The Last Tourist

by Olen Steinhauer

  “So?” she asked.

  He stepped back inside. “Probably false alarm.”

  “Sure,” she said, and returned to the bathroom. As the steam collected, she counted down the seconds. She’d survived so many dangerous places, but what about now? Would Lance’s obstinance really lead to her dying in Switzerland? Come on.

  But she had to play the game, so she took off her blouse and was unbuttoning her slacks when she heard the pretty tone of the doorbell. Through the wall came a muted conversation. Then the door shut, and after a moment Lance knocked on the bathroom door. She opened it fully, and he hesitated, eyes stalled briefly on her bra. Then: “That was the hotel staff. Turns out it is real. There’s a room in flames beneath us.”

  She made a show of irritation. “I really wanted that shower.”

  “We’d better go.”

  “Sure you don’t want to go up in flames with me?”

  His gaze traveled the length of her body again, approvingly, and she cursed herself—the fool was actually considering it. She forced a grin. “Come on, cowboy. Let’s get out of here.”

  A minute later, they were heading toward the stairs. No hurry. On the second floor, though, a very old woman in gemstones looked panicked and lost. Lance ignored her, and was clearly annoyed when Leticia stopped and spoke to the old woman, then invited her to join them. Helping her on the stairs slowed them down considerably, and they were slowed more when Lance’s phone rang. He glanced irritably at the screen, then stiffened and answered, one hand on the phone, the other on the old woman’s elbow.

  “Yes?” he said. Leticia watched his face pinch in a pained expression. “For sure?” he asked, and though the news he received was obviously not good, he didn’t miss a step or forget to keep hold of the old woman. “A fire alarm. Yes, ma’am, it’s under control.” Then he hung up.

  “Something wrong?” Leticia asked.

  He shook his head, but his cheeks were very red, and a prescient tingle spread across the width of her back.

  Hotel staff were in the lobby, so they passed off the woman, but instead of following her outside Lance grabbed Leticia’s forearm. “Over here,” he said, pulling her back toward the restaurant at the opposite end of the corridor. “We have to get something.”

  “Sure,” she said, preparing herself.

  He pulled her through double doors into the spacious restaurant—pale walls, parquet, and large ring-shaped lamps above their heads like halos. Straight ahead, big windows looked north at the low, snow-covered Davos buildings. As the door closed, Lance’s right hand reached behind himself, and Leticia immediately jumped at him, punching the rigid knuckles of her left hand into his trachea.

  He gasped, clutching his throat, while the other hand emerged holding his Glock. He got off one shot, which went wild as she dropped into a crouch and stomped hard against his knee. He buckled, gun hand rising as he fell back. She launched herself against his chest, helping his fall. They landed hard, Leticia straddling him, and as he raised his gun hand again she planted her elbow, with all her weight, into his face. It hurt, bone smashing into bone, and his nose gushed a torrent of blood. She quickly rolled off him, prying the pistol out of his weak hand, and kept rolling until she was yards away.

  Gasping, she climbed to her feet and looked at him struggling on the floor. A sick, wet moan came from deep inside him. But it was barely audible, just a long, painful exhale pushing through crushed windpipe, smashed nose, and cracked teeth. She raised the Glock and pointed it at him. He was already dying, after all.

  Afterward, she stripped off her blood-covered blouse and rolled it into a bundle with the Glock hidden inside. Then she pushed back into the lobby, where the staff, overcome by escaping guests, hardly even noticed the black woman in a bra making her way past them.

  Outside in the cold, drivers were moving cars out of the way for approaching fire trucks. The crowd of half-dressed, fully suited, and drunk guests placed hands to their mouths and gaped at thick smoke rising from the other side, from where Leticia had come, into the night sky. Curious, she walked around the building, squeezing through spectators until she saw what they saw: A smashed first-floor window gushed smoke and flickering flames. The smoke was thick and black and, Leticia thought, obviously fueled by some serious propellant.

  “You need a coat,” she heard, and turned to find Dalmatian taking off his old army jacket. He put it over her shoulders, and she smiled.

  “Did you really have to do all that?” she asked as they hurried down the street.

  “I don’t know, Kanni. What do you think?”

  “My name’s not Kanni.”

  17

  Alexandra was still deeply shaken by the massacre at the stables, and when she closed her eyes she saw the terrified face of the proprietress hiding behind her counter and heard the frightened horses. But when she opened them, the scene on the bright laptop screen was no better. Three figures trembled and danced. Then they went down in a splatter of gore. Milo raised the volume on the laptop so they could hear:

  Where are the rest?

  Something’s not right.

  You going to call it in?

  The cunt set us up.

  “I’m the cunt,” Leticia said, leaning against the wall, still wearing Dalmatian’s coat.

  And now Leticia was making jokes, for Christ’s sake.

  But still, Leticia had risked her life so that they could make this video and screen it in the Gasthaus Islen, a pretty little restaurant whose owners had agreed at the last minute to let Oskar use it after midnight. This video was Milo’s closing argument.

  Their guests—Maxim Vetrov with an older, silent Russian who had assumedly come along to make decisions; Xin Zhu’s stern agent, Li Fan; and Francis from the Home Office, a paper cup of coffee in front of him—stared aghast at the screen. Sitting with them, but unfazed, was Oskar, his arm in a sling. Alexandra had gained a new respect for him, too.

  “Good Lord,” Francis said.

  “They expected us to be there,” Milo said. “They expected to wipe us all out.” Then he turned to Alexandra expectantly.

  She took a breath and said, “They murdered Katarina Heinold, German deputy ambassador to the United Nations, this morning.”

  “Why?” Li Fan demanded.

  “Because we picked her up,” Oskar said, “and they feared she would talk.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes,” said Alexandra. “She told us when and where they’re meeting. Wing B of the Congress Center, third floor. The Parsenn-Pischa room. Immediately after the closing performance.”

  “So we go in and do this to them?” Vetrov asked, motioning at the corpses on the computer screen.

  Milo shook his head. “We don’t need to.”

  Dalmatian, who had taken a position by the Islen’s front door, turned to eye passing headlights. Poitevin was outside in the snow, ready to call in any sign of approach. After a moment, Dalmatian turned back, looking uncomfortable; Alexandra wondered if there was trouble.

  “The question,” Milo went on, “is: Does this convince you all? This, on top of everything else. We need a decision now.”

  The guests looked at one another, and Li Fan was the first to speak. “The Sixth Bureau will help.”

  Alexandra had expected China to hold out, if only for show. But no, of course not. Beyond African oil pipelines, Xin Zhu was terrified that the files chronicling his decade of assistance to the Library would become known. He was fighting for his life, whether or not Li Fan knew it.

  The old Russian muttered something into Vetrov’s ear, and Vetrov said, “A question, please. How, exactly, do we deal with this? If we do not attack, then what?”

  “We need to confront them as one,” Milo said. “Northwell and its clients. They need to know that they will be prosecuted, or worse, in their home countries.”

  “But Northwell,” said Francis, tapping the tabletop. “We don’t have any sway over Northwell headquarters. That’s the Americans, and I don’t s
ee them here.”

  Alexandra sighed. Erika had warned them about this. She watched Milo lean closer to his audience, hands on the dining table. “Northwell, particularly its Tourism section, is funded directly by its clients. That’s how it’s able to hide its finances—which, I imagine, was documented in the records Joseph Keller originally stumbled on. The Library worked the same way. Without patrons, we were nothing. Take away Northwell’s clients, and the Tourism section withers away.”

  Again, the old Russian leaned over to whisper to Vetrov, then changed his mind and looked directly at Milo. “Da,” he said with a sharp nod.

  Alexandra looked at Francis, who seemed most troubled by all this. “The Booths,” he said finally. “So we arrest Oliver Booth for financial crimes. Maybe his wife, Catherine, as an accessory, though that would be a political minefield. You,” he said, nodding at Oskar, “put a team of financial regulators onto IfW’s funding schemes. The rest of you put some people in jail. But if we don’t have the Americans, Northwell will keep Nexus as its client, and next year Halliwell and Foster will be back here gathering more customers. This will cripple them, yes, but not for long.”

  “Nothing is static,” Alexandra said. “This year, we knock out most of their clientele. Then we have a year to get the Americans on board. A year is a very long time.”

  “That’s assuming a lot,” Francis said.

  Alexandra looked to the others, to Li Fan and Vetrov’s old man, and in their faces she saw the same kind of anxiety. Even in Oskar’s face.

  “This is what we have now,” Milo said. “The alternative is to do nothing and let your economies be disrupted by people who don’t give a damn.”

  Francis raised his brows, and finally shrugged. “It’s what we have.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “All right, then.”

  “Good,” said Milo. “Alex?”

  “Right,” she said, surprised that they had actually agreed. “Tomorrow we meet outside the Congress Center, and together we enter and join the meeting. Milo will explain the situation, and each of you, if you like, can explain the threats in more detail.”

  “I am bringing my men,” Vetrov said definitively.

  “Yes,” Li Fan agreed.

  “Only one each, please,” Milo said. “We have no reason to expect violence. With the security cordon in place no one will be armed. They can’t get any weapons in. Neither can we.” He opened his hands. “No one gets hurt. We walk inside, have a chat, and leave.”

  “What about the Massive Brigade?” Li Fan asked.

  “What about them?”

  She looked at Oskar. “The Germans think they are here, yes? Does that change our calculations?”

  Milo shook his head. “Not unless the Germans have a place and time that they will strike. Oskar?”

  The German shook his head sadly.

  “Then, no. It changes nothing.”

  The old Russian rose to his feet, and Vetrov followed suit, saying, “We have what we have. We thank you.” Dalmatian opened the door, letting in the night wind, so the two men could leave. Francis took another sip of his coffee, nodded sharply, and followed them out.

  Li Fan lingered, slowly packing her phone into her purse, then turned to Milo. “Xin Zhu sends greetings. He says that today we are friends.”

  “And tomorrow?” Alexandra asked.

  Li Fan looked over at her and smiled, then exited as Oskar took the flash drive with the video out of the laptop. “It will be over soon,” he said, then raised his sling a little and smiled. “Talk tomorrow.” They watched him make his way out.

  The whole conversation had left Alexandra unsettled. Not the words necessarily, but the space between the words. Like there was something their co-conspirators were leaving unsaid. Something only they knew. But she had no idea what it was.

  Once Dalmatian had locked the door again, she turned to Milo, who was closing the laptop. “Did you see that?”

  “I did,” said Leticia, finally getting off the wall and heading to the table.

  Milo seemed confused. “What?”

  “They’re not telling us something,” Alexandra said.

  “Exactly,” said Leticia.

  “No one ever tells us everything,” Milo protested.

  “It’s a group thing,” Alexandra said. “There’s something that they, as a group, are not telling us.”

  Milo swiveled his gaze between the two women, looking a little dumb, and she wondered why her father had chosen him. There was nothing special about her brother, not really. He furrowed his brow and looked over at Dalmatian. “Did you see it?”

  “Wasn’t my focus,” he said. “But I can’t say I trust them.”

  “Nobody trusts them,” Milo said, then turned to Alexandra. “Do you think we’re walking into a trap?”

  Did she? She shook her head. “Not necessarily.”

  “But they certainly don’t like the plan,” Leticia said.

  “Agreed,” said Alexandra.

  “Yet they’re all on board,” Milo said. “Maybe watching a slaughter is more convincing than you think.”

  “I don’t know,” Leticia said, stifling a yawn.

  “Go to bed,” Milo told her, then looked at Dalmatian. “How are the stitches?”

  “Holding,” he said, then broke into a queer smile for Leticia. “Good enough to take her back to our room.”

  Leticia’s eyes widened in surprise. She looked at Alexandra. “He’s learning.”

  They left together, and Alexandra went to turn off the lights. Milo stood waiting by the door, looking out at Poitevin, who was walking carefully across ice to reach them. “What are you going to do afterward?” he asked her.

  She thought of her eternal debate between a man and a dog. And, perhaps for the first time, she thought, Why not both? “A vacation,” she said. “You?”

  Alexandra wasn’t surprised at all when her brother said, “Retirement,” though she doubted he had any idea what that really meant.

  18

  Samuel had been relieved by Frank, a stout thick-necked Minnesotan who, as Samuel had told me, was built like a linebacker, albeit a short one. Frank seemed as if he’d only just gotten the job and wanted to impress his bosses with his understanding of regulations. He searched the hotel room when he arrived that final morning of the Forum, claiming that he couldn’t be sure Samuel had checked it (he hadn’t), and when he didn’t come up with any contraband he parked himself at the door rather than by the window, where Samuel had lounged the whole night, nursing his bruise. I don’t know how Samuel ended up explaining it.

  There was nothing to do but reflect on those traumatic minutes at the bar. Haroun, in the flesh, explaining to me how his life had ended up where it had, and how he justified it all. He was a creature of loss—the loss of belief—and cynicism. More specifically, his was a story of temptation as old as Genesis, but inverted: Instead of learning of good and evil, he had learned that neither existed. There was only profit and loss, and somehow he had decided that those values were worth risking his life for.

  Or maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe he only saw his job the way most people did, as a way to earn a living so that he could live life. But he hadn’t said a word about paychecks or a splendid lifestyle at coastal resorts. No girlfriends, no children, no mortgages. Haroun had tried to justify his life on purely ideological grounds, and that was why I was still shook.

  It was just after noon when Mel showed up. She asked Frank if I’d given him trouble, and when he shook his head she sent him out of the room and pulled a desk chair up to the side of the bed. Elbows on her knees, she looked at me, pressing her fingertips together, and said, “In your report, and in the recordings, there’s nothing about Milo Weaver’s plan.”

  “Because he never told me.”

  She nodded slowly. “Late last night,” she said, “he met with intelligence officers from the UK, Russia, Germany, and China.”

  “That’s the meeting he invited you to.”

  “Yes, of
course, but there’s more. Yesterday morning a German representative to the UN disappeared after landing in Zürich, heading for Davos. Last night, Swiss police found three dead Chinese intelligence officers up the side of a mountain—they’re trying their damnedest to keep it quiet. Then Milo has his meeting. And this morning, his four intelligence officers met on their own, inside the security ring. At a café in the Congress Center. We didn’t get audio, but they seemed to be debating something.”

  “Probably Milo Weaver’s plan.”

  She took her phone from inside her blue business jacket. “Sure. Then one of them went outside the security ring and headed down to the train station, where he met with this person.” She pulled up a photo and handed the phone to me.

  It was a photo of a small white man with a mustache, his arm in a sling, walking alongside a younger woman whom I recognized even though her hair was longer, cut into a bob around her jawline, and her makeup was different. I said, “That’s the woman who looked like Ingrid Parker. Back in Klosters. Who’s he?”

  “German. BND.”

  I frowned, remembering a stray character from Milo’s story. “Oskar Leintz?”

  “Yes,” she said, not surprised that I knew.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” I said, handing the phone back. “Maybe that is Ingrid Parker.”

  “It isn’t,” Mel said.

  I squinted at the image, not entirely sure myself now. “How do you know?”

  “Because yesterday the FBI confirmed a sighting in West Palm Beach, near Mar-a-Lago. Secret Service is shitting itself.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust the FBI.”

  “I trust them. I just don’t respect them.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it, then said, “Why would the Germans falsely report that Parker is in Europe, and then go meet her doppelgänger?”

  “That’s the question, Abdul. What are they up to?”

  I put on my analyst’s hat and thought about what I knew. Leintz’s fraught but essentially cordial relationship with Weaver. Weaver’s desire to put an end to Northwell’s private army, and his decision to enlist countries to help his fight. But this—this particular detail—what did it mean?