Don’t say honestly, she reminds herself.
“Traveling to foreign capitals is pretty much his job.”
“But specifically Moscow: He never mentioned any trips there?”
Did he? Ariel doesn’t think so. She shakes her head.
“What about Hamburg? Did he mention traveling there?”
“Yes.”
“Antwerp? Belgrade?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“What do you think he was doing in Belgrade?”
“The same thing he does on all his business trips.”
“Did you know that Belgrade was where he was posted for the CIA? Oh”—snaps her fingers—“that’s right: You didn’t know about his two years in the Central Intelligence Agency, did you?”
Ariel answers with a sigh.
“So you’re saying that of the trips that John made in the year before he met you, he mentioned all of them, except three visits to Moscow. Do I have that right?”
Ariel shrugs.
“And what about his motorcycle?”
This out-of-left-field question jolts Ariel. “His motorcycle?”
“A few months ago your husband bought a used motorcycle. Why did he pay in cash?”
It takes all her self-control to answer. “Did he? We didn’t discuss his payment method.”
“Why’d he buy this bike?”
“For fun. He likes riding on country roads.”
“Yet when was the last time he’d owned a motorcycle?”
“I don’t know.”
“He paid twenty-five hundred bucks for this used bike. Are you swimming in money like that?”
“What the hell do you want from me? I don’t know anything about this goddamned motorcycle.”
“But you’ve seen it?”
“Of course. It’s parked in my barn.”
“And you didn’t notice the similarity?”
Ariel knows exactly what Griffiths is suggesting. Yet she has no choice but to ask, “What similarity?”
“Between your husband’s bike and the one the kidnapper used to deliver a burner to you.”
CHAPTER 46
DAY 3. 9:09 A.M.
The two women sit in silence. Ariel doesn’t know how to respond to this, so she’s just going to not respond at all.
“I can’t help but wonder,” Griffiths finally says, “why in the world would a man in Charlie Wolfe’s position give all that money to a woman in your position?”
Ariel knows that this too cannot be a fact in Griffiths’s possession. Just as she cannot know that Charlie is George’s father. This CIA officer is bluffing again.
“I mean, even if Wolfe were motivated by the purity of the goodness of his heart—which is a big fucking if—this just looks so bad for him, doesn’t it?”
Ariel doesn’t respond.
“Look, we know that you blackmailed Charlie Wolfe. That’s not even a question. What we need to know is this: How were you able to? And who’s behind it?”
Who’s behind it? Griffiths jumped to that conclusion awfully fast. This is another allegation that Ariel simply isn’t going to argue about.
“You think you can just sit there and say nothing?”
Ariel folds her arms.
“Okay, sure, maybe you can try. But understand this: You’re not leaving here until you give me some fucking answers.” Griffiths stands. “I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it.”
*
Griffiths can picture it clearly: A smooth, handsome young operator like John Wright meets this older woman, a single mom, lonely, vulnerable, easily seduced. She trusts Wright with the long-buried secret that her child’s biological father is a rich, powerful man who has recently achieved national prominence. This seems like a golden opportunity: stage a kidnapping, collect a few million in untraceable cash, disappear in Europe. A simple plot, an easy swindle, especially for a man of Wright’s background and skill set. Makes all the sense in the world: a few months’ work for a few million dollars.
If it’s really this simple, then John Wright is not a matter of national security, not the CIA’s concern, not Griffiths’s problem. He’s just a clever con man who happened to commit his scam in her Lisbon orbit.
On the other hand, it could be much more complicated, and much more dangerous: John Wright could be working for a hostile foreign government. The cash would not be the point of the exercise; the extortion itself would. The operation’s goal would be to turn the next vice president—possibly the next president of the United States—into an enemy asset.
What a great operation that would be. Griffiths would have to admire it.
Even if that’s not what’s going on—even if no foreign government is involved, even if John Wright himself won’t be an ongoing problem—the Charlie Wolfe situation is still a dire national security threat, without doubt. Because it was just proven that Wolfe can be extorted. If it’s not by the Russians, if it’s not this time, there will always be the possibility of a next time.
John Wright and Ariel Pryce are not the real security risk. The real risk is just days away from being sworn in as the vice president of the United States.
*
“Russia?” Antonucci asks.
“Worth a shot.”
“But Wright never went to Russia, did he?”
“No. But his wife obviously doesn’t know that, and now she has to doubt him. Look.” They glance at Pryce through the two-way mirror. “She’s asking herself: Is it possible that my new husband is a Russian operative?”
“Is that what you believe?”
“Not really. But I wouldn’t put it past the Russians to arrange for an operative to marry a woman because she bore Wolfe’s illegitimate child, to secure powerful leverage against a man of his position, his access, his prospects for advancement. Hell, I’d do that myself.”
“Okay. Say John Wright is just that, and his mission was indeed to create the opportunity to blackmail Wolfe. Is Pryce going to know anything about it?”
“No, you’re right, that’s probably not what we can expect out of her.”
“Then what are we going to accomplish here?”
“We’re going to scare the shit out of her, then let her go, and see what she does with her fear.”
*
John powers up the minimally charged new phone, and waits for the service to connect. Then he punches in a long string of numbers from memory, and hits CALL.
“Yes?”
“Ten minutes,” he says.
“Okay. White Ford Fiesta.”
He hangs up. He crosses the concourse into the busiest of all the busy bathrooms in this terminal, where one man after another enters or exits every five seconds. John walks to the very last stall. He yanks the tags off his purchases. Pulls the blue sweater over his black T-shirt, perches the red cap atop his head, slides on the sunglasses. He puts the shopping bag in the trash.
The bank of sinks is crowded with men washing hands, faces, someone is having an electric shave. John checks himself in the mirror, and what he sees is someone who looks like a Spaniard.
It’s a short walk through thick crowds from this bustling bathroom to the busy exit that leads to the anarchy of baggage claim, through which he strides without slowing, staring straight ahead, out the doors to the roadway, and into the passenger door of a little white Ford.
*
“Listen,” Ariel says, “you understand what an NDA is, right? You understand what sorts of penalties these agreements include?”