“Did you know that you’re my sixth wife?” Stanley asked as their DC-8 heaved into the clouds above San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport.
“Fancy that, you’re my sixth too,” Hilary Hadley said. “Husband. Plus I had a wife once for an op at the Carnaval in Rio.”
In signing off on the covert action, Eskridge had suggested Stanley “honeymoon” in Martinique for the usual reasons: A “wife” would augment Stanley’s tourist cover. In fact, any companion adds credibility-a mere nod of corroboration by a second party almost always causes the target’s trust-governing synapse to fire. In addition, women are better able to elicit information from the Breams of the world, which is to say men.
Hadley had the sort of good looks that were accentuated by a charcoal suit, perfect for the part of a businesswoman, though Stanley sensed a free spirit beneath the Armani. He knew that some of the most gifted actors were drawn to clandestine service for the opportunity to lose themselves in roles for months at a time.
Not everyone who could act could deceive, however.
“So what do you know about us?” he asked.
“My passport, driver’s license, business cards, and all of the charge cards weighing down my insanely expensive Italian handbag say I’m Eleanor Parker Atchison, forty-seven and proud to admit it, a partner at Lerner, Marks and Hopkins, the law firm about which I’ll go on ad nauseam before it occurs to me to mention that I also have been married for seven years, to you, dear, Colin Wesley Atchison, CFO of GleamCo, an industrial cleaning products conglomerate and a topic that gets your juices flowing much more readily than any aspect of your personal life, save golf. It is for your beloved pastime that we are currently en route to shop for a condo within a chip shot of Les Trois-Ilets’ Empress Josephine course, designed by the incomparable Robert Trent Jones. We already own an adorable hundred-and-twenty-eight-year-old farmhouse in Litchfield, Connecticut, like every Tom, Dick, and Harriet in our Park Avenue social set, but we rarely use it because we prefer the office on Saturdays, when the phones are quiet, people don’t stick their heads through our doorways, and we can get things done.”
Stanley was impressed with her command of her cover. Even better was her ability to act the part: During the remaining hour of the flight, as they wove additional legend to fit their operational goals, Hadley turned into Eleanor Atchison before his eyes. He particularly liked the way her speech became clipped the moment conversation shifted to their domestic life-this was a woman with more important things on her mind. Yet when it came to the circumvention of Internal Revenue property tax codes, she was effusive, as if narrating a grand adventure.
As the DC-8 began its descent to Martinique, she argued that the quality of the material and the stitching made her handbag worth the extra nine hundred dollars. Although the argument was preposterous, her conviction left Stanley convinced.
He found himself admiring the play of the silk suit pants on her long legs, like gift wrap. Glimpsing her diamond ring and her wedding band, he felt a twinge of disappointment, before realizing that, like his own gold band, it was just cover.