The Tourist Read online

  Why, he wondered, hadn't she shared this with him? Was it possible she hadn't trusted him?

  "So where does this take us now?" asked Einner.

  "Me," said Milo. "I've taken too much from you already."

  "You've got me interested now. We've got Sudanese assassinations, tech companies buying them, and disappearing Chinese laptops. What else could a Tourist ask for?"

  Milo tempered his arguments so that Einner wouldn't suspect that he was doing this for his own self-preservation, but nothing could convince him. Einner had started, in his words, "a job," and damned if he wasn't going to see it through.

  "So, where?"

  Milo wondered again if this was all a mistake. Not just bringing Einner along, but this whole chase. It occurred to him that, had he let himself be taken in Disney World, it all might have been wrapped up by now. Grainger's call had left him no time for reflection. He might, at this very moment, have been sitting in his living room, eating ramen noodles and listening to Stephanie's particular take on the world.

  But a Tourist soon learns that might-have-beens are a luxury for others. Tourism allows no time for regret, and in fact regret is a plague to the Tourist. So he put his regrets aside and said, "We're going to Geneva. Is the car filled up?"

  Einner rocked his head from side to side. "Wait here. I think it's time for a new set of wheels."

  34

  Tina sometimes had the feeling that she didn't appreciate things enough. She remembered how she'd been in Venice, of all places, hating the heat and dirt and packs of tourists and-yes-the oppressively heavy baby in her stomach. As if all those constituted the worst the world could dish out. Then she'd met Frank Dawdle and learned that things could get much worse.

  She'd let those opening Venice days go by utterly unappreciated. She was a genius at missing what was in front of her, and she wondered if, somehow, she was doing it again here in Austin on a Saturday afternoon.

  There were some parallels. Her significant other was gone in a puff of smoke, and she found herself sweating too much on her parents' back porch. Austin heat is not unlike Venice heat in that it's wet, sapping your whole body when you leave the protection of airconditioned houses. And, as in Venice, she was alone, just her and her daughter.

  "Lemonade?" asked her mother, sticking her head out the sliding glass door and reminding her she wasn't really alone. Not technically.

  "Sure, Mom. Thanks."

  "Be right back."

  Hanna Crowe closed the door to keep in the artificial cool, and

  Tina gazed at the brown crabgrass and two dying poplars recently planted by the privacy fence. This was nothing like Venice. In these suburbs north of Austin, water was a precious commodity, and land spread wide and empty. People lived separated by high fences. This was a completely different world.

  Hanna brought an enormous plastic cup full of iced lemonade and sat beside her daughter on the lawn chair. For a while, they just stared at the dead grass. Hanna looked younger than her fifty-six years, her skin permanently pink from the Texas sun. She often wished aloud that she'd been born with her husband Miguel's southof-the-border tan, but just as often praised her daughter's olive complexion for carrying the best of both worlds. Finally, Hanna said, "Haven't heard from him, have you?"

  "He won't call again."

  "Sure he will."

  Tina was annoyed that her mother couldn't, or wouldn't, get her head around this. "He can't, Mom. The Company thinks he's done something wrong, and he needs to show them he's innocent before he can get in touch."

  "But just one call-"

  "No, Mom. One call, and they trace his location like that," she said with a snap of her fingers. "He can't risk it yet."

  Her mother smiled sadly. "You know what it sounds like, don't you?"

  "Yeah, I know. Paranoia." Hanna nodded.

  "But it's not. You've seen the sedan parked over in front of the Sheffields', right? I pointed it out to you."

  "Friends of the Sheffields, I'm sure."

  "Then why don't they get out of the car, Mom?"

  Ever since arriving two nights ago, Tina had been unable to impress her mother with these details. Her father got it, so why couldn't she?

  "Well," said Hanna, "it's nice to have you here. We haven't seen Stephanie in months."

  Tina closed her eyes. How, really, could she expect her mother to understand? Both her parents knew Milo worked for the CIA, but they believed he was an analyst of some type, dealing with classified information that precluded him ever discussing his job over family dinners. They certainly never learned the true story behind their first meeting, never knew that he had been the kind of Company employee who sometimes carried a gun and even had clearance to use it.

  The men who shared time in the sedan by the Sheffields' worked for the woman who had abruptly ended their vacation. Special Agent Janet Simmons. Though her initial impression had been that Simmons was probably the biggest bitch she'd ever met, now, with a few days' distance, she could recall how Simmons had been trying to show Tina how reasonable she was. "Yes, I think he murdered Angela Yates and another person. That's why I want to bring him in. But why would he run, Tina? Can you tell me that?"

  "No, I can't."

  "Exactly, Tina. If he's innocent, I'm all for hearing his version. But I need him in front of me." She shook her head, and her wandering eye fixed on the far wall. "This sudden escape doesn't look good at all. Maybe you know something you're not telling me? Maybe you know where he's gone?"

  Tina, with all honesty, admitted she knew nothing, and over the past days she'd wondered just how little she knew at all. Even petty Patrick had his suspicions. Was that because he was such a miserable, self-pitying man, or was it because he could see what she was blind to?

  Her mother was saying something that ended with "… fresh tortillas right off the grill.”

  “What was that?"

  Hanna Crowe smiled and rubbed her daughter's forearm. "That new restaurant off 1-35. I was thinking we'd go tonight. What do you think?"

  "Sure, Mom. That sounds good."

  Miguel Crowe had been considered a big man from the time he turned nineteen and won a scholarship to the University of Texas to study engineering. Once he'd arrived in Austin from Guadalajara, he began planning for his future, making contacts with the oil company recruiters who visited twice a year. By the time he graduated, he had negotiated a position with Exxon Mobil in the Alaskan fields, bringing along his new wife, Hanna, who quit her comparative literature studies to follow her husband north. Tina was born in Nome, but by the time she was six, they had moved back to the corporate headquarters in Irving, a suburb of Dallas. He was the only Mexican national ever to have joined the board of directors when he took early retirement in 2000, amid a wave of national hatred for oil conglomerates.

  Upon retiring, he bought an Austin bicycle shop fallen on hard times. He expanded the store, rebranded it, and took out ads in the Chronicle for what was critically referred to by locals as "the Wal-Mart of cycle stores." There was irony all over his new business venture, and Tina sometimes asked how many local stores he'd put out of business.

  "Christ, Tina. I thought you'd be happy I was helping the environment."

  Despite his business ethics, Tina adored her father. Nearing sixty, he was broad and dark-skinned and from certain angles looked like a Mexican wrestler. When he was with Stephanie, though, all the business went out of him, and he wanted nothing more than to stay on the floor at her level, discussing whatever the girl directed the conversation toward.

  That morning, he'd insisted on taking Stephanie to see the store, but by the time they got back at two they'd also visited Chuck E. Cheese's and gotten some Baskin-Robbins for dessert, which had spread a dark stain on Stephanie's lime overalls. Hanna stripped them off and went to work on the stain while Stephanie searched for some replacement clothes. Miguel also disappeared briefly, taking the day's mail to his office, then wandered back into the living room, one of the envelopes st
uck in his pocket. Unconsciously, he flipped on their widescreen television. CNN informed them of stock prices.

  "How was she, Dad?"

  "She can charm anyone, that kid. I should use her for my negotiations."

  "Didn't feed her too much, did you?"

  Her father ignored that, but sat up on the couch, glancing at the empty doorway. He took the padded envelope from his pocket and tossed it onto the space between them. "Take a look at that."

  She lifted it and quickly read the scrawled address-her parents'-on the cover. She knew that handwriting. No return address. Inside were two crisp passports and a slip of spiral paper asking her parents to please hold the passports for T and S, Tina and Stephanie.

  "My God," she muttered as she looked at her own photograph beside the name Laura Dolan. And there was Stephanie, but now named Kelley.

  When her mother walked in, she stuffed the passports back into the envelope, as if this were a secret between her and her father, which perhaps it was, but her mother was only walking through to the bathroom for extra detergent.

  "What do you think?" Miguel asked once his wife was gone again.

  "I don't know what to think.”

  “An escape plan, maybe?”

  “Maybe."

  Miguel switched to MSNBC's financial news as Hanna blew back through the room, saying, "I hope you didn't ruin her appetite, Mig."

  "Just the ice cream, hon. We played games at Chuck E.'s."

  She answered with a doubtful hmm and was gone.

  He sighed. "I don't know what all's going on, Tina, but if he's looking to pack you and my granddaughter off to some other country, then he's going to get some serious shit from me. I'll not have it."

  "He wouldn't do that."

  "Then why the passports, Tina?" When she didn't answer, he started to channel-surf, muttering, "Some serious shit, indeed."

  35

  Because of its historical aloofness, Switzerland had never joined the European Union, but in a June 2005 vote its citizens chose to become part of the Schengen Agreement, opening its borders to the larger passport-free European zone. This made the trip in the Renault Clio hatchback Einner had picked up south of Paris that much easier, and they reached Switzerland in four and a half hours, Milo taking over the wheel after the third dark hour.

  While still in the passenger seat, Milo continued going through Angela's papers, using Einner's penlight. Much of it was peripheral-Rahman Garang's credit card records, articles on Ugritech's installation of computer systems in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Sudan, and, for no apparent reason, a daily summary from the United Nations Web site:

  HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING

  U.N. Headquarters, New York

  Wednesday, June 20, 2001

  U.N. Mission in Sudan Discusses Ways to Further Assistance

  to the Implementation of Peace Agreement

  • The UN Mission in Sudan, in today's briefing, notes that, over the weekend, the acting Special Representative for Sudan, Taye Brook Zerihoun, met with the State Minister to the Presidency, Idris Abdel Gadir.

  • Their discussion focused on a proposal to hold high-level consultations between the UN Mission in Sudan and the Government of National Unity to make the Mission 's assistance to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement more focused and effective.

  • Meanwhile, the UN Mission reported that yesterday, an international NGO-hired vehicle traveling in South Darfur was shot at by an unknown armed man.

  • On that same day in West Darfur, an international NGO convoy of two vehicles with five staff members was stopped by two unknown armed men, and the staff was robbed of personal effects and communication equipment.

  Following this was an article from, of all things, the Chinese People’s Daily, dated September 25, 2004: Sudanese government foils coup plot.

  Sudan foiled a plot by Islamists to overthrow the government on Friday afternoon, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

  Elements of the Popular Congress (PC) headed by jailed Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi planned to carry out the plot in Khartoum at 2 p.m. (1100 GMT) right after the Friday prayers, said the statement…

  That was three years ago; now, with the murder of Mullah Salih Ahmad, the rebellion was in the streets.

  It was hard to concentrate. The rumble of the transmission gave him an ache in his lower spine. He was still sore from his acrobatics and short on sleep. He wanted to call Tina, to hear her voice and Stephanie's. He wanted to know exactly where they were.

  Later, as he drove, Milo rubbed his face, staring into the midnight highway darkness. His mind wandered. He thought that in spy films or television shows, there was always a clear objective. A tape of a conversation that proved some important fact. A man who had the answers to a specific question. These stories were enjoyable for their very simplicity. The truth was that intelligence work seldom, if ever, ran in straight lines. Facts accumulated, many of them useless, some connecting and then disconnecting. It took a patient, trained eye to figure out which to hold on to and which to lay aside. Angela had had that kind of eye. He didn't know if he had it.

  "Whoa!" said Einner, rising from sleep.

  Milo blinked, then swerved the car back onto the highway.

  "You suicidal or something?"

  "Sorry."

  "Let me take over." Einner sat up; he licked his teeth. "Where are we?"

  "Just crossed over. Here." Ahead was a sign:

  EXIT 1

  GENEVE-CENTRE

  LA PRAILLE

  CAROUGE

  PERLY

  They argued over which hotel to check into. Milo wanted something small and inconspicuous, like De Geneve. "That flea pit?" said Einner. "Jesus, Milo. You want to kill us before we've had a chance to fight?" De Geneve was not a flea pit, but Einner had made it a habit on his unlimited Tourism expense accounts to stay in the finest lodgings a city had to offer. In Geneva, this meant the Hotel Beau-Rivage, overlooking Lake Geneva 's harbor full of yachts.

  "They track this car," said Milo, "and that's the first place they'll look."

  "But they won't find the car. You really do worry too much."

  "That's because I'm on the run."

  "Come on. Trust me."

  As he steered down Rue de la Servette, which led directly to the water, Milo almost laughed at that. Part of it was the fatigue, but more, it was a basic truth of Tourism that you trusted no one. Yet if you had to trust anyone, it had better not be another Tourist.

  They left the car behind the hotel. It was nearly one in the morning, but the harbor was alive with music and people. The activity seemed to wake Einner, who snapped his fingers to the rhythm of a samba emanating from a party boat in the middle of the lake.

  Einner decided to put their rooms on one of the five credit cards he had in his wallet, under the name Jack Messerstein. Once they'd gotten the keys to their adjoining rooms on the fourth floor, Einner whispered to him, "You go on up. I'll ditch the car."

  "Now?"

  "I know a guy who knows a guy. And he never sleeps."

  "Can I use your phone?"

  Einner didn't seem sure about that.

  "Don't worry," he said. "I'm not calling home."

  It was true. He was merely ensuring that Einner didn't receive new orders just yet.

  Before going upstairs, he checked the lobby phone book-no listing for Ugrimov. With a Dolan card, he withdrew a stack of Swiss francs from an ATM and asked a desk clerk about Roman Ugrimov, an old friend living nearby. Yes, he knew Ugrimov-a man with that much flagrant wealth couldn't go unnoticed. Did he know where Roman lived? The clerk, eyeing the money, shook his head sadly, but in exchange for a few bills directed Milo to a stunning-looking prostitute sipping white wine in the hotel bar. Thinking Milo a potential customer, she touched his arm often. Once he said what he wanted, she pulled back. "You're a cop?"

  "Old friend."

  "My customers pay for my discretion, Mr. Old Friend.”

/>   “Then let me pay for it, too."

  Roman Ugrimov, it turned out, wasn't one of her customers, but the circle of Geneva prostitutes in her class was small, and she knew a girl-"Very young, you know. He likes them young"-who had been to his place a few times. For two hundred and fifty francs, around two hundred dollars, she made the call and scribbled Ugrimov's address on a Lowenbrau beer coaster.

  The room was called "deluxe," and indeed it bore no resemblance to the hundreds of mid- to low-priced rooms he'd lived in during his life as a Tourist. The large bed had a headboard of romantic drapes; there was a sitting area with love seats; the whole room had an elegant old-world feel. The marble bathtub was built for two. The window overlooked the lake and pleasure boats and lights of the city. What a waste, he thought, being here without his family.

  36

  They skipped breakfast, and once they were under way Einner explained that he'd delivered the stolen Renault to a friend who ran a chop shop on the outskirts of Geneva. In return, the friend gave him a Daewoo that had been stolen in Spain, repainted, and registered under a new name with Swiss papers. For a cheap car, it gave a smooth ride, even along the mountainous northern coastline of Lake Geneva.

  "You look better this morning," Einner said as he drove. "Any fresh perspectives?"

  "Just that sleep is a good idea," Milo said, because that was true. It was more than simply being rested, though. It was this, reentering his old life so suddenly. He'd woken this morning sore, but feeling like he was a Tourist, and his brain had reverted to its old methods of boxing up his anxiety. It was a temporary measure, he knew, but a necessary one. It could only last so long before the anxiety burst out and broke him completely, as it had six years ago, nearly killing him. He said, "And maybe I'm starting to feel hopeful."

  "I'll bet the Book has something to say about hope," said Einner. He glanced over to see if Milo would share the Black Book's knowledge on this point, which Milo was happy to do.