The Prisoner's Wife

by Gerard Macdonald

A man Shawn knew was bending over his coffee machine. A man he didn’t know was seated at his refectory table, tipped back in a bentwood chair.

  “Calvin McCord,” Shawn said. “All these visits I’m getting. Bobby Walters. Now you.”

  Calvin wore a suit of cerulean blue. He looked older than when he’d worked with Shawn, in the NukePro group, in Manhattan. He’d shaved his Zapata mustache; his hair was thin enough now to show the scalp beneath. When the espresso machine was adjusted to his satisfaction, he turned his attention back to Shawn.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what were you thinking? I mean, do you normally leave your door wide open? Any passing badass walks right on in?”

  “Like you did.”

  “Correct,” said Calvin. “Except, lucky for you, I’m not a badass.” He pointed. “Laptop lying right there on the counter.”

  Considering his laptop, Shawn saw someone had unlocked the case while he was out. He could guess what they were looking for.

  “This evil dude steps in,” said Calvin, “this hypothetical scamp—collects that piece of gear, walks on out—tell me,” he said to the man in the bentwood chair, “how many dollars we have to the pound these days?”

  The man in the bentwood chair, olive skinned, wore a khaki shirt and matching cotton trousers. “Two bucks,” he said, “plus change. You’re in hock to China.”

  “Okay,” Calvin said to Shawn, “let’s just say the guy that’s got your stuff, he’s up four thousand. Profitable couple of minutes. How would you feel about that?”

  “Ask me something else,” Shawn said. “Ask me how I feel about getting visits from guys I don’t want to see. Bobby Walters I don’t mind too much. You, I do. Plus your friend there.”

  “Apologies,” Calvin said. “I should have introduced you. This is Hassan Tarkani. I believe he’s about to take his feet off your table. Thank you. Hassan, meet Shawn Maguire. Colleague of mine.” He considered Danielle. “We don’t, either of us, we don’t know this lady.”

  “Ex-colleague,” Shawn said. “I retired.”

  “Or was retired,” Calvin said. “I have to tell you, man, something out there in the garden smells amazing.”

  Leaving his chair, Hassan walked across the kitchen toward the scullery. “Jasmine.”

  “Is that right?” Calvin asked. “Jasmine. Tell me, is that a tree or a plant? I could go for one of them.”

  “Not on the thirty-ninth floor, you couldn’t,” Hassan said. “You mind if I tend to your washing machine?”

  This last question was addressed to Shawn. Danielle’s wide-eyed attention shifted among the three men.

  “That damn beeping,” Calvin said. “Plays hell with your nerves. Isn’t that right, lady?”

  Danielle nodded. She was leaning against a beechwood bench, alert, watching both of the strangers.

  Hassan pressed two buttons on the washing machine, then opened its door. The beeping stopped. Hassan felt the clothes inside the machine. “There you go. Clean undies. Dry as a bone. All you got to do now is fold them.”

  “See that?” Calvin said to Shawn. “These Pakis, smart as a whip, mostly. Nothing they can’t do, except run their own sorry-ass country. Catch Osama.”

  Hassan said, “And get paid real money.”

  Calvin said, “Ma’am, I keep waiting. We still don’t know your name.”

  “Danielle,” she said.

  Shawn left the room. When he came back, he had both hands in his jacket pockets.

  Calvin considered him. “Now, now,” he said, “I don’t believe you would do that, Maguire.” The coffee cup he was holding rattled against the saucer. “If we run a quick count around the kitchen, there’s two of us here, me and Hassan there. Both of us holding. Then it’s one of you, leaving out the nice lady, who I don’t believe”—he scanned Danielle—“is carrying. Apart from which”—he made a comprehensive gesture—“you got such a pleasant home here.”

  “Plus the garden.”

  “Like Hassan says, plus the garden—which we truly thought was a treat. That jasmine, something else. Be a shame to get yourself run out of the country, Shawn. Which we could arrange. Undesirable alien. Look what you’d lose.”

  “Besides which,” Hassan said, “you haven’t asked us why we’re here.”

  “That,” Shawn said, “might be because I don’t want to know.”

  “Let me guess,” Calvin said to Danielle. “Baptiste? Would that be your family name?”

  “You could earn cash,” Hassan said to Shawn. “You could help us a little. More than you helped Mr. Rockford. You have something we need, apropos Ayub Abbasi. You told Mr. Walters, he spoke to us, you told him you want cash. We”—he pointed—“we have walking-around money.”

  “Besides which,” Calvin said, “there’s a war on. Next time they hit New York, you know, I know, could be nukes.” He nodded to Shawn. “Courtesy of Dr. Khan. We’re talking war. Good against evil. Christian against Muslim. Children of Darkness, Children of Light. White against black.”

  “White and brown,” Hassan said, considering his own wrist. “White and brown against black.”

  Calvin looked from Danielle to Shawn. “Freedom under God, you know what I mean? There’s a choice here.” He looked from Danielle to Shawn. “Like the president says, you’re not with us, you’re against. Don’t sit this out.”

  “What makes you believe,” Danielle asked, “we might do that?”

  Calvin shrugged. “Feeling I have. Plus, ma’am, you crop up here and there. You and your man. Entries on a database.”

  Shawn asked Hassan, “Another question. What makes you think I need money?”

  Calvin smiled. “Are you serious? Long as I’ve known you, Shawn, you’ve been in debt. It’s why you work for scum like Abbasi.” He poured more filtered water into the coffee machine, keeping one eye on Shawn. “We checked. You have two bank accounts. Barclays and Citibank, am I right?”

  “Both accounts overdrawn,” Hassan said. “High five figures.”

  “Not counting credit cards,” said Calvin. “Again, two. Platinum. Both maxed out.”

  Shawn waved Danielle away from where she was leaning on the worktop, watching Hassan. “Danielle,” he said, “walk right over there, will you?”

  Calvin moved fast. He put down his coffee cup and raised his hands—lightly tremulous—above waist level.

  “Now, Shawn,” he said, “don’t do this. I was just in Cedars-Sinai. Knee problems.”

  “Runs in the family,” said Hassan. “Next time, you know how it is, anything knee related, insurance won’t cover Mr. McCord here. Preexisting condition. What can you do? It’s in the small print.” Hassan shook his head. “Charge like wounded bulls, those guys.”

  “Put your hands on the table,” Shawn told him. “Don’t push your luck.”

  Calvin had backed the length of the beechwood bench. “Don’t be foolish, Shawn.”

  “We don’t know how foolish I might be,” Shawn replied. “Remember, I’ve done foolish things before. It’s why Joshua Hoskyn can’t walk straight. It’s why I’m retired.”

  “Suspended,” Hassan said. “We could fix that.”

  “Living a quiet life,” Shawn said, “away from people I don’t want to see.”

  “Oh, man,” said Hassan, “that is unkind.”

  Watching Shawn, Calvin beckoned his colleague. “Son, say good-bye to the lady. Our friend believes we’re outstaying our welcome.”

  At the door Calvin said, “I still have the same cell, Shawn, if you ever want to call me.”

  Hassan passed a card to Danielle. “Or you, ma’am. We could talk.”

  “Close the door behind you,” Shawn said. “Do it gently.”

  * * *

  At the window, Shawn watched his visitors depart. After a moment, he spoke to Danielle. “You know they were here for you?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know. For me? What does that mean?”

  Shawn pointed toward the lane. “Blue Chrysler out there. In the backseat
, there’s a head bag and hypodermics. I didn’t see them, but somewhere there’ll be handcuffs. That wasn’t for me. It was for you. Bait and switch.” He paused a moment, thinking it through. “Someone wants you back with your husband. Wherever he is.”

  16

  WEST SUSSEX, 24 MAY 2004

  Late in the afternoon, Shawn drove back from the Felbourne railway station with Ashley Victoria Caburn, a stocky, smiling woman dressed in what she wrongly believed to be current fashion. Born in Rhode Island of Anglophile parents, Ashley Victoria, schooled in Cape Cod and Surrey, seemed more English than American. Her official employment was at a high level of immigration control within the U.S. Embassy. If she had in fact worked there, she would now be part of her country’s Homeland Security apparatus. In practice, Ashley was a spy: a brilliant intelligence analyst. Had she not been female, had she not been right about Iraq when her superiors were wrong, had her sexual games been more conventional, she would by now have held some senior post in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence.

  She carried flowers.

  Glancing sidelong at this woman—his friend, and Martha’s—Shawn reflected on the laws of attraction. A man of his age, he thought, should seek wisdom and judgment; qualities of mind, not flesh. To his shame, these were principles Shawn believed in but failed to practice. He couldn’t imagine sex with Ashley. He wanted Danielle in ways that had nothing to do with judgment or wisdom.

  In quite other ways, sex was Ashley’s weakness. She was in long-running—and so far ineffective—12-step therapy for sex and love addiction. Her boss, disillusioned with his Brahmin wife, once took Ash to bed: an experience she did not enjoy. She doubted he had. Six months later, without further physical contact, she fell deeply in lust with the same man.

  Go figure, she’d told Shawn. How do these things happen? Against all advice, she sent her boss inappropriate e-mails, called his Chelsea apartment, waylaid him at the watercooler, tried to get on his flights when he traveled. Only when she was briefly exiled to North Carolina did her passion dim.

  Shawn’s wife Martha had been Ashley’s closest female friend; more than once, recipient of the spy’s lovelorn grief. When Ashley came to Martha’s funeral, she waited until the guests dispersed, then proposed marriage to Shawn. Now that he was single, she said, it was right they should settle down. She was lonely; she kept misbehaving; the clock was ticking. It was time she had a child.

  Shawn had asked for a few weeks to think that through. He was fourteen years older than Ashley; he hadn’t been planning on more children. Juanita had broken his heart more often than he cared to recall. Finally, he put the idea on hold.

  * * *

  “Can we go to Martha?” Ashley asked now. “I mean, before we hit the house?”

  Shawn swung the car off the road, into his lane.

  “We can,” he said. He glanced at the flowers Ashley held. “Those are for her?” He edged the car around Justin Hallam Fox’s border collie, rolling in roadside dust. “If I didn’t say so, it’s good of you to come down.”

  “Not entirely disinterested,” Ashley remarked, gazing around her. Hawthorn hedges frosted with blossom; chestnut leaves unfolding their early-summer softness; moorhens leading their brood of sooty chicks across the unpaved lane.

  “God, this is beautiful. I could live here, now she’s gone.” Ash shifted in her seat. “I’m hoping you’ll see sense and marry me. I know you turned me down, but it was the wrong time to ask. At the funeral. Even I see that now.” She paused a moment, considering him, then said, “I have to tell you this. It won’t get easier, Shawn. Men think they stay sexy. You believe young women want you. Not true. Young women want young guys. Good bodies. Fifty plus, my friend, you’re pretty much out of the game.”

  Shawn thought of what he might say, and decided not to say it. He parked in the lane opposite his house, at the churchyard gate. Ashley made no move to leave the car.

  “Flowers?” he reminded her. “For Martha?”

  She said, “I’m not finished. Inside information. There’s been an official complaint. Something you did to Robertson Reynolds. You know? Property guy? Owns half Manhattan. He’s unhappy, not to say royally pissed. He has influence. Big GOP donor.” She turned to look at Shawn. “I never heard the details. What did you do?”

  “I had a thing going with Ellen. His wife.”

  “Knowing you,” said Ashley, “I could have guessed. There’s also Calvin McCord.”

  “So I keep hearing,” Shawn said. “Gets around, that guy. He was here, in my kitchen. Now what’s he done?’

  “Contacted all our agencies. All intel.”

  “All sixteen?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “About?”

  “You,” she said. “Heads-up is, hands off. Do not hire this person.”

  “Why would Calvin do that?”

  “Three possible reasons,” Ashley said. “First, he thinks you’re insufficiently interested in the safety of our nation. Second, you’re working for a jihadist. Third, he doesn’t like you. These are not incompatible, one with another.” She made herself comfortable in the car. “You know I love gossip. Tell me what went down with Mrs. Robertson Reynolds.”

  “Well,” Shawn said, “what do you want? Young wife, old husband. He’s out of town, buying up the rest of the world. Making more money than he’ll ever spend. That’s how it started.”

  “What’s interesting,” said Ashley, “is the finale. The last act. Tell me—how’d it end?”

  * * *

  Shawn’s affair with Ellen Reynolds ended the night her husband returned early to his Park Avenue apartment. Robertson wasn’t expected until the following day. Several million dollars richer than the day before, missing his young bride, he’d caught an early plane from Houston and arrived home while Shawn was in Robertson’s bedroom at one in the morning, doing the kind of intimate things to Ellen that dismayed her husband as much as they pleased her. Shawn was in his undershirt, his face between Ellen’s permatanned thighs, and moments later, there stood the property billionaire, at the door of his own bedroom, looking from his wife—now covered by a cream sheet—to the man perched on the edge of his, Robertson’s, king-sized bed.

  Shawn had a panicky moment, thinking the old man might be armed, while his own private-issue Glock was inside his pants, mixed in with Ellen’s scattered underthings on the far side of the room.

  Then he saw that Robertson would do no harm to anyone, except perhaps himself.

  The old man was weeping; weeping clumsily, helplessly, as if it were something he’d never learned to do. His dark coarse-skinned face collapsed in pachydermatous folds. His breath came in long, sobbing sighs. He walked, stumbling, toward his wife, ignoring the man in his room. He knelt on Ellen’s side of the bed, pawing her prone body.

  “Don’t,” he kept saying, between breaths. “Oh, don’t. Please. Please, Ellen, don’t.”

  While Robertson wept on his wife’s breast Shawn dressed, checked that he still had his pistol, and left the bedroom. At the door, he looked back. Ellen’s naked arms were wrapped around her elderly husband, soothing him as the weeping died.

  Shawn descended the mansion’s marble staircase promising himself not to see the woman again; wondering why, right now, he felt such a son of a bitch. He’d always known Robertson was out there; always known how much it would hurt the old guy if he knew another man was sleeping with his young and nubile wife. Why should it be so much worse, now that he’d actually seen the man?

  Now that he’d seen him dissolve in helpless tears?

  * * *

  Walking back across town in the warmth of a summer night, Shawn promised himself that from here on out, he’d be faithful to Martha. Nothing more on the side. Ever. It was then, at this penitent moment, that he knew he’d lost his office-issue laptop. For an instant—when he thought he’d left it in Ellen’s room—Shawn wondered if he could face going back to the mansion. Then he remembered he’d gone straight to the bedroom, with Ellen and witho
ut the computer, which, back then, had been the last thing on his mind.

  Minutes later he called the cell phone of his protégé, Calvin McCord.

  “McCord,” Shawn had said, “I know what time it is. I also know you’re working for me, so get your ass out of bed, if that’s where it happens to be. Go to Harlem, check these bars. They’re closed, open them up. One of them has my laptop, I hope to hell.” He listened, then said, “Of course it’s got classified shit on the fucking disk. You think I’d be standing here pissing my pants if it didn’t?”

  Shawn confirmed that Calvin had a pen and something to write on, then gave the names of three uptown bars. As it turned out, he could have saved his breath. At 3:00 A.M., he found his machine where he’d left it, untouched, in La Cucina, still open in the Village.

  “Which,” Shawn said, “didn’t stop the little mother telling Rockford I lost my laptop.”

  “Come on,” said Ashley. “You were right about Afghanistan. Right about A. Q. Khan. That was enough to get you fired. You just made it easy for them.”

  “You know Calvin got my job?”

  Ashley said, “Of course I know. Boy done good. Wrote the speech for Colin Powell.”

  This was news to Shawn. “You mean—that speech? United Nations? Why we had to invade Iraq?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “But,” Shawn said, “Jesus God, it was fiction—end to end. I mean, please. Mobile labs? Armed nukes? Fucking fiction.”

  “What can I tell you?” Ashley asked. “Garbage in, garbage out.”

  In the shotgun seat of the Merc, with the door open, parked outside St. Perpetua’s churchyard, Ashley was giggling.

  “Shawn,” she said, “Shawn, you can still make me laugh. Such a gift for screwing up your own life. Coloring way, way outside the lines.” She shook her head. “Even by your standards, losing your laptop—that was a clusterfuck.”

  “I’d be amused,” Shawn said, “if there was something I could do about it. My career, I mean. Something I could do to get back in the business. I guess that door’s closed.”

  Ashley climbed out of the car, treading carefully across the lane to the graveyard.