The Travelers (16 page)

She boards the return subway at nine o’clock, the train car almost empty, not many people headed from the farthest reaches of Brooklyn into Manhattan on a Sunday night, just dark-skinned commuters on their way to shitty late-shift jobs wearing cheap denim and white sneakers, playing video games on phones, or staring into space.

At Sutter Avenue, in the heart of East New York, trouble gets on the subway, wearing all the signifiers of a guy who thinks he’s tough, the undisguised stare, grabbing at his crotch, a predator.

“ ’S’up.”

In response Gabriella produces the smallest possible smile, not encouraging but not entirely dismissive. You can’t completely ignore guys like this, it only makes it worse.

He takes a seat next to her, far too close. She can tell that a few other people notice this intrusion, but they’re all middle-aged or older, or women. No one here is going to help her.

“Where you goin’?”

She doesn’t answer.

“You fine, you know that?” He strokes her cheek with the backside of his hand.

She slides across the bench. “Please don’t touch me.”

“You too fine for me?” He reaches to her thigh, a stroke. Right there, she thinks, sexual assault.

At the far end of the car, a woman stands, opens the door, and leaves, retreating to the relative safety of another car, a witness to nothing.

Gabriella looks at this guy: yellow eyes, hooded lids, scar across the chin, tattoo of a Chinese character on the neck. She wonders if he’s armed. Anybody can get a gun these days, sometimes for as little as fifty bucks, less than half a pair of sneakers.

“Did I invite you to touch me?” she asks. “I don’t think I did, Papi.” She has found that semi-thugs are often intimidated by the perceived thugness of other ethnicities. So with African-Americans she’ll accentuate her Hispanic heritage; with Latins she’ll pretend she’s black. “So please remove your hand from my leg.”

He glowers at her, his hand still resting on her thigh.

“You a big man, Papi?” She turns to face him head-on. “Sexually harassing women? On the subway? Tough guy?”

He sucks his teeth.

“Okay, tough guy. I’ll give you till the count of three.”

“Yeah?” He sucks his teeth again. “Then what?”

She doesn’t have any intention of counting to three. She shoots her right elbow up into the bottom of his jaw, can hear the teeth knocking together as she brings her left arm across her body, a wide hook that lands dead on his mouth, busting his lip, blood spattering across the window.

“Crazy bitch!” He jumps up, and so does she, razor-focused on his body language, the position of his hands. If he has a weapon, she needs to see him reach for it before he even knows she’s noticing.

But he doesn’t reach for anything except his bleeding face, staring at her in disbelief, completely unprepared for this, no idea how to respond.

The train is slowing, coming into a station. Big drops of blood spatter onto the filthy floor.

The doors opens.

Gabriella can see him thinking about attacking her, charging her. He’s much taller. He’s pretty sure he can take her. But then again, she just fucked up his face very quickly, and if there’s one humiliation he doesn’t want, it’s to get beaten up on the subway by a woman.

He stares at her, testing her resolve, perhaps his own. She doesn’t look away; after a couple of seconds, he does. He turns, walks out, onto the dimly lit empty platform.

The doors close. The punk turns back to stare at her, sucks his teeth yet again, even in defeat unwilling to back down completely, too much pride for his own goddamned good. Lucky to still be alive. She’d considered killing him.

The train starts to move.

An old woman at the end of the car puts her hands together, clap, clap, clap, nodding at Gabriella. A couple of other people join as the train leaves the station, screeching around a curve, picking up speed.

DUBLIN

Will sits in his hotel lobby, highly polished Regency tables and gleaming brass lamps, taut silk upholstery with tasseled fringes. An American couple slouch on a camelback sofa, both turning the pages of competing guidebooks. Will notices these couples all the time, two people who don’t seem to have had a civil conversation in a decade, yet somehow manage to tough it out. Will can’t decide if it’s admirable or pathetic or both.

He checks the time, does the math. Chloe is probably at work. He sends her a friendly anodyne text message, receives a quick response, nothing specific being communicated here, just the abstract desire—the commitment—to communicate.

For a while they’d tried to talk daily when one or both were traveling. But it was usually more frustrating and inconvenient than anything, with time-zone differences and dead zones and spotty reception, not to mention the work they were doing abroad. So they agreed to text instead, each absolving the other of the responsibility of stepping away from working to take an errant call from an elusive spouse.

Will looks up as a man struts into the sitting room, broad-shouldered and clean-shaven, wearing a capitalist-in-repose getup, suede loafers, pressed shirt with monogrammed cuffs, jeans with a woven belt. This must be Will’s contact, consulting his wristwatch, making sure everyone notices his jewelry, his impatience, his importance.

“Excuse me,” Will says, “are you Shane Nicholson?”

“Yes sir. You’re Will Rhodes?” Handshaking. “Pleasure to meet you.” Backslapping.

They leave the hotel, Shane showering Will with bonhomie, two American men abroad, us against them, of course Shane has never much cared for New York, in fact distrusts big cities generally, no offense intended, and here they live in a palace in the suburbs, bought for next to nothing, you know what I mean, half-tempted to sell just to turn the profit, before prices collapse again which they’re bound to do within two years, tops, but then I’d have to find another place to live, and, well, I’m telling you, this house is
big
.

Yes, Will thinks: my car, my life, my everything, all big, bigger than yours.

They walk a few blocks, then down a few steps, through a door decorated with a tiny American flag on a tiny flagpole.

Inside, televisions are on. It’s a cold rainy Sunday night in Dublin, but it’s a bright sunny midafternoon in the U.S.A., baseball season on satellite TV. Will is introduced around to the guys, a baker’s dozen of men in their late twenties to early fifties, middle and upper management, interchangeable widgety men who do abstract widgety things.

“But these guys over here? The Irish?” Shane is asking with a sneer. “You talk to them about EBITA, about quality control? They look at you like you’re out of your friggin’ mind.” Shane takes a thoughtful sip of lager. “No one here knows how to run a business.”

“
No
one?”

“Well, not
no
one.” Retreating from the overwhelming ignorance of his slur, slightly. “But you know what I’m saying.” You’re saying you’re a jingoist ass, Will thinks, but keeps quiet. He’s not here to make enemies with guys who run outsourced data-processing centers.

Will turns to Bryson from Atlanta, pink-faced and white-haired and blue-blazered, a hypertensive American flag. Bryson is an avid reader of presidential biographies; he enjoys sharing pithy anecdotes in boardrooms and bathrooms and barrooms like this one. “You know, when Rough and Ready was in the White House…”

Bryson is another expert on everything, a man who sees life as a series of trades in expertise, that you are what you know—or can plausibly assert to know—about anything, shipping routes, the Dodgers’ pitching rotation, health-care premiums, grilling meat.

Will listens to Bryson bloviate, rewards him with on-cue smiles and guffaws. Bryson is exactly the type of guy who’ll say something he shouldn’t.

“So tell me,” Will says, letting his laugh die down from a notably unfunny joke about Danish women. “Which one of you expats here has the dirtiest secret?”

Bryson recoils, taken aback, but not really, just making a show of it.

“Anyone hiding anything ugly? Extramarital affair? Embezzlement? C’mon.” Will beckons the waiter. “I’ll buy another.” Cash on the bar, two simultaneous transactions.

“Well, there’s this one gentleman”—everyone is a lady or a gentleman to Bryson, except his wife, who’s “the wife”—“comes here to watch football.” Bryson looks around conspiratorially, making sure they’re unobserved, while in fact drawing observation. “Doesn’t really talk to anyone, doesn’t say much about anything.”

“Wow. What a scandal! Thanks for sharing, Bryson.”

The guy chuckles into his beer, the condescending laugh of a man who knows that his companion is missing the point. He turns to face Will. “This guy?” Drawing out the moment for maximum impact. “We all think he’s in the witness-protection program.”

STOCKHOLM

The American cinches the straps of his backpack, and sets off on foot in the bright light of midafternoon, early summer, into the alleys and cobblestones and ocher-tinted buildings of Gamla Stan, narrow streets rising and falling, hills and stairs, restaurants and cafés. He walks past the opera house and the royal palace and into downtown, which is any other downtown, public-transportation hubs and brutalist department stores and chewing-gum-blackened paving stones, H&Ms—the originals!—and kebab shops, pickpockets and bureaucrats and a hollow-eyed panhandler slumped on the sidewalk, shaking a paper cup. He wades through this close humanity, bodies and sweat, perfume and cigarettes, the stench of a derelict as she passes, at once pleading and predatory, a young woman who’s her parents’ worst nightmare.

Joe removes himself from the scrum, walks past the hotels that line the promenade fronting the waterway, small ferries and water taxis and pleasure craft, broad avenues filled with joggers and strollers, café tables under giant umbrellas, awnings over windows, and always a constant sense of sky—of vistas opening out, hills and bluffs and green spaces, a view of water around every corner, and a view on every patch of grass of a young woman in a bikini, sunbathing and smoking a cigarette and drinking beer, all the things you’re not supposed to do, all at once, but that seems ludicrous to these girls, alarmist, when you’re young and beautiful, and life will go on forever.

He buys a newspaper and takes an outdoor seat at a café. Blue-and-white streetcars are gliding by, Porsches and Volvos, bicycles and mopeds. Gucci and Vuitton are across the street, with their merchandise scattered about this terrace too, draped on the good-looking lunchtime crowd who are dressed as if for work but look more like actors who’ve just departed the stage set of an office, and this café is maybe the commissary. Or the continuation of the set.

The American watches a man arrive who fits the description, says hello to another man, joins his table, beckons the waitress. She kisses him on the cheek, we’re all friends, but she’s the one carrying the tray of drinks, and he’s the one checking out her ass.

Another man walks up the block; this must be Anders, a steroids-y guy, disproportionate upper body straining at his tee shirt. There are an awful lot of this type in the world, and these guys all wear their hair the same, short and wet and a little angry.

The man nods at the American, takes a seat. There’s an empty chair between the two men, and Anders places a small shopping bag beside it, a shirt store, tissue paper visible inside.

“Tell me about this.”

Anders glares at him for a second, then rolls his eyes. Shrugs, exaggerated, engaging every superfluous bulge and ripple. This guy makes a lot of movements whose primary goal is to accentuate his muscles.

Anders sighs. “It is of the
highest
quality.”

The American smiles. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

Anders makes a quick nasal snort, then holds out both hands, resigned, if-you-must.

The American places the shopping bag in the sink. He unfolds the tissue paper, pulls out the passport. The photo looks enough like him, with the long beard he has been wearing since he moved to Scandinavia. The age is a reasonable approximation. The pages include a not-unusual collection of stamps for a British tourist, a dirty sticker on back from a luggage tag. It looks perfect. But the most important elements can’t be seen.

“Your turn,” Anders says, back at the table.

The American folds back his newspaper just enough to reveal a corner of a padded envelope. Anders picks this up, disappears to the men’s room, to count his money. Neither party in this transaction is the trusting type.

When Anders returns, the American is gone, around the corner, where he shrugs out of his navy oxford shirt, revealing a white tee shirt. He retrieves a cap and sunglasses from his bag, puts them on. He follows the surly thug from a safe distance, two blocks, three. No need to get too close. There’s a slender electronic tracking device slipped into the padding of the envelope.

IRELAND

“I’m writing an article about expat Americans.”

The man is blocking his doorway, not looking like he’s going to change his mind about his unwelcoming attitude. The wind is blowing strong and salty off the Irish Sea, a churning gray at the end of the quiet street. Will pushes his fluttering hair out of his eyes.

“And what did you say was the name of the magazine?”

“
Travelers.
Have you heard of it?”

The man nods.

“So would you have a few minutes? I can keep this short.”

“I’m sorry, how’d you find me?”

This is not encouraging. “Some Americans down at the sports bar.”

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

“I’m trying to get a sense of what life is like here, as an American expat. Someone mentioned you watch a lot of football. Is that one of the main things you miss?”

“Who, exactly, down at the pub?”

Will stares at this man, this so-called Tom Evans, forgettable name, forgettable face.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Evans. I guess this was a mistake.”

PARIS

Omar shares the office on the
deuxième étage
with Pyotr from St. Petersburg, Yang from Beijing, and Parviz from Tehran. Omar’s desk is the best, pushed up against a window that faces the simple garden in the rear of the Belle Epoque house near the Trocadéro. The array of monitors in front of him makes it nearly impossible to see out the window, plus the shades are almost always drawn. So it’s more the idea of a window than an actual view of the top of the Grand Palais a few blocks away, and the presence of natural light, that Omar finds pleasing, reassuring. His apartment in La Goutte d’Or is dark.

He’d already hacked into the rental company’s antitheft tracking system, and launched his own map application to sync with the car’s GPS signal. He followed the rental’s progress, fits and starts out of the city, southerly, along the coast.

It’s easy work to identify the landline of the house in front of which the car parked, as well as the IP addresses of the computers inside and the wi-fi network, which has a higher level of encryption than most civilians would use. It takes Omar another minute of scanning to ID the mobile-phone account that’s inside the house, the mobile that’s not his subject’s. Within three minutes Omar is confident that he’s monitoring all the communication channels that are operational at this house in county Wicklow. He pulls up the map, jumps around some photo links, a pleasant-looking street, cliffs at the end of the block. Yes, he thinks, Ireland looks nice. Couldn’t be more different from Libya, but maybe not terribly dissimilar to France, not in the overall scheme of global topographical differentiation.

A half-dozen windows are now open on Omar’s screen, streaming a tremendous volume of information. But Omar is always looking for more.

This time, it doesn’t take long: after just a couple of minutes, his subject’s phone starts moving away from the house, returns to the GPS signal of the car.

As soon as the car starts moving, another mobile account suddenly appears in the house, a phone that must have been powered off until now. It’s a local Irish number, a disposable prepaid, and Omar has to hustle to locate the connection, clicking and typing frantically before the call ends—this is likely to be a short call—