In the morning, Leticia left the car with Dalmatian and took the train to Davos Platz, and during that ride she sent a message to Chen with the original location for that night’s meeting. In Davos, she walked the same path she’d followed before, up Talstrasse and then Kurgartenstrasse, but continuing past the Vaillant Arena. To her right, a media village had been set up in Davos Park, and journalists lined up to have their Dorfseeli Park credentials checked and their bodies scanned before crossing into the secure area. Police and soldiers were everywhere, along with the rooftop snipers, all watching over the foreigners who had invaded this provincial little town.
At the top of the hill she faced the white, ornate monstrosity of the Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvédère and its long line of flagpoles displaying the colors of ten nations. After a hundred and fifty years, it trumpeted its famous guests—Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Arthur Conan Doyle—and each year that list grew. The large front lot was full of limousines and expensive sedans, electric cars, and porters who looked calm but, to her jaundiced eye, were clearly ready for a breakdown. She passed through them without notice, headed inside, and looked around the busy lobby. Businesspeople from around the world stared at their phones or stood in private circles laughing. It had the feel of controlled chaos, which, it struck her, the Swiss were very good at.
As she waited for a free spot in the bar that overlooked Davos through high windows, she kept her head held high, trying to see and be seen. But she recognized no one.
She camped out for an hour and a half, working her way through two almond milk lattes and a small plate of almond cookies, reading news off her phone and learning more about the day’s Forum panels—climate leadership, cybersecurity, the beginning or end of globalism, AI, the EU and the future of the transatlantic alliance, Venezuela, creating jobs for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” and even the epidemic of loneliness. And the guests: the presidents of Afghanistan and Rwanda, the Jordanian prime minister, Germany’s federal chancellor, the Saudi finance minister, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, and private equity giants. She’d been in plenty of important cities over the space of her career, but it struck her that if someone were to place a nuclear device in this little Alpine town during this week, it would have a bigger effect on the world than placing one on Pennsylvania Avenue.
She was watching a live special address by António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, wondering if he even knew what had been happening in Milo’s secret corner of UNESCO, when a female voice said, “Hello, Leticia.”
She hesitated before raising her head, knowing that the lag would make her look suave and mildly uninterested, but in fact it was a way to prepare herself for what, if she were being honest, she didn’t want to see. And there it was: Grace Foster standing beside her chair, looking fresh and upbeat. A light sprinkling of freckles across her nose made her look like a soccer mom. Standing a couple of feet behind her was the man she now knew was Haroun Ghali, not Gary Young.
“Hi, Grace. Fancy meeting you here.”
The bitch smiled at that, then looked around at the full tables. “It’s very busy here. Would you like to go someplace private?”
Leticia wanted to make a coarse joke but decided against it. She stood, pocketing her phone, and said to Haroun, “Nice to see you again, Gary.”
He nodded. “Ms. Steele.”
“How’s your wife?”
He didn’t reply.
As she led Leticia in a circuitous route to the elevators, Foster said, “I’m surprised to see you.”
“Well, we have some things to discuss.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve reconsidered my job offer.”
“Actually…”
Foster looked over her shoulder at Leticia with a wry, surprised smile.
They shared the elevator with three Brazilian businessmen chatting in Portuguese and got out at the third floor. The corridor was very long, and when they finally reached the deluxe suite at the end Foster unlocked the door and put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside handle.
The living room was large and pleasant. Through French doors, two shallow patios overlooked the traffic on the Promenade and the mountains in the distance.
“So,” Foster said, taking the desk chair. “What brings you here?”
Leticia settled on the sofa, while Haroun remained by the door to the foyer, leaning against the frame, arms crossed over his chest. “I fucked up,” Leticia said.
“How?”
“I put my faith in the wrong person.”
“In Milo Weaver?”
Leticia nodded but said, “Look, I’m not here to apologize. I’ve just had a chance to think about what Weaver’s planning, and it doesn’t add up. He thinks he can get other countries to do his work for him. He should know better, but he doesn’t.”
“What kind of work?”
“Burying you. Burying your ex’s company, Northwell. Burying IfW and MirGaz and Nexus and Tóuzī. He’s smart enough to know the Library can’t do it—even if there were a Library anymore. But he’s not smart enough to know that Germany, China, Britain, and Russia aren’t going to do him any good. They’ll do something, sure. They’ll lean on you guys. But they’ll just bleed you. There’s a lot of money to be made in extortion.”
Foster looked past her at Haroun, who pinched his lower lip in thought. She said, “What about America?”
“There’s a seat at the table if they want it.”
Foster tilted her head. “Weaver’s not that stupid either. He must think he has a winning hand.”
“Sure he does,” Leticia said. “He’s got Joseph Keller’s papers. They’re convincing, but they won’t make his new allies do what he wants.”
“He doesn’t know they’re fake?” Foster asked, then grinned.
“No. Not the fake ones. The originals.”
The frown that cut a line down Foster’s forehead was the first sign that Leticia’s words were sinking in. “Joseph Keller’s papers were destroyed.”
Leticia nodded. “Sure. But the Germans had an agent on Keller in Paris. Some irregular. Keller left the papers in his room, so their agent photographed them.”
“The Germans?” she asked.
“Yeah. You knew that, right?”
Behind her, Haroun exhaled loudly, and Foster rubbed her forehead, her cheeks coloring. Their reactions gave Leticia a moment of satisfaction, but she shook her head as if annoyed. “Come on, guys. Don’t make me regret changing sides.”
Foster straightened, getting a hold of herself. “No matter,” she said. “The Germans have Keller’s document and shared it with Weaver. Yes?”
Leticia nodded. “I haven’t seen it, but he considers it a smoking gun. He’ll bring it tonight when he meets with the others. Once they’re convinced, they’re going to coordinate themselves in order to bring you down. Like I said, though, it’s not going to go his way. They will thank him for the dirt, then toss him aside. Or worse—probably worse. They know they can’t trust Milo to stay quiet.”
“You think they’ll kill him?”
Leticia shrugged. “There’s a strong possibility. If he’d been smart, he would have met them here, in town, but no. He chose the Restaurant Clavadeleralp. Up on the side of a mountain. Kill someone there, no one will know until the place opens again in June.”
Foster stared at her contemplatively, then asked, “When?”
“Eight o’clock tonight.”
Foster nodded approvingly, looking past her to Haroun. “That matches what we heard.”
“Heard from who?” Leticia asked, though she knew.
Foster didn’t answer, only said to Haroun, “Is the team assembled?”
“Yeah,” he said, straightening. “The others are tracking from Zürich. I’ll check on them.”
“And ask Lance to come here.”
Haroun nodded and turned to leave, but paused when Leticia said, “I met your brother. Abdul. He’s a good guy.”
“I know,” Haroun said, turning to look at her coolly. “And he’s here.”
“Here?” Leticia asked, sounding surprised, though Milo had already told her. “In the hotel?”
“He’s with his Agency friends. And that’s on you. Whatever you said convinced him to come here.” Then he left.
“He’s not pleased with me,” Leticia told Foster.
“Well, you did a job on his friend in Hong Kong. Now you’ve gotten his brother tangled up in this. Want a drink?”
“It’s not even noon yet.”
“C’est la vie,” Foster said, and went to open a cabinet to reveal a minifridge. She took out two little bottles of brandy, cracked them open, and handed one to Leticia. They tapped bottles with a dainty clink, and Foster said, “To new beginnings.”
Leticia felt as if she’d been handed her last drink before execution. But all she needed was to last until night.
“How did you get here?” Leticia asked. “You’re pushing papers at Langley, and now you’re running a new generation of Tourists. You were assigned to get rid of the files, weren’t you?”
“You put that together yourself?” Foster asked.
“It was a team effort.”
She rocked her head, as if impressed, and took another sip. “Sure. I was supposed to get rid of all of it. But there isn’t a single volume on the shelf called Tourism that you throw in your bag and take to the vault. There were scattered volumes on specific operations—the old ones hadn’t even been digitized. The digital files could be taken care of in an afternoon. But the paper files? I had to track down cross-references. A 1969 report on Chinese supply lines to North Vietnam references a file about a Tourist assigned to liquidate a Vietnamese colonel. So I’d track that down. And I couldn’t grab them without reading through them. Every day, all day, for two months. That’s when I realized what I was dealing with. It’s in the details. Government is blunt. A hammer. But this—this was brain surgery. And the American government was trying to forget about it. Such a waste.”
“There’s a reason Tourism was shut down, you know.”
“Because it lost a single battle,” Foster said. “Because one Chinese colonel was too smart. And because the politicians were too scared to put it together again. All those decades of development, of carefully crafting the perfect secret army—all gone to waste. The problem was never Tourism. The problem was its paymasters. They didn’t have the stomach for it.”
“But Anthony Halliwell did.”
Foster smiled at that. “Tony was a shitty husband. But this? This was why he got up in the morning. There was no one else in the world who could really understand it. So, yes, I brought him in. Together, we pored over the records. Together, we analyzed failings and came up with solutions. And it was simple, really: politicians. They were the problem. They’re not interested in strengthening the nation’s bottom line. They’re interested in their own personal gain. But CEOs? They live and die by their bottom lines. In business, the strength of your organization is what defines your power. It’s simple and, in a way, beautiful.”
“But you needed clients.”
“Of course. And where better to find them than Davos? Each year we gather our clients. Inform them of our progress. Listen to their needs, and they listen to ours. So far, so good. We’re even expanding.”
“Who?”
Foster shook her index finger coyly. “You just arrived, honey. And until we leave Switzerland you’re staying right here, in this room.” She held out her hand. “Phone, please.”
As Leticia handed it over, there was a knock at the door. Foster said, “Come,” and a chiseled blond with striking light-blue eyes stepped inside. Lance, apparently. He surveyed the room, his gaze settling on Leticia. Foster rose and prepared to go. “She’s to remain here.”
“I will take care of that,” the man said, his voice colored with Swedish singsong.
To Leticia, Foster said, “Thank you, by the way. By tomorrow all this will be over, and we can take care of your contract. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great,” Leticia said, though she didn’t believe a word the bitch said.