came up, I handed it off to Eddie, he made it disappear.”
Arielle said, “That’s Eddie.”
Favor turned to Winston Stickney. It was an automatic gesture from their years in the field. Stickney was the wise man, insightful and sober. Stick always seemed to know what to do.
He was having no part of it now, though. He held up his hands, shook his head.
“It’s not my party, Ray. Do what you think is best.”
Mendonza was looking at Favor, waiting for an answer.
Paper meant forged passports and supporting documents. To a Bravo team, it was a staple. Paper was as basic as air.
“Why would we need paper?” Favor said. “To look for a girl gone lost? To scuba dive and lie on the beach?”
“Just asking,” Mendonza said. “I guess it feels a little strange, the four of us going off somewhere without cover.”
“We don’t need cover,” Favor said. “We’re going to do a little good deed and then we’re gonna have some fun. That’s all. No cover, no paper. No fucking tradecraft, we’re done with that shit.”
He realized that his voice had risen. The others were looking at him. Staring.
Favor took a couple of seconds, composed himself. When he spoke again he made sure that he sounded calm.
“I just want to play it straight,” he said. “Agreed?”
“Sure,” Stickney said.
“Why not?” Arielle said.
“Whatever you think,” Mendonza said.
“That’s what I think,” Favor said. “It’s just a vacation, goddammit.”
Arielle left them and went off to pack.
Her home was about fifteen minutes away, but she didn’t have to go there. She had a bedroom at the converted lodge, a place to crash at the end of a long night of work. She kept clothes there, and an overnight bag that was always packed and ready to go. Favor often traveled on a few minutes’ notice to inspect property, and usually he wanted Arielle with him.
When she got to the room, she spent a few minutes replacing winter clothes in the bag with some warm-weather pieces. Then she carried it to her office. She picked up a laptop computer—one of two that she kept in sync with the desktop machine—and she zipped it into a carrying case.
She opened a desk drawer and removed a piece of electronic equipment about the size and shape of a paperback book: a black case dotted with a row of LED lights. At a glance, it resembled the broadband modem found in many American homes. It was in fact a compact satellite antenna: when connected to the laptop, and properly aligned with a data satellite, it provided a reliable high-speed Internet connection virtually anywhere in the world.
Favor sometimes said that Arielle’s job was to be the smartest person in a fifty-mile radius, major research universities not excepted. It was a joke with a large kernel of truth. When he researched a new business opportunity, Favor was full of questions, usually esoteric and difficult. And when he needed to know, he went to Arielle. She had a gift for learning. She read rapidly and retained almost everything, and above all she knew how to find the answers she didn’t already know. The satellite antenna and her laptop allowed her to do it from anywhere.
She slid the antenna into a pocket of the laptop case.
On her way out, she paused at the top of the stairs. She asked herself: What will Ray need?
She answered: Antibiotic ointment and dressings. It was exactly the kind of thing he would neglect.
Looking after Ray Favor was not part of the job description. Yet she did it, probably more than was healthy for either of them. She didn’t consider herself the nurturing type, and she was definitely not self-sacrificing. It came down to two reasons:
She cared for him.
He had nobody else to do it.
Their relationship was unique, as far as she could tell. They never married, but they knew each other far better and were far more intimate than most married couples. They had been lovers for the past dozen years, yet she had had others in her life, and Favor had had many women. They disdained sexual exclusivity and the jealousies that went with it, and they both resisted any infringement on their personal freedom. Still, they were mutually devoted.
Arielle thought that they had proved themselves to each other so often, in so many different ways, that they needed no formal commitment. They didn’t need declarations of love. They didn’t even need a name for what they