The Detachment

right by a tobacco vendor and a hardware store, all currently closed. Parked cars lined the narrow street alongside the building, creating concealment possibilities around the hotel entrance. I saw not a single pedestrian, and compared to the revelry of the Ringstrasse, this part of the city was practically sepulchral.
    I walked around the block, my footfalls against the stone sidewalk the only sound of any note. There was a restaurant around the corner, and two cafés down the street, but they were small affairs, presumably catering to people in the neighborhood and not attracting crowds from farther away. Everything else was either residential, or closed. I saw no security cameras anywhere, and was grateful that, for the moment, at least, Vienna wasn’t as blanketed with the devices as Tokyo, London, and, increasingly, major American cities.
    I stepped inside the entranceway, ready to provide a story in Japanese-accented broken English about needing a restroom, and was surprised to see that I wasn’t yet in the hotel. The front entrance was shared, it seemed, with an apartment complex. To my right was another dark wooden door, marked with the hotel’s signature orange; ahead of me was a long flight of wide stone stairs leading to a landing and then continuing on around and above it. Between the hotel and the apartment complex, how much foot traffic could be expected here at night? Not a great deal, I suspected, and the later Finch stayed out for dinner, the greater the likelihood that when he arrived at the hotel, we would have the moment alone I needed.
    On the mosaic tiled floor alongside the staircase, I noticed some painting equipment—a tarp, several cans, a ladder, coveralls—and indeed, the corridor smelled of freshly applied oil paint. Nothing worth stealing, so the workmen probably just left it when they quit for the day. I walked over for a closer look, and saw a roll of translucent plastic sheeting the workers must have been using to keep splatter off the tiled floor. I pulled on the deerskin gloves I was carrying, knelt, and unrolled about a foot worth of plastic. It was strong and heavy—about ten mils, I guessed, maybe more—but still flexible. I gripped a corner and tried, unsuccessfully, to drive my thumb through it. I drummed my fingers along the roll and looked around, an idea forming in my mind.
    There was a box cutter on the tarp next to the paint cans. I used it to cut off about a three-foot length of the plastic sheeting, which I laid out on the floor alongside the equipment, and then replaced the roll and the box cutter as I’d found them. I stepped outside, called Larison, and told him what I wanted him to do. Then I called Dox, who confirmed that he and Treven were close by the restaurant and that Finch and Capps were inside.
    “Good,” I told him. “I want you to give them plenty of space. All I need to know is when they leave, whether they’re heading toward the hotel together or whether they say goodnight before, and when our friend is a minute away from the hotel.”
    “You sure he’s going back to the hotel? It’s a nice city and the weather’s good, he might want to go to a club or something.”
    I thought of Finch, whose file photos had revealed a balding, colorless bureaucrat of about fifty—not so different in appearance, in fact, from J. Edgar Hoover, to whom Horton had compared him. “You think our guy is going clubbing?” I asked.
    There was a pause. “Well, not clubbing, maybe. But there are areas of the city where a gentleman who’s so inclined can find women of a certain professional disposition. If we get done in time tonight, I’m fixing to visit one of those areas myself.”
    “I think you might be confusing your own proclivities with those of our friend.”
    “I’m not sure ‘proclivities’ is the word I’d use, but okay, I suppose I see your point.”
    “Look, if he stays out for whatever reason, you just keep watching him. The later he gets back to the hotel, in fact, the better. I just need that one-minute heads-up regardless.”
    I clicked off, then called Treven and told him to coordinate with Dox to watch the restaurant and the route to the hotel. I hoped we could finish this thing tonight. If we couldn’t, our next chance would be in the morning, which would mean watching the hotel entrance all night and trying to do the job in daylight. And every minute you spend in that kind of proximity to a target, you have to remember someone