The Expats (16 page)

Kate opened a spreadsheet, ready to type in names and dates and criminal acts. She returned to the web, and found the Chicago news sites. She started browsing, one crime at a time, looking for photographs of the accused, the convicted, the acquitted, the released.

“I’M SORRY TO tell you,” Evan had said, “that we’re not going to lift your cover.”

This was as Kate had expected, after all she’d done, and seen. In a way, the permanent cover was a relief, removing her own decision
making from the equation. If she was forbidden to tell anyone, she didn’t have to decide not to.

“I see. Okay.”

Evan considered her closely, probably trying to determine the extent to which she was disappointed, or frustrated, or angered by this decision. She wasn’t any of those.

“And that, Kate, is it.”

“Is what?”

“We’re finished.”

Kate glanced at her watch. It was eleven thirty in the morning. “For today?”

“Forever.”

“Oh.” She didn’t push back her chair, or stand, or move in any way. She didn’t want this part to be over. Because when this part was over, it was the end of the whole thing. Her whole career. “Really?”

Evan stood. “Really.” His hand out. The bitter end.

KATE’S STREET TURNED gently and then ended abruptly, like many European streets. In the States the streets were all long and straight, extending for miles, stretching as far as anyone could see, dozens or scores or hundreds of blocks. Europe vs. America, in a nutshell. The French don’t even have a word for the idea of a city block.

A barrier stood at the entrance to the rue du Rost, red and white diagonal stripes on a strip of steel sitting atop sawhorses,
RUE BARRÉE
painted in neat stenciled block letters, black paint. A policeman stood at inattentive attention, chatting up a woman in a short apron. A waitress on a cigarette break.

Kate walked past the palace gates, watched the guards notice and dismiss her. She looked one in the eye, a fresh-faced man wearing rimless glasses, and attempted a smile, but he didn’t react. The parking area back there was filled with cars, and people, and activity.

She crossed the street and entered a building and buzzed a bell.

“Come on up!” Julia exclaimed through the intercom.

The elevator was tiny, like her own. It must have been challenging for the architects and engineers, finding a way to carve elevator shafts into all these ancient buildings.

“Welcome.” Julia was holding the door open with one hand, using the other to usher Kate inside. There seemed something antiquated in
the gentility of this gesture; something mannered, but not ironic. Something odd. “So nice to have you over, finally.”

Kate walked in tentatively, still not used to wandering around people’s homes in the middle of the day. Back in Washington, the only places she’d wandered in daytime besides her own offices were field trips to the State Department or Capitol Hill. When she’d socialized at night, it had usually been in restaurants, at theaters. In public places. It felt intimate to be in Julia’s apartment, alone with her, in the middle of the day. It felt illicit.

“Thanks for having me.” Kate passed through the foyer into a long room that served as living and dining rooms, with a bank of windows in the western wall. Through every window was a view of the
palais
, richly swagged curtains and wrought-iron gates, balustraded balconies and sandstone turrets, an unfamiliar flag flying on top.

Julia noticed Kate staring at the palace. She followed Kate’s gaze to the flagpole. “The flag is up,” Julia said. “This means the grand duke is in residence.”

“Really?” Kate asked. “That’s true?”

“Yes. And it’s lowered when he’s not in the building.”

“But that flag? That’s not the Luxembourg flag.”

“Oh?” Julia joined Kate at the window. “You’re right. That’s the Italian flag, I think. That means an important Italian is visiting. The prime minister, maybe? Or the president? What do they have in Italy?”

“Both.” Kate reminded herself to not be too much of an expert. Added, “I think.”

“Well”—Julia shrugged—“one of them’s over there now.”

“I bet you never lived across the street from a monarch before.”

Julia laughed.

“Where
have
you lived?”

“Different parts of Chicago.”

“Your whole life?”

“Nearly.” Julia turned away. “I’ll go make the coffee. A cappuccino for you?”

This was typical of Julia’s discreet evasion. She never outright refused to answer a question, but rather responded without specifics, deflecting the question back at the asker, turning the conversation away from her history without drawing any attention to the redirection. But that’s exactly what had captured Kate’s attention, aroused her suspicion.

Sometimes, Julia simply found an excuse to leave the room.

“A cappuccino would be great.”

Kate looked into the palace yard, a ground cover of tan gravel under a canopy of pines and chestnuts. A dozen cars, nearly all of them deep blue Audi sedans. For license plates, the cars had panels of two stripes, blue and orange, with no numbers or letters or any identification. The single non-Audi, the car parked nearest the porte cochere, was a vintage Rolls-Royce, grand and gleaming in a blue that matched all the other cars—or, probably, it was vice versa. The Rolls’s license plate consisted solely of a crown.

Royalty. Very different from merely rich.

A handful of Luxembourgeois military were loitering in the backyard, near a cluster of men in different uniforms; these must’ve been Italians. A few security-looking guys wearing black suits stood off to the side, looking more alert than the uniformed personnel.

Kate could hear the crunch of gravel under the hard soles of the patent-leather shoes of the tall man who was striding across the yard, wearing a cutaway military jacket with epaulets. The Luxembourgeois military came to attention and saluted the man as he strode by, not pausing or slowing down or glancing at anyone.

The Italian military didn’t salute, but they did bring their bearings erect, and they stopped talking and watched him until he’d entered the porte cochere, his heels clicking on the wood tiles, a much quieter driveway for horses’ hooves than one paved in stone.

She began to turn from the window, but something caught her eye: on the second floor, up near her level, someone was opening a towering French door to a narrow balcony. An elegant man in a dark suit stepped outside, and surveyed the scene in the yard below. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and bumped one out. He lit the cigarette with a gold lighter, and leaned on the low stone wall.

Kate could see now that his necktie, which at first glance looked like solid navy, was a deep-hued paisley in blues and purples; it was a lovely tie.

As the crow flies, this man was not more than thirty yards away.

It would, Kate couldn’t help thinking, be an incredibly easy shot.

THE MAN ON the palace balcony took a deep drag of his cigarette, exhaled a big puff, then three perfect smoke rings. Kate could see his eyes scanning the pebbled lot below.

This was exactly the type of setup Kate had used at Payne’s Bay. An
innocuous seasonal rental with a perfect sight line. But in Barbados it had been a three-hundred-yard shot. Here, you’d barely even need a scope.

“It’s sort of addicting, isn’t it?” Julia asked. “Watching the goings-on over there.”

“Mmm,” Kate said, distractedly. Her original suspicion was that the Macleans had fled the States to escape something. But now she was becoming convinced of the opposite: they’d come to Luxembourg to accomplish something specific. Was it completely unreasonable to think it was an assassination?

KATE TURNED OUT the light and turned to Dexter, the taste of red wine mingled with toothpaste, moving through the paces, grabbing this and licking that, paint-by-numbers sex, not particularly satisfying nor in any fashion problematic, just another unremarkable in a series of uncountables.

And after, a drink of water, pajamas pulled on, breath not all that difficult to catch.

“Listen, tomorrow night I’m playing tennis with Bill,” Dexter said.

She didn’t turn to Dexter, in the dark. “You have a good time with him, don’t you?”

“Yeah. He’s a good guy.”

Kate stared at the ceiling. She wanted, needed, to talk about this with someone, with this exact someone. As much as Kate had been resenting Dexter, and this new life of hers, he was still her best friend. But she was worried—no, it was beyond the uncertainty of worry; it was awareness—that this would cross some line in their marriage, a line that no one acknowledged until you were on its precipice. You know the lines are there, you feel them: the things you don’t discuss. The sexual fantasies. The flirtations with other people. The deep-seated distrusts, misgivings, resentments. You go about your business, as far away from these lines as possible, pretending they’re not there. So when you eventually find yourself at one of these lines, your toe inching over, it’s not only shocking and horrifying, it’s banal. Because you’ve always been aware that the lines were there, where you were trying with all your might not to see them, knowing that sooner or later you would.

“Why?” Dexter asked. “You sound like you have something on your mind.”

If Kate said, “Dexter, I’m afraid that Bill and Julia aren’t who they
claim,” he would be angry. He’d be defensive. He’d have all sorts of possible, plausible explanations.

“You have something against Bill?”

Eventually Dexter would confront Bill, nonconfrontationally. And he’d be fed a line, which Dexter would swallow. They were in the witness-protection program, is what Kate suspected they’d claim. They couldn’t discuss the details, the veracity of the story couldn’t be confirmed, couldn’t be proven or disproven. That’s what
her
story would be, if she were in Bill’s shoes.

Kate wasn’t sure which she most wanted to avoid: fighting with Dexter about Bill’s possible secrets, or revealing to Dexter—finally—her own.

So she lay there, feet splayed, looking up at the dark ceiling, trying to figure out a way to say something to her husband.