Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

“Wait a minute,” he said, and Milo heard him grunting, moving around his bedroom. “Yes.”

Milo recited the IBAN code he’d given to Drummond. “For your sake, I suggest you don’t share this with the press. Say the paintings were discovered by accident, by a passerby, whatever. Otherwise, half the museums you insure will start having trouble.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” said Jochem Hirsch.

“Twenty-four hours, understand? I won’t call again; you won’t hear a thing. But if the money doesn’t reach the account, then the Degas and Cézanne will be ash.”

He hung up.

The train brought him to the center of town, where he got some breakfast. He was famished, and as he ate he read a copy of Kurier someone had left behind. It was on the front page, which was surprising. There she was, a posed photograph, probably from the high school. Smiling as if nothing bad could ever happen to her.

Of course it was on the front page, he realized as he finished his meal. The Germans, embarrassed retrospectively, would have remembered that they had seen this potentially dangerous man talking to the very girl who’d gone missing. Evidence of foul play was all over it. Yet all Kurier said was that she had been seen leaving the school but had not appeared on the other side of the block, where her father had been waiting. There was nothing about Sebastian Hall or Gerald Stanley.

The Germans, he imagined, had checked in with the Company administrator that had put them onto him. Alan Drummond would have asked them to please keep it quiet.

His food settled heavily in his stomach, and as he laid down Swiss francs for the bill he took out his cell phone and typed out a message.

Check acct tomorrow this time. Will be offline until Saturday.

He sent the message, then turned off his phone, lest it receive an immediate reply, and removed the battery. On the way to the Hauptbahnhof, he picked up a copy of Le Figaro because he saw a photo of the dejected parents, Andrei and Rada Stanescu, dazed by photographers’ lights. The French newspaper had printed a translation of Rada’s public plea, which had been broadcast on German television:

I want to speak to the person who took Adriana. You know who you are. You can put right the wrong you have done to her, and to my husband and myself, by placing her somewhere safe now. You don’t have to put yourself at risk by going to a police station or a post office. You can put her in a church, or somewhere with a pay phone and money so she can call us. We’ll pick her up. That’s all you have to do to end this.

Milo popped two more Dexedrine, wiped some ash off his sleeve, and boarded the eleven thirty train to Paris.

By Friday, his anxiety had nothing to do with Adriana Stanescu, a possible mole in Tourism, the art extortion that was now complete (AP reported that a clinic employee had noticed the two paintings in the backseat of an abandoned car), nor even the fact that Alan Drummond would be fuming because he’d gone offline. Those were nothing beside this interminable wait in the Manhattan rain while students with knapsacks and cell phones passed him in pairs and solo. Those old worries meant nothing compared to this.

For the first time in months, he knew exactly why he was here. “Here” was the grounds of Columbia University, across from the high, majestic columns of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library on a drizzling but unseasonably warm afternoon. The trench coat he’d picked up at Macy’s that morning kept his body dry, but he was still shivering. He had resisted the urge for more Dexedrine; a clouded head was the last thing he wanted.

One thing that might have helped him now was self-righteousness, an emotion common to men who’ve been rejected by their wives. In some men it leads to harassing calls or intrusions at four in the morning, or even haunting a loved one’s place of work, as Milo was doing now. Self-righteousness had never been part of Milo Weaver’s repertoire, though, and if Tina came out now and told him to leave, he would do so without argument-he felt sure of this. Self-righteousness is born of the conviction that you deserve something from someone; Milo, on the other hand, didn’t believe anyone owed him a thing.

His crime had been secrecy.

Among other things, he had hidden the identities of his parents-his real parents-from her. Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Primakov and Ellen Perkins. One a Soviet spy Milo briefly lived with in Moscow during his teenaged years; the other, his mother, a 1979 suicide in a German prison, someone described, alternately, as a Marxist terrorist, a mentally disturbed nomad, or-as he thought of her-a ghost.

Milo’s lies (or, generously: omissions) might have been bearable had he confessed them on his own, but he hadn’t. Tina had learned the truth from strangers, and the humiliation had been too much for her.

Therefore, the fault was his, and reconciliation was something he did not deserve. He hadn’t needed a marriage counselor to tell him that.

Yet when, a little after five thirty, he spotted her trotting down those few front steps, phone to her ear, he had to stop himself from rushing forward to kidnap her. That was his Tourist side, demanding what he desired. He followed her around the corner to the car, where she hung up and got behind the wheel. He broke into a jog and appeared at her window. She was starting the engine, not looking at him, so he tapped the glass by her head. She turned and let out an involuntary shout.

Neither moved. The engine rumbled, and she stared at him, her green eyes comically widened in shock, her soft lips separated, one hand over her heart as if pledging allegiance. He wondered if he looked different to her, if the last three months had altered his features. He knew he’d lost weight, and in a rush of vanity he hoped it made him more attractive. He hoped-and the thought later struck him as ludicrous-that the man she saw through her window aroused her desire. The woman he saw aroused his.

She didn’t open the door, just rolled down the window-she wasn’t giving in yet. “Oh, shit. Milo.”

“Hey.”

“Well, what,” she said. “You’re in town?”

“Not really. Just a few hours. To see you.” When she didn’t answer, he thought that maybe he was taking too much control, being too forceful, so he added, “If that’s all right with you.”

“Well. Sure.”

“Are you picking up Stef?”

“Mom’s in town-she’s taking care of that.” She paused. “Were you wanting to see her?”

There was nothing he wanted more than to see his daughter, that single spark of Technicolor in his grayscale existence, but he shook his head. “Probably not a good idea. I have to leave again pretty quickly. I don’t want to upset her.”

He hoped she noticed how considerate he was being now. Not like last year when he’d demanded that they disappear with him.

He said, “Look, I don’t want to keep you.”

“Get in.” She pressed a button to unlock the doors. “I can drop you off on the way.”

He ran around to the passenger side before she could change her mind.

In the old days, he always drove. This was her seat, and behind them Stephanie would sit, asking inopportune questions. He realized that he had seldom watched her drive, and was impressed by how smoothly she pulled out of her parallel parking situation. She seemed to be doing just fine without him.

“How’s Little Miss?”

“She’s all right,” Tina began, then shook her head. “Not entirely. She’s been cracking her knuckles.”

“Who’d she pick that up from?”

“She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. It’s a nervous tic.”

Six-year-olds weren’t supposed to have nervous tics, Milo thought as he felt the desire for a pill. “She feels anxiety in the house,” he said.