11
When, at three that afternoon, she heard the knock on her door, Erika was reading up on the international sex trade. Once she’d decided on what to do with Milo Weaver, she made sure to cease her in-office investigation of him, because every site and document she looked at was logged in the central database. However, instead of returning to what she was supposed to be working on-namely, the backgrounds of two Iranian nationals applying for asylum-she found herself drawn to the industry that had set Adriana Stanescu’s life moving along its particularly atrocious path.
It was bleak. Part of the reason sexual slavery continues unabated is that imagining it is so abhorrent to most people that they choose instead to ignore it. Imagining the travails of someone like Adriana led to upset stomachs. Law-abiding citizens preferred the knowable crimes of murder and robbery to the unknowable of slavery. This silence on the issue only encouraged the industry to thrive.
So it was almost a relief when Tomas Haas interrupted her. The young analyst from the basement-level surveillance center had been at Pullach nearly a year and was one of the few with whom she chose to exchange words. “Good afternoon, Tomas.”
He wasn’t smiling. “Fraulein Schwartz, we’ve spotted a van at your house.”
“A van?” She let herself appear concerned. “Markings?”
“Toledo Electrik GmbH.”
“Oh!” She smiled and touched her breast. “You had me scared. No, that’s nothing. There’s a problem with the circuit breaker-it keeps switching off in the middle of my shows. I gave Toledo a set of keys.”
“Would you like someone to check on it? To be sure.”
“No, I’ll call the electrician,” she said, picking up her office phone. “Thanks.”
Once he was gone, she called the number of a throwaway cell phone she’d bought the previous night and left inside her house. Oskar answered on the third ring. “Toledo Electrik.”
“Yes, this is Erika Schwartz. Do you have someone at my house right now?”
“Schwartz… here it is,” he said and rattled off her address.
“That’s it.”
“Should take an hour or so. We’re mailing the bill, right?”
“Exactly. It looks like it won’t be a problem?”
“No problems yet, ma’am. We’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
“Thank you.”
Image
The rear doors opened to reveal a woody bilevel, and when he was brought out he saw that they were surrounded by gangly birches and broad elms, stripped of leaves, creating a black web through which he could just make out other houses that made him think of American planned communities. Large homes set far back behind tended lawns, clean automobiles in the driveways. He could only see these things when he looked hard, though, which meant that anyone looking in would simply see four men getting out of a van with-he now saw-the markings of an electrical repair company. From their perspective, the man in the center of the group would be walking with his hands clasped behind his back; the new set of PlastiCuffs would not be visible at all.
There were no guns involved, just a light, almost comforting, hand on his back, while the little man with the mustache hummed some song. He was clearly the boss, and it was he who unlocked the front door, typed the security code into the alarm, and pocketed a cell phone sitting on a fragile-looking end table beside the door. “Come in,” he said. “We’ll soon have you out of those restraints.”
It was all so polite that Milo began to sweat profusely.
They went downstairs, where the man turned on some lights and found, beside a spare bathroom, a heavy security door with a keypad. He typed the code with a flat hand, fingers covering the pad so it was impossible to tell the combination, then pulled open the door to reveal stairs heading deeper into the earth.
A couple of decades ago, he would have called it a fallout shelter. Times had changed, though, and these were now referred to as panic rooms, but the function was the same. A secure place where one could survive for days or weeks with no need of the outside world. Along the walls were shelves of provisions-canned food, soap, bottles of water. A refrigerator beside an electrical generator. A propane stove. There was a television/VCR combination, a radio, and a shelf of books. Two small monitors, now black, were assumedly connected to CCTV cameras observing the grounds. Two lounge chairs, one sofa, and a dining table. Against the stone wall in the back of the room, a single cot with fresh bedding. On the concrete floor beside it were two rolls of duct tape.
The mustached man gazed at cans of soup while the other two removed Milo’s cuffs and took his coat. “You needed to urinate?” he asked.
“Desperately.”
The man nodded in the direction of a small door, and the other two led Milo to it. Inside was a spotless toilet, but no sink. It was a small space, but both his guards squeezed in behind him, peering over his shoulder, hands on his back as he relieved himself. He pulled the chain to flush, then raised his hands. “Can I wash?”
Neither answered. They pulled him out and led him to one of the chairs. The mustached man, still reading the cans, said, “Are you hungry perhaps?”
“Could use some coffee.”
“Yes. So could I. Heinrich? Nehmen Sie auch einem?”
The block of muscle looked up from Milo. “Ja, danke.”
The mustached man turned to the wiry one. “Dann also für alle?”
The wiry one nodded and trotted upstairs.
Their exchange, figuring out how many coffees were needed, struck Milo as amusing. Nothing else did. He was in a secure basement from which he would never escape unless they let him leave. He was here for as long as they wanted, and in here they could do anything they desired. No one would hear a thing.
Heinrich took the chair across from Milo as a phone began to ring. The mustached man took out the cell phone he’d taken from the foyer and said, “Toledo Elektrik.”
A conversation followed. He got the name Schwartz, that something would take about an hour, and that a bill would be mailed. And Frau-ma’am-he was talking to a woman.
He pocketed the phone again and said to Heinrich, “In Ordnung.”
Heinrich looked relieved, though the mustached one didn’t seem concerned either way. He held Milo’s coat folded over his arm and paced the room slowly, peering at everything as if he’d never been here before. Perhaps he hadn’t. His free hand searched Milo’s coat pockets, coming up with receipts and lint. He stuck the receipts in his pants pocket and tossed the coat on the bed. “You should make yourself comfortable,” he said. “It’ll be some hours before things get started.”
“What, exactly, is going to get started?”
“Conversations.”
“When your boss gets home from work?”
The man stared at him.
“This is his house, isn’t it? Or her house. Your boss’s.”
“All that matters to you is that this is the easy part. Have some coffee, something to eat. Get over that headache… does it still hurt?”
“A little.”
“Heinrich.”
Heinrich half-rose from his chair and, with a large flat hand, struck Milo across the temple. It felt like a wooden board and rekindled the pain that had, until then, been subsiding. He cradled his head in his hands and stopped himself from shouting an obscenity. “What was that for?”
“For nothing,” the man said as he passed behind Milo. “I’m not a big believer in the carrot and stick. It’s fine for mules, but for people? No. Much too predictable, and anything that predictable can be manipulated. The unpredictable stick-that’s much more useful because there is no clear answer to it.”
Milo raised his head, half of it pulsing sorely, and could feel his damaged nose dripping blood onto his lips. “I think I understand,” he said.
“Good.” The mustached man sat on the sofa, just beyond Heinrich. He used a remote control to turn on the television against the wall. “My boss, as you say, isn’t entirely comfortable with mode
rn digital technology. So we have this.” He pressed play, and the embedded VCR began to whir, flickering grainy images on the screen, the buzz of static, then voices. News items. A German newscaster. The image of a girl, Adriana Stanescu. A camera ranging over mountains, then a mountain road, the scene of a wreck, a path into the forest. Then again. Another newscaster-Spanish-and more of the same. And more: childhood shots of Adriana, swimming with her parents, a young birthday. Now Dutch. Then Italian. French. Moldovan. British. German. American. Polish.
It went on, in languages he couldn’t even identify, with scenes of the mother breaking down on camera, screaming, her stoic husband hollow-eyed behind her. The occasional angry person-on-the-street giving an opinion. It lasted for over an hour until it faded to black and the mustached man pressed STOP and then REWIND. As it whirred loudly, he said, “Heinrich,” and another board struck Milo’s temple.
“Jesus! Cut it out!”
He started to rise, but Heinrich pushed him down again. The mustached man retrieved one of the rolls of duct tape and tossed it smoothly to Heinrich, who began to strap Milo in the chair.
There was nothing to be done. This had all been planned ahead of time-the hard hand, the video, and even his eventual outburst. They knew what they were doing.
The VCR clicked loudly. Then they all looked up as their missing member trotted down the stairs holding a tray with large, steaming coffee cups. Milo wondered why it had taken so long to make them, then realized it hadn’t. The man simply knew he wasn’t to interrupt the videotape.
“Excellent!” The mustached one got to his feet. “What kind?”
The wiry one began passing out cups. “There was a bag of Starbucks grounds. Ethiopian.”
“Starbucks?” He seemed confused. “How about that? You know their coffee, Mr. Weaver?”
“Intimately.”
“Delicious,” he said and sipped from his cup, then leaned back. “Too hot for me. Heinrich?”
Heinrich was holding two cups-one for him, one for Milo. “Very hot,” he said, then looked over at the mustached man. Heinrich seemed to interpret his superior’s silence as an order. He poured a little of the steaming coffee onto Milo’s chest. It burned straight through his shirt, but he didn’t shout out this time, only grunted. Heinrich set down the cup and began to drink from his own.
The mustached man took his coffee to the stairs. “I think Mr. Weaver would like some more television.”
The one who’d brought the coffees used the remote to start the VCR playing again. Newscaster. Adriana. Barren trees.
“Let’s make sure we remember every image on that tape, yes? There’ll be a quiz later.”
The man with the remote laughed lightly, and Heinrich smiled. The mustached man left them alone as Adriana’s mother wept uncontrollably on-screen.
None of this, really, was a surprise. Just as he tried to keep himself grounded, his interrogators would only be interested in keeping him off balance, and for the next five minutes he felt himself slipping. Then the man with the mustache made his first mistake. As a Dutch newscaster with dour features discussed Adriana’s murder, he quietly came down the stairs, holding a crumpled slip of paper that had come from Milo’s pockets. It wasn’t a receipt. Heinrich paused the video.
“Excuse me,” he said as he unfolded the paper. It was hotel stationery. “I was just curious-who wrote this?”
Honestly, Milo said, “I’ve never seen it before.”
Heinrich’s open hand crashed against the side of his face. Milo took a labored breath.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“I know,” the man said, then brought the paper over for him to read.
The world was too blurry for him to read a thing. “Closer, please.” The man obliged, and he could now see that it was from the Cavendish, London. Below the name, in sweeping letters, he read:
Tourism, like Virginia,
is for lovers.
Turn that frown upside down, man.
It was followed by a smiley face.
Despite himself, Milo began to laugh. James Einner had a wonderfully idiotic sense of humor.
“Well?” said the man.
“I wish I knew,” he said. “It’s kind of lovely, isn’t it?”
Heinrich struck him again, but he hardly felt it.
“Who’s it from?”
“A secret admirer, I guess.”
12
She made sure to follow her routine and visit Herr al-Akir’s shop for her Riesling and Snickers. She’d noticed a change in his demeanor the previous evening, and it had taken her a moment to realize that it was the result of Friday’s irregularity. That idiot who had run in to collect her, foolishly calling her Director Schwartz. That was the only explanation for the heavy stare that flickered away nervously when she turned to meet it. Tonight was the same. The Guten Abend, Frau, then nervous silence as she trudged to the back to collect her wine. She placed her ten sixty-five on the counter and watched him tap at the register. “Herr al-Akir,” she said, “did the gentleman give you the five cents last week?”
He blinked three times, then nodded. “Yes. Your account is settled.” He handed over her receipt.
“Is there anything wrong?”
He shook his head eagerly. “Everything is very fine.”
“Perhaps you have a question for me.”
He seemed stunned by the suggestion. “No. No questions.”
She tried for a smile, even though she knew the effect her smiles had on strangers. “Good evening to you, then.”
Back in the car, she put Herr al-Akir out of her mind and focused on the road. It had been a quiet day. She had waited for a visitor from the second floor-not Wartmüller himself, of course, but perhaps some intermediary-to wonder to her face how she’d gotten Dieter Reich to keep her on the Stanescu case. But no one said a thing to her; in fact, she got the pleasant feeling that the second floor had been abandoned.
Though they’d exchanged no significant words since that three o’clock phone call, she had seen Oskar at the office. He came in after four looking exhausted and worked on his computer, filing nondescript vetting reports and running some of Erika’s errands. They had decided beforehand that nothing about Milo Weaver would pass between them in the office, no matter how safe they considered themselves. Which was why he stayed behind briefly when she left at seven thirty. While Erika visited Herr al-Akir, Oskar drove his own car into the Perlacher Forest and waited for her to pick him up.
He looked frigid by the side of the road, his Volkswagen parked out of sight, and once inside he fooled with the heater until it blew loudly. “You took your time,” he said.
“Had to pick up my Riesling.”
“I think you have a drinking problem, Erika.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Watching videos.”
“Nothing broken, I hope,” she said, because she had noticed the underlying hatred in Oskar once he had learned of Adriana Stanescu’s past. He was looking for someone to blame, and Milo Weaver was as good as anyone.
“Not yet. But we’ve still got time.”
Image
He knew something was happening when Heinrich, after receiving a call, got up and turned off the television. Milo had watched and listened to Adriana Stanescu’s multilingual story for, he estimated, four hours. Four hours duct-taped to a chair facing the video loop. Even now, with the television black, he kept seeing the grainy family photos, the stunned father and screaming mother, and the bare branches that led to her final resting spot in the mountains of France.
Of course, with repetition everything dulls, and the panic he’d felt during the first and second viewing had waned so that by this fourth (or was it fifth?) viewing he was more interested in his ability to predict the actual phrases and emotional outbursts. A memory game; a distraction.
The mustached man descended the stairs first, looking cold and perhaps ill. In his hand was a bottle of white wine. Then, much more slowly, a breathtakingly heavy wo
man followed him down. She gripped the wooden rail, making no effort to hurry herself, until she finally reached the concrete floor and looked around to get everything in focus. Her salt-and-pepper hair, thick and untidy, was chopped into a pageboy cut. When she got Milo into focus she started forward again and settled on the sofa, legs splayed, breathing heavily. “Mr. Weaver,” she said, producing something like a smile that could easily have been a sneer. Her accent was thick. “Welcome to Germany.”
The mustached man, no longer the authority in the room, began to open the wine bottle, using the Swiss Army knife that had been used to remove Milo’s cuffs.
The woman he assumed was Frau Schwartz said, “Heinrich, perhaps Mr. Weaver would like something to drink.”
“My name is Hall.”
“Perhaps Mr. Hall would like something to drink.”
Milo gestured with his chin at the coffee stains down his shirt. “I think I’ve had enough, Miss Schwartz.”
“Someone made a mess,” she observed. “Maybe we can get your hands free-it would be easier that way.”
“Yes,” said the mustached man, leaving the bottle. He clicked the corkscrew back into place and worked open a blade. He began to cut through the duct tape.
“Heinrich,” she said, nodding at the open bottle. “Why don’t you bring us two glasses from the kitchen?”
Heinrich headed up the stairs.
“Don’t cut him, Oskar,” she said, and Milo finally had a name for the mustached man.
For a while Schwartz just watched him, while Oskar worked on the duct tape. She produced that plastic smile again. “Mr. Weaver-no, please. Let me use that name. I am Erika Schwartz-that’s my real name, too. Have you some knowledge of me?”
Now that he had the first name, he recalled a fragment of biography from his previous life in administration. An antagonistic BND director who, to the Company’s delight, was being slowly sidelined within German intelligence. “No. I sell insurance for a living-are you in the business, too?”
She placed her swollen hands together, as if praying. “Let’s step back a moment. Milo Weaver, thirty-seven years old. Employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.” She held up a hand when Milo started to protest. “Until last year, you were in administration, and your records were semipublic. So we know some things about you. You have an apartment in Newark, New Jersey. You have a family-a wife, Tina, and a daughter named Stephanie-who live in Brooklyn. But you haven’t seen them much recently because you’ve been traveling in Europe under the name Sebastian Hall. Except for one known instance, in December, when, under your real name, you went to Budapest.”
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