The Nearest Exit

by Olen Steinhauer

  “What’s the most excellent of reasons, then?”

  Drummond considered him a moment, then shrugged. “The future of our relationship with German intelligence, if you must know. With her alive, we remain out in the cold. With her death, we’re in.”

  The geometry of escape left him, replaced by some weird algebra of cause and effect. “I don’t get it.”

  “Because there’s no need for you to get it. I’m not here to connect the dots for you. Just know that what you did put the entire transatlantic relationship in jeopardy.”

  “So you’re going to kill her anyway?”

  “You haven’t been reading the papers,” said Drummond. “Adriana Stanescu’s body was found only hours ago-late Thursday night, I mean. All of Europe is in mourning, or so the newspapers would have you believe. Me, I kind of doubt most of Europe gives a damn about a Moldovan girl, but I’m like that. I suspect most people, particularly in that racist backwater across the ocean.”

  It was too much to keep straight; he couldn’t chart the repercussions of everything he’d just heard. So he said the first thing that came to mind. “Who did it?”

  “That’s something we’d all like to know.”

  They pulled up to one of the terminals-he’d lost track of which was which-and parked beside a tall figure illuminated briefly in the headlights. Hat, long overcoat. Drummond said, “Time to meet your babysitter,” and then the men on either side of Milo got out of the Explorer. The one on his right left the door open so the tall figure could climb in beside him. “I think you know Mr. Einner?”

  He had last seen James Einner the previous July in Geneva. Milo had attacked him in his hotel bathroom, bound him in duct tape, and wrapped him in a shower curtain. Hatred or anger hadn’t motivated his actions, just expediency. In fact, he liked James Einner.

  “James,” he said, smiling.

  In James Einner’s memories, however, the humiliation of that July incident colored everything, and when Milo stuck out a hand to shake, Einner planted a swift fist into the center of Milo’s face, knocking him back against the far door. Shock, then pain, filled Milo’s features.

  Mildly, Drummond said, “Now, James.”

  Einner raised both his hands, his long fingers dancing merrily and his bright blue eyes twinkling. “All done, sir.”

  The pain poured into Milo’s nose now. His eyes were awash in tears, and he tasted blood. “You fucka,” said Milo. “You bwoke my nose.”

  Einner took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it over, still smiling.

  “Meet your babysitter, Sebastian. He’ll be your partner while you vet Marko Dzubenko’s tales. Unlike me, Einner doesn’t have a soft spot for old farts like you. He’ll cut your throat at the first sign of disloyalty. Isn’t that right, James?”

  “You’ve got that right, sir.”

  With the handkerchief pressed to his leaking nose, Milo looked back and forth between these two men, and to the driver, who was trying hard not to laugh. As he tilted his head back to avoid too much mess, he was consumed by hatred. Not for Drummond, or even James Einner, but again for Yevgeny Primakov, who had abandoned his parental responsibilities as soon as they had become inconvenient. Yevgeny’s abandonment was nothing new, but that made it no less appalling.

  14

  They were sitting seven rows apart in coach, another sign of Tourism’s budget constraints, and James Einner looked comfortable in his pin-striped, and not very cheap, Tom Ford suit (a ludicrous expense since most Tourists tossed their clothes after a couple of wearings), while Milo was stuffed into an ill-fitting and starchy Italian suit. Correctly predicting that the clothes Milo had picked up back in Zürich wouldn’t be presentable by the time he left JFK-blood spatter didn’t sit well with any country’s passport control-Drummond had brought him the suit, as well as a wheeled Baggallini tote full of necessities: the official “Tourism kit” most Tourists soon realized was too cumbersome for the life.

  Once they had boarded this American Airlines flight to London, Milo plugged himself into his iPod, pressed a complimentary napkin to his nostrils, and tilted his head back as far as it would go. He closed his eyes and listened to David Bowie, circa 1972:

  News guy wept and told us,

  Earth was really dying

  He wasn’t angry about the punch-he’d deserved it. Last year’s fight with Einner had been particularly humiliating for the younger man, who’d been dragged off a toilet in the middle of a bowel movement, then wrapped in a shower curtain, pants around his ankles, stained with his own shit.

  The real shock was that he was still here. Drummond hadn’t released him from Tourism; the morning hadn’t found him free of all this. Now he even had a chaperone to make sure he didn’t step out of line.

  Somewhere over the Atlantic, they met by the bathrooms. Einner said, “If you’re waiting for me to apologize, then forget it.”

  Milo gave him a generous smile and looked at the dried blood on the napkin; the flow was finished. “I’m just wondering why I’m still employed. Drummond doesn’t trust me.”

  Einner rocked his head from side to side, then made room for a stewardess to pass. He whispered, “You know how many Tourists we’ve got in Europe right now?”

  Back when he’d been in administration, twelve had been the default number, but there’d been cutbacks. “Eight?”

  “Five,” said Einner. “Including you and me. We lost three in the last few months, and one of us five is laid up in a hospital in Stockholm.”

  “He told you all this?”

  “This guy’s not like Grainger. I know the old man was your friend, but he was a goddamned sphinx when it came to sharing information. And Mendel-you dealt with him, right?”

  Milo nodded.

  “You got a little more information from him, but it’s like he was always leaving out the most important detail. Drummond, though…” He faded off a moment. “He’s trying to make you a partner with him. I like it, this new Tourism.”

  “So what else has he told you?”

  Einner wagged a finger. “You’re not going to get me that easily. Just know that the situation has saved your ass. We can’t afford to lose any more Tourists, not even ones as washed up as you.”

  “We.”

  “What?”

  “You said we can’t afford to lose Tourists. Drummond really does have you thinking you’re partners. It’s fantastic.”

  Einner waved off his cynicism and wandered off. Milo envied his belief in the new Tourism, the Tourism of “we.”

  Because of air traffic, they had to float for a half hour over Heathrow before finally descending at nine Saturday night. Milo hadn’t been able to sleep at all, so when they finally approached the gate, he was flagging, and Einner looked noticeably young and alert among the tired passengers shuffling off the plane. They continued separately down the labyrinth of corridors to the crowded border control, where, after twenty minutes’ wait, an overly polite official said, “You have an accident, sir?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He tapped the side of his nose.

  “Back in America. I’ll survive.”

  “Then please enjoy yourself, Mr. Hall. And try not to have any accidents here.”

  He felt itchy and clammy in his starched suit as he moved through the throng of real-world tourists, but it was another rule of Tourism that, when traveling, one should look as much like a businessman as possible, like someone who has come to invest in the host nation, who has money to blow, who has no patience for customs delays and might easily take his gold card elsewhere. As young and old tourists flushed in the face of hard questions from British customs, Milo passed unmolested, pulling the Baggallini behind him.

  In preparation for the next day, he perused the stores in Terminal 3 and bought a T-shirt with a silhouette of London across it, white sports socks, and sunglasses. He took the escalator back down to the arrivals level and joined a twenty-minute taxi queue.

  As he finally made his way into th
e redbrick metropolis, to Piccadilly and Mayfair, he considered his situation. His new boss looked upon him with suspicion, and James Einner, despite their past camaraderie, was here to threaten him each step of the way. Why should he put up with this? Why not ask the driver to turn back to Heathrow? He could dump his phone in a wastebasket and buy a ticket back to his family.

  Adriana was gone-but only a fool could believe that it set him free of anything other than guilt, and it didn’t even do that.

  The reason he remained, like the reason Drummond hadn’t fired him, was far more practical than the safety of a Moldovan girl: He wasn’t sure he could survive the exit interview.

  These extended interrogations went on for weeks as you spilled everything you had done and seen, accounted for all your absences and contacts, and made a general accounting of the money you’d spent. The Company didn’t spend so much on Tourists just to have them walk away. It wanted to squeeze every dollar out of each Tourist before setting him free. Milo knew this because he’d once supervised the exit interviews himself. He knew how an interrogator sniffed out inconsistencies like a truffle dog burrowing under wet leaves.

  And what if he did make it? What if he survived weeks of interrogation, and by some stroke of luck they didn’t find a way to connect him to his father, his confessor, and charge him with treason? What then? Would Drummond really trust him to keep his mouth shut about his work? Tom Grainger would have-but Grainger had been an old friend. Drummond had only met Milo twice, once to congratulate him, once to reprimand him. There were limits to the new Tourism, but Milo had no idea where they lay.

  Before entering the modern Cavendish Hotel, he found a Boots pharmacy. What he wanted was a pack of Davidoffs, but the only way to keep going was to hold on to the promise of a future. He’d decided on the flight to end his relationship with Dexedrine, and in the pharmacy asked the cashier for a box of Nicorette gum, the “fresh mint” flavor. He ripped open the box as he returned to the hotel. He chewed two, the rush of eight milligrams of nicotine bringing on hiccups at the front desk, and his desire for a cigarette ebbed. Predictably, though, it was nowhere near as good as the real thing.

  15

  He woke at six and checked his nose. It wasn’t actually broken. He could breathe through it, but it was bruised a faint purple and slightly swollen, which would make his surveillance that much harder.

  Beneath his suit and tie he wore the London T-shirt and a pocket held the white socks. He took the half-empty Sunday morning tube to Hampstead, then walked up to East Heath Road. Among the facades looking out over the park was an inconspicuous Georgian belonging to a man named Edward Ryan.

  There were two London vignettes within Dzubenko’s stories, and Milo had been assigned to verify one that focused on a man the newspapers commonly described as “xenophobic, racist, and nationalist,” much like the political party he headed. Despite having been the subject of exposés by the Guardian and BBC’s Panorama linking it and its leader to pro-Nazi movements, the party had gained 4.6 percent in the most recent round of local elections.

  Drummond had briefed him in the Explorer at JFK while Einner, still beside him, listened. Assumedly, he had received his brief beforehand. Drummond first showed Milo a photograph of a trim, gray-tinted Englishman in a bowler. “Edward Ryan, national chairman of the Union of British Nationals. According to Marko, he’s on the receiving end of Russian money funneled through the SSU. Essentially, Moscow’s funding the revitalization of the UBN. Once the party gets a member into Parliament, Moscow can point to the growing racism in England. That in turn will energize the anger of British Muslims and lead to deeper divisions. That’s long-term. In the meantime, Moscow and Kiev get inside information on the Labour Party, which the UBN regularly spies on.”

  Beside him, Einner said knowingly, “Why risk sending in your own people, when a bunch of xenophobes will do it for you?”

  The question, of course, was how to verify that this was true. On that point, Drummond repeated Dzubenko’s own suggestion. “On the second to last Sunday of each month, Ryan passes Labour Party information to the SSU’s representative, who he thinks is a Ukrainian businessman sharing his interest in racial purity. You will shadow him, and if he meets the representative you’ll ID him for me.”

  “The head of the party does this?” Milo asked doubtfully.

  “Trust, Marko tells us, is in short supply in the UBN. He’d rather do it himself.”

  Ryan’s Sunday itinerary was no secret. An adoring interviewer had, in December, spelled it out in order to show what a busy and important man the politician was. At eight o’clock, he went for a jog on the Heath. By ten thirty, he was in his front pew for the Anglican St. John-at-Hampstead’s parish Eucharist, having walked the distance along busy Heath Street, where the occasional supporter (few and far between in an area full of liberals and Muslims and Jews) could shake his hand. When the interviewer asked how a man of his high principles could take part in the services of a church with a reputation for encouraging multicultural and interreligious cohesion, Ryan smiled and said, “My community is my community. The effort to clean white Britain must begin on our own streets.”

  Afterward, like any respectable family man, he returned home for tea and newspapers, then took his two sons, six and nine, to whatever Sunday activity had been decided upon that week.

  Milo had been over the schedule the previous night, considering where Ryan might best hand over information. Each place, it seemed, was perfect. The expanse of Hampstead Heath was classic dead-letter drop territory. Pass-offs could be made all along Heath Street, and it was part of the nature of church that its members mingled and whispered to one another. Children’s events, as Milo knew, divided instantly into children on one side and parents on another, and the parents quickly sank into lengthy chats. There were any number of ways for Ryan to pass on information, if he were going to pass on anything at all.

  Milo found a spot in the park and pressed his phone to his ear, so that in his suit he looked like a churchgoer involved in early business. He drifted to some bushes and used the camera phone to zoom in on the front of the house. Tourism had long ago eschewed the high-end phones that were a magnet for thieves, instead making its own adjustments to mundane models, like increasing the camera range and resolution of this store-bought Nokia.

  Just after eight, Ryan emerged in jogging pants and a sweatshirt. He walked briskly down the sidewalk, knees high, then crossed into the park and began his morning run. No security detail followed him.

  The environment worked to Milo’s advantage. Winter had stripped the concealing foliage of its leaves, and the Heath’s naturally rolling terrain gave him numerous vantage points. While Ryan was in motion, the chance of a drop was unlikely; anything thrown on the ground could easily be intercepted by passersby. It was during the pauses-and despite Ryan’s air of athleticism, there were plenty-that Milo brought the camera to his eye and zoomed in on the man’s hands. Two stops at trees, where he leaned against the trunk and tugged his ankles up high behind himself, and three stops at benches. At the third one, he reached into a pocket in his running pants but only took out a pack of cigarettes, which went back into his pocket. While he smoked, Milo found a better position, then watched him deposit the butt into a trash can. At one point, Ryan ran into a friend, also jogging. They shook hands, the friend still bouncing in his springy shoes, and talked for a couple of minutes. Milo took photographs of the entire encounter.

  Ryan returned home by nine thirty. Milo found a trash can, in which he dropped his jacket and tie, and slipped on his sunglasses, so that when Ryan left for church he was a slightly different man.

  Ryan reemerged in a charcoal suit, joined by a thin, birdlike wife and his two cleaned and pressed sons. Heath Street was waking up, the stores just opening. While in most of London blue laws kept Sunday shop hours to a minimum, tourist areas like Hampstead were exempt, and the mixed population raised their blinds in preparation for the rush of Sunday shoppers arriving from quiet
er neighborhoods.

  The Ryans paused three times along that walk, and Milo photographed each encounter. The first was with an old woman heading in the same direction. Mrs. Ryan approached her and helped her cross the street. Then, after a moment’s consultation, the whole family remained with the woman, keeping to her shuffling pace. Next, a heavy white-haired man shook Ryan’s hand in both of his, grinning madly, his pink cheeks glowing. Ryan made a joke, which caused the man to erupt in fits of laughter, then patted his shoulder to send him on his way. The third encounter occurred outside a halal butcher’s, when a bald younger man stopped Ryan, shook his hand, and whispered something close to the side of his face. Ryan smiled broadly but didn’t laugh. As they talked, a bearded man in a taqiyah opened the butcher shop’s front door, and both men stopped their conversation to stare at him. Then the bald man left, and the family continued with the old woman past the Hampstead tube station to Church Row, where more Georgian houses led down to the crowd of parishioners entering St. John-at-Hampstead.

  Though there were plenty of ideal aspects to passing messages in a church, the Ryans sat, without fail, in the front pew, a location that precluded any secret conversations. The only chances were just before services, or just after, as they greeted their fellow worshippers. From across the street, Milo shot pictures of Ryan’s various handshakes, then headed back to Heath Street until services ended. He took advantage of the opening shops to buy a pair of jeans, a jacket, and some sneakers, which he carried in a bright red shopping bag. As he hurried back to the church, he noticed a Hyundai parked halfway down Church Row, with a man in his fifties sitting behind the wheel. He glanced at the face and kept moving toward the church.

  There was something familiar about it, but he couldn’t place it at first. It only came to him as he was taking shots of the parishioners again. The surprise, when it came, nearly made him drop the phone.