The Tourist Read online

  "Company wire?"

  "State Department."

  "Are they looking?"

  "Well, you don't get these all-embassy alerts often. They're looking. Last I heard, a lead went cold in Istanbul."

  As they crossed the street, Milo felt a tug of regret for the Dutchman, whose phone had been a beacon for all the Company agents in Turkey. The feeling passed, though, when he realized that, by backtracking the Dutchman and his SIM card, they certainly knew that Milo had flown out of JFK and, within a few hours, when. "How about Frankfurt?" he asked when they reached the Opera doors. "Are you done here?"

  The Tourist checked his watch. "Been off the clock eighteen minutes. I'm all yours."

  Milo held open the door for him. "And you've got a car?"

  "I can always get a car."

  "Good." They entered the broad, modern lobby, and when Einner veered toward the opera cafe Milo tugged his arm and guided him through a side corridor leading past the bathrooms.

  "You know a better place for a drink?"

  "I know another exit. Come on."

  "Jesus, Milo. You really are paranoid."

  While Milo could only jimmy the doors of old-model cars, Einner had a more advanced tool at his disposal-a small remote control for power-door locks. He pointed it at a Mercedes C-Class saloon, pressed a small red button on the quarter-sized mechanism, and waited while it automatically went through possible code combinations. After forty seconds, they heard the car alarm bleep its disarming, then the doors unlocked with a quiet pop. It took just over a minute for Einner to start the car. They were soon heading out of town, and Einner said, "Where to?"

  " Paris."

  The destination didn't faze him. "We'll have to watch out for a couple hours, until we reach France. In case the owner reports this thing missing."

  "Then drive fast."

  Einner obliged, roaring out of town and crossing to the A3, which took them to Wiesbaden, where they switched roads and, after an hour, merged onto the broad, smooth A6 that would take them to France.

  "You going to share?" Einner asked.

  Milo gazed out the window at a highway landscape; he could have been in upstate New York and not known the difference. "I want to talk to Diane Morel, a.k.a. Renee Bernier."

  "The communist novelist?"

  "The very same."

  "And what do you expect from her?"

  "A little clarity. The Chinese colonel was the reason we came after Angela."

  Einner let this sit before pressing. "And?”

  “And what?"

  "And is there a reason you need my help? Really, Milo. You expect people to take everything on faith." Milo didn't answer, so he said, "You know why I'm good at my job?"

  "Because you're so pretty?"

  "It's because I think as little as possible. I maintain no pretensions about understanding anything. Tom calls me, and that's all I need to know. Tom is God when he's on that line. But you, my friend. You're not Tom."

  He was right, so Milo told him an abbreviated version of what had come before, including the quick end of his vacation and Grainger's secreted message to contact him. "Everything here, in Europe, really started with this colonel and Renee Bernier. I need to get my facts straight before pushing on."

  "Okay," said the Tourist. "What happens after Diane Morel enlightens you?"

  "I decide on the next step."

  Though Grainger had told Einner to help Milo out, all Tourists know their orders last only until the next orders arrive. For all Einner knew, in the morning he'd receive a call to kill his passenger, but for the moment he seemed satisfied by temporary certainties.

  Milo noticed that the owner of the Mercedes had fitted an adapter to use with an iPod. He went through his bag until he'd found his own and plugged it in. Soon the car was filled with France Gall.

  "What's this?" Einner sounded irritated. "The best music in the world."

  It was after four thirty when they crossed the European Unionized non-border into France, having seen three police cars but receiving no grief from any of them. The sun hung low in the windshield, sometimes obscured by a gray smudge of cloud in the direction of Paris. "We'll keep the car until tomorrow," Einner told him. "We'll find a Renault, I think. I'm trying to sample all of Europe 's brands before I finally buy one myself."

  "Tom wouldn't let you do that, would he? All the registration involved?"

  Einner's shrug suggested this was a concern for lesser Tourists. "I've built up a legend for a rainy day. It's good to get a few purchases on it."

  Milo thought of the Dolan legend he'd spent years building up. "Apartment?"

  "Little one. In the south."

  He supposed all Tourists did the same thing. The smart ones, at least. "So what was the trouble in Frankfurt? Were you teaching manners to bankers?"

  Einner chewed his peeling lower lip, wondering how much to share. "It's a dirty business, banking. But the job was straightforward enough. Get some answers, then get rid of the evidence."

  "Successful?"

  "I always am," said Einner.

  "Sure you are."

  "You don't believe me!"

  After a moment, Milo said, "To the Tourist, success and failure are handed out in equal measure. To the Tourist, successes and failures are the same things-jobs completed."

  "Jesus. You're not quoting the Book again, are you?"

  "You really should get hold of it, Einner. Makes the life a lot easier to take."

  Einner's drawn expression gave Milo a measure of satisfaction. He remembered his own Tourism days, the irregular biorhythms that would one day make him suicidal, and the next lead him to feelings of invincibility. He saw too much of that latter feeling in Einner, which would lead to a sudden death. If the only way to make him listen was to lie about the source of his lessons, then so be it.

  "Where'd you find it?" he finally asked, staring hard at the darkening road.

  " Bologna." Milo grunted amusement to make himself more believable. "In a bookshop, if you can believe it.”

  “You're kidding."

  "A dusty old place with racks up to the ceiling.”

  “And how did you get there?"

  "I followed the clues. I won't bore you with all the steps, but the final piece was in a Spanish mosque. Wedged in the spine of the imam's Qu'ran. Can you believe it?"

  "Wow," said Einner. "What was the final piece?"

  "The address of the bookstore, and the location in the shelves. On the top, of course, so no one would pick it up by accident."

  "Big?"

  Milo shook his head. "Not much more than a pamphlet.”

  “And how long did it take?”

  “To find the Book?"

  "From the beginning. From when you first made an effort to look for it."

  Milo wanted to assure him that the search wasn't easy, but also give him hope. "Six, seven months. Once you get on the trail, the search builds momentum. Whoever set up the clues knew what he was doing."

  "He? Why not a she?"

  "Find the Book," said Milo. "You'll figure it out yourself."

  29

  A half hour before Paris, the low summer sun disappeared behind slate clouds, and rain dropped from the sky. Einner turned on the wipers, cursing the storm. "So, where to?"

  Milo checked his watch-it was 7:00 p.m. He'd hoped to track down Diane Morel, but he doubted she'd be in the office this late on a Friday. "Angela's. I'll spend the night there."

  "And me?"

  "I figured you had a girlfriend to visit."

  Einner rocked his head from side to side. "Not sure if she's available."

  Milo wondered if there really was a girlfriend after all.

  Einner drove along Angela's street, slowly, to look for DGSE watchers. They spotted no one, saw no vans on the street, so Einner dropped him off two blocks away, and Milo jogged in the hard rain to the apartment. In the doorway, he wiped water off his face and searched the buzzers. At the bottom of the second column the name M. GAGN
E was highlighted with a scribbled star. He pressed the buzzer.

  It took about two minutes for M. Gagne-a woman, it turned out-to speak through the intercom. A wary "Oui?"

  "Uh, excuse me," he said in English, too loudly, "I'm here about Angela Yates. She's my sister."

  The woman let out an audible gasp, then the front door buzzed. Milo pushed through.

  Madame Gagne was a widow in her late sixties. Her husband, the previous superintendent, had died in 2000, and the job fell inevitably to her. She told him this in her claustrophobic salon after having decided that Milo truly was the brother of Angela Yates, even though Angela had never said a thing about siblings. "But she was the quiet one, was she not?" the woman asked in her thin, airy English.

  Milo agreed that Angela was indeed the quiet one.

  He said that he had come to collect some family heirlooms before the rest was taken away by L'Armee du Salut-the Paris branch of the Salvation Army-next week. He apologetically told her he spoke no French. He gave his name as Lionel, in case she asked to see his papers, but she didn't. Once she'd ushered him in for a small glass of wine, it became clear that Madame Gagne was lonely.

  "You know how I did learn my English?" she asked.

  "How?"

  "At the end of the war, you know, I was only but a small child. A baby, really. My father was kill by the Germans, and my mother- Marie was her name-my mother was alone with me and my brother, Jean. He is dead now. She found American soldier-a black man, you understand? Big Negro from Alabama. He stayed-he love my mother very much, and he was good to Jean and me. It did not last-these things, good things, they do not-but he lived with us to when I was ten, and he teached me English and jazz." She laughed aloud at the memory. "He took us when he had the money. Do you know that I saw Billie Holiday?"

  "Did you?" Milo asked, smiling.

  She waved a hand to temper his enthusiasm. "Of course I was only but a child, I understand nothing. She was too sad for me. For me, was Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Yes," she said, nodding. "That was music for me. For a child. Salt peanuts, salt peanuts," she sang. "You know that song?"

  "It's a wonderful song."

  As their conversation reached the forty-minute point, he tried not to let his anxiety show. He felt he must have missed a watcher, or maybe police cameras were being used, and he waited for Diane Morel and her handsome partner to break down the door and put him in shackles. But this, as Einner would have said, was just paranoia. Angela had been dead a week, and the DGSE didn't have the funds to pay anyone to sit in a car for that long.

  Besides, he liked Madame Gagne's stories. They touched on his particular nostalgia for that time when Europe was rebuilding itself, and beginning anew. The short-lived Franco-American honeymoon. The French had loved these American jazz musicians, the Hollywood films shipped over by the boatload, and the English pop music they imitated with the ye-ye girls that filled Milo 's iPod. He brought up France Gall, and to his surprise Madame Gagne immediately launched into a brief rendition of "Poupee de are, poupee de son." His eyes glazed over, his cheeks warm.

  Madame Gagne leaned closer and used her loose-fleshed fingers to squeeze his hand. "You are thinking of your sister? Things like this-suicide, I mean. You must know there is nothing you can do. Life, it goes on. It must."

  She said this with the conviction of someone who knew, and he wondered how her husband had died. "Listen," he said. "I haven't reserved a hotel room yet. Do you think that I…"

  "Please," she interrupted, squeezing again. "It is paid through the month. You stay as long as you like."

  She let him in with a long key, handed it over, then expressed surprise that the place was such a mess. "It was the police," she said in a bitter tone, then remembered her English: "Pigs. Tell me if they steal something. I will make the complaint."

  "I'm sure that won't be necessary," he said and thanked her for her help. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, "Before my sister died, did she have any unexpected visitors? Some friends you hadn't seen before, or workmen?"

  Madam Gagne's eyelids fell, and she rubbed his arm. "You live in the hope, I see that. You don't want to believe what she did."

  "It's not that," he began, but she held up a hand.

  "The pigs, they ask this, too. But in the day, I work with my sister. Her flower shop. I see no one."

  Once she was gone, he took a bottle of Chardonnay from the refrigerator, filled a glass, then drank and refilled it. He sat on the couch to think over how to do this.

  Do not sleep. Do not dream of Tina and Stef.

  It was a simple one-bedroom, but unlike most French apartments the rooms were large. Diane Morel's people had been through it, a blunt search that left the kind of chaos that police all over the world never feel it's their duty to set right, and he knew he would have to focus on areas they would have missed.

  Angela's search for the Tiger had been her pet project. She hadn't requested funding allowances, and she hadn't reported her progress to the embassy. So she probably hadn't stored her case notes in the embassy. They would have to be here-unless, of course, she had committed everything to memory. He hoped she hadn't been that brilliant.

  He began with the kitchen. Kitchens offer the most options for concealment. There were water and gas pipes, appliances, and cabinets full of containers. To cover his movements, he tuned her stereo to a classic rock station that ran the gamut from sixties chanson to seventies progressive. He removed all the dishes and glasses from the cabinets and pulled back the cabinet papers. He checked the pipes for loose joints. He fingered the undersides of the drawers and the table, then went through everything in the refrigerator, dipping his fingers into marmalade, soft cheeses, and ground meat that had gone bad. He checked the seams of the refrigerator and pulled it out to look over the tubes gridded across its rear. Finding a screwdriver in a drawer, he disassembled the microwave, telephone, and food processor. After two hours, as the stereo played "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground, he admitted defeat and proceeded to put everything back together.

  He didn't need to do this, but he remembered how clean her apartment had been last week. Despite being exhausted and dirty, he didn't have the heart to leave the place in chaos. So he took his time-he had all night, after all-and worked until the kitchen was clean again.

  Einner buzzed while he was taking apart the bathroom, and when he let him in the young Tourist handed over a greasy bag with a gyro and fries. He'd eaten his own dinner in a doorway up the street, watching for shadows. "Not a peep. We should be fine, at least until morning."

  Because Milo didn't want to spend too long at the scene of Angela's death, he gave Einner the bedroom. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep at this-he was bleary from fatigue-but he pushed on, settling beside the toilet and shaking the pipes leading to the water heater, then drawing his hand along the pipes' length. There. His finger caught the corner of a small aluminum box, the size of two thumbs side by side, magnetically attached to the pipe.

  On the outside of the box was one of those reproductions of old French alcohol ads that Europhile New Yorkers buy in poster prints to cover their living rooms. A bobbed brunette in a red Victorian dress clasped her hands together in excitement, staring at a tray of glasses and a bottle of Marie Brizard mixer. A slogan read, PLAISIR D'ETE, PLEASURE OF SUMMER.

  It was a magnetic key holder, and that's what it held. A single door key with a three-leaf-clover grip. There were no identifying features. He pocketed it and replaced the holder behind the pipe.

  He didn't tell Einner about the key. There was no point in doing so until they had the next piece of the puzzle, but nothing else turned up. What they were faced with, in the end, was a clean apartment.

  30

  Einner took the deathbed, and Milo slept on the sofa. Unconsciousness came swiftly, and in the late morning he woke with the sheet knotted around his sweaty body and the key pinching the inside of his fist. He didn't remember taking it out of his pants.

  They d
idn't leave until after noon. Madame Gagne appeared at the foot of the steps to greet them. Milo introduced his friend, Richard, and the old woman smiled sadly at Einner, as if he, too, had lost a sister.

  It was raining again. As they ran to the car, Einner declared that he knew the finest place in all of Paris for a proper American breakfast. Milo, however, wanted to get moving. "Twentieth District."

  Einner considered his wet windshield a moment. "You're kidding. The DGSE headquarters?"

  "She does work there, you know."

  "Yeah. And if our government's blaming you for Angela's murder, then the DGSE will happily hand you over."

  "Which is why I need your help. You have a gun?"

  Einner reached beneath his seat and pulled out a small Pistolet Makarova. It disturbed him that he hadn't noticed Einner put it there. "It's my backup. The one from yesterday's in the Main River."

  They took a lengthy route, heading out to Boulevard Adolphe Pinard, which circled the city. They drove south and took the exit for Boulevard Peripherique. After a roundabout, they continued down another lane until they had reached Boulevard Mortier. They rolled past the unassuming, rain-streaked DGSE building at number 141, then drove two more blocks to where, on the corner, Milo spotted a glassed-in phone booth. "Pull over here and turn the car around."

  The rain drenched him again before he could reach the booth. The phone book had been stolen, so he dialed 12, information, and asked for the phone number to the DGSE's central office.

  He was first put through an endless menu. It took five minutes before a male operator picked up. Milo said, "Pourrais-je parler a Diane Morel?"

  "Ne quittez pas," said the operator, and after a moment of on-hold Muzak, he returned and said, "La ligne est occupee."

  She was there, but on another line. Milo said, "Je la rappellerai," and hung up. He held up a finger for Einner's patience, waited another minute, then called again. The same operator picked up.

  Deepening his voice, Milo said, "II y a une bombe dans vos bureaux. Elle explosera dans dix minutes." There is a bomb in your offices. It will explode in ten minutes.