“You expected secret gadgets, maybe?”

He shrugged, then wiped a crumb from his chin. “There was a bag. Clothes, mostly. Pills-Dramamine, things for the bowels, pain relievers, that sort of thing. A key ring.”

“Keys?”

He shook his head. “It’s got a car remote on it, but no actual keys. An iPod, but all that’s on it is music. David Bowie, actually. The man seems obsessed.”

“Pockets?”

“Receipts. From London, mostly. A couple Polish ones. And a personal note written on hotel stationery.”

“Love letter?”

Oskar reached into his pocket and handed over the note. “I don’t think he knew it was there. He seemed surprised when I showed him. He laughed.”

She turned the slip so that it caught the streetlight from outside. She read, then read it again and felt the blood rush into her cheeks. “What does he say about it?”

“He says it’s kind of lovely.”

She read it a third time, then folded it and recited it from memory: “Tourism, like Virginia, is for lovers. Turn that frown upside down, man.” She shook her head, unable to control the wild, involuntary grin, and then swallowed. She wasn’t paying attention, though, and a rough wedge of chicken lodged in her esophagus.

“What?” said Oskar.

She waved her hands, pointed at her throat, and tried in vain to speak. Oskar rushed over. She felt the oxygen leaving her body, her arms going cold. Oskar got behind her and pushed her up, grunting, then wrapped his arms around her layers of fat and jerked his fist into her stomach, or thereabouts, several times. A slimy piece of chicken shot out of her mouth and landed on the rug. She gasped as Oskar came around to check on her.

“Thank you,” she managed.

“You’re all right?”

“Do you believe in fate, Oskar?”

“No.”

His pragmatism was coming along just fine. “Good. Let’s find out what kind of Tourist our friend is.”

14

When Erika Schwartz finally returned with Oskar, Milo was feeling disgusted with himself. She’d given him what he’d aimed for-time, an extra hour to think over his predicament. Yet he’d come up with nothing, and found himself dwelling on the irony of his situation: At a time when the Department of Tourism was worried about a Chinese mole, it was because of Adriana Stanescu that he’d been captured.

That’s because you serve them, the little voices. You’re a fool.

Schwartz settled across from Milo. Her cheeks and forehead were red, and he wondered if stairs really were that hard on her. What kind of health was she in? Might a few well-placed words bring on a heart attack? Oskar, too, seemed flustered. Perhaps they’d been arguing-another thing that might work to his advantage.

She said, “I will act based upon my suppositions, while my suppositions will be based on my limited knowledge. Does that seem reasonable to you?”

“Sure.”

Schwartz opened her plump hands. “For the moment, we’ll set aside the events in Zürich. Let’s stay with Adriana. My supposition is that you were asked to kill her. Maybe you were asked to kidnap her, and then the order was changed-the distinction doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that, like any hired gun, this was probably all you knew. The name of the victim, perhaps the method of disposal. Simple facts, from which you could improvise as you wished, so long as the orders were followed.”

Milo stared at her, a blank slate. Then: “This is crazy. When my embassy finds out-”

“Please,” she said, raising a hand. “As I’ve made clear, what interests me is the why of her murder. Not the how. The who, I hope, will become clear once I know the why.” She blinked, as if confused. “I did make that clear, yes?”

Milo didn’t answer, but Oskar said, “I believe you did, Erika.”

“Good.” She crossed her hands in her lap and then, noticing crumbs, flicked them away. “So what I’m realizing now is that you, Mr. Weaver, won’t be as much help to me as I’d hoped. You’re a killer, which means it’s not your purview to know the why of your orders. I also doubt you know anything about the girl you killed. Which is why I’m going to tell you about her.” She smiled. “Don’t get me wrong-I don’t think anyone as versatile as yourself will have his heart softened by a story or two. I just think it’s a good thing for humans to know the full measure of their actions. Does that sound pompous?”

“Certainly not,” said Oskar.

Something upstairs had convinced her to try this new angle. Maybe it was guesswork, or just the acute senses of an experienced interrogator, but she had decided to tell Milo the one thing that he had been desperate to know: the story behind Adriana Stanescu. So he said, “It sounds very reasonable.”

“Excellent,” said Erika. “It took some digging, but I had help from Adriana’s uncle, Mihai. He, you have to understand, isn’t like us. He doesn’t have the apathy-is that the right word?” Milo didn’t answer, so she went on. “Mihai doesn’t have the apathy that we from intelligence are full of-the apathy toward individuals that our job requires. No, Mihai Stanescu is sentimental to the extreme, particularly when it comes to his dead niece. He doesn’t understand-as you and I do-that good little girls and boys must sometimes disappear when important things require it. Because, really, Milo-despite all the claptrap from priests and politicians about the value of the little children, the fact is that the world doesn’t change when they die. The value of the dollar remains the same. Your American Idol doesn’t lose ratings. The stores remain fully stocked. And children disappear all the time.”

Though he held on to his stolid expression, Milo wondered where she was going with this. It wasn’t just a story.

She said, “Take, for instance, the so-called tragedy of sexual trafficking. Thousands of women and children-and let’s not soften the blow with vagaries; they’re sometimes as young as six months-disappear every week and end up in whorehouses, sold as sexual slaves, or videotaped for Internet sites. They are abused, raped, tortured and sometimes killed for the pleasure of a certain demographic. Does this change the value of the euro?” She shook her head, and her discomforting smile reappeared. “Certainly it does not. People like you and me, we understand this.”

Image

What could she read in Milo Weaver’s face? Very little. Either he truly was a pro-she’d decided to set aside the term “Tourist” for now-or he had no idea where her monologue was heading next. Perhaps he really didn’t know Adriana’s past.

“A case in point. Of one such girl who went through what the media would certainly call a tragedy if they caught wind of it. But, really, Stalin aside, tragedy is when thousands of people are killed, and when their deaths bring down financial institutions-that’s tragedy. This is more… I don’t know. A blip in the moral universe? Something like that, though for people like us, there really is no moral universe, is there?”

Milo looked like he was going to answer, but didn’t. Oskar stared at the side of his head. Heinrich and Gustav were mesmerized by her speech; she almost expected them to start taking notes.

“Ah, well, the story,” she said. “It began in Moldova, as you’d expect. At that time Adriana was only eleven.”

Image

Milo listened. Despite himself, he paid attention to every word, every digression, and, worse, all the physical details. Erika Schwartz described the design on the scarf Adriana wore when she boarded the bus headed west, and though he knew this was a detail she probably couldn’t know, it remained with him anyway, all the way through to the warehouse in St. Pauli where the initial rapes occurred, to the Berlin apartment where she was used many times a night. The scarf was decorated with flowers shaped into paisleys. She had not used the mawkish word “tears,” but she didn’t need to. He knew that a paisley looked like the drop of salty water that forms at the corner of a child’s eye, and the image just wouldn’t leave him.