I headed south and this time went right downtown before pulling off. Then I parked and read through the form in the glow of the dash-light. His name had been Michael Travin. He had a Maine driver's license that gave a home address in Lewiston. The car had been rented from the Hertz counter in the Renaissance Center and the local address was room 909 in the Detroit Plaza Hotel — the hotel that's part of the complex. Hertz had imprinted his Visa card. He'd paid three dollars for extra insurance…
Decision time. But not really. I found Michigan Avenue, followed it straight down to Randolph, and that took me right into the Center. I parked in the same lot where I'd left Bright-man's Jaguar. The cold, dusty wind was fierce off the river. As I walked up, the towers glowed like copper against the night sky. I went in by the main entrance and found the hotel desk right in front of me, but I walked around for a moment, getting my bearings. The place was like something left over from a sci-fi spectacular: the main lobby was a brightly lit, five-story atrium where trees breathed the man-made air, fountains splashed into artificial lakes, and concrete "seating pods" projected out into space. Impressive enough, and security was probably better than normaclass="underline" but the place was very big, very busy, and despite everything I still looked very respectable.
Smile.
"Hi. I'm Mr. Travin in 909. I can't find my key, so I must have left it with you. I hope."
Smile.
"Just a — yes, Mr. Travin, you did. Here you are."
"Thanks."
I strode firmly away from the desk, but then blundered about, not sure which way to go, for a network of circular stairs and escalators wound you round to various levels inside the lobby — it was that kind of place. Eventually, however, I followed a bellhop into an elevator, which then shot me up to the guest rooms. Emerging, I found myself in an empty, curved hall. I followed this around. The door to 909 was like any other door in any other hotel. I hesitated a moment and almost knocked; then just inserted the key and went in.
At once, instinctively, I knew that the room was empty.
I flipped on a light. I was in a little hall, the bathroom on my right. I stuck my head in. Neat. Tidy. The towels weren't fresh but they were neatly hung up. The shower was one of those molded plastic units — not up to the standards of the lobby — and there were a few drops of water around the drain; but nothing more. I backed out, then stepped into the main part of the room. This too was nothing more than a standard first-class American hotel room. There was a desk-bureau, with a mirror and a wicker chair; a TV set on a plastic pedestal; a tub chair, covered in vinyl; and then the bed, a single, with a night table and a lamp. Even the room's only picture was standard — an abstract that could have been taken from any doctor's office, New York to Los Angeles.
Standard. Empty. Barren.
And no sign of Michael Travin at all.
I looked everywhere… not that there were many places to look. There were no bags, no clothes in the bureau or closet, and the room was so neat you would have thought the maid had just finished. The bed was made. Ashtrays were clean. The wastebasket was empty. I turned on the television. It was tuned to one of the Canadian stations in Windsor. I pulled back the drapes. There were no messages scrawled on the windows, and the lights of the city winked up at me dumbly…
I lit a cigarette, took a drag. The room was so neat and tidy that you'd think he'd checked out. But he hadn't — otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get the key in his name. And a maid, I realized, hadn't done this: the towels were hung up, but they hadn't been changed, and though the ashtrays were clean, there were no fresh matchbooks. What had happened?
But now a peculiar feeling came over me. I don't know how to describe it — a creepy, paranoid prickling at the back of my neck. I hadn't felt it in years, not since I'd lived in the U.S.S.R… and then I knew what it was and I spun right around and began searching again, searching now for the signs of a search, a search that would have been made so carefully that even if you did find traces of it you wouldn't be sure. Not quite. Not ever… On my hands and knees, I felt along the edge of the carpet, and yes, it was loose; if I pulled it back here, I could take up the whole room. Had the contractor been sloppy or had somebody lifted it? Then I traced out the seams in the wallpaper, feeling along with my fingernail. Loose again. Natural wear, or had someone been using a razor? I turned the chairs upside down, pulled out the bureau and the bed, checked the TV — and found three screws that might have been freshly scratched. They'd been looking for something small, I thought, some sort of paper or document. Or maybe not: when I turned over the mattress, I found a six-inch cut where they'd slipped in their probe. But, whatever they'd been looking for, I was now certain of one thing. CIA, SIS, SDECE, STASI, BND… "Security," everywhere, leaves the same mark, but there was only one source for the peculiar, lingering scent I sniffed all through this room: KGB.
Which didn't especially excite me. I was more accustomed to the Komitet than I was to dead bodies. But I began to think fast. They, after all, must have moved very fast. At four o'clock
Travin calls me in the parking lot. Looking down, I could make out the booth — was it even possible that he'd called from right here? No. He might have recognized Brightman's car from this height, but not me — and he'd known my name. We'd then set up our meeting. Five-thirty, that was. So, sometime in the hour between four and five, they'd picked him up and started following him. That had probably happened right here, for they would have had this room under surveillance, but in any event they'd followed him to Grayson Street. What had they thought he was doing there? Hiding something? Not likely. Surely there was only one thing they could have thought — that he was meeting someone. But that hadn't concerned them, I'd already worked that much out. What did interest them, then? When you thought about it, all they'd really taken trouble about was his identity. They'd cut off his head, hands, and feet, so that establishing the identity of the corpse would now be a forensic miracle. But then they'd been very sloppy, for they'd forgotten the car. Or had they known about it at all? If they'd followed him there, they must have… But they'd ignored it, and come here and searched the room instead. Which might mean something: maybe they already knew that the Travin identity was false and that, by itself, it wouldn't help establish who the man actually was.
Possible.
But maybe not.
For their differing reasons, both the Kremlin and the Pentagon find the notion of an all-powerful, super-efficient Soviet state very convenient and promote it like hell. But for anyone who's ever lived in Russia the idea is laughable — and the KGB's screwed up before.
Using a Kleenex, I picked up the phone.
"This is room 909, operator. I'd like to speak to information in Lewiston, Maine."
"Yes, sir. That's a toll-free call, sir… just one moment."
She got off the line as the long-distance operator came on: "Information for what city, please?"