Beating Ruby (20 page)

I have to say I was surprised when Alex and I arrived on Teterboro’s humid tarmac. Ever since embarking secretly with March on a flight for Paris with a fake passport from a tiny airfield in Pennsylvania, I had assumed Paulie’s services revolved exclusively around arranging illegal flights. The jet with a royal-blue logo waiting for us challenged this theory; there
was
such a thing as Paulie Airlines. And I was pretty sure that Pan Am would have sued regarding the use of the aforementioned logo, had they still been in business.

I spotted March already waiting near the plane with his magic suitcase—not really magic, but with an awesome fingerprint lock system, and always full of perfectly folded things and guns. The short, stout
man with a charcoal beard and a receding hairline standing next to him looked familiar. I waved at Paulie. He saw it and strode toward us with his arms wide open. His mouth stretched into a wide grin, revealing his secret weapon: large, square, and blindingly white veneers that might have looked like a malpractice suit waiting to happen, if it hadn’t been for his girlfriend, who actually loved them.

Did I say he was coming to greet
u
s
? Typo, sorry. Paulie was coming
to greet
me
. I was pulled into a heartfelt hug, received overstated compliments regarding my beauty, a kiss on each cheek, and Alex got . . . an icy glare.

“You the snitch?” Paulie grunted in lieu of a welcome.

Alex made a brave attempt at good-cop-smiling him. “I’m Agent Morgan. Always a pleasure to meet a businessman of your . . . caliber, Mr. Strozzi.”

Paulie’s veneers disappeared under a tight-lipped frown. “Sounds like snitch talk to me.”

Alex shrugged it off and pointed to the airstair deployed at the front of the jet. “I’m sure it does. Can we embark?”

Paulie made an evasive gesture with his hand. “Yeah.”

March moved toward the airstair, but stopped in his tracks when he noticed Alex and I weren’t following. His eyes met mine. I responded with an uneasy smile, and he disappeared inside the cabin with one last peek at us. We were about to embark when Alex reached inside his jacket’s inner pocket; his phone was buzzing. Nodding for me to get on the plane, he walked away to answer the call.

I’d have complied, but I was curious. I took a few cautious steps in his direction, trying to get close enough to hear at least part of his conversation. Alex’s back was turned to me, but whatever was going on sounded serious enough that he was raising his voice, in spite of his obvious attempts at keeping it down to an exasperated hiss.

“No . . .
No!
. . . Listen to me, all that kid’s got going for him are straight Fs. He should be studying, and
you
should be avoiding him . . . Yes . . . I hear you, and if you want to go see
Rome and Julie
, I’ll take you when I get back, but you are
not
allowed to go out with Scott. Am I making myself clear? . . . Poppy, I don’t care that school is closed tomorrow. It’s
no
.”

Poppy was at it again, and she treated Alex to a long rant, punctuated by his own sighs. “Pass me Irene . . . Hey, Irene, is everything all right? . . . Yes, she told me; I said no.” His voice dropped to a threatening whisper; I had to strain my ears to listen. “Irene, you know where the paint gun is. If you see that boy anywhere near our apartment, you shoot him. I’m counting on you . . . Good . . . Good. Yes, thank you. I’ll see you in a few days.”

Alex hung up, and I watched with amusement as he raked a nervous hand in his messy brown locks.

“Boy troubles again?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Yeah. I’m being told that my ‘vision of a patriarchal system in which women would be tradable goods under the authority of their brothers is inherited from the Middle Ages.
’
”

I shrugged. “She’s kind of right.”

“She’s also sixteen, and therefore a tradable good under my medieval authority.”

My shoulders shook with quiet laughter as we climbed into the plane. Once we were in, Alex ducked his head to acknowledge March—who was sitting near a window with a crosswords magazine on his lap—and went to sit at the back of the plane. I hesitated, searching March’s impassive expression for a second. Finding no sign that I was welcome to sit near him, I managed a polite smile and walked past him to go settle in a large cream seat at Alex’s side.

A light drizzle had started falling on the tarmac, dusting Alex’s window with diamond-like drops. The plane started moving. He stared through the thick glass, his eyes locked on the horizon. “You never asked about my parents.”

An unpleasant pressure built up in my chest, only made worse by the cabin’s vibrations as we took off. I had hoped for a friendly breakup, and the last thing I wished was for him to be reminded about his parents’ gruesome death while sitting on a plane. We were off to a bad start. “Alex, I just didn’t think it was my place to—”

“But you looked it up. You did research on the crash without telling me.”

I glanced at March’s seat at the other end of the cabin. His back was turned to me. Could he hear our conversation? I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to understand.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay. I know every detail of your file; it’s only fair you get a peek at mine.”

“I don’t know the details, Alex. I just looked up crashes in Egypt for that year, and there was only one involving American victims. I had read that the government wouldn’t release their names, so, after I learned about your real job, I figured . . .”

“That my father was an agent too?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t look at me as he spoke, his eyes still lost in the ashen clouds now surrounding us. “Six years ago, he was stationed in Cairo for several months. I was still in college, and my mother thought Poppy was too young for that kind of trip. She went to visit him alone for their wedding anniversary. He had to accompany local officials on a trip to Luxor around that time.” Alex paused, his throat tightening imperceptibly. “My mother wasn’t supposed to be on that plane, but officially it was just a routine business trip, and my father made a last-minute decision to take her to visit Esna after his mission. Their plane was shot down over the Eastern Desert. There were no survivors.”

“Is . . . is this why you followed in his footsteps?”

He nodded. “I guess.”

I was tempted to tell him that it was unhealthy, that he might some
day meet the same fate as his father, but I thought of my conversation with
March about my mother, and realized I was no better. I fidgeted in my seat. “Do you know who they were, the people who killed your parents?”

“Yes.”

“Did you . . . did someone catch them?”

“No.” He stared at me, something unreadable in his eyes. “But I’m close.”

For a moment, I had this terrifying thought that maybe March had something to do with the incident and that it was the reason Alex was so wary and confrontational around him. March didn’t fit the profile, though. He hated side casualties, and judging from my previous experience as his client, he favored covert assassinations—the type of guy to spend one bullet wisely rather than blow up an entire plane. The Roosevelt Tram and Dries’s lair didn’t count because he’d been pissed; we all have our bad days.

I glanced at him. He was still immersed in his crosswords, but he’d turn to check on us every now and then. When his eyes met mine, my heart skipped a beat. What if I w
as wrong? What if . . . A painful knot formed in my throat. Anything but this. I didn’t even want to consider the possibility.

Alex leaned closer, and one of his hands started to move to cover mine
on the armrest; I pretended to readjust my dress to avoid the contact.

“I’m sorry, Island. I shouldn’t have brought this up,” he said.

“No, it’s okay. I’m the one who asked.”

God, how was I going to get out of this?
I’m sorry for the brutal murder of your family, Alex. By the way, I know you’re a little depressed at the moment,
but I have to tell you I’m thinking of breaking up with you.
Yeah . . . no.

Next to me, his voice dropped to a murmur. “Thank you for listening.”

“Thank you for trusting me with this story, I guess.”

“We’re in the same boat.”

No, we weren’t. I averted my gaze. “I’m going to get myself some water. Do you want something? A Coke, maybe?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

I got up and searched the galley’s mini fridge while behind me Alex rose as well to retrieve a small laptop from his travel bag. I grabbed his Coke and a plastic cup. When he took them, I glanced to the front of the cabin.

March had abandoned his crosswords, and his eyes were set on me, radiating anger.

TWENTY

Boy Toy

“You see the gear lever here? Well, if you take the top off, you’ll find a little red button. Whatever you do, don’t touch it.”

—
Goldfinger
, 1964

It could have been worse. It was overall an awkward flight, filled with reproachful glances and unspoken tension, but with Alex and me busy on our respective laptops and March eventually opting to resume his crosswords and check his smartphone instead of staring at me, there was enough fubbing going on in the plane to keep the storm at bay.

We landed in Zürich before dawn. Local time was six a.m., and a light breeze welcomed us upon stepping out of the plane. In the distance stood the massive skein of glass and metal of the terminal’s hall, casting a bright light on the darkened tarmac. This time our passports were real—even March’s—and I experienced an odd sense of satisfaction upon entering a foreign country legally, waving my precious sesame in front of the customs officers with a regal gesture. I
did
notice the way March’s magic suitcase and Alex’s black travel bag seemed to be cleared without much effort, even when I knew what rested in them. I chose to look the other way. Given my recent troubles, I wasn’t going to get all picky just because we were relying on corrupt customs officers to sneak a few guns into a neutral country.

There was some fuss over who’d receive the honor of carrying my suitcase for me—proof if need be that you can be both a gentleman
and
a red-ass baboon. I decided to drag it myself.

“I’ll see you two at the Eden au Lac in thirty-five minutes,” March announced as we strolled through the terminal and passed a group of tourists struggling with the self-check-in kiosks.

March didn’t look at Alex as he said this; he looked at
me
. More passive-aggressive vibes, huh? I was torn between guilt and anger, and I didn’t want him to witness either. I dusted imaginary lint from my sweater dress and looked down at my loafers. “Fine. I’ll see you at the hotel, Mr. November.”

His jaw ticked. “Excellent.”

I kept telling myself that, after all, I was being handed yet another opportunity to come clean, and that a bazillion girls had dumped a guy before me—how hard could it be to just say no?—but in that moment, following Alex to the elevators, I just felt a little nauseated.

He led us down to an underground garage. There he pulled a key from his pocket, which he pressed. At the other end of the aisle, two beeps resounded and lights flashed; a boyish smile lit up his features. We walked toward the source of the noise, and I have to say I was a little disconcerted when we reached the vehicle, like there’d been an error or something. Alex, on the other hand, seemed increasingly pleased, circling the simple white urban SUV with his hands on his hips, inspecting it.

Honestly, those sleek lines were so generic I couldn’t even identify the model. The only odd detail was perhaps the lights, with their unusual bluish hue. I stepped closer to the round hood, examining the T-shaped logo in its center. “Tesla? An electric car?”

“Yes, it is,” Alex replied with a carnivorous grin, grazing the handle to unlock the driver’s door. Okay, that was a little cool.

“Why this one?” I asked as I buckled my seat belt, staring at the tactile dashboard.

“Because I wanted to verify the rumors.”

“What rumors?”

His answer came at the same time that my body was propelled backward—I hadn’t even heard the engine start. “That it’ll pin you to your seat.”

We made it to Zürich in one piece, but as the Tesla slowed down, I was pretty sure some of my internal organs were now stuck in places they shouldn’t be. All those accelerations had to be messing with my anatomy. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and we were driving on the Utoquai, along the shores of Lake Zürich, a dark, quiet immensity stretching for twenty-five miles in a valley guarded on each side by chains of snowy mountains. On our left, an endless ribbon of elegant nineteenth-century buildings flew past the car. Once refuges for rich landowners able to afford a chunk of the lake’s scenery for their private enjoyment, most of them had been turned into hotels welcoming an international clientele.

My breakup with Alex had gone well. I had just said, “Sorry, we’re done, please don’t touch me anymore because it makes things weird between us,” and he had said, “Yeah, sure.”

Okay, I’m lying. Alex seemed in such a good mood, and delighted with his new toy, that the words had remained stuck in my throat. I had spent half an hour trying to come up with appropriate lines for a gentle breakup, stuff like “Things are too complicated between us,” or “I have to let go for your own sake,” and . . . nope, I had nothing good, and I was still chickening my way out of this.

I sighed in resignation as we stopped in front of the Eden au Lac hotel’s neo-baroque façade. Greco-Roman columns and sculptures, vegetal patterns—the ensemble was gorgeous, and perhaps a bit too much. Very European. I thought of Thom. He had been here, seen the same façade—this was precisely why we had chosen this hotel for our stay. Something had happened within those walls that had changed his life. I needed to stop wallowing in self-pity and work on understanding what.

Alex took a left turn to access the hotel’s parking lot. He glanced in the mirror at the black BMW about to enter the parking lot as well. No need to see through the tinted windshield—March had been following us all along.

Much like the flight, the few yards from the parking lot to the hotel’s lobby were spent in tense silence, and I pretended to be fascinated by the ceiling’s moldings while March took care of check-in. I can’t overstate how relieved I was when he handed me a key of my own. At this point, the last thing I wanted was to share a room with either of them.

I plead guilty of filling my plate with a mountain of food at breakfast that morning, but that nice waitress in the dining room forced me. Like a pusher in a dark alley, every time I moved away from the gargantuan buffet, she’d show me something new and delicious I hadn’t seen yet. It went very fast, and before I could fully understand what had happened, I was sitting at our table, in the middle of that Versailles-like room, surrounded by gold-leafed stuff and big chandeliers. And there was approximately a pound of brioche, cake, cheese, ham, eggs, and jam in front of me.

Alex raised an eyebrow at my plate before resuming his explanations. “I received our tram enthusiast’s identification during the flight. His name was Karsten Salzgeber. Thirty-eight. Born in Feldkirch, Austria. Good career in the Austrian army, with five years in the special forces—”

“Until he received a dishonorable discharge following a disastrous raid in Afghanistan,” March completed, as if to drive home the point that
he
had read the file too.

I took a swig of my hot cocoa. “But you don’t usually get a dishonorable discharge just because a mission went badly. Right?”

“You do if you try to set a Taliban’s fifteen-year-old son on fire to make his father talk. Five members of the unit were tried. That’s the magic of combat stress and peer pressure, I guess,” Alex said, looking down at his cup of coffee. “Following his discharge, he became a mercenary. According to our data, he joined a Vienna-based private security company about a year ago. That’s when he kind of vanished from our radar.”

“Why is that?”

“The question you want to ask is: Who did that? After that date, we have no records whatsoever—no credit card logs, no medical expenses, no flights . . . nothing.”

“Someone was paying it all for him? Like, keeping him in some sort of bubble?” I asked.

“Yes. A pattern typically seen when one joins the service of a powerful employer,” March explained.

I chewed on my brioche. “He and those guys with the motorbikes were watching Thom’s place. They probably wanted to make sure there would be no loose ends. Do you think Thom met him here in Zürich?”

March confirmed, cutting his slice of cake in even pieces. “Very likely.”

Alex watched him do so with a curious stare. “We could try to question employees here at the hotel, but I’m not really fond of that kind of direct approach. They’re used to keeping their clients’ secrets, so we’ll mostly get lies.”

“What about the security cameras? Thom was here less than four weeks ago, and many systems can store logs for up to a month. Can’t the NSA, like, hack into those? Or maybe Colin?” I inquired while stuffing my face with French cheese.

“Probably, but I’ll need an authorization before they do it for us.” Alex smiled. “What about you? Could you?”

I laughed at first, because I thought he was joking. “Of course, network security is IT’s biggest joke. But I don’t do that kind of stuff; I never had the mindset for that.”

Next to me, I hadn’t noticed the way March’s lips had curled into a predatory smile. “Don’t sell yourself short, Island.”