Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Delun. His son. You know about him, right?”

Milo’s scalp began to itch, but he resisted scratching. “Go on.”

“Killed last year. In the Sudan. He was working for Sinopec, the Chinese oil company, and got swept up in one of those riots triggered by the murder of Mullah Salih Ahmad. The murder you guys did.” When Milo didn’t answer, he added, “Machete. He was chopped up by men with machetes.”

It was a simple fact, something that a little more research would have revealed-research that Milo had been too distracted to perform.

It changed everything.

The man he so admired, the cool, complicated spymaster directing all the action from abroad was not so cool after all. He was driven in the same way Milo would be driven if someone ever did anything to Stephanie. He wasn’t ruled by ideology or nationalism or even the pleasure of the game, not at the moment. Revenge motivated him, and in that case all predictions went out the window. There were plenty of rules governing espionage, but no rules regulating revenge.

And then…

Milo said, “Does he know you’ve been picked up?”

Pearson gazed up at him with huge eyes. “I hope Li told him.”

“Li knows?”

“Well, he was here in the airport, wasn’t he? Saw those goons around the X-ray machine cart me off.”

Milo wasn’t sure of anything now. Wasn’t sure what Zhu was thinking, nor even what he himself was thinking. He only felt a cool panic stutter into his body. Zhu knew so much more than they did, and had been ahead of them every step of the way. Now-

“Myrrh,” Milo said, almost shouting, as he turned to the observation window.

Drummond’s voice came disembodied from the darker room. “What?”

Milo pushed open the door to find them all-Drummond, Jones, Klein, Irwin-staring at him. He focused on Drummond. “Now. Order them all back. Zhu knows we’re going to recall all the Tourists as soon as possible. Their names and codes are the most important thing he’s gotten out of this. He might not give them up so easily.”

Drummond didn’t react at first, only stared. Then he took out his phone and called the office and told the night staff exactly what to do. His hands, Milo noticed, were beet red and trembling.

It was after three in the morning, and talking to Pearson was exhausting him. He’d learned, in generalities, that Pearson’s cooperation with Zhu had begun three years before, with an offer of money. There was nothing to pull at the heartstrings in his story. Pearson was simply a man who wanted more, who enjoyed the clandestine games that came with the job description. He met semiregularly with Li, who as far as Pearson knew had no direct involvement with the embassy, and passed on files and discussed office gossip. Over the last year, though, since his son’s death, Zhu had begun to demand more information, particularly on Tourism, which Pearson had assured him was responsible for the Sudanese unrest. Finally, in December, Zhu showed up in Washington and met Pearson face-to-face to explain that his requests had a personal nature to them, and they agreed on a new payment rate, deposited into a Cayman bank, to prepare for Pearson’s move into the Department of Tourism itself. “It was a lot of money-more than I’d even asked for. He wanted the whole farm.”

“So that’s what you gave him?”

“I’m a traitor, but I’m not a corrupt capitalist. I give a fair return.”

As if on cue, Drummond walked in, gripping his phone. He said, “Go ahead.”

“What?”

Drummond couldn’t speak. He gave Milo the telephone and walked out again, slamming the door behind himself. “Hello?” Milo said into it.

“Uh, where is Mr. Drummond?” asked a young female voice.

“He just handed you to me. What’s going on?”

“It’s the phones, sir. They’re all off.”

“They? Who?”

“The phones,” she repeated. “All the Tourists, except three, have gone black. I’ve contacted them directly with the Myrrh code, but the rest… I don’t know what to do. They’ve all turned off their cells.”

“You still know where they are,” Milo reminded her.

“Of course, but there’s no way to contact them.”

“Thank you,” Milo said and hung up. He felt an urge to throw himself across the stained table and strangle Pearson. Instead, he returned to the observation room and told Klein and Jones to turn on their Company phones. “Right now, please.”

There were a few seconds of silence as they reassembled and powered up their phones; the small room suddenly came alive with start-up melodies, then the beep-beep of messages received.

Each had an identical message, “Myrrh, myrrh,” which had been sent more than an hour before that moment. Each also had another message, sent twenty minutes before the Myrrh code. Jones’s read:

L: Stanley Wallis, Kasr el Madina Hotel, Cairo. Total silence.

The L stood for liquidate, and “total silence” meant that Jones should disassemble her phone and refuse all outside communication until the job was done. Klein’s message was identical, though it pointed him to Peter Schiffer, Hotel Belle Epoque, Bern.

Drummond verified that Stanley Wallis and Peter Schiffer were Tourists, muttering under his breath that Schiffer was the new work name for James Einner. Then he got down on his knees, sat, and lay back, flat on the grimy tile floor, eyes shut. “Holy shit,” he said to no one in particular. “He’s making us kill ourselves.”

Irwin, Milo noticed, was in a near-fetal position in his chair, eyes open and round. Only Jones and Klein, the two Tourists, seemed to be holding it together.

Even Milo felt himself starting to lose it. Throughout the world at that moment, thirty-seven men and women had just received orders to murder one another. Any time now the killings would begin, and there was nothing any of them could do about it.

Drummond sat up but remained on the floor, looking as if he’d just woken. He sighed loudly. “So, Milo. Is he still your hero?”

Milo wasn’t listening. He wanted to be far away. He wanted to be home. He took out Drummond’s phone and dialed an international phone number, and by the third ring Erika Schwartz picked up.

“It’s done,” he told her. “Alan will mail the tape. For Wartmüller, go to Lugano, to this address,” he said and gave her a street and number. “Garage number six, combination 54-12-35. It’s probably not what you expect, but with a little creativity you can end his career with it.”

Schwartz said, “You sound terrible, Milo. There were problems?”

“Oh, no, Erika. Everything’s just fine.”

“Then perhaps you can give me the final thing you promised.”

“The final thing?”

“The name of her killer.”

Milo had forgotten. He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll do that-but I don’t think it’ll do you any good now.”

“Why not?”

On all the continents they began to move, drawn by words on small screens. An L followed by a name, and each name received the reverse order, to take out the one coming to see him. On a large screen on the twenty-second floor of the building on the corner of West Thirty-first and the Avenue of the Americas, the red spots on every continent shifted, and then, over hours, pairs converged. They left cities to find new cities, and those in the countryside and in places with no names sought out the crowded centers.

In the office, the late-morning light spilling in, they watched and zoomed in on individual cities like spectators to a disaster who morbidly replay the same tape over and over again. A red spot moved closer to another red spot until they were atop one another, and then one moved away, leaving behind a blue spot. Then nearby-never farther than a half mile from the point of contact, and sometimes in the same place-the original spot stopped and turned blue.