The Travelers (38 page)

“Yes, it’s a well-known predicament. Did you start spending this money?”

Timothy nods. “The job was going to pay a thousand dollars per day, for probably ten days of shooting. That’s a lot of money for me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“After a couple weeks she got back in touch, set another meeting. Now she told me something completely different: there was no film. She wasn’t even a film producer. She was a private detective. Her client wanted to do something dicey, though not illegal, not really. This job would pay twice as much as the nonexistent acting role, and it would be easier. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what I’d have to do until I accepted the job, signed a contract with an NDA, took some money.”

This was brilliant. She set him up with the expectation of money, she made him count on it, then she took it away, while also promising more.

“I tried to get assurances that it wouldn’t be violent—I’m not violent. I was in a bad spot. I’d already spent some of the money, I really needed it. She showed me an envelope with five grand in cash, tax-free. Right there in the room, for me to walk out with.”

“So you accepted.”

He nods. “The scheme was that her client was a rich man who wanted a divorce, but there was an ironclad prenup. The only way to void it was to catch the wife committing adultery.”

“I see. So your job was to seduce my wife?”

Timothy’s eyes widen again. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know
what
?” Malcolm shakes his head. “Listen, don’t try to justify yourself to me. Just tell me what happened, okay?”

Timothy nods.

“So how’d this work?”

“Another help-wanted. An advertising trade magazine.
Ad World? Ad Age?
Something like that. I guess it was a notice tailored to attract, um…what should I call her?”

“Who, my wife? What do you think your choices are?”

“Mrs. Somers? Allison? Your wife?” Timothy is obviously worried that making the wrong decision is going to get him hurt. “So she, um…Allison…had just met with a career counselor? And she’d taken out a subscription for this magazine,
Ad Whatever
. She was obviously looking to restart her career, which I’d guess she’d put on pause to, um…”

“To raise our children?”

“Yeah. So she responded to this ad, and we set up an interview.”

“You used an office?”

“No, we met in a hotel. Not like a
hotel
hotel, but a hotel’s coffee shop. A
nice
coffee shop. I was a headhunter, the type of person who meets in coffee shops, hotel lobbies. I told her she was a terrific candidate, but this position wasn’t exactly right. But I was impressed with her, and I’d see if we could find something else. I let her dangle awhile.”

“This was at your discretion?”

“No. It’s what Nancy told me to do. Then I contrived to run into Allison, which supposedly jogged my memory about an opening. We met for drinks. Then lunch, where I told her that the position had already been filled, but I didn’t cancel lunch because I really wanted to see her. That what I really wanted, more than anything…Do you really want to hear this?”

“I do.”

“That I really wanted to see her again and again, every day. That I couldn’t stop thinking about her…Listen, man, I really don’t want to, um…
please…
I’m so,
so
sorry.”

Malcolm waves it off. “Tell me about the thumb drive.”

“Nancy said that in order to make absolutely sure that the prenup would be voided, her client needed to have his wife
admit
to infidelity. The husband knew that the wife kept a diary, electronic, which she typed on the computer in the home office.” Timothy raises his eyes at Malcolm, asking if this is true. Malcolm shakes his head.

“Anyway, the computer was password-protected, and the client couldn’t
ask
his wife for the password so he could snoop through her private shit.”

“So you’d have to steal it.”

“Right. I had to insert this thumb drive, wait ten seconds, and remove it. All the files would be copied. And that would be that.”

“Was it?”

“Uh, yes, actually. When we met yesterday, I was all set to end it with her, to tell her that I’d crossed an unacceptable line, it was unprofessional, I could lose my whole career, et cetera. But I never got the chance.”

“Why not?”

“She dumped me.”

PARIS

“I’m so sorry, madame. When did your father die?”

“It was one month,” says Mme. Fourier, with a resigned smile.

Will’s heart sinks. Did someone kill this old man, to bury his secrets? “Was he very ill?”

“No, monsieur, he was very old.”

“Did he happen to leave anything?”

“Of course. He left everything.”

“I mean anything unusual; anything you wouldn’t expect a man like him to have.”

“I am surprised to find that he is having a mobile phone.”

NEW YORK CITY

This backyard is as un-backyard-like as possible while still being a plot of land behind a house, which would be more accurately described as an ex-house. Malcolm didn’t grow up wealthy—far from it—but there’s a big difference between his working-class-suburb upbringing thirty miles east and this permanent-underclass urban hellscape here, ravaged by a half-century of abject poverty and drug epidemics, exacerbated by police brutality and its attendant backlashes, by the empty promises of pandering politicians and the irreversible trend of income disparity.

Alonso is out here smoking a cigarette, asks, “Want one?”

Malcolm shakes his head. Then changes his mind. “Actually, do you mind?”

Alonso knocks a smoke out of the pack, cups his hand over the lighter. Menthol, wow, that feels strange, and cigarettes are pretty strange to begin with.

“Thanks.”

They stand in silence, both gazing out at the unmistakable arrangement of low-rise housing projects in the near distance.

“Where you from, Alonso?”

“Born in Mexico.”

“Oh yeah? Where?”

“Campeche.” Alonso spits. He’s one of those recreational spitters, hocking up unnecessary phlegm every couple of minutes, as if to say, Hey, world, fuck you.

“That’s the Yucatán, right?”

Malcolm suspects that Alonso doesn’t want to make small talk with this guy who’s his boss’s boss’s boss, this white guy doing strange shit to this other white guy, for something that doesn’t seem to involve drugs or money. Alonso doesn’t know what’s going on, and doesn’t want to.

“We’re done here,” Malcolm says, tossing the nearly finished cigarette. He’s briefly afraid that his smoldering butt is going to start a fire, but that would be doing this place a goddamned favor. “Get rid of him,” Malcolm says, “like we discussed.”

PARIS

“No, I do not want it, certainly. I do not believe it is the phone of my father.” She shrugs. “Keep it.”

Will does. It takes a few minutes to revive the uncharged device at a small table in a crowded café, with a waiter who makes a big show of his forbearance for the American who needs an electrical outlet.

While Will waits, he uses an old pay phone near the restroom to try Chloe, yet again. She doesn’t pick up.

“Hi,” he says to the empty void of voice mail. “I miss you.”

Will opens Fourier’s flip phone, scrolls through the contacts. A dozen of them, most in Paris, except a number in New York City with a 347 area code, a relatively recently issued exchange. There’s also a phone number in Iceland.

SCARBOROUGH

It’s just a few minutes after the voice mail from Will—from an unrecognized number in Paris—that Chloe’s phone rings again. This time she answers: “You’re the last person I want to talk to.”

“
Me?
What did I do?”

She turns away from the direction of her mother inside the shingled house, toward the bushes and trees, the obstructed view of the beach, the limitless ocean. “Don’t give me that shit. You know exactly what you did.”

“No I don’t.”

“Will told me.”

“Told you? Will told you what?”

“You promised me, Malcolm. Promised you’d leave him out of it.”

“And I have.”

“Then what the hell was that new assignment you gave him?”

“Well, yeah, okay, I did do that. But seriously, Chloe, he doesn’t know what that is. Far as he’s concerned, that’s just a new column, nothing more. I gave him a raise!”

“And the blonde? Who’s that?”

Malcolm doesn’t respond for a second. “Blonde?” Another silent beat. “Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And what’s this shit about him being recruited?”

“What?”

Malcolm sounds legitimately surprised. Chloe almost believes him, but she can’t. Malcolm is a professional liar. It’s his actual job to lie—to the people he works with, the people he works for, his wife, his friends, everyone.

“You’re telling me you don’t know anything about this? About her?”

The wireless line is filled with a low static hum. Chloe wonders if Malcolm is trying to figure out whether or not to tell her the truth. Or maybe what he can say aloud, on the telephone.

“Mal?”

“Will hasn’t been in the office since yesterday morning, Chlo. No one knows where he is.”

She feels like she’s going to throw up.

“No one has heard from him,” Malcolm continues, explaining into Chloe’s terrified silence. “He’s not answering texts or calls.” Making it worse and worse.

“He’s not on assignment?” Chloe knows this is irrational, desperate. “Catching up on something old?”

“He was in the office yesterday, we spoke, he didn’t say anything about going anywhere. We were supposed to have a drink. But he didn’t show.”

This is her worst nightmare: that her job will get her husband killed.

“I was going to tell him, Chlo. Bring him inside.
Last night.
”

“Tell him what?”

“Everything.”

“About me?”

“No, everything else, but not that. That’s your decision.”

“Why? What happened, Mal?”

“I’m afraid we’ve been, uh, penetrated. Everything might be compromised.”

Her fear turns to anger, as if one emotion says to the other, here, let me get out of your way: “You fucking asshole.”

Malcolm doesn’t defend himself.

“I put my life on hold, Mal. You know why?”

He still doesn’t answer. She knows that he knows.

“Because I was worried that this is exactly what would happen. That you’d lie to me—”

“I didn’t—”

“—and Will would end up lying to me, and my whole goddamned marriage would be ruined. My whole life, Mal.”

This is why she’d been taking birth-control pills behind Will’s back, unwilling to get pregnant while her husband was becoming immersed in the world of
Travelers
, and possibly drawn into all its ugly dangerous complications. She was worried that Will would get distorted, compromised. Worried even that he’d get killed, like Gabriella’s husband: kidnapped abroad, held for ransom, murdered. At the time, Gabriella had just found out she was pregnant. The evening after Terrance’s funeral, she suffered a miscarriage. Chloe sure as hell wasn’t going to put herself through that. Certainly not for a job.

“Chloe, do you have any idea where he might be? I’m worried.”

“Me too.” But she doesn’t think that telling Malcolm what she knows is going to be a solution; in fact, it might complicate the problem. So she says, “I have no idea where he is.”

“You haven’t heard from him?”

Chloe is halfway afraid she’s walking into a trap here. Does Malcolm already know the truth? Has he been monitoring her cell phone?

“No,” she says. “I haven’t.”

Chloe had tried to talk Will out of it, told him that if he joined
Travelers
she’d have to leave. So she did.

But she didn’t leave the organization. She merely went to a different section, run out of a different office, with very different responsibilities.

NEW YORK CITY

“Hey boss?”

“Hi Stonely. Everything okay?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Is it the guy?”

“No, boss, that’s taken care of.” The terrified kidnapped guy was dealt a perfunctory ass-whupping by that psychopath Alonso, then released on his own recognizance, with the promise of more serious violence unless he cooperated. “How do I cooperate?” he asked, through bleeding mouth.

“Disappear.”

And to the guy’s credit, that’s what he did: packed his shit and got on a Greyhound bus. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t be back, eventually, but Stonely suspected no one would care. Stonely certainly doesn’t. Then again, Stonely doesn’t know what the hell is really going on with this guy.

There’s a lot Stonely doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why all the tight security for a magazine. Doesn’t know why the secretive meetings with the boss. Doesn’t understand the abductions and interrogations and break-ins—of their own staff. All Stonely knows is that these things are required by the boss. It’s a very abstract concern, a generic version of the fundamental employment relationship.

It isn’t completely satisfying to Stonely, being this much in the dark. But Stonely doesn’t think that completely satisfying is a reasonable expectation. Even being a professional baseball player hadn’t been completely satisfying. And here at
Travelers
, he has job security and health insurance, paid holidays and vacation, a 401(k) with matching contributions, no threat of physical injury, none of which was on offer in the minor-league system.

Almost everyone Stonely knows has a worse job.

“No, boss,” Stonely says, “it’s something here in the office.”

Oh good God, what now? Will has disappeared. Chloe has fled town and is lying to him. Allison got seduced by a guy who’s trying to steal Malcolm’s files. What the fuck else can happen?

“Yesterday, during the system’s routine daily backup, someone copied all the files.”

“All what files, Stonely?”

“All
our
files. Everything created by users here at
Travelers
, in every department. Including the archives.”

“What?
Who did this?”

“I don’t know who, for certain. But I do know where: Will Rhodes’s computer.”

Stonely stands there, awaiting further instruction, but not asking.

“Okay Stonely, thanks. See you tomorrow.”

Malcolm sits at his desk, head in hands, puzzling what this could mean, what he needs to do about it. Is it time to admit to his own boss that things have gotten out of control? What would happen to him?

He might be killed. And it might happen immediately.
Tonight.

So no, that’s not a great option.

He needs to try to solve this himself, quickly.

Malcolm unlocks the bookcase door, steps into the wall, shuts himself into the hidden office. He takes a seat at the narrow desk, and picks up the landline, hardwired to a dedicated line that falls through the wall cavity directly to the trunk in the basement, a line that’s swept clean every week by a taciturn tech named Ivan, of all things.

Malcolm checks his watch. It’s late, the first place he’s calling. He’s going to wake her up, which in a way is regrettable. But in another way it’s not. It’s sometimes useful to yank people from unconsciousness, to thrust them into a heightened form of consciousness, immediately hyperaware. Waking someone up sends a message, gets things done.

He dials the long number from memory, and waits a few seconds for the line to connect across the ocean.

She answers on the first ring.

PARIS

It’s much later than Will intended. After he’d spent the better part of the day tromping around every inch of the Île St-Louis, his feet ached, his twisted ankle was swollen, his bruises were sore. He was unbearably tired. He found an hourly-rate hotel between Pigalle and the Gare St-Lazare, a tiny room facing an air shaft, a lumpy mattress on which he reclined, just for a few minutes, uninterrupted by any intrusion like turn-down service, devoid of street noise, a quiet cocoon in an unlikely location. A quick nap turned into a six-hour coma.

So now it’s the middle of the night. Will has been standing in a deep doorway for fifteen minutes, watching the Paris bureau. No sign of life anywhere on this long quiet block.

He’s wearing an oversize black cap with a stiff bill and a ridiculous logo, hiding not only his face but also disguising his personality; he looks like a thirty-something who’s trying to look like a club kid.

His heartbeat quickens as he approaches the front door, keycard already out of his wallet, floating loose in his pocket. He waves the card against the surface of the reader, nothing.

He looks at the magnetic surface, waves the card again, and again, then remembers: he pushes the card flat against the reader. A click as the lock releases.

Through the door, up the grand staircase, around to the office door. He presses the button to release the second card reader, slides his card through the slot. Steps inside.

Alone in offices late at night, Will has always felt a little wrong, a sense of trespass, even in places where he belongs. Here, he feels even more wrong. He is.

Will strides to Inez’s desk, takes a seat. His fingers hover above the lock’s keypad, nervous. He’s not sure how many chances he’ll have to be wrong. Maybe none.

He’d practiced on the phone in his hotel room, hitting the touch-tone keys until he’d found the familiar-sounding sequence. He was reasonably confident that he’d narrowed it down to one of two possibilities, unsure of only the final note. But in truth he was unsure about the whole thing, worried that maybe his imagination had conflated the touch-tone sequence with the Pearl Jam phrase that he’d learned to pick on a guitar eighteen years ago.

He hits the first five notes with confidence, then pauses before the sixth. One or the other, 7 or 8. He hits 7.

It doesn’t open. But neither does any alarm sound, not that he can hear.

He tries again, ending this time with 8.

Click.

He pulls open the drawer. His eyes scan the tabs, and he finds the files he wants.

Will removes one of them, opens it on the desktop, begins to copy information into his little notebook. For better or worse, there aren’t that many contacts in this folder.

It’s almost completely silent in here; he can hear his pen scratching on the paper.

And then something else, something louder, outside: a vehicle with a small motor. The sound grows louder, settles on a constant volume for a few seconds, then gets louder again, then dies.

What?

Will jumps out of the chair. A couple of strides to the window, a sidelong glance out to the street.

Damn.

What should he do? He doesn’t want to steal these files—doesn’t want their absence to be noticed—but he needs the information. Maybe Inez won’t notice. Maybe her arrival is mundane: she lost her house key, and keeps a spare here in her desk. Or maybe it’s New York who called her in, they need something—what? a photograph? an interview?—asap. Maybe she won’t even open this drawer. Maybe this has absolutely nothing to do with him.

Will gathers his things, and some things that are not his: a couple of files, and, as an afterthought, Inez’s extra-sharp letter opener.

Inez climbs off her Vespa, stows her helmet. She scans one way up the deserted street, then down the other. She yawns.

She lets herself in the front door
.
As she climbs to the
premier étage,
she thinks she hears a noise. She pauses, listening, turning her head this way, that, aiming her ears at who-knows-what.

Nothing.

She continues up the stairs, walking softer now, her heels making quieter clicks.

At the top of the stairs she pauses again. She looks both ways down the hall, a few closed doors, one lit sconce and two dark ones. She peers up to the second floor, back down to the ground floor.

She unlocks the door. She looks around, her vision flowing across the room, over surfaces, between pieces of furniture, to the windows, the chairs, the doors to the bathroom and kitchenette and coat closet and storage room. All looks correct.

Her large desk dominates the middle of the room, attracting clutter as if magnetically, pulling in piles of paper from the periphery. She powers on the computer. Punches in a keycode, reaches her right hand into the top drawer, plants her fingertips on the little scanner in there. On the monitor, a dialogue screen opens. She types in the first password, then another. The system admits her.

The first thing she does is locate Will Rhodes’s personnel file. She prints out a few copies of his most recent contributor photo, full size, glossy paper, high quality. She looks through the other JPEGs in Will’s folder, finds a profile shot, prints out copies of that too.

She checks the time. The others will start arriving soon.

Inez opens a different drawer, removes a toilet kit. At home she’d been too dazed to put herself together. But her day has now started, and she’s going to be here for the next—who knows?—eighteen hours? She needs to brush her teeth, wash her face, apply some makeup. She doesn’t want to look like she just rolled out of bed.

She steps into the bathroom and leaves the door open, because why wouldn’t she?

It’s an old door, big and heavy, six inset panels bordered by solid molding, brass hardware, a dented knob, a large figure-eight-shaped keyhole, which Will looks through with one eye. He needs to move his entire head to change his angle of vision, watching feckless befreckled Inez carry what looks like a makeup bag to what must be the bathroom.

Will turns the knob slowly. Pushes the door gently, just wide enough to step through.

The sound of water running, a triangle of brighter light on the floor. She won’t be able to hear him above the sound of the water, and he needs to take advantage of that, right this instant.

Will pushes the storage-closet door closed quickly, lets the lock engage. Rushes across the room, still careful not to clomp his feet, moving the purloined files from his right hand to his left, to facilitate opening the door and pulling it closed, but the handoff is not clean, and he drops the files.

He kneels, gathers the contents in an anxious rush, letter-size pages and three-by-five glossies, index cards, long folded-over sheets, fumbling, vibrating.

The sound of the water stops. A big glurp of a drip.

Will, crouched on the floor, looks over his shoulder. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Inez emerges from that door.

He remains frozen, staring at the bathroom door. There’s a shift in the triangle of light on the floor; she has moved in there.

Surely she’s going to do something after the running-water task. What was that? Face-washing? Teeth-brushing?

He waits a second. Another. The light shifts again. But still no sound.

Will double-checks that the files are secure in his left hand. Stands up. It’s only another couple of steps to the door. He lets his feet fall as gently as possible on the marble floor, rolling from heels to toes, as if blotting ink, careful not to smudge. He closes his hand around the knob, this one also brass, but smooth, undented, shiny, new.

Slowly, slowly. Silently.

A soft click as the lock disengages. He freezes, looks over his shoulder. Still nothing.

He pulls the knob. The door swings open silently. He takes a step, another. Pivots on his heel, pulling the door toward him now, closing it, but then he hears a different sort of click, and his eyes dart again to the bathroom door, where the triangle of light has suddenly disappeared—

He thinks he closed the door in time.

The office door opens, admitting Omar and Pyotr, “
Bonjour
” all around.

The two men live relatively near each other. Pyotr is the only one of the Paris bureau employees who’s irrational enough to own a car, which does come in handy a few times a year, when on short notice Pyotr can give Omar a middle-of-the-night ride.

Pyotr busies himself in the corner, making a pot of coffee, a caffeine junkie.

Omar takes a seat across from Inez, leafs through yesterday’s newspaper.