Fallen Idols (53 page)
There were numerous components to Jocelyn and Diane's plan, and they all had to come off with clockwork precision. Diane had insisted that she come on the trip, both to verify the artifacts to her satisfaction and, more importantly, because Jocelyn would need her expertise in getting the pieces out of the country and into the U.S.— she had done this before, she knew how to get around customs agents. The problem, of course, was that the trip was already filled. Jocelyn had solved that by e-mailing the O'Malley girl with the he that the trip was oversubscribed, then sending the fake e-mail under the girl's name so Walt would think the girl was pulling out. On the heels of that came Diane's prearranged e-mail, and giving her the suddenly vacant slot seemed perfectly natural.
The tomb-raiding was the easiest part, although it was certainly nerve-wracking. Jocelyn was able to pull it off because it was so brazen no one would ever expect it. And she thought she was vigilant about not being followed. She had worked slowly and carefully, taking a few pieces at a time, always thoroughly covering the entrance to the tomb back up, making sure no one knew it was there.
Jocelyn believed she had finessed the problem— badly, but successfully. But there was one piece of grit in the machinery of this audacious scam that she didn't know about: someone had been spying on her. Despite her precautions, someone had seen her take the artifacts out of the tomb.
Her secret spy was the local archaeologist Walt had tried to kick off the site the year before. Walt had been forced to take the man back, and with great reluctance, he had—but theirs had been an uneasy truce. Walt had frozen his adversary out whenever he could, which made a bad relationship turn even more sour.
The stringent security measures that Walt had instituted against looting had brought about Jocelyn's downfall. Like Walt, she would go off by herself in the evening, after the day's work was done and everyone else was relaxing. No one questioned where she was going—she was Walt Gaines's wife. No one, that is, except Walt's disgruntled foe, who had started tailing both of them almost from the day they arrived. He had seen Jocelyn go in and come out of the hidden, secret tomb, and he had seen her emerge with the artifacts that she had stolen and carried back to the camp. She had kept them with her own stuff until the last night after everything was packed up and she could hide them deep within Walt's equipment, the last place anyone would ever look for stolen contraband.
But he had made one critical miscalculation. He had assumed that Jocelyn was stealing the artifacts on Walt's behalf and on his orders—that Walt, not she, was the mastermind behind the thefts. The man was the product of a macho culture, where the woman did the man's bidding without questioning why. And more importantly, he hated Walt. He was eager to pin this on Walt, the man who had humiliated him, rather than on his wife, a nice lady who treated him decently.
He had notified the minister of the thefts of the antiquities, laying the blame on Walt rather than Jocelyn, and the two had concocted their devious plot. The minister was afraid to confront Walt directly. Walt was too powerful, he had too many important friends all over the archaeological spectrum, and he was well thought of in the country, for the potential of La Chimenea, which he had supported with outside money. Besides, until Walt took the artifacts from the site and out of the country, he technically hadn't stolen them. He could claim he had removed them to examine them more closely, or for one of several other legitimate reasons. But if the informer was wrong (this was the minister's private fear, which he didn't share with his co-conspirator)—if Walt didn't have the artifacts in his possession, if this local archaeologist was trying to set him up to settle that old grudge—they would all look ridiculous.
The minister acted through omission rather than commission. He pulled the troops who were intended to guard Walt and his party through the dangerous jungle back to the airport. And then, through the contacts by which he accomplished many of his illegitimate affairs, he got word to the rebel force that the party of Americans would be traveling without military protection. He knew that for years, Che's and other rebel organizations had been thirsting for an opportunity to make a political statement against the outside forces from the United States who were doing what their own country should have been doing but couldn't, because they were too poor and too weak. Here was a chance—small in the actual nature of it but huge psychologically and emotionally—to kick sand in their faces.
So a plan was hastily formed and put to work. The local archaeologist sabotaged the alternator on the van, and Che's people blocked the road, which guaranteed there was no chance of Walt's party getting out of the jungle before dark. The rainstorm helped, too, one of those unlucky strokes that inevitably happen when the only luck to be had is bad.
Regardless of all those setbacks, Jocelyn and Diane knew that they had to get out of the country that night, because the customs fix, both in-country and in the States, had already been arranged. If they delayed, they might not have cleared customs. That was why both she and Diane were so insistent that they not turn back.
The minister had hoped there wouldn't be bloodshed. A murder was not in his country's best interests. The negative publicity and scrutiny from outside the country would be intense and counterproductive, particularly with a conservative administration in Washington. What he wanted was to be able to show the world how they were being ripped off, so they could shine a strong light on a concern that all fair-minded people would hearken to, and in the bargain, make himself look good.
When you make a deal with forces you don't control, though, you can't tell them how to act, or what not to do. The killing had not been accidental. But the victim had been. The shooter had wanted to kill someone, but Jocelyn Gaines was not the intended target. Except it was dark, and she was next to her husband, and the shot missed. The bullet that killed her was meant for Walt, who had never known the artifacts had been stolen and hidden in his equipment, until the very moment they were revealed on a dark, rainy night in the middle of the jungle.
This incredible barrage of information hit Walt like a bombshell. The turncoat archaeologist hadn't been the outlaw, after all. The culture thief had been his wife.
The night after the funeral, before she was scheduled to go back to New York, he sat Diane down and forced her to tell him what she knew. They had already started to grow close—Diane had been instrumental in cutting through the red tape to get Jocelyn's body out of the country, and she had been steadfastly at his side during the ordeal of planning for the funeral, and getting through it.
Diane's recitation of her part in the attempted thefts was sad and painful. She explained how Jocelyn had gotten in touch with her and had pleaded with her to help pull this off. She had been reluctant to get involved because of the risks they would be taking, but Jocelyn had refused to take no for an answer.
Jocelyn's compelling argument, which finally tilted the scales for Diane, was one of love and redemption. She had financially ruined the proud man who was the father of her children, and she had to make things straight with him. For him. She knew her scheme was horribly wrong, that it violated Walt's core beliefs, but given the horrible circumstances and time constraints, she believed she had no other options. She didn't want Walt to have to live an impoverished life as an old man, particularly since the mess she'd made had been solely her creation. And she was afraid that he'd be so angry, hurt, and distrustful of her that he would leave her. That was the one thing she couldn't bear.
Besides her fervent emotional pleading, what had made Jocelyn's plan acceptable for Diane was that if they pulled it off, no one would ever know. Walt would discover that the tomb had been robbed, but he would assume it was local thieves. He would carry the guilt of having hidden it with him, but he would survive that. He would still make La Chimenea into one of the greatest archaeological sites in Central America. She would reimburse their pension plans, pay off the mortgage to their house, and in a few years they'd begin the long, happy journey into their old age.
She had sent Diane out that last night as a diversion. She had to make sure she had time to hide the artifacts in his trunk.
“Your mother needed to keep me occupied and away from the camp long enough for her to conceal what they had stolen in my equipment. She couldn't put the artifacts in my case before that night, because I was still packing away the legal stuff and the rest of my equipment until that afternoon. And she knew I'd go back to the Central Plaza one last time before we left—I always did, it was a ritual with me. She knew that Diane, who was as invested in this as she was, would make sure I didn't return to camp until she'd safely—so she thought—hidden the stuff.”
He paused. There was no reason to tell his sons about his infidelity with Diane that night; it didn't matter anymore. They needed to have as many positive memories of their mother as possible, given the tragic particulars he had been laying out in front of them.
“Diane did what she had to do,” he said without elaboration. “I didn't get back until mom was finished.”
In the end, of course, they didn't pull it off. Everything went downhill fast. Jocelyn was dead, and Walt's career, his marriage, his life, was finished. The artifacts stayed in the country, but the government couldn't go public with the story because of the firestorm that came up over the mindless, brutal, anarchistic killing of an American civilian.
Walt made the decision to keep silent about the whole scheme, to protect Jocelyn's memory. Until the insurance broker sent him the check for four million dollars, he hadn't known she had changed their death benefits and bought the double-indemnity life insurance policies as a hedge against the dangers of working and traveling in Third World countries, a fear that too horribly had been confirmed.
He could have renounced the insurance money, but what would that have proved? Jocelyn was dead. She had paid for it with her life. He used some of the money to pay off her debts, moved to L.A., and tried to pick up the pieces of his life. He didn't expect there would ever be any happiness in it.
Diane joined him there. She had left New York and was on the run. Before going on the trip she had approached one of her wealthy clients, a collector who had no scruples about buying black- and gray-market art.
“Michaelson,” Tom interjected. “His name is Michaelson. I met him. That's how I knew about Diane.”
Walt stared at him soberly. Then he nodded once, and continued.
Michaelson had advanced Diane a quarter of a million dollars. She had given most of the money to Jocelyn, to cover her worst debts. Now Michaelson was pressing Diane for the money, and she didn't have it. She knew he was going to come after her for it, and she was scared for her personal safety. So she went on the run. She took on a new identity, and tried to stay out of the limelight. Walt was a safe harbor. No one knew where he was—he had cut himself off from his friends, his colleagues, even his children.
Despite themselves, and for all the wrong reasons, they started living together, more out of need than love—he knew she didn't really love him, but they had a terrible bond, which they hoped no one else would ever discover.
For a while, it worked. Everyone had bought into it, including his sons. That was why he had shunned them—he didn't want them to get too close, because the truth might come out. He was cutting his children off from him, to protect them.
But once he and Diane found out the brothers were on their trail, first when Tom came to see him and then when he learned they had gone down to Central America, they knew it was only a matter of time before their cover was blown. He had come home one day, shortly after Tom's last visit, and she was gone. He didn't know where she was now, and he didn't think he ever would. That was over, another buried part of his tormented past.
Walt leaned back against the couch. “That's it, boys,” he told them. “Now you know everything. And I can't tell you how awful I feel that you do.”
T
hey all drove up to Madison together in a limo Will rented for the occasion. It was the second anniversary of Jocelyn's death. They were going to have a small memorial in honor of her memory, and to introduce her to the newest member of the family.
Their lives had changed considerably in the eight months since that soul-baring meeting they'd had with their father. Clancy was a father himself now—Jocelyn Jorgensen Gaines was four months old. She was going to be a big girl, like her mother, and beautiful like her mother, too; she had the same Paul Newmanesque blue eyes, the same long legs (she was almost twenty-five inches long at birth), even at this tender age the same aggressive sweetness.
Clancy's businesses were booming. He and his partners had opened a second fitness center in Winnetka and Finnegan's was doing better than ever, in large part due to the Bears and Cubs finally becoming bona fide contenders instead of mere institutions.
Will was the rising star of his office. He had been written up in Forbes as a newcomer on the move and he was about to be transferred, with a huge raise and major responsibilities, to the New York office, the mother ship. As usual, he was beating the women off with a stick, but he hadn't yet found anyone he wanted to be serious with. His mother and his sister-in-law had set a high standard for him to strive for.
Tom had found peace with himself, which was the most dramatic story in the clan. Late one night, when he came back to Will's apartment from working his shift at Finnegan's, he picked up part of his dissertation and looked at it for the first time in a long while. And it hit him—he still loved math: the beauty of the abstractions, the challenge of solving problems, the muscularity demanded of his brain. He completed his work, and in a few weeks he was going to be defending his thesis. His advisor had assured him he would be approved, and that he'd be published. When that was done, he'd be Dr. Gaines. Another Ph.D. in the family, like his parents before him.