The Good Liar
Inside the elevator was another young man with cold eyes, dressed in jeans. Michael asked for the fourth floor. The man eyed him and hit the button.
When they reached the floor, the man escorted Michael down an unadorned concrete hallway to a set of double steel doors. He pressed a bell. They both looked up at a security camera above the doors. Soon the doors clicked open. Inside, the man walked Michael down another concrete hall, past closed doors, until they reached the last door on the left. He knocked, then stepped back.
Radimir Trotsky opened the door and shook Michael’s hand. He was a pleasant-looking man with short brown hair, gray eyes and a blue wool sweater. He could have passed for a Midwestern, suburban father. But then, Michael had found benign appearances common to many heartless people.
Trotsky shook his hand, led him into the office and closed the door behind him. To steel his nerves against what he was about to do, Michael reminded himself of the man’s laundry list of crimes. He reminded himself of how much danger this man posed to the United States, should he continue his climb to power.
“Thank you for meeting me,” Michael said in Russian. “I won’t keep you long.”
Michael launched into his spiel about his business of making petroleum products, his exportation of his products, his contacts in the U.S., and how he thought their joining forces with Trotsky would benefit them both. When Trotsky turned his head to get a document off the credenza behind him, Michael leaped forward and over the desk, his body falling easily into a maneuver he’d performed too many times now. He locked Trotsky’s head with one arm, the other one covering his mouth and holding tightly to his chin. The Russian’s arm shot toward an emergency call button, but Michael anticipated the move and pivoted his body away. Michael knew he had to do this fast. The former hockey player was bigger than him, younger than him. If given even a second, Trotsky would gather his wits and make this a real fight, which would no doubt alert the guards. But Michael’s knowledge and experience trumped Trotsky’s brawn.
So Michael stopped reminding himself why this was necessary. He allowed himself no prayer for the soon-to-be-dead, no prayer for forgiveness for himself. He pushed down on Trotsky’s head and, at the same time, wrenched it to the left, then the right, then once back again, snapping the vertebrae, ensuring death.
Trotsky’s body slumped and Michael froze, listening for any sounds from outside. The breaking of a neck was a noisy maneuver, but it was the best alternative under the circumstances. His body was tingling with adrenaline and sick with the knowledge of what he’d done. He listened in fear for the sound of running feet. But Michael heard nothing.
Michael draped Trotsky’s torso over his desk. He took a tiny digital recorder from the lining of the waistband of his pants. It was nearly as thin as a business card and had escaped detection from the guard downstairs, as Michael knew it would. Pulling his sleeve over one hand, he lifted the phone off Trotsky’s desk and dialed the number for the security personnel outside Trotsky’s office.
When he answered, Michael pressed play on the digital recorder. The Trust had been watching and, more importantly, listening to Trotsky for over a year and had been able to splice together words they’d recorded.
Michael averted his eyes from the body, as he heard Trotsky’s voice shoot from the recorder. “He is coming out. And I want to be left alone for an hour.”
The security guard confirmed he understood. Michael slipped the recorder back in his belt, left the office and nodded to the guard on the way out.
Trotsky had been his last job, he reminded himself. It had to be his last, because Michael knew what would happen now. He would return to his hotel, check himself out and head for the airport. He would fly home in a comfortable first-class seat that folded out into a bed, but he wouldn’t sleep. He could never sleep for days after a job like this. During those days, he would remind himself why the Trust existed, why he had done what he had done.
Yet this time, he didn’t dread the next few days like he normally did, because he would insist that this be his final job, and that thought filled up the usually empty well where his optimism was to be stored. But it wasn’t just the thought of his diminishing role in the Trust that was filling the well. There was Kate. Thoughts of Kate. Kate’s quick, deep laugh. Kate’s vulnerability. Kate’s luminous brown eyes that gazed at him with wonder, seeing only the good in him. Kate was like water, clear and cool, rushing into his well. And he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Time to leave Moscow. Time to leave this world. Time for Kate.
7
Oakbrook, Illinois
“I can’t take it,” I said, holding the phone. “I can’t take this anymore.”
“God, I can’t either,” I heard Michael say. His voice was low and rough, his breathing ragged.
I turned over in my bed and lay on my stomach, still holding the phone. “Jesus, Michael.”
“I know, I know. This is the best sex I’ve had, and I haven’t even touched you yet.”
Since our date two weeks ago, Michael and I had been on the phone every night. We talked about our work, our comings and goings, our marriages, our dreams—those that had failed us and those we still had—but we also talked about how we would kiss each other if we were together; how we would do all sorts of things.
Technically, this was phone sex, a practice that had mystified me before. I mean, what’s the point? I used to think. Why not simply wait for the real deal? I hadn’t realized how much imagination was involved with phone sex. I hadn’t realized how it forced you to talk about precisely how you liked your body to be handled, your thighs to be stroked, your ear to be whispered in. And you learned from the other person what they liked as well.
While at work, as I analyzed the company’s quarterly earnings or talked to the office manager, I could not stop hearing Michael’s voice. I could not stop seeing us in bed together. Because, of all the explicit details we’d discussed, these images were as vivid as if we’d actually made love.
But now it had gone too far. Now I was mad for him.
“I don’t know if I can wait two weeks.” Michael was supposed to return to Chicago in two weeks and we would have our official second date.
“I know. I can’t wait either.”
“I’ll get a flight tomorrow morning,” Michael said.
“Thank God.”
The next night, we had dinner at Merlo, an eclectic Italian place on Maple Avenue. Our conversation never waned, nor did our intense looks across the table. Later, I walked out of the place with Michael’s arm around my back, and I was electric from just that touch.
The Gold Coast was awash with lights, but it was quiet with the post-holiday lull. A light sprinkling of snow covered the sidewalk.
“Careful,” Michael said as we walked down the restaurant’s front steps.
I stopped. Michael, who was one step below me, did the same.
“I’m sick of being careful,” I said. I grabbed his face, his warm, smooth-shaven face, and I kissed him hard. Within seconds, our bodies were pushed against each other, our arms wrapped around each other tight. I could feel my body temperature shooting high until I wanted to tear off my cashmere coat.
“Let’s go to your hotel,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“Shut up.”
In his hotel bed, Michael held himself up on his arms, gazing down at Kate. Gorgeous, smart, sexy Kate.
They were stripped of their clothes, and in fact, he felt they were both stripped of everything —every pretense or artifice. His body felt as lean and hard as it ever had, and yet his core was somehow liquid and alive. They were right on the brink, about to consummate this intangible chemistry.
He stared into Kate’s eyes—neither of them had closed their eyes tonight, even while they were kissing—and he felt the momentousness of the instant. Sex had never been like this for him. He almost laughed because they still hadn’t technically had sex yet, but this was it. This was it. That phrase kept returning to his mind. His life was different now. He was taking a step back from the Trust into a normal existence, and yet he was taking a step forward with Kate.
“Ready?” he asked Kate.
Her brown eyes stared into his—into his soul, it felt like. She didn’t say anything. Not a word. Instead, never letting her eyes stray from his, she reached for his hips. Slowly, slowly, she drew him into her.
8
Four months later
St. Marabel, Canada
“K ate, my girl, it’s your wedding!” Liza yelled, bursting through the door of the church’s anteroom. “I can’t believe you’re shameless enough to wear white.” The sides of her auburn hair were pulled back, a few wavy tendrils escaping. She wore a soft pink dress that draped over her shoulders and exposed her collarbones.
My mother shot Liza a disapproving look.
“Liza, stop,” I said, laughing. I loved when Liza was like this—funny and over-the-top—and the fact was, she was like this ninety percent of the time. The other was a serious, soulful Liza, moody and hard to reach. She rarely let anyone see that Liza.
My mom scurried around me, fluffing my dress, and pinching off a few bouquet flowers she saw as less than ideal. We were in a tiny church tucked on an angled alley street of St. Marabel. The church was where Michael came to Mass the few times a year he did so while summering in this town. Despite the fact that I hadn’t gone to Mass in years, I found the church cozy and comforting. I needed that because now that Michael was opening a restaurant here, and Michael was about to become my new husband, and all of this meant that my life was entirely new and different and unknown. Fitting that it was spring.
“I need one minute alone with my friend,” Liza said, drawing me away from my mother and against a stone wall. Her smile waned. She looked contemplative. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said, her voice low.
“Liza. We’ve been through this.”
Liza had seemed pleased when my first date with Michael had gone so well. She seemed delighted when he came to see me again in Chicago. She sounded cautious when I went to visit him for a weekend. And when we got engaged, she was alarmed. I understood. Our relationship had progressed so rapidly, I hardly knew how to process it myself.
Long-distance relationships are the toughest breed. Michael and I fell for each other—hard—aided by the phone sex and the long weekends and the painful goodbyes that often brought me to tears. And then I couldn’t stand being away from him. It literally wrenched something inside me that I couldn’t see him, that I was forced to only hear him at night on the phone. And so our relationship had moved with electric speed. It was either that or pretend I didn’t care and try to let it grow with a slow build. But Michael wasn’t slow, at least when it came to me. He told me the first weekend I visited him that he loved me. We were in Vermont, riding horses down the back trail of his property and watching the sun sink fast over a small mountain ridge. His horse nudged up to mine. I tightened my gloved hands on the reins, surprised. Then I relaxed when I looked into his face, a face so familiar somehow.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this after such a short time,” he said. “But I have to.” He paused.
I heard a branch break somewhere in the woods, then the hum of a distant plane.
“I love you.” He said this with certainty. And certainty was a concept I hadn’t been familiar with for a long time. I’d been living with Scott, wondering and wondering and wondering—Would we have a baby? Would we last without one?
I didn’t return the sentiment that cold day in Vermont. I wanted to. But I also wanted to be smart. I wanted to take Michael’s words home and roll around in them. I wanted to see if they fit.
Yet the next day, when I was about to leave him at the ticket counter of the little airport, I felt a clutch in my chest. I would miss this man so much. And I didn’t want to miss him. I wanted to see him every morning, and every night. Before I’d met Michael, I’d honestly believed I would never feel like this again. Scott—like a thief who carries off valuables in the night—had stolen from me trust, hope, innocence, belief, all the components of first love. I had assumed the theft was complete and that I would never possess those things again. But now I had this surge in my chest, the return of feelings lost.
I dropped my bag on the concrete sidewalk. I stood on tiptoe and grabbed Michael’s face in my hands. “I love you, too.”
“Well, it’s about time.”
We kissed, laughing.
I went back to Vermont the next weekend. The week after I visited his summer place in St. Marabel, where he was moving to permanently open his restaurant. The weekend after that when he returned to Chicago, I walked into Michael’s room at the Peninsula to find it wasn’t a room, it was a suite, and it was filled with peonies, my favorite flower. A table was set up under the window, laden with a meal made of my favorite Chicago dishes—a cheese flight from Avec, endive salad from Bistrot Margot, sea bass from Spring and chocolate truffles from Vosges called Black Pearls.
“If you were to leave Chicago,” Michael said, “I know you’d miss the city. But I promise to try and bring Chicago to you whenever I can. My home is wherever we’re together.”
In that instant, I saw where this was going and I started to tremble.
“Kate.” He cupped one cheek with his big hand and kissed my eyes, my forehead, then, slowly, my mouth. “I want to do that every day. Will you marry me?”
I didn’t hesitate a second before I said yes.
I put my house on the market within a week. I won’t say that I didn’t sob—great, gulping sobs—when I left. But once I was in my mother’s car, on the way to the airport and away from Chicago for good, I felt like I was lifting off.
And now I was in St. Marabel, about to be married again.
“Liza,” I said. “Remember, it was you who set us up.”
“I know, I know.” She tucked a tendril of auburn hair behind her ears and peered into my eyes. “I just didn’t think…”
“You just didn’t think what?”
“That you’d get married. He was supposed to be a transition guy.”
“Well, he turned out to be my guy.”
She breathed out hard.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
“It’s just so soon.”
“Liza, you like Michael, right?”
“Of course.”
“Why do you like him?”
She shrugged. “Because he’s an honorable guy. He’s a great man.”
“Right. And you know that just from meeting him at work. You should see his personal side. You should see him at home with me. He’s amazing.”
I watched Liza’s face as I said this. It had occurred to me early on that maybe Liza and Michael had had a fling. Sometimes the way they spoke of each other made them seem more familiar than just two old colleagues. But Liza had flatly denied this when I asked her, and Michael had laughed.
“I’m in love with him,” I said. “Can’t you be happy for me?”
Liza stood straighter. She kissed me softly on the cheek. “Of course. I am happy for you.”
Behind us, my mother cleared her throat. I turned to her. “You okay, Mom?”
My mother, Geri Greenwood, was a worrier at heart. My brothers, seven and eight years older than me, had created enough trouble that she worried her weight away, leaving her a diminutive sixty-six-year-old, whose designer clothes were a size zero. She had on a beige chiffon dress today, and although I knew she was happy for me, the lines at the corners of her mouth looked deeper than usual.
She smiled, then went about fluffing the hem of my dress. “I just want what’s best for you.”
“ This is what’s best for me!” My voice rose, despite myself. “C’mon, you guys! It’s my wedding day, and I’d like a little support, and—”
My mother’s hand reached out and touched my arm, stopping my words. She looked at me. The lines of her face softened. “I know you’re in love. And I’m thrilled for you.”
“Me, too,” Liza said. “So let’s do it, ladies.”
Liza turned and threw open the door of the anteroom. I could see the small cobblestone foyer of the church and, beyond that, the open, arched doors leading to the aisle.
I took a few steps and peeked my head forward, peering down that ivory-covered aisle, and I caught a glimpse of Michael—tall and beautiful, hands clasped, rocking back and forth on his heels. Michael smiled at Roger Leiland, his best man, whom he’d met while married to his first wife. Michael’s marriage had split up years ago, but he said he’d never split from Roger, even though Roger had changed a lot. Apparently, the love of Roger’s life died many years ago, and he’d become hardened and callous in many ways. But Michael said he’d never give up on a friend, and I loved his unabashed loyalty. Roger was shorter than Michael, more powerfully built, and probably five or six years younger, but they had a camaraderie that could always be felt when they were together.
I took in the rest of the tiny church, mostly empty, although Tomaso, the restaurateur from Chicago, was there with his wife. My brothers and their wives were in attendance, too. They were all grinning big, no doubt relieved that their little sister wasn’t the depressed creature she’d been for a year now. And there was my dad, nervously twisting around in his seat. I’d told him that I wanted to walk down the aisle by myself this time. It felt more adult somehow, more honest and real, that I and only I would walk toward my new husband.
I felt a rising of something through me—a vision of a new husband, a new town, new friends, a new life.
“Ready?” Liza said, bumping her hip into mine.
I threw back my shoulders. “Absolutely.”
Michael and Roger stood at the bar of Jameson Place, a small, charming pub in St. Marabel where the reception was being held. There were only twenty people, but the mood was as ebullient as if hundreds were in attendance.
St. Marabel was the place where Trust members from around the world had been meeting for years, and so Michael had spent a lot of time there. But now, newly married to Kate, it felt like home for the first time.
Michael ordered a glass of Lagavulin scotch from the bartender. Roger asked for red wine.
“No, no,” Michael said, “he’ll have a Beychevelle Bordeaux.” He turned to Roger. “I’ve told you, my friend, you can’t just ask for red wine or they’ll give you some Cabernet swill.”
Roger accepted his glass from the bartender and sipped. “Delicious. You became such a wine snob when you ran that winery. That was the best cover the Trust has ever given someone.”
Michael laughed. “Now what will I become? A restaurant snob?”
“No, from the way you’re staring at Kate, I’d say you’re about to become one of those insufferable people who believes everyone can find true love. If they just look in the right place.”
Michael dragged his eyes away from Kate’s incandescent face and met the gaze of his best friend. “Guilty as charged.”
Roger turned to face the bar. Michael’s scotch was delivered, and they sipped in silence.
“So,” Roger said, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you personally—good work in Moscow.”
Michael’s body tensed ever so slightly. No one would have noticed, but he knew Roger did. They were friends, after all, but they were also trained to look for such physical clues in everyone.
“That has to be the last job,” Michael said. “Now that I’m here running the Twilight Club for the Trust.”
“Now that you’ve got Kate.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Are you going to give me hell for wanting to be a good husband? A normal husband?”
Roger held his hands up in mock self-defense. “Jesus, Michael, Moscow was just something you had to finish.”
Michael sighed. “I don’t want that anymore. I want to give Kate a great life. I want to make her happy.”
“You can’t tell her anything about the Trust.”
Michael gave him a withering look. “I would never. You know that.”
Roger nodded. “I gotta tell you, buddy…” He trailed off, shaking his head, and Michael readied himself for more ribbing about true love. “I’m jealous,” Roger said simply. “I miss feeling like that.”
Michael looked at him. “I thought you never wanted another relationship after Marta.”
Roger shrugged. “You never know.”
They shared a silence during which Michael gave his friend an opportunity to elaborate. He didn’t.
“I’m telling you, I’m fine running the Twilight Club,” Michael said. “I’m excited that the Trust will have a meeting place, and I like being in on the ground floor of it. But that’s it for me. That’s my involvement now, and that’s all.”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
“Well, I just want you to know. You’re a member of the board.”
“You used to be as well.”
“That’s right. Used to be.”
Roger took another sip. “Fine, I’ve gotten the message, for what it’s worth.”
“It better be worth something. I’ve given my whole life to this.”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Michael!” Kate’s voice rang out. She and Liza were holding on to each other, cracking up. “You have to hear this story.”
Michael could feel the grin stretch across his face. Genuine, spontaneous smiles still felt foreign to him.
“Go,” Roger said.
The two men looked at each other.
“Thanks,” Michael said.
Roger gave him a clap on the back, and as Michael walked toward his wife, he let that smile take over his face again.
9
A few hours later, after most of the wine had been drunk and the bride and groom had waved goodbye, Roger Leiland approached the bar and the one person he’d wanted to talk to all night.
She stood with her back to him, one strap of her pink dress falling over a lightly freckled shoulder. Roger felt himself stirring, turned on by the sight of her. But that wasn’t the only reason he wanted to talk.
There were only a few people left at the pub. Kate’s brothers and their wives were tucked in at the end of the bar, completely blotto and shrieking with laughter. At one of the tables, Michael’s contractor from the Twilight Club plied his date with a bottle of champagne.
“Hello, Elena,” Roger said, stepping up to her, using her alias.
She turned to him. In her eyes, he saw a look of worry. She quickly cleared her expression. He was surprised she’d let any emotion show, even for that fraction of a second, since she was notoriously stoic. He wondered what it was that troubled her.
“Hello, Paul,” she said, using his alias as well.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“Cut the bullshit,” she said, although not harshly. He liked how she talked simply and sometimes crudely, like a man, but how when you looked at her—with that body and that red hair and those intense green eyes—you were always very aware that Liza was a woman.
He looked around to make sure no one was listening. The bartender was taking care of Kate’s brothers. “So why did you introduce them?”
She gave him a hard stare, then picked up her glass of white wine and took a sip. “I didn’t think they would get married. Jesus, I just thought they could go on a date or two. I mean, Kate is my best friend, and she’d been moping around for almost a year since her marriage fell apart. And you know Michael. He hadn’t been out with someone in forever.”
“That’s because he didn’t want to bring anyone into this world.”
“Give me a break. He’s settling down here in St. Marabel. Why shouldn’t he be with someone who makes him happy?”
“Because it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous for your friend.”
She swallowed more wine, her brows knitting. “They’ll be fine. Michael has a totally different role now, right?”
He nodded. “That’s right. He’s requested step-down status, and running the Twilight Club is the assignment we’ve given him.”