Choke Point

The island of Patmos is covered by cascading white buildings set against the azure blue of the sea, mirrored by cumulous clouds in a matching sky. It’s an active monastery, Saint John the Theologian, housing one hundred seventy-five monks who farm their own food, raise goats and grow their own wine on outlying acreage.

Grace and Knox have been debriefed on multiple occasions by interrogators too pale to have been on the island long. Dulwich is nowhere to be seen. The warm sun soothes wounds inside and out. Grace has turned nearly black in a yellow bikini that seems to shrink by the week. Knox has stopped himself from staring repeatedly, reminded of their evening in Natuurhonig.

He nearly can’t remember the abdominal surgery, but has a bandage to show for it. Grace has conquered Sudoku. Knox has caught up with his company paperwork that has plagued him for months. But it has lost its luster—not the paperwork, but the thought of import/export. Dulwich has won, and Knox resents it deeply.

“Here is what we know,” Grace says from the chaise longue beside his. A fountain of two cupids peeing into a birdbath gives a pair of butterflies a place to dance.

Knox is expecting more on Berker Polat, who at last mention had been refused bail by the Dutch and was said to have been badly beaten by inmates when it was leaked he mistreated young girls.

But Grace, being Grace, surprises him.

“We found and tagged the forty-seven thousand,” she says, as if picking up a conversation they’d started over lunch. “I can have that back to you, but do not recommend it. She is very good, this Evelyn. If this is her first time, I would be surprised—and that may aid us in our search. Her past, whatever it may turn out to be. If, or should I say when—because you will instigate this—she moves the forty-seven, it will assist me in tracking the remaining funds. This is the heart of forensic accounting: a person’s tendency to repeat himself. The transfer of the forty-seven will bear a fingerprint, maybe three stops? five stops? the degree to which it is laundered. Believe it or not, this will allow me to go back in time and match similar patterns to your remaining funds.”

“Are you saying it can be recovered?”

“I have told you as much all along.”

“Cheerleading,” he says. “I thought—”

“You doubted me.”

“I doubted you.”

“I told you I will find your money. I will find your money. It may go well beyond that, John. In my experience: this isn’t her first time. We will find more than just your money, and when we do . . . finders keepers.”

It strikes him as such a Western expression. Wonders at the changes in her, worries she will be fast-tracked within the company and that this may be the last they work together. He feels like they’re just getting started.

He drinks from a sweating beer bottle. Burps softly and excuses himself.

She chuckles.

“Oh, come on.”

“Not the burp, John. The apology. This is new.”

“Is it?”

“David will find her. When he does, your actions will trigger the withdrawal of the forty-seven. It must be carefully planned, carefully thought out.”

“My action will be to cave her head in.”

“No, John.”

She has taken him literally. Again. He’s about to try to straighten it out when she lays the chaise longue back flat. Knox can’t help himself from looking. Again.

“Not going to happen,” she says.

He looks away at the peeing cupids. “In your dreams,” he mutters.

“Mine or yours?”

Several minutes pass. Side by side.

“You miss her,” Grace says to the sky. “This is understandable.”

“What makes you the expert?”

It takes Grace another minute to answer.

“My broken heart,” she says.