The Expats: A Novel

by Chris Pavone

  Dexter was not that type of guy.

  “SO WHY ARE you two here? In Luxembourg?”

  They were in a corner booth at a brasserie on the Place d’Armes. The plaza was being filled with the wooden stalls of the Christmas market, strung with lights, festooned with wreaths. The clamor of hammering and the hum of portable electric generators wafted through the doors whenever they opened, accompanied by a chill. You never really needed to take off sweaters and jackets in wintertime Luxembourg. A chill was never far away.

  “My job,” Dexter said. “I work in banking.”

  “Banking? No! There can’t be banking in Luxembourg!” Lester’s red-faced joviality and harmless sarcasm were straight out of the father-of-a-friend textbook. He had changed out of his golfing gear into a navy blazer, pressed khakis, a button-down oxford. Directly from the office, leaving the tie in the Buick. A caricature of himself.

  “Where are you from, Les?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, we got around, didn’t we, Julia-kins? But now I live near Santa Fe. You ever been down that way?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “What about you, Dexter?”

  He shook his head. Dexter’s manic energy had been spent; now he was quiet, shy.

  “Beautiful country,” Les said. “Just beautiful.”

  “And you’re from Chicago?” Kate asked.

  “We lived there awhile, that’s right.”

  “I’ve never been there, either.”

  “Huh. But I bet you all get around Europe? That’s what Julia tells me everyone does, here. That right?”

  “I guess.”

  “So I’m going to—where am I going? Let’s see: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm. You got any suggestions for me?” Les looked from Kate to Dexter to Kate again, acknowledging that right now, she was going to be the one speaking for her family.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Hotels. Restaurants. Sights. What have you. I’ve never been up this way before, probably never will again. Figured I’d see this part of the world before I die.”

  Kate smiled. “Of those three, we’ve been only to Copenhagen.”

  The food arrived, large plates filled with brown and beige—pork shoulders, lamb shanks. Kate’s came with buttered spaetzle and buttered potatoes. The minced-parsley garnish was the only green thing on the table.

  “Where’d you stay?” Les asked. “Nice hotel?”

  “Not bad.”

  “How many stars?”

  “Four, probably. Maybe three.”

  “No, I’m ’fraid not. In my dotage, I’ve become strictly a five-star guy.”

  “Can’t help you then, Les.” Kate glanced at Julia, who was also quiet, sheepish-looking.

  “What about restaurants?” Lester asked. “That’s a good-eating town, isn’t it?”

  She smiled. “Again, Les, we’re going to have to disappoint you. What with the kids, and a budget, we don’t really seek out the finest dining.”

  “A budget? I thought all you Luxembourg bankers were richer than Croesus.” Looking at Dexter now.

  “That may be,” Dexter said. “But I’m not a banker. I work in banking, but my job is really more like I.T.”

  “I.T.?” Les looked shocked. “Well, I’ll be.”

  “Is that so unusual?”

  “No, no, not at all. It’s just I wouldn’t’ve expected that a Luxembourg bank would hire an American for any type of I.T.”

  “Why’s that?” Dexter asked.

  “It’s sort of become the specialty of the rest of the world, hasn’t it?”

  Dexter cut his eyes down to his food. “Well, it’s more about security, what I do. I’m a security consultant. I help banks ensure that their systems are secure.”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “The main thing is I try to put myself into the mind of an attacker. What would he do? How would he do it? I try to orchestrate the attack myself, and find the points of weakness that a hacker would exploit. I ask myself, What is he looking for? How is he going to try to find it?”

  “You talking about computer weaknesses?”

  “Yes. But also human weaknesses.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning the types of weaknesses that make humans let down their guard. Trust people they shouldn’t trust.”

  “You’re talking about manipulating people.”

  “Yes.” Dexter and Lester were staring at each other. “I guess I am.”

  IT WAS AFTER sex when Kate most wanted to talk to Dexter. To tell him that Bill and Julia were FBI agents. To tell Dexter that she knew he was lying to her about something, and demand he explain.

  During her entire career at the CIA, pillow talk had never played a role. But now she understood what an asset it could have been, having sex with people to get information. She wondered whether this insight would’ve changed her past behavior.

  She stared at the bedroom ceiling, again, failing to start the conversation. Even with the new possible opening of “Lester is not Julia’s father,” she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  Dexter would be going to London in two days. She could wait.

  18

  “You don’t have to do this,” Dexter said, gathering his things. “I can take a taxi.” He closed his carry-on bag, a quick aggressive zip. “Is it that you enjoy visiting our tidy little airport? Or are you really that desperate to get rid of me?”

  “Counting the seconds,” she said, purposefully not looking at him.

  He picked up his key ring from the hall table, slipped it into his computer case. It was the same sterling ring that the real-estate agent had presented to Dexter when they’d closed on the D.C. house, his initials engraved on an oval fob. Kate had received her own, but she’d long ago relegated it to her jewelry box. Matching key rings were an invitation to disaster.

  Now Dexter’s ring held the Luxembourg apartment’s keys, and two unfamiliar keys that she assumed were for his office, and one small key that she knew was a bicycle lock, rarely if ever used. Plus a memory stick with a hardened case, tamper-resistant and tamper-evident, with secure encryption keys and even self-destruction circuitry. This device had not been casually purchased from Eurobureau; this was a serious little gadget.

  “This trip is to London?” she asked, pulling the door shut behind her.

  “Indeed.”

  Down in the parking, Dexter deposited his computer bag and sturdy plastic Samsonite into the way-back, on the newly washed black carpet, professionally cleaned a few weeks ago in the parking of the centre commercial in Kirchberg, by appointment, while Kate shopped above—groceries and DVDs and Christmas toys, a twelve-pack of new underwear for the boys, growing too quickly to fit into anything for more than a few months at a time, their old briefs obscenely small and tight, somehow embarrassing.

  Kate opened the driver’s door but then paused, pretending to make the decision to remove her coat. She walked to the rear. She glanced at her husband, nervous, worried about the mirrors, despite her certainty that they were not angled for this, not the side-views and not the rearview; she knew positively that Dexter simply could not see her in the mirrors.

  The garage’s overhead light extinguished itself, its automatic timer expired. Now the only illumination was from the tiny bulbs in the car, single-digit watts scattered at places where you might otherwise bump your head, or trip.

  Kate reached across Dexter’s bags, and carefully put down her coat, the heavy pile of navy wool and silk lining and brass buttons. She coughed to cover the sound of opening the zipper of his nylon bag. She grabbed his keys tightly to avoid jangling. Coughed again to close the zipper, then slid his keys into her pocket in concert with slamming the door. She began to—

  Dexter was beside her. Kate held her breath, frozen. Caught.

  He stared at her, and she at him, for seconds. A dim forever. “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t answer; couldn’t.

  “Kate?”
/>   In the dark, she couldn’t see the expression on his face.

  “Kat?”

  “What?”

  “Can you move out of the way, please?”

  She took a step back, and Dexter popped the hatchback. Grabbed his computer bag. He threw Kate a glance. The trunk light had gone on, and she could read his face: confusion, worry. She was paralyzed. What was about to happen here? To her whole life?

  Dexter unzipped the bag. He reached his hand in, feeling around. Glanced again at her, quizzical, then continued to rummage around, his brow furrowed.

  Kate couldn’t move a muscle.

  Finally Dexter pulled his hand out of his bag, looking at it, at the thing he was holding: a piece of plastic wrapped with wire.

  She still didn’t move. She still couldn’t.

  “I thought I’d forgotten my charger.” He held the thing up for her to see: proof that he hadn’t forgotten it, for both of them, much to their vastly different types of relief.

  KATE STAGGERED TO the front of the car, collapsed into the driver’s seat. She turned the ignition, shaky, and switched on the headlights, and hit the remote to open the garage door. She shifted into drive while Dexter was buckling his seat belt.

  Kate had lied to many people in her life, profusely; she’d regularly been a breath away from getting caught. But it was very different when it was your husband, and the thing you’re lying about is no longer yourself, but him. It was inconceivable to treat it as a game; it was impossible to pretend that it wasn’t real life.

  “You okay?” Dexter asked.

  She knew that her voice still wouldn’t work. She nodded.

  The drive to the airport took ten minutes. Dexter made a meager attempt at small talk, but Kate responded with grunts. So he gave up, granting her the space of her silence.

  She spun the car around a short arc of a roundabout and cruised into the efficient little airport. It was a one-minute trip from the kiss-and-fly parking to the check-in counter. Almost never any queue—none—to check in, and rarely a soul waiting at security. Distances here measured in steps, instead of the kilometers marched in Dulles or Frankfurt. From the door of their apartment to any gate, the journey was twenty minutes.

  “Thanks,” Dexter said, a peck and a smile, climbing out the door. Elsewhere in the kiss-and-fly other men were climbing out of the passenger seats of other German cars, gathering bags and feeling around pockets for passports, uttering variations of what Dexter said now, to his wife, “See you in a few days,” all with something else on their minds.

  KATE EXITED HER building just as her phone began to ring, another incoming call from Julia Maclean. Kate hit the Ignore button, again.

  She set off in the light drizzle of a cold December rain, a degree too warm for snow. Retracing the footsteps of the previous time she’d followed her husband across town. This was the same route as her walk to French class, or the good butcher, the post office. The same walk that launched her daily peregrinations, the myriad missions of the housewife. But today Kate was something else.

  She marched through the lobby without a glance at the guard, punched the elevator button, rode to the third floor with a pair of Italian bankers on their way to five. She didn’t know where Dexter’s door would be—she hadn’t followed him into the elevator, back when she’d followed him—but she suspected it would have no label, no plaque, no name on the door. She quickly found such a door, near the end of the fluorescent-lit corridor. The first key she tried opened the lock—easy!—and she pulled the door.

  Kate stepped into a tiny vestibule, dimly lit, another door a few feet in front of her, room enough for two people in here, tops. Designed for one.

  A keypad, numbers glowing red, confronted her on the opposite wall.

  How many combinations would she be allowed to try? The system would shut down after what? Three false tries? Two? Would she get the chance to be wrong even once, before the system turned off, or sent an SMS to his phone, or an e-mail to some account?

  Numbers were streaming through her head, or ideas of numbers: their anniversary, their children’s birthdays, his own birthday, hers, or possibly his mother’s or father’s, his childhood phone number, an inversion of any of these, a replacement code …?

  The only way it would be possible to guess his code? If he were a moron.

  SHE WAS HOME again when her mobile rang, an unfamiliar number, a long string of digits, must be from a different country.

  “Bonjour.” She didn’t know why she answered in French.

  “It’s me.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “I forgot my key ring,” Dexter said. “Or, worse, I lost it.”

  “Oh?”

  “I need it. I need something from the flash drive on it.”

  She glanced at his keys, sitting in the ceramic bowl on the hall table, exactly where he would have left them, if he had left them, on purpose or by accident.

  “What do you propose?” she asked, trying to keep her voice flat, unemotional, uninvolved in what he should imagine was his own private drama.

  “Are you home?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you look for them?”

  “Where?”

  “Where I keep them.”

  “Okay.” She walked through the hall, stood at the table, staring at the keys in the bowl. “No, they’re not in the bowl.”

  “Can you check the car? Maybe they fell out when I was looking for my charger.”

  “Sure.” She went to the basement, looked in the empty trunk. “They’re here.”

  “Thank God.” His voice was crackly; phone reception was poor, down in the garage.

  She didn’t respond. Walked back to the elevator.

  “Listen,” he began, but didn’t continue.

  “Yes?”

  He was thinking, she guessed. She let him do it. “Do me a favor.”

  “Of course.”

  “Take the key ring to the computer.”

  “One minute.” Kate walked into the guest room. Sat at the laptop. “Okay.”

  “The computer on? Pop in the memory stick.”

  She slipped the device into its slot. “Done.”

  “Okay. Double-click it.”

  A dialog box popped open.

  “The user name,” he said, “is AEMSPM217. Password is MEMCWP718.”

  What the …? She jotted down these sequences before typing them, keeping a record for herself; these were too complex to memorize on the spot. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out what these numbers could mean, but nothing was occurring to her. Nothing familiar in any of that. “What are those numbers?”

  “They were created by a random-number generator. I memorized them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the only way to get a totally unbreakable code. Now, please, double-click the top icon. The blue I.”

  This launched an application, the screen blinking on an unfamiliar logo, then a small window, another series of letters and numbers, gibberish.

  “Read it to me.”

  “Is this randomly generated?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Why do you need it?”

  “Kat. Come on.”

  “Goddammit Dexter. You tell me nothing.”

  He sighed. “This is a program that creates dynamic passwords. It’s how I unlock my computer. A new code every day.”

  “Isn’t this a little ridiculous?”

  “It’s what I do, Kat. It’s ridiculous?”

  “No, not—I didn’t mean … I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. Can you read me the code, please?”

  “CMB011999.” She jotted it down as she read it, and he repeated it.

  “Why don’t you keep this program on your computer?”

  He sighed again before answering. “It’s crucial to silo the components of a multi-stage security apparatus. No matter how good the security, any computer—mine included—is hack-able. Any computer can be stolen. Seized by law enforcem
ent. A computer can be exploded, or imploded. Set on fire with a liter of kerosene, bludgeoned with a nine-iron, erased with a portable low-voltage electromagnetic pulse.”

  “Huh.”

  “So that’s why I memorized the randomly generated codes, and that’s why I use dynamic passwords created by an external device. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful. Then can I get back to work now?”

  They hung up. Kate stared at the dialog boxes, then sprang out of her chair.

  OUTSIDE AGAIN, SLICKENED cobblestones and dense cold fog, through the quiet blocks near home and across the somber Place du Théâtre, a concrete cap to the public parking beside the small theater, into the narrow tree-lined sidewalks of the rue Beaumont, expensive children’s clothing, expensive chocolate, expensive antiques, expensive women walking in and out of the expensive restaurant doors at lunchtime, Japanese and Italian, then the busy intersection with the avenue de la Porte Neuve, then back on the charmless boulevard Royale, nervous.

  Kate pulled on her gloves.

  Back in the concrete bunker of an office building. Back in the empty elevator, the long gray hall; back in the small dark vestibule. The fingers of her right hand hovering next to the glowing keypad. She could feel the electricity from the keys, jumping the centimeter to her fingertips, coursing through her. The tingle of anticipation.

  The code couldn’t be today’s daily code; it wouldn’t make sense that Dexter would need to rely on the flash drive to get into his office. It would be—it should be—something he’d memorized; it would be the same every day. It would be the password he’d revealed to her, reluctantly. She’d told this to herself ten times, twenty, on the short walk over here: it would be the same password. It had to be.

  Was it impossible that entering a wrong code would lock her into this tiny room until the police arrived? Or electrocute her?

  She didn’t need to look at the slip of paper in her left hand. She typed the M, then the E, and then in a rush the MCWP, the 718.