Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

None of this, really, was a surprise. Just as he tried to keep himself grounded, his interrogators would only be interested in keeping him off balance, and for the next five minutes he felt himself slipping. Then the man with the mustache made his first mistake. As a Dutch newscaster with dour features discussed Adriana’s murder, he quietly came down the stairs, holding a crumpled slip of paper that had come from Milo’s pockets. It wasn’t a receipt. Heinrich paused the video.

“Excuse me,” he said as he unfolded the paper. It was hotel stationery. “I was just curious-who wrote this?”

Honestly, Milo said, “I’ve never seen it before.”

Heinrich’s open hand crashed against the side of his face. Milo took a labored breath.

“I’m telling the truth.”

“I know,” the man said, then brought the paper over for him to read.

The world was too blurry for him to read a thing. “Closer, please.” The man obliged, and he could now see that it was from the Cavendish, London. Below the name, in sweeping letters, he read:

Tourism, like Virginia,

is for lovers.

Turn that frown upside down, man.

It was followed by a smiley face.

Despite himself, Milo began to laugh. James Einner had a wonderfully idiotic sense of humor.

“Well?” said the man.

“I wish I knew,” he said. “It’s kind of lovely, isn’t it?”

Heinrich struck him again, but he hardly felt it.

“Who’s it from?”

“A secret admirer, I guess.”

She made sure to follow her routine and visit Herr al-Akir’s shop for her Riesling and Snickers. She’d noticed a change in his demeanor the previous evening, and it had taken her a moment to realize that it was the result of Friday’s irregularity. That idiot who had run in to collect her, foolishly calling her Director Schwartz. That was the only explanation for the heavy stare that flickered away nervously when she turned to meet it. Tonight was the same. The Guten Abend, Frau, then nervous silence as she trudged to the back to collect her wine. She placed her ten sixty-five on the counter and watched him tap at the register. “Herr al-Akir,” she said, “did the gentleman give you the five cents last week?”

He blinked three times, then nodded. “Yes. Your account is settled.” He handed over her receipt.

“Is there anything wrong?”

He shook his head eagerly. “Everything is very fine.”

“Perhaps you have a question for me.”

He seemed stunned by the suggestion. “No. No questions.”

She tried for a smile, even though she knew the effect her smiles had on strangers. “Good evening to you, then.”

Back in the car, she put Herr al-Akir out of her mind and focused on the road. It had been a quiet day. She had waited for a visitor from the second floor-not Wartmüller himself, of course, but perhaps some intermediary-to wonder to her face how she’d gotten Dieter Reich to keep her on the Stanescu case. But no one said a thing to her; in fact, she got the pleasant feeling that the second floor had been abandoned.

Though they’d exchanged no significant words since that three o’clock phone call, she had seen Oskar at the office. He came in after four looking exhausted and worked on his computer, filing nondescript vetting reports and running some of Erika’s errands. They had decided beforehand that nothing about Milo Weaver would pass between them in the office, no matter how safe they considered themselves. Which was why he stayed behind briefly when she left at seven thirty. While Erika visited Herr al-Akir, Oskar drove his own car into the Perlacher Forest and waited for her to pick him up.

He looked frigid by the side of the road, his Volkswagen parked out of sight, and once inside he fooled with the heater until it blew loudly. “You took your time,” he said.

“Had to pick up my Riesling.”

“I think you have a drinking problem, Erika.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Watching videos.”

“Nothing broken, I hope,” she said, because she had noticed the underlying hatred in Oskar once he had learned of Adriana Stanescu’s past. He was looking for someone to blame, and Milo Weaver was as good as anyone.

“Not yet. But we’ve still got time.”

Image

He knew something was happening when Heinrich, after receiving a call, got up and turned off the television. Milo had watched and listened to Adriana Stanescu’s multilingual story for, he estimated, four hours. Four hours duct-taped to a chair facing the video loop. Even now, with the television black, he kept seeing the grainy family photos, the stunned father and screaming mother, and the bare branches that led to her final resting spot in the mountains of France.

Of course, with repetition everything dulls, and the panic he’d felt during the first and second viewing had waned so that by this fourth (or was it fifth?) viewing he was more interested in his ability to predict the actual phrases and emotional outbursts. A memory game; a distraction.

The mustached man descended the stairs first, looking cold and perhaps ill. In his hand was a bottle of white wine. Then, much more slowly, a breathtakingly heavy woman followed him down. She gripped the wooden rail, making no effort to hurry herself, until she finally reached the concrete floor and looked around to get everything in focus. Her salt-and-pepper hair, thick and untidy, was chopped into a pageboy cut. When she got Milo into focus she started forward again and settled on the sofa, legs splayed, breathing heavily. “Mr. Weaver,” she said, producing something like a smile that could easily have been a sneer. Her accent was thick. “Welcome to Germany.”

The mustached man, no longer the authority in the room, began to open the wine bottle, using the Swiss Army knife that had been used to remove Milo’s cuffs.

The woman he assumed was Frau Schwartz said, “Heinrich, perhaps Mr. Weaver would like something to drink.”

“My name is Hall.”

“Perhaps Mr. Hall would like something to drink.”

Milo gestured with his chin at the coffee stains down his shirt. “I think I’ve had enough, Miss Schwartz.”

“Someone made a mess,” she observed. “Maybe we can get your hands free-it would be easier that way.”

“Yes,” said the mustached man, leaving the bottle. He clicked the corkscrew back into place and worked open a blade. He began to cut through the duct tape.

“Heinrich,” she said, nodding at the open bottle. “Why don’t you bring us two glasses from the kitchen?”

Heinrich headed up the stairs.

“Don’t cut him, Oskar,” she said, and Milo finally had a name for the mustached man.

For a while Schwartz just watched him, while Oskar worked on the duct tape. She produced that plastic smile again. “Mr. Weaver-no, please. Let me use that name. I am Erika Schwartz-that’s my real name, too. Have you some knowledge of me?”

Now that he had the first name, he recalled a fragment of biography from his previous life in administration. An antagonistic BND director who, to the Company’s delight, was being slowly sidelined within German intelligence. “No. I sell insurance for a living-are you in the business, too?”

She placed her swollen hands together, as if praying. “Let’s step back a moment. Milo Weaver, thirty-seven years old. Employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.” She held up a hand when Milo started to protest. “Until last year, you were in administration, and your records were semipublic. So we know some things about you. You have an apartment in Newark, New Jersey. You have a family-a wife, Tina, and a daughter named Stephanie-who live in Brooklyn. But you haven’t seen them much recently because you’ve been traveling in Europe under the name Sebastian Hall. Except for one known instance, in December, when, under your real name, you went to Budapest.”