Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

“Uh huh," Milo said to passing trees.

"I'll show you. Unless you've got us housebreaking. You don't, do you?"

Milo shook his head.

"Fine. We'll get some nightlife, then." The trees gave way to houses as they neared the lake. "You know, you can tell me what happened back there. I'm working with you, after all."

But Milo didn't speak. It was Tourism, which taught him to measure the number of facts he let loose, and the fact that Tourism had become the root of everything. He still hadn't reached that next level of understanding. So he lied, because that, too, was Tourism. "Ugrimov was a dead end. Had to expect a few."

"And Ugritech?"

"If someone's using his company to move money, he doesn't know about it."

Einner frowned over this failure. "But at least we're in Geneva, am I right? And you've got the best guide you could hope for. We on for tonight?"

"Sure," said Milo. "I'll need to catch a nap first."

"Well, you're not a young man anymore."

They reached the Beau-Rivage by four. Einner said that while Milo slept, he would get his own kind of rest at a whorehouse he never missed when visiting town. "Very classy place. Clean. They treat you right. Sure you don't want a pop?"

Milo wished him happiness, picked up a complimentary Herald Tribune, and headed to the elevator. As he rose toward his room, he noticed at the bottom of the front page a photograph of a gentlelooking old man with a white comb-over and a soft smile. Datelined Frankfurt, it told of Herr Eduard Stillmann, ten-year board member of Deutsche Bank, found bludgeoned to death in his twentyeighth-floor office. Police had no leads as of yet. Milo knew, as he set the paper on his bed and began to undress, that they never would have any.

During his Tourism days, sleep sometimes happened this way. He'd run into a wall of information, and it would exhaust him physically and mentally. Not even Tourists can make so many connections in a snap. It takes time and reflection, like art. Milo was no better than the average Tourist, and when he woke and showered and dressed that evening, his mind was still ruptured by too much knowledge.

He wasn't even suspicious when Einner said, "I've got to head out in the morning.”

“Oh?"

"Call came. New pastures for this one. Think you can handle it on your own?"

"I'll give it an honest try."

He only lasted an hour at Platinum Glam Club, a throbbing pulse of slick nightclub on the Quai du Seujet, facing the Rhone where it flowed from Lake Geneva. Fifteen minutes in, he'd gone deaf from the techno music and the rich Swiss youth packed in around him, screaming to be heard. Lights flashed, lasers scribbled on the walls, and he soon lost track of Einner in the crowd that led to the dance floor. His entry fee entitled him to a free drink, but it was too much work trying to fight his way to the bar, where toned young men in spiky bleached hairdos flipped bottles to the agonizing rhythm of the music, as delivered by a certain DJ Jazzy Schwartz. He backed away, knocking into pretty girls with tall, multicolored drinks and short skirts who pretended he wasn't there, and tried to make it to the couches that lined the room. By the time he reached them, though, they were filled. He had no idea why he was here, so he worked his way to the entrance again.

With the door in sight, a girl with black, straight bangs and a silver lame one-piece blocked his path, holding a tall mojito between her breasts. She had a big smile as she shouted something he couldn't hear. He fooled with his ear to show the problem, so she took his neck with her free hand and brought his ear to her mouth. "Want to dance?"

He touched her bare, moist shoulder to show she shouldn't be offended, but he didn't want to dance.

"Your friend says you do!" she growled, as if catching him in a lie.

In answer to his expression, she pointed behind him. Over a field of well-coiffed heads, he saw Einner with another young girl-a blende as tall as him-bouncing on the dance floor, waving a thumbs-up at Milo.

"He paid already!" the girl shouted.

It took Milo a moment too long to get it-he was slow, after all-and he leaned down, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and said, "Another night."

She caught him as he 'started to leave. "What about the money?"

"Keep it."

He broke loose and fought an incoming pack of young men in gray suits and ties and finally climbed the stairs to the cool street facing the Rhone. His ears hummed. The crowd out here was nearly as thick, a riot of revelers the four burly doormen had deemed unacceptable. Some, however, were content with the street, and they shared wine and beers and cigarettes on the curb. A drunk girl spun in the street as her girlfriends, clutching cans of Red Bull, laughed.

A passing Mercedes honked at her until she happily jumped out of the way, and Milo began walking back to the hotel.

He'd forgotten how empty all this made him feel. Einner was still young. For him, the cities of Europe were a wonderland of music, violence, and casual sex. It had been that way for Milo as well… until it wasn't. Until he realized that the cities of Europe were like one city, a city with plenty of potential, but without variety. He never stayed long enough to discover the nuances that made a place particular. For him, cities were all part of the bright lights of a Platonic "city"; the where made no difference.

He rubbed his eyes and, at the lake now, crossed to the shoreline, the water black and almost invisible. It was all clear now, the fact he'd been unwilling to accept. Tripplehorn was one of Grainger's Tourists. Grainger had been controlling everything from the beginning.

He picked up a bottle of Absolut from a convenience store, got his key from reception, and took the elevator again-he was getting sick of its elegant, mirrored interior-and undressed in his room. He considered finding a hotel computer to draft some kind of message to Tina. Just a word to say he was all right. But by now, he knew, the Company-or at least Janet Simmons-was watching both her e-mail accounts. So instead he poured a shot of vodka and drank it down.

There was a slow, steady throb at the base of his neck that reminded him that his primary emotion was despair. You put a man on the run, take him from his family, and then show him that the one person he trusts has been using him, and the man starts to crumble-or the woman, as Angela proved back in 2001. The betrayal makes him desperate for something stable in all this, and the only thing that comes to him is his wife and daughter, who he cannot see, touch, or talk to. And without that family, it might as well be 2001 again, him standing on the edge of a Venetian canal contemplating suicide. Without his family, there was no reason not to jump.

Despite these dismal thoughts, Milo only drank that one shot.

He remembered Einner's change in orders and knew what he had to do next.

James Einner didn't get back to the hotel until three. By then, Milo had jimmied the door between his room and Einner's, packed his knapsack and stuck it in the closet, checked on flight times using the hotel phone, and lay on his bed, but didn't sleep. He heard the Tourist come into the adjoining room, heard him stumble against something and curse, then head for the toilet. Milo slipped into the room with his roll of duct tape held behind his back. "Get laid?" he called.

"What?" came Einner's surprised voice through the cracked bathroom door. "Oh. No. I thought you'd be asleep by now."

"No," said Milo, settling casually on the foot of Einner's bed. He could do it now, while the man was on the toilet, but he liked Einner, and didn't want to humiliate him.

"Hey," said the Tourist.

"What?"

"How'd you get in my room?" Shit.

Milo walked swiftly to the door, pushed it open, then kicked at Einner's hand as it swung the little Makarova toward him. It went off-a loud crash in the small space, a bullet burying itself into the tiles above the tub-and as Einner began to stand, his pants still looped around his ankles, Milo brought his elbow down, hard, against the younger man's shoulder. It knocked him back onto the toilet. Milo raked the heel of his other hand up against Einner's chin, knocking the back of his head against the wall. The Makarova clattered to the floor.