by Chris Pavone
His eyes dart around in panic, and that’s when he sees it: sitting on his desk, amid the clutter. He allowed himself to be distracted by his own ruse.
He looks at the door; no one there. Glances at his watch: 11:55.
The phone rings again, Jean the art director. Not now.
Will plugs one end of the cord into the back of his CPU, and turns again to the door before plugging in the other end. Then he takes a seat, and looks up—
Malcolm is standing in the doorway.
NEW YORK CITY
Elle slid the device across the table. It looked like a hardcover novel, with an effusive blurb across the front, metallic paper, bright colors, an attempt to communicate urgency, peril.
It seemed like they’d been sitting in the conference room for years. Will was completely disoriented about the time of day, and the location, and who these people were, and what they wanted from him. About everything, really.
“What’s this?” Will asked.
“Sort of a computer.”
“Sort of?”
Although there was a dust jacket wrapped around something, the book-shaped thing underneath wasn’t made of paper and cardboard and glue. The dust jacket was wrapped around a cardboard casing of a metal object. “It connects to a port with this wire. Here.”
“That ruins the disguise, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, when the device is connected, it becomes obvious that it’s not a book. But when it’s not connected, it’s not obvious.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At five P.M. every day, the Travelers server initiates the daily backup of all the files of every user’s account. Every user. You understand?”
“You’re saying some members of the staff, but not all of them.”
She scowled at him. “This device here”—she tapped it—“is a powerful hard drive. It has the ability to hold every file at Travelers.”
Will looked down at the thing.
“But in order to piggyback on the system-wide backup, first it needs to break a security code. Which might take thirty minutes, or as long as four or five hours. That depends partially on chance. We have no way of knowing. So you need to connect this device to your computer by noon, and leave it there till five-thirty. Then disconnect it, and deliver it to me immediately. You don’t want this in your office longer than necessary.”
Will’s mind jumped around the personnel who might invade his office—Malcolm and Gabriella, the art director and copy editor, cleaning staff. “What if someone sees it?”
“That depends on who that someone is, doesn’t it?”
“Malcolm. What if Malcolm sees it?”
“Then we’re fucked. That is, you’re fucked; Malcolm doesn’t know who I am.”
“What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Don’t let it happen.”
“That simple?”
“What do you want me to tell you, Will?”
“Is there any reason this needs to happen tomorrow?”
“Any reason it shouldn’t?”
Will didn’t answer.
“Listen, Will, you’re the one who accelerated the process. You’re the one who made this”—she gestured around the room—“happen. You’re the one who forced us to cut to the chase. This, Will? This is the chase. This is what we need: proof of the operation.”
He nodded.
“And Will? Don’t trust anyone who has anything do with Travelers.”
He snorts. “My wife works for Travelers.”
“Yeah,” Elle says, “I know.”
—
Will’s heart is in his stomach. It takes absolutely all his focus to not look at the cord connecting a fake book to his computer, to not check to see if this is noticeable to the man in the doorway, boss and friend and clandestine operative and, possibly, enemy.
“You okay, Will?” Malcolm looks worried. Will isn’t sure if it’s because of a legitimate concern for his well-being, or something else. “You didn’t get into another bar fight?”
“No.” Will reaches up to his jaw. “Well, actually, yeah. But the bar was in my house, and my adversary was the banister.”
“Will.” Tsk-tsk. “You should tell me when you’re getting drunk by yourself. I’ll keep you company.” Malcolm hovers in the doorway, looking around at the disarray. He is fully aware of Will’s passion for neatness and order. Everyone is. “You sure everything’s okay?”
No, Will thinks. Absolutely not.
“Any word from Chloe?”
Will shakes his head.
“Listen, Rhodes, do you have a minute?” Malcolm’s hand is on the doorknob, and it looks like he’s thinking about pulling the door closed behind him. Oh fuck no, this can’t really be happening—
“Um.”
Then someone else is suddenly in the doorway. “Will? We’ve been calling. Jean needs you immediately. We’ve got to get art to the printer today.”
Will turns his eyes back to Malcolm, who has pursed his lips, is considering whether to assert his authority and detain Will, or to let him go where he’s needed.
Malcolm checks his watch, sighs. “Okay, Rhodes, go ahead. But can we grab a drink tonight? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Will absolutely does not want to do this. But what can he say? “Sure Mal.” He stands up, fighting the urge to rearrange his staged disarray. “I’d love to.”
—
The art department occupies an open-plan room, big white workspaces, oversized monitors and printers and scanners, all looking like a secondary school’s technology room, complete with grown-ups who are making a concerted effort to look like kids, sneakers and tee shirts and jeans, headphones, even a skateboard.
“Will, thanks for coming over.” Jean moves to a large monitor, in front of which Vito is sitting, clicking through photos. “Veal? Can I help you?”
“Oh, I’m just waiting for Penelope. We have to—”
“Honestly Veal, I don’t care.” Jean is not known for his gentle touch with office politics. “But could you move, please?”
Veal cedes his space.
“You see the top row?” Jean indicates a half-dozen images, glowing bright green. “Are those all the same mountains? I can’t tell. Your ID list isn’t clear about this.”
Will leans over, examines each image. “Yes. It’s outside of Edinburgh.”
“Scotland?” Vito asks.
“Is there another Edinburgh?”
“I could’ve sworn these photos were from Iceland.”
“You’ve been to Iceland, Veal?” Will can’t quite imagine this giant African-American man roaming around the small, extremely Scandinavian island.
Vito shakes his head. “Worked on a story. Lots of art.”
“We’ve never run an Iceland story.”
“We most certainly have.”
Will searches his memory, comes up blank. “I’ve looked through all the archives. I never came across an Iceland story.”
“You must’ve missed it. Or someone must’ve removed the issue. Which would not be a surprise, the way people treat things around here.” Vito is forever up in arms about the various levels of disrespect that his colleagues display for one another’s property, and time, and effort. The world is not nearly as considerate as Vito thinks it ought to be.
“Do you remember when this was, Veal?”
“As a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly when it was: late 1994. It was my first year here, I was an assistant, and it was my very first experience working with Jonathan.”
—
Will uses both hands to pull down the binder for the second half of 1994, lugs it over to the table, a typing stand that someone discarded, back when typewriters and their stands were being discarded.
The issues are wired together between rigid cardboard, but it’s easy to find the covers. Will’s thumb flicks across each, July…August…September…October…
December.
Will looks more carefully, scanning the page-numb
er sequence, making sure he’s not making a mistake here…
He’s not. November 1994 isn’t here.
Will turns over the binder, examines the wire system, the covers. It’s not an easy apparatus to disassemble. Someone went to significant effort to extract November 1994. Maybe other issues?
Will flips through the binders, one after another, month after month, year after year. They’re all here but two: the issue that features an article about Iceland written by Jonathan Mongeleach, from November 1994. And another from May 1992.
—
“This is good, Hector.” Malcolm looks around the leafy street, a quarter-mile from his home. He’s rarely in his residential neighborhood during daylight, and practically never on a weekday. It’s nice. Quiet. Romantic. “I’ll get out here. Thanks.”
Malcolm watches Hector make the turn uptown, around the corner, out of sight. Malcolm keeps walking, halfway down the next block, where he climbs into the backseat of a silver SUV with no license plates, tinted windows in the rear.
“What’s going on?” Malcolm asks.
“She’s been in that coffee shop for, um”—Stonely, sitting behind the wheel, consults his watch—“twelve minutes.”
Of all the fucked-up things Malcolm thought he’d ever do, he never imagined this. He and Stonely sit in silence for a couple of minutes. Malcolm can’t imagine what Stonely is thinking, but he’s grateful there’s no small talk.
The café door opens again, and Allison and the man exit the coffee shop. They don’t especially look like people who’re having an affair.
“Is that him?” Stonely asks.
“Yup.”
Stonely picks up his phone, hits a button, waits a second, says, “That’s him.”
Malcolm watches as a man falls into step behind the couple, on the other side of the street. “Okay,” Malcolm says. “I’m out. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“Remember, we need to make sure she doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t see anything.”
“Absolutely.”
“And Stonely?”
“Yeah boss?”
“Make sure you stay hidden too. You’re traceable to me.”
“Understood.” Stonely fires the ignition. “Don’t worry about it.”
If only Malcolm could not worry about it, that would be so fantastic. It was very recently that he had no idea that this was even a thing he could worry about.
He climbs out of the backseat, facing away from his wife. He hustles around the corner, out of sight, back to his other life, his office life, which has invaded his family life. Now he is launching his counterattack.
—
The main branch of the New York Public Library seems to have become more of a photo op than a functioning library, another backdrop for selfies, tourists draping themselves around the famous lions, lounging on the steps sipping Starbucks, staring down at screens.
It takes a long time for the sets of magazines to be delivered to the periodical desk. Then Will stands at the wide counter, looking down at another set of Travelers magazine, 1994. Another incomplete set.
“The issues I’m looking for aren’t here.”
The librarian examines Will over her reading glasses. “Well that’s peculiar.”
“Yes, it is.” Will doesn’t expect her to be able to provide any meaningful answers to any of his important questions. What could she possibly know? “Do you think any other branches might have them?”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t have the foggiest. This is Travel + Leisure?”
“No. Travelers.”
“They’re based in New York, aren’t they? Have you tried their offices?”
Will smiles. “I have.”
He finds the computers, hunches over a keyboard, conducts searches for back issues, which are being sold by dozens of people, at a wide variety of price points—pristine editions for collectors, stacks of undifferentiated issues from junk peddlers. After clicking through to a dozen prospects that all turn out to be unpromising, he identifies a dealer who claims to have full sets of magazines. “Please enquire!”
So Will sends an email. For good measure he sends a few emails, to a few prospects: Looking for TRAVELERS May 1992 and November 1994.
He gets up, and walks away from the computer. Then he turns back. Sits down again. Wipes the browser history, and empties the cache, and for good measure powers down the computer.
—
“Well if it isn’t Will Rhodes! How ya been?”
The pharmacist wears glasses low on his nose, yoked around his neck by a metal chain. He also wears a wide smile on his face, and an extra forty pounds around his waist, sitting low and frontal, like a woman pregnant with multiples.
“I’m not bad. You? How’s business?”
Silverstein shrugs, the what-are-you-going-to-do shrug of the beleaguered small merchant, communicating in one fatalistic pantomime the rising rents, the predatory pricing by online competitors, the federal-regulations paperwork and employee headaches and maybe a problem with rodents in the storage room.
“How’s life in Brooklyn?” the pharmacist asks. “You happy that you abandoned the Lower East Side?”
Will shrugs.
“Just like generations of immigrants. One flees the Lower East Side for Brooklyn, the next abandons Brooklyn for the suburbs, the next leaves Long Island and comes back to the Lower East Side. An endless loop. Am I right?”
“You are right, Mr. Silverstein.” The pharmacist is only a decade older than Will—Malcolm’s age—but he acts of a completely different era, so he gets treated that way.
“Or you could skip all that mishegoss, and stay put, like my family. Been in the same neighborhood for a hundred twenty years.” Silverstein rummages under the counter, opening drawers. “I bet you haven’t found a pharmacist in Brooklyn as good, have you?”
“Honestly, I haven’t needed one.”
“You’re lucky.”
“I’m young.”
“Same thing.” Silverstein finally locates Will’s pills, holds up the bottle, gives it a shake-rattle. “Every four hours, not to exceed four doses in twenty-four hours. This is important, Will.” The guy actually wags his finger. “These things are habit-forming.”
“Got it.”
“I’m surprised this prescription is even refillable. Oh, I see, it was only a dozen pills to begin with.”
The pharmacist peers at Will over his glasses, then turns to his computer, makes a few keyboard strokes, frowns at his screen. This is a man who clearly hates his computer.
“Co-pay is ten. Decline counseling? Please sign.”
Will signs the digital screen with the stylus.
“It’s good to see you, Will. You take care.”
“You too, Mr. Silverstein.”
Will turns, walks past the floor-to-ceiling oak shelves with library ladders, toward the glass door with a brass bell, the meticulously hand-painted business name, SILVERSTEIN & SONS PHARMACISTS SINCE 1922, all the things you expect but don’t necessarily get anymore.
“Oh Will? You wanna pick up your wife’s refill also?”
“My wife’s?”
“Yeah. We called her…looks like…twice. She outta town?”
“Um…”
Will’s body is frozen, half-twisted back toward the interior of the store, his feet still facing the exterior. His imagination conjures a half-dozen explanations in one second. Antibiotic for a lingering cough, but was there one? Muscle relaxer after a back strained in yoga. Nasal inhaler for inflamed sinuses, skin ointment for a fungal rash, antidepressants for a hitherto secret depression. One plausible possibility after another.
“Yes, she is out of town.”
“I know it’s hard to get here, since you guys moved.”
Silverstein pulls open a drawer, then another, then removes a little paper bag.
Will glances at the prescription slip stapled to the front, just to confirm that it’s his wife’s name. But he forces himself not to read the l
abel closely, not to identify the medication. Because until he reads it—until he opens the box and actually observes Schrödinger’s cat, firsthand—his world is still suspended between two possibilities: it’s alive or it’s dead, the abstract cat, and his concrete marriage.
—
“Here.” Roger reached out, handed Will the black hood. They were finished in the conference room with the big seal hanging on the wall. Will put on the hood for the hallway, the elevator, the garage, into the back of the car again, moving slowly, navigating a parking lot.
“Why’d she leave you?” Elle asked. “What prompted it?”
Will summarized the confrontation with Chloe. Elle didn’t say anything, didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask anything. Just listened to Will talk for five minutes, sitting there in the backseat, blind.
“Do you think she believed you?”
“About what?”
“That you’re working for the CIA?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Did you tell her that I asked you about Travelers? About Malcolm? Gabriella?”
Will felt the knot growing in his stomach, tighter, like someone was twisting his insides. The someone sitting next to him.
“Are you sure she left because of this, Will? Or could it have been something else?”
PORTLAND, MAINE
Chloe walks out to the dock, stares off at the water, the islands out there. She feels a hand on her shoulder, hears a deep-voiced man saying, “Well hello, you.” She turns, wraps her arms around this man, squeezes tight.
“It’s great to see you,” he says.
She beams at him, and he rubs her upper arm, an intimate gesture, but not too intimate, and not sexual. Anyone watching would think that they’re old friends, maybe college classmates, or they’d been neighbors as kids, or they’re cousins, used to see each other all the time. But none of this is what they are.
“Thanks for coming all this way.” She smiles. “Your flight okay?”
He nods. “So how have you been? Everything okay?”
“Not really.”
The man nods again, but doesn’t say anything.
“Listen, this may sound absurd to you. In fact, it sounds absurd to me.” They’re facing the choppy water, the stiff wind. “Will told me that while he was on a trip, two people—a woman and a man—claimed to work for the CIA, and offered him ten thousand dollars per month to be an asset when he’s traveling overseas.”