The Expats: A Novel

by Chris Pavone

  TODAY, 1:01 P.M.

  Kate unlocks the desk drawer, and the lockbox. She hefts the Beretta, much lighter without its magazine. The smooth black metal is cold in her hand.

  She glances at a photo on the desk, a little snapshot in an antique leather frame, the boys laughing in the surf in St-Tropez. More than a year ago now, bronzed and blonded by a summer of sun, teeth glinting white, golden light shimmering off the Mediterranean, late afternoon in late July.

  In the end, Dexter left the where-to-live decision up to Kate. He claimed that he preferred the countryside or small-town options, Tuscany or Umbria, Provence or the Côte d’Azur, even the Costa Brava. But Kate suspected that Dexter never really wanted to live in any countryside. Instead, what he wanted was to lose an argument. He wanted to make her feel like she’d won something, like this decision had been hers, despite him.

  Kate couldn’t help suspecting that he’d been manipulating her about everything, all the time. A huge reversal, after so many years of believing that he was the least manipulative person she knew.

  Her probably superfluous argument for Paris was on behalf of the children. So they would grow up educated and cosmopolitan, not sheltered and spoiled; she didn’t want their sole areas of competence to be tennis and sailing. The grown-ups could always move to Provence when the children had gone to university.

  Kate leans back in the chair, the pistol in her palm, thinking about these people: this other couple, strangers who she thought were friends who were pretending to be enemies. And her surprisingly diabolical husband. And her own behavior, both questionable and justified. And what she’s about to do.

  She snaps the Beretta’s clip into position. She lifts a hardened panel in the bottom of her handbag—very similar to the compartment in Dexter’s old briefcase, where he kept his secret phone. She drops the handgun into the bottom, then replaces the panel.

  Kate reaches across to a cluttered bookshelf, unplugs a mobile from its charger. She hasn’t powered up this phone for more than a year and a half, but she keeps it charged. She turns it on, punches in the long number. She doesn’t store numbers like this one in address books of any sort.

  She doesn’t recognize the voice on the other end of the line—a woman saying, “Bonjour”—but she didn’t expect she would.

  “Je suis 602553,” Kate says.

  “One moment, madame.”

  Kate looks out the window, over the gabled rooftops of St-Germain, the Seine and the Louvre to the right, the glass domes of the Grand Palais straight ahead, the Eiffel Tower to the left. The sun is peeking through clouds behind her, unseen, painting a golden wash over the city, gilding her lily of a view, almost too perfect.

  “Yes, madame. The ladies’ lounge in the Bon Marché. Fifteen minutes.”

  Kate glances at her watch. “Merci.” She hurries out the door once again, down the elevator and through the lobby and breezeway to the street, the rue du Bac merging onto the boulevard Raspail, weaving south through the dense lunchtime crowds, pushing her way into the department store, onto an escalator, brushing past slowly ambling women to the anteroom outside the restroom, where a pay phone is ringing.

  “Hello,” she answers, closing the door behind her.

  “Lovely to hear your voice,” Hayden says. “It’s been so long.”

  “Likewise,” Kate says. “We need to talk, in person.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Not really, no. It’s a solution.”

  He doesn’t reply.

  “Can we meet at four?” she asks.

  “In Paris? I’m afraid not. I’m, well, not near.”

  “But you’re not far. And if I’m not mistaken, you have access to a plane.” Hayden was promoted last year, despite a lifelong career track in the field, not administration. He is now, surprisingly, deputy baron of Europe. A job that comes with use of a jet. As well as discretion on personnel, from the junior officers in Lisbon and Catania to the field chiefs in London and Madrid. Paris too.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Do you remember the fifty million euros stolen from a Serbian?” Kate asks.

  Pause. “I see.”

  “Four o’clock?”

  “Let’s make it five.”

  24

  Kate marveled at how deeply she’d buried her head in the sand. How she’d ignored what she should have seen, long ago: that the Macleans had been monitoring the Moores’ every move, for months.

  Jake waved at her from the other side of the store window. Kate waved back. Dexter and the boys were in another shop, a chocolate store, while she stood outside. She could see their eyes wide, their fingers pointing, their whole bodies begging. Kids in a candy shop.

  Kate had chosen to pretend she hadn’t seen Julia. She’d turned the other way up Hartenstraat, let her gaze linger in the opposite direction, giving the FBI agent an opportunity to scamper away, unsure whether or not she’d been made.

  Now Kate stood in some other straat, her mind racing back to what she realized was the beginning of the surveillance: that rainy day—extra-rainy, pouring thick sheets—in late September—more than three months ago—in the parking lot of the Belle Etoile mall in Strassen. Julia claiming that she’d forgotten her phone in Kate’s car. Insisting that Kate stay away, stay dry. Returning to the car alone, installing something subtle and unfindable, then returning to Kate with the slim smile of secret victory. Mona Lisa.

  From that moment, Bill and Julia had always known where Kate was.

  So the Macleans had known it the following Friday afternoon, when Kate and Dexter set south on the A3, crossing the border into France, cruising by the nuclear reactors at Thionville, veering off at Metz onto the A4 toward Reims. That turn was probably when Julia and Bill decided to give chase, to hop into his little BMW, racing to catch up, closing the gap during their remaining three-hour drive to Paris, slowing down to 140 kph only when their GPS alerted them to speed cameras. Or maybe not slowing down at all. What did the FBI care about European Union speeding tickets?

  And while the Moores were finding a place to park in Paris, the Macleans were still on the highway, hurtling through Champagne, the vineyards littered with trucks parked for the night in the fields, harvest time. They located Kate’s stationary station wagon in a grimy garage. They called around to the nearest hotels, one after the other, until they found the one where there was a junior suite registered to Monsieur et Madame Moore. The Macleans booked their own room nearby, set up surveillance.

  The Moores were easy to follow. They moved in a large, slow group, took the Metro and never taxis, walked around crowded streets. They were out in public spaces, all the time.

  The Macleans probably took turns—ten minutes on, ten off, trailing each other while they trailed the family—following, waiting for a good opportunity, a natural circumstance, a touristy spot late in the day, an easy chance meeting, an effortless insertion. They’d already called the Moores’ hotel, verified that babysitting was available, knowing they could pull this off, knowing that Dexter and Kate would accept an invitation to a night out, to too much wine, to a fashionable club, to accelerated friendship, to instant intimacy.

  That whole spontaneous Saturday night had been carefully orchestrated. That attempted mugging was play-acted, a sham.

  This had all started a quarter-year ago.

  Dexter was hiding something—was it really fifty million stolen euros?—and these FBI agents were tight on his tail. They were following his every move, through Luxembourg and Belgium and into Holland, now tracking him around Amsterdam. They were closing in on something, unwilling to allow Dexter out of sight for a weekend. Why?

  The boys spilled out of the chocolate shop, victorious, their booty held aloft—“Mommy! Look!”—eager to show their mother what their father had allowed them to choose, innocent and naive.

  Kate smiled down at her children, but she was shivering with cold and terror. “That’s great, sweetie.”

  Whatever was going on, it felt like it
was drawing to an end. Kate certainly hoped it wouldn’t be a violent end. But she had to be prepared.

  KATE WAS ALONE, stopped in the middle of a bridge, looking up at the spectacular sky: the deep rich blue damask of dusk, the fast-moving puffy clouds, layers of whites and silvers and grays piled atop one another. The lights were on in the windows, on the fronts of bicycles, reflecting in the water.

  Dexter had taken the boys back to the hotel for a predinner pay-per-view; they weren’t meeting his tiresome friend Brad until eight.

  On the far side of the bridge, the last of the boutiques fell away, like the end of a commercial stretch on a suburban road, the final Sizzler and Meineke under streetlights before the dark countryside. The funk of marijuana drifted from a pair of dreadlocked teens.

  Kate found a bank, entered the small vestibule with the ATMs. She ignored the cards in their slits in her wallet, the everyday cards. Instead she reached her thumb into an interior pocket, a half-dozen pieces of plastic there, things she didn’t need to carry in Europe, but did: laminated American Social Security card, old office ID, gym membership. And the bank card, the checking account in her old name. The account Dexter didn’t know about.

  She withdrew the limit: one thousand euros.

  She also withdrew the maximum from their joint Luxembourg account, another thousand. She took cash advances from two credit cards, a thousand apiece.

  Back in the street, the red lights began to appear, the women large and unattractive, southeast Asians, garters and high heels and sagging breasts spilling out of ornate lace.

  Kate found a convenience store. She bought a packet of plastic bags, a roll of tape, a bottle of water. She was thirsty, nervous.

  The streets grew narrower and the storefront windows denser, six girls in quick succession, good-looking dark-haired Europeans; then around the corner a few Africans, full-lipped and big-bottomed. There appeared to be departments. Like a department store.

  She entered a well-lit café, clean and safe-looking from the outside, but rougher within. She ordered a Coke, left her coins on the bar, drank it quickly. She walked to the rear, found the sign for the toilet, pointing down a creepy-looking winding staircase. There were a couple men down there, a shady transaction, the stench of secrecy.

  “Excuse me,” she said, sidling past, locking the door. She took the baggies out of her coat pocket, tore one off along the perforation, tossed the remainder in the bin. She removed her wad of large-denomination bills. Peeled off a few hundreds, shoved those in her right pocket; some twenties were in her left. She put the balance of the four thousand euros into the bag. She pressed the air out, folded the packet tightly, wound it up in tape.

  She sat down on the toilet. Pulled off her left boot. When she crossed her legs, she always did it right over left. She didn’t know if she’d be crossing her legs—she didn’t know how the hell this was going to go down, if at all. But better safe than sorry.

  The boot had a low heel, but it would do. At the rear of the sole, back behind the arch, where the leather sole rose to meet the rubber-bottomed heel, there was ample space. In this space, she taped her compressed bagful of cash.

  Outside again, men were shuffling their feet, making fleeting eye contact through the red miasma and the glinting expanses of velvet-framed glass. There were boisterous teenagers, groups of three or four, outdoing one another in bravado to compensate for inexperience. Besuited middle-aged men, some furtive, others brazen—regulars, or simply beyond caring what strangers thought, secure in the knowledge that here, everyone was pursuing their own agenda. Not unlike everywhere.

  The coffee shops were full and loud and rank smelling, the pungent pot wafting through doorways and lingering on sidewalks.

  A young man met her eye, a come-on to something. She considered and dismissed him, kept walking.

  Along another canal, this one very different from what she’d seen of upscale Amsterdam, lined with sex shops and nightclubs and red-lit windows. The sound of drunken laughter spilling out of a bar, Australian-accented English, the titter of embarrassed women.

  Another man made eye contact, this one older, harder. He nodded at her, and she nodded back. He said something in Dutch, and she slowed down, but didn’t respond.

  “You lookin’ for sometin’?” West Indian accent, far from home. So was she.

  “Yeah.”

  Gold tooth glinting. “What dat?”

  “Something special,” she said. “Something steel. With lead.”

  His smile disappeared. “Can’t ’elp you wit’ dat.”

  She reached into her pocket, removed a twenty. “Who can?”

  “Go see Dieter. Up dere.” Inclining his head, dreadlocks tumbling.

  She continued up the sidewalk beside the narrow canal, the sounds and smells close beside her. In front of a live-sex club, promotional posters leaving no doubt about the show, a man in a shiny black suit, pointy-toed shoes, narrow leather tie, carefully watching everyone come and go. He met Kate’s eye. “Guten tag.”

  “Hi. You Dieter?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m looking for something. A friend told me you could help. It’s steel.”

  Dieter looked confused. “Is a stolen thing?”

  “No,” she said. “Steel. Metal.” She raised her hand, pointed at him with her forefinger, thumb straight up in air. Winked the thumb. Bang.

  Dieter understood, shook his head. “Not possible.”

  She took two blue twenties out of her pocket, offered them. He grimaced, didn’t accept the money, shaking his head again.

  Kate retrieved another bill, this one a hundred.

  Dieter glanced at the green piece of paper, easy to instantaneously assess the denomination. “Follow me,” he said, folding his hand around the bill. He walked quickly, looking both ways again and again, ill at ease on a non-sex-trade mission. Across a bridge, down a narrow crowded street, attractive whores in every window, a popular stretch, the Billboard Top 40 section of the district, no specialty tastes here. A turn into a darker and smaller street, an alley really, just a couple red lights here, long stretches of brick wall.

  Dieter stopped at a red window, and Kate stopped alongside him. The pretty blonde inside looked at him, and at Kate, then opened her door wordlessly. Smells of incense and cigarette smoke and ammoniac disinfectant. Dieter walked past the girl and her sordid little room, her neatly made bed framed in mirrors. The girl didn’t meet Kate’s eye.

  They walked down a narrow hall, cheap wallboard, unadorned. At the end of the hall, a rickety staircase, low-ceilinged, badly lit.

  Kate was getting nervous. She stopped walking.

  “Come.” A quick wave, not particularly reassuring. “Come.”

  They climbed the stairs, turned on a treacherous landing, climbed again to another recently constructed hall. The cheap flooring was vibrating, and Kate could make out a thumping hip-hop bass, and now vocals, a growling basso, and now synthesizers, the music growing louder, its English lyrics distinct, vulgar and brutal.

  Kate stepped down off the carpeting and onto a tile floor, a wider hall, taller ceilings, moving from a slum to a mansion, somehow tucked away in here, a pair of large doors, paneled and painted, Dieter glancing back at her, then pushing the doors open—

  Kate took in the anarchy of the tremendous room at a glance. Couches and settees and chaises, coffee tables and Persian rugs, tasseled lamp shades on alabaster bases, marble fireplaces and massive windows fronting onto the canal, a half-dozen girls in various states of undress, one of them with her head in the lap of a tattooed and pierced and furious-looking man, her head being thrust down and yanked up by the ears, and, in the middle of it all, a bright orange head, bent over a mirror-topped coffee table, then rising, throwing itself back, sucking the white powder in and shaking his head, long stringy hair slapping his face.

  “Ahhhhhh!” he yelled. “It’s fookin’ bootiful.” He wiped his nose, looked at Kate, then at Dieter. “ ’Oo’s this coont, then?”

/>   Dieter shrugged. “She looks for something.”

  “You know ’er, then?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Ookay, then.”

  Dieter shrugged, turned, and left, closing the doors behind him, glad to be rid of Kate and her disquieting inquiry.

  “Angelique? Check ’er.”

  The girl rose languidly, six feet tall, topless, wearing nothing but panties and stilettos. The redheaded man watched her, his eyes filled with lust. Angelique was a fantastic specimen, not more than seventeen years old. She frisked Kate, then sauntered away, back to her chaise and her magazine. Vogue. A naked girl reading a fashion magazine.

  “What you woont, then?”

  “I want a piece.”

  The tattooed man seemed to be finishing up, pumping the girl’s head up and down furiously, while she gagged and gulped and tried not to whimper.

  “Ah woont a piece, too.” He grinned. “You ’ere to gi’ me a piece o’ yoour poosy? Tha’s nice ah-you.”

  Kate smiled broadly. “I want a fucking gun, you stupid Scottish prick.”

  “Ahhhh,” moaned the other man.

  “Whot? You listen ta this, Colin?”

  “Ahhhhhhhhh.” Colin bunched the girl’s hair in fistfuls. “Doon’t intrup me, Red.”

  “A fookin gun, you say?”

  Kate didn’t respond.

  “Whot are you, soom kinda fookin bobby? Where’s your wire?”

  “No wire.”

  “Show me, then.”

  Kate looked him in the eye; he didn’t blink.

  “Or git the foock oout.”

  She waited another beat, another two, eyes glued, before she slowly took off her jacket, and dropped it to the floor, still staring straight at him.

  She pulled her sweater over her head in one swift motion, her hair staticky. Reached behind her, unzipped her skirt, let it fall to the floor. She stepped out of it, hands on hips.

  “You American?” he asked.

  Kate was now wearing nothing except boots and underwear. She didn’t answer.