“Please go ahead.”
“I can’t actually imagine a worse scenario for our national security. Can you?”
“Is it possible that this, now, is already the setup by a hostile?”
This too is something Griffiths has been considering. “Yes, I can definitely see this whole thing being stage-managed by Moscow.”
“Do I hear a but in there?”
“But even if this whole kidnapping and ransom and phone calls et cetera—even if everything that has happened over the past days has been orchestrated by a hostile foreign power, or for that matter by an opposition domestic? Even if that’s true? It doesn’t change the original sin. It just changes the mechanism of how the punishment is being meted out, and by whom. The original sin, that’s still exactly the same.”
Farragut continues to mull it over. This is an important decision, ambushing him in the middle of his summer vacation.
“I need to ask,” he says, “because I’m definitely going to get this question myself: Can her silence be achieved?”
“You mean with money? Paying her off?”
Farragut doesn’t answer immediately. Then he says, “No.”
Griffiths can see the path, Farragut to DCI, then DCI to the president. For an instant, she considers lying. But that’s not a rational option here.
“As far as I know, there are no eyewitnesses. Pryce claims that she has evidence—which we believe is an illicitly recorded private conversation with Wolfe—but we don’t know if that’s true. If it is, she hasn’t indicated that there’s anyone else in possession of this evidence, nor that there’s any fail-safe that would trigger the release of the evidence in the event of her demise. If either were the case, I think she’d have mentioned it, to guarantee her security. She hasn’t.”
“And if this evidence did somehow emerge, independent of her?”
“Without her around to authenticate it, it would be pretty easy to discredit. That is, again, if the evidence truly exists, and if it survives her. It’s also possible that she’s bluffing.”
“Has she taken any protective measures?”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
“So.” He pauses. “What would our options be? I’m not advocating. But I need to be able to answer the question.”
“Well, if we find her?” Griffiths also pauses, allowing this to sink in: Locating Pryce may not be that easy. Especially if the worst-case scenario is true, and this operation has been orchestrated by a foreign entity. At this moment Pryce could already be safe and sound on a private jet en route to Moscow.
“Then we could make her disappear somewhere in Spain. Or she could be found dead in Lisbon. Or she could go home to America, then commit suicide sometime soon. All those scenarios would be plausible given the recent events. But I do have to reiterate: The horse has already left the barn. Where there’s one reporter, there will be more.”
“Reporters?” Farragut snorts.
Griffiths knows that of course the director is right about this: Reportage doesn’t mean what it used to. People already believe what they believe, and these days they go to the media to assure them that they’re right, not to learn otherwise.
“But the fact still exists,” she says. “And someone else will eventually find it. Getting rid of Pryce doesn’t solve that problem.”
Farragut takes another long pause before asking, “Doesn’t it?”
He’s right again. Killing Ariel Pryce might, in fact, solve the problem.
“Are you sure, Griffiths?”
*
It’s just after four A.M. when Wagstaff draws the final blue line through the final list. He has now ruled out ninety-nine percent of these men. On the right side of the table, there are just a dozen names from present-day Washington that aren’t crossed out; on the left side, twice as many New York names from a decade and a half ago. This has turned into a satisfyingly small universe of possibilities.
Wagstaff reminds himself that this strategy is still a long shot. He knew it when he started, knew it in the middle, he knows it now that he has come to the end: This is not a reliable method of ID’ing the perpetrator of a crime.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Wagstaff reads all the names that haven’t been crossed out, then takes a quick second pass. He feels his pulse quicken. It isn’t from the cocaine.
There are only four names that appear on both sides of the table. One of them is impossible to ignore.
CHAPTER 42
DAY 3. 4:51 A.M.
The sun hasn’t yet risen, but the Seville airport is already busy, as airports are in the final predawn hour, with commuters in business suits, and long-distance travelers embarking on first legs, and the bedraggled detritus of last night’s missed connections, and the people who simply arrive everywhere way too early, vibrating with misdirected nervous energy.
“Are you sure about this?” Ariel asks.
“Yes,” John says. “It’s much better this way. Otherwise we’d be two Americans traveling together with no luggage, and me with this beat-up face. Even if the police are not searching for us, we’d look suspicious. Why risk it?”
He’s right, Ariel thinks. But her brain seems to have stopped functioning properly, after working on overdrive for so long. “I don’t know.”
“I do. Trust me.”
“Okay.” Ariel nods. But she’s suddenly panicked. “I’ll see you at home?” It comes out more of a question than she intended.
John smiles. “Of course.”
She turns to walk away, then feels a tug on her arm.
“Hey,” he says.
“Yeah?” She half-turns back, meets his eye.
“I love you.”
Ariel holds his gaze. Their relationship has been a continuing escalation of trust—that’s what relationships are—and this is the apogee, isn’t it?
“You know that, right?”
Ariel feels a lump in her throat. She hopes that this fear is completely irrational, caused by nothing except the bizarre circumstance. But she has learned to trust her sudden fears, all of them.
“I do,” she says. “I love you too.”
*
There are no direct flights across the Atlantic. Ariel’s goal is to get on the earliest flight to the shortest layover to cross the ocean.
The ticket agent’s nails clatter across the keyboard, and she glances from screen to passport and back, hits one key and waits, hits another and waits, and why in God’s name is this so slow— The agent rattles off a barrage of Spanish.
“Lo siento,” Ariel says, “no hablo espa?ol. Do you speak English?”
“The first possible connection is in Amsterdam, but that is a very short layover, which you might miss, and then it would be another four hours there. The next possibility is Brussels, which is a longer layover, but much safer. Which do you prefer?”
Ariel feels like she has already made so many hard decisions, has kept her wits through so many individual steps, and she doesn’t have any decisiveness left.
“Se?ora?” The clerk indicates the growing line of impatient customers. “Por favor?”
“The safer connection.”
“Brussels?”