The Expats: A Novel

by Chris Pavone

  Dexter had given Kate a watch for Christmas, gold, leather band, simple and elegant. The price was right there in the vitrine on the rue de la Boucherie, everyone in town could see it: 2,100 euros. All the husbands came shopping to the center streets twice a year, for Christmas and for their wives’ birthdays. They gazed in the windows of the same retailers on the same streets, considering the same prices that all the women considered, so everyone who cared knew exactly how much every bag cost—that midsized one was 990 euros, that one with the bigger pockets, 1,390.

  And these women, all these mothers, all these ex-lawyers and ex-teachers, ex-psychiatrists and ex-publicists. Expat exes. Now they were cooks and cleaners; they went shopping and lunching. They carried price tags on their arms, projections of their husband’s income and willingness to spend it on nothing. On matrimonial goodwill.

  Had Dexter become one of those men, behind her back? If so, he was still hiding it. And Kate was still letting him. Because she didn’t think that confronting him, when all she knew for certain was that the FBI suspected him, would do any good. She was going to need to be the one to discover the truth. And she had as good a shot as anyone. Better: she had access to his computer, his possessions, his daily schedule. His history. His mind.

  “Hello, Kate,” Julia said.

  Kate couldn’t read the look on Julia’s face. Couldn’t determine what level of truth, or what depth of continued deception, they were agreeing to stand on, here in the middle of this crowded party. Honesty is a consensual continuum.

  Did Julia know that Kate knew she was an agent? And also knew what her mission was?

  Kate swallowed her pride, or disgust. Her protectiveness and hostility. “Hi Julia.”

  WHAT COMPLETE LONELINESS is this? Surrounded by people, suffused with untruth, unable to tell anyone anything real. Vague acquaintances, casual friends, intimates, even her single soul-mate, the one person in the world, her partner, her ally, her everything. His head was thrown back in carefree laughter, his eyeglasses askew, hair mussed, crooked smile. She loved him so much. Even when she hated him.

  Kate considered her husband, the secrets between them, the distance those secrets created. Her secrets: her secret life. The spying on him she’d already done and planned on doing, the massive wall of untruths that was growing taller every day, with every conversation they didn’t have, every admission she didn’t make.

  Kate climbed the stairs. Quietly, alone, past the parents’ floor to the kids’, an out-of-the-way bathroom. Primary-colored plastic crap on the bathtub ledges, shampoo bottles decorated with unfamiliar cartoon images—TV shows produced in France, Germany, maybe Denmark. A few tubes of toothpaste in various stages of crusted-over sticky disgustingness, the universal uncontrollable in kids’ bathrooms.

  Kate sat down. Across the tiled room, a full-length mirror, an invitation—a challenge—to observe your own nakedness. Kate stared at herself, fully clothed in black skirt and nylons, black sweater, ebullient necklace, excessive earrings, this brand-new expensive watch. Stupid jewelry.

  It seemed so obvious now: of course she would be drawn to a man with a secret life. Of course she would be attracted to someone who had something slithering under the surface, something unseemly, somewhere secret.

  She had forcibly willed herself to believe that she’d left this behind when she chose Dexter: a world where people were defined by their duplicities. And in her life, filled with deceptions, this had been her largest: self-deception.

  Dexter had said that the best hacking is done by exploiting human frailties. Kate had always known, of course, that she had her own frailties. Everyone does. But she’d never before been aware of exactly what hers were. Now she was.

  Did she know her husband, at all?

  Kate began, once again, to cry.

  THE CLICK OF the door, and Dexter was gone, back to the office for the first time since before Christmas. Back to that room that Kate had broken into. Back to the computer she’d failed to access, the files she’d riffled. Back to the video camera suspended in the corner.

  It was the day after New Year’s. The first day back in the home routine since Kate had learned that her husband was probably some type of criminal. Back to grocery shopping, lugging, unpacking, stowing. Loading and unloading the dishwasher. Sorting and folding the laundry, tiny load after tiny load. Whites and lights, darks and brights.

  There was black ice early in the morning, a thin sheet of invisible danger lining every paved surface, cars sliding and crashing everywhere, on small streets and highways, the steep ramps of driveways. Kate was thankful they lived in the center, where the early-to-work bankers’ traffic melted the downtown ice before she sank into the heated seats of her car at eight sharp, weaving in and out of the casualties. The Porsche that slid into a stone wall, the Ferrari towed from a tree trunk. Emergency lights glowing in the dark gray fog.

  Dexter was at the office now. If the video was the first thing he checked, then he already knew.

  Kate must’ve glanced at her mobile phone a hundred times, assuming that she’d missed Dexter’s call, with every glance expecting to see the new voice mail alert, listening to the message, “What the fuck were you doing in my office?” But the message never appeared. The only person who called was Julia. Kate didn’t answer, and Julia didn’t leave a message.

  Dexter had gone to work later than normal, and now he was home earlier than expected. “I’m going to London in the morning,” he said. “This is my last trip for a while. My last business trip. But you remember we’re going to Amsterdam for the weekend, right?”

  “Of course,” Kate said.

  Dexter had made all the Amsterdam arrangements, because it was one of his old friends who was passing through on business, an early-career buddy from their shared days low in the ranks at an ISP.

  They’d reconnected through social media. Thought it would be fun to see each other, after all these years, in Europe.

  So it was the first of their family trips that Kate hadn’t booked from home. From the laptop computer that Julia had once used for ten minutes, to check her e-mail, when her Internet service had been down.

  DEXTER AROSE WELL before daylight. Kate stayed in bed, unmoving, staring at the dark wall as he hurried through his shower, dressing. When she heard the door close, she got up.

  Kate started her investigation in the predawn darkness with the computer. She accessed their aboveboard bank accounts, the one in Luxembourg and the one in Washington. The American checking account had minimal online security—nothing more complicated than a user name and a password. But the Luxembourg account required a long, abstract user name, a string of meaningless numbers and letters. Then a similar password. Then a complex access-code grid, to which Kate needed to insert the correct numbers and letters from a jigsaw-puzzle-like key.

  If that was the security rigmarole for 11,819 euros, she could only imagine the complexity for a 50,000,000-euro account; 50,000,000 stolen euros. These types of codes were too complex for Dexter—for anyone—to memorize. There would have to be a record of the account numbers and security protocol somewhere. It wouldn’t be at his office, in an institutional building in the civic center surrounded by a variety of law enforcement. A place that could be raided, a building that could be shut down, a property that could be seized.

  He must be keeping the information in the apartment.

  Kate began to open and quickly close every file on the hard drive or the shared drives or the clouds, files that were not her own, looking for similar information for a different account.

  When the boys woke up hungry, an hour later, Kate had still found nothing on the computer. This was what she expected. As Dexter had mentioned, any computer could be compromised. But Kate had to be thorough and patient.

  It had to be here, somewhere.

  IT TOOK TWO hours to make her way through the file drawer of the home-office desk, through every single piece of paper, every envelope and folder, looking for handwritten notes, A1-sized
sheets that had been output from their printer, scrawls on phone bills, anything on which Dexter could have recorded a code.

  Nothing.

  Kate turned her attention to the books he’d chosen to bring to Europe, a handful of novels, foreign-language dictionaries, travel guidebooks, technical manuals. All she discovered was that he particularly admired a few lines in A Confederacy of Dunces.

  She examined every notebook scattered around the house—the boys’ tiny pads and midsized ones, big composition books and giant drawing pads, trying not to get distracted by their artwork. Ben in particular had gone through a phase of portraiture that was comically focused on socks.

  American-bank checkbooks, deposit slips, check registers. Photo albums. The children’s passports. Bedside drawer. Medicine cabinet. Coat pockets. Kitchen drawers.

  Nothing.

  AT TEN THIRTY Dexter returned from London, exhausted. It seemed like he’d left years ago, instead of this morning. They barely spoke—not a bad flight, meeting was all right—before he collapsed into bed, a hardback on his chest, a dense volume about financial markets.

  He still hadn’t mentioned anything about the video camera in his office. He hadn’t said a word about anything that mattered.

  She lay down beside him, picked up her magazine, opened to the table of contents, turned pages, trying to read but merely skimming, eyes wandering over words and images.

  Soon Dexter fell asleep. Kate kept her eyes on the magazine, killing more time, turning pages quietly, staring at photographs, deconstructing them into their constituent pixels, abstractions of forms and color. It was a two-month-old glossy from the United States, outdated celebrity gossip and irrelevant cultural commentary and a long piece of political journalism that seemed like it was from not only a different country and continent, but from a whole different world. A planet where she used to live but now could barely recognize.

  Kate waited five minutes after Dexter’s snoring commenced. Then crept out of bed.

  She tiptoed downstairs, in the dark. She took his wallet to the bathroom, and shut the door. She locked the door. She removed every single item from his wallet, one by one: credit cards and IDs, receipts, various denominations of different currencies.

  Kate examined everything, and found nothing.

  She plucked a tea towel off its kitchen hook, carried it to the desk where Dexter’s mobile phone sat, plugged in to its charger, red light glowing. She wrapped the phone in this towel, to mute the beep when she unplugged it. She returned to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, scrolling through contacts and memos and recent calls, any application that provided an opportunity to type and save a string of digits or letters.

  She discovered that he hadn’t made any calls during his day in London. As she scrolled through his list of calls made or received during the past sixty days, she discovered that Dexter had never made any international calls whatsoever during any of his business trips, except those home to her.

  She closed the phone, considering the oddness of a series of business trips that required not a single phone call. No secretaries to confirm meetings, no logistics to be arranged—no cars to beckon, no tables to reserve. No meeting follow-ups or previews. No details to discuss, ever, with anyone?

  This didn’t seem terribly likely.

  This was impossible.

  Either he hadn’t gone on these trips, or he had another phone.

  WHEN KATE USED to imagine what she didn’t want to do—how she didn’t want to investigate Dexter—this was the exact image in her brain: creeping through her own home in the dark of the middle of the night, picking through her husband’s private things while he slept.

  This was why she’d promised herself that after they were married, she’d never investigate him again. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to feel this way.

  But here she was, carrying his nylon briefcase into the bathroom, locking the door. She felt around the interior pockets, unzipping, unsnapping, ripping Velcro, not expecting to find anything, but then something … what? … a silk tab at the bottom of his case—

  Her pulse raced. She pulled this square black centimeter, suddenly hopeful. She lifted a sturdy nylon panel, and there it was: a hidden compartment. And inside, a phone. An unfamiliar little piece of plastic and metal.

  She stared at this first bit of positive proof, the entrance to the rabbit hole from which she might never reemerge. She considered putting the thing back into its little pocket, the briefcase back into the hallway. Instead she could go upstairs, shake her husband awake. What the fuck is going on, Dexter?

  But she didn’t.

  She powered on the phone. The screen blinked to life. She stared at the cool blue glow, the app icons, the reception bars. She hit the phone icon and the recent-calls button and stared at the list, the walls of the rabbit hole closing in, deepening, while she scrolled:

  Marlena, yesterday at 9:18 A.M.

  Marlena, the day before at 7:04 P.M.

  A London number, country-city code 44-20, unsaved to contacts, at 4:32 P.M.

  Marlena the day before that, and again, last Monday night.

  Kate opened the contacts list: just two. Marlena, with a London number. And Niko, with a prefix she didn’t recognize. Kate memorized both.

  Marlena and Niko: who the hell were they?

  DEXTER WOKE LATE. He ate breakfast with Jake and Ben, and didn’t return upstairs to shower and shave until they all left for school. Lazy deadbeat, all of a sudden, after four months as an unrepentant workaholic.

  But when Kate returned home he was gone. Back to the video camera that had recorded her. Back to his unexplainable office. Back to his secret phone, his unfamiliar contacts, his fifty million stolen euros. Back to his other life.

  Kate could barely breathe.

  She set to work again. She dug through their basement storage, sifting through the American electronics that wouldn’t work here. She examined the back of the old television, the insides of lamp shades, the slots in the toaster, the filter of the coffeemaker. The box of old Tupperware, mismatched glassware, impulsively and wastefully purchased Chinese bowls. The summer tires for the car. The bicycle pump. The luggage. The luggage tags.

  Among all this unused, unusable detritus was a wardrobe box, KATE’S WORK CLOTHES, dark wool suits and starched white blouses, collars just shy of frayed. Her old life, crated up and forgotten in a basement.

  She went to the bakery, ordered a ham sandwich. Waiting, trying to figure out how she could begin investigating Marlena and Niko, other than calling their numbers. That would be traceable; she would be noticed.

  If Dexter didn’t check the video footage, who did? What was the camera there for?

  She looked in his sock drawer, underwear drawer, T-shirt drawer; the pockets of jeans and suit jackets and overcoats; the inside stitching of his belts. The linings of his neckties. The bottoms of his shoes, heels of shoes, insoles of shoes.

  She collected the children from school, bought pastries, then parked them in front of the television, cartoons in French. Bob l’Eponge was, it seemed, always on.

  She examined the liner notes to CDs, the big pockets in photo albums, the backs of photos, sitting there on the couch, with the children.

  “Mommy?” Jake asked. “I’m hungry.”

  She’d forgotten to feed her children.

  KATE DIDN’T HEAR Dexter come in. The range’s exhaust fan was on; she was sautéing.

  “Hi.”

  She jumped, her right hand attached to the sauté pan, lifting it, chicken flying, the edge of the pan hitting her left forearm, quickly searing a line into her flesh, dropping the pan onto the vitro-ceramic cooktop, clattering. She yelped, short and loud.

  “Oh!” Dexter said, rushing into the kitchen, but then helpless, no idea how to help.

  Kate ran to the sink, turned on the water, put her arm under it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  For the past few seconds, she’d forgotten about
the video camera and the money and Marlena and Niko. But now she remembered.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Sorry,” he said again, kneeling, picking chicken off the floor, throwing it away. Then he gathered the pieces off the cooktop, put them back in the pan. “We can still eat this, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Should I go get the first-aid kit?”

  The faint red line was two inches across the pale flesh of the inside of her forearm. She held it under the stream of cool running water. “Yes. Thanks.”

  She looked at her husband. At his eyes, locked with hers, worry across his forehead. He’d never burned himself cooking. He didn’t cook enough to make kitchen mistakes. He’d never peeled his thumb with a peeler, nicked his fingertip with a paring knife, scalded his arms in boiling water, burned bubbles on the back of his hand with splattering fat.

  What he’d done was steal fifty million euros.

  Dinner came and went. The adults read some books to the children, then read books to themselves, then Dexter fell asleep, without having mentioned anything about any video.

  She lay awake next to him, sleepless.

  Marlena and Niko.

  “WHAT ABOUT DEXTER?” Claire was asking. They were waiting for three o’clock at school.

  “Excuse me?” Kate was completely absorbed in her own obsessions. She still hadn’t discovered anything more of any value: no account records, no leads on Marlena and Niko, no information about anyone stealing fifty million euros from anyone, anywhere in the world. Plus the family was driving to Amsterdam that night, and Kate hadn’t yet packed. Dexter would be home at four thirty, itching to hit the road. She was running out of time.

  “I was saying that Sebastian is worthless around the house. Is Dexter handy?”