The Travelers (12 page)

Click: a chart of gross revenues, ad pages, net profits. A few heads nod appreciatively at this turn toward the more concrete, measurable subject of finances. One guy even writes something down.

“
Travelers
receives a steady stream of mail, which Benji reads compulsively. He learns that many of these passionate reader-travelers have something in common: they want
more
. More advice, more specific. So he experiments with methods of delivering more to these readers: destination-specific newsletters, special issues, seminars.”

Click, click: covers of special issues on Tuscany and Portugal.

“But what the audience really wants is not something that can be
delivered
to them en masse, because it’s something unique, something tailored to them personally. Something that would be impossible to supply by a bunch of American writers who visit France a few times a year and while there spend most of their time plastered, chasing women.”

A couple of chuckles, but the man at the head of the table remains impassive. Malcolm can’t tell if he’s enjoying this story or hating it or has heard it before.

“Benji decides to try a gambit that has absolutely nothing to do with magazines.”

Click: a modest storefront on the rue de Rivoli.

“The first bureau of the Travelers International Booking Service is Paris,
naturellement.
A one-year lease across the street from the Louvre and down the block from the Meurice, around the corner from Place Vendôme, the Ritz. The mission is explicitly to service American tourists who want more than just guidebook Paris. They want
access.
”

Click: the opulent dining room of Le Grand Véfour.

“They want impossible dinner reservations. They want private invitations, insider information, exclusive experiences. They’re willing to pay handsomely for an enhanced version of travel. The brand they trust to provide this service?
Travelers.
”

Click: a black-and-white photo of a dapper man, leaning on a cane.

“Benji hires an outgoing Parisian named Jean-Pierre Fourier, who quickly proves himself adept at helping well-off Americans have a superlative time in Paris. Jean-Pierre arranges Notre Dame tours and off-hours Louvre visits; he reserves tables at the best restaurants and most exclusive cafés; procures invitations to fashionable parties and books cars to Versailles, tee times at Morfontaine, sold-out tickets to the opera and ballet and the lovely concerts in La Sainte-Chapelle. He can also be counted on to arrange girls, discreetly.”

Malcolm sees one of the women glance down; a man crosses his legs. Some people are uncomfortable with this reference. The man at the head of the table isn’t one of them.

“It turns out that there is no luxury, no exclusive experience, that American tourists cannot be convinced they want, maybe even need. That first cramped storefront leads the following year to a bigger storefront, and then a whole building, in a quieter, more polished part of town, equally convenient to a certain type of tourist, less so to others.

“The Paris bureau is successful not only as a travel agency, but just as important as a brand extension, with the magazine fueling the agency and vice versa, both entities enhancing the other.”

Click: an elegant storefront near the Via del Corso in Rome. “We open bureaus in Rome, in Florence, in Madrid and Barcelona, in Athens and London. The investments are reasonable, the exposure minimal, the audience established, the margins impressive.”

Click, click, click: magazine covers from the fifties, sixties, seventies.

“The same factors that led to the magazine’s initial success help the bureaus thrive. After Western Europe, expansion follows into North Africa, Asia, the Mideast and Latin America, and eventually Eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall.

“Meanwhile, the magazine continues to break new ground, to hire the best talent, to win awards, to dominate the market. The
Travelers
brand steadily expands its influence and profitability, the category leader according to every measure. By the nineties there are three dozen bureaus on six continents, ten special issues every year, as well as the most ad pages and largest circulation in the category.”

Click, click: eighties, nineties.

“Then what happens?”

Click: black screen. Malcolm looks around the room. Everyone knows the answer, but like a roomful of middle-schoolers, no one wants to answer when everyone knows.

“I did,” says the man at the far end of the table.

Malcolm meets the man’s gaze across twenty feet of richly oiled teak, a Midcentury Danish table that was acquired to decorate this office when both were brand-new.

“I happened.”

The two men stare at each other from opposite sides of the divide, the new-media baron who intends to buy the old-media bastion. They both appear to be the same age, with probably the same schooling, with overlapping social circles that further overlap their business circles, Venn diagrams with vast intersections. Malcolm is surprised they’d never met until a month ago, never shook hands on the Hamptons sands, never shared a fund-raiser ten-top at the Cipriani Ballroom, both wearing tuxedos custom-tailored at Sam’s on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong.

“That’s right. The content world shifted on its axis. The old delivery mechanism—paper, printed and bound and shipped to newsstands and drugstores around the country, and directly to customers’ mailboxes—was in large part replaced by the web. The old fee structure—consumers paying to consume content, supplementing the revenue generated by the ads targeted at those consumers—has also been replaced by a new model.”

Click: home page of travelers.com.

“I don’t want to make light of this revolution—not your role in it, sir, nor the immense changes in brand identities and consumer loyalties that it has engendered. But to many consumers—to many readers—these changes are irrelevant. What hasn’t changed for them is the content they love, nor the brands they trust to deliver it.”

Click: the
Travelers
logo.

Malcolm glances around the room again, looking for overt skepticism. He doesn’t notice any, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. His eyes again find the emotionless gaze of the person who’ll probably be his new boss.

“So. The print magazine has seen a drastic decrease in circulation. I’m sure this is a surprise to exactly no one anywhere. On the other hand, the website, and the electronic editions, are robust, and steadily growing in unique users. Overall, our audience is
growing
.”

Click: another chart, big numbers, getting bigger.

“Also not surprisingly, the travel services took a hit. We’ve shuttered quite a few overseas bureaus.”

Click: map of the world, 1998, with stars at bureaus. Then half fade away, to today.

“On the other hand, we’ve discovered that there’s a not insignificant population who aren’t looking for more information, more discounts, more options. They’re not looking for
more
, period. They’re looking for
better.
Better recommendations, better choices. They’re looking for this word that’s being bandied about relentlessly these days:
curated
experiences.

“And what’s the essence of a curated experience? It’s
trust.
It’s trust in the expertise, the experience, the
brand.
If you’re asking a chef to curate your meal, you’re putting your dinner in his hands, every bite. You’re trusting him to provide the experience you want, without you needing to micromanage the choices. Same is true when you ask a bookseller’s recommendation, a fishing guide’s best holes in a trout stream, a sommelier’s favorite bottle of Margaux in a Michelin-starred restaurant.”

Click, click, click: streams and mountains and bottles of wine.

“This is what
Travelers
has been providing discerning tourists since its inception: curated travel experiences. Yes, the delivery mechanisms have changed. But the content has not changed. The brand has not changed. The
trust
, it hasn’t changed.”

Click: the current issue’s cover.

“We are
Travelers
, ladies and gentlemen. The most trusted brand in international travel.”

STOCKHOLM

The American who calls himself Joe wakes up early, as always, an unbreakable lifetime habit. He brushes his teeth, washes his face, dries off with a thin, worn hand towel, its edges frayed. The dingy old towels came with the apartment, along with a few pieces of cheap furniture—not enough for forever, but a start—and a mop. The bathrooms are constant reminders that he’s abroad, the oddly shaped fixtures and inevitably cramped quarters and accordion shower doors, the smell of the grooming products, the hand-soaps and shaving creams and shampoos, they all smell like not-America.

He ambles down the far side of the hill to Folkungagatan, the neighborhood’s main drag, with its hardware stores and photo labs, kebabs and pizza, supermarket and sushi bar and the cheerful little place with the surprisingly good curry.

Joe buys a newspaper and steps into the bakery. Orders his pastry and coffee, looks around the small room, a normal-looking assortment of people, responding to his presence normally. His preferred seat, in the far corner, is free.

He reads the newspaper in detail, eats carefully, drinks slowly. He has nothing to do today. He never has anything to do. For a half-century he worked all the time, even when it looked like he was on vacation. Then he needed to retire.

First he went to Iceland, established a quiet life in the countryside. Then for variety he came here, to a familiar, comfortable Western European city. He likes Stockholm.

Whenever the door opens, he glances up, but never lets his gaze linger. He ignores the television that’s playing twenty-four-hour international news, nearly all of it businessy, programming tailored to whatever breed of human wants to know the share price of Intel at any given moment. Certainly not him.

A woman walks in who’s so tall and so beautiful that she’s impossible to ignore. She orders a cappuccino, then makes her way down the pastry display, considering her choices.

His eyes flicker to the screen over her shoulder, a bit of nonfinancial news for a change, a breaking story: a murder victim has been discovered in Capri. The case has captured the attention of the international media—a luxury hotel in a famous place, a dead man stabbed in the neck and thrown off a cliff, a mystery woman wanted for questioning.

The American tries to focus on the low-volume audio, catches only flickers. His hearing has been deteriorating, along with everything else. He’s getting old, and it’s coming on quickly. For a long time he felt invincible, impressed by his own resilience and stamina. Not anymore.

He stands, walks toward the TV, no longer paying any attention to the blonde.

“The victim is apparently a citizen of the United States but not a resident,” the reporter says from her stand-up spot, the sea shimmering behind her. Then the screen splits to include a new image, a headshot.

“Holy crap,” Joe mutters, frozen there in the middle of the bakery, blocking the path of the Amazonian Swede.

“Taylor Lindhurst’s last known address was in a remote region of southwest France.”

Although it’s remotely possible that Lindhurst—a new name for an old acquaintance—was murdered by any number of rational people, for a variety of justifiable reasons, the most simple explanation is the likeliest.

Perhaps Joe should get out of here today. Pack a bag, walk across the Slussen cloverleaf across Gamla Stan and over to the station for a train to the airport, a flight back to Iceland. Or maybe instead he should get to the Värtahamnen terminal right now, to hell with luggage, board one of those overnight vomitoria boats across the Baltic, hide out in Latvia or Estonia, places no one would think to look for him, and no one who tried would succeed.

He made the choice to believe that he’d be safe here in Iceland and Sweden until the end of his life, either because he’d die a natural death or because they’d find him, and he’d never even hear the bullet. Which he manages to convince himself, even in the small hours, would be preferable.

NEW YORK CITY

Will steps out onto Sixth Avenue, in the middle of Midtown, the middle of the media world, Time Life and McGraw-Hill, Sirius and Fox, CBS and S&S, conglomerates strewn around the skyscrapers, the homogeneous anonymity of midcentury institutional architecture, flapping flags and sputtering fountains, massive modernist sculptures dwarfing the hot dog carts and honey-roasted nuts and all the tiny little people, scurrying around like ants, Will himself just another one, another little ant crossing the stone-paved plaza, glancing at the hundreds of faces that surround him, five-thirty on a weekday afternoon.

He stops at the corner, the traffic rumbling by, taxis and limos, SUVs and Minis, trucks and buses, honking and sputtering and belching black clouds of noxious exhaust. He stands at the very edge of the curb, toes over the precipice, dangerously exposed out there. Will can feel the crowd amassing behind him, who knows how many people, but he shouldn’t turn around to look.

The light changes. He jogs across the avenue, elbows his way through the throng on the far side, up the crowded side street to Fifth Avenue, which is even busier than Sixth, with Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Saks, an immense swarm of humanity.

Will turns around, scans the crowd, looking for anyone who might be watching him.

He retreats to Sixth. Descends to the plaza under Rockefeller Center, the subway station and the shopping arcade, pizza parlors and shoeshine shops, six-dollar umbrellas. He hustles through the busy space, then up the stairs on the far side of the avenue, now walking uptown. He pauses at a magazine stand, examines a few covers, turns downtown. Onto a side street, a long block to the avenue, around another corner, onto a different side street.

Will does this for thirty minutes, scanning sidewalks, past gift shops and jewelry stores, Indian restaurants and newsstands, a grimy Irish pub where he pauses at the door, seems to consider going in, then changes his mind, backtracks to a two-story glass wall of a mega-deli with seating on a mezzanine, a pair of knee-high leather boots visible up there.

In the bright fluorescent light inside, Will is hyperaware of the physiological effects of his first ever surveillance detection route, his racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, his whole body vibrating.

Will orders a coffee, even though a stimulant is really not what he needs now. Should’ve gotten a cold beer. It’s evening, after all. Who the hell stops at a deli like this for a hot coffee, on a warm day, at dinnertime?

He tosses the coffee into the garbage, pays for a beer, absorbs the quizzical look of the cashier. Walks past the sneeze-guarded steam tables, suffused with the ineffable sadness of dinners plucked from a cheap deli’s salad bar.

Will walks upstairs, to the far corner of the mezzanine, an empty table surrounded by a buffer of other empty tables. He takes a seat that faces the rear.

He can’t help but glance over at the woman, dredging a teabag in a paper cup.

Will forces his eyes to move across lines of newspaper type, but this isn’t reading he’s doing. He turns a page, repeats the sham on A3. Something perhaps about Pakistan, or West Africa. He takes a sip of beer, doesn’t particularly taste it. He takes a gulp.

He remembers his phone, removes the battery, just as she’d instructed, down in the Southern Hemisphere, two days ago. He puts the pieces in his pocket, takes another sip of—

“Will Rhodes?”

She’s standing at his table, smiling down at him.

“Is that you?”

He gets up from the plastic chair, manages a smile, forces a cheek kiss.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to join you?”

Will gestures at the chair. “Please.”

She’s carrying a handbag and a magazine and a banana and a napkin and a cup of tea, and she dumps all these items on the table, instant mess. Her hair is pulled back again, her face almost entirely makeup-free. She’s wearing a shapeless sweater over a staid skirt, no longer a meticulous construction of a sexpot fantasy.

He still can’t believe any of this is happening.
Has
happened.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he says.

“Of course you can. The first time is the hardest, as with everything. And good news, Will: I already know everything about your Argentinean trip. I don’t need any report.”

“Then what’s this meeting for?”

She begins to unpeel the banana. “Test run.”

“Testing what, exactly?”

She removes another strip of peel, and another. “Our process.”

“You mean my willingness to follow your orders? To come when beckoned?”

“Yes.” She takes a bite of the banana, chews, swallows. “Also testing your first attempt at a surveillance-detection route.”

Elle and Roger had spent hours explaining it to him at the hotel, then practicing on the streets of Mendoza.

“And how’d I do?”

“Not so great.”

“Okay, glad to hear it, another shortcoming of Will Rhodes. Can I go now?”

“Really? Are you
really
going to act like that?”

Will glares at her. He finds it hard to remember how much he adored this woman, just a few days ago, back when he believed she adored him. Now he loathes her.

“Does anyone suspect anything?” she asks. “Chloe?”

He doesn’t answer.

“What about your boss? Malcolm, right? Malcolm Somers?”

Will doesn’t answer.

“What’d you tell him about your trip? Did you tell him about us?”

He still doesn’t say anything.

“Show him any pictures? Me on the beach in that bikini, maybe?” She leans away, takes another big bite of banana. “I’ve never actually
been
to Australia. That was Photoshopped.”

“What are we, friends now?”

“Why not? Do you think your life will somehow be improved if you make a grand show of hating me? How exactly would that make your life easier? Listen.” She leans forward, lowers her voice. “We had a good time together. France, Argentina. Putting everything else aside, those nights were genuinely enjoyable for me. Even though it was my job, the fun was real.”

He snorts. She ignores it.

“Anyway, nice to see you again,” she says, somewhat loudly, now performing for a wider and probably nonexistent audience. “I’ve got to run.” She stands, gathers her things, but leaves the banana peel on a napkin on the table. “I’ll see you in a week.”

“You will?”

She taps something—what’s this? an envelope?—which she seems to have deposited along with her trash. Then she leaves.

Will waits a couple of minutes, as he’s supposed to. He tucks the envelope into his jacket, then steps out of the bright surgical-room silence of the nearly empty deli into the loud dirty rush hour, all these people with their headphones and backpacks, their secrets and lies.

And look at this, across the street: Elle’s partner, the man who calls himself Roger, leaning against a doorway, one ankle crossed in front of another, a phone in his hand, looking like any other guy who’s standing on the sidewalk, killing time. How much has this guy watched here, today? Has Roger been following Will all day? And Will didn’t notice?

Will sees the wire running from Roger’s phone to his ear. Roger listened to the whole conversation, of course he did. And he probably wasn’t the only one.

Will glances at his watch. Plenty of time to meet his wife for dinner. If he’s not mistaken, Chloe is ovulating.

MENDOZA

“Your job,” she said, “is to ID targets for recruitment.”

“Targets?”

“Foreign journalists,” she said. “Politicians. Policemen. Businessmen. Whoever, wherever, whenever. If they’re important people, or if they have access to important people, then they’re of potential interest to us. You already spend half your life with these people. You’re a verifiable international journalist, but you’re
lightweight
—”

He sat up straighter, insulted. But he couldn’t deny it.

“—and no one would worry about you, no one would suspect that you’re not exactly who you say you are. You’re
perfect
. And it will be easy. And lucrative. And who knows? Maybe it’ll even be fun. Exciting.”

Will examined his breakfast plate, heaped high with food he hadn’t touched, his second breakfast with this woman. Last time, he’d been ravenous.