The Tourist Trail Read Free Page B

was wet and shivering and needed her help. And she had a soft spot for strays.

Robert
    At the Buenos Aires airport, Robert held Lynda’s picture, studying the faces of the people walking past, coming through the automatic glass doors that separated customs from the outside world. He himself had emerged from behind those doors only an hour before, weary from a sleepless night, wondering how he would make it through the long day ahead. With one more flight to go, and a partner yet to meet, he’d begun to entertain thoughts of turning around and heading home. He tried to remind himself why he’d agreed to this assignment in the first place.
    He replayed the previous morning in his head, when Gordon had phoned him awake and told him that Aeneas had turned up again. Like a bad penny , Gordon said. He told Robert to pack his bags and get to the office.
    But Robert had stayed in bed, staring at the bare walls of his “no personality” apartment, as an old girlfriend once called it. She’d been right. He used to blame the lack of decoration on living his life on the road. But the truth was, as an undercover agent, Robert had assumed so many personalities over the years that he had begun to question which personality was his.
    Robert’s one meager attempt at interior decorating was a laminated map of the world. He’d hung it in the kitchen, planning to use pushpins to mark every place he had visited—Amsterdam, Oslo, Osaka, Kuwait—but he abandoned the idea when he realized that most of those trips were classified.
    And that morning, after he’d finally gotten out of bed and dressed, he’d wandered into the kitchen and stared at the northern reaches of the map, at the tiny islands of Svalbard, two hundred miles north of Norway, just below the polar ice cap. Places Robert had nearly succeeded in erasing from memory, until Gordon had called and mentioned Aeneas.
    When Robert had entered Gordon’s perennially unlit office, Gordon was reclined in his chair, feet on the desk, keyboard on his lap. People often mistook the posture for laziness, but Robert knew it was intentional. Gordon once said the fastest way to get promoted at the Bureau was to pretend you didn’t want to get promoted. Robert wondered whether Gordon’s emerging paunch was part of the disguise, but he wasn’t about to ask. Gordon was only a few years older than Robert but looked twice that, heavyset, with a balding head framed by wisps of thin blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
    Robert walked to the window and pulled open the vertical blinds to let in some light, revealing the top half of a naked tree. The night’s ice storm had left a sheen on its branches, and they hung low under the weight. A dense layer of clouds threatened more of the same. Robert normally would have welcomed the change in scenery brought about by a new assignment, but not this time. He could feel Gordon watching him but resisted the urge to turn around.
    Don’t you want to know what he did? Gordon asked.
    Not particularly.
    I’d have thought you would relish a second shot at him.
    And I’d have thought I would’ve graduated to pursuing real terrorists by now.
    Oh, he’s real, Gordon said. Aeneas, too, has graduated. To negligent manslaughter.
    Robert turned to see if Gordon was joking. He wasn’t. Aeneas may be good at protecting animals , Gordon said, but he’s not so good at protecting people. He let one of his crew members, a woman, die up in the North Atlantic. Details are sketchy because nobody’s talking. She was estranged from her parents, and they want it kept quiet as well. But they’ve got connections in the Bureau, which is all we need to know. And, frankly, it was just a matter of time before he gave us another reason to come after him.
    Robert had looked back out the window, at the tree, at one sadly sagging branch. He felt the urge to exit the building, climb the tree, shake the ice