Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

Through his sobs, Andrei Stanescu said, “I call him and I call him but he doesn’t answer. Herr Reich isn’t answering.”

“I’m sorry, but I told you before-I’m not on the case anymore. Trust me, Herr Reich is working diligently on it.”

“I need answers-can’t you see? I am dying!”

“You should go home.”

“Where is the man?”

“Herr Reich? He-”

“No!” he shouted, anger suddenly replacing that deep sadness. “The other man! In the picture! The one that kill her!”

“That was a mistake,” she told him, and Hasad noticed that now only one bottle was in her hand, and she held it upside-down, like a club. He moved to the left and, below the counter, gripped a heavy nightstick he kept for emergencies. She said, “It happens sometimes.

Yes, he talked to your daughter, but he had nothing to do with her kidnapping.”

“Don’t tell me that!” shouted Andrei Stanescu. He marched toward the front of the store, toward Hasad, but only stared at Director Schwartz. As he rounded the end of the aisle, effectively blocking her exit, Hasad caught the heady stink of some brandy all over him.

“What are you doing?” Director Schwartz asked calmly.

“I’m sick!” he said. “I am sick of all… of Germans. Of you. You think I am a stupid immigrant what listens happy to all your lies. I’m not. No one cares about a little girl who is killed by the man in that picture. No one!”

“I assure you, Herr Stanescu-”

“Assure, assure! I’m sick of all that assure! I’m dying. You tell me now where is that Russian and I will take care of it myself.”

“Herr Stanescu,” she said, her voice firmer now, “you have to get him out of your head. He was a tourist, asking Adriana for directions. He’s not even Russian.”

That seemed to take some of the wind out of him; from behind, Hasad saw his shoulders sink. “Not Russian?”

“No,” she said gently. “He’s American.”

“American?”

Hasad loosened his grip on the nightstick.

“But then who did it?” Stanescu asked, returning to his pitiful demeanor.

Director Schwartz blinked at him, then pursed her lips. “I’ll tell you what. In the morning I’ll sit down with Herr Reich and go through the case with him. Then I’ll call you at home and tell you everything I’ve learned.”

Andrei Stanescu, defeated, stared at the tiled floor. “I do not believe you.”

“Of course you don’t,” she told him, “but I am being honest. Herr Reich took over the case because it was considered that important. If he’s not answering your calls it’s because he’s busy tracking leads. Tomorrow, I will find out his progress and report it to you. But you have to go. Now. Do you understand?”

He shook his head; he understood nothing.

“In a couple of minutes men are going to come through that door, and if you’re still here they’ll arrest you. When you started yelling I pressed a panic switch,” she said and opened her free hand to reveal a key ring with a button attached to it. “If you’re gone when they arrive, I’ll tell them that pressing it was an accident.”

Stanescu raised his head.

“Do we have a deal?”

He nodded.

“Expect my call around ten. If I haven’t called by eleven, you call me. Okay?”

Andrei Stanescu didn’t nod again, just turned around. In his face Hasad saw not hope but the indistinct despair he knew from his own immigrant circles, often when jobs had been lost or residency applications turned down. He shuffled to the doors, which opened automatically for him, and slipped off into the night.

He hadn’t, until then, realized that he’d been holding his breath. He met Director Schwartz’s eyes as she picked up her second bottle from the shelf and brought both to the counter. “Well,” she said.

“Should I call the police?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He’s just grieving. There’s no need to make his life any worse than it is.”

“You handled that very well.”

“Thank you, Herr al-Akir. But he was never dangerous.”

He began to ring up the wines. “And the Snickers?”

“Not to night. I might try to lose some weight.”

“Good luck with that, Director Schwartz.”

He took her money and watched her head for the doors before calling out, “And the men? Should I expect them soon?”

“Men?” she said, turning back.

“The ones you called.”

“Oh!” She smiled, took out her key ring, and pointed it through the open doors. She pressed, and her Volvo winked in reply.

Heading down on the elevator, on his way to meet his wife for dinner, Alan Drummond felt an unfamiliar emotion that Wednesday after noon: satisfaction. It wasn’t the pleased satisfaction of someone who’s just finished a particularly good meal or some fulfilling sexual act, but the satisfaction of someone who’s spent too much time dissatisfied and has finally gone through a twenty-four-hour period largely free of disappointments.

Rebuilding the Department of Tourism had taken only four days. The technicians who had removed the computers and disassembled the cubicles had kept detailed records of where each had come from, and it was just a matter of repeating the procedure in reverse. There were glitches, of course. Human error. A couple of Travel Agents ended up with the wrong computers, but instead of bringing in the technicians again Drummond had them switch cubicles. By then the remaining thirty-eight Tourists had been redeployed, and while most were able to continue their previous assignments, seven had to abandon them and begin new ones. One, though, was less lucky. Her sudden disappearance was badly timed, and when she returned to Jakarta a welcoming committee was waiting for her at Soekarno-Hatta International; twelve hours later she was confirmed dead.

Though the number of Tourists was still dreadfully low, during the four days since their redeployment only that one had been lost, and they’d gained two more from the ranks of the Travel Agents, both of whom were now suffering through training at the Point. The memory of the Guoanbu’s game still haunted him, particularly as he thought of those five Tourists-Stanley, Gupta, Mobuku, Martinez, and Yuan-who had been lost during the Myrrh recall. Among those who were left, though, significant work had been done, and not just the miserable work of keeping the department above water. Two terrorist cells-one Pakistani, one Saudi-had been infiltrated; three nuisances (Syrian, Moroccan, and Palestinian) had been liquidated; a Tourist had acquired choice intelligence about Hugo Chávez’s government during the resolution of the Andean crisis between Ec ua dor, Colombia, and Venezuela; and one Tourist had even saved the lives of two French journalists in Najaf. That was positive work, progress, and it proved that Milo Weaver was a shortsighted fool. Despite his years in administration, Weaver had an incomprehensible misunderstanding of how compromise was necessary in order to do the good work.

The department had even survived Director Ascot, who had gotten wind of the mole hunt from God-Only-Knew-Who. Nathan Irwin dreamed up the lie to save them: “It’s simple, Alan. You tell that bastard that since taking over you’ve grown disgusted by the lax security in the department, and the only way to deal with it was to bring everyone back to New York and give them new identities. You needed the fake mole hunt to justify the recall.”

The fact that the lie worked beautifully had the ironic effect of making him and Irwin partners in crime. Ironic, because Irwin had savagely fought Drummond’s appointment to head Tourism. That was politics for you.

By Friday, though, Irwin and his nosy staff would be out of his hair, and he would be free of the perpetual oversight.