The Expats: A Novel

by Chris Pavone

  “Yeah. But the people I work for don’t know from Thanksgiving. To them, tomorrow is Thursday.”

  “Whatever it is, can’t it wait?” she asked. “Can’t someone else do it?”

  “Listen. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  “So you say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Why was she picking a fight? “Nothing.”

  Silence.

  She knew why she was picking a fight: because she was furious, because the FBI and Interpol were for some reason in her business, because she’d once made a horrible decision that would haunt her forever, and because the one person in the world she’d trusted without reservation was lying to her.

  Perhaps his lie was about something benign. And maybe his lying had nothing to do with her anger. After all, he didn’t force her to have a morally wrenching career. He didn’t force her to keep it a secret. He didn’t force her to have children, to sacrifice her ambition, to quit her job entirely. He didn’t force her to move abroad. He didn’t force her to take care of the children, to do the cleaning and shopping and cooking and laundry, all by herself. He didn’t force her to be alone.

  “Can I talk to them?” he asked.

  Different zingers kept popping into her brain. She uttered none of them. Because it wasn’t Dexter whom she was furious at. It was herself. And perhaps Dexter wasn’t lying to her at all, and never had.

  She put the phone on the counter, walked away from it, as if from a moldy peach.

  “Ben!” she cried. “Jake! Your father’s on the phone.”

  Ben ran up to her. “But I need to poop!” He was panicked. “Can I poop?”

  She was picking a fight because it was Thanksgiving, and she was not thankful.

  KATE SPRAWLED ON the sofa, flipping channels, Italian game shows and Spanish soccer matches and bleak BBC dramas and a limitless assortment of programming in French or German. The children were finally asleep, after a frustrating conversation about Dexter’s absence: the boys lamenting it, Kate trying—heroically, in her estimation—to suppress her irrational desire to condemn him, and to instead explain it supportively. Trying to be supportive to her husband and her children; trying to remember that this was also supportive to herself.

  She heard the laughter of teenagers spilling out of a bar a block away, the high-pitched squeals reverberating on the cobblestones. She caught strains of English. These were little expats, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, smoking Marlboro Lights and drinking Red Bull–vodka concoctions until they threw up in the foyers of the small apartment buildings that surrounded the pubs, whose Portuguese cleaning ladies arrived to work before sunrise, their first order of business to examine the nearby foyers, towing an industrial bucket on steel casters with a mop sitting upright in the wringer, cleaning up teenagers’ vomit.

  It wasn’t Dexter’s fault, her anger. It was her own. All the decisions that led to this point had been her own. Including the one not to suspect him of anything.

  She stared at the flickering screen, a Dutch channel, an undubbed American made-for-television movie from the mid-eighties. The hairstyles and the clothes, the cars and the furniture, even the lighting, all of it looked like exactly what it was. Amazing how many clues there are in a single screen shot.

  Kate could no longer ignore her suspicion of Dexter. She was now aware that ignoring it was exactly what she’d been doing.

  She also didn’t want to confront him, to demand an explanation. He wasn’t stupid enough to construct an implausible, unpracticed lie. Quizzing him wasn’t going to accomplish anything other than to alert him that she was suspicious. Asking him questions wasn’t going to be how she found out what was going on. If he were willing to answer truthfully, he’d have told her the truth to begin with. He hadn’t.

  Kate knew what she had to do next. But first she needed Dexter to come home. Then she needed him to leave again.

  “HELLO FAMILY!” DEXTER yelled from the door. He was holding a bottle of Champagne.

  “Daddy!” Both boys came running into the hall, limbs spinning, cartoonish, jumping into their father’s arms, violent, acrobatic hugs. Kate had set them up at the dining table, lined with newsprint, two fresh sets of watercolors, brushes, a whole battery of water cups. The theme was Things I Want to Do on Our Next Holiday. Kate had led off by painting her own Alpine scene, beginning a PR campaign for a revised Christmas plan, while also engaging with the kids in an activity. Two birds. In turn, the boys had created their own snowy scenes, which Kate had affixed to the fridge door. “Manipulative bitch,” she’d have to admit, would be an accurate description of herself.

  “What’s that for?” Kate pointed her chef’s knife in the general direction of Dexter’s wine bottle, crested and gold-foiled and beaded with condensation.

  “Daddy, come look at what I painted!”

  “One minute, Jakie,” he said, then turned back to Kate. “We’re celebrating. I made—we made—twenty thousand euros today.”

  “What?! How wonderful! How?” Kate had managed to convince herself that there was no upside to being snidely suspicious. What she had to be was upbeat suspicious.

  “Remember those derivatives I mentioned?”

  “No. What does that even mean?”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again to say, “It doesn’t matter. But anyway, I liquidated a bundle of financial instruments today, and twenty K was the profit.” Dexter was still opening cabinets, looking around. He didn’t know where they kept their wineglasses.

  “In there.” Again, Kate pointed with the blade. Now that he was so much closer, the knife seemed inappropriate. She put it down.

  He popped the cork and poured, foam rushing to the top, settling slowly. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” she answered. “Congratulations.”

  “Daddy! Please!”

  She carried the bottle into the dining room. Dexter settled at the table, trying to figure out the subjects of the boys’ drying watercolors. The artwork was rather abstract.

  He looked happy. Now, she thought, was as good a time as any. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “that instead of the Midi, we should go skiing. For Christmas.”

  “Gee”—his standard prelude to facetiousness—“you don’t want this money to have any time to cool off, do you?”

  “No, that’s not it. I was thinking this before … you know. All our hotel reservations are cancelable. And there are still open spots at some ski resorts.”

  “But the South of France,” he said, “you know it’s in the top five.”

  The top five. Right now this list was Paris, London, Tuscany, the Costa Brava, and the broad notion of southern France—the Riviera or Provence, maybe Monaco, which although technically not France, was probably the same thing, except for certain logistical details.

  Dexter had told Kate about this list in London, a few weeks earlier. The British-run international school had been unaccountably closed for something British, so they’d hopped the early flight to City Airport, dropped their bags at the hotel by ten A.M., and were off in the dismal late-autumn weather, private squares and wrought-iron gates, austere facades and cozy-looking carriage houses in the cobblestoned mews. And the beautiful sounds of English, everywhere.

  They paused at the majestic sweep of limestone mansions on Wilton Crescent, the curving cap to Belgrave Square, security cameras everywhere. Dexter had insisted they come to this neighborhood, this street. She didn’t understand, at the time, why.

  Kate watched the children running up the sidewalk, excited by the mere shape of an arced street. It didn’t take much.

  A vintage Rolls and a brand-new Bentley, both gleaming ebony and mirrored chrome, faced off at the curb. Dexter glanced at a house number, then took a few steps to stand in front of the next. They were exactly the same. “Maybe one day we’ll live here.”

  She guffawed. “We’re never going to have this much money.”

  “But if money were no object? Where wou
ld you live? Here?”

  She answered with a dismissive shrug. Foolish daydreams.

  He told her his top five, and she got into the spirit. Suggested swapping out Costa Brava for New York. “Maybe someday,” he said. “But I don’t want to fantasize about living in the States. Not now. Just where we’ll live in Europe”—he smiled—“after I get rich.”

  “Really? When is it exactly that you’ll be getting rich?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Trying to be coy. “I’ve got a plan.” He didn’t elaborate, and it didn’t occur to her that he really did have a plan to get rich. Could he?

  “Skiing?” he now asked, surrounded by the children and the output of their imaginations. “How would we get there? We’re not going to sit in the car for twelve hours.”

  “That’s one option, yes.”

  Dexter looked up, as if peering over the top of reading glasses that he’d never worn, never owned. A gesture learned from film.

  “I agree it’s not the best option,” Kate said. “We could fly.”

  “To where?”

  “Geneva,” she said offhandedly, as if this were not the sole reason for the ski trip.

  THE PRE-DINNER CHAMPAGNE was followed by a bottle of white Burgundy with the veal stew, then Kate took out the Armagnac for Dexter to sip—a glass, two—while she put the children to bed. Then they talked about skiing and vacations while drinking more brandy, music on, a fire burning, foreplay on the couch, energetic sex on the floor. They were up late, with a lot to drink.

  So in the morning Dexter slept in, as he always did after Armagnac. When Kate returned from dropping the kids at school, he was still at home, a rarity. He was collecting his things, on his way out. They shared a tender kiss at the door, which she shut behind him, the large heavy slab clicking quietly into its lock.

  Kate stood in the foyer, next to the console table, a few little flat slivers of dried mud sitting in the corner, pushed up against the molding, the physical remnants of wherever he’d gone last week, when he’d claimed to have gone to Brussels.

  Her keys were still in her hand, her coat still on. Kate waited until she heard the elevator stop humming, then she followed.

  SHE FELT HUMILIATED—she felt depraved—that this was what she needed to do to find out where her husband’s office was. She trailed him across town, not particularly carefully. Never once on his ten-minute walk to the boulevard Royale did Dexter turn around to see if anyone was following. He made no attempt to evade anyone, or catch anyone, or hide anything.

  He walked through the public spaces on the ground floor of a nondescript building, eight stories tall, late-sixties concrete, outdated, ugly, functional. The semi-outdoor hallways were lined with workaday businesses, dry cleaner and sandwich shop, tabac and presse, pharmacy and Italian restaurant. Wood-burning pizza ovens were everywhere in Luxembourg, all over Europe; so was fresh mozzarella. The pizza was generally pretty good.

  Dexter entered the glass-walled lobby and pressed the elevator-call button and waited, then stepped into the elevator with another man of the same vintage. He rode the elevator to either the third or fifth floor.

  Kate walked around the perimeter of the bunker-like building, all entrances visible to the guard at the lobby desk. She examined the windows: ledgeless, all four facades facing different busy streets, crowded sidewalks filled with retail shops, a block away from the civic center and central bus depot, officials everywhere, uniforms and weapons and surveillance, the boulevard lined with international banks, the streets filled with cars of the bankers pulling into their private garages, the subdued gray Audis and BMWs that the family men drove, the extravagant yellow Lamborghinis and red Ferraris owned by the bachelors.

  A busy hub of business and government. A secure environment. Much more secure than Bill’s. There was no way she’d be able to come in through a window.

  Here, she’d have to enter through the front door, in broad daylight.

  17

  “Mommy! Come quick!” Jake was suddenly standing in front of their table at the playground, panicked, panting.

  Days had passed in a cold thick fog of kitchen mopping and grocery shopping and pot scrubbing. Of purchasing presents for the boys’ teachers, and guiding the children while they drew holiday cards for their best friends, and attending Christmas concerts. Of end-of-year coffee mornings and moms’ lunches. Of visits to Christmas markets.

  Kate had plenty of excuses for Julia. Day by day, putting distance between them, a cushion, padding, protection for whatever explosion was on the horizon. Spending more time with British Claire, or Danish Cristina, or anyone.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Kate asked Jake. “Is Ben okay?”

  “Ben is fine.”

  Kate let out a sigh of relief.

  “But Colin isn’t.”

  Claire shot up. They all ran down the grassy slope to the pirate ship, where a cluster of small children were surrounding a boy who was lying on the pebble-covered ground, blood pouring out of a gash on the top of his head.

  “Darling,” Claire said, examining Colin’s head. The boy was stunned. She turned to Kate. “I’d rather not take Jules to hospital with us. And I’m afraid that Sebastian is, of course, in Rome.” She unwrapped her cashmere scarf, dabbed it on Colin’s head a few times, then held it firm and still, trying to stop the bleeding. The boy’s face was covered in blood. “Would you mind terribly,” she continued, remarkably calm, “tending to Jules for a bit? I suspect we’ll be a few hours at the clinique pediatrique.”

  “Of course.”

  Claire glanced at her watch. “It’ll be supper time before long. But Jules’ll eat anything, won’t you, dear?”

  “Yes Mum.”

  “That’s a good girl.”

  Claire smiled at Kate weakly but genuinely. She gathered her younger child in her arms, and set off for her car, and the hospital, and the type of ordeal that Kate most dreaded: a child’s health was at stake, urgently, here, in a foreign land and a foreign language, alone.

  Kate had always known that she herself was a strong woman. But it had never occurred to her that there were strong women everywhere, living mundane lives that didn’t involve carrying weapons amid desperate men on the fringes of third-world wars, but instead calmly taking injured children to hospitals, far from home. Far from their mothers and fathers and siblings, from school chums and old colleagues. In a place where they had no one to rely on except themselves, for everything.

  THE NEXT DAY Kate stepped into the narrow cobblestone street, another festive shopping bag adorned with another ribbon, for another birthday party, at a children’s play space in a strip mall in suburban Belgium.

  “Oh my God!” It was Julia, standing in front of her, with an older man. “How are you?” Julia leaned in to kiss Kate on both cheeks.

  “Hi, Julia. Sorry I haven’t returned your calls, I was just—”

  Julia waved it off. “Listen, Kate, this is my father, Lester.”

  “Please call me Les.”

  “Dad, this is Kate. One of my closest friends.”

  “A pleasure,” he said.

  Kate examined this unlikely man, considered this unlikely encounter. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

  This Les character was wearing the standard-issue uniform of the retired American, the khakis and golf shirt and walking shoes. The fleece pullover with THE HIGHLANDS emblazoned on the breast, an embroidered midswing golfer; a souvenir from a corporate retreat, circa late nineties. The type of thing that a law-enforcement manager would wear if he were trying to appear to be someone who’s just a little bit not him.

  “You’re visiting?” Kate asked. “From?”

  “From home! Yes, I decided it was finally time to come check out this little burg of Julia-kins’. It’s a beautiful town, isn’t it?!”

  Kate reeled from the brazenness with which this man didn’t answer her question. “The week after Thanksgiving,” she said, “is not when people typically travel to see family.”

&
nbsp; Lester smiled. “What can I say? I’m unconventional.”

  “Listen, Kate.” Julia laid her hand on Kate’s arm. “What are you doing tonight? Do you think you and Dexter could join us for dinner?”

  Kate’s eyes widened, and her mind unwittingly raced for an excuse to beg off before she realized that would be supremely stupid. “Of course.”

  “DADDY!”

  “Hey Jake how are ya?”

  “Daddy, look what I made!” Jake held up a few pieces of cardboard—deconstructed cereal boxes—that had been glued, taped, and stapled to halved water bottles. Kate had been saving recylcables for this. She’d also been collecting scraps of cloth—orphaned socks, old sweatpants—for a different project. She’d added recipes to the repertoire of children-friendly cooking—peeling and dicing apples for applesauce, pounding veal for schnitzel. She’d begun to treat the boys’ activities as a proper activity of her own, instead of as an interruption to other things she should be doing.

  “This is great,” Dexter said unsurely, examining the oddly shaped structure. “What is it?”

  “A robot!” As if it couldn’t be more obvious.

  “Of course. It’s beautiful,” Dexter said. “It’s a wonderful robot.” He turned to Kate. “So it’s Julia’s dad who’s visiting? And you found someone to watch the kids?”

  “The sitter should be here in a few minutes. We’re meeting them at the restaurant at seven. But it’s just Julia and her father. Bill can’t make it. Or won’t.”

  “Okay then.” Dexter glanced at his watch, turning his wrist jerkily to see the face. “So what are you kids doing? What should we do? Daddy’s home for a little while before dinner so we can do whatever you want so what do you want to do?”

  “Lego!”

  Dexter seemed nervous and edgy and filled with too much energy. Hopped up on something. Could he be doing drugs? That would certainly be an astonishing development.

  “Okay, Lego it is! Let’s go.” He opened the closet door, grabbed the toolbox. “One of their bureau drawers is loose,” he explained, without prompting. Kate hadn’t noticed any loose drawer. And she was surprised at this uncharacteristic interest in domestic repairs. “You boys get started on the Lego while I do something about the drawer.”