The Expats (43 page)

“Dexter’s employment is confidential,” Kate added, her own irrelevancy.

“Nor a record,” Julia continued, a freight train beginning to roll, “of how his income is being generated. We’ve checked your bank account, of course. That is, your
nor
mal bank account, the one you opened in both your names, with credit cards and cash cards and statements mailed to your apartment. So we can see the regular income coming in, and the regular expenses going out. But what we can’t see is
where
the income is coming from.”

Julia paused, staring at Kate, letting this sink in before clarifying, “The transfers are being made from a numbered account,” Julia said. “Nameless, anonymous.”

“That’s kind of the point of Luxembourg, isn’t it? Banking secrecy.”

“Have you met any of his colleagues?” Julia asked, continuing to ignore Kate’s half of the conversation. “Have you ever seen Dexter’s employment contract?”

This was the first allegation Kate could refute. Because she had in fact seen his contract, a brief, unremarkable document that he’d squirreled away inside a misleadingly labeled folder. But she stayed silent.

“Have you seen a pay stub? Has he received anything in the mail from his employer? Has he filled out any paperwork? Life-insurance forms?”

Kate stared at the battered old table. Of course the contract could be fake.
Was
fake.

“A business card? A corporate credit card? A key-card to access the offices?”

Their waitress delivered the drinks, loud thumps on the table, two Coke lights and a beer on the bare wood.

“Have you ever seen anything whatsoever—
any
thing—that would
prove—not even prove, that’s too strong a burden; that would indicate—that your husband works for any company at all?”

Julia picked up her soda, took a sip. Didn’t continue her attack.

“That’s quite a collection of circumstantial evidence,” Kate said.

“Circumstantial evidence may not be enough to convict. But it’s almost always enough to reveal the truth. Isn’t it?”

“Circumstantial evidence to bolster wild conjecture.”

“Inescapable conclusions, actually.” Julia was staring at Kate firmly with complete conviction, trying to convey her certainty across the table.

Kate looked away, out the window at the swirling snow. “What do you
want
?” she asked. “From me?”

After a long silence, Julia answered, saying exactly what Kate expected: “We want you to help us.”

“DEXTER.”

He looked up from spearing a forkful of amuse-bouche, a something-something with something sauce. This was supposedly the finest restaurant in the country. The chef had won the most prestigious award in the world. That bestowment had been long ago, but still.

“I know,” Kate said. Her entire body was tingling, bristling with anxiety. This was going to be a difficult conversation, with a lot on the line.

“You know what?” Dexter popped the unidentified food object into his mouth.

“I know you’re not a security consultant.”

Dexter stared at her, chewing his UFO slowly. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I know about the secret bank account.”

He stopped chewing momentarily, then started again, contemplatively.

Kate held her tongue. It was now his move, and she was going to wait him out. He swallowed. He picked the napkin out of his lap, dabbed the corners of his mouth.

“What,” he said, “do you think you know?”

“Don’t try to deny this.” It sounded a bit more hostile than she intended.

“Who has been telling you what, exactly?”

There was ample space between tables. They had plenty of privacy,
here in the middle of a formally dressed crowd, neckties and dark suits, pearls and quilted handbags.

“Nobody needed to tell me,” she said. “I found the account with the twenty-five million euros, Dexter.”

“No you didn’t,” he said, slowly and calmly, steeling himself. “Because it doesn’t exist. I don’t have an account with twenty-five million euros.”

Kate stared at Dexter and his lie, and he stared right back. “Who spoke to you, Kat?”

She mumbled.

“Who?”

“Bill and Julia, that’s who. They’re FBI, on loan to Interpol.”

Dexter seemed to consider this.

“They came here—to Luxembourg—chasing you, Dexter. This is a big operation, for a big crime, and you’re the suspect.”

A pair of waiters arrived, bearing white plates under silver domes, sliding the plates onto the table, lifting the domes in tandem. One of the waiters explained the dish, in what may have been English, or possibly Swahili, for all Kate knew; she didn’t pay any attention.

“Did you steal the money, Dexter?”

He stared at her.

“Dex?”

He glanced down at his plate, picked up his fork. “After we eat this,” he said, “we’re going to the restroom for a minute.”

DEXTER LOCKED THE door. “Show me you’re not wired.”

She stared at him but didn’t say anything or do anything.

“Show me.”

“You’re not doing this.”

“I have to.”

She was surprised at how invasive this felt. But of course this is what someone like him would do. So this is what he had to do.

Kate removed her blouse. She’d gone a long time without being strip-searched. And here it was, twice within one week. She unzipped her skirt, stepped out of it. Dexter pawed around the lining, the zipper. He wouldn’t know a bug if it was stinging him on the nose.

Dexter handed her clothes back.

These days, transmitters could be anything, anywhere, any size. The one she was wearing now, for example: a small disk affixed to the
underside of her wristwatch. The present Dexter had given her just a couple weeks ago, on Christmas morning in the Alps, primly wrapped in earth-tone plaid with a staid silk ribbon by the jeweler on the rue de la Boucherie. The Swiss-made watch that had been trucked to a distributor in the Netherlands and then collected in a van by the boutique in Luxembourg, then flown by Dexter back to Switzerland to be unwrapped by Kate in France, thirty miles from where it had been manufactured, then flown back to Luxembourg, where in the men’s room of a downtown brasserie it had been upgraded by an undercover FBI agent, and eventually overlooked by an American semi-criminal here in this silver-wallpapered restroom, now.

Kate started buttoning up, zipping up.

Dexter opened her handbag, rummaged around: lipstick and compact and phone, pens and keys and packet of gum, who the hell knows what, all of it possibly recording or transmitting. Impossible for this bag to get a clean bill of health in such a cursory checkup.

She’d left the Beretta in the apartment.

“I’m going to put your bag in the car,” Dexter said. “Meet me back at the table.”

SHE STUMBLED OUT of the restroom, into the hall. Steadied herself against the wall before taking another step on the plush carpet.

This was much harder than she’d expected. She’d been in similar situations before. But never with her husband. For many reasons, she thought it would be easier this time.

Kate tried to stay composed. She took a sip of wine, then a sip of water. She wiped her mouth with her napkin, and fiddled with her fork, and massaged the bridge of her nose.

Dexter returned to the dining room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that.”

The waiters slid immense white bowls onto the white tablecloth. The soup course. A few tablespoons of liquid, topped with what looked like lobster meat.

“Do you understand? That I had to?”

Kate stared into her soup.

“First of all,” Dexter said, “I don’t know anything about twenty-five million euros.” As they’d agreed the night before on their cold balcony, scripting out this dialog, there would be three large lies in this
conversation. This was the first. “And I haven’t actually stolen any money from anyone.” And this was the second.

“But the way I’ve been making my living, I admit that not all of it is entirely legal.”

“So you’re not a security consultant?”

“No, not anymore. I’m a day trader, in securities. I’d been dabbling for a few years, a hobby. Then a year and a half ago, I had a string of successes, and I was fed up with my work, so I … Kate, I’m sorry … I quit.”

A busboy cleared their plates, smoothed the linen, retreated. “So what do you do that’s illegal?”

“I hack into corporate computers, to access inside information. Which I use to ensure that my trades are profitable.” This was the third lie, delivered steady and calm. Well-performed.

A waiter visited to find out if everything was okay. A preposterous question.

“How much money have you made?”

“I’ve made about six hundred thousand euros from this, um, activity.”

Kate gave Dexter a small smile, an encouraging nod. The past two minutes had been the hardest part of the conversation, the biggest challenge to the performance. Dexter had handled it well. The rest would be much easier. Much closer to the truth.

THE WAITERS CEREMONIOUSLY lifted more domes, little breasts of some bird underneath, lacquered skin, viscous brown sauce in a glistening slick, little baby vegetables, a whole nursery school’s worth.

“Who is this Marlena woman? They showed me pictures of you with a terrifyingly beautiful woman.”

“She’s a prostitute. She helps me by seducing men, and accessing their computers, which is how I hack into their systems.”

“That’s horrible.”

He didn’t defend himself.

“So you have no actual job. But I found an employment contract hidden away in a file. That’s a fake?”

He nodded.

“But you have a work permit? We’re here legally?”

“Yes. I own a business here.”

“There was some problem, though? Back when we first arrived, at the U.S. embassy?”

“The problem was that I’d applied for the work permit much earlier than when we arrived here. And in the meantime—”

“The meantime being about a year?”

“Correct. In that year, the Luxembourg government started automatically sending copies of new work permits to the foreign embassies. I didn’t know about this change in protocol. So in the normal course of affairs, in September, the embassy should’ve received a copy of my work permit, if I’d’ve received it when they—when you—thought I had; when I was claiming I had. But that’s not when I received it.”