Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

The Ryans paused three times along that walk, and Milo photographed each encounter. The first was with an old woman heading in the same direction. Mrs. Ryan approached her and helped her cross the street. Then, after a moment’s consultation, the whole family remained with the woman, keeping to her shuffling pace. Next, a heavy white-haired man shook Ryan’s hand in both of his, grinning madly, his pink cheeks glowing. Ryan made a joke, which caused the man to erupt in fits of laughter, then patted his shoulder to send him on his way. The third encounter occurred outside a halal butcher’s, when a bald younger man stopped Ryan, shook his hand, and whispered something close to the side of his face. Ryan smiled broadly but didn’t laugh. As they talked, a bearded man in a taqiyah opened the butcher shop’s front door, and both men stopped their conversation to stare at him. Then the bald man left, and the family continued with the old woman past the Hampstead tube station to Church Row, where more Georgian houses led down to the crowd of parishioners entering St. John-at-Hampstead.

Though there were plenty of ideal aspects to passing messages in a church, the Ryans sat, without fail, in the front pew, a location that precluded any secret conversations. The only chances were just before services, or just after, as they greeted their fellow worshippers. From across the street, Milo shot pictures of Ryan’s various handshakes, then headed back to Heath Street until services ended. He took advantage of the opening shops to buy a pair of jeans, a jacket, and some sneakers, which he carried in a bright red shopping bag. As he hurried back to the church, he noticed a Hyundai parked halfway down Church Row, with a man in his fifties sitting behind the wheel. He glanced at the face and kept moving toward the church.

There was something familiar about it, but he couldn’t place it at first. It only came to him as he was taking shots of the parishioners again. The surprise, when it came, nearly made him drop the phone.

He looked up, but the Hyundai was gone. The driver had been one of the two in Berlin, the “Germans” who’d been shadowing him.

The existence of his shadow put a pall over the rest of the day’s surveillance. Had the Germans tracked him to London? Unlikely. More likely, they hadn’t been Germans in the first place, and it only proved that the file on him was more correct than Drummond knew: Milo wasn’t so clever after all.

He felt tense and exhausted by 4:00 P.M., when Ryan returned home for the evening. Still, he’d gotten his photographs, and in a pub, over a tepid plate of steak and kidney pie, he sent them to one of the phone numbers Drummond had given him-an analysis unit that had probably been pieced together from friends in the “war on drugs.”

By then, he had played and replayed his shadow’s face in his head, going over the previous months’ jobs, searching for some connection. Tourism, as Drummond had pointed out, is only as secure as its anonymity. The same is true for Tourists themselves. Their only real safety lies in their lack of identity, and when that disappears the world becomes far more dangerous.

Not just dangerous, but…

He stared at his plate, realizing that his shadow’s existence proved something larger than his own stupidity. He called Drummond. The voice mail answered. He said, “It’s no longer a theory,” then hung up. Within five minutes, his phone was ringing.

“What’s with the elusive messages, Hall? Is he or isn’t he selling secrets?”

“No sign yet. I mean the larger story. It’s not a theory.”

Drummond cleared his throat. “Some explanation, please.”

Milo tried. It was all about his shadow. Berlin, and now London. “Only the department knows my day-to-day location-correct?”

“Correct.”

“Well, if you really don’t have someone shadowing me-you don’t, do you?”

Drummond verified this with a grunt.

“Then someone inside the department is leaking my location, and has been doing so at least since Berlin.”

“Is the guy Chinese?”

“Don’t be simple, Alan. I just don’t see another way to explain it.”

He mused over that, humming. “Well, if you see him again…”

“I know. I will.”

The image analysts texted their reports on Ryan’s acquaintances. None raised any red flags, though one-the old woman the whole family helped to church-was unidentifiable. It was possible that Dzubenko had been mistaken about the day that information was transferred, or that the meeting time had been changed since his defection. Milo needed to be sure, though, so he returned to Hampstead Heath as the sun hung low, preparing to disappear, and rain began to fall. He checked the sodden ground along Ryan’s path and examined the two trees against which he’d stretched, but it was while he was crouched in the wet grass under the second of the three benches that he found it, and finding it surprised him almost as much as the German had.

It was a small USB flash drive, cleverly encased in two inches of wood, stuck with adhesive to the underside of the bench. A casual observer wouldn’t have noticed anything, and in the failing light Milo nearly missed it, too, but he was depending more on his hands than his eyes, and when he caught the edge of the wood he pulled and felt it break off easily into his palm.

He took out his phone, which contained a Company-installed standard USB port. As a light shower began, he copied the contents of the flash drive-three Word documents-then replaced it. He was soaking wet by the time he squatted among high shrubs farther down the incline.

The documents were encoded and unreadable, so Milo sent them to the analysts with a note for Drummond: From subject-no recipient yet. He pocketed the phone and made sure his view of the bench was unobstructed and clear (a lamppost illuminated the area), then checked the time. It was seven o’clock, cold and pouring rain, and he had no idea how long it would take for the drive to be picked up. It would be, he suspected, a very long night.

He was wrong. At a little after eight, a tall, elegant figure crossed the Heath, heading toward the bench. Milo brought the phone to his eye, zooming in. The figure paused by the bench and looked around. Milo lowered the phone and stood. “What the hell are you doing?”

Einner shook his head and walked down to him. “You must be freezing your ass off.”

“Get out of here.”

“Drummond thought you could use some help. You hadn’t moved for nearly an hour-he wanted to find out if you were dead.”

“He could’ve called.”

Einner didn’t answer. They both knew that Drummond just wanted to make sure Milo hadn’t abandoned his phone and walked.

“Did it pan out?” Milo asked.

“I found you, didn’t I?”

“I mean your angle. Did Marko’s story check out?”

“Yeah. And I assume that you sitting in the rain means yours is checking out, too.”

“Just waiting for the pickup.”

Einner grinned, then turned to look at the empty bench up the hill. He pointed at the nearby lamppost. “See that?”

“The lamp?”

“Yeah. Look at the top of it.”

When his eyes adjusted to the glare, he could make out three inconspicuous cameras atop the pole. He exhaled. “I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“Sure you do,” Einner said and took out his phone. After a moment, he said, “Can I get a visual on a surveillance camera? Exactly, baby. Just see where I am and there should be three to choose from. I need a bench.”

As he waited for the reply he shrugged at Milo.

“How’s it coming in? Great. Listen, we’re going to need IDs on anyone who sits there or fools around with it. Particularly the latter.” He covered the mouthpiece and said to Milo, “Underneath?”