The Travelers

by Chris Pavone

  It’s pretty obvious that Marlon does mind, but what’s he going to do? He reaches into a refrigerator, removes a small bottle, unscrews the cap. No mold-filled soda gun here.

  “Dean, I’m going to ask you a question, and I’m going to need the truth, okay?”

  Dean smiles. “Sure, glad to tell you the truth.” He leans toward her, whispers in her ear. “Yes, it really is as big as you’ve heard.”

  “You’re a degenerate bastard, aren’t you?”

  He shrugs, but the smile remains.

  “Will Rhodes is in trouble, Dean, and he has disappeared, traveling under a false passport. I need to find him. You know anything about this passport? And before you answer, let me tell you that I’m willing to trade information.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “I’m aware that Marlon dispenses more than just artisanal cocktails and cute little bottles of soda.” She taps her nostril with her forefinger. “But I’m willing to keep this information to myself, Dean. Instead of, say, informing the NYPD.”

  The smile has disappeared. “What do you want?”

  AKUREYRI

  Will passes the entrance to the airport, now useless. He stops at a gas station, stretches his legs. He consults the map, traces his new route. He uses the bathroom. He buys some food, some caffeine. He finds a pay phone, and he calls his wife. Will is going to continue to call her, every day. There may be nothing else he can do, so that’s what he’s going to do.

  He accelerates away from the wet gray dimness of one of the cloudiest places in the world, and after a few minutes finds himself alone on the road again, speeding on a straight narrow strip of asphalt through a valley lined on both sides by glaciers, by fields of black volcanic rock covered in soft green moss, and practically no trees, anywhere.

  Also no nighttime. The sun drops below the horizon, but darkness never descends, the sky suspended in a state of permanent-looking dusk. Will continues through the non-night, passing just a handful of cars, no police. There are only a few hundred cops in the entire country, and almost none carries a gun. In a typical year, there’s perhaps a single murder in Iceland; last year fifteen thousand homicides were committed in the United States.

  This is one of the morsels that Will digested from Jonathan’s Iceland article—the negligible rate of violent crime, the minuscule police presence. As well as the universality of English—everyone speaks it, which makes being an English speaker unremarkable. And the near irrelevancy of Iceland on the world stage, and the attendant unlikelihood that any intelligence operatives or international law enforcement would poke around here, for any reason. All the same reasons why Bobby Fischer chose to disappear in Iceland: all good reasons for Jonathan Mongeleach to disappear in Iceland.

  Will has been driving for three hours when he realizes that he has just fallen asleep at the wheel, jolting awake in a panic, blinking his eyes violently. He’s still two hours shy of his destination, without any sign of civilization in any direction other than the clothesline-straight road ripping through the lichen-blanched volcanic rock. He’s not going to make it.

  There’s no hurry, he reminds himself. He wants to solve the puzzle, but there’s no actual urgency to it. No one knows where he is, and no one can find him.

  Will glances around at the unforgiving, unwelcoming landscape. He turns into a pullout, the car bumping over a rutted dirt path. There’s nowhere to hide out here, no trees, no hills to lurk behind, no way to not be noticed, if anyone is looking. He heard a joke: What do you do if you find yourself lost in an Icelandic forest? Stand up.

  He kicks off his shoes, reclines the seat. Turns onto his side, shuts his eyes.

  Then he remembers to lock the door. There may be almost no murders in Iceland, but he’s an American, and Americans tend to kill one another with very little provocation.

  HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA

  Chloe inserts the phone’s battery. She waits for the cellular service to connect, expecting—hoping—to find a new message, a destination. She still doesn’t know where she’s going.

  The bars appear. She receives a text message, alerting her to her new cellular provider, to the applicable fees for data, text, calls. She’s roaming. She opens her email program, her eyes scanning down the list. Nothing she cares about, from no one important.

  And there’s no voice mail. Damn.

  She closes the phone. She’s about to power it off, to remove the battery again, when the device buzzes at her.

  It took a minute to connect, but there are, after all, two new voice mails.

  The first is from Larissa, whom Chloe pays to make sure the roses stay alive. The teenager has been coming by once a week to water, to prune, to add homemade fertilizer—coffee grounds mixed with vinegar—since early spring, when Chloe noticed that the plant looked like it was dying. Larissa is going to be away next week; her younger sister will fill in.

  The second voice mail is from just a few hours ago, an unrecognized number, with the +354 international dialing code.

  Where the hell is +354?

  KEFLAVÍK, ICELAND

  Elle is waiting curbside at a terminal that’s exuding wave after wave of bleary red-eye passengers from the other side of the ocean, from Denver and Seattle, from Boston and Toronto, and finally from New York, clumps of people wheeling luggage, checking phones, carrying children, boarding buses and taxis, looking around for glaciers and geysers, for volcanoes and hot springs, for things you don’t find in airport parking lots, even in Iceland.

  Malcolm Somers emerges. He looks like any other luggage-free day-tripping businessman, suit and tie, chin up and shoulders back, impatient at some holdup or another, where’s my car, my meeting, my whatever. He looks like exactly who he is, cocky overpaid son of a bitch. It’s too bad that it’s not this guy she’s here to kill.

  He strides toward the car rentals, which are right here across the street, no shuttle bus, no air-train, no transport between the transports.

  Roger emerges. Elle flashes her headlights, and he marches over, climbs in.

  “Hey,” he says. “Do we know his alias yet?”

  Elle turns the computer toward Roger, shows him a headshot, a name that’s not Malcolm Somers, a passport number, driver’s license.

  She opens another browser window, data from the rental-car company, make and model and color, license plate number. She scans the lot, finds Somers’s rental car before he does. The same model she’s sitting in, different color. The rental lots are filled with them.

  Elle turns to Roger, inclines her head across the street. “We’ll have to switch off A and B cars. I’ll start A, you’ll take over on the highway. Your phone fully charged?”

  “It is.”

  “Good.” She hands him an adapter, a cord, the other rental’s keys. “Keep it that way. Let’s stay one kilometer back for A, another kilometer for B.”

  “That’s a lot of space.”

  “Somers knows what he’s doing, and he’s going to be on the lookout. We need to be extra careful.”

  “Weapons?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. “Reykjavík isn’t exactly Mogadishu.”

  Elle can see that Roger is uneasy. Although he’s a big strong man, hand-to-hand combat has never been his forte. What Roger is good at is shooting people.

  SNÆFELLSNES PENINSULA, ICELAND

  “Sure,” the chef says. “I think I know who you’re talking about.”

  “Really?” Will has been driving and stopping and asking after an old American for the better part of the day, growing tired and frustrated, increasingly worried that John Collins of Húsavík lied to him, sent him off on a wild-goose chase, just to get Will out of his orbit. That’s probably what Will would’ve done, in his shoes.

  Will is standing in the parking lot of a roadside restaurant. The chef has come outside to collect a delivery, a burlap sack of red-skinned potatoes. “He is called Joe, this American. But I think he arrived two years ago, not one. And he does not live here all the time
. He returned a few months ago from his other home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Munich. Or at least that is what he said.”

  “Could I ask you where his house is?”

  “Sure, just up the road, perhaps forty minutes’ drive. Do you have a map?”

  Over the past few years, Will has stopped using paper maps entirely, in favor of the irrefutable superiority of GPS-powered mobile applications, the unassailable wisdom of the crowd’s biofeedback mechanisms replacing the hard-earned expertise of the individual. Traffic apps are great. But he doesn’t have a computer or a smartphone now, and the rental didn’t come with a navigation system. So he’d bought an old-fashioned gas-station map.

  The chef unfolds this map, lays the paper on the hood of the little car, dirty and spattered from its journey across the terrain and the weather of northern Iceland. “Somewhere in here”—finger tracing road. “You can see the house from the road as you approach. The house is orange. Way out near the edge of a cliff.”

  —

  The landline is ringing. Only a handful of people know this number, all of them local residents, all native Icelanders except Stas, who lives way out on the far side of the peninsula, a crazy goddamned place to live, the German out there to prove something.

  “Hello Joe? It’s Einar.”

  “Einar! How are you?”

  “I’m well, thank you. Listen, Joe, a man was just here asking after you.”

  “After me?”

  “Eh, not by name. He was asking after someone of your description—an American man of about your age who lives here.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Joe cranes his neck forward, looking out his kitchen window toward the road from the east, the road from the rest of the world, intruding upon him, as he knew it eventually would. But he’s prepared. Always. “Did you tell him where to find me?”

  “I did, yes. I’m sorry if that wasn’t the right thing.”

  “No, no, don’t apologize, Einar! It was completely the right thing. But I was about to go make a boat repair, and I wonder if I still have time. How long ago did he leave?”

  “Just now.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’m curious about who this is. Maybe my estranged brother has finally hunted me down to apologize for being such a jerk.”

  Joe doesn’t have a brother, estranged or otherwise.

  Einar laughs. “No, I don’t think so. He was my age, this man. Maybe your nephew?”

  “Was he driving the biggest Mercedes you’ve ever seen?”

  “No, this guy was driving a little white Chevrolet.”

  “Then probably not. My nephew is an obnoxious prick. He’ll drive only luxury cars, even rentals.” Joe now has a description of the man and his car, and didn’t need to ask for either. “Okay, Einar, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you for poker on Sunday, I hope?”

  “Definitely.”

  Joe returns the phone to its cradle, gazes out the window. This phone conversation will definitely make it difficult to get away with killing whoever’s about to show up—difficult for Joe to claim he was taken by surprise, difficult to categorically deny any knowledge of any stranger who disappeared, difficult to pretend he doesn’t have any idea who this was. Yes, it’ll be more difficult. But it won’t be impossible. And he probably won’t ever need to explain himself anyway. He’ll be gone.

  He kneels. Opens the bottom cabinet drawer, which contains nothing except a couple of dish towels. He pulls the drawer completely out of its frame, and places it on the kitchen floor. Reaches far into the darkness of the cabinet’s cavity, and extracts another dish towel, this one folded over and secured with twine, which he unties, unwraps, revealing a forest-green passport from the Republic of South Africa, and a rubber-banded roll of currency, and a big, long, ferocious-looking hunting knife.

  —

  From the road, Will can see the orange house perched near the end, where the land meets the sea and the sky, both dark and gray and forbidding. But from the top of the driveway the house isn’t visible, lost behind an uneven rise covered in an undulating blanket of moss. Across the road, a waterfall tumbles from the crook of the elbow of a dark brooding mountain.

  This spot is isolated and lonely, and also stunning and serene. This makes complete sense for someone who’d already lived a big noisy life. This is the opposite.

  The driveway is carved crudely out of the lava field, narrow, bumpy, curvy. Will takes it slowly, worried about the undercarriage of the car. The drive takes longer than expected, just like all the drives on this island, with sheep and fog and unpassable trucks chugging along in low gear, no one except him in any rush to get anywhere. Apparently for months at a time the sheep roam freely, basically wherever the hell they want to go on the entire island, and then in autumn they all get sorted, hey, here’s your sheep, yeah that one’s mine, thanks.

  Will arrives at the house, but there’s no other car there; no one home. He looks around without getting out, without even shifting into park. What should he do?

  He turns the car around in the small yard, pointing it back toward the driveway, ready to make an exit. But where is he going to go? He has nowhere to go, nothing to do except find the man who lives here. He’ll take a look around.

  It has started to rain again, lightly, a cool mist settling from the sky, as if from an aggressive humidifier. Will presses his face against a window, but can’t see much inside. He moves to a different window, a view onto a spartan living room, a half-measured existence, like a rental cottage, the sort of place that’s inhabited by its owner for just a week or two per year, the rest of the time rented out by a managing agent, occupied by tourists who arrive for Saturday-to-Saturday holidays, leafing through the three-ring binder that offers helpful hints about where to buy groceries, how to turn on the temperamental hot tub.

  Will’s hand hovers above the doorknob, wondering about what level of trespass he’s willing to commit. If the person who lives here is not the man he’s looking for, there’s no sense committing any trespass whatsoever; on the other hand, if it is the right house for the right man, trespassing might get Will killed.

  “Halló?” he calls out, not expecting a response. Not getting one.

  He walks around the perimeter, nothing notable, a small shed with tools and a bicycle, a woodpile covered in plastic tarp, a table with—

  What’s that? Will’s eye catches movement to the right, a rustling in the low shrubs.

  “Hello?”

  And there—what’s that?—someone moving, a flash of dark clothing, light hair.

  “Hey, wait!” Will hurries to the footpath that leads through the dense shrubs, his feet squishing in puddles of mud, the wind and the rain picking up. From afar, the terrain looks inviting, the moss a soft mohair blanket. Up close, though, the volcanic rocks are sharp, their crags stark, the ground uneven and punishing to the soles of his feet, to his battered legs, to his whole body, an assortment of intersecting aches, bruises, strains. It was only three days ago that Will was jumping off New York City rooftops, landing badly. Blood is still pooling beneath his skin, bruises settling, his legs and shoulder and rib cage deep mottled patches of purple and black, his swollen ankle stiff and painful.

  He jogs up the path tentatively, careful of his footing, then comes around a rock protrusion and suddenly he’s at the end of the earth, atop a high bluff, much higher than expected. He comes to a nervous stop.

  “Jonathan?” he calls out, into the wind. “It’s Will Rhodes!”

  Far below, the beach is covered in rocks of every size, a base layer of pebbles topped with boulders. Will can see a set of wooden stairs a couple hundred yards east, a narrow cove with a short dock, a small motorboat. There aren’t any other houses out here; that dock must belong to this property. That boat to this man, who’s running from Will.

  “I just want to talk!”

  He senses movement up ahead, more ruffled foliage. He continues around another dramatic rock pro
trusion, something fashioned by a toddler’s imagination, or Dr. Seuss. At the far end Will sucks in his breath, suddenly flush against the cliff’s precipice. His shoe pushes a pebble from underfoot, out over the edge, landing sixty feet below, maybe seventy, the sound of its impact lost in the din of crashing waves.

  Will is now distinctly aware of his feet, of his footwork, his precariousness, every step an opportunity to make a fatal mistake.

  He spins around at a sound behind him, a snapping of twigs, a rustling of foliage, a bird maybe, or a bear—are there bears in Iceland?—or maybe another sheep, they’re absolutely everywhere.

  Another big piece of volcanic rock looms in front of him, with just a narrow band of dirt path between its vertical face and the cliff’s edge.

  “Hey,” Will yells again. “Come on, just give me a minute.”

  No reply.

  He glances over his shoulder, considers retreating, back to the house, to the car, to the relative safety of any other existence, of not being on a slippery path at the edge of a cliff, pursuing a fugitive.

  The rain has picked up, and he feels his shoulders getting wet, drops falling from his hair onto his cheeks.

  He’s almost around this boulder, just another step until the dirt path heads inland, away from the precipice.

  Here. Whew.

  But it’s only a brief instant of relief that Will feels. Because from the far side of the boulder a hand grabs Will by the shirt at the back of his neck, and yanks him away from safety, and thrusts him in the other direction, pitched forward, over the lip of the cliff.

  ICELAND

  At a busy gas station, Malcolm unfolds himself from the little car, his joints creaking, his muscles aching. His right knee in particular feels wobbly.

  He takes a minute to stretch before he walks across the pavement to the ubiquitous minimart—junk food and cheap beer, Saran-wrapped sandwiches and quarts of motor oil, a refreshingly clean restroom, a diversely stocked gift shop. This station is big, bigger than Malcolm would want, but he doesn’t have a choice. In places like rural Iceland, there’s usually not much choice: the hotel is the hotel, the gas station is the gas station, take it or leave it.