'Okay,' said the Tourist. 'What happens after Diane Morel enlightens you?'
'I decide on the next step.'
Though Grainger had told Einner to help Milo out, all Tourists know their orders last only until the next orders arrive. For all Einner knew, in the morning he'd receive a call to kill his passenger, but for the moment he seemed satisfied by temporary certainties.
Milo noticed that the owner of the Mercedes had fitted an adapter to use with an iPod. He went through his bag until he'd found his own and plugged it in. Soon the car was filled with France Gall.
'What's this?' Einner sounded irritated. 'The best music in the world.'
It was after four thirty when they crossed the European Unionized non-border into France, having seen three police cars but receiving no grief from any of them. The sun hung low in the windshield, sometimes obscured by a gray smudge of cloud in the direction of Paris. 'We'll keep the car until tomorrow,' Einner told him. 'We'll find a Renault, I think. I'm trying to sample all of Europe 's brands before I finally buy one myself.'
'Tom wouldn't let you do that, would he? All the registration involved?'
Einner's shrug suggested this was a concern for lesser Tourists. 'I've built up a legend for a rainy day. It's good to get a few purchases on it.'
Milo thought of the Dolan legend he'd spent years building up. 'Apartment?'
'Little one. In the south.'
He supposed all Tourists did the same thing. The smart ones, at least. 'So what was the trouble in Frankfurt? Were you teaching manners to bankers?'
Einner chewed his peeling lower lip, wondering how much to share. 'It's a dirty business, banking. But the job was straightforward enough. Get some answers, then get rid of the evidence.'
'Successful?'
'I always am,' said Einner.
'Sure you are.'
'You don't believe me!'
After a moment, Milo said, 'To the Tourist, success and failure are handed out in equal measure. To the Tourist, successes and failures are the same things-jobs completed.'
'Jesus. You're not quoting the Book again, are you?'
'You really should get hold of it, Einner. Makes the life a lot easier to take.'
Einner's drawn expression gave Milo a measure of satisfaction. He remembered his own Tourism days, the irregular biorhythms that would one day make him suicidal, and the next lead him to feelings of invincibility. He saw too much of that latter feeling in Einner, which would lead to a sudden death. If the only way to make him listen was to lie about the source of his lessons, then so be it.
'Where'd you find it?' he finally asked, staring hard at the darkening road.
' Bologna.' Milo grunted amusement to make himself more believable. 'In a bookshop, if you can believe it.”
“You're kidding.'
'A dusty old place with racks up to the ceiling.”
“And how did you get there?'
'I followed the clues. I won't bore you with all the steps, but the final piece was in a Spanish mosque. Wedged in the spine of the imam's Qu'ran. Can you believe it?'
'Wow,' said Einner. 'What was the final piece?'
'The address of the bookstore, and the location in the shelves. On the top, of course, so no one would pick it up by accident.'
'Big?'
Milo shook his head. 'Not much more than a pamphlet.”
“And how long did it take?”
“To find the Book?'
'From the beginning. From when you first made an effort to look for it.'
Milo wanted to assure him that the search wasn't easy, but also give him hope. 'Six, seven months. Once you get on the trail, the search builds momentum. Whoever set up the clues knew what he was doing.'
'He? Why not a she?'
'Find the Book,' said Milo. 'You'll figure it out yourself.'
29
A half hour before Paris, the low summer sun disappeared behind slate clouds, and rain dropped from the sky. Einner turned on the wipers, cursing the storm. 'So, where to?'
Milo checked his watch-it was 7:00 p.m. He'd hoped to track down Diane Morel, but he doubted she'd be in the office this late on a Friday. 'Angela's. I'll spend the night there.'
'And me?'
'I figured you had a girlfriend to visit.'
Einner rocked his head from side to side. 'Not sure if she's available.'
Milo wondered if there really was a girlfriend after all.
Einner drove along Angela's street, slowly, to look for DGSE watchers. They spotted no one, saw no vans on the street, so Einner dropped him off two blocks away, and Milo jogged in the hard rain to the apartment. In the doorway, he wiped water off his face and searched the buzzers. At the bottom of the second column the name M. GAGNE was highlighted with a scribbled star. He pressed the buzzer.
It took about two minutes for M. Gagne-a woman, it turned out-to speak through the intercom. A wary 'Oui?'
'Uh, excuse me,' he said in English, too loudly, 'I'm here about Angela Yates. She's my sister.'
The woman let out an audible gasp, then the front door buzzed. Milo pushed through.
Madame Gagne was a widow in her late sixties. Her husband, the previous superintendent, had died in 2000, and the job fell inevitably to her. She told him this in her claustrophobic salon after having decided that Milo truly was the brother of Angela Yates, even though Angela had never said a thing about siblings. 'But she was the quiet one, was she not?' the woman asked in her thin, airy English.
Milo agreed that Angela was indeed the quiet one.
He said that he had come to collect some family heirlooms before the rest was taken away by L'Armee du Salut-the Paris branch of the Salvation Army-next week. He apologetically told her he spoke no French. He gave his name as Lionel, in case she asked to see his papers, but she didn't. Once she'd ushered him in for a small glass of wine, it became clear that Madame Gagne was lonely.
'You know how I did learn my English?' she asked.
'How?'
'At the end of the war, you know, I was only but a small child. A baby, really. My father was kill by the Germans, and my mother- Marie was her name-my mother was alone with me and my brother, Jean. He is dead now. She found American soldier-a black man, you understand? Big Negro from Alabama. He stayed-he love my mother very much, and he was good to Jean and me. It did not last-these things, good things, they do not-but he lived with us to when I was ten, and he teached me English and jazz.' She laughed aloud at the memory. 'He took us when he had the money. Do you know that I saw Billie Holiday?'
'Did you?' Milo asked, smiling.
She waved a hand to temper his enthusiasm. 'Of course I was only but a child, I understand nothing. She was too sad for me. For me, was Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Yes,' she said, nodding. 'That was music for me. For a child. Salt peanuts, salt peanuts,' she sang. 'You know that song?'
'It's a wonderful song.'
As their conversation reached the forty-minute point, he tried not to let his anxiety show. He felt he must have missed a watcher, or maybe police cameras were being used, and he waited for Diane Morel and her handsome partner to break down the door and put him in shackles. But this, as Einner would have said, was just paranoia.
