The Last Tourist

by Olen Steinhauer

  “But you needed clients.”

  “Of course. And where better to find them than Davos? Each year we gather our clients. Inform them of our progress. Listen to their needs, and they listen to ours. So far, so good. We’re even expanding.”

  “Who?”

  Foster shook her index finger coyly. “You just arrived, honey. And until we leave Switzerland you’re staying right here, in this room.” She held out her hand. “Phone, please.”

  As Leticia handed it over, there was a knock at the door. Foster said, “Come,” and a chiseled blond with striking light-blue eyes stepped inside. Lance, apparently. He surveyed the room, his gaze settling on Leticia. Foster rose and prepared to go. “She’s to remain here.”

  “I will take care of that,” the man said, his voice colored with Swedish singsong.

  To Leticia, Foster said, “Thank you, by the way. By tomorrow all this will be over, and we can take care of your contract. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds great,” Leticia said, though she didn’t believe a word the bitch said.

  13

  From the glove compartment, Alexandra took the small Glock pistol she’d carried everywhere these last three months and slipped it inside her long coat, then got out of her car to take in the large wooden stables of a horse-riding school. The snow had been plowed into low white cliffs along the edge of the road, and when she walked through slushy puddles toward the stables, she wished she’d picked up some Wellingtons. Instead, she’d brought a pair of suede boots that wouldn’t last these few days in Switzerland, much less the trip back to London to visit the RSPCA. Because, yes, there really was nothing else left for her. She’d ended a good career to join a secret organization that had, after fifteen years, imploded. And what now? Take her heavily redacted CV on the rounds of London law firms? She couldn’t face being laughed out of that many offices. Better to call it quits. Go back to her little flat. Find a dog to take care of. Read a lot. And get the hell off the potholed highway that was the twenty-first century. She’d had quite enough of it.

  She wasn’t like Milo, who thought that geography could solve his problems. In the mountains around Avegno with his family, he’d seen a paradise of solitude, while Alexandra had seen a slow, moldy death. No, Alexandra could only live among people in the throb of a modern metropolis; hiding was anathema to her. Even this place—Davos Frauenkirch, just south of Davos proper—with its mountain peaks and clean air, stank of death to her.

  She heard the faint sound of banging and followed it around the side of the stable, through the stink of hay and horseshit, where she discovered a woman and a man shoeing a large stallion’s rear foot. The horse stood placidly as the woman huffed, gripping the horse’s ankle, and the man hammered nails into the hoof. She watched a moment, then worked her way back to the front, where a large black SUV with tinted windows splashed through puddles to reach the building. When it stopped near the front door, Oskar got out of the passenger’s side. He had a worried look—or what she interpreted to be a worried look, his silly mustache twitching—as he came over to her.

  “So?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, and turned back to the car. Two of his young thugs opened the back and helped Katarina Heinold step gingerly down to the half-frozen mud.

  The German patron didn’t look as if she had been kidnapped. She didn’t look upset at all. “So she came willingly?”

  “We were just giving her a ride from Zürich Airport.”

  “This doesn’t look like her hotel.”

  “Not everyone is unreasonable, Ms. Primakov. Once we explained the situation, she became quite cooperative.”

  “You told her everything we know.”

  “A version of everything.”

  They all went inside, where in the off-season the place was mostly empty. The stable owner, a heavy woman in a smock, shook Oskar’s hand and led them to a musty, warm office in the back. It was just large enough for four people—Oskar, Alexandra, Katarina, and one of the thugs, who sat in a corner picking his nails.

  “For the sake of our guest,” Oskar said to Katarina, “please let us speak English.”

  Katarina examined Alexandra from her chair, judging. “You are Milo’s sister?”

  Alexandra nodded.

  “I’ve heard about you. You worked behind the scenes, yes?”

  “I got librarians out of trouble,” Alexandra said.

  “Until you got into trouble yourself.”

  Alexandra rocked her head, accepting the little jab. “And now, Ms. Heinold, it’s you. When did you first become involved with Northwell?”

  She frowned and looked at Oskar. “I have already told you this.”

  “Please,” he said. “Again.”

  Reluctantly, she turned to Alexandra. “I am not involved with Northwell. Not directly. I communicate with Investition für Wirtschaft. We have mutual interests.”

  “What mutual interests?”

  “Money,” she said, and shrugged. “They approached me in New York and established an open line of communication.”

  “So they already knew about the Library.”

  “Oh, yes. It was disappointing to hear, actually. That the thing we believed only a small circle knew about was actually well known.”

  “Thanks to Kirill Egorov.”

  Katarina shrugged again. “So I was to tell them if intelligence came up about them, so they could be prepared.”

  “And what did you get for that?”

  “The knowledge that I was helping German business to succeed.”

  “And money,” Oskar said glumly.

  “And money,” she echoed. No embarrassment, no shame.

  “It wasn’t just you and IfW.” Alexandra said. “That meeting in September. Sardi’s. Beatriz Almeida was there. Grace Foster and Gilbert Powell, too.”

  “It was time for me to learn more. The operation was expanding.”

  “You wanted Portuguese intelligence? From Almeida?”

  Katarina shook her head slowly. “Beatriz was not interested. The liquidity of German banks is not her concern.”

  “So she left the lunch without agreeing to anything?”

  “I think she was angry. I invited her to dinner, but she didn’t even reply. That lunch was a mistake.”

  Warmth flooded Alexandra’s cheeks, and she tried to control her voice when she said, “So you were a mole.”

  Katarina sat up straighter, defensive. “Germany did not support the Library because we loved the Library. None of us did. We supported it because of what it could give our countries. I have no excuses to make.”

  Alexandra sighed. “Okay, then. But right now we need to know when and where Northwell’s meeting will be.”

  To Oskar, in German, Katarina snapped, “I’m tired of repeating myself.”

  At that moment all four of them jumped at a cracking sound from outside. Everyone except Katarina knew what it was, for when they got to their feet she remained in her chair and said, “Was that an automobile?”

  The thug was heading out the door to meet his partner, a small pistol in his hand, and Oskar moved to the office window as Alexandra took out her Glock. Katarina’s eyes widened, and only now did she rise in shock.

  “Scheisse,” Oskar muttered, peeking out through the blinds.

  Alexandra joined him. The driver’s side window of Oskar’s SUV was smashed, and though the tinted windshield hid him, she knew his driver was in there, dead. But her eyes were immediately drawn to the foreground, where two tall men in tailored long coats carried pistols toward the stable’s front door. She hadn’t yet seen the Tourists that had been after them these three months, but by the cut of their suits and the blank, hard looks in their eyes, she knew what they were.

  Oskar said, “They’re coming for you, Katarina. They’re coming to kill you.”

  As a barrage of gunshots sounded from the direction of the entrance, Oskar pushed open the office door and carefully looked out. He waved for them to follow, then pointed
to the left, farther down the corridor. He, though, stepped to the right, toward the entryway. Katarina, stunned, didn’t move, so Alexandra grabbed her arm and yanked hard. “No,” the woman sputtered.

  “Come,” Alexandra said, dragging her along.

  It was loud in the narrow hallway, and behind them Oskar was reaching the main entrance. When Alexandra looked back, she could see the proprietress huddled down behind the counter, weeping.

  Alexandra dragged the patron toward a small door with a Plexiglas window, through which sunlight shone, and she thought she heard a siren wailing behind the rear wall—no. Not a siren, but the terrified whinnying of horses who could sense the bloodbath going on. Katarina was in tears. When they reached the door, the gunshots ceased, and there was only the frantic sound of the horses. She looked back—Oskar, pistol raised, turned the corner, disappearing, and gunshots roared again. Alexandra pushed through the door into the bright cold and told Katarina, “Run,” before breaking into a sprint in the direction of her car. Katarina didn’t need prodding; she ran in her heels through the wet earth.

  Once they cleared the building, Alexandra looked back to see that by the open front door, a man’s body lay in the mud. She couldn’t tell who it was. Then a flash of gunfire inside the building, followed by a figure in a long coat stepping outside and spotting them. His pistol rose, held steady in two hands. She felt an urge to stop and raise her own gun, but the lot was wide open here. By the time she got into position she would be dead.

  “Faster,” Alexandra gasped, and was surprised by how well Katarina kept up; she was a bureaucrat fueled by pure adrenaline now.

  The gun exploded in the Tourist’s hand, just once. But Alexandra felt nothing. She kept running and was almost at her car when she realized she was alone. She looked back and saw the gray coat and heels of Katarina Heinold. Her body twitched in the mud, but her head, pulverized by a direct hit, lay still, half buried by the impact of its fall.

  Another explosion sounded, but when she looked the Tourist was no longer standing in his professional position. He was, instead, down on one knee, gripping his side, trying to figure out what had happened. Leaning against the doorway, blood on his face, Oskar aimed his big pistol at the man. When the Tourist raised his gun, Oskar fired once more, and it was done.

  14

  My guard was a small, dark CIA officer named Samuel who sat by the window and thumbed through phone messages while I watched local coverage of the day’s Forum. Samuel and I talked a little, mostly office gossip—he had heard rumors about some romantic relationships in Africa section, and I either debunked the rumors or played them up, depending on what he seemed to want to hear.

  I spent a lot of time looking out the window. Our room had a view of mountains and the flat, gravel-covered roof of the Congress Center cluttered with rows of solar panels. On the far end of the roof, two ever-present snipers in heavy white coats chatted and peered down into the park on the other side. All I could see of the park was bare treetops, but right below my window was a triangle of snow-covered courtyard between the Congress Center and the hotel, and sometimes Forum attendees stepped out onto the metal stairs leading down to the snow to have a smoke.

  We ate room service meals delivered on draped carts by harried staff, and it was at our early dinner that the petite server, a girl no older than twenty, locked onto my eyes as she uncovered the plates. It was a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. Flirtation, or fear? Her eyes self-consciously flicked down to one of the two water glasses covered with cardboard lids to keep out dust. Then she was back to my eyes again, a significant look before taking the signed bill from Samuel.

  “Smells good,” he said as the server left, and I took the water glass and drank deeply, flipping over the cardboard disk. On it was a simple message: Come down for a drink. I pocketed it, wondering, and settled by the window to eat. In the gathering darkness I saw the two snipers still on the Congress Center roof, and to the south of the park, along Talstrasse, I saw another sniper atop a low apartment building. There were many more, I knew, that I couldn’t see from my window.

  “I need a drink,” I said, turning away from the window.

  Samuel looked up from his phone. “What?”

  “You need to keep me in this hotel, fine. But I’m going to go crazy stuck in this little room. So will you. I saw a bar down near the front desk.”

  Samuel looked surprised by the idea. “I don’t—” he began, then stood up. “Hold on.”

  He made a call in the bathroom, and from the defensive sound of the murmurs I guessed he was being scolded for even suggesting a trip downstairs. When he came out, though, he was blinking, surprised. “Well, they said it’s okay.”

  “Really?” I asked. “They weren’t pissed off?”

  “They were pissed off I wasted their time asking.”

  There was no bar, per se, but four stools in front of a counter and guests lounging at low tables, sipping drinks. We took two of the stools, and I ordered a vodka martini, offering to buy one for Samuel. He hesitated, unsure, and shook his head no, but I ordered another anyway. I didn’t want to drink alone, and despite his job I actually liked Samuel.

  When he learned I had a six-year-old, he became very interested. He had a girlfriend back in DC who wanted children, but the thought of that kind of responsibility terrified him. So I tried, with as much honesty as possible, to take him through the rigors of parenting, balancing the easily catalogued cons with the less apparent pros. As he began to form a picture of his possible future, he sipped at his martini without shame. Eventually, he looked around. “Know where the bathroom is?”

  “I think it’s back there,” I said, pointing to a corner.

  “I’ll be right back. Don’t run. You’re not going to run, are you?”

  “All I want to do is go home,” I said, and I wasn’t lying.

  He grinned. “Wouldn’t be able to anyway. Frank, at the exit, is built like a linebacker.”

  When he left, I finished my drink and asked the bartender for another. I hunched over it, trying not to spill my first sip, and that was when I felt a pat on my back and turned to Samuel’s stool. But it wasn’t Samuel. It was Haroun. And he was grinning wildly.

  I was lost. Anger and confusion and a lifelong love clashed in my chest. All I could do was open my arms and hug him tightly. He smelled of some sharp, unfamiliar cologne.

  “Brother,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I…” I shook my head, trying to clear it. I exhaled loudly. “No, no. You. You’re the one who needs to talk.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, then reached casually over to Samuel’s glass and took a sip.

  “What happened?” I blurted. “How did you become—”

  “Become this?” he asked, setting down the glass. “Come on. I’m the same kid who fought your bullies in middle school.”

  “You’re not.”

  “You’re the one who’s changed, Abdul. A wife and—how old is Rashid now? Four?”

  “Six.”

  “See?” he said. “You’ve become part of the machine.”

  “What machine?”

  “Money.”

  I sighed, remembering how frustrating he could be. “Your people,” I said. “They’re the machine. Capitalism run amok.” He seemed to find that amusing, which irritated me even more.

  He said, “How is what we’re doing any different from Iraq? Half a million Iraqis and four and a half thousand Americans slaughtered to control a dwindling resource. Next to you guys, we’re amateurs.”

  I counted on my fingers: “Schoolgirls kidnapped and enslaved, dozens of sailors drowned, CEOs murdered. And that’s only what we’ve been able to uncover.”

  He leaned back. “But next to American history…?”

  I was stunned by his coarseness. He’d always been that way, but now his cynicism had gone off the charts. “Who the hell are you, Haroun?”

  He drank the rest of Samuel’s martini and glanced around th
e room. We looked so similar. I was Haroun, if he let himself go, and he was me, if I’d lived an athletic and dangerous life. Around us people were laughing and dealing, and they had no idea what earthshaking events were happening at the bar.

  “Right,” he said, a decision made, and turned back to me. “In 2009, I was working for Global Partners in Yemen.”

  “You told me about it when you got back.”

  “That’s right. Yemen’s like a lot of the world: great people, shitty situation. I’d seen it before—Congo, Somalia, Sudan … but Yemen?” He paused. “Didn’t we argue?”

  “You told me the world was falling apart in slow motion.”

  “Sounds like me,” he said. “That’s because I’d just been someplace that was heading in that direction fast. Then I come back home, turn on the TV, and there they are, all the signs. The empty political rhetoric. The exploitation of the underclass. The gaudy hoarding of wealth. The roads—Jesus! A land with so much money, and it can’t even keep its bridges up? Everywhere I looked, the edifices were crumbling.”

  “You were prime for activism,” I noted. “You could’ve joined the Massive Brigade.”

  “Activism, or nihilism,” he said. “Because who the fuck was I? You were always the smart one. The career path. The focus. The faith. Someone like you, if you put your mind to it, might change things for the better. Me? I would only grow angrier, until I exploded. And that, my brother, was when I received a visitor. She invited me to join something bigger than myself. This is real power, she told me.”

  “She would show you how the world really worked,” I said, feeling an uncomfortable tingle across my scalp.

  “Something like that.”

  “Was it worth it?” I asked. “Giving up your family? Me?”

  He sighed, then glanced around the room again. “I only have one life, Abdul. Give me a second one and I’ll try an alternate path.”

  We were both silent for a short while. I drank, wondering what to say to all of this. There were arguments to be made, but was this really the time for them?