Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maggie cannot believe what she is seeing.

For the first time in so long, her heart bursts with joy.

An hour later — an hour spent putting so much of it together — she lands at Heathrow Airport. If you are one of those people who want to make sure you get your ten thousand steps in every day, Maggie suggests you fly into Heathrow. You walk left and right. You go upstairs and down. You use escalators and moving walkways. It’s also a “tease” walk — every time you think it’s over, there is just one more turn, one more set of stairs, one escalator, one more moving walkway to go.

Several flights landed at the same time, the passengers disembarking and first flowing and then clogging up the main Terminal 3 artery that leads to the passport and immigration heart.

Maggie feels alone, adrift, and yet there is finally a real sense of purpose. She is putting it together. Not all of it. Not yet. But she thinks she has a big-time lead. Fatigue radiates from every pore in her body as she gets through passport control, bypasses the baggage carousel and customs, steps through the exit door...

She freezes when she sees him, half worried it’s just a mirage.

Cue the bursting heart.

There are a ton of people in the arrivals hall. Chauffeurs with various name signs — some handwritten, some on touchscreen pads — are scattered everywhere. There are loved ones with welcome balloons and friends standing on their tiptoes, craning their necks to see who exits next. There are tour representatives and airport staff — maybe a hundred, two hundred people in all — but Maggie sees him right away.

Porkchop!

When she looks his way, Porkchop lifts his sunglasses and wiggles his eyebrows. Maggie shouts — shouts out loud — “Porkchop!” and breaks into a run. She wonders whether she’s ever been so happy to see someone, and no answer comes to her. He spreads his thick arms, and Maggie jumps into them. Porkchop swallows her up in a bear hug. She welcomes the smell of Marlboro and leather, and then Maggie just lets everything go. She collapses into the bear hug. Her smile gives way to tears. She digs her face into the leather and for a few moments she just cries. Porkchop lets her, holds her up. He cups the back of her head with his big hand. His voice is uncharacteristically choked up as he mutters, “It’s okay now, Mags, it’s all okay.”

She manages to say, “How...?”

“I was flying to Dubai,” he says. “There was a change of planes in London so...”

“I’m so happy to see you.” She hugs him harder. Then: “I think I know where we have to go now.”

“Where?”

“Bordeaux. A vineyard called Château Haut-Bailly.”

“I did some research on the plane,” Maggie tells him, as they stroll out of the arrivals hall. “There are no nonstop flights from Heathrow to Bordeaux.”

“You don’t want to fly anyway,” Porkchop says, heading for the stairwell. “Too much scrutiny. Come on. Do you have anything that can track you?”

She thinks about it for a moment. “The phone Charles Lockwood gave me.”

Porkchop gestures toward a trash can. She dumps the phone in it and keeps on moving. A sign reads HEATHROW EXPRESS. They follow it, walking side by side.

“So why Bordeaux?” Porkchop asks.

She quickly explains how Steve had told her that the medical researchers had packed up from Apollo Longevity and moved to a secret location. When she finishes, Porkchop says, “And you think the secret location is on a Bordeaux vineyard.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me why.”

Maggie had spent a lot of the flight working out the angles. She is eager to try out her theory on the only person who might get it. “You remember the last time I called Trace?”

“Of course.”

“I know you remember. It wasn’t a question.”

The Heathrow Express arrives, and they hop on. Porkchop sits and waits. He isn’t the type to say I told you so, but he had warned her about making that call. She hadn’t listened. Porkchop had been against reaching out to Trace. “You don’t want to tip him off,” he’d told her.

And, of course, Porkchop had been right.

“Trace was in Dubai when I called him,” Maggie says.

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve met his girlfriend. Fiancée, actually.”

“The Nadia who wanted you to do the surgeries?”

“Yes.”

“And you told her you called Trace?”

Maggie shakes her head. “She confronted me about it.”

“What did you say?”

“I denied it.” Denied it, Maggie thinks. A polite way of saying I straight-up lied to her face. “I said I never called him.”

“Does she believe you?”

“Hard to know.”

Porkchop nods. “Go on.”

“So after I called, we know Trace vanished. You figured he had something to hide and ran off.”

“Me?”

“Okay, I did too. But not like you.”

Porkchop’s face is set. “You know what we learned at the TriPoint refugee camp.”

She nods. “One witness — and only one witness — claims they saw Trace leaving the camp after Marc was killed. That’s it. And the witness could have gotten the timing wrong, whatever. Anyway, I called Trace because I wanted to hear his explanation. Not over the phone. Face-to-face.”

“And he ran instead,” Porkchop says, spreading his hands. “Gee, that doesn’t seem suspicious.”

“The point is, we figured he’d gone to Bangladesh or some other remote area.”

“Made the most sense. Easier for him to hide.”

“Either way,” Maggie says, “you’ve been searching for him ever since. And you’re good at this kind of thing, Porkchop.”

“Not that good.”

“No, you are. And you’re — shall we say — highly motivated. Yet you’ve come up with nothing.”

“The point being?”

“Maybe we got it wrong,” Maggie says.

“How so?”

She sits up and turns to him. “Okay, so right after I called Trace, he broke into Apollo Longevity and stole the THUMPR7, the DNA sequencing machine, all of it. At first, I figured his plan was to fly to America and hide that stuff in those safe deposit boxes.”

“Makes sense.”

“It did, yes.”

“It doesn’t anymore?”

“Let me try this theory on you,” Maggie says.

“I’m listening.”

“Suppose Trace never planned on coming to America.”

“Because he planned on running?”

“Not like we think.”

“I’m not following.”

“I think Trace flew that day from Dubai — not to the United States but to Bordeaux. I think that’s where Oleg Ragoravich built in secret his new ‘fountain of youth’ headquarters. Trace was fascinated by that vineyard. Château Haut-Bailly. His apartment has a ton of wine from it. He even sent Marc and I there on vacation.”

Porkchop allows himself a small nod.

Maggie shifts in her seat. “Nadia says she kissed Trace goodbye outside Terminal 1. But Emirates, the only airline that flies nonstop from Dubai to Dulles, leaves from Terminal 3. Air France uses Terminal 1. Not that he couldn’t have taken a connecting flight, but...”

The Heathrow Express stops at London Paddington. Maggie and Porkchop rise and follow the signs for the Hammersmith & City Line. The train is packed so they stand for the five stops to King’s Cross St. Pancras.

“Sharon just did some digging for me,” Maggie continues. “An abandoned vineyard adjacent to Haut-Bailly was bought three years ago by someone using a double-blind trust. Sharon says there are satellite photos showing what looks like massive underground construction.”

“Suspicious,” Porkchop agrees.

“And do you want to hear the big kicker?”

“I’m all ears.”

“Nadia has a tracker on Ivan Brovski’s phone.”

Porkchop crosses his arms. “That’s the, uh, gentleman who took you on the plane.”

“Yep. The one you told to keep your daughter-in-law safe and happy. I think your exact words to him were, ‘Don’t make me have to find you.’”

Porkchop lets himself smile. “Shows the power of my threats,” he says. “What does Nadia’s tracker show?”

“Ivan Brovski landed at Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport a few hours ago.”

Porkchop arches an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”

“Oh, but I do.”

“So maybe I’ll have the chance to ‘find’ him, after all.”

Porkchop makes a few calls on the platform — someone had clearly given Porkchop a mobile phone before he headed overseas — and then he and Maggie board the Eurostar for the journey to Paris. The train can travel 186 miles per hour and includes a thirty-one-mile railway tunnel that goes under the English Channel.

As they board, Porkchop says, “Did you know that the term ‘Chunnel’ is a portmanteau of ‘Channel’ and ‘Tunnel’?”

“If you say so.”

“‘Portmanteau’ was on my New-Word-A-Day calendar last month.”

“I figured.”

“It means a word blending the sound and combining the meaning of two other words.”

“Great.”

“Other portmanteaus include ‘brunch’ — breakfast and lunch — and ‘motel’ — motor and hotel.”

“Yeah, I get it, Porkchop.”

“First time I’ve gotten to use the word.”

“You must be very proud.”

They find their seats.

“You have more to tell me,” Porkchop says.

“I do.”

“But we are both exhausted. We have two and a half hours on the Eurostar before we get to Paris. Then we go from the Gare du Nord to Montparnasse to take a TGV train to Bordeaux. That’s also over two hours.”

“How do you know all this?”

Porkchop gives her the eyebrow arch. “Trace isn’t the only Francophile, you know.”

“We’re going to need a place to stay in Bordeaux.”

“Already taken care of.” He holds up his phone. “We will be staying at the owner’s private guesthouse at Château Smith Haut Lafitte. I told them we’d be fine at the Les Sources de Caudalie — that’s their five-star hotel — but Florence insisted we’d be more comfortable in the guesthouse.”

“Florence?”

“The vineyard’s owner.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s an old friend.”

“I bet.” Maggie shakes her head. “I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.”

“And yet you continue to be.”

“How do you know, uh, Florence?”

“I spent a lot of years riding through Europe.” Porkchop folds his leather jacket into a pillow and places it against the window. “Anything else before I...?”

She shakes her head. “Take a nap. I need to check something out anyway.”

He closes his eyes and leans back on his leather pillow. Maggie spends the ride following up on some leads. She debates what she should tell Nadia, but for right now, she figures it’s best to stay no contact. Once the Eurostar arrives at Gare du Nord, they take the Paris Métro to Montparnasse, where they grab the high-speed train. It’s when they arrive at the Bordeaux Saint-Jean station and walk outside that Maggie gets another reminder of who Porkchop is and what he means to people.

The street is lined with motorcycles.

Maggie can’t even guess how many. Fifty riders? Or a hundred, decked out in classic biker garb, greet Porkchop. There is a magic to Porkchop. She’s always known this. When Maggie’s parents first heard how Marc had been raised, they’d been, to put it politely, wary. When they met Porkchop, the wary vanished. He had an ease, a confidence. You want to be near Porkchop. She sees it again now, the way people are drawn to him. It’s not an act on his part. It’s not something Porkchop turns on and off. It’s not something he needs or cultivates. He makes people feel seen and secure, maybe because he doesn’t try to work on it. There is, if you look closely, a coldness to him too. Porkchop loves very few, just his inner circle, but those he does he loves with a ferocity that both frightens and exhilarates. You know those stories about a parent lifting a car to save their child? It takes little to imagine Porkchop performing such a feat. His family is his world — the rest of the planet’s inhabitants are in the periphery, deep background, scenery.

Porkchop goes down the leather-clad receiving line, offering hugs, double-cheek kisses, handshakes, backslaps, whatever. He introduces Maggie to the leaders. They hug her too. A woman with spiky gray hair introduces herself as Élodie and invites Maggie to hop on the back of her bike. Porkchop gets on with a man named Guillaume. The other bikers follow. It’s an impressive sight. Ten minutes in, the other bikers peel off because it’s getting late, and the bikes make too much noise. Thoughtful.

Guillaume and Élodie drive them through Château Smith Haut Lafitte’s entrance and past the main hotel. They wind their way through the vineyard to the guesthouse. The guesthouse is rustic in the best of ways. Stone walls, tile floors, worn leather furniture, plain wooden furniture. There’s a chess set on the coffee table. There are four bedrooms on the second floor. Porkchop’s stuff is already in the corner suite. Maggie has no idea how. She takes the opposite corner. There are toiletries, but Maggie realizes, with the suddenness of her departure from Dubai, she has no clothes.

Ten minutes after arriving, a striking, elegant couple come by with a bottle of wine. The woman is the aforementioned Florence. She is with her husband, Daniel. They, too, greet Porkchop and Maggie with double-cheek kisses and warm hugs. Florence hands Porkchop the bottle. He studies it.

“The Rouge 2015,” Porkchop says with a nod of approval.

Daniel opens it with a smile. “We also brought the Blanc 2022 if either of you prefer the white.”

Porkchop looks over at Maggie. Maggie says, “I’m good with the red.”

Florence and Daniel are, as one might imagine, charming hosts. They had just gotten back a few hours ago from a two-week cruise from Amsterdam to Basel, doing both the Dutch canals and the Rhine. A dream trip, they told them, but they are happy to be back.

“I assume,” Florence says to Porkchop, “that you’ve been enjoying your stay?”

“Of course,” Porkchop says. “But I do have a favor to ask.”

He tells them that the airline has lost Maggie’s luggage and he wonders whether they might have anything in either their manor or maybe the hotel’s lost and found that she could use for the next day or two. Florence and Daniel both look Maggie over before Florence says, “You’re about the same size as our daughter Alice. We’ll send some garments down to you.”

After Florence and Daniel depart, Maggie and Porkchop remain on the porch, staring out into the Bordeaux night, sipping the most heavenly of wines. The vineyard smells of soil and fruits, of earth and lavender. The moon puts the grapevines in silhouette. The silence, like the dark, wraps itself around them. Under any other circumstance, it would be perfect here, timeless and profound, and she tries to remember her father’s advice about easing into the moment even in the midst of chaos. But that’s not working tonight.

She looks at Porkchop’s profile and thinks she sees a tear on his cheek.

“You okay?” she asks.

He nods. “Guillaume and Élodie tell me that there is no way into that abandoned vineyard. The area is remote and very well protected. CCTV. Motion detectors. Barbed wire. Round-the-clock armed guards.”

Maggie takes another sip. “I’m not surprised.”

“Everyone knows that it’s more than a vineyard. The most prevalent rumor is that it’s a secret military base. Some of the more conspiracy-minded think it’s housing biological or chemical weapons.”

“Even better to keep people away.”

“Do we have a plan?”

Maggie thinks about it. “I think so, yeah.”

They both sit back and stare out.

“There are things Marc didn’t tell me,” Maggie says.

“Which reminds me.” Porkchop grabs hold of his satchel, puts his passport in the side pocket, and starts to dig through the main pouch. “Sharon told me to give this to you.” He pulls out a phone. “Your griefbot.”

He hands it to her. Maggie takes it. Porkchop turns and stares out again.

“You never told me about it,” he says.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

He nods. “Because there are things you don’t tell me.”

“Yeah, I thought you might be going there. It’s not the same thing.”

“Actually, it is. You trust me, right?”

“With my life.”

“And yet you keep things from me. And I keep things from you.”

“What do you keep from me?”

“You’re missing the point.”

“Also you’re not my husband.”

“Marc told you what he knew. What he could.”

“He didn’t tell me about Oleg Ragoravich.”

“Do you think that means he loved you any less?”

“Now who’s missing the point?”

“Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex — no one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of — and yet we are convinced we can read other people. We think that we know what’s going on inside others, what they are really feeling or experiencing or thinking, but they can’t tell the same about us. That’s obviously impossible. You and Marc...” Porkchop stops and shakes his head. “You guys were the best couple I’d ever seen. But you weren’t” — he puts his palms together — “‘one.’ That’s new-age bullshit. It’s also undesirable. Marc didn’t tell you everything about Ragoravich because he wanted to protect you. Like you and me with the griefbot. Only yeah, fair — more so. Marc knew that if he told you the full truth, you wouldn’t go home and take care of your mother. You’d want to stay by his side and fight with him. And then maybe you’d be dead now.”

Maggie gets it. And doesn’t. “Do you really think Trace had something to do with Marc’s murder?” she asks him.

He just stares out.

“Porkchop?”

“No one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of.”

“Quoting yourself?”

“Who better?” Porkchop lets loose a deep sigh. “It’s late. I’m going to bed.”

“You slept the whole train ride here.”

“But you didn’t. Get some rest. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“Suppose Trace is there?” she asks.

Porkchop’s eyes close.

“What will we do then?”

He opens his eyes, leans down, and kisses the top of Maggie’s head. “We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.”