An American Spy

7

Some families thrive by being open to the world, absorbing visitors into their daily routines, while others hold themselves always at a distance, in voluntary exile, as if bringing in some third party might blemish their particular joy. The Weavers were part of this latter group. When friends and family visited, they used their too-small apartment as an excuse and put them up at the nearby Park Slope Inn-it kept the intrusions within a predictable, manageable bracket of time.

Penelope, though, crashed like a boulder in the middle of their living room, taking their couch for her bed. It was awkward for everyone except Stephanie, who seemed energized by the disruption. On Friday, Tina went to work, leaving Milo and Stephanie to deal with their guest. Penelope, perhaps to get out of their hair, left at noon for “errands” and didn’t come back until after five, carrying a large bag full of metal containers of steaming Thai food from a restaurant called Sea. By then, Milo and Stephanie had spent a couple of hours browsing at BookCourt, shopped for groceries, and bought tickets for Sunday’s international puppet festival at the Yeshiva University Museum. Penelope held the bags aloft and said, “No more of Daddy’s unsalted food!” Stephanie cheered.

Saturday began with a surprise, for Milo had forgotten his own thirty-eighth birthday. He woke to Tina and Stephanie piling on top of him with kisses and happy wishes. Everyone ate chocolate cake for breakfast, even Penelope, though she criticized the quality of the chocolate the baker had used. Stephanie gave him an aluminum box for pens that she had painted with unintentionally abstract dragons, while Tina gave him a set of Waterman pens. Tina had apparently told Penelope about his birthday, for she, too, handed over a heavy wrapped present, which turned out to be both volumes of Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking. “Salt, you’ll find, is a very common ingredient.”

They all seemed to enjoy most of Saturday, going out for a movie Stephanie chose, Kung Fu Panda — the title seemed to say it all. By Sunday morning, though, Penelope’s mood had taken a nosedive, and when Stephanie got out of bed at nine to sit in her pajamas and watch cartoons, Penelope pulled a pillow over her head and groaned. Over breakfast, she told them, “Alan and I always agreed that not having children was a lifestyle choice-we simply wanted to keep some style in our life.”

Tina, who depended on her Sunday morning quiet time with the arts pages, grew noticeably irritated when Penelope kept interrupting her to bring up Alan’s virtues and flaws. When Penelope was washing up, Tina said, “Christ, she does test one’s nerves, doesn’t she?”

They all piled into the subway to reach the Yeshiva University Museum on West Sixteenth for the Jewish, Greek, Czech, and Chinese puppet festival. It was something Tina had read about the previous weekend, and Milo was excited to show Stephanie something that wasn’t transmitted through a television screen. Watching her laconic reactions to the puppets on the lit stages, though, he worried that she’d been warped too much already. Despite the historical curiosities of Mitzvah Mouse, the herky-jerky illuminations of the Greek shadow puppets, and the strangely lifelike Czech marionettes, Stephanie remained entirely unmoved-until the Chinese hand puppets.

Though the first show, concerning a married couple arguing over how best to cook an eel, did little to raise her interest, when during the second show Wu Song came on wearing his red kimono against the black velvet background, tinny music rising behind him, she settled down and focused. Then came the tiger, an elaborate, large-headed monster with wide, flat teeth, twisting with anger and hunger. Milo didn’t know the story, but it seemed pretty basic-Wu Song, while passing the Jingyang Ridge, kills a tiger with his bare hands, an act that makes him famous. Still, it was a masterly show, a dance between Wu Song’s martial arts and the man-eating tiger’s artful lunges, and by the time the tiger had been dispatched, Stephanie was leaning forward, pinching at the fabric of her jeans. Penelope, beside Tina, muttered, “So that’s what they do.”

Only later, at a coffee shop on Union Square, did she elaborate over a dish of vanilla ice cream. “They didn’t tell the rest of his story, which doesn’t surprise me. Old Wu Song was a real killing machine. He later avenged his brother’s death by poison by decapitating his brother’s wife and killing her lover.”

“ Really?” asked Stephanie.

“It’s one of those lovely stories about loose women sliding easily into murder, then getting what they deserve.” She winked at Stephanie. “Let that be a lesson to you.”

On their way back to Brooklyn, Milo’s phone chirp-chirped, and he found an invitation from his father- Byblos Restaurant, 11:00 — and texted back Yes.

“Who was that?” Tina asked over the rumble of the subway car.

“Yevgeny. We’re lunching tomorrow.”

“Grandpa?” asked Stephanie, brightening.

“First me, then you two can have him for dinner,” said Milo. “Tomorrow or Tuesday.”

“Well, I’ll be off your couch by tomorrow,” said Penelope. “The new bed’s being delivered, as well as some new furniture.”

“You can stay,” Tina said, a little too quickly. “If you want. I mean, if you’re not comfortable there.”

“Thanks,” Penelope said, seeming to believe her, though the truth was that both Tina and Milo couldn’t wait for her to be out of their home.

On Monday morning, otherwise known as Public Service Day, after Tina had left for work and he’d walked Stephanie to the Camp Friendship facility on Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, Milo returned slowly home and dialed the Washington number Chaudhury had given him. Partly, he was preparing an answer to the question he knew his father would ask- How do you know who this Chaudhury character is? — but more, his curiosity was growing, and he wanted to find out who, exactly, was looking out for Alan these days. After three rings, a female voice said, “Director Rollins’s office.”

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Rollins.”

“Your name?”

“Milo Weaver.”

“And this is concerning?”

“An employee of his.”

“Name?”

“Dennis Chaudhury. Want me to spell it?”

“No, thank you, sir.” She paused, perhaps typing it all out, and said, “Director Rollins is out of the office today. Can he reach you at this number?”

“Yes. You have it?”

“Yes, sir. Will eleven o’clock tomorrow morning be all right?”

“I think so,” he said, trying to sound friendly. “What’s the name of the director’s section?”

“You don’t know?”

He paused. “I’ve forgotten.”

“Well, Mr. Weaver, this section is like an expensive restaurant. If you have to ask…”

Running late, he met his father at Byblos, a crowded upscale Lebanese restaurant not far from the United Nations Headquarters. Yevgeny was already pushing hummus and pine nuts around a small oily plate with a piece of grilled pita bread, and Milo noticed him lick his fingers and wipe them on his pants as he rose to greet his son. It was an unlikely gesture from a man who had, for the decades Milo had known him, prided himself on his gentlemanly demeanor. Once he’d sat again, he brushed at his cheek as if swatting away a fly, a tic he’d been developing for years. The man was sixty-seven, and though he’d seen signs of his father’s gradual decline, this was the first time Milo had really seen the decades in him.

To move things along, Yevgeny had decided on entrees for them both-a spicy Kafta Koush Kash for Milo, and a fried fish entree called a Sultan Ibrahim for himself-and once the waiter had left he offered the hummus dish to Milo. Milo declined, so Yevgeny scooped up more and took a bite, then, in Russian, spoke through a half-full mouth-another inconsistency. “I don’t think your friend is dead.”

“Neither do I,” said Milo. “The question is: Where is he?”

Yevgeny shrugged. “Who’s to say? A little before four in the morning, on Saturday the fourteenth, someone sabotaged the hotel’s security cameras. The staff got them working again after about fifteen minutes, then they went down again. There’s a half hour or so of dead time.”

“Anyone could have come in and taken him.”

“But no one took him.”

“What?”

Yevgeny smiled. “The city of London is as thick with cameras as that hotel.”

Milo rubbed the bridge of his nose-he’d forgotten that Yevgeny, or Yevgeny’s friends, would have access to the police cameras. “So he walked out on his own?”

“He left and took public transport to Hammersmith before getting to a street without cameras. From there, he vanished.”

It was something, and Milo felt the relief in his back, the sudden release of tension he hadn’t known he was holding on to.

Yevgeny swatted at his cheek. “Your friend, he’s a curious one.”

“I know.”

“Guess how he got to London.”

“Plane.”

“Five planes. New York to Seattle. Drove to Vancouver and then flew to Tokyo. From there, to Mumbai. Mumbai to Amman. Amman to London. Each plane, another name. His own only on the first flight to Seattle.”

Alan had circled the planet to reach London. “How long did this take?”

“Four days. In Mumbai and Amman, he left the airports briefly; in Tokyo, he stayed in the international terminal and waited for the next flight.”

“You got this from MI-5?”

“Some of it. They knew he flew in from Jordan; I filled in the rest.”

“What else do they know?”

“Arrived in London very late on Thursday the twelfth. Checked into the Rathbone and on Friday made a single call from his room, to a third-floor room registered to one Gephel Marpa. Want me to spell that?”

“Please.” Once he’d done so, Milo said, “Tibetan?”

“Very good. Long-standing member of Free Tibet. London resident, which means Mr. Marpa came to the hotel on purpose.”

“So they met?”

“Maybe-no one knows. At least, Five isn’t saying yet. Saturday afternoon, after Alan Drummond disappeared, Marpa left the hotel and returned to his home in South London.”

“What did Alan do for meals?”

“Room service.”

“So he flies there Thursday, spends Friday in his room. Maybe talks to Marpa, maybe not. Someone shuts off the security cameras, and he walks out.”

His father nodded.

“Why sabotage the cameras in the first place? He knew the street cameras would get him.”

Yevgeny took a deep breath. “Who’s to say?”

“Leticia Jones,” Milo said after a moment. “She was in the same hotel; she turned off the cameras.”

His father shook his head. “It wasn’t her.”

“How do you know?”

“Can’t I retain a little mystery?” he asked, some of his old charm coming through. “Trust me, son: Your alluring Tourist didn’t turn them off.”

Milo frowned at him, wondering if his father knew who had turned off the cameras but didn’t want to share. There could be any number of reasons for his reluctance, ones that, perhaps, had no bearing on Alan’s situation. Milo said, “If it wasn’t to hide Alan leaving the hotel, it was to hide the movements of someone who went in to speak to him first. Alan might have walked out on his own, but I’ll lay odds that someone else convinced him he had to leave. Threat, or whatever.”

Brows raised, Yevgeny said, “One of many possibilities.”

Milo stared past his father a moment, to where a waiter stood near the register in the back, talking on a cell phone. “I don’t get it,” he said finally. “Alan flies around the world to get to London, arranges to meet a Tibetan dissident in the hotel, then never goes to the man’s room. Then he walks. I want to see that video footage.”

“You’ll have to get it yourself. My contact has seen it but can’t smuggle out a copy.”

Their food arrived, wreathed in a pleasantly pungent smell, and Milo noticed with dismay that his father’s lips soon became damp and littered with flakes of fish. He felt the urge to reach across with his napkin and wipe it for him, but no matter how far gone he was Yevgeny would never allow that.

“How’s your work?” Milo asked.

Yevgeny chewed and considered the question. He raised his utensils in a half-shrug. “It goes on and on. I’ve never told you the details of my days, have I?”

Milo shook his head. Though he knew that, for the past six years, his father had been running a secret intelligence-gathering department within the UN, he had no idea what his job actually demanded. Milo knew he ran agents, but not how many or how often.

It requires a lot of travel. Not as much as a Tourist, of course, but a lot for a man my age. These days, there’s all that security to deal with-my UN credentials aren’t as ironclad as they used to be. And the work’s expanding; I’ve even had to bring on an assistant to keep everything organized. I would retire, but I don’t know who to pass it on to.”

“Your assistant,” Milo suggested, “let him take over, and you can stay in touch in case problems arise.”

“ Her. And, no-I know that she doesn’t want the job. This is why I keep suggesting you give up this idiotic employment search and just come join me.”

“I’ve had enough of traveling,” Milo said. “Besides, I really don’t want to work for my father.”

Yevgeny folded his hands beneath his moist chin and stared. “Perhaps you’re right, Milo. I’m not entirely sure you’d have the stamina for the job.”

“Reverse psychology hasn’t worked since I was sixteen.”

Yevgeny reached forward and patted Milo’s hand. “Everything is worth a try.”

Before leaving, Milo ordered some to-go baklava and waited by the front door while Yevgeny put the lunch on his card. As they walked eastward, they settled on dinner with Tina and Stephanie the next evening; then Milo told him about Dennis Chaudhury, likely of the Central Intelligence Agency. Yevgeny frowned at the story, then took out a handkerchief and wiped some grease from his lips. “He sounds very ignorant, this Mr. Chaudhury.”

“I’m sure he knows more, but it’s done now. He thinks he’s gotten all he can get from me.”

“Have you verified he is who he says he is?”

“I’ve got the number of his boss.”

“A number he gave you?” Yevgeny said doubtfully.

“I’ll talk to the guy in the morning, then run the information myself. It doesn’t matter, though. The Company will run its investigation, and either they’ll share results or they won’t.”

Yevgeny paused, turning to get a good look at his son, then shrugged and continued walking. “I’m surprised you can let all this go so easily.”

It wasn’t as easy as his father suspected, but now it was easier. Alan had walked out of that hotel on his own two feet. Alan had been running an operation-perhaps still was-and London had been part of a ham-fisted attempt to draw Milo into it. It had been clumsy and stupid, and that was argument enough to keep his distance from Alan Drummond.

“Happy birthday, by the way.”

On the local 4 train, heading home, he worked to ignore some fresh pain in his gut, a mixture of lunch and the old bullet wound, as well as Alan Drummond-who, he’d decided, no longer deserved his attention.

As so often in his life, however, his own desires were inconsequential. History moves forward, and none of us live alone, no matter how hard we try. The desires of others manipulate our hours and days to their own obscure purposes.

He knew this as truth as he raised his gaze from the white foam box of sweets in his lap and saw, sitting opposite him, a sensual, fresh-skinned black woman with a broad smile on her face. She wasn’t looking at him, but he was the only thing on the train she was interested in.