The Favor Read Online Free PDF Page A

plate, allowing it to proceed unmolested with
its agile reconnaissance of the pulpy, whitish yellow filling. He
had lost all appetite for breakfast himself and couldn’t see much
reason for begrudging the wasp.
    A couple of dozen yards away, leaning against
the stone fence around the memorial column to the Virgin that
occupied the center of the square, a man was watching him. He
didn’t make any bones about it; he obviously didn’t mind a bit if
Guinness noticed. He was simply watching, with his hands shoved
down into the pockets of his trousers.
    There had been no tail that morning. There
had been no tail at all, not since he had arrived from the States
three days before; Guinness didn’t have a doubt in the world about
that. You were very careful about such things if you wanted to stay
alive, and Guinness was a very careful fellow. They would have
known he was in town, of course–the “they” encompassing a whole
range of people with all sorts of unpleasant motives—you simply
assumed that. They weren’t stupid, and airport and train terminals
were regularly watched. Probably the police had some sort of
arrangement with the hotels, and probably they weren’t the only
ones. After a couple of years, you gradually abandoned the
comforting illusion that somehow you were invisible. But nobody had
been wandering around in Guinness’s shadow while he had escorted
friend Bateman on their tour of the city. Guinness had eyes in the
back of his head for stuff like that, and there hadn’t been a
soul.
    So here was this guy with his hands in his
pockets, bold as brass. Guinness put him in his late forties—hair
already beginning to turn a purplish gray and parted a little too
close to the center to be quite fashionable, a heavy face with deep
lines around the mouth. Weary, unintelligent eyes behind a pair of
gold framed glasses—something Guinness remembered from among the
twenty some odd photographs he had been shown during his final
afternoon of briefings; at this distance, of course, he couldn’t
even be sure that the eyes weren’t simply painted on with
watercolors. He couldn’t be sure of a damn thing.
    Guinness wondered if his onlooker was as
heavy as he looked in the crumpled brown suit he was wearing. What
a slob, you thought to yourself; the type who could be counted on
to fall over dead from a coronary occlusion in another eight or ten
years–too much goose liver and brown dumplings, too many happy
hours at the Bierstube . But that, quite probably, was one of
those carefully cultivated illusions that people in their line of
work tended to foster about themselves. It was always a good idea
to allow people to underestimate you, and the German Federal Police
doubtless made their people stay in reasonably decent shape, even
up to the level of major.
    What was he waiting for, the son of a bitch?
Why didn’t he just trot right over and state his business, instead
of being so insistently cutesy and conspiratorial about it? Perhaps
he expected Guinness to go all sweaty with apprehension under that
steely gaze, or perhaps he thought that the hint would be taken and
the two of them could go off together to conduct their interview in
greater privacy. Well, in that case he would have himself a long
wait, because Guinness wasn’t visiting any dark corners with
anybody, not even with the third ranking counterintelligence
officer assigned to Munich—perhaps most especially not with
him.
    Fuck the bastard. He could stand there until
his pension was due; if he wanted to chat he could come over and do
it right here, right in the Marienplatz, right in front of God and
everybody.
    Guinness took a sip of his coffee—for form’s
sake more than anything, since it was stone cold. It was also
pretty nasty, and he made a face as he set the cup back down. Hell,
enough of that; it wasn’t worth poisoning himself just to look
properly nonchalant. After a while, the wasp lost interest in the
pineapple turnover and flew