An American Spy

5

The next morning, Tina called Penelope and insisted she come for dinner, then asked Sarah Lawton’s mother if Stephanie could stay the night. The previous year, Stephanie and Sarah had been archenemies, but as with many children’s relationships it only existed in the extremes, and when things warmed between them they became-despite occasional mentions of divorce-best-friends-forever.

Milo’s only responsibility was to take care of the food, which he mistakenly chose to cook himself. Chicken fajitas with fresh salsa, guacamole, and sour cream. When Tina returned home from work, she snuck a bite of the meat and made a face. “Did you taste these?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You forgot the salt.”

It was true, and his impressive-looking meal had little flavor. He powdered everything with salt after the fact, but it wasn’t the same, and he could see the measured surprise in Penelope Drummond’s face when she took her first eager bite. She and her husband were well-known foodies, spending large chunks of their income on new restaurants and following specific chefs’ careers. Still, Penelope ate, as they all did, until she frowned at them both and said, “Is something going on?”

“What?” Tina said.

“There’s something weird here.” A pause. “You’re not planning a menage a trois, are you? Because I may be single, but I’m still a decent girl at heart.”

They laughed at that, a little too loudly, and Milo wondered how Tina was going to do this. She had insisted on breaking the news herself, but how does anyone pass on the news that a husband has gone missing? Probably not in the middle of a meal. Before dessert? he wondered, then realized with frustration that he’d forgotten to pick up ice cream.

“No, really,” said Penelope, holding a guacamole-smeared fork above her plate. “Something’s going on.”

That’s when Tina’s eyes, despite the innocent smile on her face, glazed with tears, and Milo knew that whatever she’d planned was history now. Penelope put down her fork and stroked Tina’s wrist. “If it means that much to you, then, sure, I’ll sleep with you.”

Tina laughed again, pitifully, and shook her head. Milo said, “It’s nothing like that.”

Not letting go of Tina, Penelope raised her eyes to him. “Well, then, Milo. Maybe you should tell me.”

She’d said it very coolly, and Milo answered, “In a sec.” He mopped his lips with his napkin and went to the kitchen for another bottle of wine.

As he worked on the cork, he heard whispers from the living room, then a loud, “ What? ” That was Penelope. By the time he returned, Tina had dried her tears and was holding on to Penelope’s wrist, though she wasn’t crying either; she was staring at her flavorless food. Then she glared at Milo. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know much,” Milo said, clutching the bottle and staying well away from the table. “London, the Rathbone Hotel. If he’d just disappeared, that would be one thing, but someone shut off the hotel cameras. Anything’s possible.”

“Anything?”

“Kidnapping is the theory.”

“Or murder?”

He hesitated.

“Well?”

“It’s possible, but there’s no sign of that.”

She held onto his eyes. “Who?”

“No one knows yet. People are working on it.”

“You?”

“I’m looking into it.”

She stood then, and Tina, still leaning forward, watched her. Penelope seemed to want to say something as her cheeks flushed, but nothing came out. She walked to the foyer, hesitated, then continued and, after collecting her purse and figuring out the complicated locks on the door, walked out of their apartment.

She returned an hour later. By then, Milo had packed the dishes into the dishwasher and the leftovers into the refrigerator, while Tina remained at the table drinking half the bottle of wine. She kept saying, “I did it all wrong,” and each time Milo said, “There’s no right way to do it.”

Penelope buzzed from the street, saying only, “It’s me,” and when she arrived with her blond hair cowlicked on one side, it was obvious that she’d been drinking. “Can I come in?” she asked but was already walking past Tina into the living room. When she saw Milo, she said, “Hi,” and dropped onto the couch. She took a long, loud breath. “I don’t have any other friends I can talk to about this.”

She didn’t talk about it at first, though. She threw her purse onto the floor and stretched out, putting her feet up, her soiled heels resting on a pillow.

“I like this neighborhood,” she told the ceiling lamp. “There’s a terrific bar down the street. I forget the name. You know it?”

“It’s great,” Milo said as he went to one of the chairs.

Penelope remained fixated on the lamp. “I could sell our place and get something here. How much would a one-bedroom cost?”

“A lot.”

“I should be able to get that much for ours.”

“You know,” Milo said, “he could be all right. Could be just fine.”

“He might be,” she agreed, “but he wouldn’t come back to me, would he? I kicked him out.”

“He told me he thought he could patch things up.”

“You said that before.”

In the silence that followed, Tina found fresh glasses and poured wine for everyone, forgetting that Milo wasn’t drinking. Penelope placed hers on the floor beside her purse. “Milo,” she said. “I forgot to ask why.”

“Why?”

“Why did someone kidnap my husband from a London hotel room?”

“When we find out who, we’ll know why. And vice versa.”

“It’s the Chinese, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. No one knows.”

She slowly sat up, looking groggy, muttering, “The Yellow Peril. Is that racist, Tina?”

Tina sat next to her without bothering to reply.

Penelope tried to fix Milo with her gaze, but she seemed to have trouble focusing. “You’re going to London?”

Milo shook his head. “Better people are working on it.”

“Alan said you were the best.”

That didn’t sound like Alan Drummond. “He was exaggerating.”

Penelope chewed on her lower lip, then looked over at Tina as if she’d only just noticed her. She gave a small smile and turned back to Milo. “You do have some idea. I can see that. I can’t see much, but I can see that.”

“Maybe,” he admitted, because what he could see was that he had a small window of opportunity. She’d gotten over her shock, and she was at least tipsy. “You can help, though.”

“Me?”

“Tell me everything you know about what he was working on.”

She looked again at Tina, perhaps wanting assistance, but Tina remained in her corner of the couch, waiting. Penelope said, “You don’t want to go to the roof?”

“If the Company’s listening, I won’t have to repeat it to them later.”

“And the Chinese? What if they’re listening?”

When he didn’t immediately answer, Tina said, “Ironically, Milo only worries about the CIA.”

Penelope nodded at that. “Well, I already told Tina-right in this room, so I guess you’ve already heard it,” she said to the walls, grinning conspiratorially. Then she sighed. “Alan wouldn’t tell me anything-secret, you know. He was obsessed; I know that. He made a lot of phone calls and worked off of his desktop.”

“Calls from the landline?”

She shook her head. “One of his cells.”

“Can I take a look at his computer?”

“I’ll give you the keys and you can go get it now. The password is ‘intrepid.’ With ones in place of the i ’s.”

“You didn’t overhear any of the calls?”

“Just one. But he was speaking German. I don’t know German. He knew that.”

Milo waited.

“He went to D.C. on day trips.”

“Often?”

“Once that I know of, but he hid that from me, so if I discovered one used train ticket there were probably more. Back in the middle of April, he was gone for three or four days. Wouldn’t say where.”

“You didn’t hear any more of his calls?”

“He was very good at closing his office door,” she said. “But there was a visitor.”

“When?”

“Beginning of the month?” she wondered, shaking her head, then nodded. “A Wednesday. I’d gone out for groceries, but our local place was closed-inventory, or renovations; I don’t remember which. I came back, and he was having Scotch with a Latino-looking guy. Alan was flustered, I could tell, but he introduced us. Hector Garza.”

“Did he have an accent?”

Penelope shook her head. “Sounded midwestern to me. When he left, Alan said he was giving Hector a work reference.”

“So Hector used to work in the department?”

“Computer technician. That’s what Alan said.”

“Young? Old?”

“Early thirties, maybe. Not tall-my height.”

Milo rubbed at his face as if taking all this in, but he was running through his memories. He knew of no Hector Garza from the old office, even though, in the aftermath of the department’s demise, he’d gone over the list of administrative employees with Alan to help figure out transfers. One of the four surviving Tourists, Jose Santiago, might fit that description. “Anyone else?”

“He didn’t have a lot of friends. Not anymore. Just you.”

Thirty seconds passed, then Tina said, “Did you get ice cream?”

“What?” said Milo.

“Dessert.”

“I forgot.”

Penelope said, “Wait a minute.”

“What?” said Tina.

Penelope shook her head, and a lopsided grin appeared on her face. “He told me. He told me.”

“Told you what?” asked Milo.

She settled her clasped hands over her stomach and said, “I’d forgotten. I mean, it was something like two months ago-just after you were shot,” she said to Milo. “When he was fired. He asked me- Christ, how come I forgot this?”

“Just tell us,” said Milo.

“Well, he told me that he knew about something that was a danger to the country, and he said that he thought he knew how he could neutralize it.”

“Why did he tell you that?”

A sad smile crossed her face. “He was asking permission. He asked if me if he should work on it or not.”

“What did you say?” Tina asked.

The smile disappeared. “I told him I was all for it.”

“And you never connected that to how he’d been acting?” asked Milo.

“He never mentioned it again,” she said, staring into his eyes defensively. “Two months ago he brought it up, late in the night-he’d woken from a bad dream-and then never again.” She shook her head. “We were on vacation. I forgot about it.”

No one spoke for a few moments, until Penelope said, “Don’t you think you owe it to him?”

Both looked at her, but she was speaking to Milo.

“You really were his only friend.”

He rubbed at his nose. “I’m doing what I can.”

“But you’re still here.”

Milo slowly got to his feet. “Give me your keys, then.”

As she dug through her purse, Milo’s phone let out the chirp-chirp of an incoming message. He dug it out of his pants. It was from Janet Simmons, and once he’d read it he cursed beneath his breath, then read it again.

NO SIGN OF YOUR FRIEND IN OUR RECORDS.

LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED THE CAVALRY.

“Something wrong?” asked Tina.

He deleted the message and gave her a smile. “I just wish life was simpler.”

Penelope, her index finger through a ring laden with keys, let out a contemptuous snort. “Maybe you should have chosen a different career path.”

His stomach was acting up again as he walked to the subway, but it wasn’t the old bullet wound; it was anxiety, the fear that the Chinese, who had until now been on the other side of the world, were now here, in his backyard, for who else could Dennis Chaudhury be working for? He hated himself for his stupidity, for having spoken openly with a complete stranger. A stranger he’d met with, just down the street from his home. This was what happened when you began to enjoy life outside the Company. You forgot that no one is above deception. You became as naive as all the other civilians. Now, Alan had drawn the Chinese right into the middle of his life.

Rumbling underground in a half-full car, though, he realized that he couldn’t even hold onto this conclusion. A Company agent might pose as a Homelander, or perhaps the NSA was following up on signals intelligence it didn’t feel like sharing with the Company. Even the FBI could be running Chaudhury, wanting to cover its tracks by posing as Homeland Security.

What about Britain? Alan had disappeared in London, and MI-5 would be interested in knowing why an ex-CIA man had disappeared on its turf. If the Company was staying quiet, then Five might send someone over, or ask Six to do so.

Once he’d opened himself up to that possibility, he considered the Germans, who had once been hunting Sebastian Hall. The overbearing Erika Schwartz of the BND had learned that Hall was in fact Weaver months ago and would certainly be interested in his reappearance in London. Drummond, he remembered, had been speaking German on the phone

…

Without knowing what, exactly, Alan had been working on, he had no idea what other countries could be added to the list. Trying to figure out whom Chaudhury worked for was an exercise in confusion.

Because of the weekly dinners, the doorman at 200 East Eighty-ninth, the Monarch, recognized Milo’s face. He tapped the brim of his hat and let Milo in, but said, “I’m sorry, sir, the Drummonds are out.”

Milo held up the keys. “I know. I’m picking up something for Penelope.”

“Can I help, sir?”

“Probably not, but thanks. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

He took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, then paused in the carpeted corridor to work his way through the ten keys Penelope carried everywhere. He got it right on the third try and slipped inside.

It was a huge place, easily three times larger than his apartment, and fitted out in a vaguely retro style that Milo had always admired. He went to the open-plan kitchen and poured himself a glass of flat tonic water, then passed the Bauhaus sofa on his way to the office, a leathery affair with an old, lumbering Dell computer beneath the oak desk.

The first thing he noticed was that the computer was unplugged, and the Ethernet cable had been taken out. The simplest security-if it wasn’t attached to the Internet, no one could hack it without first breaking into the apartment. Without electricity, Penelope wouldn’t be as tempted to use it. So he plugged it in and, as it powered up, browsed the shelves that ran the length of one wall. History books-military, political, and cultural. American foreign policy. Napoleonic battle tactics. Soviet expansionism. The funding of Islamic terrorism. There were a few hundred titles here, organized fastidiously by author. On the bottom shelf, laid flat because of their size, were books on design.

It was a remarkably tidy office-the office, perhaps, of an unemployed man-and the opposite wall was decorated with framed pictures. Old family photos: grainy, some ripped and pieced back together, of Boston socialites going back to the 1920s. Mixed in were recent black-and-white close-ups of leaves, fruits, and tombstones-he remembered that Penelope had taken up photography. In the corner was an elegant drinks cabinet full of bottles. Throwing caution to the wind, Milo added vodka to his tonic.

When the computer asked for a password, he typed 1ntrep1d, and the hard drive began to click and whir. He opened the desk drawers but found only pens, a stainless steel letter opener, a few blank Post-it pads, and a ream of printer paper. The computer went quiet, and on the monitor, he saw a blue, empty desktop. He opened the C-drive and found only system folders and a few basic applications. Drummond had either cleaned the computer before leaving, or everything was right there, but hidden. He turned it off again, unplugged it, then dragged the computer case out from beneath the desk. It took about three minutes to figure out how to pop open its front, and he removed the hard drive. In the kitchen he found a Ziploc bag and sealed it inside, leaving it on the counter.

For the next two hours he went through the office again, slowly, pausing only to sip at his drink. He went through the books one at a time, fanning them to find loose slips of paper, which were always bookmarks or receipts used as bookmarks. He turned around each of the photographs on the wall. He pulled apart the desk, checking inside its shell with his hands and beneath the drawers. He went through the printer paper, then disassembled the laser printer. He used the letter opener to unscrew the back of the computer case and looked inside. He pulled up the throw rug, checked the floorboards, and broke open the seat of the chair, then went to the light fixture in the ceiling. He returned to the photographs and opened each frame. Nothing. Then he checked each of the three electrical outlets.

It was when he began unscrewing the outlet beneath the window that he found a hair-thin wire leading from behind the panel, up behind the curtains to the curtain rods, where it powered a camera. It was a small thing, like a webcam, but built to order with an antenna and a clip that attached to the end of the curtain rod. There was no manufacturer’s name or serial number. From its position, the camera witnessed the entire room, but it wasn’t so small that Alan wouldn’t have noticed it. He had to have known of its existence. Milo unclipped the camera and peered into the wide-angled lens, then ripped out the power cord and pocketed it.

Though he’d tried to put each item back together after taking it apart, by midnight the office looked different. The chair sagged, its seat hanging open; the computer gaped at him where he couldn’t put back the front panel. It was as if, by searching for a few hours, he’d aged the place prematurely, but he was too tired to keep at it. He grabbed his empty glass and returned to the living room, then stopped. In an armless chair Alan had once told him had been designed by Mies van der Rohe sat Dennis Chaudhury, his heavy eyelids very dark, but there was a smile on his face. “Hello, Milo.”

“How long have you been here?”

Chaudhury rocked his head from side to side. “Half hour? More? I didn’t want to interrupt your work. It’s always a nice surprise to find out someone’s doing your job for you.”

“You’re alone?”

“One friend in the lobby, another in the hall. I thought you and I could talk alone.”

As Milo came around and settled on the couch, he noticed that the hard drive was gone from the kitchen counter. “This your first visit?”

“Penelope wouldn’t leave the place. When we found out she’d gone to visit you, I was upstate. Took a while to get back. She there for the night?”

“Probably. She’s had a rough time of it.”

Chaudhury nodded as if this were sad news. “So what did you find?”

“You’ve got the hard drive. That was it.”

“Anything interesting on it?”

“It’s either wiped clean or encrypted. I don’t really know my way around computers.”

“Don’t worry-we’ve got plenty of people who do. What does Penelope say?”

“Whatever he was doing, he kept it from her.”

Another nod. “Took it hard, did she?”

“Did the Brits get back to you?”

Chaudhury considered his reply. “They say they’ll have something for us later.”

“Sounds like they’re being uncooperative.”

“A kinder word would be ‘careful.’ ”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing important,” Chaudhury said, then picked at the knee of his slacks. “You planning on going?”

“To London? No.”

“Good. I’ve already sent someone, and I don’t want you getting in the way.”

“Isn’t that overstepping your bounds? Sending field agents to London?”

Chaudhury’s self-satisfied smile faded, then he rocked his head. “You really think the Department of Homeland Security has any boundaries, Weaver?”

“Maybe not, but the better question is whether or not you have boundaries.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re not a Homelander. I’d just like to know what you really are.”

Chaudhury blinked, only briefly thrown, then touched his hands together. He sighed. “I’m on the side of the angels. Isn’t that enough?”

“That would make you the first one I’ve ever met.”

Chaudhury rubbed at a nostril, placed his hands on the seat of the chair, and pushed himself up. When he spoke, his voice was lowered. “I’m Company, Weaver. That’s all you need to know.”

“Why the pretense?”

“Because my bosses thought you might not want to help us. They seem to think you have a beef with the Company. Maybe because we stuck you in a jail for a while. We brought you back, of course, but you chose to leave the nest again. Maybe you don’t like us anymore.”

“I don’t hold grudges.”

“They’ll be so pleased to hear it.”

“Section?”

Chaudhury stuck his hands in his pockets. “What?”

“What’s your section?”

“Counterterrorism.”

“Under Bill Ferragamo?”

Another pause. “No.”

“Who?”

“I’m not playing twenty questions. You want to help me find out who abducted your friend, then great. If not, then fuck off. It’s all the same to me.”

“I’ll fuck off, then,” Milo said and walked out of the apartment. On his way to the elevator, he passed a thickset hood that looked less like CIA than like Balkan mafia.

At home, he found Tina dozing on the couch, her head in Penelope’s lap. Penelope was watching a late-night talk show in which an actress with a new film out was showing off her platform shoes. Penelope gave Milo a tired smile as he settled on a chair. “I’m sober now,” she said with something like pride.

“Good for you.”

“Did you uncover all?”

He shook his head, realizing that Tina was wrong-Penelope did trust him. She’d learned her husband was missing and wasn’t rushing off to the police; she was leaving everything to him. “Alan left the place clean,” Milo told her. “He knew what he was doing.”

“He always did.”

“What kind of security did he have in his office?”

“Security?”

“Motion detectors, cameras, that sort of thing.”

“Should he have had something?”

“I’m just asking.”

She grinned. “Well, I hope he didn’t have a camera. You know that great leather chair? We used to have sex on it all the time.” The grin faded. “Before he turned into… well, before he started pushing me away.”

Milo stared at her, wondering. “When was the last time?”

“That we had sex? ”

“In his office.”

She didn’t look like she was going to answer, but finally arched a brow. “Nearly a month ago. I actually remember the date. May 23, a Friday. We finished just minutes before you guys showed up for that roast lamb. Any more intimate questions?”

Milo shook his head. There was no way that Alan would have missed that camera, which meant either that he knew who was watching him or that he had installed it himself. Either way, three and a half weeks ago, on the evening of May 23, the camera wasn’t there; it had arrived after that date.