The German didn’t volunteer for a diplomatic flight to Mexico until his grandson was a month old. By then Lewis had envisioned every possible shade of miscalculation and the tension was depleting the sleep of the entire team despite their discipline, dedicated exercise regimes and determination to wait it out.
They sprang the trap at the bank without Tomas, who was already installed in Arizona on his new assignment. When it was over, the elderly German was confined quietly to a room at the German embassy, watched by the resident security staff, while the cabinet minister made arrangements for his removal to Germany. When the minister and BPOL delegation arrived two days later, the paperwork was completed to have the bank drill the box and pass the contents to a consulate official. Lewis spent three days at the embassy along with the cabinet minister and other officials to observe while a trio of gemologists examined and appraised the value of the gems. He emerged at the end of the day with a German bank draft and the promise of future business.
Lewis notified the Premises Section to terminate leases on vehicles, residences and offices. His people could finally relax and catch up on sleep while they moved efficiently through the process of packing, cleaning, relinquishing their vehicles and ghosting away from their cover identities. Christine staggered their departure dates and coordinated their flights home to limit overlap at the airport.
The last night before the departures began, Lewis took the entire team out for dinner at a restaurant Christine liked for its low-key location, excellent food, cold beer and informal wait staff. It was a rare opportunity for team members to be together and converse freely. Lewis thanked each member individually and asked about their preferences for their next assignment. There’d be a formal party in Washington with the director and assorted board members, but Lewis preferred to thank his teams as a unit on location. The mood wasn’t the same at headquarters.
With the project complete, their equipment withdrawn and the team safely away, Lewis and Christine packed up their residences and the project office. The next day, Lewis surprised Christine by agreeing to join her to see the Frida Kahlo Museum. The day after that, they departed to DC and Beige headquarters to submit final project reports and attend the project’s board review. From there, he went to Cozumel.
He spent the first three days wearing as little as possible in the sun and the water, cleaning and stocking the house and sleeping. On the fourth day, he caught the ferry to the mainland and drove to Cancun to meet Suzanna’s flight.
From the moment he saw her, he knew he’d made the right call to invite her. He scarcely noticed the days pass. His old craving for solitude, his impatience with what he had previously considered a necessary evil — the intrusive presence of a houseguest with whom he had nothing in common faded into the past. They had two weeks. Before the first was up, he’d begun to relish the breaks in his sleep that were a long-established pattern. Being awake while Suzanna slept close enough to touch was a new experience. The citrus in her shampoo lulled his senses while his restless mind roamed through the day’s events and conversations for hints that she was finding answers to her puzzle of self-discovery. It was an old habit to use periods of wakefulness to rehash the day. His mind naturally followed the pattern, unpacking what he had learned about her upbringing, personal politics, and tastes, what she admired, what she feared. It was in those brief periods of wakefulness that he acknowledged that she was learning about him, too — the areas of the world he’d experienced, the aspects of human behavior he rejected, what he valued.
Richard Oxenburg had been paid — paid in full, apparently. Lewis couldn’t figure what was holding the man in Brazil. He had a twenty-four hour watch on Oxenburg, expected every day to hear that he was on a plane. But the days passed, and the nights while Oxenburg stayed put in Brazil, and Suzanna never referred to her husband in any way.
* * * *
The sound of the waves was louder now, with the incoming tide. When it turned again in six hours, Lewis would send Gerald’s ashes out with it. Then, with that duty done, he’d be free to think about other things.
He didn’t know he’d slept until he missed her warmth. She was at the open window. The house was in bad condition: no shutters, the sills of the windows rotting away from the moisture, the floor tiles chipped and uneven. Nothing fit tightly, not the roof, not the windows. He liked it that way, with the fresh salt air streaming through the place. It had been a beautiful house once, a villa. That had been long before his time. Now it was a graceful wreck, which suited him fine. Suzanna thought he should fix it. She didn’t understand. The house was doomed, the beach already zoned for a new resort. It was a temporary possession; he couldn’t risk a permanent address. There would be other houses, other beaches.
“Hey,” he said softly, “who said you could wear my shirts?”
She turned. Her voice was low, her cheek wet in the moonlight. “You did.”
Her tears surprised him. He sat up, stretched, linked his hands behind his head, and slowed his thoughts before asking, “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s so cold, the ocean at night. Just endless waves and wind and sky.”
“As oceans go, the Caribbean is one of the warmest in the world, actually.” He eased his shoulders against the headboard. “The ocean always seems bigger, scarier when you’re feeling small. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I was thinking about Richard. He always said he preferred being alone. I wonder if he’s happy now.”
He’d anticipated that she would know her husband had been paid and would be home soon. He waited for her to finish.
“The day they tried to serve the papers,” Suzanna continued,“he called. I thought he might. I was dreading it.”
“Papers?”
“The divorce papers, of course.”
Lewis’s hands slid free. He caught himself, rolled his shoulders, and resumed his position against the headboard.
“Lewis, you stood in my living room and listened while I called my lawyer the first day you came back. Don’t pretend you didn’t check their files. I know you better than that.”
He wasn’t sure what this called for, but he was fully awake now, sensible of the need to proceed with caution, to keep his distance, not go to her, not touch her, not jump to demanding clarity. She’d chosen this dark hour and had positioned herself across the room for this. He held his impatience in check. His tone was musing, matter-of-fact as he recalled the day he’d returned to her house, “You were dressed like you were going to a business meeting, and yes, I did check. Your meeting was at a law firm, a Sun West client. I assumed it was about insurance but what I thought then doesn’t matter now. What’s this about divorce?”
“It’s been looming for the last year or so, but I didn’t do anything at first. I guess I was trying to talk myself out of it, trying to convince myself to be happy. Then in December, Richard told me he wasn’t coming home to spend Christmas with me, and I had to face reality. I was relieved. That was sobering. I knew then it was time to do something. I dread the ugly, expensive, humiliating ordeal but I want to be free. I had my first appointment with Duncan Smythe in January. Duncan’s experienced, tough and smart. He knows Richard, so he understood from the beginning what this will take.”
“Help me out here. When I woke up in your bed in April, I seem to recall you crying about selling your husband’s precious trophy car. Why cry about it to a total stranger if you were already months into divorcing him?” Lewis asked, genuinely baffled and struggling to keep his tone neutral.
“Oh, I wasn’t crying about the car. I was exhausted and overwhelmed by how unpredictable you were. You were so relentless. After you’d been careful with me the night before, that morning, you reverted to being cold and merciless. I was crying because of everything. What you accused me of was fair. I did sell Richard’s Jag after Duncan had finalized the list of our assets, done all the calculations, and warned me repeatedly not to buy or sell anything. I’d been feeling guilty, but I really had no choice; I needed the money.
“But you, you woke up sick and in pain and startled to see Richard’s closet, and you immediately pounced on it. You went straight to accusing me of being greedy and scheming, doing things behind Richard’s back. It was too much, and you didn’t even know what you were talking about.
“When you came back a month later, the meeting I canceled with Duncan was to finally admit I’d sold the Jag. I was dreading telling him — not only because of the extra work he’d have to do but because it would break his trust. Up until then, I’d been the good guy. Duncan is tough, and he’s capable of standing up to Richard, but you don’t get the same commitment from any lawyer after you’ve shown yourself as the kind of client who won’t follow instructions.”
She gathered up her hair and looped it into a knot behind her head, a familiar gesture he’d seen her make unconsciously many times when she was deep into expressing something. “You showing up out of the blue that day gave me an excuse to put off telling him. Then, when you told me you had brought the Jaguar back, it was almost unbelievable, like a gift from the gods. I remember the look you gave me when I laughed, but it was either that or cry with relief.”
“Is that why you agreed to dinner? Because I’m a god?”
He was relieved when she laughed. Her voice was normal again when she answered. “Oh right, of course, but for other reasons, too. First, because at that moment, I felt lighter, happier than I had in a long time and a nice dinner would put a bow on that. But also, I hadn’t gotten over thinking about you and wondering who you were really and if you were alive. The fact that you’d hit on the single best gift you could give me was like the ultimate evidence of karma or whatever you want to call it. I wasn’t going to let you out of my sight if there was a way to see more of that man who sat in my living room and drank coffee and talked to me like I mattered not just as an expedient to an end.” She turned back to the window.
He left the bed and came to stand behind her. She leaned back against him.
He let his gaze rest on the faint gray smudge where sea and sky merged while he absorbed the deluge of information. “So, what about those papers? Did he sign them?”
“No. He wouldn’t even accept them. Everything has to be Richard’s idea.”
“Why haven’t you said anything about this before now?”
“I hate thinking about it, and it has nothing to do with you. Besides, I thought I had no secrets from you.”
“I might have thought that too, once. Now I’m wondering what you’re expecting.”
She sighed. “I expect Richard to be as obstructive and difficult as possible. Not because he wants to stay married, but because he wants to have the power to say when it’s over. Duncan will do his best, but I’ll be Richard’s real target. I’ll have to stand up for myself. I’ll deal with it, but not right now. I don’t want to spend any of my time here thinking about all that.”
“How would you like to spend it?”
“I’d like to go back to bed, for starters. I’m cold.”
“Right.” He watched a wave hit the beach and dissolve into foam. “Great idea.”