15th Affair (28 page)

“Why are you here, then?”

“I wanted to see if you had charmed management into giving you silk sheets and an ocean view.”

“Oh, yes, it’s just like the Ritz. And no one even asked me to put out.”

She grinned but couldn’t hold the pose. Her smile crumpled. She put her hands into her ragged hair and pulled it away from her eyes. She looked up at Joe. His expression was cool. But still, she could read that he felt sorry for her. That he still cared.

“I look terrible, I know. I never wanted you to see me like this. How are you, Joseph? What’s it like for you now?”

“I’d like to say it’s like nothing ever happened, but there’s been fallout, of course. Professional and personal.”

“You want to talk about it?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I understand. But to the point of all this, Joseph,” she said, making a gesture with her hand that took in all twenty square feet of her cell. “I have to get out of here.”

“I know.”

“I’ve answered all their questions. I’ve been tortured, Joe. I’m not holding anything back. They’re not giving me anything off for my time and service in the Agency. They just keep hammering me with the same questions, and I’ve told them I don’t know anything more.”

“OK. Well, they’re not convinced, I guess.”

“But you can help me. You can speak for me. You know what I’ve done and what I’ve sacrificed.”

“I’m not considered a clean source on you, Ali.”

“Joe, please, please. I’ve got kids. I have more to give to the Agency. I’m a valuable person. You can save me, Joe. I know you can save me.”

“Is there anything you can tell me that I can pass on?”

“I’ve given up everything.”

“I was told we only had five minutes,” he said.

“Will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

He patted her hands and left her.

SECRET AGENT MAN
was at the bars of her stone cage at what seemed to be his usual time. Alison noticed that he was dressed as was his style, in a khaki-colored jacket with a white shirt, a blue-striped tie, and a pair of dun-colored pants. His hair was neatly combed and he was clean-shaven. But he hadn’t brought her fresh paper jumpsuit and the boxed meal, her only food for the day.

He said, “Ms. Muller. My name is Anderson.”

“First or last?”

“Just Anderson,” he said. “We have to clean your cell. And I thought maybe you’d like a hot shower before we bring you back.”

“Are you kidding?”

The idea of standing under hot water was just tremendous. “Not at all. I have a Taser,” he said. “Need I say any more?”

“No. I’ll behave. Where would I go, anyway?”

“Exactly,” said Anderson.

Alison thought Joe had arranged this. At least he had done this much. Maybe this shower was incentive for her to be more cooperative. Maybe that would work.

Anderson opened the cell door and stepped away, out of Alison’s reach. He patted the waistband of his pants under his jacket so that she could see the bulge of the Taser gun.

“Straight ahead, Ms. Muller. You’ll see an opening on your left at the end of the corridor. There’s a short flight of stairs, and the staff bathroom is up there. There’s soap and shampoo and a clean towel on a hook. Your dinner is being prepared now. Pork loin and boiled new potatoes. Chocolate brownies.”

“Wow,” Alison said, giving him a big grin. “Must be my birthday.”

She had walked about ten paces down the hallway when Anderson fired a .44-caliber bullet into the back of her skull. He fired again into her back as she fell. He stooped next to her, flipped his tie over his shoulder, and felt for a pulse.

There was none.

He sighed. Then he walked around her body on his way to the office to make his report.

I WAS HAVING
a dinner party. This was the first time in maybe a year since I’d had people over, and I was up for it. Julie was in a sparkly party dress, and she had a new word.

“Mommy.”

It was the best word in every language all over the world.

Mrs. Rose had spent the day helping me cook, and my buds were all in my house: Claire and her adorable husband, Edmund. Yuki and my boss and idol, Jackson Brady. Richie and Cindy, of course, and Jacobi had come with a date.

Her name was Miranda and she played “Dora” on a daytime TV show I had never seen, but Mrs. Rose had almost fainted when Miranda walked in the door.

We were all having cocktails. Mrs. Rose had refused the invitation to be my date. She had a new grandchild and was glad to get out of my house.

I gave her a hug and a check and she patted my arm and said, “Have fun. I’ll be here in the morning.”

Brady came into the open kitchen looking for the corkscrew. He opened a bottle of wine and said, “Whatever is cooking is making me slobber.”

I laughed. “Ten more minutes. That’s all. Just ten.”

Yuki followed Brady in, put her arms around his waist, and kissed his back. God, it had been a long time coming, but these two were just made for each other.

“Do you need help with the salad dressing?” she asked me.

“Of course I do,” I said.

Out in the living room, Edmund was roaring with laughter; Claire was, too, at something Miranda had said, and Jacobi was flushed in a very good way. Cindy was in the big chair, holding Julie on her lap. If or when to have babies had been the big logjam in her otherwise wonderful relationship with Richie, and I think every time she comes to my house, she’s trying Julie on to see if she can imagine herself as a mom.

I saw Richie standing behind the sofa, looking at Cindy holding Julie. Wow. He was in love.

As for me, I ached more than a little.

Joe had been over a few times to see Julie, and it was a meltingly beautiful thing to see them together. But I had never let him stay the night or even for a meal.

I just wasn’t ready. And I didn’t know how I would ever be ready. He had lied. He was mysterious. I didn’t know where he was living, what he was doing, or how I could ever fit in with a man I no longer trusted.

It was Brady, of all people, who helped me take the roast out of the oven. Claire got the vegetables onto the table and Edmund poured the wine.

Richie was clinking his glass with a spoon, saying, “Lindsay, it’s wonderful to be here. I’m personally so glad you had help with the cooking, since we all know you can’t even make coffee.”

Everyone laughed, even Julie and me.

The buzzer rang from downstairs.

Claire said, “That’s the dessert. I’m not telling you from where. Just get away from the door so I can still make it a surprise.”

Claire is a chocoholic, and I say that’s a good thing.

I said, “OK, surprise me.”

I went back to the table and Claire pressed the buzzer. A minute later, I heard the door latch open and Claire say, “You’re not the cake.”

So what
was
this?

I got halfway to the door and saw my husband standing there in the hallway.

He said, “Geez, Lindsay, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

I said to my bosom buddy, “Claire. You set this up.”

“Me? No. Not me. No way. I would never do anything like this. Nuh-uh.”

And she melted away from the door.

Joe had a bunch of roses in his hand. He looked like the prince who woke up Sleeping Beauty with a kiss. Handsome. Expectant. And like, maybe, his steed was tethered down at the curb. I stared into his face and saw the lines in his forehead, which were deeper than they had been a couple of months ago. He had some gray at his temples that I hadn’t noticed before.

I stood at the door, feet firmly planted, blocking the entrance.

He said, “Lindsay?”

I honestly didn’t know what to do or say.

Let him in?

Or say, “Not now. Maybe some other time.”

Rio de Janeiro

Saturday, July 12, 2014

2:00 p.m.

CHRIST THE REDEEMER
appeared and vanished in the last clouds clinging to jungle mountains that rose right up out of the city and the sea. Then the sun broke through for good and shone down on the giant white statue of Jesus that looked over virtually all of Rio from the summit of Corcovado Mountain.

In the prior two months, I’d seen the statue from dozens of vantage points, but never like this, from a police helicopter hovering at the figure’s eye level two hundred and fifty feet away, close enough for me to understand the immensity of the statue and its simple, graceful lines.

I am a lapsed Catholic, but I tell you, I got chills up and down my spine.

“That’s incredible,” I said as the helicopter arced away, flying over the steep, jungle-choked mountainside.

“One of the seven modern wonders of the world, Jack,” Tavia said.

“You know the other six offhand, Tavia?” I asked her.

Tavia smiled, shook her head, said, “You?”

“Not a clue.”

“You without a clue? I don’t believe it.”

“That’s because I’m unparalleled in the art of faking it.”

My name is Jack Morgan. I own Private, an international security and consulting firm with bureaus in major cities all over the world. Octavia “Tavia” Reynaldo, a tall, sturdy woman with jet-black hair, a lovely face, and beguiling eyes, ran Private Rio. And we’d always had this teasing chemistry between us.

The two of us stood in the open side door of the helicopter, harnessed and tethered to the ceiling of the hold. I hung on tight to a steel handle anyway. The pilot struck me as more than competent, but I couldn’t help feeling a little anxious as we picked up speed and headed southeast.

I used to be a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps; I got shot down in Afghanistan and barely survived. A lot of good men died in that crash, and because of their deaths, I’m not a fan of helicopters despite the fact that they can do all sorts of things that a plane, a car, or a man on foot can’t. Let’s just say I tolerate them when the need arises, which it had that day.

Tavia and I were aboard the helicopter courtesy of Mateus da Silva, the only other person in the hold. A colonel with the Brazilian military police, da Silva was also head of all security for the FIFA World Cup and the man responsible for bringing Private in as a consultant.

The final game of the tournament—Germany versus Argentina for the soccer championship of the world—was less than a day away. So far there’d been little or no trouble at the World Cup, and we wanted to keep it that way. Which was why da Silva had asked for an aerial tour of the Magnificent City.

After two months in Rio, I agreed with the nickname. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world, but there’s no place like Rio de Janeiro, and certainly no more dramatic an urban setting anywhere. The ocean, the beaches, the jungle, and the peaks appear new at every turn. That day a million hard-partying Argentine fans were said to be pouring over Brazil’s southern border, heading north to Rio.

“This will give us a sense of what Rio might look like during the Olympic Games,” da Silva said as we peered down at dozens of favelas, shantytown slums that spilled down the steep sides of almost every mountain in sight.

Below the favelas, on the flats, the buildings changed. Here, on the city’s south side where the wealthy and super-rich of Rio lived, modern high-rise apartment complexes lined the sprawling lagoon and the miles and miles of gorgeous white-sand beaches along the coast.

We flew over the tenuous seam where slums met some of the world’s most expensive real estate toward two archshaped mountains side by side. The Dois Irmãos—the Two Brothers—are flanked by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the ultrachic district of Leblon to the north, and a sprawling favela known as Rocinha to the west.

Once one of the most violent places in any city on earth, Rocinha was among the slums Brazilian military police tried to “pacify” in the years leading up to the World Cup. The government trained a hard-core group of elite fighters known as BOPE (from the Portuguese words for “Special Police Operations Battalion”) and declared war on the drug lords who had de facto control over the favelas. Da Silva was a commander in BOPE.

The special unit killed or drove out the narco-traffickers in dozens of slums across the city. But they’d succeeded only partially in Rocinha.

The favela’s location—spilling down both flanks of a mountain saddle—made access difficult, and the police had never gained full control. Da Silva remained nervous enough about that particular slum to demand a flyover.

The helicopter climbed the north flank of the mountain, allowing us to peer into the warren of pastel shacks built right on top of each other like some bizarre Lego structure.