Spook Country

“Take it,” said Brown. “I want you straight for customs.”

“Canada?”

“Vancouver.”

“Aren’t there going to be more passengers?” Milgrim asked. The Gulfstream looked like it could sit twenty or so. Or serve as the set for a porn feature, as most of the seating consisted of very long white leather divans, plus a bedroom in the back that looked like a natural for your more formal money shots.

“No,” said Brown, “there aren’t.” He slipped the passport back into his suit coat, then patted the place on his right hip where he kept his gun. Milgrim had seen him do this five times since they’d left N Street, and the micro-expression that always accompanied it convinced him that Brown had left his gun behind. Also his black nylon bag. Brown was suffering from phantom gun syndrome, Milgrim thought, like an amputee itching to scratch toes that were no longer there.

The Gulfstream’s engines fired up, or started, or whatever you called it. Milgrim looked around the back of his white leather chair, to the front of the cabin, where a corrugated white leather curtain sealed off the cockpit. There was evidently a pilot up there, though Milgrim had yet to see him.

“When we land,” said Brown, raising his voice against the engines, “customs officers drive out to the plane. They come aboard, say hello, I hand them the passports, they open them, hand them back, say goodbye. An aircraft like this, that’s what happens. Our passport numbers, and the pilot’s, went through when he filed our flight plan. Don’t behave as though you’re expecting them to ask you any questions.” The plane began to taxi.

When it rushed forward, the roar of its engines deepening, and seemed to leap almost straight up into the air, Milgrim was completely unprepared. Nobody had even told them to fasten their seat belts, let alone about oxygen masks or life jackets. That seemed not only wrong, but deeply, almost physically, anomalous. As did the steepness of this climb, forcing Milgrim, who was facing backward, to cling desperately to the white, padded arms.

He looked out the window. And saw Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport recede, more quickly than he would have thought possible, and as smoothly as if someone had zoomed a lens in reverse.

When they leveled out, Brown removed his shoes, stood, and padded toward the back of the plane. Where, Milgrim assumed, there would be a toilet.

From behind, he saw Brown’s hand touch the place where his gun wasn’t.

56. HENRY AND RICHARD

A pale boy with a very thin beard was holding a rectangle of white cardboard inscribed with HENRY & RICHARD in green marker, as they left the customs hall. He wore a dusty-looking, no doubt expensively Dickensian chimney-sweep suit. “That’s us,” said Hollis, stopping their luggage cart beside him and offering him her hand. “Hollis Henry. This is Odile Richard.”

“Oliver Sleight,” he said, tucking his sign under his arm. “Like sleight of hand,” offering his to shake, first with Hollis, then Odile. “Ollie. Blue Ant Vancouver.”

“Pamela told me there was no office, up here,” Hollis said, pushing the cart toward the exit. It was a few minutes after eleven.

“No office,” he said, walking beside them, “but that doesn’t mean there’s no work. This is a game design center, and we have clients through other offices, so there’s still a need for hands-on. Let me push that for you.”

“No need, thanks.” They went out through an automatic door, and past a crowd of post-flight smokers working back up to functional blood-nicotine levels. Odile was evidently one of a new generation of nonsmoking French, and had been delighted that Hollis no longer smoked, but Sleight, Ollie, as they followed him across a striped section of covered roadway, produced a yellow pack of cigarettes, lighting up.

Hollis started to remember something, but then the difference in the air struck her, after Los Angeles. It was like a sauna, but cool, almost chilly.

They went up a ramp, into a covered parking lot, where he used a credit card to pay for parking, then led them to his car, an oversized Volkswagen like the one Pamela had driven. It was pearlescent white, with a small stylized Blue Ant glyph to the left of the rear license plate. He helped them stow their bags and her cardboard carton in the trunk. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette and crushed it with an elongated, elaborately distressed shoe that she supposed went with his look.

Odile opted for shotgun, which seemed to please him, and soon they were on their way, something half-remembered scratching fitfully in Hollis’s head. They cruised past large, airport-related buildings, like toys on some giant’s tidy, sparsely detailed hobby layout.

“You’re going to be the fourth-ever residents in our flat,” he said. “The Sultan of Dubai’s public relations team were there, last month. They had their own business here, but wanted to meet with Hubertus, so we put them up there, and Hubertus came up. Before that, twice, we had people in from our London office.”

“It’s not Hubertus’s place, then?”

“I suppose it is,” he said, changing lanes for the approach to a bridge, “but one of many. The view’s extraordinary.”

Hollis saw uncomfortably bright lights on tall poles, beyond the bridge’s railings, overlooking a visual clutter of industry. Her cell rang. “Excuse me,” she said. “Yes?”

“Where are you?” said Inchmale.

“In Vancouver.”

“I, however, am in the lobby of your achingly pretentious hotel.”

“I’m sorry. They sent me up here. I tried to reach you, but your cell wasn’t answering, and your hotel said you were gone.”

“Hotbed of locative art?”

“I don’t know yet. Just got here.”

“Where are you staying?”

“In a flat that Blue Ant has.”

“You should insist on serious hotels.”

“Well,” she said, glancing at Ollie, who was listening to Odile, “I’m told we’ll like it.”

“Is that the royal ‘we’?”

“A curator from Paris, who specializes in locative art. They brought her to Los Angeles for the piece. She’ll be very helpful, up here. Has contacts.”

“When are you back here?”

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t be long. How long are you there?”

“As long as it takes to produce the Bollards. Tomorrow we’re having a first look at the studio.”

“Which one?”

“Place on West Pico. After our time. Much is.”

“Is what?”

“After our time. Why, for instance, are there these types with Star Wars helmets, standing at the foot of the Marmont’s driveway, staring as if transfixed? I saw them earlier, when I checked in.”

“They’re viewing a monument to Helmut Newton. I know the artist, Alberto Corrales.”

“But there’s nothing there.”

“You need the helmet,” she explained.

“Dear God.”

“You’re at the Marmont?”

“I will be, when I’ve gotten back across Sunset.”

“I’ll call you, Reg. I should go.”

“Bye, then.”

Long past the first bridge, and still on the wide street they’d turned onto, they drove through a stretch of carefully styled shops and restaurants. Jimmy Carlyle, who’d spent two years playing bass with a band in Toronto, before joining the Curfew, had told her that Canadian cities looked the way American cities did on television. But American cities didn’t have this many galleries, she decided, after counting five in a few blocks, and then they were on another bridge.

Her phone rang again. “Sorry,” she said. “Hello?”

“Hello,” said Bigend. “Where are you?”

“In the car, with Ollie and Odile, going to your flat.”

“Pamela told me you’d taken her along. Why?”

“She knows someone who knows our friend,” she said. “Speaking of whom, why didn’t you tell me he was Canadian?”

“It didn’t seem important,” said Bigend.

“But now I’m here. Is he here?”

“Not quite. Doing paperwork with a customs broker in Washington State, we’re guessing. GPS matches up to a broker’s address.”