The Tourist

1

Four hours after his failed suicide attempt, he descended toward Aerodrom Ljubljana. A tone sounded, and above his head the seat belt sign glowed. Beside him, a Swiss businesswoman buckled her belt and gazed out the window at the clear Slovenian sky-all it had taken was one initial rebuff to convince her that the twitching American she'd been seated next to had no interest in conversation.

The American closed his eyes, thinking about the morning's failure in Amsterdam-gunfire, shattering glass and splintered wood, sirens.

If suicide is sin, he thought, then what is it to someone who doesn't believe in sin? What is it then? An abomination of nature? Probably, because the one immutable law of nature is to continue existing. Witness: weeds, cockroaches, ants, and pigeons. All of nature's creatures work to a single, unified purpose: to stay alive. It's the one indisputable theory of everything.

He'd dwelled on suicide so much over the last months, had examined the act from so many angles, that it had lost its punch. The infinitive clause "to commit suicide" was no more tragic than "to eat breakfast" or "to sit," and the desire to snuff himself was often as strong as his desire "to sleep."

Sometimes it was a passive urge-drive recklessly without a seat belt; walk blindly into a busy street-though more frequently these days he was urged to take responsibility for his own death. "The Bigger Voice," his mother would have called it: There's the knife; you know what to do. Open the window and try to fly. At four thirty that morning, while he lay on top of a woman in Amsterdam, pressing her to the floor as her bedroom window exploded from automatic gunfire, the urge had suggested he stand straight and proud and face the hail of bullets like a man.

He'd spent the whole week in Holland, watching over a sixty-year-old U.S.-supported politician whose comments on immigration had put a contract on her head. The hired assassin, a killer who in certain circles was known only as "the Tiger," had that morning made a third attempt on her life. Had he succeeded, he would have derailed that day's Dutch House of Representatives vote on her conservative immigration bill.

How the continued existence of one politician-in this case, a woman who had made a career of catering to the whims of frightened farmers and bitter racists-played into the hands of his own country was unknown to him. "Keeping an empire," Grainger liked to tell him, "is ten times more difficult than gaining one."

Rationales, in his trade, didn't matter. Action was its own reason. But, covered in glass shards, the woman under him screaming over the crackling sound, like a deep fryer, of the window frame splintering, he'd thought, What am I doing here? He even placed a hand flat on the wood-chip-covered carpet and began to push himself up again, to face this assassin head-on. Then, in the midst of all that noise, he heard the happy music of his cell phone. He removed his hand from the floor, saw that it was Grainger calling, and shouted into it, "What?"

"Riverrun, past Eve," Tom Grainger said.

"And Adam's."

Learned Grainger had created go-codes out of the first lines of novels. His own Joycean code told him he was needed someplace new. But nothing was new anymore. The unrelenting roll call of cities and hotel rooms and suspicious faces that had constituted his life for too many years was stupefying in its tedium. Would it never stop?

So he hung up on his boss, told the screaming woman to stay where she was, and climbed to his feet…but didn't die. The bullets had ceased, replaced by the whining sirens of Amsterdam's finest.

"Slovenia," Grainger told him later, as he drove the politician safely to the Tweede Kamer. "Portoroz, on the coast. We've got a vanished suitcase of taxpayer money and a missing station chief. Frank Dawdle."

"I need a break, Tom."

"It'll be like a vacation. Angela Yates is your contact-she works out of Dawdle's office. A familiar face. Afterward, stay around and enjoy the water."

As Grainger droned on, outlining the job with minimal details, his stomach had started to hurt, as it still did now, a sharp pain.

If the one immutable law of existence is to exist, then does that make the opposite some sort of crime?

No. Suicide-as-crime would require that nature recognize good and evil. Nature only recognizes balance and imbalance.

Maybe that was the crucial point-balance. He'd slipped to some secluded corner of the extremes, some far reach of utter imbalance. He was a ludicrously unbalanced creature. How could nature smile upon him? Nature, surely, wanted him dead, too.

"Sir?" said a bleached, smiling stewardess. "Your seat belt."

He blinked at her, confused. "What about it?"

"You need to wear it. We're landing. It's for your safety."

Though he wanted to laugh, he buckled it just for her. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small white envelope full of pills he'd bought in Dusseldorf, and popped two Dexedrine. To live or die was one issue; for the moment, he just wanted to stay alert.

Suspiciously, the Swiss businesswoman watched him put away his drugs.

The pretty, round-faced brunette behind the scratched bulletproof window watched him approach. He imagined he knew what she noticed-how big his hands were, for example. Piano-player hands. The Dexedrine was making them tremble, just slightly, and if she noticed it she might wonder if he was unconsciously playing a sonata.

He handed over a mangled American passport that had crossed more borders than many diplomats. A touring pianist, she might think. A little pale, damp from the long flight he'd just finished. Bloodshot eyes. Aviatophobia-fear of flying-was probably her suspicion.

He managed a smile, which helped wash away her expression of bureaucratic boredom. She really was very pretty, and he wanted her to know, by his expression, that her face was a nice Slovenian welcome.

The passport gave her his particulars: five foot eleven. Born June 1970-thirty-one years old. Piano player? No-American passports don't list occupations. She peered up at him and spoke in her unsure accent: "Mr. Charles Alexander?"

He caught himself looking around again, paranoid, and gave another smile. "That's right."

"You are here for the business or the tourism?"

"I'm a tourist."

She held the open passport under a black light, then raised a stamp over one of the few blank pages. "How long will you be in Slovenia?"

Mr. Charles Alexander's green eyes settled pleasantly on her. "Four days."

"For vacation? You should spend at least a week. There is many things to see."

His smile flashed again, and he rocked his head. "Well, maybe you're right. I'll see how it goes."

Satisfied, the clerk pressed the stamp onto the page and handed it back. "Enjoy Slovenia."

He passed through the luggage area, where other passengers from the Amsterdam-Ljubljana flight leaned on empty carts around the still-barren carousel. None seemed to notice him, so he tried to stop looking like a paranoid drug mule. It was his stomach, he knew, and that initial Dexedrine rush. Two white customs desks sat empty of officials, and he continued through a pair of mirrored doors that opened automatically for him. A crowd of expectant faces sank when they realized he didn't belong to them. He loosened his tie.

The last time Charles Alexander had been in Slovenia, years ago, he'd been called something else, a name just as false as the one he used now. Back then, the country was still exhilarated by the 1991 ten-day war that had freed it from the Yugoslav Federation. Nestled against Austria, Slovenia had always been the odd man out in that patchwork nation, more German than Balkan. The rest of Yugoslavia accused Slovenes-not without reason-of snobbery.

Still inside the airport, he spotted Angela Yates just outside the doors to the busy arrivals curb. Above business slacks, she wore a blue Viennese blazer, arms crossed over her breasts as she smoked and stared through the gray morning light at the field of parked cars in front of the airport. He didn't approach her. Instead, he found a bathroom and checked himself in the mirror. The paleness and sweat had nothing to do with aviatophobia. He ripped off his tie, splashed water on his cheeks, wiped at the pink edges of his eyes and blinked, but still looked the same.

"Sorry to get you up," he said once he'd gotten outside.

Angela jerked, a look of terror passing through her lavender eyes. Then she grinned. She looked tired, but she would be. She'd driven four hours to meet his flight, which meant she'd had to leave Vienna by 5:00 a.m. She tossed the unfinished smoke, a Davidoff, then punched his shoulder and hugged him. The smell of tobacco was comforting. She held him at arm's length. "You haven't been eating."

"Overrated."

"And you look like hell."

He shrugged as she yawned into the back of her hand. "You going to make it?" he asked. "No sleep last night.”

“Need something?"

Angela got rid of the smile. "Still gulping amphetamines?"

"Only for emergencies," he lied, because he'd taken that last dose for no other reason than he'd wanted it, and now, as the tremors shook through his bloodstream, he had an urge to empty the rest down his throat. "Want one?"

"Please."

They crossed an access road choked with morning taxis and buses heading into town, then followed concrete steps down to the parking lot. She whispered, "Is it Charles these days?"

"Almost two years now."

"Well, it's a stupid name. Too aristocratic. I refuse to use it.”

“I keep asking for a new one. A month ago I showed up in Nice, and some Russian had already heard about Charles Alexander."

"Oh?"

"Nearly killed me, that Russian."

She smiled as if he'd been joking, but he hadn't been. Then his snapping synapses worried he was sharing too much. Angela knew nothing about his job; she wasn't supposed to.

"Tell me about Dawdle. How long have you worked with him?"

"Three years." She took out her key ring and pressed a little black button until she spotted, three rows away, a gray Peugeot winking at them. "Frank's my boss, but we keep it casual. Just a small Company presence at the embassy." She paused. "He was sweet on me for a while. Can you imagine? Couldn't see what was right in front of him."

She spoke with a tinge of hysteria that made him fear she would cry. He pushed anyway. "What do you think? Could he have done it?"

Angela popped the Peugeot's trunk. "Absolutely not. Frank Dawdle wasn't dishonest. Bit of a coward, maybe. A bad dresser. But never dishonest. He didn't take the money."

Charles threw in his bag. "You're using the past tense, Angela."

"I'm just afraid."

"Of what?"

Angela knitted her brows, irritated. "That he's dead. What do you think?"

²

She was a careful driver these days, which he supposed was an inevitable result of her two Austrian years. Had she been stationed in Italy, or even here in Slovenia, she would've ignored her turn signals and those pesky speed limit notices.

To ease the tension, he brought up old London friends from when they both worked out of that embassy as vaguely titled "attachés." He'd left in a hurry, and all Angela knew was that his new job, with some undisclosed Company department, required a steady change of names, and that he once again worked under their old boss, Tom Grainger. The rest of London station believed what they'd been told-that he had been fired. She said, "I fly up for parties now and then. They always invite me. But they're sad, you know? All diplomatic people. There's something intensely pitiful about them."

"Really?" he said, though he knew what she meant.

"Like they're living in their own little compound, surrounded by barbed wire. They pretend they're keeping everyone out, when in fact they're locked in."

It was a nice way to put it, and it made him think of Tom Grainger's delusions of empire-Roman outposts in hostile lands.

Once they hit the Al heading southwest, Angela got back to business.

"Tom fill you in on everything?"

"Not much. Can I get one of those smokes?"

"Not in the car."

"Oh."

"Tell me what you know, and I'll fill in the rest."

Thick forests passed them, pines flickering by as he outlined his brief conversation with Grainger. "He says your Frank Dawdle was sent down here to deliver a briefcase full of money. He didn't say how much."

"Three million."

"Dollars?"

She nodded at the road.

Charles continued: "He was last seen at the Hotel Metropol in Portoroz by Slovenian intelligence. In his room. Then he disappeared." He waited for her to fill the numerous blank spots in that story line. All she did was drive in her steady, safe way. "Want to tell me more? Like, who the money was for?"

Angela tilted her head from side to side, but instead of answering she turned on the radio. It was preset to a station she'd found during her long drive from Vienna. Slovenian pop. Terrible stuff.

"And maybe you can tell me why we had to learn his last whereabouts from the SOVA, and not from our own people."

As if he'd said nothing, she cranked the volume, and boy-band harmonies filled the car. Finally, she started to speak, and Charles had to lean close, over the stick shift, to hear.

"I'm not sure who the orders started with, but they reached us through New York. Tom's office. He chose Frank for obvious reasons. Old-timer with a spotless record. No signs of ambition. No drinking problems, nothing to be compromised. He was someone they could trust with three million. More importantly, he's familiar here. If the Slovenes saw him floating around the resort, there'd be no suspicions. He vacations in Portoroz every summer, speaks fluent Slovene." She grunted a half-laugh. "He even stopped to chat with them. Did Tom tell you that? The day he arrived, he saw a SOVA agent in a gift shop and bought him a little toy sailboat. Frank's like that."

"I like his style."

Angela's look suggested he was being inappropriately ironic. "It was supposed to be simple as pie. Frank takes the money down to the harbor on Saturday-two days ago-and does a straight phrasecode pass-off. Just hands over the briefcase. In return, he gets an address. He goes to a pay phone, calls me in Vienna, and reads off the address. Then he drives back home."

The song ended, and a young DJ shouted in Slovenian about the hot-hot-hot band he'd just played as he mixed in the intro to the next tune, a sugar-sweet ballad.

"Why wasn't someone backing him up?"

"Someone was," she said, spying the rearview. "Leo Bernard. You met him in Munich, remember? Couple of years ago."

Charles remembered a hulk of a man from Pennsylvania. In Munich, Leo had been their tough-guy backup during an operation with the German BND against an Egyptian heroin racket. They'd never had to put Leo's fighting skills to the test, but it had given Charles a measure of comfort knowing the big man was available. "Yeah. Leo was funny."

"Well, he's dead," said Angela, again glancing into the rearview. "In his hotel room, a floor above Frank's. Nine millimeter." She swallowed. "From his own gun, we think, though we can't find the weapon itself."

"Anyone hear it?"

She shook her head. "Leo had a suppressor."

Charles leaned back into his seat, involuntarily checking the side mirror. He lowered the volume as a woman tried with limited success to carry a high E-note. Then he cut it off. Angela was being cagey about the central facts of this case-the why of all that money-but that could wait. Right now he wanted to visualize the events. "When did they arrive at the coast?"

"Friday afternoon. The seventh."

"Legends?"

"Frank, no. He was too well known for that. Leo used an old one, Benjamin Schneider, Austrian."

"Next day, Saturday, was the trade. Which part of the docks?”

“I've got it written down."

"Time?"

"Evening. Seven.”

“Frank disappears…?"

"Last seen at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning. He was up until then drinking with Bogdan Krizan, the local SOVA head. They're old friends. Then, around two in the afternoon, the hotel cleaning staff found Leo's body."

"What about the dock? Anyone see what happened at seven?"

Again, she glanced into the rearview. "We were too late. The Slovenes weren't going to ask us why Frank was buying them toys. And we didn't know about Leo's body until after seven. His papers were good enough to confuse the Austrian embassy for over eight hours."

"For three million dollars you couldn't have sent a couple more watchers?"

Angela tightened her jaw. "Maybe, but hindsight doesn't do us any good now."

The incompetence surprised Charles; then again, it didn't. "Whose call was it?"

When she looked in the mirror yet again, her jaw was tighter, her cheeks flushed. So it was her fault, he thought, but she said, "Frank wanted me to stay in Vienna."

"It was Frank Dawdle's idea to go off with three million dollars and only one watcher?"

"I know the man. You don't."

She'd said those words without moving her lips. Charles felt the urge to tell her that he did know her boss. He'd worked with him once, in 1996, to get rid of a retired communist spy from some nondescript Eastern European country. But she wasn't supposed to know about that. He touched her shoulder to show a little sympathy. "I won't talk to Tom until we've got some real answers. Okay?"

She finally looked at him with a weary smile. "Thanks, Milo."

"It's Charles."

The smile turned sardonic. "I wonder if you even have a real name."

3

Their hour-long drive skirted the Italian border, and as they neared the coast the highway opened up and the foliage thinned. The warm morning sun glinted off the road as they passed Koper and Izola, and Charles watched the low shrubs, the Mediterranean architecture, and the zimmer-frei signs that littered each turnoff. It reminded him just how beautiful this tiny stretch of coast truly was. Less than thirty miles that had been pulled back and forth between Italians, Yugoslavs, and Slovenes over centuries of regional warfare.

To their right, they caught occasional glimpses of the Adriatic, and through the open window he smelled salt. He wondered if his own salvation lay in something like this. Disappear, and spend the rest of his years under a hot sun on the sea. The kind of climate that dries and burns the imbalance out of you. But he pushed that aside, because he already knew the truth: Geography solves nothing.

He said, "We can't do this unless you tell me the rest."

"What rest?" She spoke as if she had no idea.

"The why. Why Frank Dawdle was sent down here with three million dollars."

To the rearview, she said, "War criminal. Bosnian Serb. Big fish."

A small pink hotel passed, and then Portoroz Bay opened up, full of sun and glimmering water. "Which one?"

"Does it really matter?"

He supposed it didn't. Karadzic, Mladic, or any other wanted ic-the story was always the same. They, as well as the Croat zealots on the other side of the battle lines, had all had a hand in the Bosnian genocides that had helped turn a once-adored multiethnic country into an international pariah. Since 1996, these men had been fugitives, hidden by sympathizers and corrupt officials, faced with charges from the UN's International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Crimes against humanity, crimes against life and health, genocide, breaches of the Geneva conventions, murder, plunder, and violations of the laws and customs of war. Charles gazed at the Adriatic, sniffing the wind. "The UN's offering five million for these people."

"Oh, this guy wanted five," Angela said as she slowed behind a line of cars with Slovenian, German, and Italian plates. "But all he had was an address, and he demanded the money up front so he could disappear. The UN didn't trust him, turned him down flat, so some smart young man at Langley decided we should purchase it ourselves for three. A PR coup. We buy ourselves the glory of an arrest and once again point out the UN's incompetence." She shrugged. "Five or three-either way, you're a millionaire."

"What do we know about him?"

"He wouldn't tell us anything, but Langley figured it out. Dusan Maskovic, a Sarajevo Serb who joined the militias in the early days. He's part of the entourage that's been hiding the big ones in the Republika Srpska hills. Two weeks ago, he left their employ and contacted the UN Human Rights office in Sarajevo. Apparently, they get people like him every day. So little Dusan put in a call to our embassy in Vienna and found a sympathetic ear."

"Why not just take care of it there? In Sarajevo?"

The traffic moved steadily forward, and they passed shops with flowers and international newspapers. "He didn't want to collect in Bosnia. Didn't even want it set up through the Sarajevo embassy. And he didn't want anyone stationed in the ex-Yugoslav republics involved."

"He's no fool."

"From what we figure, he got hold of a boat in Croatia and was going to wait in the Adriatic until 7:00 p.m. on Saturday. Then he could slip in, make the trade, and slip out again before he'd have to register with the harbormaster."

"I see," Charles said, because despite his returning stomach cramps he finally had enough information to picture the various players and the ways they connected.

"Want me to take care of the room?"

"Let's check the dock first."

Portoroz's main harbor lay at the midpoint of the bay; behind it sat the sixties architecture of the Hotel Slovenia, its name written in light blue against white concrete, a surf motif. They parked off the main road and wandered around shops selling model sailboats and T-shirts with PORTOROZ and I LOVE SLOVENIA and MY PARENTS WENT TO SLOVENIA AND ALL I GOT… scribbled across them. Sandaled families sucking ice cream cones and cigarettes wandered leisurely past. Behind the shops lay a row of small piers full of vacation boats.

"Which one?" asked Charles.

"Forty-seven."

He led the way, hands in his pockets, as if he and his lady-friend were enjoying the view and the hot sun. The crews and captains on the motor- and sailboats paid them no attention. It was nearly noon, time for siestas and drink. Germans and Slovenes dozed on their hot decks, and the only voices they heard were from children who couldn't fall asleep.

Forty-seven was empty, but at forty-nine a humble yacht with an Italian flag was tied up. On its deck, a heavy woman was trying to peel a sausage.

"Buon giorno!" said Charles.

The woman inclined her head politely.

Charles's Italian was only passable, so he asked Angela to find out when the woman had arrived in Portoroz. Angela launched into a machine-gun Roman-Italian that sounded like a blast of insults, but the sausage woman smiled and waved her hands as she threw the insults back. It ended with Angela waving a "Grazie mille."

Charles waved, too, then leaned close to Angela as they walked away. "Well?"

"She got here Saturday night. There was a motorboat beside theirs-dirty, she tells me-but it left soon after they arrived. She guesses around seven thirty, eight."

After a couple more steps, Angela realized Charles had stopped somewhere behind her. His hands were on his hips as he stared at the empty spot with a small placard marked "47.”

“How clean do you think that water is?"

"I've seen worse."

Charles handed over his jacket, then unbuttoned his shirt as he kicked off his shoes.

"You're not," said Angela.

"If the trade happened at all, then it probably didn't go well. If it led to a fight, something might have dropped in here."

"Or," said Angela, "if Dusan's smart, he took Frank's body out into the Adriatic and dropped him overboard."

Charles wanted to tell her that he'd already ruled Dusan Maskovic out as a murderer-there was nothing for Dusan to gain by killing a man who was going to give him money for a simple address with no questions asked-but changed his mind. He didn't have time for a fight.

He stripped to his boxers, hiding the pangs in his stomach as he bent to pull off the slacks. He wore no undershirt, and his chest was pale from a week spent under Amsterdam 's gray skies. "If I don't come up…"

"Don't look at me," said Angela. "I can't swim."

"Then get Signora Sausage to come for me."

Before she could think of a reply, Charles had jumped feet-first into the shallow bay. It was a shock to his drug-bubbly nerves, and there was an instant when he almost breathed in; he had to force himself not to. He paddled back to the surface and wiped his face. Angela, on the edge of the pier, smiled down at him. "Done already?"

"Don't wrinkle my shirt." He submerged again, then opened his eyes.

With the sun almost directly above, the shadows beneath the water were stark. He saw the dirty white hulls of boats, then the blackness where their undersides curved into darkness. He ran his hands along the Italian boat at number forty-nine, following its lines toward the bow, where a thick cord ran up to the piles, holding the boat secure. He let go of the line and sank into the heavy darkness under the pier, using hands for sight. He touched living things- a rough shell, slime, the scales of a paddling fish-but as he prepared to return to the surface, he found something else. A heavy work boot, hard-soled. It was attached to a foot, jeans, a body. Again, he fought to keep himself from inhaling. He tugged, but the stiff, cold corpse was hard to move.

He came up for air, ignored Angela's taunts, then submerged again. He used the pilings for leverage. Once he'd dragged the body into the partial light around the Italian boat, through the cloud of kicked sand, he saw why it had been such a struggle. The bloated body-a dark-bearded man-was rope-bound at the waist to a length of heavy metal tubing: a piece of an engine, he guessed.

He broke the surface gasping. This water, which had seemed so clean a minute before, was now filthy. He spat out leakage, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Above him, hands on her knees, Angela said, "I can hold my breath longer than that. Watch."

"Help me up."

She set his clothes in a pile, kneeled on the pier, and reached down to him. Soon he was over the edge, sitting with his knees up, dripping. A breeze set him shivering.

"Well?" said Angela.

"What does Frank look like?"

She reached into her blazer and tugged out a small photograph she'd brought to show to strangers. A frontal portrait, morose but efficiently lit, so that all Frank Dawdle's features were visible. A clean-shaven man, bald on top, white hair over the ears, sixty or so.

"He didn't grow a beard since this, did he?"

Angela shook her head, then looked worried. "But the last known photo of Maskovic…"

He got to his feet. "Unless the Portoroz murder rate has gone wild, that's your Serb down there."

"I don't-"

Charles cut her off before she could argue: "We'll talk with the SOVA, but you need to call Vienna. Now. Check Frank's office. See what's missing. Find out what was on his computer before he left."

He slipped into his shirt, his wet body bleeding the white cotton gray. Angela started fooling with her phone, but her fingers had trouble with the buttons. Charles took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.

"This is serious. Okay? But don't freak out until we know everything. And let's not tell the Slovenes about the body. We don't want them holding us for questioning."

Again, she nodded.

Charles let go of her and grabbed his jacket, pants, and shoes, then began walking back up the pier, toward the shore. From her boat, her chubby knees to her chin, the Italian woman let out a low whistle. " Bello," she said.

4

An hour and a half later, they were preparing to leave again. Charles wanted to drive, but Angela put up a fight. It was the shock-without him having to say a word, she'd put it together herself. Frank Dawdle, her beloved boss, had killed Leo Bernard, killed Dusan Maskovic, and walked off with three million dollars of the U.S. government's money.

The most damning piece of evidence came from her call to Vienna. The hard drive of Dawdle's computer was missing. Based on power usage, the in-house computer expert believed it had been removed sometime Friday morning, just before Frank and Leo departed for Slovenia.

Despite this, she clung to a new, hopeful theory: The Slovenes were responsible. Frank might have taken his hard drive, but he would only have done so under coercion. His old SOVA buddies were threatening him. When they met with Bogdan Krizan, the local SOVA head, she glared across the Hotel Slovenia table while the old man gobbled a plate of fried calamari and explained that he'd spent Friday night with Frank Dawdle, drinking in his room.

"What do you mean-you visited him?" she said. "Didn't you have work to do?"

Krizan paused over his food, holding his fork loosely. He had an angular face that seemed to expand when he shrugged in his exaggerated Balkan manner. "We're old friends, Miss Yates. Old spies. Drinking together until the early morning is what we do. Besides, I'd heard about Charlotte. I offered sympathy in a bottle."

" Charlotte?" asked Charles.

"His wife," Krizan said, then corrected: "Ex-wife." Angela nodded. "She left him about six months ago. He took it pretty hard."

"Tragic," said Krizan.

To Charles, the picture was nearly complete. "What did he tell you about his visit here?"

"Nothing. I asked, of course, many times. But he'd only wink at me. Now, I'm beginning to wish he'd trusted me."

"Me, too."

"Is he in trouble?" Krizan said this without any visible worry. Charles shook his head. Angela's cell phone rang, and she left the table.

"There's a bitter woman," said Krizan, nodding at her backside. "You know what Frank calls her?"

Charles didn't.

"My blue-eyed wonder." He grinned. "Lovely man, but he wouldn't know a lesbian if she punched him in the nose."

Charles leaned closer as Krizan dug into his calamari. "You can't think of anything else?"

"It's hard when you won't tell me what this is about," he said, then chewed. "But no. He seemed very normal to me."

Near the door, Angela pressed a palm against one ear so she could better hear the caller. Charles got up and shook Krizan's hand. "Thanks for your help."

"If Frank is in trouble," said Krizan, holding on to him a moment longer than was polite, "then I hope you'll be fair with him. He's put in a lot of good years for your country. If he's slipped up in the autumn of his life, then who's to blame him?" That exaggerated shrug returned, and he let Charles go. "We can't keep to perfection one hundred percent of the time. None of us are God."

Charles left Krizan to his philosophizing and reached Angela as she hung up, her face red.

"What is it?”

“That was Max.”

“Who?"

"He's the embassy night clerk. In Vienna. On Thursday night, one of Frank's informers sent in information about a Russian we're watching. Big oligarch. Roman Ugrimov."

Charles knew about Ugrimov-a businessman who'd left Russia to save his skin, but kept influential contacts there as he spread his diversified portfolio around the world. "What kind of information?"

"The blackmail kind." She paused. "He's a pedophile."

"Might be a coincidence," Charles said as they left the restaurant, entering the long socialist-mauve lobby, where three SOVA agents stood around, watching out for their boss.

"Maybe. But yesterday Ugrimov moved into his new house. In Venice."

Again, Charles stopped, and Angela had to walk back to him. Staring at the bright lobby windows, the final pieces fitted together. He said, "That's just across the water. With a boat, it's ideal."

"I suppose, but-"

"What does someone with three million dollars in stolen money need most?" Charles cut in. "He needs a new name. A man with Roman Ugrimov's connections could easily supply papers. If persuaded."

She didn't answer, only stared at him.

"One more call," he said. "Get someone to check with the harbormasters in Venice. Find out if any boats were abandoned in the last two days."

They waited for the callback in a central cafe that had yet to adjust to the postcommunist foreigners who now shared their thirtymile coastline. Behind the zinc counter a heavy matron in a coffeeand-beer-splattered apron served Lasko Pivo on tap to underpaid dockworkers. The woman seemed annoyed by Angela's request for a cappuccino, and when it arrived it turned out to be a too-sweet instant mix. Charles convinced her to just drink it, then asked why she hadn't told him that Frank's wife had walked out on him.

She took another sip and made a face. "Lots of people get divorced."

"It's one of the most stressful things there is," he said. "Divorces change people. Often, they get an urge to start again at zero and redo their lives, but better." He rubbed his nose. "Maybe Frank decided he should've been working for the other side all along."

"There is no other side anymore."

"Sure there is. Himself."

She didn't seem convinced of anything yet. Her phone rang, and as she listened she shook her head in anger-at Frank, at Charles, at herself. Rome station told her that on Sunday morning a boat with Dubrovnik registration tags had been found floating just beyond the Lido 's docks. "They say there's blood inside," the station chief explained.

After she'd hung up, Charles offered to drive-he didn't want her Austrian habits slowing them down. In reply, Angela showed him her stiff middle finger.

He won out in the end, though, because once they were among the tangled hills of the upper peninsula, she started to cry. He got her to pull over, and they switched seats. Near the Italian border, she tried to explain away her hysterical behavior.

"It's hard. You work years teaching yourself to trust a few people. Not many, but just enough to get by. And once you do trust them, there's no going back. There can't be. Because how else can you do your job?"

Charles let that sit without replying, but wondered if this was his own problem. The idea of trusting anyone besides the man who called him with assignments had long ago been proven untenable. Maybe the human body just couldn't take that level of suspicion.

After showing their passports and crossing into Italy, he took out his cell phone and dialed. He talked a moment to Grainger and repeated back the information he'd received: "Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia. Third door."

"What was that?" Angela asked when he hung up.

He dialed a second number. After a few rings, Bogdan Krizan warily said, "Da?"

"Go to the docks across from the Hotel Slovenia. Number fortyseven. In the water you'll find a Bosnian Serb named Dusan Maskovic. You've got that?"

Krizan breathed heavily. "This is about Frank?"

Charles hung up.

⁵

It took three hours to reach Venice and hire a water-taxi-a motoscafo. By five thirty they were at the Lido docks. A sulking young Carabiniere with a wishful mustache was waiting by the abandoned motorboat-the Venetians had been told to expect visitors, but to not set up a welcome party. He raised the red police tape for them, but didn't follow them aboard. It was all there-the Dubrovnik registration papers, the filthy cabin littered with spare engine parts, and, in one corner, a brown splash of sun-dried blood.

They didn't spend long on it. The only things Frank Dawdle had left in that boat were his fingerprints and the chronology of the killing. Standing in the middle of the cabin, Charles held out two fingers in an imitation pistol. "Shoots him here, then drags him out." He squatted to indicate where the oil on the floor had been smeared, with faint traces of blood. "Maybe he tied that metal tubing to him on the boat, or maybe in the water. It doesn't matter."

"No," said Angela, eyeing him. "It doesn't."

They found no shell casings. It was possible the casings had fallen into Portoroz Bay, but it was also possible that Frank had followed Company procedure and collected them, even though he'd left his prints. Panic, maybe, but that, too, didn't matter.

They thanked the Carabiniere, who muttered "Prego" while staring at Angela's breasts, then found the motoscafo driver waiting on the dock with an unlit cigarette between his lips. Behind him, the sun was low. He informed them that the meter was still running, and it had passed 150,000 lire. He seemed very pleased when neither passenger made a fuss.

It took another twenty minutes to ride back up the Grand Canal, the bumpy path taking them up to the Cannaregio district, where the Russian businessman, Roman Ugrimov, had just moved in. "He's into everything," Angela explained. "Russian utilities, Austrian land development-even a South African gold mine."

He squinted in the hot breeze at a passing vaporetto full of tourists. "Moved to Vienna two years ago, didn't he?"

"That's when we started investigating. Lots of dirt, but nothing sticks."

"Ugrimov's security is tight?"

"Unbelievable. Frank wanted evidence of his pedophilia. He travels with a thirteen-year-old niece. But she's no niece. We're sure of that."

"How do you get dirt on him?"

Angela gripped the edge of the rocking boat to keep balanced. "Frank found a source. He really is quite good at his job.”

“That's what worries me."

He paid the driver once they'd reached the vaporetto stop at Ca' d'Oro, tipping him handsomely, and they broke through crowds of milling tourists to reach the maze of empty backstreets. Finally, after some guesswork, they found the open area-not quite a square-of Rio Terra Barba Fruttariol.

Roman Ugrimov's palazzo was a dilapidated but ornate corner building that rose up high. It opened onto Barba Fruttariol, but the long, covered terrace that Angela gazed at, shielding her eyes with a hand, wrapped around to a side street. "Impressive," she said.

"A lot of ex-KGB live in impressive houses."

"KGB?" She stared at him. "You already know about this guy. I low?"

Charles touched the envelope of Dexedrine in his pocket for comfort. "I hear things."

"Oh. I don't have clearance.

Charles didn't bother answering. "You want to run this, then?”

“I'd rather you did. I don't carry a Company ID.”

“Curiouser and curiouser," Angela said as she rang the front bell.

She showed her State Department ID to a bald, cliche-ridden bodyguard with a wired earplug and asked to speak with Roman Ugrimov. The large man spoke Russian into his lapel, listened to an answer, then walked them up a dim, steep stairwell of worn stone. At the top, he unlocked a heavy wooden door.

Ugrimov's apartment seemed to have been flown in direct from Manhattan: shimmering wood floors, modern designer furniture, plasma television, and double-paned sliding doors leading to a long terrace that overlooked an evening panorama of Venetian rooftops to the Grand Canal. Even Charles had to admit it was breathtaking.

Ugrimov himself was seated at a steel table in a high-backed chair, reading from a notebook computer. He smiled at them, feigning surprise, and got up with an outstretched hand. "The first visitors to my new home," he said in easy English. "Welcome."

He was tall, fiftyish, with wavy gray hair and a bright smile. Despite heavy eyes that matched Charles's, he had a youthful vitality about him.

After the introductions, he led them to the overdesigned sofas. "Now, please. Tell me what I can do for my American friends."

Angela handed over her photograph of Frank Dawdle. Ugrimov slipped on some wide Ralph Lauren bifocals and tilted it in the failing evening light. "Who's this supposed to be?"

"He works for the American government," said Angela.

"CIA, too?"

"We're just embassy staff. He's been missing three days.”

“Oh." Ugrimov handed back the photo. "That must be troubling."

"It is," Angela said. "You're sure he hasn't come to see you?”

“Nikolai," said Ugrimov, and in Russian asked, "Have we had any visitors?"

The bodyguard rolled out his lower lip and shook his head.

Ugrimov shrugged. "Nothing, I'm afraid. Perhaps you can tell me why you think he would come here. I don't know this man, do I?"

Charles said, "He was looking into your life just before he disappeared."

"Oh," the Russian said again. He raised a finger. "You're telling me that someone at the American embassy in Vienna has been looking into my life and works?"

"You'd be insulted if they didn't," said Charles.

Ugrimov grinned. "Okay. Let me offer some drinks. Or are you on the job?"

To Charles's annoyance, Angela said, "We're on the job," and stood. She handed over a business card. "If Mr. Dawdle does get in contact with you, then please call me."

"I'll be sure to do that." He turned to Charles. "Do svidaniya."

Charles repeated the Russian farewell back to him.

Once they were down the steps and in the dark street, the air moist and still warm, Angela yawned again and said, "What was that?"

"What?"

"How'd he know you spoke Russian?"

"I'm telling you, I need a new name." Charles looked up the length of the street. "The Russian community's not so big."

"Not so small either," said Angela. "What're you looking for?"

"There." He didn't point, only nodded at a small sign at the corner indicating an osteria. "Let's take a long walk around to there. Eat and watch."

"You don't trust him?"

"A man like that-he'd never admit it if Dawdle came to him."

"Watch if you want. I need some sleep."

"How about a pill?"

"First one's free?" she said, then winked and stifled another yawn. "I have embassy drug tests to contend with."

"Then at least leave me one of your cigarettes."

"When did you start smoking?"

"I'm in the midst of quitting."

She tapped one out for him, but before handing it over said, "Is it the drugs that do it to you? Or the job?”

“Do what?"

"Maybe it's all the names." She handed over the cigarette. "Maybe that's what's made you so cold. When you were Milo, you were a different person."

He blinked at her, thinking, but no reply came to him.

⁶

He spent the first part of his night watch at the little osteria, looking down Barba Fruttariol, eating a dinner of cicchetti-small portions of seafood and grilled vegetables-and washing it down with a delicious Chianti. The bartender tried to start a conversation, but Charles preferred silence, so when the man rattled on about George Michael, "certainly the greatest singer in the world," he didn't bother contradicting or agreeing. The man's banter became dull background noise.

Someone had left behind a copy of the day's Herald Tribune, and he mused over the stories for a while, in particular a statement by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that "according to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," which amounted to about a quarter of the Pentagon budget. A certain Senator Nathan Irwin from Minnesota, breaking party ties, called it "a damned disgrace." Not even that could hold his attention, though, and he folded the paper and put it aside.

He wasn't thinking about suicide, but about the Bigger Voice, that thing his mother used to discuss with him during her occasional nocturnal visits in the seventies, when he was a child in North Carolina. "Look at everyone," she told him, "and see what guides them. Little voices-television, politicians, priests, money. Those are the little voices, and they blot out the one big voice we all have.

But listen to me-the little voices mean nothing. All they do is deceive. You understand?"

He'd been too young to understand, and too old to admit his ignorance. Her visits never lasted long enough for her to explain it well enough. He was always tired when she arrived in the middle of the night to rap on his window and carry him out to the nearby park.

"I am your mom, but you won't call me mom. I won't let you be oppressed, and I won't let you oppress me with that word. You won't even call me Ellen-that's my slave name. My liberation name is Elsa. Can you say that?"

"Elsa."

"Excellent."

His early childhood was punctuated by these dreams-because that's how they felt to him: dreams of a ghost-mother's visitations with her brief lesson plans. In a year, she might come three or four times; when he was eight, she came nightly for an entire week and focused her lessons on his liberation. She explained that when he was a little older-twelve or thirteen-she would take him away with her, because by then he would be able to understand the doctrine of total war. Against whom? Against the little voices. Though he understood so little, he was excited by the thought of disappearing into the night with her. But he never did. After that intense week, the dreams never returned, and only much later would he learn that she'd died before she could bring him into the fold. In a German prison. By suicide.

Was that the Bigger Voice? The voice that spoke from the stone walls of Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison, convincing her to remove her prison pants, tie one leg to the bars on her door, the other to her neck, and then sit down with all the enthusiasm of a zealot?

He wondered if she could have done that had she kept her real name. Could she have done it if she had still called herself a mother? He wondered if he could have survived these last years, or chosen so casually to end his life, if he had kept hold of his own name.

There he was again, back to thoughts of suicide.

When the restaurant closed at ten, he again checked Ugrimov's front door, then jogged westward, sometimes frustrated by dead ends, until he'd reached the waterside porticos of the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia. The third door, Grainger had said, so he counted to three, then, despite his stomach again acting up, lay flat on the cobblestones to reach over the edge of the walkway, down toward the rancid-smelling canal.

Unable to see, he had to do it by feel, touching stones until he felt the one that was different from the others. By now, these selected cubbyholes were over fifty years old, having been added to the architecture of postwar Europe by the members of the Pond, a CIA precursor. Remarkable foresight. Many had been discovered, while others had broken open on their own from poor workmanship, but occasionally the surviving ones proved invaluable. He closed his eyes to help his sense of touch. On the bottom edge of the stone was a latch; he pulled it, and the stone separated into his hand. He placed the lid beside himself and reached inside the exposed hole to find a weighty plastic-wrapped object, sealed airtight. He took it out, and in the moonlight ripped it open. Inside lay a Walther P99 with two clips of ammunition, all like new.

He replaced the stone's cover, returned to Barba Fruttariol, and worked his way around the area, circling the palazzo as he wandered dark side streets, always returning at different angles to watch the front door or peer up to the lights along Roman Ugrimov's terrace. Sometimes he spotted figures up there-Ugrimov, his guards, and a young girl with long, straight brown hair. The "niece." But only the guards passed through the front door, returning with groceries, bottles of wine and liquor, and, once, a wooden humidor. After midnight he heard music wafting down-opera-and was surprised by the choice.

While the mewing cats ignored him, a total of three drunks tried to become his friend that night. Silence worked on all except the third, who put his arm around Charles's shoulder and talked in four languages, trying to find the one that would make him answer. In a swift and unexpected surge of emotion, Charles thrust his elbow into the man's ribs, cupped a hand over his mouth, and punched him twice, hard, on the back of his head. With the first hit, the man gurgled; with the second, he passed out. Charles held the limp man a few seconds, hating himself, then dragged him down the street, across an arched bridge spanning the Rio dei Santi Apostoli, and hid the drunk in an alley.

Balance-that word returned to him as he crossed the bridge again, trembling. Without balance, a life is no longer worth the effort.

He'd been doing his particular job for six-no, seven-years, floating unmoored from city to city, engaged by transatlantic phone calls from a man he hadn't seen in two years. The phone itself was his master. Weeks sometimes passed without work, and in those periods he slept and drank heavily, but when he was on the job there was no way to stop the brutal forward movement. He had to suck down whatever stimulants would keep him in motion, because the job had never been about keeping Charles Alexander in good health. The job was only about the quiet, anonymous maintenance of the kindly named "sphere of influence," Charles Alexander and others like him be damned.

Angela had said, "There is no other side anymore," but there was. The other side was multifaceted: Russian mafias, Chinese industrialization, loose nukes, and even the vocal Muslims camped in Afghanistan who were trying to pry Washington 's fingers off the oil-soaked Middle East. As Grainger would put it, anyone who could not be embraced or absorbed by the empire was anathema and had to be dealt with, like barbarians at the gates. That was when Charles Alexander's phone would ring.

He wondered how many bodies padded the murky floor of these canals, and the thought of joining them was, if nothing else, a comfort. It is because of death that death means nothing; it's because of death that life means nothing.

Finish the job, he thought. Don't go out in failure. And then…

No more planes and border guards and customs people; no more looking over your shoulder.

By five, it was decided. The prescient glow before dawn lit the sky, and he dry-swallowed two more Dexedrine. The jitters returned. He remembered his mother and her dreams of a Utopia with only big voices. What would she think of him? He knew: She would want to beat him senseless. He'd spent his entire adult life working for the procurers and manufacturers of those insidious little voices.

When, at nine thirty, the George Michael fan unlocked the osteria again, Charles was surprised to find himself still breathing. He ordered two espressos and waited patiently by the window while the man cooked up a pancetta, egg, garlic, oil, and linguine mix for his clour, sickly customer. It was delicious, but halfway through his plate he stopped, peering out the window.

Three people were approaching the palazzo. The bodyguard he'd seen yesterday-Nikolai-and, close behind, a very pregnant woman with an older man. That older man was Frank Dawdle.

He dialed his cell phone.

"Yeah?" said Angela.

"He's here."

Charles pocketed the phone and laid down money. The bartender, serving an old couple, looked angry. "You don't like the breakfast?"

"Leave it out," Charles said. "I'll finish it in a minute."

By the time Angela arrived, her hair damp from an interrupted shower, the visitors had been inside the palazzo for twelve minutes. There were four tourists along the length of the street, and he hoped they would clear out soon. "You have a gun?" Charles asked as he took out his Walther.

Angela pulled back her jacket to show off a SIG Sauer in a shoulder holster.

"Keep it there. If someone has to get shot, I better do it. I can disappear; you can't."

"So you're watching out for me."

"Yeah, Angela. I am watching out for you."

She pursed her lips. "You're also afraid I won't be able to shoot him." Her gaze dropped to his trembling gun hand. "But I'm not sure you'll even be able to shoot straight."

He squeezed the Walther until the shaking lessened. "I'll do fine. You get over there," he said, pointing at a doorway just beyond, and opposite, the palazzo's entrance. "He'll be boxed in. He comes out, we make the arrest. Simple."

"Simple," she replied curtly, then walked to her assigned doorway as the tourists, thankfully, left the street.

Once she was out of sight, he reexamined his hand. She was right, of course. Angela Yates usually was. He couldn't go on like this, and he wouldn't. It was a miserable job; it was a miserable life.

The palazzo's front door opened.

Bald Nikolai opened it, but remained inside, his tailored jacket arm holding the bloated wooden door so that the pregnant woman- who Charles could now see was very beautiful, her bright green eyes flashing across the square-could step over the threshold and onto the cobbles. Then came Dawdle, touching her elbow. He looked every one of his sixty-two years, and more.

The bodyguard closed the door behind them, and the woman turned to say something to Dawdle, but Dawdle didn't answer. He was looking at Angela, who had emerged from her doorway and was running in his direction. "Frank!" she shouted.

Charles had missed his cue. He began running, too, the Walther in his hand.

A man's voice shouted from the sky in easy English: "And her I love, you bastard!" Then a rising wail, like a steam-engine whistle, filled the air.

Unlike the other three people in the street, Charles didn't look up. Distractions, he knew, are usually just that. He hurtled forward. The pregnant woman, eyes aloft, screamed and stepped back. Frank Dawdle was stuck to the ground. Angela's flared jacket dropped as she halted and opened her mouth, but made no sound. Beside the pregnant woman, something pink hit the earth. It was 10:27 a.m.

He stumbled to a stop. Perhaps it was a bomb. But bombs weren't pink, and they didn't hit like that. They exploded or crashed into the ground with hard noises. This pink thing hit with a soft, wretched thump. That's when he knew it was a body. On one side, spread among the splash of blood on the cobblestones, he saw a scatter of long hair-it was the pretty girl he'd spotted on the terrace last night.

He looked up, but the terrace was again empty. The pregnant woman screamed, tripped, and fell backward.

Frank Dawdle produced a pistol and shot wildly three times, the sound echoing off the stones, then turned and ran. Angela bolted after him, shouting, "Stop! Frank!"

Charles Alexander was trained to follow through with actions even when faced with the unpredictable, but what he saw-the falling girl, the shots, the fleeing man-each thing seemed only to confuse him more.

How did the pregnant woman fit into this?

His breathing was suddenly difficult, but he reached her. She kept screaming. Red face, eyes rolling. Her words were a garbled mess.

His chest really did feel strange, so he sat heavily on the ground beside her. That's when he noticed all the blood. Not the girl's-she was on the other side of the hysterical woman-but his own. He could see that now. It pumped a red blossom into his shirt.

How about that? He was exhausted. Red rivulets filled the spaces between the cobblestones. I'm dead. Off to the left, Angela ran after the dwindling form of Frank Dawdle.

Amid the indecipherable noises coming from the pregnant woman, he heard one clear phrase: "I'm in labor!"

He blinked at her, wanting to say, But I'm dying, I can't help you. Then he read the desperation in her sweaty face. She really did want to stay alive. Why?

"I need a doctor!" the woman shouted.

"I-" he began, and looked around. Angela and Dawdle had disappeared; they were just distant footfalls around a far corner.

"Get a fucking doctor!" the woman screamed, close to his ear. From around that far corner he heard the three short cracks of Angela's SIG Sauer.

He took out his telephone. The woman was terrified, so he whispered, "It'll be all right," and dialed 118, the Italian medical emergency number. In stilted, too-quiet Italian from just one painful lung, he explained that a woman on the Rio Terra Barba Fruttariol was having a baby. Help was promised. He hung up. His blood was no longer a network of rivulets on the ground; it formed an elongated pool.

The woman was calmer now, but she still gasped for breath. She looked desperate. When he gripped her hand, she squeezed back with unexpected strength. Over her heaving belly, he looked at the dead girl in pink. In the distance, Angela reappeared as a small form, hunched, walking like a drunk.

"Who the hell are you?" the pregnant woman finally managed.

"What?"

She took a moment to regulate her breaths, gritted her teeth. "You've got a gun."

The Walther was still in his other hand. He released it; it clattered to the ground as a red haze filled his vision.

"What," she said, then exhaled through pursed lips, blowing three times. "What the hell are you?"

He choked on his words, so he paused and squeezed her hand tighter. He tried again. "I'm a Tourist," he said, though as he blacked out on the cobblestones he knew that he no longer was.