chris pavone - the accident (extract)
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T H E A C C I D E N T
C H R I S P A V O N E
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First published in the United States in 2014
by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York
First published in the United Kingdom in 2014
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
7477 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
Tis export edition first published in 2014
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Copyright Chris Pavone, 2014
Te right of Chris Pavone to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,
Designes and Patents Act 1988
A CIP record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 9780571298938
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
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Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?
J R
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P R O L O G U E
He awakens suddenly, in terror. He spins his head around the spare
room, searching the darkest shadows in the blue wash o moonlight,
sitting bolt upright, head cocked, alert or noises. He reaches his
hand across his body, and grabs the gun.
As he becomes less asleep, he realizes what woke him. Te gun wont
help. He returns the weapon to the end table, next to the ever-present
water bottle. He swigs, but his stomach is roiling, and it takes a couple o
seconds beore he manages to swallow.
He walks to the end o the hall, to the room he uses as an office. Just a
desk and a chair in ront o a window. Te reflection o the moon shim-
mers in the Zrichsee, a block away rom this Victorian pile o bricks and
wrought iron, covered in blooming wisteria, its scent spilling through thewindows, seeping through the walls.
He jiggles the mouse to wake his computer, types in his password,
launches the media player, and opens the live eed o streaming video.
Te camera is mounted high in a darkened room, ocused on a woman
whos lying in bed, reading. She takes a drag o a cigarette, and flicks her
ash into a big glass ashtray.
He looks away rom the invasive image on his screen to a small key-pad mounted beneath the desktop. He punches buttons in rapid succes-
sion, and with a sof click the drawers unlock.
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He pulls out the stack o paper, bound by a thick green rubber band.
He turns to a page one-third o the way through, and scans the text to
identiy the scene. He flips orward ten pages, then five. Ten back two.
He runs his finger down the page, and he finds it, on the bottom o page
136, just as his minds eye pictured it, in his sleep in the middle o the
night. One word. One letter.
I.
He thought hed caught every one.
Tis current draf o the manuscript is the third; it will also be the
final. For the initial draf, hed written rom a first-person perspective, but
not his own. Because this book was going to be a memoir, publicly au-
thored by someone else but ghostwrittenor coauthoredby him; they
hadnt decided on the exact nature o his credit.
Ten circumstances changed. When he picked up the project again,
he recast the story rom his own point o view, first-person singularI
did this, I saw that. Tis was going to be a more honest book, more trans-
parent.
Afer hed finished, and typed on the final page, and re-
read the whole thing, he changed his mind. He decided he needed to
hide behind omniscience, and anonymity, to create the shadow o doubt
about this books authorship. o give himsel some chance o survival.
So hed pored over the entire manuscript, revising everything to third
personHe drove around a long, dangerous bend. He stared in horror.
Deleting passages that no longer made sense, adding sectionsaddingchaptersthat now did.
It was a big editorial job, but hardly a unique situation. Tis type o
thing must happen all the time, in rewrites, revisions, reconsiderations.
An author combs through every page, recasting point o view, replac-
ing nouns and verb conjugations. Over and over and over, thousands o
times.
But he misses one o these pronouns, or two. Just a little mistake, acouple o typos. Not a matter o lie or death.
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The Accident Page 488
EPILOGUE
There is no single person in the world who can
verify the entirety of whats in these pages.
But there is one person who can come close: the
subject himself, Charlie Wolfe. There are other
people who could, if properly motivated, attest
to the individual realities, one incident at a
time, in which they had direct firsthand knowledge.
Perhaps this book will be that motivation to those
witnesses, an impetus to reveal their truths, to
verify this story.
But the author isnt one of those possible
witnesses. Because if what you are reading is a
finished book, printed and bound and distributed
into the world, I am, almost certainly, dead.
THE END
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P A R T I
M O R N I N G
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C H A P T E R 1
Its just beore dawn when Isabel Reed turns the final sheet o paper.
Halway down the page, her mouth alls open, her heartbeat quickens.
Her eyes dart across each typescript line at a rapid-fire pace, accelerat-
ing as she moves through the final paragraph, desperate to arrive at a
revelation, to confirm her suspicions. She sucks in her breath, and holds
that breath, or the last lines.
Isabel stares at the final period, the little black dot o ink . . . star-
ing . . .
She lets out her breath. My God. Astounded, at the enormity o the
story. Disappointed, at the absence o the confirmation she was hoping
or. Furious, at what it means. errified, at the dangers it presents. And,
above all, heartbroken, at the immensity o the betrayal. Betrayals.She puts the page down on the at stack o paper that sits on the
bedspread, next to a crumpled sof-pack o cigarettes and an overflow-
ing crystal ashtray, a mildly snarky birthday present rom a passive-
aggressive colleague. She picks up the manuscript with both hands,
flips it over, and uses her thumbs to align the pages. Her hands are
trembling. She tries to steady hersel with a deep breath, and sets the
straightened pile o pages in her lap. Tere are our words centered atthe top o the page:
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The Accident
by Anonymous
Isabel stares across the room, off into the black nothingness o the
picture window on the opposite wall, its severe surace barely sofened
by the hal-drawn shades, an aggressive void invading the cocoon o her
bedroom. Te room is barely lit by a small bullet-shaped reading sconce
mounted over the headboard, aiming a concentrated beam o light di-
rectly at her. In the window, the lights reflection hovers above her ace,
like a tiny sun illuminating the top o her head, creating a halo. An angel.
Except shes not.
She can eel her body tense and her jaw tighten and her shoulders
contract in a spasm o rage. She tries to suppress it, bites her lip, brings
hersel under the flimsiest tether o control.
Isabel draws aside the bedspread, struggles to a sitting position. Its
been hours since she has shifed her body in any appreciable way, and her
legs and back are stiff and achyold, i she had to choose a word or her
joints. Her legs dangle over the side o the mattress, her toes searching or
the fleece-lined slippers.
Along the wall, long slivers o aluminum shelveshundreds o hori-
zontal eetare filled with neat stacks o manuscripts, their authors
names written with thick black Sharpie into the sides o the stacks o
pages. ens o thousands o pages o proposed books o every sort, prom-
ising a wide assortment o entertainment and inormation, producedwith a broad range o skill levels.
Tese days, everyone younger than Isabel seems to read manuscripts
and proposals on e-readers; quite a ew o those older, too. But she eels
uncomortable, unnatural, sitting there holding a little device in her
hands. Isabel is o the generation thats just old enough to be congenitally
uncomortable with new technologies. When she started her first job, she
didnt have a computer at her desk. A year later, she did.Maybe next year shell start using one o those things, but or now
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shes still reading on paper, turning pages, making notes with pens, sur-
rounding hersel with stacks o paper, like bricks, bunkered against the
relentless onslaught o the uture. And or Te Accident, she didnt even
have a choice. Because although nearly all new projects are now delivered
to her office electronically, this submission was not.
She shuffles down the hall, through the darkness. urns on the kitchen
lights, and the coffee machineswitched rom -, which is set to
start brewing an hour rom now, to and the small television. Filling
the silent lonely apartment with humming electronic lie.
Isabel had been reading rantically, hoping to discover the one asser-
tion that rang untrue, the single mismatched thread that would unravel
the whole narrative, growing increasingly discouraged as page 1 at the
office in the morning became page two-hundred-something at home in
the evening. She ell asleep sometime afer eleven, more than halway
through, then woke again at two, unable to quiet her mind, anxious to get
back to it. People in the book business are constantly claiming I couldnt
put it down or it kept me up all night or I read it in one day. Tis
time, all that was true.
So at two a.m. Isabel picked up the manuscript and started reading
again, page afer page, through the late-late night. Vaguely reminiscent
o those days when ommy was an inant, and she was sleep-deprived,
awake in a dormant world. Tey are very discrete periods, or very spe-
cific reasons, when its a normal part o lie to be awake at our a.m.:
its or making babies or caring or them, in the small desperate hourswhen a blanket o quiet smothers the city, but through the moth-eaten
holes theres the occasional lowing o a railroad in New Jersey, the distant
Dopplered wail o an ambulance siren. Ten the inevitable thump o the
newspaper on the doormat, the end o the idea o night, even i its still
dark out.
Nothing she encountered during the 488 pages seemed alse. Now she
stares at the anchors ace on the television, tuned to Wole . . . Tat god-damned son o a bitch . . .
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Her anger swells, and she loses control
Isabel cocks her arm and hurls the remote across the kitchen, crack-
ing and splintering against the rerigerator door, clattering loudly to the
floor. Ten the heightened silence o the afermath, the subdued thrum
o a double-A battery rolling across the tile, the impotent click as it comes
to rest against a baseboard.
She eels tears trickling down her cheek, and wipes them away.
Te coffee machine hisses and sputters the final drops, big plops all-
ing into the tempered glass. Isabel glances at the contraptions clock,
changing rom 5:48 to 5:49, in the corner o the neatly organized counter,
a study in right angles o brushed stainless steel. Isabel is a passionate
proponent o perect alignment. Fanatical, some might say.
She opens the rerigerator door, with its new scratch rom the air-
borne remote, whose jagged pieces she kicks out o her way. She takes out
the quart o skim and pours a splash into her mug. She grabs the plastic
handle o the carae and fills the mug with hot, viscous, bitter, bracing
caffeination. She takes a small sip, then a larger one. She tops up the mug,
and again wipes away tears.
She walks back down the now-lighted hall, lined with the amily pho-
tographs shed unearthed when she was moving out o her matrimonial
apartment, into this single-woman space in a new neighborhood, ar
rom the painul memories o her homeo her liedowntown, where
shed been running into too many mothers, ofen with their children.
Women shed known rom the playgrounds and toy stores and mommy-and-me music classes, rom the gyms and grocers and coffee shops, rom
preschool drop-off and the pediatricians waiting room. All those other
little children growing older, getting bigger, Emmas and Stellas in pre-
cious little plaids, Ashers and Amoses with mops o messy curls in skinny
jeans on scooters; all those sel-satisfied downtown bobo parents, un-
abashedly proud o their progenys precociousness.
Shed bought hersel a one-bedroom in a ull-service uptown co-op,the type o apartment that a woman chooses when she becomes recon-
ciled that shes not going to be living with another human being. She had
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reached that age, that stage, when a liestyle starts to look permanent: it
is what it is, and ever will be, until you die. She was making her loneliness
as comortable as possible. Palliative care.
I she wasnt allergic to cats, thered probably be a couple o them lurk-
ing around, scrutinizing her disdainully.
Isabel lined this nice new hallwayparquet floors, ornate moldings,
electrical outlets where she wants themwith ramed photos. Tere
she is, a smiling little toddler being held alof by her tragically beautiul
mother in Central Park, at the playground near the museum, a couple o
blocks rom the Classic 8 on Park Avenue that her parents couldnt actu-
ally afford. And then hand-in-hand with her remarkably unambitious a-
ther, starting ourth grade at the small- town public school in the Hudson
Valley, afer theyd finally abandoned the city or their country place, the
old amily estate that theyd been selling off, hal-acre parcels at a time,
to pay or their lie. Ten in cap and gown, the high school valedictorian,
bound not or Harvard or Yale or even a first-rate state school, but or a
second-tiermaybe third?private college upstate, because it offered a
ull scholarship, including room and board, and didnt necessitate expen-
sive out-o-state travel. Te drive was just a ew hours.
Her parents had called her Belle; still do. But once she was old enough
to understand what the word meant, she couldnt bear to lay claim to it.
She began to insist on Isabel.
Isabel had intended to go to graduate school, to continue studying
American literature, eventually to teach at the university level, maybe.But that plan was ormed beore shed had an understanding o the reali-
ties o personal finance. She took what she thought would be a short-term
job at a publishing houseone o her athers school chums was a amous
editorwith the irrational expectation that shed be able to save money
to pay or school, in a year, or two. She was buoyed by modest success in
an enjoyable workplace during good business years, and one thing led to
another. Plus she never saved a dime. By the time she was twenty-five, sheno longer thought about grad school. Almost never.
So then there she is, in a little black dress onstage at a book- award
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ceremony, accepting on behal o her author who was in South America
at the time, chasing a new story. And in a big white dress, aglow, in the
middle o the panoramic-lens group shot, the thirty-six-year-old bride
with her bridesmaids, at her wedding to a man shed started dating a mere
eight months earlier, short on time, perectly willing to turn a blind eye
to his obvious aults, the personality traits that her riends were too sup-
portive to point out, until the sae remove o hindsight.
Tat utter bastard.
It still amazes her how quickly youth slipped away, how severely her
options narrowed. Just a couple o bad relationship decisionsone guy
who as it turned out was never going to commit, another who was a clos-
eted assholeand the infinite choices o her late twenties turned into
the dwindling selection o her mid-thirties, now saying yes to any non-
creepy men who asked her out at parties or introduced themselves in
bars, sometimes using her middle name i the guy was on the margins o
acceptability and she might end up wanting to hide behind the unstalk-
able shield o an alias; over the years shed had more than a ew dates with
men who thought her name was something else. Hal the time, she was
glad or the deception.
Another photo, a smaller print, lying in the hospital bed with
ommy in her arms, tiny and red and angry in his striped swaddling
blanket and blue cap. Isabel returned to work afer the standard three
months, but in that quarter-year something had passed, and she was
complacent to allow it. Her husband was suddenly making embar-rassing amounts o money, so Isabel hired a housekeeper to go with
the nanny. She started leading one o those enviable-looking livesa
our-day workweek, driving the shiny car rom the pristine lof to the
shingled beach house, a perect baby and a rich handsome smart unny
husband . . .
And then.
She stops at the final photo, spotlit, a small black-and-white in thecenter o an expanse o stark-white matting. A little boy, laughing on a
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rocky beach, running out o the gentle sur, wearing water wings. Isabel
reaches her hand to her lips, plants a kiss on her fingers, and transers the
kiss to the little boy. As she does every morning.
Isabel continues to the bathroom, unbuttoning her flannel top as she
walks, untying the drawstring o the pajama bottoms, which crumple as
she releases the knot. She pushes her panties down and steps out o them,
leaving a small, tight puddle o cotton on the floor.
Te hot shower punishes her tense, tired shoulders. Steam billows
in thick bursts, pulled out the bathroom door, spilling into the dressing
area, the bedroom. Te water fills her ears, drowning out any sounds o
the television, o the world. I theres anything else in her apartment mak-
ing noise, she cant hear it.
What exactly is she going to do with this manuscript? She shakes
water out o her hair, licks her top lip, shifs her hands, her eet, her
weight, standing under the stream, distracted and disarmed, distressed.
It all beats down on her, the shower stream and the manuscript and
the boy and the past, and the old guilt plus the new guilt, and the new
earth-shattering truths, and ear or her career and maybe, now, ear
or her lie.
She slips into a sof, thick white bathrobe, towel-dries her hair. She
sweeps her hand across the steamed- up glass, and examines her tired
eyes, bagged and bloodshot, wrinkled at the corners. Te bathrooms
high-wattage lighting isnt doing her any avors this morning. She had
long ago become accustomed to not sleeping well, or a variety o rea-sons. But with each passing year, it has become harder and harder to hide
the physical evidence o sleeplessness.
From the other room, she can hear the irrelevant prattle o the so-
called news, the piddling dramas o box-office grosses, petty marital in-
discretions, celebrity substance abuse. Steam recolonizes the mirror, and
she watches big thick drops o condensation streak down rom the top
beveled edge o the glass, cutting narrow paths o clarity through the og,thin clear lines in which she can glimpse her reflection . . .
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Something is different, and a jolt o nervous electricity shoots through
her, a flash o an image, Hitchcockian terror. Something in that slim
clear streak has changed. Te light has shifed, theres now a darkness, a
shadow
But its nothing, she sees, just the reflection o the bedroom V, more
ootage o yesterdays international news, today. oday she has to con-
sider the news in a whole new light. Now and orevermore.
She gets dressed, a sleek navy skirt suit over a crisp white blouse, low
heels. Te type o office attire or someone who wants to look good, with-
out particularly caring about being ashionable. She blow-dries, brushes
her shoulder-length blonde hair, applies makeup. Sets contacts into
her hazel eyes. She assesses herseltired-looking, inarguably middle-
agedin the ull-length mirror, and sighs, disappointed. Tree hours o
sleep pushes the limit o what makeup can accomplish.
She stares again at the bottom o Te Accidents covering page: Au-
thor contact [email protected]. She types another e-mailshes
already sent two o these, in the past twelve hours. I finished. How can
we talk? Hits Send. She again receives the rustrating bounce-back mes-
sage: an unrecognized address.
Tat doesnt make any sense. Who would go to the trouble o writing
such a manuscript and then not be reachable? So shell keep trying, will-
ing hersel to believe that its some technical problem, something thatll
eventually get resolved. She stares at her laptop, the gradations o gray o
the various windows on the screen, the silver rame o the device itsel.Te little black circle at the top, the pinhole camera, that she never uses,
never even considers.
She could burn the manuscript right now, in the fireplace, using the
long ancy fireplace matches that her penny-pinching aunt sent as a
housewarming. She could pretend she never read the submission, never
received it. Forget about it.
Or she could go to the authorities, explain what happened, let themhandle it. Which authorities? Certainly not the CIA. Te FBI?
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flicks the relatively harmless fiberglass filter out into the air above Central
Park West, where it seems to hover or a split-second, Wile E. Coyote
like, beore alling, fluttering out o sight.
She scrolls through her phones address book, finds the number, and
hits Call.
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C H A P T E R 2
Hayden slips the bookmark into the Icelandic primer. He places the
thick volume atop his spiral notebook, a short stack next to a taller
stack o reerence works, some newish vinyl-covered handbooks,
some tattered paperbacks in various states o alling-apartness, held to-
gether by duct tape or masking tape, or bound by sturdy rubber bands.
Tese reerences are increasingly available electronically, but Hayden still
preers to hold a physical book in his hands, to run his eye across the tops
o pages, down the columns, searching or a word, an image, a act. Te
effort, he thinks, reinorces the learning. Hes old enough to recognize
that theres a finite universe o inormation hes going to be able to absorb
in the remainder o his lie; he wants to learn all o it properly.
He drops to the floor, does fify push-ups, fify sit-ups; his late-morning mini-workout. He buttons a French cuff shirt over his under-
shirt, affixes his enamel cufflinks, knots his heavy paisley tie. Slips into his
sport jacket, glances at himsel in the mirror. Adjusts his pocket square.
It was during his first posting overseas that he started wearing pocket
squares, plain white linen handkerchies. Hed wanted to look like a young
ambitious conormist American unctionary, the type o guy who would
proceed immediately rom Groton to Harvard to Europe and always carrya white handkerchie, neatly squared-off, in the breast pocket o his suit
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jacket. Hes surprised at how many o those decisions made back then, at
a time when adulthood seemed to stretch ahead indefinitely, turned out
to be untemporary. Careers and hobbies, spouses or lack thereo, politi-
cal belies and literary preerences, hairstyles and pocket squares.
Te sun is streaming through the French doors, casting brilliant
white light across the whitewashed floors, the white brick walls, the
white upholstery, the occasional piece o unavoidable Danish teak. In the
kitchen its even brighter because o the reflections rom the appliances.
Te brightness is almost blinding.
Te elaborately carved ront door is covered in hundreds o years
worth o uncountable coats o paint, scraped and chipped and deeply
gouged, revealing an undercoat o pale green here, a dark blue there. He
removes a matchbook rom his pocket, tears out a paper match, inserts
it between door and jamb, one match-length above a long gash in the
wood.
Te street is leay, sun-dappled, birdsongy. Haydens bicycle leans
amid dozens o others in the jumbled rack on the wide sidewalk, a ew
blocks rom the queens palace in Amalienborg. He hops on, pedals gently
through quiet streets, to the staid brick building on Kronprinsessegade
that houses the David Collection, one o the premier resources on the
Continent or his new hobby, Islamic art. He spends a hal-hour examin-
ing the Middle Age artiacts o the Spanish emirate, rom a time when
Cordoba was the largest city in Western Europe. Cordoba, o all places.
Hayden Gray is, afer all, a cultural attach. He has a large luxuri-ous office three hundred miles to the south, in the American Embassy in
Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate. He still makes his perma-
nent home in Munich, but his new job responsibilities require regular
appearances in Berlin, and a legitimate office there. O course Berlin has
always been a ascination or Hayden, indeed or anyone in his line o
work. Los Angeles has the film business, and Paris has ashion; Berlin is
or espionage. But its not a particularly attractive city, and the appealingthings about ita vibrant youth culture, a practically developing-world
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level o inexpensiveness, and the limitless energy o its nightlieare not
compelling assets or him. So hed rather not live there.
Back on the bicycle, alongside the lush greenery o the Kings Garden,
across the bridge, and into Nrrebro, the midday street lie a mixture o
young native artistic types and recent immigrants, alternative bars along-
side kebab joints that double as social clubs. He locks the bike just as the
rain begins, quick spatters and then within seconds ull-on.
Hayden rushes to push the glossy door, climbs a long steep flight o
stairs, and enters an apartment, high-ceilinged and large-windowed, but
shabby, and nearly empty. Te place where hes been sleeping or the past
couple o nights is a long-term leasea quarter-century long, in acton
the other side o downtown Copenhagen. But this one on Nrrebrogade
was hastily arranged a week ago by the woman whos sitting at the win-
dow now, a pair o binoculars in her hands.
Hello, she says, without turning. She can see him in the windows
reflection.
Anything?
No. Bore. Dom.
Hayden joins her at the window, looks past the immense streetlight
suspended by wires above the boulevard, across to the storeront on the
ground level, to the apartment above it.
She gives him the once-over. Nice tie, she says. You have anything
interesting or me today?
Always. Lets see . . . Ah, heres a good one: Tomas Jefferson andJohn Adams died on the same day.
You mean the same date?
I mean they died on the same exact day. And that day was July
Fourth. In 1826.
She turns to him. Tats not true.
Oh, but it is.
Huh. I give that a 9.What do I need to get a 10?
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Ill know it when I hear it. She turns back to the window, resumes
her vigil.
He removes his horn-rimmed glasses, uses his Irish linen pocket
square to wipe them clean. He holds his glasses up to the light, gazes
through the lenses to double-check their clarity. Tis is taking a long
time, he says. Sympathetically, he hopes.
Tis is taking orever.
Hayden knows that she wants to go home, to Paris. Back to her hus-
band, her children, her perect apartment in St-Germain-des-Prs. She
has been traipsing around Europe or a month now, looking or one per-
son. One elusive, clever, dangerous man.
ell me why it has to be mewhos here?
He watches a beautiul woman in the street pedaling slowly through
the rain, one hand on the handlebars while the other holds a large um-
brella, covering not only hersel but also the big wooden bucket in ront
that contains three small children wearing raincoats with matching hats.
I mean, she continues, its not as i I speak Danish, or know Co-
penhagen well. I dont have any special knowledge about whoever that
guy is.
In the window across the street, the scraggly man sits at his desk,
turned as always in profile. Jens Grundtvig, part-time student, part-time
writer, and nearly-ull-time stoner, is sometimes typing on his computer,
sometimes just moving his mouse around, researching, and sometimes is
on the telephone, gathering quotes, checking acts. Grundtvig seems tobe putting a act-checking polish on another mans project, and Haydens
task is to find that other man. Afer three months, Jens Grundtvig o Co-
penhagen is Haydens only substantive lead.
Because I trust your instincts, Hayden says. And to paraphrase
Proust: you, Dear, are the charming gardener who makes my soul
blossom.
She snorts. She knows that this is ractionally true, but predominantlybullshit, and that Hayden is not going to tell her the whole truth. She ac-
cepts being in the dark; its part o their arrangement.
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Tat truth is complicated, as always. And the truth is that this opera-
tion is entirely black, absolutely no record o it anywhere. Te expenses
or the entire teamthe woman here in this apartment, the two men
stationed at either end o this block, the other two who are off-duty
are unded out o a Swiss account. Teyre all under-the-counter, off-the-
books reelancers.
Youre a hero, Hayden says, patting her shoulder.
Tats what I keep telling my husband, she says. But he doesnt be-
lieve me.
A hero, Kate, anda martyr.
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8/12/2019 Chris Pavone - The Accident (Extract)
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https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/86874-the-accident