Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

The line went dead.

From hotel to hotel, the trip took nearly nine hours, placing him in the Best Western’s arid lobby by six Sunday evening. He drove most of the way in a Toyota he’d picked up on an Antwerp side street using his key ring, then dumped the car just over the Swiss border in Basel, wiped it down with a towel he found in the trunk, and took an hour-long train to Zürich Hauptbahnhof, where the previous night’s snow had blackened into mud.

He gave his Tourism name to a demure desk clerk with tight, tired eyes and received an envelope with SEBASTIAN HALL scribbled across it. As he headed back to the front doors, he realized he was being watched by a man and a woman, placed strategically at opposite ends of the lobby, wearing matching dark suits, one clutching a Herald Tribune, the other an Economist. They watched him stop at the doors, where he read the note. One word: Outside.

He found a spot on busy, cold Schaffhauserstrasse, beyond the reach of some inconspicuous security cameras at the next corner. The two lobby watchers didn’t follow him out.

It only took five minutes. A gray Lincoln Town Car made wet sounds through the dirty snow as it pulled up to the curb. The back door opened, and a man not much older than him-maybe forty-peered out. That now familiar voice said, “Riverrun, Hall. Get inside.”

He did so, and as the car started moving again Drummond said, “We finally meet like civilized people.” He gave a tight-lipped smile but made no attempt to shake hands.

He was young for a Tourism director, and his dark hair was long enough to be pulled back behind his ears-far from his time in the marines. He had reading glasses in his shirt pocket and a broad, all-American chin.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Milo said, watching the lights of Zürich pass by. “You in town just to see me?”

“You’d like to think that,” said Drummond, still smiling. “No-Kosovo’s proclaiming its independence soon. I’m in for a little discussion with some representatives.”

“Should be heated.”

“You think so?”

“Depends on our policy. Serbia won’t take it sitting down. At least Kosovo waited until the Serb elections were finished. If they’d done it beforehand, the nationalists would have swept the vote.”

The smile vanished. “I wasn’t too sure about you, Hall. I got some wind about you causing major havoc last year. Enough that I wouldn’t have brought you back. You’re too…” He snapped his fingers, but the word wouldn’t be summoned. “Your Tourism career ended seven years ago with-the reports tell me-a breakdown. Then you moved into administration and-I’m just being honest here, you understand-and your record in the Avenue of the Americas was not particularly stellar. As for the way it ended…” He shook his head. “Well, you were accused of killing Tom Grainger, my predecessor.” He squeezed his lips together and cleared his throat. “Anything to say about all this?”

Milo didn’t have much to say, because, looking into Drummond’s smug face, he lost all desire to impress the man. He tried anyway. “I was cleared of those charges.”

“Well, I know that. They do let me see files now and then. It was another Tourist who killed Grainger.”

“Yes.”

“Now, that Tourist-him, you killed.”

“You seem very well informed, sir.”

“I’ve got facts, Sebastian. Plenty of them. It’s the messiness that troubles me. A Tourism director dead. A Tourist. Not to mention Terence Fitzhugh, the Senate liaison… suicide, if you trust the files.”

“Angela Yates,” said Milo.

“Right. An embassy staffer. She was the first to go, wasn’t she?”

Milo nodded.

“All this messiness. All this blood. With you at the center of it.”

Milo wondered if he’d really been summoned to Zürich to be accused of murder again. So he waited. Drummond didn’t bother speaking. Milo finally said, “I guess you’ll have to ask Mendel why he brought me back.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Something about budgets.”

Drummond stared at him, thinking this over. “Messy or not, you’re enough of a pro to be let in on a few things. Last year’s budget problems have intensified, and Grainger turning up dead did nothing for us in Washington. It seemed to echo all our enemies’ arguments. That we’re irresponsible and expensive, financially and in terms of human lives.”

“Sounds about right, sir.”

“Sense of humor. I like that. The point is that by now when we lose a Tourist we don’t have the resources to replace him. In Mendel’s estimation, you had at least been trained before, and all it would take was a relatively cheap catch-up course.”

“I was cut-rate.”

Drummond grinned.

“How many have we lost?”

“Tourists? Enough. Luck isn’t always on our side.”

That struck Milo as an entirely banal way to explain away the deaths of human beings, but he set aside his annoyance and turned to the window as they merged onto a highway, heading out of town.

“Last year,” Drummond said, “when things went sour for you, was there anyone outside the department who knew the details of what happened?”

“Janet Simmons, a Homelander-she learned a lot. I don’t think she got the whole story, but she’s smart enough to put some things together.”

“We’ve vetted her,” Drummond said. “Is that all?”

Yevgeny Primakov knew everything, but that was a treason he didn’t feel up to admitting. “She’s the only living person. She and Senator Nathan Irwin.”

“The senator knows everything?”

“Of course. He was the one behind the Sudanese operation.”

“You know this?”

“No real evidence, but yes, I know it.”

A pause. “Senator Irwin’s the only one keeping the department alive. I don’t think we need to worry about him. We can thank him for any operational budget we still enjoy.”

Milo realized with dismay that the senator was quite possibly Drummond’s government sponsor, the friend who had landed him his new job in Tourism. But all he said was, “Do all these questions have a point? Sir?”

Drummond cleared his throat. “Look, Hall. I didn’t call you here to play around with you.” He produced a looser smile, to show how human he was. “I called you because you did an excellent job in Berlin. I had my eye on you, you know.”

“So did the Germans.”

“You keep saying that. Did they have the German flag plastered across their foreheads?”

“German haircuts.”

“Well, I hope they didn’t take useful notes.”

“I’m sure they didn’t.”

“Good,” he said, then looked at his hands, which Milo noticed were unusually red. “I knew it was going to be a hard one. For someone like you.”

“Hard, how?”

“It being a girl.”

Milo tried to appear bored. “The job itself was child’s play.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. And the other job, the financial work?”

“Should be wrapped up by the end of the week.”

“Good. Because it raised some eyebrows in Manhattan when you requested that six hundred grand.”

“You have a pen and paper?”

“Check the armrest.”

Milo opened the leather armrest that separated them and found two bottles of Evian, a stereo remote control, and a pen and pad. He wrote down a twenty-one-digit code, and when he handed it to Drummond he wondered what kind of circulation problem caused his redness. Another medical question. “Here’s the account’s IBAN. Money should be there by Thursday. Harry Lynch knows how to withdraw it without leaving fingerprints. Is Harry still around?”

Drummond looked confused. He still hadn’t learned the names of his underlings at the Avenue of the Americas.