I lower myself into a chair and grip the armrests.
Carlisle stares right at me as if he’s trying to remember my reaction. “All we know so far is that he’s missing. That’s it. That’s all we have. Could he have been kidnapped? It’s a small possibility. But there are other reasons he may have gone off the grid.”
I feel my face clench like a fist, eyes pinched shut, mouth open, teeth bared. I hide behind my hands. Over the course of my life, I’ve prepared myself for the eventuality that he would end up in the hospital or even die on the job, but this—my mind stretches, picturing a thousand scenarios and tortures. Two tears break free from the inside corners of my eyes, run down along the crevices next to my nose. I force myself to look up. “Tell me exactly what you’re doing to find him.”
Carlisle’s face is blankly professional. “You have my assurance that State is doing all it can. The FBI field office in Paris is already scouring the area. So are the French police, local and federal—”
I cut him off. “You have to assume he was kidnapped, though, right? I mean, that’s how you’re treating it, right? As if he were?”
“Of course,” Carlisle says. “Yes. Absolutely. Right now, SIGINT is looking for what we call ‘chatter’—intercepted conversations—about a missing American diplomat. But so far there’s nothing. Which is a good sign.”
“What is SIGINT?” I ask, blotting my eyes with a tissue.
“Signals Intelligence. They deal with cell phone interceptions, any sort of electronic communication.” Carlisle takes a seat and consults his notepad. “Gwendolyn, did your father talk to you about work at all? What he does? Maybe he mentioned certain troubles he was having at the office?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, the usual stress. And he was sad the last few days. The anniversary of my mom’s death. But he never mentioned much about work. Just that he looked at papers a lot, wrote some reports.”
Carlisle nods and makes a note. “Has your father spoken at all about a desire to, I don’t know, retire? Leave the State Department and move abroad?”
Joey’s hand slaps the table. “That’s enough, Chase.”
Carlisle fires a look at Joey, then turns back to me. “Gwendolyn, we know your father phoned you yesterday afternoon but didn’t leave a message. Have you had any contact with him since then? E-mail, maybe. Social media.”
“No,” I say. “Nothing at all.”
“Thank you. That’s helpful.” Chase sets down his pen and folds his hands in front of him. “I know this must be so hard for you. Do you have any relatives you can stay with for the time being?”
“I have an aunt and uncle in Texas. Georgina and Robert Kaplan. He’s a rabbi in, I don’t know where. A suburb of Dallas, I think.”
“No one local?”
“I’m sure I can stay with Bela and Lili. The Atzmons. They’re friends of ours who live in our building. Fifth floor.”
“The Atzmons will do for the near term,” Carlisle says as he stands. “Probably best if you stay with them tonight. We’ll be sure to come get you if there are any developments.”
I open my mouth to speak, but Carlisle’s already disappearing through the door.
*
The wipers tango quickly across the windshield, sweeping away the rain, pulling back, sweeping again, pulling back. I try to hypnotize myself with the motion, try to lose myself in it. The SUV Joey borrowed from the motor pool is creeping up Third Avenue through the 3:00 a.m. traffic. He doesn’t bother with the lights or siren now, as if he senses I’m grateful to be here with maybe the one friend my dad has in the world who can actually do something to help.
“How’re your kids?” I ask. “Christina is the oldest, right?”
“Yeah,” Joey says. “She’s twelve next month. And Oscar just turned nine.”
“Oscar. I always liked that name.”
It sounds like small talk, but it’s a test. I’m closely watching Joey’s face for his reaction when I say, “We’ll all have to get together, you know, when my dad is back.”
His head retreats a little, and I see him breathe in slowly. “Sure,” he says with a smile that isn’t real.
“My dad’s not coming back, is he, Joey?”
“Of course he is,” Joey says, but the words are hopeful and empty, the way you tell a cancer patient to get well soon.
I feel my face starting to clench up again. I turn away and lean into the cold glass of the window, where the rainwater is flowing down in little rivers. “What happened to him, Joey? Please tell me. No bullshit. I think I have a right.”
Joey drums his fingers on the wheel. “Your dad was at a meeting with a contact of ours, someone we work with. The meeting was at a café. After the two of them left, he texted our office in Paris to say he was all right. But a little while later, his phone was either turned off or just stopped working. There were no police reports from the area, no signs of violence. That’s all we know for sure.”
I think of the timeline I saw on the wall of the room across the hallway. “Was the meeting with someone named Feras? I saw his name on the whiteboard.”
“Yes,” Joey says. “We have someone en route to speak with him now. But we don’t know what role he played, if any.”
“There was a guy, a Russian or Serb, I can’t remember. I saw a picture of him the other night on my dad’s computer. Viktor Zoric. Is he connected to Feras?”
“Not likely. But you can be sure it’s being looked into anyway.”
I press the palms of my hands into my eyes, and Joey reaches over to squeeze my shoulder.
“I don’t get it, Joey,” I say, my voice broken, barely there. “My dad shuffles papers around. What would anyone want with someone like him?”
A long moment of silence. “I think I need a cup of coffee,” Joey says finally. “Come on, I’ll buy you a Coke or whatever.”
Suddenly the SUV veers to the right, cutting across two lanes of traffic. Car horns sound furiously behind us. He pulls to the curb in front of a little bodega, shuts the ignition off, and motions for me to follow as he exits.
The rain batters against my head in fat, frigid drops and runs down my face and neck and into my shirt collar. I raise my hood as Joey pulls me along by the upper arm like he’s leading a prisoner. “It’s not safe to talk in there,” he says. “The radio. It’s never really off. You understand?”
We stop beneath the awning of a twenty-four-hour corner store and stand before wooden shelves lined with bananas and oranges and apples and buckets of cheap flowers in plastic wrapping. There’s no one around, not at this hour, and Joey grips me by the shoulders.
“Your dad,” Joey says. “What is his occupation?”
“He’s a political officer with the Department of State, a diplomat.”
“Come on, Gwendolyn,” Joey says. “What is your father’s job? What does he do for a living?”
“Christ, Joey, what are you getting at?”