his watch. In the rearview, the Opel sedan pulled slowly into the road and kept a steady distance behind him.
It took fifteen minutes to reach Tempelhof Airport’s long-term parking lot. By then, Adriana had awakened, as he had expected she would, but during the fast drive down the B96, he hadn’t heard a thing. Only when he slowed at the entrance and stopped to take an automated parking ticket did he hear her kicking against the walls of her tiny prison. His stomach went bad again, but he kept it under control, and once he’d parked, the sound of her struggling seemed incomprehensibly loud. He got out, leaving the car unlocked and the screwdriver in place. He followed her noises to the trunk. He took out his wallet and flipped through it as if counting cash, but said in German, “Adriana, it’s going to be okay. Nothing will happen to you. In a few minutes someone else will take you out. Go with him. He’s here to protect you.”
If it weren’t for the duct tape, Adriana Stanescu might have shouted German or elaborate Moldovan curses at him, but all he heard was wordless moans and three sharp kicks of her bound feet against the inside of the trunk. He ran to catch an airport shuttle arriving at a nearby stop. Just beyond the stop, the Opel had pulled into a space but kept idling. At the sight of Milo running toward the bus, the car backed out again. He moved to the rear of the half-full bus and watched the sedan follow him to the airport.
6
Milo had nearly expected failure, but since any good Tourist’s travel plans are often thrown awry, failure didn’t concern him. In fact, a part of him wished for it-perhaps at the airport ticket booth (had there been a person handing out tickets), or in the parking lot (had the German shadows decided to check his car before shadowing the bus). If failure stopped him in his tracks, he could end the pointless game. Not only this particular job, but all jobs, forever.
It didn’t fail. The Germans followed him to the mostly empty airport-it was scheduled to close down later that year-and took notes as he bought a ticket for the next departing flight, to Dortmund. He depended on his Sebastian Hall papers too much to risk them, so he used his emergency documents-a U.K. passport that gave his name as Gerald Stanley, resident of Gloucester.
They watched him wait for the 6:50 P.M. departure. Out in the lot, he knew, his father parked beside the BMW, opened the trunk, and with the help of some friends transferred the struggling girl to another car in order to save her life.
His shadows tired before boarding began. He imagined that they were going to check out the BMW, but it would now be empty.
Yet by the time he was on the plane, taxiing down the old Tempelhof runway, his surety faded. Would Yevgeny keep his promise? It was a big responsibility: Keep the girl hidden for a month or two while the police searched for her. The parents could make honest cries of despair, and after the attention had died down Yevgeny would contact them. The child is fine, he would say, but the only way to get her back safely is to keep her a secret, to leave your lives in Berlin and move away-perhaps return to Moldova-under new names, where you can live together in peace. Yevgeny would take care of the particulars-the passports, transportation, visas if necessary-but he would have to be assured of their silence.
A telling detail from their debate had been Yevgeny’s doubt that the girl’s parents would be willing to leave their lives for the sake of Adriana. “Of course they would agree to it immediately, but later, when they’re trapped in some lonely town far from Western civilization, don’t you think they might change their minds? Contact old friends and family?”
It told him that Yevgeny couldn’t imagine sacrificing his own future for the sake of either of his daughters, much less for the out-of-wedlock son who’d caused him more grief, probably, than he had been worth. As his plane crested cloud, Milo wondered if the old man, after some consideration, would realize what trouble this plan was and decide to end all their problems with a bullet.
He would have to see for himself. In a few weeks, he decided, he would demand to visit the girl.
Exhausted, he burned the Alligator ID and his Gerald Stanley papers in Dortmund and spent the night in a hotel as Sebastian Hall. He also put his phone back together, but no one called. In the morning, he bought a change of clothes in the Westenhellweg shopping center, rented a car, and drove through the Ruhr, where industrial and once-industrial cities like Bochum and Essen passed; then the landscape turned to farmland as he continued into the Netherlands. By Saturday afternoon, he’d reached Amsterdam, turned in his car, and boarded a bus heading to Belgium. Only once he’d taken a room at Antwerp’s Hotel Tourist that evening did he pick up some German newspapers. The only sign of Milo Weaver’s trail of destruction was a brief update, on the arts pages, on the lack of progress on the E. G. Buhrle theft. There was no mention of Adriana Stanescu-the Berlin police would be waiting seventy-two hours before raising the alarm.
He ate a dinner of beef stewed in red wine with pearl onions, the obligatory french fries, and two half liters of Vondel brown ale. The meal left him tired again, so he climbed up to his meager room. Before sleep came, a cell phone melody jolted him.
“Yeah?” he said irritably.
“Riverrun, past Eve.”
“And Adam’s.”
“Nice job, Hall. We’ve even heard of it over here. The family’s been hounding the police.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased.”
“None of us can figure out where you put her. In Kreuzberg?”
“Ask me no questions, Alan.”
“I am asking you, Sebastian.”
The lie came out smoothly because it had been practiced. “There was a second car in the courtyard. That’s where I put her. After your Germans left me at the Tempelhof gate, I doubled back. I picked up the car and drove her out to the countryside.”
“What Germans?”
“The ones you sent to watch over me.”
Drummond paused, perhaps wondering about the uses and misuses of irony. “You lost me. I didn’t send anyone.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s done.”
“It might matter. If someone’s following you-”
“No one’s following me now.”
Another pause. “Where are you?”
It was a pointless question, as Drummond’s computer charted the location of all his Tourists’ phones. “Antwerp.”
“You’ll be heading back to Zurich now?”
“Yeah.”
“First thing when you arrive, drop by the Best Western Hotel Krone. There’ll be a letter for you.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Listen, I’ve got things to prepare.”
“Won’t take long, Hall. Trust me on that. Just follow the instructions and you’ll be done in no time.”
The line went dead.
7
From hotel to hotel, the trip took nearly nine hours, placing him in the Best Western’s arid lobby by six Sunday evening. He drove most of the way in a Toyota he’d picked up on an Antwerp side street using his key ring, then dumped the car just over the Swiss border in Basel, wiped it down with a towel he found in the trunk, and took an hour-long train to Zurich Hauptbahnhof, where the previous night’s snow had blackened into mud.
He gave his Tourism name to a demure desk clerk with tight, tired eyes and received an envelope with SEBASTIAN HALL scribbled across it. As he headed back to the front doors, he realized he was being watched by a
