Deception (19 page)

Henri's teeth clenched. The massage was passive-aggressive, he thought; somewhere between shiatsu and shish kebab. He put up with it for another thirty seconds, trying not to react visibly. Then he rolled over and pulled Madeleine down for a kiss.

She brushed his lips peremptorily with her own, pushed off him, and went into the bathroom.

Something had gotten into her, he thought. Somehow, since yesterday, she had grown angry with him. Or perhaps she was angry with herself, or with her husband. Whatever the reason for her mood, he resented it. This was for married men—dealing with the vicissitudes of women's tempers. This was not for him. If he had wanted this, he would have gotten married himself.

A scorpion the size of his thumbnail was crawling down the length of the bed. He brushed it onto the floor, looked at it for a second, then sat up and crushed it with his bare heel.

Madeleine came back into the room, still not looking at him. “I'm hungry,” she said to the window.

“So let's eat,” Henri said.

“There's no food here.”

“Of course there is. I went to the market yesterday.”

“I want a swim.”

“So let's swim,” he said.

“I want a drink.”

“So …”

She turned, and pinned him with her eyes.

“You're fucking Isabella DiMeglio,” she said. “Aren't you?”

A moment passed. Henri, with some effort, maintained eye contact.

“Madeleine,” he said patiently.

“Yes.”

“Don't ask a question if you don't want to know the answer.”

“I hate when you say that.”

“I'm sorry. But—”

“Oh, forget it.” She turned away again, to face the window. “Let's have a drink,” she said.

2.

He found one of the last good merlots in the cellar, opened it with a silver corkscrew, then carried it with two glasses to the side of the pool, where Madeleine stood looking out across the fields, naked.

The resentment was still with him as he poured the wine. Now they were going to have a talk, he thought. Like husband and wife. She was in a mood; she was feeling jealous; she wanted reassurances. Henri, on the other hand, wanted none of it.

He poured two glasses, then waited for the opening salvo.

“My husband mentioned you today,” Madeleine said casually.

She continued to face the field as she spoke. To the east of the house was raw wilderness: immense fields of purple lavender, distant rocky hills dotted with golden shrub. Behind them, the vast picture windows of the living room reflected the glow of the setting sun.

“Yes?” Henri said.

“He wants you to get him some coke. I told him you don't do that anymore. But he insisted I ask.”

“I don't do that anymore,” Henri said.

“I told him that. But he wouldn't listen. He wants you to come over to the house.”

“It's a waste of time.”

“You should come anyway. He knows a lot of important people. It could be worth your while. You could meet some new friends.”

He took a sip of wine, and fell into a chair. “Whatever you like,” he said emptily.

She came to take a seat near him, reached for her glass, and gave him a tender smile. For a moment, Henri was utterly baffled by that smile. One minute she was furious—and what right did she have to be furious if he was seeing another woman? She was married to another man—and the next, she was tender. During that moment, Henri Jansen felt that he would never understand women, the way they thought and the way they behaved, for as long as he lived.

In the next moment, he saw the answer clear as day. Madeleine had fallen in love with him, of course. That was why she went from angry to tender in the space of a heartbeat.

The thought was troubling. Madeleine's husband, after all, was not a good man to have as an enemy. The man's enemies had a way of disappearing.

But the vulture, Henri was sure, did not know that he and Madeleine had been carrying on together. And there was no reason for him to find out—unless she did something stupid. Until this moment, he had not felt there was any need to fear this. Madeleine wasn't stupid. But if she'd fallen in love …

“I love you,” she said suddenly.

Henri kept his face impassive; but inside, he clenched.

“You know that, don't you? I've fallen in love with you.”

“Madeleine,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Let's not get crazy.”

“No.”

“You're a married woman. And I'm …”

He trailed off. She snorted laughter.

“Let's get drunk,” she said after a minute.

“All right.”

“Do you want to hear about my hike today? With the famous American criminal and the Saudi prince?”

“All right.”

“Let me get drunk first. Otherwise I might get sad, when I think of how I spent the day, and how you spent the day.”

“I spent the day walking.”

“And fucking Isabella DiMeglio?”

“Just walking, alone.”

“When's the last time you saw her?”

Henri didn't answer.

“Oh, forget it,” Madeleine said again. She wiped at the corner of her eye, and raised her glass. “You know—I really couldn't care less.”

3.

Madeleine was very drunk.

“And you should have seen his nose,” she said with a giggle. “His big Jew nose. This Arab—with his big Jew nose.”

Henri was smiling too.

“They're the same, you know,” she went on. “The Arabs and the Jews. That's what makes it all so funny.”

“It is funny, isn't it?”

“This prince—”

She paused to refill her glass, unsteadily, from the second bottle of wine. The first lay glittering on the concrete by the edge of the pool, empty. “This Saudi prince,” she said. “He's a suspect.”

“A suspect?”

“You know. Bin Laden.”

“Ah.”

“My husband says that he launders money for them. He explained it all to me. Offshore finance; that's how they do it. Those little Caribbean islands, those shell companies—that's what they call them, shell companies …”

Henri reached for the bottle.

“Nauru,” she said. “In the Pacific. Twelve people live there, and there are four hundred banks.”

“Your husband told you this?”

“But the real money goes through the big cities. London, New York, Paris, Tokyo. And Switzerland. Of course, Switzerland. It's easier to cover the tracks in a big city. Then you've got your diamonds, your tanzanite and honey, funneling money to Al Qaeda …”

She hesitated, as if following some thought of her own.

“I'm hungry,” she said then.

Henri pushed himself out of the chaise lounge, took an instant to check his balance, and headed for the house. As he crossed the stone patio, he stumbled and righted himself. He pushed through the front door and into the dark kitchen. The air in there smelled of ripe cheese and fruit. He loaded up a tray with bread, brie, and
saucisson
, then went back to the pool.

But Madeleine was gone.

Henri slowed. He looked across the vista, at the pool, the vineyards, the fields of lavender, the guest houses, the setting sun. Madeleine was nowhere to be seen.

Then his eyes moved back to the pool, and in that moment he knew: She had drowned herself.

Suddenly, he felt almost sober.

It had been half on purpose, he thought. Half suicide, at being put off after her declaration of love; and half accident, a drunken mistake. When he approached the edge of the pool, he would see her body at the bottom like some bizarre sunken treasure.

And what would happen then?

He would report it, of course. And the police would come. And Madeleine's husband would see to it that Henri never received an invitation to be a houseguest anywhere, ever again. If he didn't see to it, then Princess, the owner of this house, would take care of it—for Henri would have smeared her reputation.

Or perhaps it wouldn't end with ostracism. Vladimir Ismayalov, after all, was not a good man to have as an enemy. Perhaps sometime in the next year or two Henri would be the one facedown at the bottom of a swimming pool, his head crushed in, his body slowly bloating …

She burst out of the water. “Ah!” she said, and began to paddle in a clumsy sidestroke.

His breath came out in a long, shuddering sigh.

He moved to the edge of the pool and set down the tray in his hands: a thirty-four-year-old man who suddenly felt seventy. He wondered if he was going to faint. It seemed possible.

“Come in,” she said. “It's wonderful.”

“Get out of there,” Henri said. “You're too drunk to swim.”

She came out of the pool, naked, and into his arms.

They kissed. “I love you,” she said into his throat. “I love you, Henri.”

He was not going to faint. It was under control. It had been close—but it had been a false alarm.

But God in Heaven, he thought as she leaned up for a kiss. God in Heaven, how he needed to get out of this business.

EIGHTEEN

1.

As soon as he allowed himself entrance to the apartment, Keyes smelled something rotten.

Not literally—the place was spotless, the only odor a faint trace of lavender oil. Yet something was not right.

He sighed. The flight here had exhausted him. His leg was throbbing. He needed rest, and food. But now he was here; and so he set down the bag in his hand, planted the cane, and doggedly began his search.

The air and the room had the feeling of being on hold. Food and water had been set out for a cat; the lights were hooked up to a timer. The newspaper topping a pile inside the front door was dated five days earlier. So a trip, Keyes surmised, had been undertaken. But on the kitchen counter he saw suntan lotion, a sun visor, flip-flops. If the woman who lived here had gone on a cruise to Greece, why would these have been left behind?

A preliminary tour of the apartment suggested that it belonged not to a young woman, but to a young family. In the master bedroom, he found a king-sized bed surrounded by antique walnut furniture. The next room was a nursery, with a crib, a heap of stuffed animals, a closet filled with puzzles and toys. A dining room featured a glass table with four chairs, one supporting a pink plastic booster seat. The final room was a study, with bookshelves lining the walls, a computer resting on a heavy mahogany desk, and an enviable view of Lake Michigan.

In the bottom drawer of the desk, Keyes found a fireproof box. Inside the box he found three birth certificates: Greg Gordon, Victoria Ludlow, and Margaret Ludlow Gordon. Nowhere in the box were passports, which seemed to confirm his suspicion—a trip had indeed been taken.

But not to the Greek Isles, he thought. Not with the visor and sun-tan lotion and flip-flops left behind.

He leaned the cane against a wall, sat behind the desk, and switched on the computer. Here were e-mails from Greg Gordon to his work, a law firm in downtown Chicago. Many of the e-mails concerned the impending merger of two British publishing companies. There were also e-mails from the woman, who seemed to run a catering business, to her friends. The woman had many friends. He browsed down the list, looking for something of special interest, finding nothing.

Then he turned his attention to a date book beside the computer. Over the past month, despite having a toddler, the woman seemed to have spent most of her days eating lunch. The lunches blocked out entire afternoons, from one to four. By comparison, he thought, Rachel had been a saint. She'd given up her own career, when Jeremy had come, without complaint. For the entire first year, she hadn't once let him out of her sight.

He put the thought from his mind, and focused on the date book.

A string of days had a line drawn through them, starting five days previously and continuing into the next week. The days of the cruise, Keyes thought. So they had planned on going, as the sun-themed paraphernalia indicated. But then their plans had changed. Where had they gone instead? And who was the woman on board the ship, if not Victoria Ludlow?

Nowhere in the computer or in the date book did he find any mention of Steven Epstein, Francis Dietz, ADS, or anything that seemed to indicate an involvement with physicists or foreign interests—besides the British publishing concerns—of any kind.

He installed the surveillance software anyway. The software would take hundreds of screen shots per minute. Each time the computer connected to the Internet, these would be clandestinely forwarded to ADS. Keyes would possess an ongoing record of everything this computer did, including every stroke registered on the keyboard.

After watching the installation bar creep across the screen for a few moments, he reached for the cane and continued his search.

The apartment, he decided at length, was not a front. People did live here; and he believed they were the husband and wife whose birth certificates he had found in the fireproof box. On a bookshelf in the study was a photo album featuring wedding and baby pictures. In the refrigerator were tofu, springwater, rice salad, organic milk, organic eggs, chopped fruit in Tupperware containers, and gourmet cat food.

Keyes looked at these items with a slight curl to his lip. These people, he thought, did not know what it meant to have obstacles in life. They thought that, as long as they did everything right, fate would reward them. They didn't understand how fragile their house was—a house of cards.

He closed the refrigerator.

He put in a call to Daisy, back in Vermont, and asked her to gain access to the apartment's telephone records. Daisy told him to hold on.

He returned to the bag near the front door, crouched beside it, and withdrew the fingerprint kit. The apartment was spotless; he would need to find latents. On the bathtub spigot, he discovered good prints with ridge details intact. He spritzed them with ninhydrin and lifted them with tape.