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.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
When she’s left alone, Maggie opens the griefbot app.
AI Marc appears on the screen with a smile. But it’s different to her now. Less potent. She’s not sure why. It’s like she sees the cracks and wires.
“Hey,” AI Marc says. “Where are you?”
“In a vineyard in Bordeaux.”
He smiles. “I wish I was there.”
“You’ve been here before,” she says.
“With you,” he says. “I’ll never forget.”
Neither, Maggie thinks, will I.
“Who picked this place for us?” she asks.
“It was Trace.”
“You knew back then that Oleg Ragoravich was building a facility here,” she says.
His honest answer surprises her: “Yes.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Did you enjoy that weekend?”
She nods. She remembers the morning sun coming into their room, the way it bathed his beautiful face in the yellow glow. Marc opened his eyes and looked into hers and they just lay there, in the bed, side to side, and Maggie remembers an old Joan Baez lyric, “Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there.”
“That’s all I wanted for us,” Marc says. “A weekend together.”
It’s a good answer, a nice line, but there is no way to know whether it’s true or not. In that sense AI Marc is no different from Real Marc. This answer might be Real Marc’s truth, interpreted through data and overheard conversations. But what had Porkchop said about the human condition? You can’t really know what another person is thinking deep inside.
And neither could any AI program.
“Is Trace in Bordeaux, Marc?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he kill you?”
The screen glitches. Maggie expected that. The griefbot doesn’t know it’s dead. It can’t comprehend its own death any better than a human. Sharon had warned about this.
As if on cue, AI Marc says, “I don’t understand.”
Maggie changes up. “This is a hypothetical. Let’s say you’re not Marc Adams. You’re an AI creation of him. You were created by my sister to comfort me because the real Marc Adams was murdered. Your data dump ended three months before your death, so you can’t know for certain. But you can look up the stories online. About your death. Study them, crunch the data, add in what you already know about Marc’s life. And then tell me. Did Trace Packer kill you?”
The screen freezes.
Maggie sighs and stands. Then from her phone, she hears Marc say, “The most likely scenario is that Doctor Marc Adams was killed as reported — during the terrorist massacre at TriPoint.”
“What’s the second most likely scenario?”
“That Trace Packer was involved.”
“How about...?” She stops, swallows, tries again. “Based on what you see, is there any chance that you’re alive...”
The screen freezes up again. Maggie pushes on.
“...that you faked your own death or, I don’t know, that you’re still out there somewhere, alive?”
She waits. But the screen doesn’t unfreeze.
In the morning, Guillaume and Élodie drive Maggie and Porkchop to Château Haut-Bailly. When they arrive, Guillaume says, “We have guns, if you want.”
“Will they do us any good?”
“Only if you want to get killed. We will leave you a bike and wait by the road with our top people. If you give the word, we can be there in minutes.”
Porkchop thanks them. He and Maggie walk the path in silence. She leads. Her plan is a simple one. When they get to the fence, Maggie signals for Porkchop to stop. He does. There are no visible buildings, just overgrown grapevines as far as the eye can see. Maggie moves along the fence line until she reaches the gate.