Deception (6 page)

5.

Francis Dietz waited until the bus had gone, rattling away up the hill. Then he pitched away his cigarette and began to move toward the gangplank of the
Aurora II.

Three men stood at the base of the gangplank, all wearing the white uniform of hired stewards. Two were Filipino; the third was Greek. As Dietz drew close, one hand dipped into his battered leather bag. The men rose to their full heights, and the Greek crossed his thick arms in front of his chest. “Can I help you?” he asked, with exaggerated cordiality.

Dietz smiled—he had a winning smile, which transformed his face from stolid and serious to open and appealing—and took his hand from the bag. “I need to take a look on board,” he said. “Security issues. It won't take a minute.”

“‘Security issues,'” the man repeated. “What kind of security?”

“National security,” Dietz said, and reached out for a sudden handshake.

Three pairs of eyes followed his hand. Inside the palm, barely visible through the crooked thumb, was a roll of bills.

The Greek reached out and shook the hand.

“Five minutes,” he said.

The other two men exchanged a glance. Dietz bowed his head, stepped around the men, and trotted up the gangplank. As he stepped aboard, he could hear the beginnings of an argument behind him.

FOUR

1.

The handful of rose petals felt soft, and lighter than air.

Keyes held it by his side, looking at the church doors and waiting for his daughter to step out into the sunshine with her new husband. The idea that his daughter's college boyfriend was now his son-in-law seemed—like the rose petals in his palm—lighter than air, and barely real. Until today, Keyes had been able to imagine that the boy was merely an unfortunate detour on his daughter's trek through life. But he had just watched the vows being exchanged. He had just seen the rings being slipped onto fingers, and then the kiss …

The two rows of people around him, clutching similar handfuls of rose petals, also looked at the church door anxiously. Until now, the wedding had gone smoothly enough. But where were the bride and groom? Keyes saw Rachel trying to catch his eye. She wanted to blame him, somehow, for the fact that they hadn't yet made their appearance. He carefully avoided looking at her, and kept his eyes focused on the door.

The cell phone burred against his leg.

He ignored it. Now they were coming out—Margot grinning widely, looking happier than he had seen her looking for years; even sullen Joe Cifelli, Jr., looked happy for once—and Keyes raised the handful of petals. Whether or not he approved of the match, it was over now. Margot was an adult, capable of making her own choices. And as the proud father, his job now was to be gracious.

He flung the flowers heavenward, along with a dozen and a half other people, and for a few moments the air was filled with a shower of fluttering rose petals.

Then the bride and groom were slipping into a waiting limousine, to be whisked to the reception. Rachel was still trying to catch his eye. The phone was still burring against his leg. He turned away, reaching down and shutting it off. Today was his daughter's wedding. Today he wasn't available.

But Daisy knew what day it was. She wouldn't be calling unless it was an emergency …

Dick Faulk, Margot's godfather, was slapping his back. “Congratulations,” he said. Dick, Keyes thought, seemed pained. He also could not believe that Margot had settled for Cifelli, and his backslapping was too strong to mask his pity. “Congratulations, Jim. What a day. What a day.”

2.

Joe Cifelli, Sr., was talking in a smooth, never-ending flow.

Keyes stood, watching the mouth move and trying not to pay attention to the words.
Water off a duck's back
, he thought.
Water off a duck's back.

“It's to the girl's credit that she's ready to try marriage,” Cifelli said. “After what happened with you and the missus, I mean. But just because one generation gets it wrong doesn't mean the next can't get it right. Am I right, or am I right?”

Keyes nodded, stone-faced.

Behind Cifelli, the band was meandering through “Autumn Leaves.” Keyes wished they'd get to the end and then skip the rest of the cocktail jazz, and move right to the toasts. Until the toasts had come and gone, this miserable night would never end.

A caterer moved past on his left, wheeling a tray piled with salmon and pork. His eyes followed of their own volition. He was starving.

“Now, if you ask me,” Cifelli was saying, “it's not your fault, Jim, no matter what they say. Not everybody's as lucky as me and Rosalie. And besides, you had the accident, didn't you? You lose a child and the whole marriage crumbles. I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds, here. We're family now, aren't we? So we need to be straight with each other.”

Margot appeared from nowhere, hugged Keyes, hugged Cifelli, hugged Keyes again—she was in a tizzy, in a whirl—and said, “Mom's crying behind the tent.”

Keyes blinked.

“Go talk to her,” Margot said. “Please?”

“Honey—I don't think she wants to talk to me.”

“Don't ruin this for me, Dad. Please.”

“Me?”

“Please. Just go talk to her.”

He looked at his daughter—pale and overwrought, just like her mother—looked at Cifelli, then sighed, and nodded.

But he had no goddamned intention of talking to Rachel. He threaded his way between tables and stepped outside. Before him the inn—low, sprawling, and determinedly quaint—looked muted and quiet beside the glowing tent. “Autumn Leaves” segued into “Misty.” So he had a few minutes, at least, before the toasts.

He made certain he was unobserved, then reached down and turned on his phone. It was ringing again; or perhaps it had been ringing the entire time. The LCD indicated that the call was coming from Daisy. He brought it to his ear and thumbed a button. “Yes,” he said.

Daisy's voice, flickering in and out. “… bother you …”

He waited.

“… gamma … critical.”

His mouth tightened.

“… fireworks,” she said.

“How bad?”

The connection was getting worse. Waves of static rolled into his ear. Then, for one moment, it became crystal clear. “Isaac's gone to supervise. Greenwich is going crazy. The fireworks …”

Suddenly Keyes understood.
Fireworks.
Not an explosion; not a setback. An accomplishment. Critical Achievement Two—a fireworks display of electrons, photons, muons, and positrons. A burst of subatomic particles, symbolizing that they had done it.

They had done it.

Joy leaped inside of him; he quickly pressed it down. Time to celebrate later. But the joy remained there, percolating below the surface. All these months, all these years, and now they had Critical Achievement Two.

“What about Epstein?” he asked. His mind was already rolling ahead, greedily, to Critical Achievement Three. Greenwich had violated the moratorium on experiments imposed after Epstein's disappearance—until they had secured Epstein's formula, which could be used to predict precisely the lifetime of the black holes, work was to have stopped completely—but the man's instincts had been right. He had gone ahead, and gamma site still existed. So it was natural to look ahead to Three. Greenwich, no doubt, would be doing the same.

Only crackling. “Any word?” he pressed.

“… yet,” Daisy said, and then something that was swallowed by static.

“I can get away from here in an hour or two. You still at the office? I'll need transportation to gamma.”

“… weekend,” she said.

“I appreciate it, Daisy. Thanks in advance.”

“… raise,” she said.

He smiled, clicked off the phone, and slipped it back into his pocket.

Fireworks.

So they had done it. And now, as soon as the Epstein situation was brought to a conclusion, there would be nothing left in the way.

Something rustled behind him. He turned, and saw that it was Rachel.

Her mascara ran down her face in twin blue tear-streams—but she looked lovely in her black gown, with her hair piled atop her head and a slim silver necklace encircling her throat. In that first instant, he could almost see the girl who had once lived inside that woman's body, the girl with whom he had fallen in love.

In the beginning, he remembered, all their time together had been good. They had been just kids themselves. Then life had grown more complicated; the marriage had shaded into something more comfortable, more complex. For years they had walked a tightrope, through the good times and the bad.

Then had come the time in the hospital room, unlike any other. And when that time had ended, so had the marriage. Keyes had gone to a place deep inside himself. For a long while, he had stayed there. When he had resurfaced, Rachel was gone.

She took a step forward. “You don't return my calls,” she said.

Keyes licked his lips, and didn't answer.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I was just thinking how nice
you
look.”

“And thin. Have you been losing weight?”

He shrugged, as if it was something that had happened accidentally.

“Too thin,” she said. She took another step forward. Her hand brushed his. Then she was hugging him, pressing her face into his chest.

Her shoulders heaved. Keyes let her cry, his hands moving awkwardly, uncertain where to settle. Inside the tent, “Misty” came to an end; no other song began. In a moment, then, would come the toasts.

“Our little girl,” Rachel said, her words muffled by his chest.

“She looks happy,” Keyes said.

“I don't know. Does she? I can't tell.”

He found one hand moving to stroke her hair. The hair felt dry, desiccated; she colored it too often these days. A surge of pity came to complement the other feelings inside him. Poor Rachel, he thought. She had lost everything, hadn't she? For an instant he almost found himself saying ridiculous things to her. Things about the Project, and how, once they reached Critical Achievement Three, everything might change. Things about how there were ways … how there might have been ways … to put everything back together again, to pretend none of it had ever happened …

… a malfunctioning turn signal; was that how God intended to take his boy? Impossible. Even chance could not be so finicky. The accident had been a mistake. And mistakes, with enough effort, could be corrected, no matter how large the scale.

But Rachel would think he had lost his mind, if he said something like that.

“The toasts are starting,” he said instead.

She nodded, her chin rustling against his shirt. “We should go in there together. To show Margot we can do it.”

“Your mascara is running. You look like a raccoon.”

She sniffled, pulled back, produced a wad of Kleenex from somewhere—Rachel secreted Kleenex on her person like a con man concealing aces—and swiped at her cheeks.

Then she crooked out her arm, and managed to smile bravely.

They had tragedy to bind them, he thought as he took the arm. Tragedy had torn them apart, and yet the same tragedy bound them together. It didn't make any sense. Ever since the accident had taken Jeremy, nothing seemed to make sense.

Their arms locked. He put his other hand reassuringly on her elbow. Tomorrow, no doubt, they would be back to talking through lawyers. But for tonight, they could be civil with each other. It was a good night—Joe Cifelli, Jr., aside.

Fireworks.

They had done it.

He bowed his head, and returned the smile, and together they moved back into the tent.

FIVE

1.

Forty-foot stone walls topped with ragged battlements rose up against a turquoise sky.

Somehow the colors in this part of the world looked exaggerated, Hannah thought. The gray of the stone was layered and rich, the blue of the sky brilliantly vivid. Farther off, a strip of ochre rock led into the sea: reddish-yellow-gray against the green water, terminating in a small island that featured the prison tower of Sapienza.

The tour group strolled slowly among the ruins, inspecting the escarpments and the lions of Venice carved into the stone, making their gradual way in the direction of the tower.

“
Sapienza
,” Jackie Burns said. “It means
wisdom.
This island was a strategic point in the route from the Ionian to the Aegean Sea—and more generally, in the route from Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. Notice, as we walk, evidence of the many different civilizations that had a hand in building parts of this fortress throughout the ages. The prison tower at which our tour will conclude was built by the Turks in the sixteenth century. Yet the fortress proper was begun three hundred years earlier—”

Hannah, despite herself, found herself enjoying the stroll. The view was idyllic, the wind soft and balmy. A constant nibble of apprehension threatened to spoil her pleasure, but for the moment she had it under control. For all she knew, after all, this was only a vacation. In a week she would return to her life with a clear head and a clean conscience, and start over again. And this time, she would get it right.

The subversive part of her mind, never content to let things rest, spoke up.
What about the plants
? the voice said.
Your poor plants. You could at least have made allowances for the plants …

Hannah ignored the voice. There were enough other voices competing for her attention. On one side was Jackie Burns, still lecturing. On the other were the Epsteins, who were sticking to her like glue.

Mr. Epstein was asking her for the third time to make absolutely certain that she returned his book as soon as they arrived back at the ship. Hannah paid no attention. She had given him the assurance already, each time he had asked. There was something weird about his need to keep asking, she thought. Perhaps the man suffered from Alzheimer's.