by Adam Gittlin
I don’t get it.
I decide to start from scratch. I reassemble the pen set holder, then I replace the pens. I stare at the set.
The pen.
I remember Green’s words:
“That pen, my young friend, is everything.”
I take the pen from the set again. Noticing a thin line running around the circumference of the center, I decide to unscrew it. When I do, it separates into two pieces. And something falls out of the top half.
I hear Green’s widow suck in air as I reach down and pick it up.
“What is that?” she asks.
“A Micro UDP-chip,” I say, “or the world’s smallest flash drive.”
“Flash what?”
I recognize the technology. It is the latest and greatest in electronic file storage—a USB flash drive so small it measures only three-quarters of an inch by a half inch, and is a millimeter thick. But this discovery leaves me with another question.
Why give it to me hidden in a pen?
Why not just hand it to me?
I think about running it right now in Green’s desktop computer, but decide against it. God only knows what it contains. And I have no idea what this woman can or cannot handle, or really who these people even are.
I stand up and walk toward her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Green, for—”
“Anne,” she corrects me.
“Thank you—Anne—for trusting me. Now, I need you to keep doing just that—trusting me. You can’t tell anyone about this. In fact, you can’t tell anyone at all I was even here.”
“I don’t understand? What was—why?”
“The only way I can hopefully find the answers you’re looking for is by working on my own. Answers about your husband.”
“Why not just go to the police?” she asks.
“Because if it were that easy, your husband would have done so.”
CHAPTER 16
ST. GALLEN, SWITZERLAND
2004
Over the course of the next five months, Gaston Piccard’s country chalet became our entire world. Within a week, our physical transformation began. A world-renowned plastic surgeon who happened to be one of Gaston’s childhood friends was secured. I was told he never knew any of our names or identities. All he knew was he’d be making a small mountain of cash for a few days work.
The attic of the four-story home was transformed into a wild contrast of rustic wood and state-of-the-art medical equipment with a couple small windows overlooking the lush, storybook countryside. The white-and-silver machines seemed so sterile you could drag your tongue across them, while at the same time the thought of walking in the space barefoot screamed “splinter.”
My surgery was hardcore. I was a full-out global fugitive, therefore I couldn’t take even the slightest of chances. Changing an identity is all about the face. Altering the body surgically is both unnecessarily agonizing and pointless. If someone looks the same but has broader shoulders or they’re a couple inches taller, they’re still toast. But if a serial killer on the FBI’s “America’s Most Wanted” list were to brush shoulders with law enforcement with the same exact bodily proportions but with a few strategic facial alterations they’d probably never recognize him.
In my briefing before we got started it was explained that in the world of plastic surgery there are two choices: to enhance or take away. For example, let’s take the eyebrow line. We each have a certain projection of our brow based on cell tissue thickness and the proportion of our skull. If the brow starts out as protrusive, you can reduce, or make even more protrusive. If the bone starts out weaker—not dominant in terms of appearance strength with regard to a certain feature—you can build upon it: bone grafting, injection fills, or silicone implants.
All options have their pros and cons. Injections can be effective, but whether right under the skin like Botox or the deeper shit like Restolin, you’re talking like six months before it has to be done again. Bone grafting while truly appearance altering requires bone to be taken from somewhere else—either another part of the body or a third party. Silicone can also be insanely effective in terms of changing one’s look, and you’d be surprised to learn implants don’t simply come in perfectly round bags for fake tits—they come in all crazy-shaped, small derivations made to be stuffed up into your face to change your cheekbones, eye sockets, you name it. But, this stuff can leak. The language of plastic surgery is a complicated one. Understood, it seems, only by those who perform it and upper-crust women who elect to put themselves through it.
The tip of my nose—do you think I went with more of a point or the exact opposite which left it looking like a little ass? Or what about the angle of how my nostrils attach to my face?
Doesn’t matter. I was a ghost to you when this all began, now I’m just a different ghost. But I will tell you this:
I look forward to nothing more than the day I can reveal myself.
The day I am both exonerated and ultimately enlightened.
Free from both the law and my past.
What I can tell you is that my surgery ran the gamut: both the tip and bridge of my nose, brow line, eye sockets, cheekbones, chin, lips, even my ears. They even touched on my neck a bit. Injections were bypassed. With regard to enhancements I intended on this little makeover sticking permanently. There were implants and reshaping; there was bone grafting and bone shaving. All of this was done in three different surgeries spread out over ten days. Once the bulk of the swelling for the first stage subsided after about three days, we moved into stage two, then the same process for stage three.
When I awoke, even in my drug-induced haze, I held my hands up because they felt funny. There was gauze around the tip of each finger.
“There is something else. Something we hadn’t discussed,” the doctor said in English weighed down by a heavy Western European accent.
“Like what?” I asked through barely parted, burning lips.
He reached down and gently took hold of my right wrist. He lifted my arm up so my hand was in front of my face.
“I was contracted to give you a new identity. So that is what I did.”
I was confused. Drugs like morphine and Vicodin were racing through my system.
“No matter how we change the way we look, there is one thing we can never change. Our eyes. And there will always be a special few that no matter what you have done to conceal your birth face will always be able to recognize your eyes. My guess—those people will not let you know they have identified you until it is too late.”
The doctor let go of my wrist. He stood up. My hand still in the air my eyes followed him.
“I don’t understand. What does—what do my eyes—”
“What it means is that in my estimation there is little chance anyone could ever recognize you again. But should someone be able to—someone really looking for you, should someone or someones like that exist—because of your eyes, what I have given you is an absolute last line of defense. My team removed each of your fingerprints starting from the joint seam where such a procedure would be hard to identify for even the most trained of eyes.”
He placed his open left hand in front of me. With his right hand he pointed to the line where his left index finger creased at the joint below his fingertip.
“It was done with a cutting-edge procedure that uses both lasers and acid. Dual effectiveness, you might say.”
My eyes moved back to my hand.
Or should I say the new hand that belonged to the new person.
“Holy shit.”
I could feel a slight, unexpected smile come across my face. I couldn’t help being inspired by the doctor’s ambition. And I appreciated his desire for me to get where I needed to go. It was either that or this guy saw me in the news—whether he told Gaston or not—and wanted to ensure he could never be linked to me.
Either way, I didn’t care. It was genius.
“Whomever you were when you walked in here—that person has officially bee
n wiped from the face of the earth.”
For the next two weeks, all I did was sip smoothies through a straw and stare out into the Tamina Valley. Even with all the medication, the pain was extraordinary. Even so, I couldn’t help playing back every second of the previous month—Mattheau, my father, Murdoch. The Ia drawings. Detective Morante. I thought of how much I already missed Tommy, Jake, and L—and how the size of that hole in my heart was only sure to grow with time. Every second felt like an hour. I still couldn’t tell if I was being punished or spared. If a higher power was looking out for me, or simply ensuring that I suffer.
Two weeks later, sitting up in bed and looking in a mirror for the first time, I stared at what looked like a mummy from the Syfy network. Perry and Gaston were in the room along with the doctor. The doctor, sitting on the edge of my bed, started to unwrap the gauze. My eyes, wide as the moment they saw the world for the first time, never blinked. With each layer removed, the underlying white, stretchy material became more blood and pus stained. Finally, the last piece was removed.
I heard Perry suck in a breath, shriek. My peripheral vision caught her covering her mouth. The sensation of looking at myself in the mirror, and seeing a man I had never seen before, was a fierce mix of raw emotions that had me trembling. There was relief that the face being sought around the globe no longer existed. There was rage for those who drove me toward such measures. There was a sense of tremendous loss; a sense both of my dead parents would have been disappointed I had let the one face they gave to this world slip away. There was determination unlike any I had ever felt before to move forward. The transformation was complete. All that was left was to top it off with a new hair color and style.
Perry’s transformation was less drastic as she was not a fugitive. A little bit of work on her nose and eyelid shape—both things she claimed she wanted anyway. Her long, beautiful brown hair was chopped and changed to an auburnish red bob, which was actually quite hot considering her face is so beautiful. As for Max, the beauty of children at this age in this situation is that they seem to be changing every day in terms of appearance. Nonetheless, Perry made it into a game and told him as a special treat he could do whatever he wanted with his hair. He said he wanted a Mohawk.
Done.
Perry was concerned about Max, and rightfully so. The father she took him from was certainly an animal, but I could see in her face her questioning if she had done the right thing every time I saw her look at him. We discussed what she should tell him about my transformation. She decided that she didn’t want to lie to him; she told him I had to do it because people were saying I had done something very bad that I didn’t do. And I had to make it right before they could find me.
Like I said, Perry was concerned for Max. I was achingly concerned for both of them. Max kept saying he wanted to see me. Once I was truly on the mend, Perry and I decided it was time. As he entered the room, Perry remained by the doorway. I was sitting in a chair by the window overlooking the valley I could by this point draw from memory. Funny, he didn’t even pause or break stride in the slightest upon sight of me. He walked right over and stood in front of me.
He studied my face. He started to put his hand up, but put it back down, probably thinking I was still in pain from some of the residual bruising.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can feel it. You won’t hurt me.”
He reached out and touched my cheek lightly. Then he ran the tip of his finger across my brow line.
“I like your chin. It looks cool.”
“Thanks.”
He put his hand back down to his side.
“Did you do it?”
I was taken aback.
Did I do what? Did I accidentally murder a dirty cop? Did I inadvertently get my own father killed? Did I run from the police, and put everyone I know and love back home in harm’s way?
I looked at Perry. She shrugged. I knew she hadn’t given specifics.
“Did I do what?”
“Whatever it is the people you are hiding from say you did.”
“No. I mean—anything I did, it was accidental. Or was done to someone who deserved what they had coming. I would never do anything bad to anyone or hurt anyone on purpose.”
“Good. Because you’re nice to me. And you’re nice to my mom.”
Then, surprisingly, he moved into me and hugged me. A tear ran down my new face. Perry, smiling wide, started to cry.
“Can you go outside for a walk yet?” Max asked.
“Absolutely. Time for some fresh air.”
In discussions with Gaston, we decided that Amsterdam would be the right place for us. Not only did he work closely with some high-ranking Netherlands’ government officials, meaning we’d easily obtain authentic ID, he knew a lot of people there, a number of whom were owners of real estate. Getting an apartment would be easy. As for what I would do professionally, I thought it was probably best to start fresh here as well—perhaps another area of business, or something far more low-key altogether—but Gaston felt otherwise. Commercial real estate was still the way to go. Not only did I know and love the business of buildings, thus giving me the opportunity to start working straight away, I had learned about and worked at the highest level in the industry in the world’s most comprehensive market—New York City. Another plus—one doesn’t need a real estate license to perform as a real estate agent in The Netherlands. Once in Amsterdam—a city of seventy-five million square feet of office space as opposed to the half a billion I was used to—I would lay low for a few weeks and literally walk the streets, learn the lay of the land, scope out the product. From there I would find a firm and start at the bottom as a junior broker showing space.
For the next couple months all we did was learn to speak Dutch—Gaston brought in a teacher twice a week in order to ensure our being out of his hair for good once we were gone—perfect our backstories, and learn about the Dutch culture. What Dutch people liked to eat, do for fun, what they valued; where Dutch people vacation, about their work ethic, what they typically spend money on. We devoured books and information online. We absorbed anything and everything Dutch. Did you know the Dutch are the tallest people in Europe? Or that when Dutch schoolchildren pass their exams, they hang the Dutch flag and a schoolbag outside their homes?
My background? I was born and raised in The Hague, the second largest city in The Netherlands. I attended the University of Groningen and graduated with a degree in economics. Once in Amsterdam, the plan was for me to literally take a day trip to Groningen in order to take notes and photographs to study should I run into others who attended the school, a scenario that was more than likely. My father was a simple man who worked for the State Department—most of The Netherlands’ government departments are located in The Hague—while my mother was a waitress. We were a hardworking family of modest means. I was an ambitious boy, an only child, who wanted more. We developed a similar back-story for Perry and Max. The story would go that Perry—a single mother who had never been married—and I met a couple years earlier while vacationing in Tenerife.
We also got my finances in order. Once we were gone, the goal was for me to never have to check back with Gaston unless there were extreme circumstances. In order to achieve this, we needed to strategically set up bank accounts in tax-safe havens around the world; the plan was to spread out my thirty-seven-point-five million dollar share of my father’s life insurance payout. While Gaston had access to my U.S.-based accounts, obviously these funds couldn’t be touched. What could be touched was the account for the life insurance trust. The payout of the trust was set up to hit a completely segregated bank account—an account based in Switzerland—where at this point my portion still resided. Once ready to roll, we created many anonymous accounts all with benign balances that would never raise any red flags in the usual spots like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda along with places like Dubai, the Channel Islands, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Cyprus, and Grenada. Some of the accounts were personal, others were corporate she
lls, depending on jurisdiction. Four hundred fifty thousand here, sixty-five thousand there; two point two million here, seven hundred twenty-five thousand there. Once I left Switzerland, I would have every bank account number, routing number, debit card, username, and password with me in order to draw money as necessary from anywhere in the world.
In the fall, once we had the language down extremely well, it was time for the move. Our new government-issued passports, driver’s licenses, and ID cards had arrived. Perry York was now Tess Beel. Her son Max’s new name was Johan. I opened my new passport and looked at my name.
Ivan Janse.
Something about seeing this new name, to go along with my new physical persona, triggered nerves deep within me. It took my breath away. I thought of everything I had been through; I thought of everything that was about to come. Life had turned me into a warrior of epic proportions. I had killed. I had put everything on the line to protect those I love. I had learned to treasure more deeply, truly hold dear those things that matter most. I had learned to flip a switch and go to a place most men can never imagine going.
As we were leaving the chalet, a place we had only spent five months but I knew would live inside me forever, I caught a last glimpse of myself in a mirror. My eyes—Jonah Gray’s eyes—stared at a man the world had never seen before. I wondered something.
You ever imagine what happens when a hurricane collides with an earthquake?
Nice to meet you.
My name is Ivan Janse.
CHAPTER 17
NEW YORK CITY
2013
7:15 p.m.
It’s going to be tight.
In 1993 my father bought a warehouse in Soho. Why did he buy it? To keep it out of a rival’s hands.
Get what you need, Pop said. Always. No matter what.
When I was a kid, in the summer my friends and I used to hop from one Hamptons house to another. One night a girl named Jenny Gaynor and I hit one of the six guest bathrooms in my friend Jim Brezen’s house after rolling around in the grass of his estate grounds at about two in the morning. Once the bathroom had become a steam room, and we were able to separate our naked, sweaty bodies enough to come up for a second’s air, we jumped in the shower. I picked up the half-used bar of soap. The second I did, Jenny let out a shriek.