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Indonesia.
    Maybe it was a subliminal slip. Maybe what he really wants is to get caught.
    Twenty minutes out of the city, he turns the car between two tall stone pillars, onto a long straight driveway cut through the dense forest. He slows as he approaches a towering wrought-iron gate, stops the car at the security hut.
    “ Guten Tag , Herr Carner.” He has been using an alias. “Welcome back,” the security guard says, and opens the gate.
    He presses his foot down on the accelerator, speeding toward the imposing half-timbered chalet looming at the end of the dark, shadowy drive.

CHAPTER 6
    H ayden crosses the windswept bridge over the long, shallow lake, Peblinge Sø, back into the bustling downtown district, making his way through the crowded shopping streets to an elegant café at a sharply angled multi-street intersection. Blocking the door are a pair of American tourists—a man his age, with the type of woman you’d expect—consulting a guidebook. Both of them are wearing shorts and polo shirts, white sneakers with athletic socks. Outfits that Hayden simply can’t abide.
    “Undskyld mig , ” he says, not wanting to give these buffoons the satisfaction of being addressed in their own language.
    “Oh, excuse me,” the woman says, smiling.
    Hayden steps inside, and there she is. The hostess here is the most beautiful human being he’s ever seen in his life, a perfect specimen of blonde-haired blue-eyed young loveliness. She’s been here every weekday for years; she’s the reason Hayden frequents this café whenever he comes to Copenhagen.
    This city in general is filled with fantastic-looking people—men and women, old and young, babies and children. The whole city is like a living breathing meta-gallery, an art installation of unfathomable scale. And this hostess, Sweet Jesus, she’s heartbreaking.
    She smiles warmly, leads him through the dining room. And it’s notjust that the girl is spectacular looking . There’s something beyond mere genetics about it, about people here: they look you straight in the eye, and offer a large smile. Not the phony I’m-trying-to-sell-you-something smile that you tend to get everywhere in America, but a genuine invitation to friendliness and openness and happiness. Especially at this time of year, early summer, when you have to make a concerted effort to see a dark sky: the sun rises before anyone in their right mind is awake, and sets well after most people are asleep.
    The waiter—like the hostess, surreally good-looking—delivers the coffee to Hayden’s corner table, the china Royal Copenhagen, the white tulips in an Alvar Aalto vase, the burnished silver Georg Jensen, the linen crisp and cool and sharply folded, everything arranged just so. No Styrofoam cups here.
    His phone vibrates, a call from New York. “Yes,” he answers.
    “Something you need to hear. I think you’ll want to wear an earpiece. You’ll be listening to recordings of three separate telephone conversations.”
    Hayden connects the headphones, puts the tiny speakers into his ears. He watches the hostess at her station near the door, fiddling with a pen, twirling the thing in her fingers. His contentment is quickly washed away as he listens, lips pursed in what he hopes appears to be concentration, but is furor, barely contained. A string of profanities— fuck damn shit, that fucking fucker —ricochets around his brain while his face presents nothing more than a thoughtful man, thinking. Hayden doesn’t curse out loud, ever. But in his brain he swears like a sailor. An angry drunken broke sailor who just stumbled upon his girlfriend cheating on him. With his best friend.
    Fuck.
    This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He should’ve had at least a day to prepare. He was expecting the delivery to happen via e-mail, which is why he has a tech monitoring the literary agent’s e-mail, opening every attachment, as well as the whole surveillance operation herein Copenhagen. Ensuring