Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

With the Gray meeting just a few hours away, it was easy to forget that there were more things going on. The shadows from Berlin and London, whom he’d never identified. Perhaps they were working for the Chinese, perhaps for the Germans. Or maybe Drummond was a liar, and they were working for him. Whoever they were, he didn’t want them around when he met with Gray.

He paid his tab and descended into the subway without looking back. He took a train to Deák Ferenc tér, then switched to the Millennium Railway-the world’s second-oldest subway-that took him back to Oktogon. Again, he joined the crowds on that busy square and worked his way around to Szondi, but continued past number 10, keeping an eye on the scaffoldings with the curtains of plastic netting. It was Sunday, and the construction workers were still gone. There-on the right side of the street was a particularly messy site, with loose steel bars that had yet to be pieced together. He parted the netting and went inside, grabbing a heavy, meter-length of pipe, and stepped into the cavernous, dirty foyer. He waited.

He didn’t know how long it would take, but he was willing to wait as long as necessary. In the end, it took a half hour. During that time, two residents left the building, and each time he took out his battery-less cell phone and spoke German into it, pretending to be an investor wondering where his workers were. Then, a little after twelve thirty, his shadow entered the building.

There was a moment-less than a second-when he had to examine the face from his squatting position. He didn’t want to brutalize some innocent Hungarian. In that moment the shadow, too, recognized him. Milo was prepared, the pipe already drawn back, and as soon as he registered the heavy jowls and deep-set eyes, he put all his effort into the swing. The hollow end of the pipe made a faint whistling sound as it arced along the low path, just below the knee. A muted thump and crunch as the shin cracked.

There was no dramatic pause. Milo followed through with his swing, only briefly slowing on impact; then gravity took over, dropping the man to the ground, the tails of his trench coat catching on the pipe as the screaming began, filling the old Habsburg entryway.

At first, there was nothing intelligible from the screams, and Milo straightened and held the pipe like a shotgun aimed at the man’s head. He waited. Certainly some residents would be waking to the sound, suddenly interrupting their lunches, but he ignored that. He stared at the man’s twisted, screaming face.

He knew, of course, that this was just a man hired for a job. A simple job that Milo himself had done many times. Milo felt nothing. This was just collateral damage.

He squatted again as the screams became more intelligible. Oh Jesus fuck, my leg! My leg! American. The man held on to his shin, as blood spilled between his fingers. Milo got close to his bucking face and shouted, “Who do you work for?”

“Jesus Fucking H. Christ!”

“Who do you work for?”

The curses continued, and Milo dropped the pipe and grabbed the lapels of the trench coat and dragged the man deeper into the foyer, close to the stairs. A long trail of blood streaked the dirty tiles. He worried the man was going to pass out, so he slapped him twice, hard, and repeated the question. He didn’t get an answer, but the shouting ceased as the man fumbled with his wet, flopping shin and moaned softly.

It had been a mistake. He could see that now. He went back for the pipe, then squatted by his head. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Finally, the man registered him with his eyes. He didn’t answer, but the eyes were enough. Milo held up the pipe. “I’m going to brain you unless you tell me who you’re working for.”

“Global. Security.”

Global Security was one of the smaller security firms that had received government contracts to ease the military strain in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hired guns, which told him nothing. “Who hired you to follow me?”

“How should I know?” the man shouted. His face was wet with tears.

A woman’s voice shouted from above: “Mi történik legyöz ott?” Milo dropped the pipe, and as the clattering noise filled the building he started going through the man’s pockets. The man didn’t fight back. Finally, he found the cell phone and began running through the call logs. “What’s his name?”

“I told you, I don’t know!”

“Your boss. What’s the name of your boss?”

“Cy!”

There it was-cy-three calls in the last two days. Milo called the number and waited until a male voice with a southern accent said, “You lose him again, Raleigh?”

“No, he didn’t lose me,” said Milo. “He’s right here.”

“Shit,” said Cy.

“Listen, I’ve broken Raleigh’s leg, but he’s not telling me what I need to know. Maybe you can. Otherwise, I’m going to kill him.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who’s hired you to keep tabs on me?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

Milo picked up the pipe and swung it against Raleigh’s broken leg. As the echoes of his screams started to fade, Milo returned to the phone. “You’ll tell me now, Cy. Otherwise, Raleigh dies right here. Then, over the next week, members of your family start disappearing. At the end of the week, I come for you.”

The boss made a sighing sound. “Don’t you think that’s overkill?”

“You’ve caught me in a very poor mood.”

“Fuck,” said Cy.

“Én hívja a rendőrséget!” called the upstairs voice.

A half hour later, Milo was back in Buda, joining the crowded, steep subway escalator up to Moscow Square as he chewed Nicorette. Faces passed him heading down into the earth, a whole range of faces, all the varieties of Caucasian. His anger had left, and with it the adrenaline shakes. Now all he felt was a stoic animosity. Why hadn’t he figured it out before? Who would give a damn about where Milo Weaver was at any time? Not the Chinese, and not the Germans. Alan Drummond didn’t need to track him all over the place. There was only one person who cared about what Milo was up to. Senator Nathan Irwin. He lived in fear that Milo would sit up one day and present the evidence that tied the senator to last year’s Sudanese debacle. Irwin, like any careful politician, was covering his ass.

For the rest of today at least, Irwin would have to depend on guesswork.

Moscow Square had the intense feel of a transportation hub. Teenagers met in small groups, others walked quickly to buses and trams, and small, dark men in leather jackets sold things from rickety tables and from beneath their jackets. There was something seedy about this open, triangular space, and the smell of fried food and the incessant traffic around its border just added to that feeling. The one blessing was an unseasonable warmth in the air, a premature spring day.

He browsed a magazine stand and walked the circumference of the square, stolidly ignoring vendors who approached with cell phones, Easter trinkets, shoes, and books. For the benefit of blue-clad Hungarian policemen, he kept moving. On one side, traffic jammed the roads leading around old buildings with billboards for McDonald’s, Raiffeisenbank, and Nespresso, with an enormous George Clooney taking a pleasing sip. The other side rose precipitously to Castle Hill, where tourists boarded squat electric buses to take them all the way up into that rarefied district.

A little before two, he chose a spot near the steps leading up to the castle road, stuck his hands in his pockets, and let his slack face be seen from as many angles as possible. No one seemed to notice him, or care. Everyone was heading somewhere or selling something.

Henry Gray approached from behind, trotting down the steps in a light, airy manner that was decidedly not Hungarian. “Sorry I’m late,” he said without any sign that this was a potentially life-threatening rendezvous; it threw Milo. He stuck out a hand, and Gray took it casually, a single pump before releasing.