Spook Country

The maids, she discovered, had actually saved and folded the bubble wrap that had come in the box from Blue Ant. It was on the shelf in the closet. Instant tip-upgrade. She put the wrapping, the box, and the helmet on the tall kitchenette table.

Doing this, she noticed the Blue Ant figurine that had come with it, standing on one of the coffee tables. She’d leave that, of course. She looked back at it, and knew she couldn’t. This was some part of her that had never grown up, she felt. A grown-up would not be compelled to take this anthropomorphic piece of molded vinyl along when she left the room, but she knew she would. And she didn’t even like things like that. She wouldn’t leave it, though. She walked over and picked it up. She’d take it along and give it to someone, preferably a child. Less because she had any feeling for the thing, which was after all only a piece of marketing plastic, than because she herself wouldn’t have wanted to be left behind in a hotel room.

But she decided not to take it carry-on. She didn’t want the TSA people publicly hauling it out of the box with the helmet. She tossed it into the Barneys bag that held her dressier clothes.

ODILE WAS UNHAPPY that they weren’t going to a hotel, in Vancouver. She liked North American hotels, she said. She liked the Mondrian more than the Standard. The idea of a borrowed flat disappointed her.

“I think it might be really something, from what they said,” Hollis told her. “And nobody lives there.”

They were in the back of a Town Car Hollis had arranged with the hotel, billed to her room. When she’d returned the Jetta, the boy who’d almost recognized her hadn’t been there. They were nearing LAX now, she knew; through smoked windows, she could see those weird bobbing oil-well things on a hillside. They’d been there since she’d first come here. As far as she knew, they never stopped moving. She checked the time on her phone. Almost six.

“I called my mother,” Hollis said. “I did it because you mentioned yours.”

“Where is she, your mother?”

“Puerto Vallarta. They go there in the winter.”

“She is well?”

“She complains about my father. He’s older. I think he’s okay, but she thinks he’s obsessed with American politics. She says it makes him too angry.”

“If this were my country,” Odile said, wrinkling her nose, “I would not be angry.”

“No?” Hollis asked.

“I would drink all the time. Take pill. Anything.”

“There’s that,” said Hollis, remembering dead Jimmy, “but I wouldn’t think you’d want to give them the pleasure.”

“Who?” asked Odile, sitting up, suddenly interested. “Who would I pleasure?”

54. ICE

T ito woke as the Cessna’s wheels touched down. Sunlight through the windows. Grabbing the back of the couch. They sped along on the ground, the pitch of the engines changing. The plane slowed. Eventually, its propellers stopped. He sat up in the sudden silence, blinking out at flat fields, rows of low green.

“Here long enough for a stretch and a pee,” said the pilot, getting out of his seat. He passed Tito on his way back through the cabin. He unfastened the door, and leaned out, swinging it open. “Hey, Carl,” he called, gri

“Stretch your legs,” Garreth said to Tito, getting out of his chair. Tito sat up, watching as Garreth started down the ladder. Tito rubbed his eyes and stood.

He climbed down to the packed earth of a straight road ru

Garreth produced a bottle of mineral water, a toothbrush, and a tube of toothpaste. He began to brush his teeth, pausing to spit white foam on the ground. He rinsed his mouth from the bottle of water. “Got a toothbrush?”

“No,” said Tito.

Garreth brought out an unopened toothbrush and passed it to him, along with the bottle of water. While Tito brushed his teeth, he watched the old man walk a distance down the road, then stand, his back to them, urinating. Finishing with the toothbrush, Tito poured what was left of the water over its bristles, shook it dry, and tucked it into the i

“Western Illinois,” Garreth said, as if reading his mind. “Belongs to a friend.”

“Of yours?”

“The pilot’s. The friend flies, keeps avgas here.” The man with the cowboy hat yanked a cord on the back of the truck, starting up the engine of a pump. They moved away from a sudden billowing reek of fuel.

“How far can it fly?” Tito asked, looking at the plane.

“A little under twelve hundred miles on a full tank. Depending on weather and number of passengers.”

“That seems not so far.”

“Piston-engine prop. We have to keep hopping, this way, but it keeps us under all kinds of radar. We won’t see any airport. All private runways.”

Tito didn’t think he meant actual radar.

“Gentlemen,” said the old man, joining them, “good morning. You seemed to sleep quite well, finally,” he said to Tito.

“Yes,” Tito agreed.

“Why did you lift that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement badge, Tito?” the old man asked.

ICE. Tito remembered Garreth saying “ice,” when he’d handed him the thing. Now he had no idea why he’d done that. And Eleggua, not he, had taken the badge-case from the man’s belt. He couldn’t tell them that. “I felt it on his belt as he tried to hold me,” he said. “I thought it might be a weapon.”

“Then you thought to use the Bulgarian salt?”

“Yes,” Tito said.

“I’m curious to learn what happened to him. I imagine, though, that he was taken briefly into custody, causing a jurisdictional pissing match. Until some entity, sufficiently high up in the DHS, ordered his release. You probably did your man a favor, Tito, taking that badge. It’s unlikely it was really his. You saved him having to refuse to explain it, until his fix came through.”

Tito nodded, hoping the subject was now closed.

They stood, then, watching the fueling of the plane.

55. PHANTOM GUN SYNDROME

M iller,” said Brown, from his enormous white leather recliner, across ten feet of off-white shag carpet. “Your name is David Miller. Same birthday, same age, same place of birth.”

They were in a Gulfstream jet on a runway at Ronald Reagan. Milgrim had his own white leather recliner. He hadn’t been to this airport since it had been National. Across a bridge from Georgetown. He knew this was a Gulfstream because there was an elaborately engraved brass plate that said “Gulfstream II” on the high-gloss wooden surround of the window beside his chair. Bird’s-eye maple, he thought, but too shiny, like the trim in a limo that was really trying. There was a lot of that in this cabin. And a lot of white leather, polished brass, and off-white shag. “David Miller,” he repeated.

“You live in New York. You’re a translator. Russian.”

“I’m Russian?”

“Your passport,” said Brown, holding one up, navy blue with pale gold trim, “is American. David Miller. David Miller is not a junkie. David Miller, upon entering Canada, will neither be in possession of nor under the influence of drugs.” He checked his watch. He was wearing the gray suit and a white shirt again. “How many of those pills are you holding?”

“One,” said Milgrim. It was too serious a matter to lie about.