Gone Tomorrow

‘Sorry,’ I said.

His pants were soaked. So now the onus was on him. Two choices: either disrupt the rhythm of the interrogation by taking a break to change, or continue with wet pants. I saw the guy debating. He wasn’t quite as inscrutable as he thought he was.

He chose to continue with wet pants. He detoured to the chest of drawers and dabbed at himself with napkins. Then he brought some back and dried the table. He made a big effort not to react, which was a reaction in itself.

He asked again, ‘When was the last time you left the country?’

I said, ‘I don’t recall.’

‘Where were you born?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘Everyone knows where they were born.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘We’ll sit here all day, if necessary.’

‘I was born in West Berlin,’ I said.

‘And your mother is French?’

‘She was French.’

‘What is she now?’

‘Dead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Are you sure you’re an American citizen?

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘A straightforward one.’

‘The State Department gave me a passport.’

‘Was your application truthful?’

‘Did I sign it?’

‘I imagine you did.’

‘Then I imagine it was truthful.’

‘How? Were you naturalized? You were born overseas to a foreign parent.’

‘I was born on a military base. That counts as U.S. sovereign territory. My parents were married. My father was an American citizen. He was a Marine.’

‘Can you prove all of that?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘It’s important. Whether or not you’re a citizen could affect what happens to you next.’

‘No, how much patience I have will affect what happens to me next.’

The guy on the left stood up. He was the one who had held the Franchi’s muzzle hard against my throat. He went directly left from behind the table and walked out, through the wooden door, into the third room. I glimpsed desks, computers, cabinets, and lockers. No other people. The door closed softly behind him and the room we were in went quiet.

The main guy asked, ‘Was your mother Algerian?’

I said, ‘I just got through telling you she was French.’

‘Some French people are Algerian.’

‘No, French people are French and Algerian people are Algerian. It’s not rocket science.’

‘OK, some French people were originally immigrants from Algeria. Or from Morocco, or Tunisia, or elsewhere in North Africa.’

‘My mother wasn’t.’

‘Was she a Muslim?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m making inquiries.’

I nodded. ‘Safer to inquire about my mother than yours, probably.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Susan Mark’s mother was a teenage crack whore. Maybe yours worked with her. Maybe they turned tricks together.’

‘Are you trying to make me mad?’

‘No, I’m succeeding. You’re all red in the face and you’ve got wet pants. And you’re getting absolutely nowhere. All in all I don’t think this particular session will he written up for the training manual.’

‘This isn’t a joke.’

‘But it’s heading that way.’

The guy paused and regrouped. He used his index finger to realign the nine items in front of him. He got them straight and then he pushed the computer memory an inch towards me. He said, ‘You concealed this from us when we searched you. Susan Mark gave it to you on the train.’

I said, ‘Did I? Did she?’

The guy nodded. ‘But it’s empty, and it’s too small anyway. Where is the other one?’

‘What other one?’

‘This one is obviously a decoy. Where is the real one?’

‘Susan Mark gave me nothing. I bought that thing at Radio Shack.’

‘Why?’

‘I liked the look of it.’

‘With the pink sleeve? Bullshit.’ I said nothing.

He said, ‘You like the colour pink?’

‘In the right place.’

‘What place would that be?’

‘A place you haven’t been in a long time.’

‘Where did you conceal it?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Was it in a body cavity?’

‘You better hope not. You just touched it.’

‘Do you enjoy that kind of thing? Are you a fairy?’

‘That kind of question might work down at Guantanamo, hut it won’t work with me.’

The guy shrugged and used his fingertip and pulled the stick back into line, and then he moved the phony business card and Leonid’s cell phone both forward an inch, like he was moving pawns on a chessboard. He said, ‘You’ve been working for Lila Hoth. The card proves you were in communication with the crew she hired, and your phone proves she called you at least six times. The Four Seasons’ number is in the memory.’

‘It’s not my phone.’

‘We found it in your pocket.’

‘Lila Hoth didn’t stay at the Four Seasons, according to them.’

‘Only because we told them to cooperate. We both know she was there. You met her there twice, and then she broke the third rendezvous.’

‘Who is she, exactly?’

‘That’s a question you should have asked before you agreed to work for her.’

‘I wasn’t working for her.’

‘Your phone proves that you were. It’s not rocket science.’

I didn’t answer.

‘He asked, ‘Where is Lila Hoth now?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘How would I know?’

‘I assumed you scooped her up when she checked out. Before you started shooting darts at me.’

The guy said nothing.

I said, ‘You were there earlier in the day. You searched her room. I assumed you were watching her.’ The guy said nothing.

I said, ‘You missed her, right? She walked right past you. That’s terrific. You guys are an example to us all. A foreign national with some kind of weird Pentagon involvement, and you let her go?’

‘It’s a setback,’ the guy said. He seemed a little embarrassed, but I figured he need not have been. Because leaving a hotel under surveillance is relatively easy to do. You do it by not doing it. By not leaving immediately. You send your bags down with the bellman in the service elevator, the agents cluster in the lobby, you leave the passenger elevator at a different floor and you hole up somewhere for two hours until the agents give up and leave. Then you walk out. It takes nerve, but it’s easy to do, especially if you have booked another room under another name, which Lila Hoth certainly had, for Leonid, at least.

The guy asked, ‘Where is she now?’

I asked, ‘Who is she?’

‘The most dangerous person you ever met.’

‘She didn’t look it.’

‘That’s why.’

I said, ‘I have no idea where she is.’

There was a long pause and then the guy moved the phony business card and the cell phone back into line and advanced Theresa Lee’s card in their place. He asked, ‘How much does the detective know?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘We have a fairly simple sequence of tasks in front of us. We need to find the Hoths, we need to recover the real memory stick, but above all we need to contain the leak. So we need to know how far it has spread. So we need to know who knows what.’

‘Nobody knows anything. Least of all me.’

‘This is not a contest. You don’t get points for resisting. We’re all on the same side here.’

‘Doesn’t feel that way to me.’

‘You need to take this seriously.’

‘Believe me, I am.’

‘Then tell us who knows what.’

‘I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know who knows what.’

I heard the door on my left open again. The leader looked across and nodded some kind of consent. I turned in my seal and saw the guy from the left-hand chair. He had a gun in his hand. Not the Franchi 12. The dart gun. He raised it and fired. I spun away, but far too late. The dart caught me high in the upper arm.