The Travelers (36 page)

“Sir? Is this duffel bag yours?”

Duffel? No, what duffel? I don’t have any—

“Yes.” It’s the man standing next to Will who answers.

“Sir, do you have a cigarette lighter in this bag?”

Oh thank God. Will grabs his things, his contraband-stuffed jacket, and he gets the hell out of there, clutching his passport and boarding pass like life preservers.

Will gazes up at the departure board. The gate for the flight to Portland, Maine, is 34. Its status is boarding.

His phone vibrates again, yet another text message from Malcolm:
Hey Rhodes, what the fuck? Are we having a drink or what?

He locks a stall in the men’s room. Gets undressed, changes into his spare clothes, jeans, tee shirt, cap. He removes the padded envelope from the rear of his jeans, and slides his passport inside, keeping company with a thick wad of twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

Will extracts a different passport from the envelope, a Canadian document in the name of Douglas Davis. And a different boarding pass.

He examines the two thumb drives in his hand. He puts one in his front right pocket, the other in his rear.

He packs his old clothes into the bag, and exits the men’s room.

“Paging Will Rhodes. Passenger Rhodes on the eight-fifteen bound for Portland. Please report to gate thirty-four immediately. This is your final call. Final call.”

He looks up, locates gate thirty-four, a hundred yards to his right.

Will turns left.

SCARBOROUGH

“Hello?”

“Hey Chloe, it’s Dean.”

She doesn’t respond. Is Dean really calling her? That takes a lot of nerve.

“Dean Fowler,” he clarifies.

“Yes, believe it or not, you’re the only Dean I know. Plus I recognize your voice.”

“Glad to hear it. Listen, Chloe…”

“Yes?”

“Your husband came to me the other night, looking for something, um, unusual.”

Oh. That’s why he’s calling. It’s not to proposition her. Or at least not directly. Maybe Dean is taking a more indirect approach. “Just tell me, Dean.”

“I don’t have all the details, but I can probably get them, if you want.”

“I’m sure I will.”

NEW YORK CITY

He forces himself to stare at…at what? at his shoes? the back of the guy’s neck in front of him? No. More natural, he needs to find something else to stare at, a good-looking woman is what he should ogle, there, on the adjoining queue in a different boarding group, short skirt and high heels, too lip-glossed, too tacky, but whatever: he’d rather people think he’s a leering creep with bad taste than a fugitive.

His boarding pass is tucked into the passport with a name and ID number that all belong to someone else, someone who’s not being hunted. Or at least that’s what Will hopes. He has never before used this fake passport—
any
fake passport. Maybe that Canadian tweeker has already reported it stolen? Or maybe he got arrested, convicted of a crime, his travel documents voided. Maybe it wasn’t a real passport to begin with. Or maybe it’s the other guy who betrayed Will, Mr. Ramones who sold him the passport in the dive-bar backroom in Bed-Stuy. Maybe
he
got arrested, and opted to trade his secrets for a reduced sentence.

Maybe Will himself is about to get arrested right now, at an airport gate.

He hands his documents to the gate agent, his heart racing, racing,
racing
. She glances down at the passport, at the photo, up at Will’s face.

He can actually hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears. Can she?

She puts the boarding pass down on the scanner, presses down to flatten the thermal paper’s bar code, and Will waits to hear the pleasant beep, the nice soft sound that’s coming from the adjoining station as the tanned woman passes, tossing Will a small smile, but instead of the nice beep he gets the deep buzz, the wrong-answer noise familiar to anyone who has ever seen a quiz show—

Oh damn, this is it, the alarms about to start blaring, the lights strobing, the SWAT team rushing in, weapons raised—

RESTON, VIRGINIA

“Thanks again for taking care of this so quickly,” Elle says, pulling the door closed behind her. She looks around Raji’s sad little apartment, the pleather furniture, the humongous TV, the absence of any decoration of any sort hanging on any wall, the empty beer bottles that are arrayed on the kitchen pass-through, like troops defending a citadel. “Sorry about the hour.”

“It is not a problem, you are the client, my job is to service you. Did you have a good dinner?”

“Yeah, it was fine.” It was revolting. “Thanks for the suggestion.”

Elle had noticed these bottles when she’d dropped off the disk drive, an hour ago. She’d decided to buy replacements, whose plastic bag she hoists now. “I come bearing gifts.” While she puts the six-pack on the kitchen counter, she can hear Raji in the other room, the creaking of his desk chair, the clacking of his keyboard.

Elle uses a handkerchief to extract the cardboard container from the bag. Then she folds the plastic bag, puts it in her pocket, along with the handkerchief and her hands. She doesn’t want to touch anything here. Keeping her hands in her pockets is a good way to avoid touching things. Plus she’s wearing Band-Aids on the tips of her thumbs and forefingers.

“So Raji, tell me: what did you find?”

She can tell by his face that the news is not good.

“I am sorry to say that if the records are here, they are extremely well disguised.”

“You’re positive you’ve understood what I’m looking for?”

“You are looking for files that were created or updated by Malcolm Somers, files that might contain records of aliases that match up with other names, or that match names with monetary amounts, or that match names with any numbers that could conceivably be monetary amounts, or that match names with locations.”

“And you’ve found nothing whatsoever like this?”

“No. Furthermore, I have found no files
at all
created or updated by Malcolm Somers.”

“None?”

“None.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Is it possible that Somers doesn’t actually have any files on his computer? Or on the server?”

“Yes. But what is
not
possible is that he would not have a folder. Here, let me show you.”

Elle leans down, looks over the guy’s shoulder at the screen.

“Do you see this organizational tree? These branches? Those are departments within the magazine. Editorial, design, pro—”

“I get it.”

“Within each branch, the names of individual users. People.”

“Yup.”

“Here, freelancers. Here, archive.”

“My God, archive is a big branch.
Huge
.”

“Yes. Those folders contain files that have not been altered in three years, after which all files automatically migrate to archives. There are thousands of folders in that branch, representing any personnel who have ever created a file for this organization, since the advent of digital files, in 1988. There were very few back then, do you see, here?”

“Yes.”

“This man, Malcolm Somers, he has been working for this organization for a decade?”

“That’s correct.” Her mind is racing to catch up with the likely explanation.

“Yet he has no folders,” Raji continues. “None active. None archived.”

“What can that mean?”

“Two possibilities. One is that for some reason he does not maintain files, and has asked his administrator to remove the folders with his name, folders that probably would have been generated automatically with his employment. So these folders—one for active, one for archives—would need to be manually deleted by someone with administrator privileges.”

“What’s the other possibility?”

“That the folders do exist on the server, but are not here on this external drive.”

“Is it possible that this drive would fail to duplicate these folders, if they existed?”

“No.”

“So the only way that those folders are not here is if they were deleted?”

“Correct. Either deleted directly from the mainframe source, or deleted from this drive after they were duplicated.”

“Is there any way to tell which?”

“With a high degree of certainty, I can say that the folders were deleted from this drive after they were duplicated.” Raji opens a new window, gibberish, strings of numbers. “Do you see this line?”

“Yes.”

“That means that the drive completed its duplication at 14:09:51 today. And this?”

“Yes.”

“That means that something was moved to the trash, and the trash emptied, at 16:20:11. This was an active function, initiated by a user. By a human being.” Raji turns from his screen, looks at Elle. “Whoever was in possession of this drive at four-twenty this afternoon? That is the person who deleted the Malcolm Somers folders, and any files within.”

That duplicitous bastard.

“And do you see this line?” He points at the screen again. “This means that before the data was moved to the trash, it was first copied to a different external device.”

Huh? Will Rhodes copied the files and then deleted them? What the hell is he up to?

“But the files are not on this drive,” Raji says. “I am sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

None of this is his fault, poor guy. The entire operation has hinged on Raji’s work, and he never knew it, and never will. Elle needed access to the satellites and databases and vast networks of nonstop surveillance of the American populace, which was not something she could arrange without the participation of a substantially plugged-in institution.

So the operation didn’t really hinge on Raji himself; he’s not a uniquely qualified individual. But his employer is a highly qualified outfit, and Raji is a uniquely disposable individual. He has been Elle’s sole point-person since the inception of the project, working under the very specific, abundantly explicit mandate that he be the only person in his office with access to the operational details. Because although Virginia Data Associates takes great pride in its ability to gather secrets, and keep them, even VDA would have to comply with a court order, should it ever arrive. By keeping the VDA loop limited to just one person, Elle was simplifying the mitigation of that eventuality.

Raji is also the only person at VDA who has ever seen Elle.

“Your boss doesn’t know anything about this, right?”

“About what?”

She points at the external drive. “These duplicated files.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Does he know anything about any of it, Raji?”

“Only the broad strokes: that I have been tracking the expenditures and movements of a small population of interconnected American citizens.”

“Anything more specific than that?”

He’s getting nervous. “Why do you ask?”

“Just to prepare my report. I didn’t find what I’m looking for, and I’ll need to explain why. But don’t worry, my report won’t reflect badly on you.”

He doesn’t look convinced.

“I promise, Raji. You’ve done a terrific job. But I do need to know if anyone else is aware of any sensitive details. I’m sure you understand.”

Raji looks down. “I did consult my supervisor, but just one time. It was about that woman who took an undocumented trip to Italy when she seemed to be pretending to be in Turkey. Chloe Rhodes.”

“Why?”

“I needed help. Although I’d figured out that the woman hadn’t stayed in Turkey, I didn’t have the personal bandwidth to spend the necessary time reviewing raw footage—
vast
amounts of footage, none of it high-quality, nor fresh—to find out where she
had
gone. Not without sacrificing all my other surveillance.”

“So what did you do?”

“I requisitioned a team of freelancers. They reviewed the entire day’s worth of footage from every available camera in the airport.”

“What background information did they have?”

“Nothing. Just a picture of her face. They didn’t have a name, an alias, a passport number, nothing. They were merely looking for a woman—here’s what she looks like, please find her in the Istanbul airport, then tell me. That’s it.”

“And you’re the one who tracked her to Capri?”

“Correct.”

“So none of these freelancers—and your boss—none of them know anything specific?”

“That’s right.”

“Wow. I
really
appreciate your discretion, Raji. Great work.” She turns toward the kitchen. “You want that beer now? I sure could use one myself.”

“Yes, thank you.” Raji starts to get up, but she stops him. “Please, it’s my turn to do something for you.” She walks to the counter. She removes two bottles with twist-off tops, which she twists off, puts the tops in her pocket.

From another pocket, Elle removes a tiny glassine bag that contains a single pill, small and white and seemingly benign, like any other prescription medication that someone might take to control hypertension or anxiety, for pain or allergies, to treat an infectious disease or prevent an unwanted pregnancy; the average American spends a thousand dollars per year on pharmaceuticals.

But this pill is different. The average American can’t get a prescription for it, can’t purchase it at a pharmacy, can’t be reimbursed for it by any health-insurance plan, can’t even buy it from the friendly neighborhood drug dealer.

Elle drops this harmless-looking little pill into one of the bottles.

NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN

Will doesn’t have his sleeping pills, on which he normally relies to knock him out on these red-eyes to Europe. And he doesn’t want to put any liquor into his system. So his body is filled with unadulterated adrenaline, his imagination buzzing, keeping him alert, awake.

The loud horrible noise at the airport gate turned out to be nothing more than the exit-row protocol. But it nearly gave him a heart attack, and it takes hours for him to fully calm down. It’s not until halfway across the Atlantic that he manages to pass out.

Then he awakes with a startle, just west of Ireland, his brain unwilling to accept sleep.

He retrieves the two old
Travelers
issues
,
whose archives were eradicated to prevent the casual observer from uncovering their secrets. Will is almost positive that the secret buried in November 1994 is that Jonathan Mongeleach is currently living in Scandinavia.

And what of May 1992? Will is pretty sure that the salient item is a one-page profile of Jean-Pierre Fourier, the man who opened the very first overseas bureau of
Travelers
in Paris back in 1949, on the occasion of his retirement, which coincided with his seventieth birthday, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union. Monsieur Fourier had lived in the same apartment on the Île St-Louis for nearly his whole life, and he was planning on dying there. Which, as of last year, when he gave a quote to
Le Monde
for an article about elite hotel concierges, hadn’t yet happened.

PORTLAND

“I have good news and bad news,” he says. “Which do you want first?”

Chloe glances around at this restaurant, which looks like half the restaurants in Brooklyn, with all the handcrafted this and fusion that.

“This woman who claims to be Will’s C/O? She doesn’t work for the CIA.”

Chloe assumes that this unsurprising revelation is what he means by good news, says “Okay” without any enthusiasm.

“But she did.”

“When did she leave?”

“Well, she didn’t
leave
, exactly. But her association, ah, self-terminated.”

“Huh? What happened?”

“Here’s the thing: she
died
. KIA, Libya, five years ago.”

RESTON

Elle takes a sip from the beer in her right hand, extends the one in her left toward Raji, holding the bottle by its neck with the Band-Aided tips of her fingers.

“Again,” he says, “I am sorry.”

She takes a seat a few feet away from him. “Can I ask you a question, Raji?”

“Of course.”

“Who is it you think you work for?”

“I work for Virginia Data Associates.”

“Yes, but what do you think VDA is?”

His face is blank.

“Do you think it’s a privately held company? Family owned? A subsidiary of a publicly traded corporation? A government contractor?” It doesn’t make any difference what Raji thinks, but Elle is curious, and this will be her last chance to find out. “I guess what I’m asking is: who’s benefiting from your work, Raji? Is it private profit? Or public good?”