Two Nights in Lisbon

 by Chris Pavone

I have never read anything nor even heard of this author before.  He has published several other action/suspense books.

In this book an American couple travel to Lisbon.  The wife has accompanied her husband on a business trip.  When the wife awakes in the hotel room she is shocked to find her husband is not there and within a couple hours she is in touch with the police to tell them her husband is missing.  She keeps trying to reach him on his cell phone but he is not answering. This seems a bit quick to react and the police tell her that.  She admits they have not been married long but that this is out of character for him.  Eventually she is able to see video surveillance which seems to show her husband getting into a car around 7 a.m.

She then goes to the American embassy where she is again assured that probably nothing is amiss.

Both the American embassy and the police investigate further and find that both the woman and her husband have changed their names.  This raises suspicion.  Somehow the CIA also seem to be involved so these three agencies start investigating further and tracking the woman's movements.  Eventually one of them tracks the husband's phone to a garbage can in a warehouse district so they think something bad might have happened.

The woman is walking down a street and a motorcycle roars up and hands her a cell phone.  The driver tells her to answer it when it rings.  She does so and is told that her husband has been kidnapped and she needs 3 million euros to get him free.  She and her current husband do not have a lot of money so the woman says she doesn't know where to get that kind of money.

We then learn that the woman was previously married.  While married to her former husband and associate of her husband raped her at a party at his house.  When the woman's husband doesn't support her in her grief and her desire to avenge herself on the rapist she leaves him.  However, she does confront the rapist, telling him she got pregnant from him.  He agreed to give her some money, which she has put in trust for her son, and she has to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

In order to get the money she needs she contacts her ex who tells her he cannot get her the money. She then asks him to get his "friend" to contact her.  The man reluctantly gets in touch with her and she tells him she needs the money and will break the ND agreement with evidence on him if he doesn't help her. He is able to get $2 million dollars to her.

The woman eventually pays the ransom, and gets her husband back.  They are interrogated by the police and decide to try to leave Lisbon.  They sneak out of the hotel, despite a lot of surveillance on them, and manage to make it to Spain.  They decided to try to book separate flights back to the U.S.  The woman is detained by the Spanish police at the request of the Portugese police.  The husband is not located.  The woman is shocked that her husband has disappeared and apparently genuinely upset at this  development.

While all this is going on a blabber mouth employee of the woman as told someone else about the NDA. There is also a reporter the woman encountered in Lisbon who has figured out the rapist is the man in line to be nominated for VP of the US.

In the end we find out that the woman's marriage was a marriage of convenience.  Her husband's sister had also been raped by this man (at 16 years of age) and has not recovered.  The two of them cook up the plan to marry, stage the kidnapping, with the money going to the man's daughter.  Their other goal is to updend the plans for the man to become VP.  As other people break the story the woman is not guilty of violating the NDA.

This was an action packed book, I have to say I didn't anticpate the ending.