The Travelers (20 page)

“Is she going to be a problem?” Gabriella asks. “Stephanie?”

“I don’t think so.” Malcolm can’t remember which fishes he’s supposed to not eat anymore. Tuna is definitely out. Mercury? Lead? Kills dolphins? What about swordfish?

On the far side of the room is that holier-than-thou busybody Ashford Warren, who would not hesitate to lecture Malcolm on his ethical-consumption violations. Ash once berated Malcolm, at length, for having purchased a bag of apples in early summer, a half-year out of season, at a moment when the market was overflowing with ripe stone fruit, grown locally. “But I want an apple, not a peach, you sanctimonious son of a bitch.” The two of them almost came to blows on Seventeenth Street. Fucking prick.

Ash catches his eye, and Malcolm nods at him across the room.

The restaurant is crowded, the staff obsequious, the crowd table-hopping, proud of themselves for being here, among one another, clubby-smug in the way that every club is at least a little smug, even when it’s not a club.

“Gabs, do you know if I’m supposed to be chewing or eschewing swordfish?”

She ignores this. “Are you really going to take her to the next GEC meeting?”

“I doubt it.”

“Ooh. You gonna get in trouble.” Singsong, a little girl in a schoolyard. “Do you know who else was up for that job?”

“Stephanie’s?”

“They must’ve looked at a lot of candidates.”

As part of his middle-aged maturation, Malcolm has struggled to reconcile himself that he should often appear less important—less informed, less respected, less strong—than he is. This charade is particularly challenging with good-looking women. Great-looking women. Great-looking women about whom he’s had sexual fantasies for a decade. There’s only one of those.

“Fuck if I know,” he says. “I’m not consulted on things like that.”

This is not true. Malcolm was consulted, and he conducted his own independent research on all the candidates. That’s how he discovered that Stephanie Bloom, daughter of the famously dickish mega-millionaire Seth Bloom, suffered from a certain weakness—a few of them—that Malcolm could envisage someday exploiting. So Malcolm had lobbied strongly for Stephanie, which confused the shit out of the corporate execs, because she was maybe the last candidate they thought Malcolm would endorse, if he was even willing to endorse any, which didn’t seem terribly likely. It was another of Malcolm’s enigmatic moves.

“Listen, Gabs, what’s up with Will recently? He’s been a little distant. You know what’s going on?”

“Something with Chloe, maybe?”

“Anything specific?”

“Not that I know of. How’s he handling the new assignment?”

“Seems fine. He’s doing what he should.”

“Have you gotten reports from the overseas bureaus?”

Malcolm nods.

“So what is it you’re worried about?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, but something’s up. Can you keep an eye on him?”

“Passively, or actively?”

“Actively.”

“Beginning immediately?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Malcolm feels his phone buzz in his pocket. He plucks it out, glances at the screen, the alarm telling him that it’s 1300. He’d gotten used to 24-hour military time during his years abroad, and kept using it. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve gotta tweet.”

“Are you telling me you schedule your tweets?”

“Otherwise I can’t remember.”

His thumbs fly,
Kinda sorta lovin’ lunch at café rouge!
Malcolm knows that this 100 percent insincerity is despicable, and he justifies it by his resentment about tweeting specifically, and the stupid things he has to do in general, which he realizes doesn’t actually justify anything to anyone other than himself.

And the alarm wasn’t really to tweet. “Excuse me,” he says, and gets up. Malcolm would much rather that Gabriella think he needs an alarm for tweeting than for what he really needs to do.

Allison Rabinowitz-Somers holds one little hand of both her kids, soft and warm, a chick under each wing. She knows it’s silly, this feeling of nostalgia for today even as it’s still happening, mourning the loss of something she still possesses. She good-bye-kisses the silken tops of their heads, then wades through the parental hive, hellos and how-are-yous, proffered cheeks and one “call-me” gesture, pinkie and thumb extended. Allison doesn’t want to call anyone who uses that gesture.

She sits on the bench of a long lunch table in the sparkling cafeteria, empty at this hour, freshly waxed floors, the pungent aroma of disinfectant. She unties the ribbon from the bakery box, unfolds the cardboard while keeping the label visible, one of those recent European imports, fawning reviews in the
Times
and blogs, the fooderati. The sticker itself is half the point.

The other moms on the committee—which committee? for a second Allison forgets—trickle in, oh-my-Godding about the pains au chocolat and croissants, even though this isn’t much of a butter-and-flour crowd. Allison is no exception. Meatless Mondays evolved into no-food Mondays, and meatless weeks, and no-weekday-flour, and vegan daylight, monthly juice cleanses, one abstemious rule after another in pursuit of elusive goals, another five pounds, a half-marathon. By the time she’s fifty, she’ll probably be consuming nothing but wheatgrass, through a feeding tube.

“You guys?” Carrie is fake tearing-up. Carrie’s hands are often pressed to heart, tears never more than a couple of blinks away. Carrie is always thrusting her altruism at everyone, tweeting and gramming her various philanthropic efforts, her rescue dog and hybrid car, her eco-friendly this and fair-trade that.

“You guys. Are.
So. Awesome.
”

Carrie is being handed a gift certificate accompanied by proclamations that “You
deserve
it!” as thanks for some selfless work. Carrie absorbed one of the responsibilities, she did something unrequired amid the litany of the marginally required, intercut with the coffee-grabbing and chitchatting—did you hear? where will you ski? those boots?—and the mandatory volunteering, to decorate for the dance or to collect gently used coats or canned food, one not entirely optional thing after another, plus the manicures and pedicures and haircuts and waxes and the occasional pseudo-therapeutic massage, not to mention the kids’ medical, psychological, and educational assessments and appointments and coaching for advancements, and obviously the pediatrician and gynecologist and dentist and oral hygienist, the skin-cancer screenings and mammograms, and of course the exercise—oh God, all the exercise, just thinking about it is exhausting, yoga and tennis and Pilates and SoulCycle—and the grocery store and cleaner’s and tailor’s, and before you know it you’re back at school pickup, then there’s projects—Native American studies projects, interpretative-dance projects—that necessitate the crafts store or Lincoln Center, and the toy store—with two children and sixteen other kids per class, that’s a birthday every other week, none uncelebrated—and you always, always,
always
need to buy milk and orange juice and toilet paper, and it can all easily—
so
easily—turn into a full day if you let it; if you want it. A month can go by, a year, or two, or ten.

Malcolm makes his way past the tables, all these fishes and foliages, unsweetened iced teas and sparkling waters, another urban spa. The men’s room is empty. Malcolm enters the nearest stall, removes his jacket, hangs it on a brass hook. He pushes down his pants. Takes a seat.

He leans to the side, and opens the door of the toilet-paper dispenser, exposing the large spare roll resting above the half-used one. He reaches down into his pants. Removes a matte black thumb drive in a magnetic sleeve, and affixes this sleeve inside the dispenser. He shuts the little door.

Malcolm flushes the toilet, pulls up his pants, rearranges himself. Even though the bathroom is empty, he washes his hands, completing the charade. There are rules to follow, every single time.

If the drive is inserted into the port of a computer that isn’t already equipped with the proprietary de-encryption program, the drive will wipe itself, leaving not a trace of any data, not even of the self-destruction script. So even if an over-industrious, bizarrely well-connected janitor—or, more likely, some operative who has been shadowing Malcolm—shows up in this men’s room
and
finds the device
and
knows how to get it to an interested party, there’s still no way for the information to fall into the wrong hands.

Though maybe
wrong
isn’t the operating concept;
unintended
would be more accurate. Because there isn’t necessarily a right and a wrong. That type of clear dichotomy is a luxury Malcolm can’t afford to consider; it’s his professional equivalent of owning a jet. Yes, a private plane would be nice. But its absence isn’t something anyone can complain about.

Malcolm doesn’t know who’s going to collect this dead drop, this blind handoff of sensitive classified information. He never has. He never will. He just does what he’s paid to do.

BARCELONA

Will squints into his brand-new phone in the harsh glare of the summer sun beating down on the pier. He doesn’t expect Chloe to answer these days, but he continues to try anyway, every day. Just because the calls go unanswered doesn’t mean they’re futile; it’s the act of calling, the effort of trying—and to be seen trying—that’s the point. A minor accomplishment, a small attempt to reach his wife, to reach out to her, to hold on to her.

Which is an increasingly dubious proposition. Chloe has been retreating further and further into her private self. Again and again, she denies that anything is wrong—that is, anything new: it’s merely the recent infertility and the long-term insolvency, the ongoing renovation of the dilapidated house and the attempted reorientation of a faltering career. The same monumental issues that were concerning her before.

Before.

Before what? Before Will went to Argentina, and came home different. Chloe isn’t the one who’ll put her finger on that juncture, but Will sure is. That’s the before.

Nearly all the recently dialed numbers on this new phone are his wife’s. He hits Call, waits while the connection jumps from one European cell tower to another, then across the towerless expanse of the Atlantic, somehow picked up by American towers and eventually by his wife’s device, thousands of miles from where Will is standing on a pier in the Mediterranean.

As expected, it’s Chloe’s voice mail that picks up.

There’s something almost liberating in this predicament, being the only one who’s trying. It’s as if his marriage is already lost, and now he can possibly salvage it or fail, but either way he has nothing additional to lose except the dishonor of not trying. So he’s trying. And he’s telling himself, over and over, that it’s not going to be me who walks out. Whatever else I’ve done, if this marriage is going to end, it’ll have to be her. It’s not going to be me.

Since Argentina Will has been to England and Scotland and Ireland, to the beaches of Croatia and the cafés of Salzburg and now this hot pier in Spain. He has taken a thousand photographs and written ten thousand words, had his texts edited and criticized, fact-checked and laid out and proofread and printed, distributed to newsstands and mailboxes and bookstores and libraries, hundreds of thousands of thick copies of glossy paper, with a big photo of him on the contributors’ page, smiling for the camera in a burgundy banquette at a brasserie in Montparnasse.

Chloe was the one who took that photo, on their honeymoon. But in the past couple of months, it has been Elle with whom Will sits in banquettes and booths, on park benches and café chairs, while he painstakingly provides descriptions of the people he meets, the nefarious rumors he hears, every bit of scandal whose whiff wafts by. He has explained to Elle the corporate structure of
Travelers
, who does what, where, when, why, how. After an ill-advised third glass of Barolo, he even shared with Elle his concern about Chloe’s growing detachment.

He has had more truthful, more personal, and more frequent conversations with his case officer than with his wife.

Between his
Travelers
trips and his CIA responsibilities and his secret martial-arts training and his actual writing, Will barely has time to sleep. He no longer has any social life, nor much of a matrimonial one. What he does have is an extra thirty thousand dollars, collected in cash from Elle in ten-grand chunks. He has been using some of this to pay his more ethically flexible subcontractors who are happy for the transaction to be excluded from traditional financial institutions. And some of this undocumented cash is what he’s been using for day-to-day expenses, bolstering the solvency of his checking account. He has also managed to squirrel away a few grand, stored in a remote location, for the rainy day that he knows is inevitable.

And he now knows how to fight.

The yacht is massive beyond any reasonable expectation of a pleasure boat, with a swimming pool and a helicopter pad and a submersible launch, a mind-boggling display of incomprehensible wealth. The host of this party has a net worth that’s said to be 20 billion dollars, an amount that can also be expressed as 20,000 individual millions. What’s 1 million dollars, when you have 19,999 other million dollars?

Will would like to think that he has a basic understanding of normal routes to wealth, routes taken by the rich people he encounters. Big salaries with bigger bonuses and stock options, bought-out start-ups and compound interest, real-estate appreciation and inherited estates. Avoid taxes. Invest early, get out at the top. Buy low, sell high.

But this? Will doesn’t understand how an individual can amass such a fortune, can’t comprehend a system in which any activity can be rewarded in such vast disproportion to all others. What can a person have done to deserve this? This cannot be earned money. This is either stolen money or invented money.

“Will Rhodes,” he announces himself to the young woman with the clipboard, intimidatingly attractive in the way of most young women with clipboards. A black-suited guard waves a metal-detector wand across the short dress of a long woman in front of him.

Will knew there’d be a metal detector, this is not a surprise. But still he’s starting to get nervous, his perspiration increasing. It’s hot.

“
Bienvenido
, Señor Rhodes,” the clipboard woman says. “Please.” She indicates the gangway with a tan arm decorated with a profusion of silver bangles, a musical jangle. “We sail in thirty minutes.”

The metal-detector guard gives Will a look that says, stop, wait, I’m in charge. He waves his wand over Will, an insignificant click at Will’s tie bar, which the guard ignores, another at his belt buckle, also ignored. The noise grows more insistent at his hip, so Will reaches into his pants pocket, removes the phone, extends it in his palm.

The guard considers the phone, then dismisses it, just another benign i-device. He continues to move the wand down Will’s right leg, up the left, without further incident. The guard nods, we’re finished, and waves Will up. Walking the plank.

At least a hundred guests are gathered on decks. Will is overdressed, as he often is. There are very few other neckties, except for the highly visible security crew in their hired-help black and white. He can already see a half-dozen of these guys; there must be an army strewn around this ship.

The wardrobe convention is unmistakable: the older you are, the more clothes you wear, and vice versa, from itsy-bitsy bikinis and banana hammocks up to summer dresses and linen jackets and even a few ascots, worn with the sated smugness of unattractive middle-aged men who habitually have sex with staggeringly attractive young women. There are no middle-aged women on this yacht, which is the right word for it. If ever there was a yacht, this is it.

“Buenas tardes. Me llamo Lucia-Elena.”

“Will Rhodes.” He holds out his hand to this woman, who’s wearing a thin shimmery dress in a loud pattern of swirling greens and purples and oranges. “
Mucho gusto.
”

“You are American?”

“How can you tell?”

“Your name, of course.”

“Not my dreadful accent?”

“Perhaps that too.
Un poco.
”

“I know, it’s appalling.
Lo siento
. I shouldn’t even be allowed to enter Spain.”

“Oh, do not be so hard on yourself. There are many guests tonight who do not speak a word of Spanish. How have you made the acquaintance of Señor Miloshevsky?”

“I haven’t, not yet. I’m a journalist.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I write about food, and travel, and wine. You know,
important
subjects. I never go near anything trivial like politics or business. I’m not that type of writer.”

“Would you enjoy a glass of
cava
?” She beckons to a passing waiter, a tray, a flute of bubbly for Will,
muchas gracias.
“Are you here in an official capacity, Señor Rhodes?”

“Please call me Will. And yes, I am.” He reaches into his pocket, removes his notebook, exhibits this proof of his industriousness. “I’m writing a story about a glamorous party on a mega-yacht.”

She smiles. “I see.” She assesses him over the lip of her own glass, a clear liquid, ice cubes, a slice of lemon. “Well then, Señor—”

“Will,
por favor.
”

“Señor Will. Allow me to introduce you to some other guests.”

This is when it dawns on Will that Lucia-Elena is an employee here, paid to facilitate introductions, to smooth over the rough patches where different worlds intersect, Russian energy barons and German industrialists and Spanish nobility, Swiss bankers and American investors, young women and old men.

There’s a new hotel in New York that pays beautiful women to hang around the lobby, their mere presence an implicit promise of something. Lucia-Elena is a more sophisticated version, occupying a different position on the long continuum of people who get paid to help others have a good time, hostesses and bartenders, private chefs and dating consultants, exotic dancers and call girls.

In the midst of benign chitchat with a British couple—a sexy young Lord and his sexier Lady—Lucia-Elena inclines her head. “There is Señor Miloshevsky.” He’s a dour-looking man trying unsuccessfully to look un-dour, flanked by a pair of similarly forbidding men. Over their shoulders, the coastline of Spain is receding from view.

“Who are his jolly-looking companions?”

“Business associates.”

This answer is not as specific as Will wants. “The one on the right looks familiar. What’s his name again?”

“That is Señor Borchov.”

“And the other one?”

“I do not know. I expect Señor Miloshevsky is wanting to meet you? He is very friendly with journalists. Would now be a good time for introductions?”

Will turns his body to face the host, pink-shirted and pink-faced and absolutely terrifying looking. “Of course.”

Will’s left hand, in his pants pocket, finds his phone. His index finger locates the button on top, which Will presses. He shifts his torso a few degrees and presses the button again, and again, a half-dozen times in a few seconds, a half-dozen photos from a half-dozen angles taken through the lens that’s disguised as a diamond in the middle of his tie bar.

“Now would be perfect.”

NEW YORK CITY

“Another new phone?” he asked, a few days ago. “You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s higher tech.” Elle placed a second item on the table, a little velvet pouch. “Use it with this.” She pushed the pouch across the table, a battered slab of oak, carved with a hundred years’ of initials and profanities and jokes, drunken proclamations and defamations, crudely drawn arrow-pierced hearts and erect penises and the types of breasts drawn by people who are unfamiliar with the shape of breasts.

Will opened the pouch, removed a silver stick. “A tie bar?” Art Deco horizontal etchings, a small diamond in the middle, a flashier piece of jewelry than Will would choose. It also seemed heavier than it should. Will turned it over, saw that it was a thick piece of silver. Tie bars aren’t supposed to be thick, or heavy.

“It’s a camera,” Elle said. “The lens is the thing in the middle that looks like a diamond. The angle of the lens is tilted twenty degrees upward, which is this way”—she reached across the table, showed him the little triangle etched on back—“so it can capture faces when you’re close. The ideal range is five to ten feet, but anything up to thirty works.”

“Did I miss something?”

“The shutter—I guess it’s not really a shutter, is it, on a digital camera?—is remote-controlled with the phone. When you put this switch in this position, and you hit this button, it takes a photo.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean: did I miss some prior conversation wherein I agreed to take surreptitious pictures of thugs in international waters?”

“Let’s not be histrionic.”

“
Histrionic?
That’s a big word. I’m not histrionic. I am rationally, calmly, terrified. And I’m asking again, when the hell did I agree to do anything remotely like this?”

“There’s no danger to you.”

“Oh no?”

“As far as anyone can tell, this is a phone like any other. And this? Man bling.”