“I thought you’d want to know what was happening,” Bennett said as he jotted down notes about the Legion: “founded in ’71, funded by drug money… ”
“I don’t,” she said in a seductive whisper.
“You don’t?” he asked, turning to look at her now.
“Nope.”
Jon hit the Mute button. “You are the same woman I married yesterday, right?”
“I say we go through political detox,” Erin said softly. “No talking about the news. No watching the news. No papers. No magazines. No BlackBerrys. No checking our voice mail or e-mail for the entire honeymoon. Let’s go cold turkey.”
“Cold turkey?” he asked, bewildered.
“It’s better than cold showers, right?” She smiled.
Now he was completely confused. “But yesterday, you practically wanted to… ”
Erin leaned forward and put her finger to his lips. “That was yesterday,” she whispered. “Now I know what I’ve been missing all these years.” She caressed his face. “This is the only honeymoon we’re ever going to get. Who knows how much time we’ve got left? Let’s enjoy it.”
Bennett didn’t need to be asked twice. The world would have to wait.
They ate a long, lingering breakfast in bed.
Then they showered, dressed casually, and took a car service to Washington Dulles Airport. For their honeymoon, Bennett had promised to surprise Erin. And sure enough, she was surprised.
With their bags packed, they were standing in front of the Departures board when Bennett asked, “So, where would you like to go?”
“I’m sorry?” asked Erin.
“Where would you like to go?” he repeated.
“What are you talking about?”
“Name a place — anyplace in the world — and that’s where I’ll take you.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you were going to surprise me.”
“I am. You can go anywhere in the world!”
Erin just looked at him for a moment, not sure whether to laugh or to punch him in the nose. No plane tickets? No destination? No hotel reservations? Nothing? What kind of honeymoon was that? What kind of…
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jon said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you really don’t.”
“Yes, I really do.”
“All right, Mr. Know-It-All, what am I thinking?”
“You’re thinking, What kind of moron surprises his new bride with no tickets, no reservations, zip, zilch, nada, nothing?”
All right, maybe he did know what she was thinking. But that still didn’t excuse…
Bennett suddenly pulled out his BlackBerry.
“Hey, I thought we weren’t going to use those on our honeymoon,” Erin said.
“I’ve got my travel agency on standby. They’re ready to make all the arrangements. Just name the destination, and they’ll have first-class tickets within minutes, the ritziest accommodations, the finest service, all the amenities, and no one will even know where we are.”
Erin thought about that for a moment. She had never had the time, or the money, or the freedom to just look at a Departures board and pick any place in the world to go. Nor had she ever had someone to share it, even if it had been possible.
But now, for the first time in her life, time wasn’t an issue. They didn’t have jobs. They didn’t have kids or a care in the world. No one was counting on them for anything but a postcard. Cost wasn’t an object either. They had money in the bank from Jon’s years on Wall Street—$22 million and change, to be precise. Why not go a little crazy? They could be gone for a week or a month or a year or more, if they wanted. Let Corsetti and Rajiv and Costello handle the nightmares. The Bennetts had served their time, and they were done.
“Anywhere?” Erin asked again, just to be sure.
“Anywhere,” Bennett said.
She kissed him on the cheek and said, “Ronda.”
The little resort town held a special place in her heart.
Nestled in the hills of southern Spain, Ronda was the birthplace of Spanish bullfighting, an occasional home for Ernest Hemingway at the peak of his writing career, and more importantly, the last place Erin had vacationed with her parents as a little girl before her father was killed in the mountains east of Kabul. It was quiet and serene and filled with bittersweet memories of the perfect life that once was hers. She had never mentioned it to Jon.
A few minutes later, Jon was off the phone. He took her by the hand and led her to the British Airways desk. There he handed over his credit card, purchased two first-class tickets, and explained the journey ahead.
“If it pleases you, my lady,” Bennett began, “we will board Flight 918 aboard a Boeing 747, leaving Washington at 6:10 p.m. and landing at London Heathrow at 6:20 tomorrow morning. There, we will transfer to British Airways Flight 6982—an Airbus A320—leaving at 7:55 a.m. local time for Málaga on the southern coast of Spain, better known as the Costa del Sol. When we touch down in Málaga at 11:35 a.m. local time, we will be picked up by a limousine and driven to the lovely mountain resort town of Ronda, which, I might add, is the birthplace of Spanish bullfighting. I’ve reserved the honeymoon suite at the city’s most beautiful hotel, the Husa Reina Victoria de Ronda. Our room overlooks the mountains of Andalusia and will be filled with roses and the best champagne in the country. How does all that sound?”
“Magical,” said Erin, her eyes sparkling.
6
Barry Jaspers was a desperate man.
He glanced at his watch again and kicked a stray shoe across the bedroom floor. He had already finished packing his suitcase and had stuffed his briefcase with research papers that still needed grading. But no keys meant no car. No car meant no flight. He certainly didn’t have the time to call for a cab if he was going to get to LAX in time for the 8:35 nonstop to Washington Dulles. So Jaspers bit his lip and kept hunting.
His wife, Leigh Ann, turned over and pulled the covers over her head. The last thing he wanted was to wake her. At forty-three, she was six months pregnant with “The Surprise” and needed all the sleep she could get.
Jaspers, known to most of his friends simply as Professor, was just shy of his fifty-eighth birthday. A widower before he met Leigh Ann, he had two grown sons and had been sure he was done with bottles and diapers. Now he was back at the starting line. His colleagues on campus were giving him a hard time. The truth was it had been a long time since there had been a baby in his arms, and the idea of going through it one more time with Leigh Ann, the woman who had rescued his heart and soul from the depths of despair, actually excited him, though he was loath to admit it to anyone else. He had not exactly been the best father to his boys. But maybe this time he could do it right. He certainly wanted to try.
For now, though, all he wanted was to find his keys. He had already checked the bedroom and the master bath. He raced back downstairs to the kitchen, checking drawers and counters and Leigh Ann’s purse in an increasingly frantic hunt.
Jaspers cursed himself for booking a morning flight. Ever since his days as an undergraduate, he had hated getting up early. Back then, of course, it was because he was too hungover to get out of bed before noon. Now he was just getting old and lazy. He hated rush-hour traffic. He hated long security lines at the airport. The only thing he hated more was funerals. But what choice did he have? If he was going to make the viewing this evening and the memorial service tomorrow, he had to catch this flight.