The Expats (14 page)

9

It was tricky to call anyone in America, because of the time difference combined with the school schedule. All morning she was free, available; but everyone on the East Coast was asleep, at breakfast. By the time it was nine
A.M.
in Washington, she was picking up the children, she was with them, she was at the grocer’s and butcher’s and baker’s, on play-dates and at the sports center, driving and cleaning and cooking. By the time she was no longer busy—children clean and abed, dishes washed, house tidied—she was exhausted, introverted, watching last season’s HBO shows on iTunes, the laptop hooked up to the television via thick, multipronged cords, digital-media life support.

There was only one person in her time zone she could call. She dialed the long number, which was answered on the first ring. “Hello.”

“Hi,” she said. “I’m bored.” She didn’t say her own name, nor his. No names on the phone, ever. “In fact, more bored than I’ve ever been. In my life.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m doing laundry.”

“That’s
good
,” he said. “It’s important to dress your family in clean clothing.”

Kate realized that this conversation—lonely, laundry—sounded exactly like an asset reporting into a case officer, in code. “Tell me something interesting,” she said.

“Interesting? Er … let’s see. No American president has been an only child. They’ve
all
had siblings. If not biological, at least by marriage.”

She’d known Hayden since the beginning of her career. After all this time, it was easy to forget how noticeable was his world-weary drawl,
his Locust Valley lockjaw. Nobody sounded like him, in Luxembourg. Not even British men.

“That’s a four.”

“Oh,
not
fair. Statistically, twenty percent of American children are singletons. But not one American president grew up that way? Come
on
.”

“Okay, I guess it’s a five,” she said, not fighting the impulse to smile, despite her awful mood. Hayden’s fun facts always cheered her. “I’m lonely.”

“I know it’s hard,” he said. “But it will get better.”

Hayden had lived his entire adult life abroad. He knew what he was talking about. “I promise.”

“MAYBE DADDY WANTS to tell us what he did today.”

Jake and Ben didn’t look up from their brown slices of Böfflamott,
My Bavarian Cookbook
, page 115. Even if they’d known that an attack had just been struck by one of their parents, they’d also have known that it wasn’t their battle.

Dexter didn’t say anything.

“Or maybe Daddy thinks Mommy isn’t intelligent enough to understand his job.”

He stopped chewing.

“Or maybe Daddy just doesn’t care that Mommy’s curious.”

Jake and Ben exchanged a quick look, then both turned their eyes to their father.

Kate knew she wasn’t being fair. She shouldn’t be doing this. But resentment was getting the best of her. She’d scrubbed three toilets that afternoon. Toilet scrubbing was at the very top of the list of chores she hated.

Dexter put down his fork and knife. “What exactly do you want to know, Kat?”

She winced at this purposeful use of her ex-name.

“I want to know what you
do
.” Kate had never pried into Dexter’s work life, at least not to his face. They’d always been a couple who’d given each other a lot of space. It was one of the things she most appreciated about her husband: his willingness to not know. Now it was Kate who wanted to know. “What did you do today? Is that too much to ask?”

He smiled, for the benefit of the kids. “Of course not. Let’s see, today.
Today I plotted out one phase of a penetration test that I’m going to perform in a couple weeks.”

That sounded like experimental sexual intercourse.

“A pen test is when a consultant like me tries to breach a system’s security. There are three main approaches to intrusion. One is the purely technical method: finding some hole, some tear in the system that you can get into, rip open, and march around at will.”

“Like what?”

“Like an unmonitored computer. One that’s hooked up to the system and not password-protected. Or if it is password-protected, the user name is something easily cracked, or still on its default setting. Like a user name of
user
and a password of
password
. Some systems can be cracked in a few hours. Others might take months. And the longer it takes, the more likely it is that a hacker will give up, look for an easier target.

“The second approach is purely physical: breaking into a facility. Sneaking past the guards, coming in the window, up through the basement. Or pure force: arriving with manpower and gunpower. The physical approach is not my specialty.”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. What’s the third approach?”

“The third is usually the most effective. Social engineering. This is when you manipulate a person to gain access.”

“How do you do that?”

“All the methods revolve around basically the same principle: making people think you’re on their team, when you’re not.”

Social engineering. That had been Kate’s career.

“And the most effective are a combination of all three—social engineering to get physically on-site, where you utilize technical skills. This is how you shut down governments, steal major industrial secrets, cheat casinos. And, most relevant to me, this is how you rob banks. This is a bank’s worst nightmare.”

Dexter took a bite of beef. “That’s why we’re here.” And a sip of wine. “This is what I do.”

KATE STARED OUT her window, over a cliff, down hundreds of feet into the Alzette gorge, across a quarter-mile of modern steel bridge, and old railroad aqueduct, and medieval fortifications and lush green lawns
and dense forests and black-roofed houses and towering church spires and rushing river, across to the slope that fell from the Kirchberg Plateau’s glass-and-steel office buildings and, on top of it all, an immense amount of bright blue sky. It was a spectacular view, a view of limitless possibility. A view that encapsulated Europe.

Then she turned her eyes back to her computer. The website for Julia Maclean Interior Design was nothing if not well-produced. Professionally produced. It was heavily reliant on mood music and slowly fading images, on varied typefaces and banal phrases. There were a few dozen images of pleasant but unremarkable residential rooms. According to one of the pages, the aesthetic intent was “Eclectic Traditional,” which seemed to mean pairing expensive-looking American antiques with African tribal masks, Chinese stools, and Mexican ceramics.

There were no testimonials from clients. No celebrity endorsements. There was no page of local press mentions, no links to other features. The biography read:

Julia Maclean, an Illinois native, studied architecture and textiles at college, and has a master’s degree in fine arts with a specialty of interior design. She held a number of prestigious internships before launching her own firm, and in the past decade has earned a loyal following for her whimsical yet traditional approach to refined interiors. Equally at home amid the modernism of Lake Shore Drive or the traditionalism of the North Shore, Julia is one of the most sought-after decorators in the greater Chicago area
.

On the contacts page, there was an e-mail address, but no brick-and-mortar location, no phone or fax numbers, no names of employees or colleagues, partners or references.

Across every attractive page of the entire website, there was not one piece of hard information traceable to any real person or place.

Kate had seen websites like this before. They were legends. Cover stories.

“BOYS!” KATE YELLED, ignoring her husband momentarily. Not ignoring; just not responding. “Breakfast!”

She put the crepes on the dining table, one spread with Nutella, the other with Speculoos, both rolled tightly. There didn’t seem to be any
frozen waffles in this country; certainly no Blueberry Eggos. Luckily, the children were proving to be flexible when it came to eating different forms of sugar at breakfast.

What they weren’t flexible about was not seeing their father on a daily basis. Kate was discovering that she was unable to bear their complaints about his absences, which felt a lot like accusations of her unsatisfactory parenting. If the boys needed him so much, it must be because they didn’t love her enough. QED.

She knew rationally that this was not true. But she felt irrationally that it was.

“No.” Kate turned to Dexter, angry and showing it, purposefully. “I don’t remember you saying any damn thing about going to Sarajevo this week.”

She tried to settle herself, to remind herself that business travel was rarely if ever optional; it was stressful, not relaxing; lonely, not fun. And Sarajevo was one of the last places on earth Dexter wanted to go. He bore a grudge against the whole ex-Yugoslavia region for the murder of his brother.

“Well,” he said, “sorry. But I am.”

Kate shouldn’t resent him for leaving, for leaving her by herself with children in a strange land, alone and lonely. But she did.

“And when are you back?”

The children settled themselves into chairs, staring at the television. In Washington they’d never seen a single episode of
SpongeBob SquarePants;
they didn’t know it existed in English. What they were watching was
Bob l’Eponge
. A French invention.

“Friday night.”

“What are you doing exactly? In Sarajevo?” This would be Dexter’s second trip to Sarajevo, along with one each to Liechtenstein, Geneva, London, and Andorra.

“Helping some of the bank’s clients tighten their security.”

“The bank doesn’t have people for that?” she asked. “In Bosnia?”

“This is what they pay me for: to make customers comfortable. This is what I do, Kat.”

“Kate.”

He shrugged. She opened her mouth to scream at him, but couldn’t, wouldn’t, in front of the children.

Kate slammed the bathroom door. She leaned on the sink, scrubbed clean by none other than herself. She stared into the mirror, tears
welling. She wiped one eye and then the other, but it was no use, she was crying now. Overwhelmed by the indelibility of her aloneness, her outsideness. Unable to imagine how she will ever feel like one of those other women, content in this life, sitting at a café table and laughing at the trials and tribulations of unwanted-hair removal. Having a great time. Or at least creating the compelling appearance to her, to one another, to themselves, of having an enjoyable life.

Kate and Dexter didn’t have an enjoyable life, not yet. They’d procured notarized copies of their passports and birth certificates and marriage certificate, to apply for residency permits. They’d opened bank accounts and taken out insurance policies, bought mobile phones and small appliances and Ikea’s bureaus and frozen meatballs. They’d driven to the second-largest city in the country, Esch-sur-Alzette, to buy a used Audi wagon with an automatic transmission and under fifty thousand kilometers. It had taken a couple weeks of online browsing to find such a car, a time frame that corresponded precisely to the length of time they didn’t realize that the word
break
meant station wagon.