He’s on his feet pacing now, but he restrains the urge to kick the walls in frustration. The dog tag had been in his pocket at this time yesterday. He’d put it there in the morning, the cool weight of it seeping through his satin pocket liner into his skin, its bulk a necessary irritation. He had heard the small, metallic ping when he dropped his trousers onto the tile floor of the shower.
The American is still wearing yesterday’s clothes. He had thrown himself onto the berth fully dressed and lay there most of the night, fits of restless sleep enveloping him as he chased his thoughts in circles, like a mangy dog chewing its own tail. Fretting. Plotting. And the answer only comes to him now because exhaustion has filled the small wells inside his mind, poured itself into the hollows of his bones.
He lost the dog tag in the shower. Of course. Yes. An amateur mistake but there you have it.
He kicks his shoes off and lies back down on the bed. He crosses his hands over his chest and closes his eyes as though mimicking a corpse. The American sees it clearly now in this dream-like state as his limbs relax into the mattress.
He had shaken out his trousers before folding them. Years and years of military training had instilled this habit in him. He never wads his clothes into a ball and throws them in the hamper. He straightens and folds them along their crease lines instead. He sets them in orderly stacks and sends them to the cleaners.
The dog tag could still be in the shower, one part of his brain offers. This voice is the hopeful one, the one he has tried to systematically stomp to death over many years. He listens to it on rare occasions, but this is not one of them. No. The American is certain the dog tag was found. His job is to figure out by whom.
The art of extracting his own memories is something he learned from military interrogators. It was part of his training, albeit small, when they determined his particular gifts would be better used in other areas. His real job—not the one he performs for the advertising agency in Frankfurt—is to have conversations and repeat them to his handlers. He strikes up conversations and asks the right questions to the right people at the right moments. He finds his targets when they are unguarded. When they feel safe. In a bar or on a train or in a department store. He learns their secrets but almost never by force. His betrayals are acute and painful and personal. It’s a morally ambiguous career, to be sure, and not one that comes without consequence. But he is two decades in and has long since learned to justify the means and the ends and everything in between. He is not sorry for what he has done or what he is about to do. Usually it’s nothing personal, he thinks; this is what it takes to save the world.
So the American rewinds his brain and goes back over the day before. He begins in the shower, with that last moment that he had the dog tag, and he creates a mental marker of that moment when he shook out his trousers. He moves forward, one frame at a time, to everything that happened after that. Sneaking back to the cargo area. Watching the navigator and the cabin boy exit the ship. No. There’s nothing significant there, so he continues on. Paying the cabin boy to care for the dog. Breakfast. Watching Leonhard Adelt. His mind skitters a bit so he slows and carefully goes through his little monologue before the passengers. Gertrud Adelt entering the dining room. And there, like a flashbulb, he has it: damp curls hanging heavy against her chin. Pink skin warmed by the shower.
Gertrud Adelt was in the shower yesterday morning. Gertrud Adelt has the tag. This certainty comes to him at the exact moment that his mind officially surrenders to sleep. And because it is both a conscious thought and a dream it is tattooed into his memory. It will be his first thought upon waking.
THE NAVIGATOR
Max is almost certain that he has dressed himself correctly. There’s a bit of chafing in a couple of areas, but he doesn’t see any obvious tags or seams. He checks his collar and runs his fingers down the front of his shirt, counting buttons, making sure everything is lined up correctly. Tying his shoes is problematic. Not because his fingers aren’t working properly but because bending over makes him want to die. And then vomit. And then drive an ice pick through his eye and out the back of his own skull. All of which would be counterproductive given his current situation. So in the end he has to lean against the wall and lift his foot as high as he can without falling over.