of them might even be Charlie himself.
The kitchen appliances were massive too—a refrigerator the size of an SUV, a ten-burner stove. Who needed ten burners? Ariel barely ever used one, like now, making tea to take to the patio that faced the pool, sit in the shade under the striped umbrella, the terra-cotta paving stones surrounded by a palace guard of blue hydrangea, a staggering array of big blooms sagging on thick woody stems, too big and showy for their own good, like this whole property, her whole life. Like herself.
The rent here was three hundred thousand dollars for the season, Memorial Day through Labor Day. Fifteen weeks. Fifteen Saturday nights. Twenty thousand dollars per Saturday night.
What do you do the morning after you’ve been raped?
*
“Well,” Moniz says, “I am man enough to admit it: You were right.”
“What was that? I did not quite hear.”
Moniz smiles. “I said you were right.” He looks around the square, all these people, all this life. How many of them will commit crimes tonight? How many will be victims?
“Should we call a judge?” he asks. “Try to arrest Wright now?”
“Oh I wish. No, we cannot do that without discussing with the American embassy.”
“Yes we can. The American embassy has no jurisdiction.”
Santos snorts. “Do not be na?ve, António. Jurisdiction has nothing to do with it. If we arrest Wright without first getting the embassy’s sign-off, and then it eventually turns out that we are wrong? Pffft.”
This is the thing that has always frustrated Moniz about working in law enforcement: Police are sometimes more worried about stepping on the wrong toes than about crimes going unpunished. The more senior the police, the more they are concerned for their own skin.
“But we are not wrong,” Moniz says. “John Wright is as guilty a man as I have ever seen.”
“Now who is jumping to conclusions?”
They have arrived at their car. “I will call the embassy first thing in the morning, they will send someone to meet us at the station, and we will arrest Wright as soon as he arrives.”