An American Spy

11

Milo took the subway to Penn Station and boarded the 10:00 A. M. Acela Express for D.C., thinking not of his destination but of the street corner he’d come from, where he’d taken Stephanie to day camp. Had she felt his anxiety? Had she noticed the lingering hug he’d given her, the one she’d had to push to escape from? He’d wanted to leave something for her, some small gift or word of warning, but anything out of the ordinary could lead to disaster, and so he’d plastered the smile to his face, kissed her, and sent her on her way.

The two-hour-and-forty-seven-minute journey was delayed by unexpected congestion around Philly, so that he arrived at Union Station at one thirty. He had to rush through the crowd for the Massachusetts Avenue exit. His taxi made good time until a forced detour around a demonstration along Virginia Avenue, and he reached the small, unassuming colonial on Potomac Street NW by ten after two.

The name on the front gate was Washington, and when he rang the bell, the gate was unlocked electrically without a word from inside. He walked up a small parcel of overgrown yard to the front steps and waited a moment to see if he needed to ring the doorbell-he didn’t. It clicked and was pulled open by a small, tired-looking man he’d last seen-in the flesh, at least-looking ill as he came to terms with the fact that one of his aides had been a long-term agent for the Chinese, and that that single oversight had led to the deaths of thirty-three people-thirty-four, counting one of his other aides. This same man had also been responsible for the murders of two of Milo’s friends: Angela Yates, CIA resident in Paris, and Tom Grainger, former Tourism Department head and Stephanie’s godfather. He’d attempted to have Milo killed. Yet here he stood-Nathan Irwin, Minnesota Republican-still breathing and looking healthy. Perhaps sensing what Milo was thinking, Irwin said, “You’re looking in remarkably good health.”

“Well, I’m not dead.”

“Get inside,” said the senator, looking over Milo’s shoulder in a nervous, awkward way.

The interior was modest, with a staircase directly in front of them, and a living room that looked like it had been decorated by a firm of elderly women with a love of art nouveau, but without the budget to achieve their dreams. “We’re alone?”

Irwin shut the door. “Cut the bullshit, Milo. What’s your game?”

“Are we alone, Nathan? Or are some of your aides floating around?”

Irwin winced-it was a childish jab, and cruel, considering how defeated Irwin had been after the discovery-but he recovered. “Of course we’re not alone. We’re never alone. Now, what are you up to?”

Milo wandered into the living room, stroking an elaborately printed chair, catching dust on his fingers. It was an unclean safe house. He said, “I want to know what happened to Alan, and Leticia says the only way I can learn that is to help you out.”

“But you said no to that.”

“Have you never changed your mind?”

“Never,” Irwin said, but when Milo looked at his face, he was smiling. Then the smile went away. “What I want to know is why you changed your mind. We’ve got you pretty well profiled, Milo. You’re as simple as any putz on the street. You like your comfort. You like your family. Now that you’ve finally got both of those things again, I don’t think you would throw them away. Because throwing them away is precisely what you’d be doing, at least temporarily.”

Milo said nothing for a moment. He had reached a china cabinet and found a collection of ceramic pigs from around the world staring back at him with a broad variety of expressions. “Why does any of this matter?” he said finally. “I’m here to help. It’s not like you have an army behind you anymore. It can’t be easy putting something this big together.”

“It matters,” said Irwin. “First of all, you have no idea how big or small this operation is. Maybe Leticia’s our only asset.”

“You’ve also got Jose Santiago and Tran Hoang.”

A loud exhale. “She tell you that?”

“You’ve got three Tourists, but now Alan’s gone missing. You’re in a bind. What you could really use is a new administrator, and I’ve got the experience.”

“So now you don’t just want to help out. You want to run the operation.”

“Do you have someone else on hand? Do you have someone else who has experience dealing with Xin Zhu?”

“You never actually met the man.”

“Are you working with anyone who has?”

Irwin still hadn’t moved from the entryway but was leaning against the banister leading up to the second floor. He looked older than he did on television, but Milo expected that this was true of everyone. The lighting here wasn’t advantageous, and there was no makeup team. The truth was that Irwin looked terrified-which, Milo thought, he should be.

“The problem,” Irwin said, “is that for you to run the operation, you’d have to know its whole scope, and I’m certainly not ready for that.”

Milo had expected resistance-in fact, he’d expected more. Yet he knew from Xin Zhu that Irwin was just one of three players with a hand in this operation, and so Irwin’s vote was not definitive. Milo said, “Tell me, then. What role did you imagine for me?”

“I imagined nothing. Leticia brought you in. You’re here now so that these sorts of decisions can be made.”

“By you?”

Another smile cracked the senator’s features; then he nodded at the stairs. “Come on.”

It was a narrow staircase, and along the wall were three framed photographs of small children, black-and-whites from the late fifties or early sixties. Milo wondered who they were, but didn’t ask; he doubted Irwin knew. At the top, they turned left and entered a small bedroom in the rear of the house, but there was no bed, just a table and four wooden chairs, and tightly laced curtains covering the window. There had been a bed-an imprint remained in the carpet-and there was a dresser and an old vanity, but he noticed all this later. Upon entering, his attention was taken by the well-dressed middle-aged woman sitting at the table with a plastic bottle of Evian. Her hands were crossed in her lap. She watched Milo enter, then stood up, offering a hand. “Hello, Mr. Weaver. My name is Dorothy Collingwood.”

Of the National Clandestine Service, he thought as he took her small hand, but he said, “You’re not a senator, too, are you?”

She laughed lightly. “Please! I wouldn’t take Nathan’s job for all the gold in Christendom.”

“Then you must be Company.”

“I must be,” she said, smiling, and returned to her chair. “Actually, I’m NCS.”

He felt odd, standing in a dusty Georgetown bedroom with a well-regarded politician and a Company official. Irwin had been in Washington for nearly fifteen years, and he imagined that Collingwood was relatively new to her job-he’d never heard her name before. He wondered if she’d gotten in over her head.

“Is this it?” asked Milo. “Just the two of you?”

“There’s a third,” said Collingwood, “but he couldn’t make it.”

Stuart Jackson, Milo thought.

Collingwood waved at the chairs, and Milo sat to her left. Irwin sat across from Milo, to her right. Milo said, “I’m here to help. With Alan gone, you’ve got to be hurting.”

“Do you think we’re hurting?” Collingwood asked, but she was looking at Irwin, who shook his head. “Nathan thinks we’re doing fine. So you can go home.”

Milo looked at her a moment, then at Irwin, who stared passively until, unexpectedly, his left eye twitched. It meant nothing beyond the fact that this was a man under a lot of stress. Milo said, “Leticia thinks differently.”

“People on the ground always do,” said Collingwood. “You’ve been around long enough to know that.” She took a long drink of her Evian.

“She asked for my help.”

“Without consulting us,” said Irwin.

Milo was no longer sure why he was here. He knew why he was here, but not why they had bothered to meet him. “It’s up to you,” he said. “I’m just puzzled. I understand Alan. He was personally humiliated by Xin Zhu, and he became obsessed with revenge. You, too,” he said to Irwin, “to a degree. Xin Zhu planted someone in your office, so you can’t feel very good about that. But you,” he said to Collingwood, then paused. “I may be wrong, but I doubt you also have a personal gripe with Xin Zhu. You’re approached by a man-Alan, I assume-who’s been made unstable by his desire for revenge and… and what? You actually decide to go along with it?” He shook his head to show how ridiculous that was. “I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“So that’s your narrative?” she asked after a moment. “A simple tale of revenge, a boy’s game of tit for tat?”

“An eye for an eye,” Irwin suggested.

Neither said anything for a moment, waiting, until Milo said, “So it’s a lot bigger than revenge.”

“Of course it is,” said Collingwood.

“And you’re not going to tell me.”

She shook her head. Irwin just stared.

Collingwood said, “Listen, Mr. Weaver. What you see here-a couple of bureaucratic monsters running some agents from a dusty room-that’s only part of the story. We didn’t originate it; we inherited it. Now we’re here to help wrap up the storyline. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” he said. Irwin, he knew, had come into the world of espionage via his position on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. However, senators and ranking CIA officers didn’t sit around in dusty safe houses-they hired other people to do that. The people who populated safe houses were there to protect the identities of politicians and ranking officers who were pulling the strings; in this case, the situation was reversed. Whatever was going on here, these people were desperate to keep it to a select group, which didn’t yet include Milo.

“Sorry for the mystery,” she said, “but that’s all you’re getting. Now it’s your turn to explain yourself.”

Milo had spent most of the train ride going over his own narrative, because that’s all this was-a narrative. As with any interrogation there needed to be a surface storyline and an underlying one. Ideally, a third one would make it more convincing, but he didn’t think he would need that. “I didn’t want to get involved,” he said. “I think you both know that. Alan tried to bring me in before he ran off. Then, when I talked to Leticia, she tried as well.”

“And you said no both times,” Irwin pointed out.

“Of course. I don’t like this world. I haven’t for a long time. Nevertheless, I didn’t realize Alan would be so persistent. He made sure the decision was out of my hands.”

“The name,” said Collingwood.

Irwin said, “What name?”

“The one he used in London before he disappeared,” Milo said. “It was my old work name, in Tourism.”

Irwin looked over at Collingwood; this was news to him.

Milo said, “He used a name that is known to both the Germans and the Chinese, known to be mine. Eventually, one or the other country is going to start pointing in my direction.”

“Then take a vacation,” said Collingwood, matter-of-factly. “Pack up your family and rent someplace in Florida for a few weeks, until this blows over. I can give you some phone numbers.”

Irwin rocked his head. “It’s an idea, Milo.”

Milo smiled grimly. “Sure. I’ll skip town and leave it to the two of you. To Leticia and Jose and Hoang. I’m sure that, after a couple of weeks, you will have bent over backward to make sure I’m not part of the fallout when whatever you’re doing explodes.”

Collingwood said, “Nathan, I do believe he doesn’t trust us.”

“If I’m in,” Milo continued, “there’s a chance that I can control the damage so that my family remains untouched.”

Milo waited while Irwin bobbed his eyebrows and Collingwood took another drink of water. After a moment, she said, “So you’d like us to bring you in, simply so that you can protect yourself?”

“And his family,” said Irwin. “Never forget his family.”

“That’s part of the reason,” said Milo. “The other part is that I can help you.”

“Of course he can,” Irwin said, a little loudly. “He’s the finest Tourist ever produced! A prince among men!”

Milo gave him a look, then turned back to Collingwood. “I know Xin Zhu better than anyone on your team. I’ve had access to reports you haven’t seen. I know how he thinks.”

Irwin said, “That didn’t save all those Tourists, did it?”

“That was a lack of information. I wasn’t told that his son had been killed in Sudan. Had I known, we could have saved them.”

“What about these reports?” asked Collingwood. “Why haven’t we seen them?”

“Because it’s not American material. I got them from my father.”

“Yevgeny Primakov,” Collingwood said to Irwin. “He runs that UN department we were talking about.”

Milo blinked at her. His father’s intelligence arm was, or was supposed to be, completely secret. Was it a surprise that they both knew about it? He wasn’t sure.

“Could we use your father?” asked Collingwood.

“I could ask,” Milo lied.

Irwin exhaled loudly. “This is idiotic,” he said to Collingwood. “We both know Milo’s a bad seed.”

Collingwood smiled. “Did you really say ‘bad seed’?”

“The child of a KGB officer and a Marxist terrorist? The very definition of a bad seed.”

“Right,” Collingwood said, still smiling.

That they knew about his father was one thing, but Milo, perhaps naively, was surprised that they knew about his mother.

His face must have been an open book, for Irwin said, “Come on, Milo. That’s never been a secret from the Company. Hell, it’s why you were recruited in the first place, right out of college. I’ve seen your file. You had lying in your genes. They wanted to make sure you lied for us, not for someone else. Isn’t that right, Dorothy?”

Collingwood shrugged. “That’s what the files say.”

He tried to hide his growing surprise. He shook his head, desperate to change the subject. “The point is that, liar or not, we all know that I could help make sure this is a success. I just need to know more about what’s going on.”

Collingwood brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, what do you want to know?”

“What happened to Alan.”

“Nathan?” she said.

Irwin shook his head. In the dim light his cheeks looked flushed, and Milo finally understood that Irwin was not the alpha in this room. Collingwood was. She was calling the shots. Revenge truly was not the point of their plans.

“It’s a problem,” Irwin said finally. “We don’t know.”

“You don’t know what happened to Alan?”

“He’s off the grid. He walked. We don’t know why.”

“What was he supposed to do?”

“Meet with someone, then reconnect with Leticia.”

“Meet with who?” Milo asked, though he knew the answer was Gephel Marpa.

Irwin looked at Collingwood and said, “I’m not telling him that. Not yet.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

Milo said, “If you want me to ask my father for information, I’ll need to have a story for him. You can’t keep me entirely in the dark.”

“You have your story already,” she said, looking at him. “Revenge. It’s not unheard of, you know.”

“So I get nothing? I work entirely blind?”

“Consider Leticia your seeing-eye dog,” she said. “Although I’d like to believe you, I know what excellent liars you Tourists are, and I’d be a fool to take you at face value. Leticia knows as much as she needs to know, and she’ll share what’s necessary. You’ll meet her tomorrow at JFK, Terminal Three. Eight in the morning, and you come as a blank slate. Can you do that?”

He nodded.

Collingwood said, “Tonight we’ll decide on the depth of your involvement, and by tomorrow she’ll know how to use you. What are you going to tell your family?”

“Flying to San Francisco for an interview.”

Collingwood raised her eyebrows. “You think your wife would want to relocate?”

“She’s amenable.”

“Tomorrow, then,” she said and stood, offering her hand again. Milo took it.

Irwin walked him downstairs and, at the door, said, “Don’t fuck us on this, Milo. The bricks will fall directly on your head.”

Replies to that awfully mixed metaphor occurred to him, but he pressed them down, stuffing them into that box in the back room of his head. He trotted down the front steps and flagged a taxi that was cruising down the street. He climbed into the back, saying, “Union Station,” as he pulled the door shut. It wasn’t until the taxi was moving again that he noticed the driver’s face. It was Dennis Chaudhury.

“Shit,” said Milo.

“Just transporting today,” Chaudhury said as he took a turn onto another street. “I told you not to call him, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Sorry, then,” he said, “but you’re supposed to tell me what happened at the meeting.”

Milo watched colonial houses pass by. “Well, I’m in. Tomorrow I meet up with Leticia Jones at JFK.”

“To go where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?” he asked, peering in the rearview.

“Really.”

“Don’t tell me that’s all you know.”

“I know what happened to Alan.”

“Aha!” said Chaudhury, sounding pleased. “Do tell.”

“He was supposed to meet with Gephel Marpa on another floor, then meet with Leticia. He didn’t do either. He walked out. They don’t know where he is.”

Chaudhury exhaled, frowning at the road. “That’s odd.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Chaudhury looked at him in the mirror, waiting.

“Alan had only two options. He could continue to work for Xin Zhu, or he could remove himself completely from the equation. He assumed that, without having him in hand, Xin Zhu wouldn’t touch his wife, which was the only thing he cared about.”

Chaudhury stopped at a traffic light, staring ahead and saying nothing until the light changed and they were moving again, and then it was only to ask the details of the meeting. Those in attendance, which room it occurred in, and if it was recorded. Milo answered everything honestly-he had no idea about the recording, though he suspected it hadn’t been. When they were close to Union Station, Chaudhury said, “What’s your take?”

“Whatever they’re doing, they’re terrified of it getting out. It’ll be a while before I’m let in on the secret, if ever.”

Chaudhury tossed an iPhone over the seat; Milo caught it. “Keep this on you,” he said, passing over a charging cord as well, “and when he calls, you had better answer.”

Milo caught the 4:00 P. M. return train, and a little before five, as they were approaching Wilmington, he called Tina, who was at home with Stephanie. They’d ordered delivery Chinese, with an extra dish of kung pao chicken for him. “It’ll be clotty and cold by the time you get here.”

“Just how I like it.”

“You find out anything about Alan?”

“Not much. I’ll tell you when I get back,” he said, though he doubted he would tell her anything, because she and Stephanie would not be there. They would either be with Janet Simmons, or-and, preferably, he realized-with Yevgeny. They would be safe, and he could finally be free to do whatever he needed in order to assure their continued safety. One thing at a time, though. “Have you found Penelope?”

“No,” she said.

“And the eyes?” he asked.

“Eyes?”

“You know.”

“Oh, right. I see traces,” she said, and in the background, Stephanie said, “Stop looking at my eyes!”

He fully expected his new phone to ring sometime during the ride, but it was his old one that rang a little after six, with an unlisted number. Hesitantly, he answered it. “Hello?”

“Milo! It’s Billy. I’ve got some good news for you.”

“Billy?”

“Billy Morales. Redman Transcontinental.”

He didn’t know if laughing would be appropriate, so he just said, “Right. Hello, Billy.”

“Now you’ve got it. Listen, if you’re still on the market, we’ve got an attractive offer on the table for you. It may require a little more travel than you were interested in, but if you take a look-”

“Billy,” Milo said. “Do you mind if I call you back tomorrow? I’m kind of busy now.”

“Well, sure,” Morales said, sounding vaguely confused. “Listen, if you’re getting offers elsewhere you can be up front about it with me. You know that. Redman knows how to negotiate.”

“That’s not it, Billy. Trust me. Tomorrow?”

“Roger,” Morales said, and Milo hung up.

Milo reached Penn Station at six forty-five. He took the subway to Park Slope, rocking monotonously with other passengers-of-many-nations, thinking of Gabi’s excitement over the international face of this city. She was right to love it.

At Garfield Place, he checked the street for watchers, found none, then climbed the stairs. Though he heard the quiet murmur of a television from Raymond’s door, at his own he heard silence. No television, no talking, no walking. The door was unlocked. He shut it behind himself and said, “Girls?” There was no answer. It was twenty minutes before eight o’clock.

He took a breath, leaning against the door as he locked the bolt. This was what he had wanted, what he had planned for, but there was no satisfaction. No matter that they knew their captor, and that they knew Milo had arranged their abduction, they had to be scared. That was normal; it was human. Now, he could move forward. He could be open with the senators. He could-and this seemed the only option-play a double game against Zhu.

It was during this momentary rush of optimism that he smelled it in the air. Mixed into the fragrance of soy sauce and his kung pao chicken, a vague odor of shit and, beneath it, sulfur. He let go of the front door and stepped slowly forward. As he left the foyer, the living room opened up, coming into view. Everything was correct-the television, the tables, the chairs-but in the middle of the room, lying with his head turned to the side in a pool of blood soaking into the gray rug, was his father, a look of surprise on the visible half of his face.

His throat closed, hardening, and he couldn’t swallow. He waited, forcing the air into his lungs, holding onto the wall. Closed his eyes; opened them. The old man was still there.

Before approaching the body, Milo ran without noise to the bedrooms and bathroom, checking behind doors and under beds until, sure that the place was empty, he returned to the living room and gingerly touched Yevgeny’s neck. Ignoring the stink from his postdeath bowel movement, he slid his hand down the back of Yevgeny’s shirt to check his temperature; there was still a trace of warmth. The Tourist part of him thought, This happened minutes ago. The human part of him was back in a claustrophobic Moscow living room, at the beginning of his stay, listening to a KGB colonel laugh at a joke his teenaged son had just butchered in his grammar-school Russian.

Compartmentalization was failing him; he could feel it. He got to his feet and stepped back and stood straight against a door frame, as if the building could support him, and wiped away the tears. He didn’t want to sit because he feared he would never be able to rise again. He took out his cell phone and looked at it through blurred vision, then put it away again. There was no one to call. If Janet Simmons had collected his family, then she would call when they were safe. Was waiting the only option?

No. He could assemble facts. That’s what you did in situations like this-you gathered facts from witnesses.

He carefully stepped out into the corridor and went to Raymond’s door. The television was still on. He knocked three times, then did it again, louder. He listened, wondering if his neighbor was passed out drunk again, then checked the door-it was locked. Milo withdrew. Even if Raymond had heard something, he wouldn’t have heard enough to tell Milo who had them.

He shoved two pieces of Nicorette into his mouth and returned to his apartment, chewing vigorously. He skirted past Yevgeny’s body and went into the kitchen. There was vodka, but he limited himself to a single shot to take the edge off. By the time he set the empty glass down, his eyes were drenched again. He wiped at them, trying to remember his training, thinking that if he had to try to remember it, then it was of no use to him anymore.

Yevgeny had come to take them away. That much he understood. Had he gathered them, only to be attacked by Zhu’s men? Or had he come late, after Simmons had removed them, and stumbled upon Zhu’s men picking over the place, wondering what had happened?

He dialed Tina’s number. A melody cut through the silence, and he found her Nokia on an arm of the sofa. Then, unsure why, he called Penelope Drummond. Her phone, he was told, either was outside the network range or turned off.

That’s when he heard another phone ring, and at first he thought it was Yevgeny’s. He took two steps toward the corpse before realizing it was coming from his own pocket. He took out the iPhone and, without checking the display, answered it. “Where are they?”

A pause, then Xin Zhu’s voice said, “Out of the way.”

“Do you have them?”

“They’re not with me right now, if that’s what you mean.”

Milo opened his mouth, but forced himself not to say the words that had formed in the back of his throat: You’re a dead man now. Xin Zhu seemed to understand his position, for he said, “Now, please don’t engage in outrage, or threats, or anything you’ll later regret. You’ve only brought this upon yourself, Mr. Weaver.”

Dizziness set in, and the sickness he’d been holding back spread through his body. “This wasn’t necessary.”

“It was, and you know it. Mr. Drummond proved that. All you need to know now is that the orders I give you are to be followed without hesitation. Are we clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Xin Zhu said. “Now get rid of the phone and go do your job.”