The Nearest Exit (33 page)

He called the closest major hospital, the Péterfy Sándor Kórház, and like his namesake claimed to be an American doctor interested in Henry Gray’s medical records. After being passed to someone
who spoke English, he was told that Gray and all of his records had been forwarded to the Szent János Kórház last year. He took the number 6 tram across the Danube to Buda and visited the St. János grounds, but the doctors were gone, and the few nurses who spoke to him were too busy to help. They told him to come back on Monday.

So he returned to Pest and drank caffè lattes at the Peppers! restaurant in the Marriott, overlooking the quay against the steely Danube.

Again, the facts: In August, while Milo was in a prison in upstate New York, Gray received a letter that contained something that could do damage to the CIA. Soon afterward, someone tossed him off his terrace and stole the letter. It was a curious method of disposal, but he supposed the agent in question—there was nothing yet to prove it was a Tourist—thought it would look like suicide.

Gray proved more resilient than expected. By December, he not only woke up but was soon able to walk out of the hospital and disappear.

You don’t begin with assumptions; you begin with facts. A paranoid journalist’s delusions are proven right when someone tries to kill him. What does he do when he’s finally able to walk?

He runs.

Then, days later, someone calling himself Milo Weaver came looking for Henry Gray.

Presumably, this was the same man who had tried to kill Gray. Once Gray woke, he returned to Budapest to finish the job.

Why would he use Milo’s name? It made no sense.

Milo was back at Oktogon Square by eight twenty, in front of the Burger King. Parkhall was fifteen minutes late but made no apologies, instead explaining that being late to meetings was an obligation of life in Budapest.

First, they went around the corner to Ferenc Liszt Square, where, between a statue of the famous composer and the music academy, restaurants and cafés faced off, vying for business. They went to the upscale Menza, a restaurant with orange-toned retro decor, where Parkhall introduced him to a table of four friends.

Milo wasn’t comfortable advertising his presence with such a
large group, but soon realized that the entire table was drunk. They’d spent the day in the Rudas bath house, then moved through three bars until, famished, they had ended up here. None of them were lively enough to investigate Sebastian Hall’s credentials, or even rouse themselves at the mention of the 4Play Club and the chance to see Zsuzsa Papp naked. So Milo turned the conversation to Henry Gray.

The other journalists, it turned out, felt much the same way Parkhall did about Gray. The Canadian, Russell, referred to him condescendingly as “a gifted amateur.” Johann, the German, questioned the word “gifted.” There was an English stringer, Will, and an Irish radio reporter, Cowall, who was apparently between jobs—according to Parkhall, he’d come to Budapest “to find himself.” Only Cowall felt sympathy for Henry Gray, but his day of drinking had deepened his sour mood.

“We make fun of him, yeah? We all get a good laugh out of his crazy ideas. But what happens? You can come up with any explanation you like, but the fact is someone
did
toss him off his terrace, and expected the fall to kill him. It nearly did. Whether it was the CIA or the Hungarian mafia or the Russians or just some lunatic—it doesn’t really matter. Someone was after him.” He paused, staring sickly at his plate of goulash. “Goes to show. Even paranoid people get it right now and then. It’s the law of averages.”

“Christ,” said Russell. “If I’d known you’d be such a downer I wouldn’t have invited you out.”

“Oh, well,” Cowall said halfheartedly, then stood and walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

“He didn’t pay for his goulash,” Will said, unbelieving.

“I’ll cover it,” Milo said.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Johann, his German accent very faint. “Cowall, I mean. He’s no good with his alcohol. Besides, his opinions don’t mean much—he’s a devout member of the Church of the SubGenius.”

“Spent too much time in college,” said Parkhall. “Like he never left.”

Milo ate Cowall’s heavy goulash, hoping to dull the drinking he would do at the club, and probed for more theories about Gray’s
whereabouts. No one knew, nor did they particularly care. They were too exhausted to feel anything. He paid Cowall’s portion of the bill, calling it Company expenses, and he and Parkhall jumped a tram farther down the boulevard to the 4Play.

“Well, hello, hello,” Parkhall said to the large bald doorman.

Throughout his life, Milo had found himself in a surprising number of strip clubs. They were ideal for money laundering, their profits constant because men all over the world are willing to pay for a glimpse of bare female skin. His first visit, to a Moscow club, had been Yevgeny’s eighteenth birthday present—and each one since took him back to that June night in 1988 when he’d felt little arousal, mostly just shame and a childish love.

It was, like many of the stores and vacation dachas his father took him to, a KGB-only place. Inevitably, the best-looking dancers worked there, and Yevgeny was dismayed by the look on his face. “Why the attitude, Milo? Come on. This is your day.” But his father’s encouragement and the steady stream of mixed drinks made no dent in his misery as he looked over these beautiful girls from all over the Russian Empire who had, he imagined, run into some kind of trouble that had left them with no alternative than to take off their clothes for lascivious secret policemen. Lust was overcome by sympathy and pity.

He fixated on one, a morose-looking brunette his father told him was Siberian, and felt an absurd desire to take her away and save her. Misinterpreting his interest, Yevgeny called her over and ordered a private dance in one of the back rooms, promising a tip if she sent him back a man.

How did Yevgeny know that his eighteen-year-old son was still a virgin? He worked for the KGB, and those people knew everything. Or maybe he was just old enough to know that the most secretive, bitter teenagers were still unfamiliar with that one thing that makes life most interesting.

He could still smell the acrid smoke and lubricant from that velvet-curtained room, where she showed him everything and then began to unbutton his pants. He knew what he had to do—he had to tell her to stop, to talk with her about her family, about what had
brought her to this terrible end, and help her find a way out—but he could not move. Afterward, when she collected the tip from Yevgeny, he overheard her say in her harsh Novosibirsk accent, “Sweet kid you got there.” Milo felt his heart cease beating.

Zsuzsa Papp, though, evoked none of those missionary feelings. When she came over to kiss Parkhall’s cheeks, she walked like someone who’d been to prep schools all her life. Confidence and entitlement and, with the kiss, a vague whiff of solicitude toward her inferiors. Somehow she filled out her floor-walking costume—a black miniskirt, red silk blouse, and platform shoes—without looking like a whore.

“Come to unwind, Terry?”

“Absolutely. And to bring someone who wants to meet you. Sebastian Hall.”

She settled her condescending eyes on Milo. Below them, high cheekbones showed a faint flush. “A fan?”

“Soon to be, I’m sure,” Milo said as he shook her limp hand. “I’m a private investigator. Looking for your friend, Henry Gray.”

The flush in her cheeks neither expanded nor contracted. “Someone’s hired you?” Her tone suggested that this was unlikely.

“An aunt,” Parkhall informed her. “What’s the name?”

“Sybil Erikson. From Vermont.”

A smile fixed itself to her face as she said, “Just a second,” and led Parkhall a few feet away. As they talked, Parkhall became flustered, making excuses for Milo’s presence. Then Zsuzsa returned wearing the same smile. “Why don’t you buy a private show? Otherwise we stay out here, and I’ll have to look like I’m chatting you up.”

A private dance, it turned out, cost fifty euros, or fourteen thousand forints, for fourteen minutes. She led him by the hand around tables and the main stage to a booth sectioned off by a heavy curtain, and he felt as if it were twenty years ago. There was a single plush chair, which she told him to sit in, and she took a moment to catch the rhythm of the ballad from the main room. She began to dance.

“Listen,” he said, raising his hands. “You don’t need to do this. I just want to talk.”

Without breaking her movements, she said, “You gay?”

“No.”

“Well, you paid for it,” she said as she slipped out of her blouse like a candy bar losing its wrapper. “I never cheat anyone.”

She was left in a black lacy bra and the miniskirt, and then she unwound the skirt to reveal a very small black thong. He could only think of one way to make her stop, and unlike twenty years ago he now had the courage to speak.

“I lied,” he said.

“What?”

“The story about me being a private investigator. It’s not true.”

She lowered her arms so they half-covered her bra. Smile gone. “What’s your name again? Sebastian?”

“No. It’s Milo Weaver.”

She cocked her head, as if he’d tapped her cheek. “Milo Weaver?”

“A couple months ago someone came here claiming to be me. I’d like to know who he was.”

Zsuzsa waited, staring with big eyes, giving no sign she knew anything about any of this.

He said, “You’re probably confused—I would be, too. And I can’t give you much more than my word. This guy who was pretending to be me—he was looking for your friend Henry. I think he’s the same guy that tried to kill him back in August. I think he’d come back to finish the job.”

Her face twisted, and she stepped back.

Milo started to get up—“Want to sit?”—but his movement provoked her to raise her arms in a defensive motion, so he settled back down.

“James Einner?”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“The man who tried to kill Henry. Before he attacked Henry, he said his name was James Einner. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Milo lied.

“But you know who he works for.”

“I have suspicions.”

“CIA?”

“Very likely.”

“So do you. You did. You used to work for the CIA.”

“That’s true.”

She breathed through her nose so loudly that he could hear it over the music. “It’s about the letter, isn’t it?”

“I think so. But I don’t know what was in the letter. I don’t even know who sent it.”

She said, “Thomas Grainger.”

Milo stared hard. “
Grainger
sent Henry a letter?”

“You know this man.”

Milo tried to get the facts straight, the timetable. By the time he was in jail in August, when Gray received the letter, Grainger had been dead for weeks. “He was a friend. He’s dead now.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“The letter said that if Henry received it, it meant that he was dead.”

Milo wasn’t looking at her; instead, he was staring at his own knees, assembling and reassembling the known facts, which were still too few. Then her platform shoes stepped into his field of vision. She said, “Is Henry dead? Did that man kill him?”

Milo looked up, and Zsuzsa’s mascara was bleeding at the corner of her eye. “I don’t know. You haven’t heard from him?”

She shook her head.

“Where did he go? How could he just disappear? He’d have to have resources.”

“He told me nothing. He wanted to protect me. He just told me he would go away for a while, and that I should only answer questions from Milo Weaver.”

“From me?”

“Or that other guy. I don’t know the difference anymore.”

“Why me? I don’t get it.”

“The
letter
,” she said as if he were dense. “Thomas Grainger’s letter said that Henry could only trust Milo Weaver, because Milo Weaver was already looking into it.”

“It?”

“The story he told Henry. About the CIA and the Sudan and Tourists.”

Milo stared hard at her. “That’s what the letter was about?”

“Henry said we would be like Woodward and Bernstein. Or maybe I said that. We were going to write the story together.”

Milo considered just how much she’d been through in the last half year. Her boyfriend was tossed off a terrace, put in a coma, then revived only to disappear immediately afterward. During those few days before he vanished, he must have talked endlessly about CIA conspiracies, China, and assassinations in the Sudan. And Tourists. Because of her obsessive search for him, she’d lost her newspaper job and now spent evenings stripping. At least it was safer than international intrigues. Until now. A new Milo Weaver had stormed her safe haven.

Her tears had disappeared, and she’d fixed the mascara smear without him noticing. She was looking at a clock on the wall. “Your fourteen minutes are up.”

“I’ll buy fourteen more.”

“No way. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Anything I can say to convince you?”

“Nothing,” she said. Without making a show of it, she unclipped her bra and slipped out of it, standing over him so that he was watching her breasts from below. She bent slightly to remove her thong, gingerly unhooking it over her heels, then stood straight, hands on her hips, staring down at him, showing off the geometric perfection of her sculpted pubic hair. It was, he reflected later, the pose in which she might feel most powerful when dealing with a man. It worked, because a trembling weakness slithered through him.