Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

“And I appreciate it,” I said.

“I’m serious, Nick.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said.

“Everything’s under control,” Noreen said. “His regular suite at Hotel Le Royal in Luxembourg, a private room reserved at Mosconi for the Benelux senior managers–”

“The Princière.”

“What?”

“When he stays in Luxembourg, he likes the Princière Suite at the Le Royal.”

“I know,” Noreen said, peeved.

“Did you ask the hotel to stock the kitchenette with bottles of San Pellegrino? Or Perrier? Their usual mineral water is too salty.”

“He didn’t say anything about that.”

“He always forgets until he gets there, then he raises holy hell.” Lauren realized what she must have sounded like – the master control freak – and she was embarrassed. Her tone softened. “I’ll call the concierge.”

“Oh, and Leland’s in a meeting with a new financial adviser. For his personal portfolio, not the company’s. Nice guy. But ugly? Hoo boy. Must have fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch.”

“Okay, I’ve been warned,” she said.

“Buffalo Face, I call him. He walks by the bathroom, and all the toilets flush.”

“I need to get back to work,” Lauren said.

Noreen finally went back to her own desk, and Lauren checked her e-mail.

Nothing from Roger.

But why would there be anything? There had been just that one, heartbreaking e-mail, and now that was gone.

Nick wanted her to dig into what Roger had been doing at Gifford, but truthfully, she was afraid to. How could she investigate without setting off all kinds of alarm bells?

She had to be so careful.

The door to Leland’s office came open, and a man in a shapeless gray suit strode rapidly out. She caught only a fleeting glimpse – homely face, horn-rimmed glasses – before he disappeared.

Then Leland came out of his office, and his face lit up.

“I didn’t think you’d really be back so soon!” he boomed in his Texas accent. Gifford’s father had been a railroad worker in west Texas before starting the family business. Now it had revenues of ten billion dollars a year, managed construction projects in forty-seven countries, and was still in the hands of the Gifford family. Gifford Industries had been headquartered in Austin until Leland had made the wrenching decision to relocate to Washington, D.C., because that was where most of the business had gone. Government, not oil fields anymore.

She rose as Leland came over to her desk and hugged her. He was tall and rotund, with arched bushy eyebrows and sagging jowls, a large head and rosy cheeks and a white crew cut. Those who met him for the first time found him physically intimidating, and indeed, in repose, he often wore an imperious expression, made even more threatening by his arched brows.

Then he stopped abruptly. “Boy hidy, I forgot you’re hurt, and here I am crushing the life out of you.”

“Come on, Leland, I’m not made of glass.”

He put both hands on her shoulders and fixed her with a stern expression. “Nothin’ new about Roger?”

She shook her head.

“They don’t even know if he’s alive?”

“Right.”

He closed his eyes. “Why’re you even here?” he said softly.

“Because I need to be here,” she said.

“You understand you can take all the time you need, doncha? Weeks, months – whatever it takes.”

“I need to be here.”

“You know, I don’t understand half the stuff Roger does, but he’s a valued employee. More important, he’s your husband. If you ever need anything from me, you just say so, you hear?”

She nodded. “You have to leave in half an hour,” she said. “Twenty-five minutes, actually.”

She pulled a few magazines from the stack on her desk, handed him a fresh Business Week and a Forbes. Then she turned back around, opened a drawer, and took out a handful of Metamucil packets and handed them to him, too.

“You think of everything,” he said. “You sweetie.”

Loud laughter rang out from Jay Stoddard’s office as I approached. I expected to see Jay in animated conversation with one of his old buddies from the Agency. But he was alone, sitting at his desk, leaning back in his chair, watching his computer screen.

He glanced at me, then turned back to the computer. He extended his left arm and beckoned me in with a flip of his hand. “Nicky,” he said. “Just the man I wanted to talk to.”

“Okay.”

Stoddard was wearing one of his more extreme bespoke suits: double-breasted, double-vented, cut from a hairy tweed fabric. On each cuff four buttons that really buttoned, the last one undone. He looked like he’d just come back from a weekend at Balmoral Castle. My father used to wear suits like that. Before he started wearing orange jumpsuits every day.

“Oh, dear me,” he gasped, laughing helplessly. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Have you seen this?”

I entered, leaned across his desk, craned my neck. He was watching a video on the Internet. At first glance it appeared to be porn. Well, it sort of was. An assortment of busty young women in dominatrix costumes were whipping the naked buttocks of a middle-aged man with leather riding crops. One of them was checking his hair for lice. They were shouting at him in bad German. Clearly this was supposed to be a Nazi-themed orgy, though it didn’t look like much fun if you were the guy being whipped.

“Their German accents aren’t very good, are they?” I said.

“Do you know who that guy is?”

“His butt doesn’t look all that familiar, no.”

Stoddard told me the name of a prominent British political figure. “He wants to know how this video got out. He’s trying to get an injunction to take it down from the Internet. Says his privacy rights have been violated.”

I looked closer. “Says there it’s been viewed one million, four hundred thousand–”

“I know, I know. He’s an Oxford man, you know that?”

“I didn’t. Hal–”

“Brophy can wrap this one up in his sleep,” he said. Brophy was one of our more senior investigators. “Waste of time, you ask me, but I won’t turn it down.”

“Maybe Brophy can take on that CEO backgrounder, too.”

He brought his chair upright. “No, Nicky, you’re our big swinging dick. Don’t tell me you have ethical qualms about this one, too?” He raked his fingers through his silver mane.

“No. Not if it can wait. I’m taking a couple of personal days.”

“Oh?”

“Family business.”

He looked at me expectantly.

I just looked back.

He wanted to know, of course, and I wasn’t going to tell him anything I didn’t have to.

He looked down pensively at the immaculate surface of his desk, gave a slight shake of his head. “Your family,” he said. “Your father, then your brother… You sure you’re not descended from the House of Atreus?”

“Excuse me?”

“You gotta wonder if it’s some kind of blood curse.”

“What do you know about my brother?” I said.

His phone buzzed, and the voice of Elizabeth, the receptionist, crisply announced a caller who insisted on speaking with him right away.

I got up as he picked up the phone. His long, tapered index finger hovered over the extension button. “It doesn’t look good, does it?” he said, then he punched the button and took the call.

Stoddard’s parting remark felt like a kick to the solar plexus.

“It doesn’t look good”? Meaning what?

That the chances of finding Roger weren’t good, I assumed he meant. But how would he know that? And more to the point, who’d told him about Roger’s disappearance?