The Nearest Exit (24 page)

By the time she returned to her office, she desired nothing more than a long bath to wash off the dirt, and Oskar misinterpreted her expression as failure. “Ask the motor pool for something reliable,” she told him. “Dieter will okay it.”

“How did you do it?”

She took a long time to settle back into her chair. “I put on the clothes of the kind of people we hate.” She stared a moment at her desk, then peered up at him. “The trouble is, they fit rather well.”

Despite the fact that, at thirty-two now, Oskar Leintz had been only fourteen when the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, he would remain, for the rest of his life, an
Ossi
living in the West. It was a fact he was never able to forget, particularly when he traveled back to Leipzig for family gatherings. His parents still considered Munich a foreign city.

He sometimes wondered if this in-betweenness, or this lingering outsider status, was why Erika Schwartz had plucked him out of the training center in 2000 as her personal assistant. When he asked, she joked, “You looked like you could lift things, which is really all I need. Someone who can lift things.”

Things like you?
he’d wanted to ask, but at that point he still had no idea how good she was. Her name had come up among the other students, no more than rumors about an obese, caustic woman who could take a stack of files and ferret out a mole and turn him into a triple agent, all without leaving her desk. It took a while before he finally believed the rumors.

At various points during their eight years, he had wondered if accepting the position had been career suicide. Others even mentioned it to him. Franz Teufel, probably acting for Wartmüller, approached him after the CIA heroin scandal—a liaison position had opened up in Berlin, and perhaps Oskar was interested? When he
said he wasn’t, Franz gave him an opaque lesson on the biorhythms of bureaucratic careers. “They max out, lose their internal drive, and after a while simply collapse. Schwartz has had her time, Oskar. There’s no need to be on hand to witness the collapse.”

Was it loyalty, misplaced or not, that compelled him to remain Erika Schwartz’s manservant?

Perhaps, but more than that Oskar tended to believe that he had chosen the right side, and that in the end, despite evidence to the contrary, Erika’s camp would be victorious. Whatever that meant.

He signed out a gray Mercedes and was on the road by three. Though the drive would take as much as twelve hours, flying was impossible, both because of what would be done with Milo Weaver and because Weaver’s fate had to be kept from their superiors. As he drove, he made two calls. Following Erika’s suggestion, he contacted Heinrich and Gustav, two Leipzigers he’d known from the BND academy, both of whom had been useful for other under-the-radar operations. They promised to meet him at an OMV station along the E51, and when he arrived they were waiting with thick jackets, sunglasses, and cheerful smiles.

The first leg took five hours, heading north toward Potsdam, then turning east. After nine, they stopped in Frankfurt an der Oder and ate rushed meals of ready-made sandwiches and jogged around a bit to stretch their legs, then continued into Poland, taking turns at the wheel so everyone could nap in the back. That last dismal stretch after ŁódŹ was the worst, and just before Warsaw they topped off the gas tank and verified that all the lights were working—a Polish cop pulling them over for a broken blinker would have been a disaster. Then they continued into town and parked as close to the Marriott as possible.

As they took the stairs up to Weaver’s room, Oskar had to talk himself down. Over the last hour his adrenaline had begun to kick at him as he remembered that video clip. This man, the girl, and the report of a professionally broken neck. Then the footage he’d seen over the previous week of the miserable parents making their inept televised plea, and later seeing them in the flesh outside the Bulgarian church. These memories coalesced into a hatred that surprised
him, and he had to whisper to himself to make sure he didn’t kill this CIA man.

Before entering, he measured 30 mg of liquid flurazepam hydrochloride into a syringe. Gustav found the switch to turn off the hall lamps, while Heinrich used a homemade skeleton keycard on the lock. They entered slowly, and in the light from the television the two helpers nearly laughed at the sound of Weaver’s snoring, but Oskar didn’t. He took in the form on the bed, half dressed, stinking of alcohol and cigarettes, his nose swollen from what must have been a fist. Then he noticed the soft-core pornography. He shut the door.

When they struggled with him, Oskar considered making a mistake. It was a thought that came and left quickly, but while it remained he felt some comfort in it. Pull the plunger on the syringe to add a little air, and then let God decide whether or not the bubble should kill this killer of children. When Erika cornered him about it later, he could admit his mistake and point out that it had been dark in the room.

Afterward, as the American weakened and the agents began to wrap him in his sheets, Oskar settled beside him on the bed. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to kill you yet.”

“You’re German?” Weaver muttered, his voice slurred.

“Yes, I am.”

Weaver said something short and utterly indecipherable before losing consciousness completely.

As the men finished their job, Oskar collected the items on the bedside table. A keyless ring, sunglasses, a wallet and passport full of the name Sebastian Hall, an iPod, and a cheap-looking Nokia, which he was careful to disassemble before they went anywhere.

When Milo woke hours later, the world would not remain still long enough for him to focus in the darkness. A high whining noise enveloped him. He was folded up in a cramped fetal position, arms behind him, and in pain from some ungodly mix of hangover and whatever he’d been injected with. No matter what he did he couldn’t stretch out, the world wouldn’t stop shaking, and that high whine wouldn’t stop. That’s when he knew: He was in the trunk of a car.

He choked for breath as it all came back, that brief consciousness and the three Germans, lit by a television with naked women rolling across the screen.

Panic is best dealt with by locating yourself, with as much specificity as possible, in both geography and time. It was at least morning, he knew, because dim light bled through the seams of the trunk. Though he stank of other things, there was no urine smell—his bladder hadn’t yet emptied. So he doubted it was afternoon.

Geography: He was on a highway, and, given the number of times the car shifted, changing lanes, it was a busy enough road. He guessed that he was on the E30, the highway leading westward from Warsaw.

When had he been taken? Bed by eleven, and then—how long did Polish television play porn? Until three or four, he guessed. He’d
been taken at the latest by four. Sunrise was around six thirty, so they’d been traveling for at least two and a half hours, probably more. They were in Germany or the Czech Republic by now.

He could be wrong—they might have driven east—but the man with the bruised eye and the mustache had admitted to being German, and so he supposed they were taking him to Germany. If he was wrong, it didn’t matter. All he wanted was to control the panic.

Yet even though he’d given himself a place in time and space, his blood-sapped, frigid hands still twitched, because he couldn’t shake the thought from his head:
This is how she felt. This is how she felt when I kidnapped her
.

Later, when the trunk opened, gray light and cold air spilled in. It was an overcast day, the sky visible only straight up; to the left and right were the sides of big rigs the car had parked between. He was in his coat—someone had dressed him—and around the coat was a white sheet. He blinked up at the mustached man looking down at him, chewing gum, and felt an urge for some Nicorette. Or Dexedrine.

“I’m an American citizen,” he said in his most American voice. “You can’t just push me around.”

“Of course not,” said the German. He peered over the top of the car and behind himself, then settled on the bumper. Milo, folded into the trunk, considered ways he might kick the man, but none would work. “You want water?”

“I want some answers.”

“And water?”

He was cool, this German, so Milo nodded. “I’m parched. Some aspirin, too, if you’ve got it.”

He did. One of his partners, a huge man, appeared and held Milo’s head at an angle so he could swallow some bottled water; then the mustached one slipped two paracetamol between his lips. More water. When it was done, Milo’s chin was drenched and cold.

It was a roadside stop, and they were hidden between trucks to avoid easy detection. The one who’d lifted his head lit a cigarette, and in the distance Milo saw the third one—a small, wiry guy—standing
at the end of the trucks watching the road. They were waiting for something.

“Food?” asked the mustached one.

“I’ll just throw it up.”

“Probably right.”

“You want to tell me why I’m here?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, then stood but didn’t walk away.

“I’ve got to pee.”

“You are a big boy. You can hold it.”

“Any Nicorette?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been using nicotine gum, but I’m out. Any chance you have any?”

The man frowned, thinking this over, then shook his head. “We’ll get you some cigarettes.”

“I’d prefer not to start again.”

“You think that matters at a moment like this?” he asked, his expression suggesting he was truly curious about it.

“Forget it,” said Milo. “Why don’t you shut the door and let me get some sleep?”

The man smiled at that, then closed the trunk. Milo regretted his joke.

Less than five minutes later it opened again, and behind the mustached man, between the trucks, a small van had pulled in backward, its rear doors open to reveal a wheeled hospital cot locked into place. The EU license was German—he’d been right about their direction. “Time to get up, Mr. Weaver.”

“Mr. What?”

The man stared at him, and Milo grinned.

“Now I get it—you’ve got the wrong guy! My name is Hall. Sebastian Hall. Listen,” he said, not really believing this would work, “I don’t know who you are. Just cut me loose. I won’t say a thing, and you can go find this Weaver character. I mean, you don’t want the wrong person, do you?”

The man’s morose expression didn’t change. “Milo Weaver, Sebastian Hall—it’s all the same to me.”

His two friends helped Milo sit up, then lifted and moved him to the cot. There was nothing smooth about the transfer—this wasn’t their regular occupation—and Milo’s head bumped against the door frame as they tried to climb inside with him. He said, “Slowly now, fellas.” Neither answered.

Now that they were taking them off, he could see that his ankles had been bound by PlastiCuffs, which they cut with Swiss Army knives as they strapped his legs into the cot. Then they pushed him into a sitting position and undid his hands, the blood rushing coldly back into them. They tingled and hurt. The men pushed him flat again and stretched more straps tightly across his chest and around his wrists.

The whole process took about three minutes, and the mustached man joined him in the back of the van as the others closed and locked the windowless doors from the outside. There wasn’t much space, so the man settled on the floor beside Milo as the van started up and began to roll. Soon they were back on the highway.

“You going to tell me anything?” asked Milo.

“No. And I’ve got another syringe in my pocket in case you insist on talking the whole way.”

When, at three that afternoon, she heard the knock on her door, Erika was reading up on the international sex trade. Once she’d decided on what to do with Milo Weaver, she made sure to cease her in-office investigation of him, because every site and document she looked at was logged in the central database. However, instead of returning to what she was supposed to be working on—namely, the backgrounds of two Iranian nationals applying for asylum—she found herself drawn to the industry that had set Adriana Stanescu’s life moving along its particularly atrocious path.

It was bleak. Part of the reason sexual slavery continues unabated is that imagining it is so abhorrent to most people that they choose instead to ignore it. Imagining the travails of someone like Adriana led to upset stomachs. Law-abiding citizens preferred the knowable crimes of murder and robbery to the unknowable of slavery. This silence on the issue only encouraged the industry to thrive.

So it was almost a relief when Tomas Haas interrupted her. The young analyst from the basement-level surveillance center had been at Pullach nearly a year and was one of the few with whom she chose to exchange words. “Good afternoon, Tomas.”

He wasn’t smiling. “Fraulein Schwartz, we’ve spotted a van at your house.”

“A van?” She let herself appear concerned. “Markings?”

“Toledo Electrik GmbH.”

“Oh!” She smiled and touched her breast. “You had me scared. No, that’s nothing. There’s a problem with the circuit breaker—it keeps switching off in the middle of my shows. I gave Toledo a set of keys.”

“Would you like someone to check on it? To be sure.”