“I don’t believe it,” she said, staring at the octagonal black perfume bottle. “Where the hell did you get Nombre Noir? And a full ounce? And sealed? Are you out of your mind?”
“I meant to give it to you years ago,” I said.
She reached over and gave me a kiss. “I’m almost out, too. I thought I’d never have it again. Last time I checked eBay, a half-ounce of Nombre Noir was selling for more than seven hundred dollars. Where’d you get this?”
“Remember my friend the Jordanian arms dealer?”
“Samir?”
“Right. Sammy found it for me. One of his clients is a sheikh in Abu Dhabi who had a stockpile in an air-conditioned storeroom.”
“Thank Samir for me.”
“Oh, I did. Believe me, I did. You’d have thought I asked him for a nuclear warhead. But by the time he handed it to me, you were gone.”
“You could have sent it.”
“I don’t trust the mail,” I lied.
Diana once explained to me that Nombre Noir was one of the greatest perfumes ever created. But it was impossible to find now. Apparently the company that made it ended up losing money on each bottle. Then the European Union, in its infinite wisdom, decided to ban one of its main ingredients, something called damascone, because it causes sun sensitivity in some tiny percentage of people. The company recalled every bottle they could and then destroyed each one by running a steamroller over them.
As soon as she told me it was impossible to find, of course, I made a point of tracking some down.
“Well, that serves me right for leaving without letting you know,” she said.
“Yeah, so there.”
“So, um, speaking of which? They’ve offered me a supervisory special agent job in Miami,” she said.
“Hey, that’s a big deal,” I said with all the enthusiasm I could muster. “Congratulations. Miami could be great.”
“Thanks.”
“Hard to turn down a job like that,” I said.
The awkward silence seemed to go on forever.
“What about Gordon Snyder’s job?”
Snyder’s superiors weren’t so happy about his planting an unapproved, off-the-books tracking device in my BlackBerry and then trying to cover his tracks by claiming that a confidential informant had tipped him off to Mauricio Perreira’s location. He’d been demoted and transferred to Anchorage.
I’d heard he could see Russia from his desk.
“Nah, they’re looking for an organized crime specialist for that slot. So, Nico. Mind if I ask you something about Roman Navrozov?”
“Okay.”
“That helicopter crash in Marbella? A bit too convenient, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. A deal was a deal.
“Let me guess. Putin’s guys have been trying to get him for years. But he never made it easy for them. So you struck a bargain with one of your ex-KGB sources. Some sort of trade for information. It isn’t like what happened to Navrozov was a tragedy. Some might even call it justice. You probably figured it was win-win.”
“Or maybe it was just a cracked rotor blade, like they say.”
She gave me a look. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
After a long moment, I said, “Sometimes, stuff just happens.”
“Hmph.”
“You see that story in the Globe a couple days ago about the accountant who was crushed to death by a falling filing cabinet? There’s no safe place. No guarantees.”
“I didn’t mean what I said about marrying a CPA.”
“No?”
“No. I’d settle for a database administrator.”
“I mean it. You can swathe yourself in five layers of security, but your luxury helicopter is still going to come down over Marbella. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather see the bullet that’s coming for me.”
We both stared straight ahead for a while.
“You know,” she said, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re about to make an arrest in the Mercury case.”
“I was wondering if that would ever happen.”
The weeks had turned into months, and not a single one of Marshall Marcus’s “investors” had even been brought in for questioning. None of their names had surfaced in the press.
Marshall Marcus remained at liberty, since he’d cooperated fully with the FBI—and his new lawyers were still negotiating with the SEC. There were a lot of investors out there howling for his head. He’d certainly face some kind of prison time.
But apart from that, it was like nothing had happened.
Call me cynical, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether a quiet call had been placed to the attorney general. Maybe a whispered aside over steaks at Charlie Palmer’s in D.C.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “We’re talking about some extremely prominent individuals—senior government officials, elder statesmen. As the saying goes, if you shoot at