The Travelers

by Chris Pavone

  Maybe her time at Travelers has come to a close. It has taken her youth, taken her husband. And what does she have to show for it? Nothing positive. Just a deep distrust of everyone.

  She has been staying at Travelers till she can think of something better, but she isn’t convinced she’s ever going to think of something better. Maybe different will suffice.

  Lucinda leads Gabriella to an upholstered chair. A PA rushes over, attaches a microphone to Gabriella’s lapel, clips the transmitter to the waistline of her skirt, does a quick sound check, retreats.

  Gabs perches on the edge of the seat, crosses her legs at the ankle, sits up straight, pulls down the back of her jacket. She turns to Lucinda. “Were you serious about me working here?”

  “I was. Still am. You change your mind?”

  “I don’t know. But let’s talk about it.”

  Lucinda smiles, and nods, and backs away just as the light on top of the camera goes on.

  “Thanks Ted,” Gabriella says, “it’s great to be here. This fall, Ted, all bets are off when it comes to international travel.”

  And with that phrase, a few hundred clandestine operatives, scattered around the world, are ordered to go dark.

  HÚSAVÍK

  Will has a big bowl of the seafood stew that everyone else is having, fish and potatoes in saffron broth, the same thing he’ll confront everywhere in Iceland. Without thinking, he takes out his notebook, an unbreakable habit, to write down the name of the town, the restaurant, the menu description, the price. But this is one foreign trip he won’t be writing about. He closes his little book, and eats in relative peace.

  The rain is driving, bitter, cold. He trudges to his rental car, turns the ignition.

  The passenger door suddenly swings open, violently.

  LONDON

  “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right.” He turns away from the window.

  “So what’s my actual objective?” Elle asks.

  “You have to realize it’s for your own good that I haven’t told you.”

  “Oh don’t give me that bullshit. You don’t do anything for anyone else’s good.”

  He opens his mouth to object, but doesn’t bother. At this point, who cares? Instead, he takes a seat. Crosses his legs. He’s looking thoughtful, or trying to. Then finally he speaks. “For a long time, there’s been a rumor of a supersecret CIA cadre that operates outside the normal chain of command.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that they can do whatever they want, wherever they want.”

  Elle fights the urge to roll her eyes. There are always rumors like this, conspiracy theories of shadow networks, plots to assassinate the president, to steal nuclear weapons, to frame foreign leaders, to take over the world, hand control to the extraterrestrials.

  “Okay,” she says. “And?”

  “A few years ago, I learned on good authority that this cadre was real. That they were operating behind a completely legitimate front: an international media operation.”

  Elle’s mouth falls open.

  “A news-gathering outfit whose reporters are really spies; whose editor is the director.”

  “You are fucking with me.”

  “I am dead serious.”

  “You’re telling me that Travelers is a top secret Agency division?”

  “That, my dear, is what we’re trying to find out. That’s your objective.”

  Elle lets this sink in, tries to work it out. This seems so utterly implausible. But the CIA has a long, almost proud history of implausible-looking gambits. Is this one of them?

  “At first I investigated the international wire services, but came up with nothing. Then a couple of news magazines. I was handicapped by my assumption that the serious business of espionage would be handled by equally serious reporters of world events.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “At a cocktail party, I met Jonathan Mongeleach. His Africa correspondent, a guy named Terrance Sanders—”

  “Gabriella Rivera’s husband?”

  “—had recently been kidnapped in Africa, held for ransom, killed. A gruesome scenario. He was just an innocent American civilian, doing his job.”

  “Unless he wasn’t just an innocent American civilian.”

  “Exactly. Daniel Pearl was one thing, a Wall Street Journal bureau chief, a Jewish man working a Muslim beat. But Sanders?” He shakes his head. “I did a little research. Do you know how many articles Travelers runs per year, on average, about Africa?”

  He holds up two fingers. “Why do you need an Africa correspondent for two articles per year? That’s an odd misallocation of resources, I thought. So I looked deeper into Travelers—their staff, their advertisers, their history. And lo and behold, what happened?”

  “Can you stop quizzing me, please? I’m not in sixth grade.”

  “Jonathan Mongeleach disappeared. It doesn’t look like Mr. Mongeleach was murdered, or kidnapped. It looks like he chose to vanish. Why would he do that?”

  “Seriously? I’m not participating in this quiz format anymore.”

  “Because he was caught. But at what? That’s the question. Maybe he was caught light-fingered with the company coffers. Maybe he was caught with his pants down. Maybe he was caught trading media coverage for money, or cocaine, or blow jobs. Maybe he was caught with a gambling problem, a vodka problem, a sexual-harassment problem, a hostile-workplace problem. If any of that is true, I don’t give a damn, and I don’t want to buy Travelers, much less their parent company. I’m in new media. I don’t want to own a bunch of antiquated magazines that’ll be huge headaches, then slide dismally into inevitable bankruptcy.”

  Elle is no longer worried about getting killed by this man. Now she’s worried about getting killed by everyone else involved.

  “What I want to own,” he says, “is my own private spy network.”

  HÚSAVÍK

  Will doesn’t even have time to panic before the man asks, “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re the American from the boat.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  The rain is pelting the car, loud splatters. Will stares at the guy, wondering whether or not to lie. “Your name is John Collins,” he says. “You used to be a Navy pilot.”

  “Are you in Húsavík looking for me?”

  “In a way. I came here because you’re the only American in our Iceland files.”

  “Your files? What does that mean?”

  “My magazine keeps files of all sorts of people, especially American expats. Some whom we might turn to when we’re looking for advice, for information, for other people. For specific local information. I saw you in our Iceland file, and thought you might have some info about the American I’m looking for.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “My ex-boss.”

  “I don’t know anything about your magazine, or your ex-boss. I’m just a guy who used to fly planes, and then I worked in military procurement, and now I don’t. I have no idea why I’m in your files, and I don’t appreciate your coming here and harassing me.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to harass you. I’m just looking for a guy, that’s all. Not for you. But you seemed like the type of person who might be able to help me.”

  The man stares at Will, then turns and looks out the window. He doesn’t speak, but neither does he leave. They sit in silence.

  The guy sighs. “Okay,” he says. “If I came to Iceland to disappear, I’d move closer to Reykjavík. Somewhere within a couple hours’ driving of the city, where there’s a larger population that’s more anonymous, more transient. Some hippies, some seasonal people, some foreigners. You know Bobby Fischer lived down there?”

  Everyone here has told him this.

  “Plus it’s easier and cheaper to get food, supplies, closer to the capital, especially in winter. Half the year, this is a godforsaken place. The north coast of Iceland seems to have actually been forsaken
by God. You have no idea.”

  Will doesn’t find this hard to believe. “Do you know of anyplace in particular? Anyone?”

  “Yeah. In spring, we went camping near Snæfellsjökull. You know where that is?”

  “Sort of.”

  “We were talking to Emilíana’s nephew who lives at a collective, something like a commune. We were discussing the recent changes on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula—new woman working at the gas station, that type of thing.”

  “Anyway.”

  “He told me he played cards with an American, sort of an old guy, on his own, living some of the time in a farmhouse but not farming, surrounded by sheep. That sound like who you’re looking for?”

  “Maybe.”

  The man nods, puts his hand on the handle, but doesn’t open the door. “Why are you looking for people who don’t want to be found?”

  That’s a good fucking question. “It’s my job.”

  “You ought to find yourself a different job.” The man pushes down on the handle, opens the door. “This one is very dangerous.”

  PARIS

  It takes only ten minutes on the Vespa to get back to the office. Inez goes upstairs straightaway to the tech personnel who are engrossed in their cyberworlds, right hands resting on mice, headphones covering ears, listening to music while they scan silent surveillance footage of street corners and hotel lobbies, cash points and Metro stations, searching for signs of Will Rhodes.

  The headphones come off as she enters, asks, “Anything?” All heads shake.

  Inez heads downstairs, to the clutter of the main office, and plops down in her swivel chair. She slept only three hours last night.

  She punches in the digits to unlock the desk. Pulls open the middle drawer, which contains the Western European contacts; Eastern Europe is below. The fattest of the hanging folders are for France, Germany, the U.K., all a couple of inches thick, filled with individual files for cities. She thumbs through France, pulls out the hefty Paris sheaf, a hundred pages, each representing a person, headshot and contact numbers, address and known associates. Will must be in Paris to talk to one of these people.

  She slams the drawer shut, and her whole desk shakes. She opens the file.

  But something is nagging at her, has intruded on her consciousness; something is wrong. Something where? Did she see something on her ride back from the Île St-Louis? Did something catch her eye as she accelerated through the Place de la Concorde, or up the Champs-Élysées?

  No: it was more recent. It was something here. Upstairs?

  No: something in her desk.

  She reenters the code. She opens the heavy drawer again, rolling it forward on its tracked wheels till it comes to a fully extended shuddering halt. She stares into the bin for a few seconds before she realizes what’s wrong: the file tabs are misaligned.

  No: it’s not that the tabs are misaligned. There’s a file missing.

  No: there are two files missing. Iceland and Sweden.

  —

  What Inez is about to do is contrary to protocol, the strictly adhered-to rules of secure communications, the first commandment of the overseas bureaus. But this is an extraordinary situation.

  She dials the main switchboard in New York. She’s transferred to the assistant, then put on hold. She waits.

  Finally, she hears “Hello” and the implicit criticism in those two syllables, in his failure to state his name, to ask who’s calling. He doesn’t want to say or hear anything specific. He doesn’t want this call to exist at all.

  “I believe our mutual friend is on his way to either Iceland or Sweden,” she says without preamble; better just come out with it. “Or already there.”

  “What makes you think this?”

  “He took those files. In the middle of last night.” She realizes that this type of description can be confusing, looks at her watch, clarifies: “Nine hours ago.”

  “You’re positive?”

  Inez has now seen video-surveillance proof that Will entered this building last night at 2:41 A.M. Security-card proof that his keycard was the one that opened the office door. Physical proof that the files are not in their drawer. “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  Inez waits for him to say something further, ask something else, then realizes the line is dead. She holds the phone, gathering her strength to return upstairs, to redirect their search, ask if anyone needs food, or drink, or drugs, because they’re going to be here awhile.

  NEW YORK CITY

  “Who’s that?” Gabriella asks.

  “Apparently Will was in Paris last night, stealing the files for Iceland and Sweden.”

  “That’s odd. He must know something.”

  “Yes. And he’s traveling under a different name. Must’ve procured himself a passport. You have any idea how Will would do that?”

  “Not from me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Gabriella crosses her legs. “If I were Will, I’d probably go to Dean Fowler for help. Dean dabbles, you know. And they’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “Yeah. Listen, Gabs, could I ask you to go have a little chat with Dean?”

  “Sure. And what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Iceland.”

  “Why Iceland?”

  “It’s a lot closer than Sweden.”

  AKUREYRI, ICELAND

  Speeding through the traffic-free valleys alongside rushing rivers and craggy ridges and woolly sheep and more woolly sheep, racing to catch the plane to Reykjavík, Will is making good time, but still cutting it awfully close. He keeps glancing at the dashboard clock, then accelerating, driving faster than he should. Twice he needs to come to a complete stop to allow a herd of sheep to cross the road. There’s no way to hurry along sheep.

  He’s just a few miles from Akureyri when he finds himself in an impenetrable bank of dense fog, forced to slow the car to the barest crawl, the road now treacherous with severe switchbacks and low visibility, descending toward the eastern shore of Eyjafjörður, the longest fjord in Iceland.

  Will glances at the clock. He’s running out of time. He increases pressure on the gas, feels the transmission switch gears. Leans forward in the seat, his face closer to the windshield, closer to whatever it is he won’t be able to see coming through the—

  Shit! He yanks the steering wheel to the right, swerving away from an oncoming car that’s climbing the hill that Will is descending, its horn blaring, and then Will is pulling the wheel hard back to the left, to avoid flying off the road into a ditch, and now fishtailing on the wet surface, his heart hammering—

  He brings the car under control, white-knuckling the wheel.

  The road levels and straightens out beside the fjord that separates Will from the town, from the airport, from the small plane that’ll take him where he needs to be. He turns the car onto the bridge and floors the gas, the speedometer climbing, the engine whining.

  He can see the airport, nestled beside the water. The Akureyri airport is far from the tiniest commercial strip he’s ever visited—it has both rental cars and food, while plenty of airports offer neither—but it’s still pretty small, and from afar he can clearly see all the goings-on. He sees the plane he ought to be boarding, a short walk from the small terminal.

  Will’s car is halfway across the bridge when he sees the plane’s door close. Then the rolling staircase roll away. He is just arriving at the end of the bridge when the plane begins to taxi.

  He has missed the flight, the last one of the day.

  LONDON

  “Tell me.” Elle pushes her hair away from her ear, adjusts the phone’s angle.

  “I’m at JFK, where fifteen minutes ago the editor passed through security. I called our main contact in Virginia, but he didn’t answer any of his lines. So I called his boss.”

  Elle knows that their main contact in Virginia is never going to answer any phone, ever again. But she doe
sn’t want to tell Roger about this, or he might start to worry about the longevity of his own ability to answer the phone.

  “Good thinking,” she says. “And?”

  “The editor checked into a Saga-class seat bound for Keflavík. Due to arrive in seven hours. Me, I’ll be in coach.”

  Elle is scanning the departure board, looking for the next Iceland-bound flight. She’s been waiting in Heathrow for exactly this type of information since the end of her conversation in the hotel suite. She’d previously assumed that her employer is a supergreedy amoral capitalist. But now she understands him to be a stupendously devious megalomaniac. She can’t quite decide if this represents an improvement in her predicament, or the opposite.

  “Is Travelers the spy network I’m looking for?” he asked.

  And as ludicrous as this whole thing sounded, it might be true. She admitted, “I really don’t know.”

  “You know who does?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Before Rhodes deleted Malcom Somers’s files from this drive, he copied them, right?”

  Elle nodded, understanding where this was going.

  “Rhodes found something, didn’t he? And then he took that something, and he fled with it.”

  She was still nodding.

  “Rhodes knows.”

  She was already standing.

  “Go get him.”

  NEW YORK CITY

  “Hello Dean.”

  “Gabriella Rivera! You’re certainly a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Are your eyes sore? Maybe from all your ogling. You should rest them now and then.”

  “Har-har.” Dean turns toward the man behind the bar. “Marlon?” The bartender looks over at his boss. “Yours is a Manhattan, right?” Dean asks.

  Gabriella shakes her head. “Just a club soda, if you don’t mind.”