CHAPTER 61

Lisbon, Portugal

September

GREY WAS FLUENT IN Spanish, having spent many years working in Central and South America. The bad news was that, as he’d discovered in Brazil many years ago, Portuguese was not as close to Spanish as many would have you believe. He struggled to communicate with locals who did not speak Spanish or English, relying mainly on common words and gestures in order to get by. His train would leave that evening, so he had an entire day to kill in Europe’s second-oldest capital city. He took a taxi to the Hotel Jeró nimos, where he checked his bags and washed his face in the lobby’s restroom.

Lisbon was physically attractive with its gray, black, and white stone mosaic streets, bright buildings with red-tiled roofs, classic streetcars, and waterfront views. The city’s mood was, to Grey, relatively bleak. Citizens shuffled the streets with little joy and many of the buildings appeared dingy and neglected. Lisbon had the feel of a city whose best days were behind it.

Joy radiated from the faces of the numerous immigrants he saw, undoubtedly former residents of Portugal’s many former colonies, places like Mozambique, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea. A once-mighty empire that had mastered deepwater navigation, commanded the seas, and spanned the globe was now one of the smallest economies in Europe, only its language left as a mark on its former territories, a faded tattoo as a reminder of what once was.

After a café breakfast, Grey wandered to the waterfront to see the fourteenth-century Belé m Tower, the small Gothic castle that guarded the narrow waters leading to the city. He took some photos with the old green Leica in his shoulder bag before making his way toward the train station for a rail ticket. Purchasing the ticket online was out of the question, since this was the point where Grey would abandon his old identity and assume a new one. As he strolled along the walkway that led from the tower to the shoreline, he tossed his iPhone into the choppy waters of the Tagus River. No part of him felt like turning back.

The olive felt fedora on his head and Wayfarer sunglasses on his face would help hide him from the prying eyes of the security cameras and their facial recognition algorithms. His beard, though patchy, was starting to come in. After a frustrating conversation in bad Spanish and even worse English, he was told that he could buy his rail pass only online or at the station from which his train would depart. The ticket agent pointed animatedly at a pamphlet for the Estaç ã o de Lisboa-Oriente, a station east of the airport and well beyond walking distance. He triple-checked the departure time as 9: 34 p. m. local and decided that he would buy his ticket at the station that evening rather than make two trips across the city and back.

Grey impatiently explored the city as he passed the hours until his departure, his body adjusting slowly to the time difference. Walking had always helped him fight jet lag, and he logged many miles afoot as he saw the sights, cataloging them with his camera as he went. He bought two bottles of Capitulo, a local red wine, along with some fresh bread and butter for the train ride. After retrieving his larger bag from the hotel, he waited for the afternoon traffic to subside before hailing a taxi to the station.

The Oriente Station was a modern marvel of white metal arches, illuminated by artificial lighting as the sun set on the opposite side of the city. Grey paid extra for a private compartment on the Renfe train and bought the ticket from a wad of euro notes he’d accumulated over many years of travel in the employ of the United States government. When asked for his passport, he proudly produced a red-jacketed book identified in Cyrillic and ISO Latin letters as belonging to the Russian Federation. Thanks to the Colonel’s contacts, the passport was entirely authentic but for the name, Adrian Volkov, a man who until this moment had never existed.

He ate a small dinner in the station as he waited for the train to arrive, having traded his sunglasses for a pair of prescription eyeglasses. Glancing at the steel Rolex on his wrist, he thought for a moment about the man who had previously worn it, a man who had almost stopped all this from happening before it had even begun. A man he had bested, not with brawn, but with intellect.

Boarding his train, he found his way to his small but clean first-class compartment, locked the door, and poured himself a paper cup of red wine, savoring the flavor and the civilized nature of rail travel. The city lights dimmed in their wake as the train made its way into the quiet countryside, small cities and tiny villages visible along their path. Drinking through all of the first bottle and most of the second, he then pulled down both the bunk and the window shade. The train rocked rhythmically along the rails beneath him, and he quickly fell asleep.

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