Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

Was that enough? No, because Adriana’s story was bigger than a few lecherous individuals. She hadn’t been snuffed out by people as much as she had been cursed, from the moment of birth, by secret organizations. Her misery had been predestined.

He almost gave up. A large part of him wanted to throw up his hands and tell Schwartz everything she asked for, then return in disgrace to New York. It was another way of quitting Tourism. He could confess his weakness to Drummond and wait for the pink slip. Then the exit interviews. The discovery of his treasonous relationship with his father. The quiet bullet in the back of the head.

When she finished, Erika Schwartz offered another of her disturbing smiles and clapped her fat hands together like a child. “She was saved! Really, Mihai was a saint, or at least that’s what the media would call him if they got hold of the story. But you and I know better, don’t we? He was a chump. He gave up his own business for the life of a stupid little girl who shouldn’t have gotten on that bus in the first place.”

He wanted to shout Enough! but didn’t. Instead, he stared at her blue eyes and tried to keep his throat open and clear. He managed a single, brief sentence. “It’s a terrible story.”

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Erika watched him, admiring his coldness while hating it. Was this Tourist a lover, or not? “Terrible in its own way,” she said, “but if your name isn’t Stanescu, what difference does it make?”

He blinked his red-rimmed eyes, which were the only outward sign that the story was having a real effect. Then he cleared his throat. “I suppose you’re right. It happens every day. At least she was rescued.”

“Exactly,” she said, “but you know easterners-they don’t learn. You have to pound even the simplest lessons into their heads. Her parents, though they didn’t know the whole story, knew that she wanted to go to Germany. So they applied for a visa. And, finally, Adriana was in the West. Like every other kid, she went to school and made friends. She was foolish enough to think she had a life ahead of her. She thought that the past could remain past. Then, well, you came along. Didn’t you?”

He considered his answer. “Does anyone here have a cigarette?”

“Sounds like someone’s giving up,” said Oskar.

“Gustav,” said Erika, and the small man took out his pack, lit one, and handed it to Weaver. He didn’t seem to like the taste at first, but by the third drag was inhaling heavily.

He finally said, “I’m my own man, Miss Schwartz. Yes, I used to work for the Company, but that was a while ago, and I certainly wasn’t ever a secret agent-or whatever you think I am. You people are obviously convinced I’m something I’m not. I was just an analyst-I read magazines, mostly. It was the financial stuff that got me in trouble. They drummed me out, which was fine with me, but the pension plan was terrible. So I went into insurance-that’s something everyone needs, right? Well, not as many people as you’d think. Expats seem to think they’ll live forever. Or maybe they didn’t trust me. I’m starting to wonder about that. Can people see in your face that you’re a murderer? I mean, is it marked on there?”

It was disappointing. Would withholding the cigarette have made a difference? Probably not. It had just given Weaver a moment to reweave his idiotic story. She stood and gazed down at him. “Why don’t you watch some television? Heinrich, Gustav-please make sure he doesn’t doze.”

They nodded their assent, and she walked slowly up the stairs, Oskar behind her, impatient. No one said a thing, least of all Milo Weaver. She was starting to despair about her whole plan. Then she heard Rada Stanescu weeping on the television. It gave her hope.

Erika slept upstairs in her bedroom, while Oskar took a downstairs guest bedroom. Heinrich and Gustav took turns on the cot, allowing Milo to stretch out on the sofa, but even though they had cut off the sound the video loop of Adriana Stanescu’s media coverage greeted him whenever he opened his eyes.

In the morning, drinking coffee in the kitchen, Erika mused over whether or not to have another talk with Weaver before work. She decided against it. As she told Oskar, “This man will expect a morning chat-and I’ll lay odds that over the night he’s come up with something clever, some piece of information he’ll share with me. Something about our operations, maybe. Some information that looks like a favor. When I follow up on it, it will alert his people. So I won’t even go downstairs. I don’t want to be tempted.”

“What do we do with him?”

“Show him videos until I get back. I want him to remember every frame.”

Once Oskar had passed on the order to Heinrich and Gustav, Erika drove him back to his car in the Perlacher Forest, and they arrived at work fifteen minutes apart.

Everything she did felt like busywork. Even her noon conference call felt like busywork, and that included Berndt Hesse and the minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble. They discussed two topics: Sunday’s news that Fidel Castro had retired from power, and the minister’s conviction that the controversial Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons should be reprinted by German newspapers-an issue that couldn’t raise Erika beyond a dull ambivalence.

The one thing that provoked emotion was the BND operator telling her that Andrei Stanescu was on the line for her. She told the operator to please tell him she was out, and to refer him in the future to Dieter Reich. Again, the stutter hit her, and the operator said, “Could you please repeat that last bit?”

She had sent Oskar off to wait in the forest and was preparing to leave when she heard a voice. “Erika? Want to take a walk?”

She looked up from her desk, surprised to find Teddi Wartmüller filling the doorway. Surprised he had condescended to visit her office instead of summoning her to his. He was looking as elegant as ever, a black overcoat hiding his long frame, but he was tired, too. “Right now?”

“I’d appreciate it. I’m off to a black tie dinner in an hour.”

“Black tie?”

“American consulate, and they don’t appreciate lateness. Grab your coat. I’m dying for a cigarette.”

He waited patiently, watching her close the folder she’d been browsing and then work her way into a standing position.

He peered around the office. “Oskar not in?”

“Interviewing some new applicants.”

“Anything promising?”

She shrugged as she slipped into the vast quilted coat that hid her own frame. “Too early to know.”

“That’s how it always is,” he said pointlessly, then stepped aside so that she could leave the office first. As they continued down the long corridor, he remained behind her, which gave her the unsettling sense that she was being shadowed. He said, “This should only take a few minutes.”

“It’s no problem at all.”

They nodded at the front-door guards hovering around the metal detectors and crossed the empty lane to a small park on the edge of the grounds lit in the early evening darkness by lamp poles amid the trees. By the time they arrived, Erika was out of breath, and he suggested they share a nearby bench. She was very aware of her own weight when the bench creaked and sagged and Wartmüller had to take the far end lest he slide into her.

“So,” she said.

“Yes,” Wartmüller answered, then peered across the shadowy grounds. He licked his teeth and took out his Marlboros. “It was a nice trick, cornering Dieter like that, but I don’t think that’s the way we should be running things here.”

“No?”

“No. And I’d like you to give back the American.”

“American?”

He lit a cigarette, taking his time. “Milo Weaver.”