An American Spy

12

He arrived at JFK’s Terminal Three, with its distinctive flying saucer roof, just before eight in the morning. He was a blank slate. He’d left behind all his papers, his wallet, his phone, and cut the tags out of his navy suit. All he carried was a folded stack of cash and two blister packs of Nicorette. When he climbed out of the taxi, he had to pause to avoid getting hit by porters, uniformed police, and fellow travelers. It took him a moment to get his bearings because airports, where he had once felt at home, were now anathema to him. Leticia Jones was already approaching with a sultry smile.

“Hey, baby,” she said, kissing his cheeks. She looked perky in her striped business skirt as she led him by the elbow through the initial security check and into the airy but crowded terminal.

“Where to?” he asked, though he had trouble finding the breath to speak.

She walked him to one of the departure screens, full of the world’s cities. “You choose.”

“What?”

“How about Vegas?” she said, noting a nine thirty flight.

He turned to stare at her. He knew how he looked-knew that his eyes were a mess-but didn’t give a damn.

“Boston, then?” she suggested. “Cancun?”

“What the hell’s going on?”

“No,” she said after a moment. “I think Mexico City will do quite nicely.”

They stood in line at the Delta counter. Behind them, a family chatted merrily about terrorists, while ahead of them a trio of Mexican businessmen exchanged occasional words in Spanish, but Milo and Leticia said nothing to one another. Milo watched faces. It didn’t take long to spot Chaudhury, clutching a newspaper beside a family camped around their luggage. There might have been more, but his vision wasn’t cooperating; it blurred over every few seconds. The same was true of his thoughts, and he found himself thinking that, had he known then what he knew now, he would have killed Chaudhury in D.C.

When they reached the counter, Leticia opened her small purse and took out two well-thumbed passports. “Two for the nine thirty-five to Mexico City.”

“You have reservations?” asked the clerk, a diminutive brunette with olive skin.

“It’s under Frederickson,” she said and nodded at Milo. “That’s him.” She leaned across the counter, and in a high whisper added, “ He’s in a mood today. ”

Like you wouldn’t believe, he thought.

The clerk suppressed a grin, then checked their passports-Gwendolyn Davis and Sam Frederickson-and printed out boarding passes. “Any luggage to check?”

“Just us,” said Leticia, then grabbed Milo’s arm. “Come on, honey.”

While they waited in the winding line for security, he saw Chaudhury with a cell phone to his ear, calling in their status. Leticia seemed to notice him staring, so he said, “You reserved the tickets.”

“You gotta reserve,” she said. “This plane’s always full.”

“What if I’d said Cancun?”

She smiled. “Mr. Frederickson made a lot of reservations for this morning.”

They made it smoothly through security, and as they were slipping their shoes back on Milo said, “Should I be confused?”

“Well, I hope so.”

They reached Gate 5 a little before nine, but there was no space for them to sit, so they leaned against a column. Milo’s damaged intestine was speaking to him in the coagulated voice of despair, and he was sure he couldn’t pull this off. He couldn’t sit in a plane with Leticia Jones and fly to Mexico. The only thing he could conceivably do was lie on the hard floor, close his eyes, and die. Would that save them? He didn’t know, but he suspected it might. Then Leticia said, “Chill out, baby. You act like you’ve never been on a plane before.”

“I’d just like to know what’s going on.”

“So you can report it to your masters in Beijing?”

It was a sign of his utter incompetence that he stared at her hard for a whole second, shocked, and he read in her face the slight turn in mood that told him it had been a joke that, perhaps, was no longer a joke. She was wondering if she was going to have to kill him. He said, “What are you talking about?”

“Lighten up and just play along,” she said, then again looked down the busy corridor.

“You’re waiting for someone.”

“Maybe someone will come, maybe not.”

When boarding began, they joined the cattle-rush of passengers, stuck somewhere in the middle of the sweating horde, and once they were a couple of passengers from the front Leticia tugged his sleeve and said, “Time to go.” Docilely, he followed her out of the crowd and to the other side of the terminal, where they stood in another line at Dunkin’ Donuts and bought coffees and croissant sandwiches. He picked at his food, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to keep it down, for it just reminded him of the scent of Chinese food in the apartment, and then everything else.

They sat at Gate 12, which was mostly empty, and ignored the announcement calls for their passport names. Finally, the Mexico City flight took off, and they left through security. There was no sign of Chaudhury. They waited at a taxi stand, and when they got into a cab Leticia asked for Union Square Park. The driver, a light-skinned North African, turned on the meter and called in the ride, but when they reached Queens Boulevard Leticia handed him a fifty and asked him to take them instead to Port Morris, in the Bronx, but to keep it quiet from the dispatch. It took him two seconds of reflection to accept her proposal.

Though buses were the obvious next mode of transportation from Port Morris, it turned out that Leticia had left a hybrid Ford Escape a couple of streets inland. It was just after eleven.

Only once they were driving did she decide to relieve the tension. “We’re not flying out until after seven, so don’t worry yourself, but I hope you saw those shadows in the airport. You did, didn’t you?”

“An Indian guy,” said Milo.

“And…?”

He blinked at her. “Is this a test?”

“There was a white chick with him. I doubt I lost them-at least, I hope not-but I think we’re being pretty convincing.”

“Who are they?”

“Chinese, probably, but maybe Homeland’s gotten wind of something.” She sniffed, and he wondered if that was a pointed remark. Had his call to Janet Simmons been heard by everyone? But she only said, “It’s best we assume the Chinese.”

“Leticia?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Where the hell are we going?”

“We’re going for a bite and a drink. Couldn’t you use one?”

She drove up the Major Deegan Expressway and then across the Hamilton and Washington bridges to reach New Jersey, where she took Bergen Boulevard down to North Bergen, full of heavy redbrick buildings and shops. She turned off the main drag beside the park and finally pulled up at a corner Mexican restaurant called Puerto Vallarta, which was busy with a lunchtime crowd. She’d called ahead and reserved a seat under the name Jenny.

As they were seated, Leticia asked for a pitcher of margaritas. “Smile, baby,” she told Milo, but he thought he might explode. He thought that if she made another joke he would smash his head against the table until he bled. Maybe that would cut through the black, dizzying funk that had invaded him as he sat beside his father’s body in his living room. He drank two more shots of vodka from the bottle, looking at the old man’s matted hair and the loose skin on his fingers, trying to escape his memories and regrets and focus on what this meant, and what it required of him.

When the pitcher came, she filled his glass and said, “Drink up now. It’s gonna be dry as hell where we’re going.”

He raised his head at that. It was a hint, but he didn’t bother speculating aloud. He sipped his margarita, then, like a man just out of the desert, poured it down his throat until it was nearly empty. Either it would help him or it would kill him. That was how he was starting to see the world.

“I think your doctor would frown on that,” she said, slipping a straw into her glass.

He took a long look at her, his first sustained gaze that day. He’d been a Tourist himself, and knew that everything she showed him-the cool exterior, the impeccable beauty, the style and the humor-was simply for show. There was another woman just beneath the surface. A killer, yes, but someone who had been born to a home and been a child and a teen and a young adult, someone who had ended up in a world that most people would run from. She’d had her chance to leave when the department had crumbled, but she hadn’t taken it. He said, “Why’d you come back?”

She didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. “What else am I gonna do?”

“I’ve seen you in action-you could do a lot,” he said. “And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Every Tourist keeps an escape plan on ice. Somewhere, you’ve stashed another name and a bundle of cash.”

She wasn’t going to deny it; there was no point. A Tourist without an escape route wasn’t much of a Tourist. “Maybe I’m afraid of boredom,” she said finally. Then she asked, “You know what I did before this?”

“Tell me.”

“I was teaching English, if you can believe it. In Hong Kong.”

“You know Mandarin?”

“That must have been on the recruiter’s mind.”

“But that’s not enough,” he said after a moment, and it felt better, just a little, to think about this and not himself. “Something in your history tipped them off. Did you murder someone?”

“Nearly,” she said, thinking briefly about whatever story lay behind that one word. “No, no corpses littering my past. But I was involved with some… ladies in the Bay Area. I think I made my character clear there-I tried to get them to go militant. One of them, it turned out, was from the Company.”

That answer demanded more questions, but he only said, “You’ve got other talents. You should walk away from this. Go figure out what you really want to do.”

She seemed to seriously consider that, then said, “What happens if, after a few months, I realize that this is the only thing I want to do?”

“Well, it means you need to see a shrink.”

“Has that helped you?”

It was a jab at his and Tina’s couples therapy, and he wondered how and why she knew about it. “It’s a way to pass the time,” he said.

“And keep the wife off your back.”

The impulse to smash his head into the table swelled again.

He had known from the start that he would have to move his father. A corpse in the middle of the living room would, within days, attract attention, particularly in that heat wave. Like a Tourist, he’d thought in terms of time and decomposition, not in terms of parenthood.

He first searched the body, wallet with credit cards, frequent-flier cards, and hundreds of dollars and euros, which he pocketed. There was a passport, two phones, restaurant receipts, and a small sheet of paper with a single typewritten line, in capitals:

THEY ARE SAFE

Which, of course, was the note that Yevgeny had planned to leave for Milo, the note that never even made it out of his pocket.

It took a while, for though Yevgeny Primakov had lost weight in recent years, and more from blood leaked from the holes in his heart and his right lung, he had died a solid man with a barrel chest; he was heavy. Grunting, Milo finally got him into his arms and, like a groom with his bride, carried him into his and Tina’s bedroom. The springs protested from the sudden weight. Milo sat on the edge of the bed a moment and then, inexplicably, lay down beside his father’s corpse. He wanted to think clearly, to wash away all the distractions that provoked panic, for panic was what Xin Zhu was depending on. Panic was what stuttered his thinking, interrupting it every forty seconds with an image of two more corpses on this bed, scattering his thoughts into the stratosphere.

That image came back to him now, over his pork enchiladas, but in his brief vision their bodies were not in a bed but in a forest, or a park, mangled and twisted among branches. He pushed his plate away.

Leticia was halfway through her own enchiladas, which were filled with refried beans and cheese. She frowned at him. “You don’t like them?”

“Had a big breakfast,” he said, then refilled his glass with margarita.

They left at three thirty and took the traffic-clogged Route 1 to Newark Liberty International. Leticia parked in the short-term lot for Terminal C, and as she used a spare T-shirt to wipe off the seats and the dashboard and the steering wheel, Milo sighed. “Someone got their car stolen, just so we could get some Mexican food?”

His comment seemed to annoy her. She tossed the keys down by the gas pedal, got out, and shut the door with her elbow. She walked on, not bothering to check if he was following.

Once they were inside, she gave him another nugget of information about their dry destination. “We’re going to Saudi Arabia.”

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Can you be more specific?”

“Jeddah, okay? We’ve got a meeting. That’s all you’re getting now.”

They stood in line, and again Leticia took over, handing over passports. Rosa Mumu, Sudanese, and John Nadler, Canadian. They already had reservations for the 7:25 Continental flight to Frankfurt, landing the next morning at 9:15, as well as the 12:30 Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Jeddah, and upon learning this Milo felt a brief tingle of possibility. Three hours in Frankfurt could be very useful.

In the line for security, they compared notes-there was no sign of Chaudhury or the “white chick” Leticia had seen at JFK. She seemed disappointed by this, and when he pressed, she let out a little more. “Well, you know, it just bothers me. To think we’re going through all this, and whoever they are might be so stupid as to assume we actually went to Mexico.”

“If it’s Homeland, they don’t need to follow us. They just watch from the cameras.”

“Yeah. If,” she said. “Anyway, there’s time. Once they realize the plane landing in Mexico City doesn’t have us, they’ve got four hours to figure out where we are. If they can’t get the job done in that amount of time, then they’re not worth wasting our time with.”

He waited for more, but there was nothing she wanted to add.

It wasn’t until they were waiting at the gate, Milo nearly passing out, that he felt her elbow nudge his ribs. She was smiling. “You see that?”

He did. It was Dennis Chaudhury, strolling up the aisle with his newspaper. He settled in another chair at their gate, as if he were a complete stranger.

“Oh, well,” she said as Chaudhury opened a copy of the day’s Times. “The cojones on that man.”

“Want me to get rid of him?” Milo asked, stifling a yawn.

“Certainly not.” Then, giving him a look, she added, “Baby, I don’t think you could get rid of him if you wanted. You’ve had one too many margaritas.”

“As you command,” he said, then climbed to his feet. “I’ll just be a minute.”

He knew she was watching him, half expecting him to approach Chaudhury. Yet he didn’t have to approach the man to have a chat. He walked directly to the bathroom without looking around and, just inside, waited. A bald man was washing his hands, then left. Ten seconds later, Chaudhury entered, the newspaper folded under his arm.

That Chaudhury had no idea what awaited him was apparent in the fact that he wasn’t ready for Milo’s lunging kick into his stomach. It took all his failing strength, but the shot was true, hitting him squarely in the stomach, his toes perhaps even bruising the man’s ribs. Chaudhury stumbled back, and Milo snatched one of his floundering hands and swung him deeper into the bathroom, where he stumbled and slid across the floor, on his back, gasping. Milo also stumbled but regained his balance and dropped onto Chaudhury with his elbows down, one in his stomach, the other in his face, connecting with his jaw. Milo ached all over, but Chaudhury was bleeding now, disoriented. Milo climbed up, straddled him, and sat on his chest, then pounded a fist into his temple. He did it a second time before Chaudhury got out a single word: “Stop!”

It was a word Milo wasn’t able to conjure up himself, but once it was out in the air he realized, even running solely on adrenaline, that it was the only thing to do. Kill him, and everything would evaporate, including his family. Milo breathed heavily, staring at the tiled walls, as if the man between his legs didn’t exist. His mouth hung open, saliva dripping down his chin. He climbed to his feet and walked to the tile wall and leaned back against it. He watched Chaudhury slowly, achingly, climb to his feet and limp to the sinks. As the noise of running water filled the bathroom, Chaudhury said, “You made a fucking mistake, Milo Weaver.”

“He’ll understand.”

“Pretty presumptuous.”

Milo watched him wash his mouth and face and stare with dismay at his reflection. “You don’t have any idea, do you?”

“About what?” Chaudhury asked, angry.

“He’s got them.”

Chaudhury had a finger in his mouth, massaging his gums. He looked in the reflection at Milo, confused. “Who?”

“And my father’s dead.”

Chaudhury drew his finger out of his mouth; it was wet and pink. “You’re talking about your family.”

Milo didn’t answer. He walked over to the urinals, unzipped, and began to pee.

“Look, Milo, that wasn’t me. He Qiang-that’s the guy who would’ve done it.”

Milo stared at his clear stream. “You’re telling me his name?”

“What the fuck do I care? I’m a private contractor. He’s one of Xin’s men. He’s the one with the philosophy.”

“Tell me more,” Milo said as he put himself away and zipped up.

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know.” Chaudhury leaned close to the mirror, touching the side of his eye. “He Qiang brings the orders and pays the fees. I know of the man I’m working for-Xin Zhu-but I’ve never met him. And I like it that way.”

Milo left the urinals and ran water in the sink beside Chaudhury, rinsing his hands. “Description?”

“He Qiang? Big guy, heavy but not fat. How do you describe a Chinese face? Round, slant-eyed. Mole on his cheek that needs trimming.”

Milo used paper towels to dry his hands, then walked out.

Leticia was watching him intently as he crossed back to the gate, yawning into the back of his hand. The adrenaline was fading, leaving him wasted. He crashed down beside her.

“ So? ” Leticia asked.

“So I peed. Where’s the guy?”

“He’s in the bathroom, you idiot!”

Milo widened his eyes, then pointed at where he’d come from. “ That bathroom?”

“What the hell are you up to?”

Milo shook his head in feigned surprise, then nodded. “Oh, look. There he is.”

As a flight attendant announced that Continental Flight 50 to Frankfurt would soon commence boarding, Chaudhury walked swiftly and purposefully out of the bathroom, and though his skin was dark, there was a definite redness on the left side of it. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, and he was pressing a wet paper towel to the side of his mouth. The red spots on the white paper were visible from where they sat. Then he did something that Milo hadn’t expected-he left. He turned away from the gate and walked away.

“That’s weird,” said Milo.

Quickly, Leticia snatched his right wrist and raised it, turning his hand around to better see the bright red, slightly swollen knuckles. With a disgusted sound, she threw it down again. “Idiot.”

“You want them to follow us, right?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Well, now they’ll be sure to have someone waiting in Jeddah. And just so you know, they are Chinese.”

She gave him a look that suggested-what? That she was impressed? That she was about to kill him? He had no idea, but in the tired euphoria that followed what he’d done he didn’t care. He had a name, He Qiang, that went with a face he’d seen outside his daughter’s summer camp, and he had a new possibility in Frankfurt. He felt more like a Tourist every moment.