“So you haven’t seen her while you’ve been here in Europe?”
“As I said already, I met her only the one time, and that was three months ago.”
“Uh-huh. So, back to this summit.”
“Yeah?”
“Is that when you told John that the father of your child is Charlie Wolfe?”
*
He’d been adamant that the agreement include an abortion. Charlie didn’t want any bastard child of his out in the world. Who knew how that would come back and bite him one day, regardless of any NDA.
“That’s a deal breaker,” Ariel told her lawyer.
“Got it. But just for my clarity on our negotiating position, may I ask why?”
Ariel understood about attorney-client privilege; she understood that it would be an unconscionable—and disbar-able—breach of ethics for a lawyer to ever divulge anything that a client said in a situation like this. But Charlie was a man with immense power who’d likely end up with even more of it. Ariel was a woman with none who’d likely never have any. So she was not comfortable trusting in any norms. Nor trusting anyone, about anything.
“No,” Ariel said. “That’s all you need to know.”
*
John walks to the very rear of the shop, a table piled with lightweight crewnecks. He stands with his back toward the front, and chooses a navy sweater. On his way to the register, he picks up a red hat with the logo of the local football club; at the counter he plucks a pair of aviator sunglasses out of a carousel. He keeps his haul in a tight bundle in front of him, out of the view of the security camera mounted near the ceiling at the opening to the concourse. When he pushes his bundle across the counter to the clerk, he keeps his body between these goods and the camera.
“Buenos días,” he says, in his best Castilian accent, with a big smile for the homely clerk.
He pays in cash.
*
Ariel takes a moment to think this through: Is it remotely possible that this CIA woman knows the identity of George’s father? For certain?
The answer she comes up with is no. Regardless of where this woman works, what data she can access, this piece of information is simply not knowable. She might suspect it, which is an impressive deduction. But there’s no way for her to be certain.
With this realization, Ariel feels a shift in the power dynamic. Griffiths had been confident that she was knocking Ariel off-balance, putting her superior knowledge on display, revealing to Ariel things about her very own husband that she didn’t know, his cocaine arrest, his sister’s suicide attempts. But then she overplayed her hand with this bluff. Ariel tilts her chin up in defiance, and says nothing.
“And what exactly did John tell you about his time in the CIA?”
Ariel doesn’t react to this head-spinner either.
“Oh, did he fail to mention that as well? Yes, after his undergrad in ROTC, and four years in the army, your husband spent a couple of years working for the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Ariel shrugs.
“Which is to say that John Wright is a man who spent the better part of a decade learning how to be situationally aware, how to defend himself, how to handle challenging situations. Yet this same man then allowed himself to be abducted in broad daylight in front of a luxury hotel.”
This sure is a barrage that’s being thrown at Ariel. She doesn’t know which way to duck.
“Can you see it now, Ms. Pryce?”
Ariel raises her eyebrows.
“You have been set up. This brand-new husband of yours? He has played you.”
The two women stare at each other for a few seconds.
“Please tell me.” Ariel is using her most condescending, sure-I’ll-humor-you tone. “What’s your theory?”
“Not a theory.” Griffiths plants her elbows on the table. “This man shows up out of nowhere, in a place where he doesn’t belong, and sweeps you off your feet. This good-looking and might I point out much younger man, after just a few months of a part-time relationship, is suddenly so desperate to form a long-distance split household with you—plus your teenaged son and your failing business and your struggling farm—that pretty much out of nowhere he proposes marriage. Is none of this a red flag to you? Are you that confident in your irresistibility?”
Ariel doesn’t respond.
“Okay, I get it, maybe he’s fucking you silly, you can’t tell which end is up. Your, um, faculties have been compromised by multiple-orgasm events.”
“That’s a terrible thing for one woman to say to another.”
“Maybe so. But tell me: Why the rush to wed?”
“We’re in love, life is short. Maybe that hasn’t sunk in for you, distracted as you are by this busy career of yours, intimidating traumatized American citizens that you abduct off airplanes in foreign airports. But trust me: You have less time than you think.”
“Sure.” Griffiths smiles. “So this brand-new husband drags you to Lisbon under the demonstrably false pretext that you’re somehow necessary for a business trip, during which he’s kidnapped, in a city where Americans get kidnapped, on average, zero times per year. To save this husband from this extraordinarily rare peril, you have no choice but to blackmail a man who’s in a uniquely inconvenient circumstance to be blackmailed. So you do exactly that, then hand over two million euros to someone in an alley, and lo and behold, your husband is set free with a little cut on his face. Is this what happened?”
“Minus all the sarcasm,” Ariel says, but suddenly something new is scratching at her consciousness.
“So why’d you flee Lisbon in the middle of the night? That was a dramatic exit. And, I might say, well planned. Well executed.”
Ariel can’t figure it out, what’s bothering her. “We were uncomfortable in Lisbon,” she says. “Is that hard to understand?”
“Sure, but why the overnight drive?”
Now Ariel realizes what’s bothering her: Griffiths said two million euros. Even though the ransom was supposed to have been three. Did Ariel ever mention the shortfall to Griffiths? To anyone?
No. Only to the kidnappers. And to John. So how does Griffiths know?
“Ms. Pryce?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Didn’t it seem like overkill to drive through the night from Lisbon to Seville?”
“Not to me. Do I need to remind you that my husband had been kidnapped?”
“Whose idea was it to get out of Lisbon in such a hasty fashion? Yours or John’s?”
“Mine.”
“You sure about that? Was it actually your idea, or did he make you think it was your idea?”
Ariel doesn’t answer.
“And whose idea was it to travel separately from Seville?”
“John’s.”
“That didn’t send up any alarm signals?”
Should it? Maybe. But Ariel shakes her head.
“What about Russia? Has your husband spent much time there?”
“Russia?” Ariel feels a tingle run up her spine. “Not that I know of.”
“So it would surprise you to learn that last year, he made three separate trips to Moscow?”
Yes, that would definitely surprise Ariel. But “No” is what she says, “though honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’d been anywhere.”