getting his wife and daughter back, and all of his efforts had to be focused on that. He was no longer an employee of the federal government.
He needed help, he thought as he slipped a blue ballpoint with the airline’s logo into his pocket. He was caught between too many sides, Chinese and American, each of which had its own interests that, eventually, could cost him more than he was willing to lose. So far, he’d asked two people for help, and in each case it had failed, but that didn’t mean that he shouldn’t continue to try.
As they entered Frankfurt Airport, he watched for security cameras, which were easy enough to spot. They were everywhere. He and Leticia cut through the crowd of travelers toting bags and dragging children and, among the shops in the main terminal, found the toilets, each with a security camera watching the entrance.
“Don’t make us late,” she said as she wandered into the women’s bathroom.
Inside the men’s, he took out the airline’s ballpoint and ripped a paper towel from the rack. He pressed it flat against the wall, thought a moment, and then wrote in large, clear block letters:
To Erika Schwartz, BND-Pullach-
We Need To Talk. Keep Your Distance.
— JOHN NADLER
He folded the note into his pocket, then stepped out of the bathroom. Leticia was still inside, and he turned quickly, pulling out and unfolding the note, to look directly into the lens of the security camera above him. He held out the note for five seconds, counting, then ripped it in half, and again into quarters as he returned to the bathroom. He continued to tear at it until only small fragments remained, which he flushed down a toilet.
It was Leticia’s idea for them to sit separately on the plane to Jeddah. “They’ll have had time to put someone here to watch us, so we might as well pretend to be elusive,” she said. However, during the five-and-a-half hour flight, neither saw anyone obvious among the thoub suits and white shumaggs and black abayas and hijabs. They landed at 8:00 P. M. and left separately, and after a smooth entrance through passport control, where he stated his intention was tourism, he found Leticia haggling with a limousine driver along the brightly lit ring of Al Madinah Al Munawwarah Road. The night air was warm and full of the Red Sea.
It took fifteen minutes for the limo to deliver them to the Jeddah Hilton, driving through a nighttime cityscape of banks and shopping plazas identified in Arabic and English, and new, clean hotels. He noticed an illuminated billboard with the face of a smiling man in a red shumagg, a mustache, and a wide black goatee-King Abdullah Aziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques-keeping benevolent watch. By the coast, the hotel towers rose, and between them he caught glimpses of beach, glowing with lamplight. Jeddah was the largest port on the Red Sea, the most cosmopolitan of Saudi cities, and a perpetual resort and convention town. The religious police, or mutaween, held little sway here, though upon arriving at the hotel they heard the nighttime Isha prayers broadcast from speakers in the distance.
Though he hadn’t seen her visit any exchange desks in the airport, Leticia paid for the ride in riyals, and in the hotel she produced two new passports, booking them into a room as Mr. and Mrs. Greene. As they took the elevator up to the tenth floor, where the hotel’s modern lobby rose airily to the roof, she said, “Don’t get comfortable. We’re checking out in the morning.”
“I didn’t see anyone on the ride here.”
“Neither did I,” she said, leaning forward to peer down to the ground floor, “but there was a couple in the airport. They certainly noticed me.”
Milo couldn’t remember any couple, but he knew he could have missed anything. “Locals?”
“White.”
He hoped that they were from Erika Schwartz.
Their room had an expansive view of the beach, the land low and flat, sinking into the sea, and the ships’ lights were like fallen stars floating between them and Sudan. “What time?” he asked.
“Soon.” She began to unbutton her blouse. “I need a shower.”
He took a can of Pepsi out of the minibar.
“You want to join me?”
Despite fourteen hours of travel, she didn’t look worn out at all. Unlike him, she was still living the Tourist life, but looking that alert just wasn’t possible. “What are you taking?”
“That doesn’t sound like a yes to me,” she said, smiling. When he didn’t reply, she said, “Why? You want some?”
He did. Back when he lived her kind of life, Dexedrine had been his stimulant of choice, but right now he would take anything to keep from crumbling. With her shirt hanging open, revealing a lace-edged black bra, she went through her bag. The last Tourist he’d done drugs with had produced excellent cocaine, but Leticia took out a small brown bottle and tossed it over. “Just one. I don’t have many.”
It turned out to be Adderall, used to treat ADD and narcolepsy, and the prescription was for Gwendolyn Davis, the name she had used in London. By the time he’d swallowed one with a mouthful of Pepsi, she was down to her underwear, pretending he wasn’t there, folding her clothes neatly on the corner of the bed, then bending at the hips for no apparent reason. She looked at him over her shoulder with a smile.
“I’ll be in the bar,” he said, taking the soda can with him to the door. “If they lost track of us, my face should help out.”
Unfazed, she straightened. “A face like that never helped anyone.”
14
In the elevator, he pressed his forehead against the glass, watching the lobby floor rise to meet him, noting faces that turned upward, but none looked familiar. When he got out, moving slowly past businessmen in robes and suits, escorts in Western fashions, and tourists of all nations and attire, he headed first to a lobby sofa and settled down. He didn’t bother looking around, but he made sure he was visible, examining a brochure floor plan of the hotel. After two minutes, he headed downstairs to the Manhattan Sport Diner. He stood at the door, moving his gaze gradually around the place, taking in all the kitschy American memorabilia and the three plasma televisions showing the same soccer game. When a woman with a pen in her pocket asked if he was dining alone, he told her he was just looking for his wife; she must be in another restaurant.
There were plenty to look at: the Vienna, the Al Safina, the Al Khayam Iranian Restaurant, and two terraces-La Terrace restaurant, and the bar at the pool terrace. Only once he’d displayed himself at all these locations did he return to the basement level and, close to the Manhattan Sport Diner, enter a men’s bathroom and go to sit in one of the stalls.
It took three minutes for the door to open and a man to walk past all the stall doors and, finally, choose the one beside Milo. He locked his door, sat down with a stifled groan, and quietly said in what sounded like a local accent, “You’ve got something to tell me?”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“And there’s no reason to know, sir. I heard that the last time you knew someone you nearly killed him in a bathroom. I’m just here to pass on your messages.”
It was enough of an answer. This man was working for Xin Zhu. “Do you have any messages for me?”
“Just a request that you keep your hands off of innocent people such as myself.”
“Tell him,” Milo said, “that tonight I’m meeting someone. I don’t know who.”
There was a pause. “May I ask when you will know this?”
“After the meeting.”
“Yes, of course,” then, “Oh, I forgot. I do have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“In the Frankfurt airport, what was on the paper?”
“What paper?”
“I do not know. Yet this is the question.”
Milo took an involuntary breath. “Tell him he will have his answer as soon as I speak to Tina.”
“Tina?”
“He knows who that is. In fact, tell him I demand to speak to her in the next twenty-four hours.”
