It was an argument, all right. “Milo really has gone active, hasn’t he?”
Alexandra smiled and shrugged.
“So Tourism is finished?”
“The Tourists,” she told me, “are scattered to the four corners.”
“My brother?”
“South Africa. Do you want his contact information?”
Up ahead, Rashid was on the ground, and Max was licking his face. Laura was laughing. “I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“We’ll get it to you. Use it if you want.”
“And the Library?” I asked, sounding sharper than I wanted. “What’s its status now?”
She didn’t answer immediately, just looked at my family playing with her dog. “It’s … it’s figuring out what it is.”
“Are they safe? Milo and his family?”
“No one has tried anything yet, but they’re being careful. Only one thing stands in the way of Milo and his family breathing easily.”
“Nexus,” I said. “They asked me what he knew about them. He knows?”
“Yeah,” she said, looking across the park to where Stephanie Weaver was sitting on one of many scattered metal chairs, scrolling through her phone and chewing on a thumbnail. “And as long as the Agency worries about that, he’s not safe. None of us are.”
“Are you planning on doing something about that?”
“I’ve got a friend named Vivian,” she said with a smile, because now she’d finally reached the why of them bringing me to Paris. “Very good journalist. She’s got a lot of the story figured out, but she can’t find any CIA sources.”
It took me a full second to make the connection, and when I did I just stared at her, aghast. Was she really asking what I thought she was asking? Right over there, turning back in our direction, my family was working its way back to us. “You’re fucking nuts,” I said.
3
In the morning, the front desk at our hotel called—a message had been dropped off for me. It was a plain envelope with my name scrawled on it, and inside was a slip of paper with two phone numbers. One, labeled HG, began with +27, the South African country code. The other, VW, began with +44, for the UK.
When we’d gotten back to the room the previous day, I’d told Laura what Alexandra had asked of me but avoided mention of Haroun. To my surprise, she didn’t immediately explode with anger. Thoughtfully, she said, “But she wouldn’t use your name, right?”
“That’s beside the point!” I yelled. “It’s too much of a risk.”
Now I brought the phone numbers back to the room, where Laura was already packing for the next day’s flight home. I said nothing about the message.
After breakfast, we stood in a hot line for an hour, waiting to take an elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Once we were up there, looking over the grand city, Rashid suicidally trying to climb the railings, Laura kissed me firmly on the lips. We aren’t the kind of couple who show affection in public, so it was a special thing. She said, “What matters is that you know you’re doing right.”
It took a second for me to realize she was finishing yesterday’s conversation. Then I wondered—what kind of “right” was she speaking of? The basic right of keeping your family safe, or the grand, historical right of protecting people from the onslaught of Big Brother?
In the afternoon, we went to the Louvre. When faced with paintings, Rashid slumped in boredom and didn’t perk up until the museum store, where he found a comic book he begged us to get. It didn’t matter that it was in French—the superhero, a teenaged Muslim girl, in a hijab no less, was the coolest thing he’d ever seen. Back at the hotel he and Laura crashed, and I went down to the hotel bar, ordered coffee, and took a quiet seat in the corner to look over notes for the evening’s panel. I’d spent weeks boning up on cybersecurity so that I wouldn’t look too ignorant onstage, but I still wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull that off. Besides, I couldn’t focus with those phone numbers in my pocket. I took them out and, after knocking it back and forth in my head too many times, called HG.
The transcontinental line crackled as it rang four times; then it connected and he said a hesitant “Yeah?”
“Brother. It’s me.”
There was a long pause, and when he finally spoke he sounded choked up. “How’d you get…” He coughed. “This means they’ve got it, too. Do you know how long I have?”
“I got your number from Milo Weaver’s sister.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding relieved.
“How are you?”
“Well, I’m glad you can’t see the flea trap I’m living in now. But anything to stay off the radar. What about you? Where are you?”
I told him about the conference, and he asked pointed questions about Rashid and Laura that I answered calmly until the emotion built up inside me. “Come back, Haroun. Come back to America.”
“An American jail?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s better than running.”
“I’d never make it to a jail cell.”
“You don’t know that.”
He coughed again, then said, “Your people won’t let me.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re all gone. The ones I stayed in contact with are gone. A traffic accident in Mumbai. A suicide in Stockholm. A shooting in Brisbane. I don’t know, brother. I might be the last one.”
“How,” I began, then hesitated. “How do you know it’s CIA?”
“They’re getting rid of people who know about Nexus, and all of us did.” He snorted a cynical laugh. “Turns out the Agency isn’t as incompetent as I thought.”
“There has to be a way,” I said. “Maybe I could—”
“Remember what I said in Switzerland?” he cut in. “If I had another life, I would try another path. But I made my bed, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s fine. Despite the things I’ve done I never wanted to hurt you. I hope you believe that.”
I did, but I didn’t tell him. Instead I asked if I could do anything to help him.
“No one can help me, brother. But you know what you can do? Live your life well. Take care of that family of yours. I need to know you’re happy. I need to know you’re good.”
Afterward, I ordered another coffee and sank into a quiet depression. Haroun couldn’t start again and live another life, just as I couldn’t. We’d made decisions early on, and those decisions had changed everything. Neither of us could go back in time and try the other path.
Back upstairs, Rashid was looking at his comic book on the toilet, and I brought Laura out to the terrace. The noise of traffic enveloped us, and I had to lean close for her to hear my words. As she gradually absorbed Haroun’s story, she turned to gape at me. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was frightened, maybe.”
“Of what?”
“That you would see him in me.”
She held my face and kissed me deeply.
Two hours later, I made it out to the same Hotel du Collectionneur stage I’d used before, this time to join the three other guests—an Algerian, a Russian, and a Frenchwoman. I was shocked by the size of the crowd and the presence of television cameras embossed with the logos of France 4 and i24. None of this was for me, of course. I just happened to be sharing the stage with an Algerian intellectual whose controversial book on Islam had made him momentarily famous. He was well prepared for his fifteen minutes of fame, speaking in a thoughtful, measured manner about the contradictions between Islamic rules and the image gratification of social media.
The Russian professor spoke about the use of deep fakes in Moroccan media, and its influence on the country’s political stability. The Frenchwoman delved into history, arguing that France’s colonial history, and the West’s responsibility for these new media, obliged the Macron government to take the lead in securing North Africa’s data protections.
After their erudition, I felt there was nothing for me to say. But I was the only
American representative; I couldn’t go down in flames. Not here, in front of these cameras.
“My concern,” I said hesitantly, “is the security of the individuals using these services. In March, Egypt passed sweeping regulations fining purveyors of so-called fake news fourteen thousand dollars. The government has the authority now to decide what news is or isn’t fake. This is a dangerous precedent for the free press.”
“And that’s why Nexus is so popular in North Africa,” the Algerian cut in suddenly, throwing me. He was leaning back in his chair, legs crossed at the knee. Not only was he prepared for stardom; he relished it. He said, “Not a single group has been able to crack its encryption, and governments have no way to trace users. That will change the face of North African democracy. Don’t you think?”
As he waited for a reply, I looked to the audience, and in the glare of the bright lights they momentarily disappeared. I was enveloped in white. But I wasn’t alone—beyond the crowd, through the cameras, were thousands, maybe millions. What was right? What was right for Rashid, now and in the long run? For Milo? For Haroun? For Laura? For me?
“Actually, no,” I said. “Nexus was cracked a long time ago.”
“Is that so?” the Algerian asked doubtfully.
“Yes,” I said. Then I told him how.
ALSO BY OLEN STEINHAUER
The Middleman
All the Old Knives
The Cairo Affair
An American Spy
The Nearest Exit
The Tourist
Victory Square
Liberation Movements
36 Yalta Boulevard
The Confession
The Bridge of Sighs
About the Author
OLEN STEINHAUER, the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, is a Dashiell Hammett Award winner, a two-time Edgar Award finalist, and has also been nominated for the Anthony, Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, Macavity, and Barry awards. He is also the creator of the Epix TV series Berlin Station. He was raised in Virginia, and now divides his time between New York and Budapest. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part One: Expendable Turtle
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two: The Elephant
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part Three: Mergers and Acquisitions
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Afterword: The Land of Dissidence
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Also by Olen Steinhauer
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
THE LAST TOURIST. Copyright © 2020 by Third State, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs: city © xPACIFICA/Getty Images;
landscape © Joe Chen Photography/Getty Images;
texture © altedart/Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Steinhauer, Olen, author.
Title: The last tourist / Olen Steinhauer.
Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2020. | Series: Milo Weaver; 4
Identifiers: LCCN 2019048501 | ISBN 9781250036216 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250036209 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Spy stories. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T4764 L37 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048501
eISBN 9781250036209
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First Edition: March 2020
The Last Tourist Page 37
