Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Fourteen

The end of the dream, if this is a dream, is always the most painful.

She is with Marc again. Somehow, she both knows he is dead and yet completely accepts that he is alive. Yes, this makes no sense, but that’s true of most dreams when you analyze them. Or maybe it’s different this time. In the past, Marc has always come to her. This time, maybe, just maybe, she is coming to him. Either way, Marc is there. They sit at an old wooden table in the middle of a vineyard. There are two glasses of red wine in front of them. Neither has been touched. The sun is setting, the sky a burnt orange. She and Marc sit side by side. He looks out over the vineyard. She stares at his profile. She can’t look away. She fell in love with that profile. It belongs on a Roman coin, she would joke. A tear runs down Marc’s cheek. “I promise you that your life will be extraordinary,” he says to her. Those had been the closing words of his wedding vows. She remembers how overwhelmed she’d been when he said it, standing in front of everyone they loved and cared about, that line, that final line. “I promise you that your life will be extraordinary.” Damn, she’d thought at that moment, such a good line that when she finished her own vows, she’d repeated it. “I promise you that your life will be extraordinary.” Not happy. Not fulfilling. Not complete. Extraordinary. They were not going to buy that suburban house and work in private practice and do the work of married physicians with two-point-four kids and a barbecue in the yard and a basketball hoop in the driveway. In the dream, a tear runs down Marc’s cheek, as it did when he spoke on their wedding day. But that tear had been one of joy. This one is not. She takes his hand. His hand is real, she notices. She can feel it. She wouldn’t be able to feel it if it was a dream. It’s flesh. It’s Marc’s hand. This is reality. Marc is alive. So why is her heart sinking? He finally turns to look at her and when he does, his grip slackens. No, no. Stay. You’re here. With me. But Marc is pulling away. She reaches out and grabs the hand tighter. But the hand is gone. He’s still there. The tear is still on his cheek. Comfort him. Love him enough so that he would never ever go. She throws her arms around him, pulls him close. Don’t go. Please, Marc, stay. This isn’t a dream. This is real. Except now she is starting to awaken. There is nothing crueler. She tries desperately to swim back down, to stay, to cling to this old wooden table in this dream vineyard. Marc is alive here. That’s all that matters. But something is pushing her to the surface. She fights it. But she knows she can’t win. Marc begins to fade away. She is in that crest now, that strange crest between the dream world and full consciousness. There is clarity here, terrible clarity — this is only a dream; Marc is still dead — and it crushes her anew. She feels the tears on her cheeks, real ones, and she knows.

Marc is gone. Marc is dead.

When Maggie blinks her eyes open, a man’s face is staring down at her.

It’s not Marc, of course. It’s Charles Lockwood. The playboy from Ragoravich’s ball.

“You’re okay,” he says to her. “You were hurt in a car accident. But you’re okay now.”

The dream flees. It is amazing and merciful how fast that happens. The only remnants are the tears on her cheek. Maggie opens her mouth to speak to him, but nothing comes out.

“Here,” Lockwood tells her. “Take these.”

He scoops some ice chips into a cup and puts them in her mouth. Maggie knows the move — it gives someone water but won’t let them take in too much at once. Charles wears a white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up on his knotted forearms. He checks her vitals. The playboy is gone now. The physician has emerged.

“Don’t try to talk yet. Just tap your finger once for yes, twice for no. Do you remember the accident?”

It takes a second and then the memories of her escape rush in — opening the bedroom window, the biting cold, the roof, the gunfire, the Ferrari. It’s all there. Jumbled maybe. But enough.

They’d chased her. They’d shot at her. They wanted her dead.

She had tried to get away. Something hit her. She lost control...

She signals yes. She does so with the finger tap, but she also tests out a head nod. The pain is minimal.

“How...?” she manages to say.

“You reached out to me.”

She gives him a confused face.

“The phone number you called. Our emergency line. It came through. We moved fast.”

Emergency line. She tries to remember. Her head is swimming. The phone number. The one the Marc griefbot had given her. When she tries to speak, Lockwood shakes his head and tells her that she should rest. She ignores that and tries again to shake her vocal cords free. When she finally gets out a few words, they sound muffled and far away. “You knew Marc.”

“I did, yes. I assume he gave you my phone number?”

How to answer that...? She can’t. Not really. So she just nods.

“There’s a lot to tell you, Doctor McCabe,” Lockwood says. “I need your mind clear for that. It’s not yet. I know, I know. You think you’re ready. But you’re not.” He moves his chair closer to her. “First though, I need to know why you’re here.”

How to even explain it all to him?

“I need to know why you’re staying with Oleg Ragoravich.”

He waits. She lets her head fall back on the pillow. Her eyes close.

Does she trust him?

Marc — or the griefbot version anyway — had given Maggie his phone number and told her to call. That means when he was alive, Marc trusted Charles Lockwood. Shouldn’t that be enough? Maybe. But then again — and it may be because her head can’t stop spinning — how does she know what Charles Lockwood just told her about getting a call is true? Everyone has been playing head games with her. She knows that now. None of this is accidental or coincidental. Ever since Dr. Barlow approached her at Johns Hopkins, Maggie has felt the thing she hates the most — out of control. She feels manipulated, lied to, like she’s fighting against too strong a current. So is Charles Lockwood another part of that? Is he telling the truth or another liar?

There is one way to know for sure: Ask the griefbot.

She sucks on more ice chips. There’s an IV in her arm. She takes a second or two to scan herself and assess her own injuries. There are places of soreness and pain, but she feels pretty damn good. She wants to ask him about that, about her injuries, but she gets that right now Charles is focused on his own questions. When the chips melt and her mouth is moist enough to speak, she says two words: “My phone.”

“What?”

“I need my phone.”

“I don’t advise you calling anyone,” he says. “They’ll be monitoring anyone close to you.”

“Who will be monitoring?”

He shakes his head and scooches a little closer. “Maggie, listen to me. I will explain everything when you’re ready. It’s a lot. But right now — and I can’t stress how important this is — I need to know why you were staying at Oleg Ragoravich’s house.”

“I need my phone first.”

“I don’t have it,” he says. He leans back, blinks, runs his hand through his hair. “Your” — he stops, searches the air for the word — “extraction — it was not easy. Do you remember the crash?”

She nods.

“A bullet grazed your upper back. Wait, are you in pain? I should have asked you that first.”

“I’m fine,” she says.

“The old Ferrari didn’t have seat belts and luckily, I guess, your windshield was shot out. So you didn’t slam into it on impact. You rolled down a ravine. That’s what saved you. You were hard to reach. Ragoravich’s men couldn’t get to you right away. They figured the exposure would kill you anyway. You have frostnip, by the way — you’re lucky it wasn’t full-on frostbite. That will hurt for a while. Point is, they saw no point in rushing to you. The ravine is tricky in the snow. That gave us time to get there.” He looks off, his eyes welling up. “Do you remember an SUV chasing you?”

She nods.

“There were two men in it. They’re both dead.”

Silence.

“So I don’t know where your phone is. In that Ferrari, I guess. Maybe in that ravine, I don’t know. It’s not important. We can get you another. If you’re too tired to answer questions—”

“I’m not.”

“You had my emergency phone number,” Charles says.

“Yes.”

“Only one way: Marc gave it to you before he died.”

That wasn’t the way, of course, but it would be too much to explain the griefbot right now.

“And if he gave you the number, then you know you can trust me.”

She doesn’t know that, but it makes sense. And what choice does she have? She doesn’t even know where she is. She only knows that Marc had warned her that Ragoravich or Brovski would try to kill her, that they had indeed tried, and that someone, probably Charles Lockwood, had saved her.

So why not? She had to trust someone.

“I was hired to do plastic surgery,” Maggie says.

Charles Lockwood frowns at that answer. “On?”

“Oleg and a young woman named Nadia.”

“That’s the mistress I saw you talking to?”

She nods.

“So how did they end up hiring you?”

She explains in spurts about Evan Barlow, about Nadia’s breast augmentation, about the facial surgeries on Oleg Ragoravich, about Ragoravich disappearing from his recovery room, about the sudden panic, about the attempt on her life. She doesn’t go into the griefbot. As she speaks, exhaustion wedges its way into her bloodstream and spreads. It takes everything she has to stay awake.

“You know it’s not a coincidence,” Lockwood says. “You being hired for this job.”

She does now, doesn’t she?

“Who are you?” she asks.

“My name is Charles Lockwood. Just as I said.”

“Are you CIA?”

“Let’s just say something like that.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re safe,” he says. “And to answer your next question, you’ve been here two days.”

Two days. Her head drops back on the pillow. She wants to ask a million more questions, wants to stay awake, but her eyes are starting to flutter closed.

“I want to know...” She stops speaking.

“You will. I’ll tell you everything soon. But one last thing for now.”

Her eyes are closed now.

In the dark, she hears his voice: “Where is Trace Packer?”

“Bangladesh maybe,” she tells him.

“No, he’s not. Trace is missing, Maggie. We think he may have intentionally gone off the grid.”

“I don’t understand.”

And then, as Maggie sinks under, hoping to head back to that dream in the vineyard, she could swear she hears Charles Lockwood say something that makes absolutely no sense: “We think Trace is trying to find your husband.”

Maggie doesn’t see Charles Lockwood the next time she wakes up. Or the time after that. She is being looked after by two women in hospital scrubs. The women are kind and quiet. Maggie feels her strength returning. She asks them questions — where am I? where is Charles Lockwood? — but they give her a lot of tight smiles and no answers. She is soon able to get out of bed, walk around. Her recovery may seem remarkable, but her injuries ended up being more superficial than serious. There is some pain near her shoulder where the bullet grazed, and her head aches from the aftermath of a concussion.

But she also feels antsy and ready to go.

That night, when Maggie wakes up in her dark hospital-like room, she senses someone is with her. Her eyes adjust enough to see the silhouette, and then the face comes into focus. It’s Charles Lockwood. He stares at the wall.

She speaks first. “Why did you say Trace is trying to find Marc?”

He doesn’t move.

“Marc is dead,” she says.

“I know.” Charles Lockwood leans back in the chair. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why did you?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I want some answers. Like I want them now.”

He nods. Her eyes are adjusting. She can make out his face now. The gloss and polish she’d seen at Ragoravich’s have been wiped away. There are lines etched on his face. His hair has a touch of gray. He looks weathered, worn.

“There’s a lot to tell you,” he says. “I also don’t know how much you know already. I don’t know how much you knew at the time or how much you figured out later.” He turns to her. “Do you know who Eric Hoffer is?”

“No.”

“An American philosopher. He has this quote I love: ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’” He smiles. “Good, right?”

She doesn’t reply.

“Corruption starts small,” he continues. “My uncle was a pastor. He had this pious parishioner, a sweet widow, to handle the church’s budget. Mrs. Tingley. She devoted her life to that congregation. She worked long hours. One night, when she stayed late yet again, she got hungry and wanted to get a sandwich. She’d forgotten her wallet at home. That’s what she said. Who knows, right? Anyway, Mrs. Tingley ordered a sandwich from the local sandwich shop and used some of the petty cash from that week’s tithing to pay for it. No big deal. Easily justified. Then she did it again. Then she ordered two sandwiches and brought one home for her son. That’s it. Just an extra sandwich. Ten years later, the parish realized Mrs. Tingley had embezzled almost half a million dollars.”

“I assume there’s a point to this story,” Maggie says.

“There is. And I think you know what it is.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“You were the pretty face of WorldCures Alliance. Sorry, I know you’re more. But the media loved you. The combat surgeon. Devoted her life to helping the poor in dangerous hot spots. You’re pretty and telegenic and yeah, that shouldn’t matter, but we both know it does.” He pulls his chair closer. “Why did you end up leaving WorldCures?”

“My mother was sick. I came home to be with her.”

He tries to give her a probing look. “That’s all?”

Silence.

“What else happened, Maggie?”

“Do you go by Charlie or Chuck, or should I call you Charles?”

“Most people call me Charles.”

“Great. Let’s not worry about me, Charles, okay? Tell me what’s going on.”

“Fair enough,” he says with a nod. “You know about the Kasselton Foundation.”

“Of course.”

“But you never worked with them directly?”

“No, never.”

“They were WorldCures’ biggest donor.”

“I think so, yes.”

“So here’s how it plays out. One day, the Kasselton Foundation gets in touch with a new charity desperately seeking funding. In this case, WorldCures Alliance. Maybe they called you. Maybe they called Marc or Trace.”

“It was Marc.”

“Okay, fine. So Marc goes to woo them. Maybe you go too. Doesn’t matter. They seem impressed by your passion and presentation. They claim to love your idea of advanced, cutting-edge treatments for refugees and the poverty-stricken. They offer to make WorldCures a sizable donation, probably in chunks. Like Hoffer said: It begins with a cause — and you had a great cause. The Kasselton Foundation was going to help you save lives. So, of course, WorldCures took the money. Who wouldn’t? None of you knew it was connected to Oleg Ragoravich via back channels and shell companies. And even if you did suspect, well, so what? Ragoravich is just a businessman. How he makes his money isn’t your concern. And hey, better he donates his money to a worthwhile cause like WorldCures than using it to, I don’t know, spread his corruption or buy another megapalace. There’s a lot of ways to justify it. And again, you’re just nonprofit employees looking to do good. So you take the money. Maybe a million dollars to start. My God, you think, the patients you can save with that. And you do. You save lives. You develop new medical technologies and techniques. It’s great. And then, a few months later maybe, the Kasselton Foundation comes to you again. They want to make another donation because they realize WorldCures has a lot of needs. You need to hire staff. You need trucks and drivers and construction workers and paper clips and beds and medical equipment and whatever else. And guess who has vendors for you to use?”

“The Kasselton Foundation,” Maggie says to keep things moving.

“Precisely.”

“Straight-up money laundering,” Maggie says. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“Nothing straight-up about it. But yes. Money laundering seems complicated, but I’m going to make it very simple in this case. Let’s say I’m a criminal. I donate my ill-gotten money into a nonprofit. The nonprofit uses my donation to purchase legitimate goods and services from a company owned or controlled by me. Period, the end. I also overcharge. I mean, who would notice? Maybe the truck rental is normally a thousand dollars. Your charity will get invoiced for five thousand dollars. The point is, my money gets laundered — it came back to me via a respected nonprofit — and you, the altruistic charity, still get a lot of money via my donations. It’s why you look past it — it’s in your interest to do so. Yeah, sure, you may think that price seems too high for a truck rental, but so what? You aren’t footing the bill. You are making out. If someone else is also making out, that’s not your concern. It’s a win-win, if you think of it that way.”

“And this is what you claim happened with WorldCures?”

“Yes. And I don’t claim it. You know it.”

“Do me a favor, Charles. Don’t tell me what I know.”

He puts up his hands in mock surrender. “You’re right,” he says. “And it doesn’t matter. I’m not here to prosecute anyone for that. For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of you three did know at first. You, Trace, Marc — you’re physicians. Healers. You don’t do the books. When you got the first check, the Kasselton Foundation probably insisted you hire one of their own under the pretense of making sure their money was spent in a proper way. So I think for a while, yeah, like I said, this kind of corruption grows slowly. You may have had some inklings which you subconsciously ignored. Doesn’t matter if you did.”

“So where do you fit into this, Charles?”

“What about me?”

“You said it wasn’t a coincidence I was chosen to do Oleg’s surgery.”

“Right.”

“It also wasn’t a coincidence you were at the house for Oleg’s party.”

Lockwood grins in the dark. “Didn’t you say it was a ball?” His hand goes up. “Kidding, kidding. Just looking to add a bit of levity here.”

“Yeah, pretty hilarious.”

“I’m trying, Maggie, because this story is grim, and it gets grimmer.” He runs his hand through his hair. “Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe there’s hope at the end of this too.”

“Hope how?” Maggie thinks about what she heard before she fell asleep, about Trace searching for Marc. She knows, of course, that it’s impossible. But the fact that he would voice that...“And what did you mean about Trace searching for Marc?”

He takes a few moments. His hand is on his chin. Exhaustion emanates from every part of his body. “Let me tell it my way, okay?”

She doesn’t reply. She just waits.

“You want to know why I was at Oleg’s, but you’ve probably figured it out by now.”

“You’re investigating him.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re, what, undercover?”

“That makes it sound sexier than it is. But yes. I am a physician from a rich, well-connected family. It’s easy to pass me off as a ne’er-do-well who relishes the Russian party life. Do you know that was the first time Oleg Ragoravich has had any kind of event in the past three years? He’s been ultra-secretive about his movements. He’ll show up somewhere, like in Dubai, but he never lets anyone know ahead of time. I’ve been on this case for the past two years, and I’ve still never seen him in person. Not even at that crazy ball.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Not sure. There are rumors of bad health. There are rumors he pissed off some powerful people and fears assassination attempts.” Then: “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“When did Marc give you my number?”

“He didn’t.”

“How did you get it?”

Maggie wants to get information, not give it. “Maybe we could start with how you knew Marc.”

Charles nods — this is going to be a bit more give-and-take than he’d expected.

“Marc realized that they were in way over their heads with no way out.”

“Because of the money laundering?”

“That was part of it, but do you want to know a hard truth?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t think Marc cared all that much about the laundering. I don’t think any of you did. All three of you are brilliant surgeons and researchers. You all also have, sorry, a bit of a god complex. Sure, Marc wanted to save lives and all that. But I also know he — and let’s be honest, you and Trace too — have the surgeon’s ego. You are ends-justify-means types. A lot of do-gooders are. That’s just a fact. So my guess is, if it was simple money laundering, Marc would have used all the justifications I just gave you and looked the other way.”

“You’re saying it didn’t stay that way?”

Charles smiles but there is no joy in it. “Nothing ever stays stagnant in life. The world is in constant motion. Corruption, like everything else, either gets worse or it gets better.”

“And this got worse?”

“Very much so.”

“How?”

Charles shakes off her question. “The point is, Marc wanted out. So did Trace. They asked for a face-to-face with Ragoravich. Oleg loved doctors. He thought they could help him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he chose to sink his fangs into WorldCures of all charities. From day one, he saw the potential for more than just cleaning his money.”

“Potential how?”

Once again, Lockwood shakes off her question.

“Stop doing that,” Maggie says.

“Sorry, but you have to let me tell it my way, okay?”

She gives him a reluctant suit-yourself-continue gesture with both hands.

“So Marc and Trace are flown in to Ragoravich’s palace. They tell Oleg that they’re grateful and appreciative, but they plan on leaving WorldCures Alliance, and they wanted Oleg to be the first to know. Ragoravich shakes their hands and thanks them for their time. Then they got back on the helicopter with some other visitor. An overweight bald man. That’s how they described him. We still don’t know who he was. They flew the helicopter over an abandoned iron ore or salt mine, something like that, and Oleg’s men threw the bald guy out. Just like that. No warning. Not a word said. Right in front of Marc and Trace.”

Maggie looks at him in pure horror.

“Then they grabbed Trace. Like they were going to do the same to him. They dangled him upside down outside the copter for five minutes, holding on to him by one ankle.”

“My God.”

Charles nods. “Anyway, message received. There was no leaving WorldCures. They were in too deep. Trace, I think he surrendered to that fate. But you know your husband. He was a problem solver. He kept looking for a way.”

She nods to herself at that. Marc believed that he could indeed find a solution to every problem. There was no quit in her husband, just a road not yet taken.

“That,” Charles says, “is where I come in.”

“Marc became your, what, informant?”

“Something like that, yeah. He put out feelers. Quietly. I came to him. I told him the only way out was for him to help us take down Ragoravich.”

“Did he agree?”

Lockwood says nothing.

“Did he agree, Charles?”

“Yes.”

Maggie feels the tears come to her eyes. “You said Trace is missing.”

“Yes.”

“And you also said he may be looking for Marc.”

Charles shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But you did.”

“Yes.” Charles lets loose a long breath. “There are three theories about your husband’s death. Would you like to hear them in order of believability?”

She wouldn’t. But she still gives a small nod. She knows where he’s going to go with this. She needs to hear him say it out loud.

“Theory One: Marc got caught up in the violence of a volatile region. That’s the most accepted theory, of course. It’s also, for the record, the one I most believe. It’s backed up by evidence and logic.”

“What’s Theory Two?”

“I think you can probably guess now.”

Maggie nods. “Oleg Ragoravich killed Marc.”

“Yes.”

“He found out that Marc had turned on him. He set it up to have him killed and made it look like he was a casualty of war.”

“Yes.”

“And Trace, what, he got away?”

“And that’s why he’s in hiding, yes.”

Maggie thinks about it, tries to stay detached, unemotional. “That actually seems almost as likely as Theory One, don’t you think?”

Charles doesn’t respond.

“I mean, Marc risks going up against this powerful, rich, evil man — and then he ends up dead.”

“I don’t think that’s what happened.”

“Because then it would be in part your fault,” Maggie says. “My husband comes to you for help, and he ends up dead.”

“That’s not it.”

“What then?”

“Because if Oleg Ragoravich wanted them dead, he wouldn’t have had to jump through so many hoops. Did Oleg plan the slaughter at the refugee camp? Thirty-three people were murdered in that rampage. Seems like a lot of unnecessary collateral damage. And of course, he didn’t want to just silence Marc. There was Trace too. Trace, if you believe this theory, got away. Do you think Oleg Ragoravich would be that sloppy?”

All good points. But of course, Maggie already knew that.

“So,” Maggie says, “let’s get to it, shall we? What’s Theory Three?”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“But?”

Lockwood looks at her. “Did they spare you the details?”

“About?”

“About how Marc was killed.”

She feels her chest tighten. “I know about the” — Maggie is never sure of the right word to use here — “savagery.”

“To some people that seems odd.”

“A lot of victims got hacked to death.”

“I know.”

“And yes, maybe he was hard to identify. But a DNA test was done.”

Charles Lockwood tilts his head. “By whom?”

Maggie is not sure who did it.

“Did the local authorities do it?” Charles asks. “I mean, there’s no American embassy in that area. The closest was in Tunisia. So who ran the DNA test?”

“There were people,” she says. “Reliable people.”

“Right then. I mean, sure. It’s why that last theory is ridiculous.”

“So what’s your third theory, Charles?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Not to me.”

“If Ragoravich found out what Marc had done, he would kill him, of course. And just to make sure the lesson stuck, Oleg would probably kill anyone and everyone close to him. Especially you, Maggie. Best-case scenario: Marc would have to look over his shoulder the rest of his life.”

“Did you tell Marc this? I mean, when you recruited him.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Because you didn’t give a shit about him. You cared about your case.”

“Yes,” he says calmly. “I put him in an untenable situation — after he put himself in one. But there was a way out. For you, at least. If Marc ended up ‘dying’” — he makes quote marks with his fingers — “in a refugee camp in Tunisia, then, well, you’d both be in the clear.”

Maggie feels the cold down to her bones. “You’re saying Marc faked his own death?”

“No, I’m saying that didn’t happen. I’m saying it’s a ridiculous—”

“That he, what, found another body that got hacked up there. That he pretended it was his, bought off whoever ran the DNA test. And now, what, he’s in hiding?”

“I’m saying the theory is ridiculous.”

“But that’s Theory Three?”

“Yes.”

“And to follow it through, Trace, what, ran off and hid — and now he is meeting up with Marc? And what’s the plan after that, Charles?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Theory Three, I admit, is pretty weak.”

“It is,” Maggie says.

“But one thing is true either way.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re very close to Trace.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve known him a long time.”

She nods. “We served together in combat.”

“Whatever theory you believe — One, Two, or Three — Trace Packer is missing. So my question is, How far would you go to find him?”

“As far as I have to,” Maggie says.

He nods, slaps his legs, stands. “When you’re strong enough—”

“I’m strong enough now.”

He thinks about it. “Okay. We leave tomorrow.”

“Where are we going?”

Charles smiles. “Someplace much warmer.”