An American Spy

5

What she saw when she stepped out of that bathroom surprised her. It had been… four? No, five years. She’d come to New York for a Berg amp; DeBurgh corporate retreat, and one of the American lawyers, a loudmouth named Patrick Hardemann, had over drinks mentioned his daughter, Stephanie, and miserably admitted that “of course she doesn’t carry the Hardemann name; she goes by her stepbastard’s name- Weaver. ” Intrigued, Alexandra quietly fished for the stepdad’s given name, then asked where they were living-Park Slope, Brooklyn.

She’d found him easily enough and called to suggest they meet for dinner. “I’d love to see your wife and daughter. Really, Milo, we are family.” Instead, he’d come alone to the restaurant and after minutes of evasion finally admitted the truth: His wife and daughter didn’t know that he had a sister, not even a half sister. They didn’t know about Yevgeny. They knew nothing about his Russian side.

She took the hint and later decided that the world had not become a smaller place because of this, not really, for she hadn’t had him in her life to begin with. After leaving for college, Milo Weaver had for all purposes dropped out of the Primakov clan. She convinced herself that she was satisfied to find him relatively happy and healthy-that would have to be enough. Besides, there was a certain poetry to it. For years Yevgeny had kept him a secret from his wife and daughters, and now Milo was keeping them a secret from his own wife and daughter.

Now, here he was again. He’d gotten himself involved in something, and whatever he’d done had killed their father.

What surprised her was that Yevgeny had ever considered giving him the reins to the Library. Who was this anxious-looking man with gaunt cheeks and flakes of gray? The one who had said to Erika’s assistant, If you can’t find them, I want you to have me killed, and meant it? This was the kind of man you used in order to get at someone worthy; a man like this was never the final goal.

Yet it was he, her brother, Yevgeny’s “holy terror.”

He’s very easy to underestimate, Erika had said.

“Alexandra,” Milo said, his voice breaking.

She walked up to him. This was the reason Yevgeny was dead. She thought she might cry, for she hadn’t cried yet, so to stop herself she said, “You’d better talk, Milo. Or I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

His hands had already started to move forward, perhaps for an embrace, but now he pulled them back, palms out. “Okay.” He retreated a step. “Wait. What are you doing here? Don’t assume you can trust these people.”

It was an odd thing to say, but then, Yevgeny wouldn’t have told Milo what her job was these days. “I’m here on my own,” she told him. “They’re assisting me.”

He blinked. “Jesus. You worked with him?”

“If by him you mean our father, then yes. Now, speak.”

Milo rubbed his forehead. “He was there-in Brooklyn-to take care of my family.”

Christ, he was slow-witted. “I know that, Milo. Remember, I’ve been talking to Erika Schwartz.”

“No names, ” Oskar said, irritated.

They both ignored him. Milo nodded, thinking. “Right. I hadn’t known he’d brought her into it.”

“Sounds like there’s a lot you don’t know.”

Again, he nodded some silent agreement, then frowned. “It’s about Alan Drummond.”

“ Mein Gott,” said Oskar.

“And Xin Zhu,” she said. “But your precious CIA is really at the core, isn’t it? Look, Milo, maybe you don’t know what happens at this point in the story, so I’ll explain. This is where you tell us exactly what they’re up to.”

“I can tell you what I’ve seen, but I don’t know why they’re doing it all.”

“They want revenge against the Chinese.”

“Apparently not,” Milo said, checking his watch. “This has to be quick.”

“Then talk.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, where Oskar had stationed himself before, and told her in a quick, efficient manner what he knew and how he knew it. It was a story he’d obviously repeated to himself endlessly, pruned of extraneous details, and she imagined that he’d been working it over in order to better understand it himself. Did it make her more sympathetic, knowing how Xin Zhu had threatened him? Not really. When he finished, she said, “You’ve got to have some opinion by this point.”

“The only thing that makes me think this is not a revenge operation is what I was told during one conversation with Irwin and Collingwood. Maybe that was only for my benefit. Maybe they know I’m being run by the Chinese, or perhaps they suspected the safe house was bugged. All I know for sure is that what I’m doing with Leticia is a ruse to distract the Chinese from something else. Leticia thinks it’s another attack, but they’re not keeping her in the loop.”

“Where is Alan Drummond?” she asked as Oskar’s phone rang. He answered it.

“No one knows,” said Milo. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

Oskar said, “Jones is heading for the elevators.”

Milo stood but didn’t leave. He seemed to be waiting for something, so she said, “I talked to Drummond,” then wondered if she should have said anything.

Milo looked at her, frowning again.

“Before,” she said, “when he disappeared. He told me very little, but he did say that your family would be safe. He’d made sure of it.”

Milo’s eyes grew but then relaxed, the light gone from them. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he said and walked to the door. Before leaving, he turned back and spoke to Oskar. “An attempt. Try an attempted kill. That would help clear me with Jones. And if you slip and accidentally get me here,” he said, tapping the center of his forehead, “then no hard feelings.”

Before either of them could answer, Milo was gone.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Oskar took his tote bag from under the bed and looped it over his shoulder. “I don’t believe a word he said.”

“He sounded convincing to me.”

“He always does, but without knowing exactly what he wants, there’s no way of knowing the truth of anything Milo Weaver says. Even then, you can’t be sure.”

It was the highest compliment she’d heard applied to Milo, even higher than Yevgeny’s admission that the teenaged Milo had been right about his corrupted soul. Maybe there really was more to him than met the eye.

Oskar was listening to his phone again. He hung up. “They’re taking a taxi to the airport.”

Francisco was already at King Abdulaziz International, and he called Alexandra while she and Oskar were on the road, heading there. “They got tickets to Hong Kong,” he said, “one stop in Dubai.”

“Are they at the gate?”

“Not yet.”

“Call back when they are,” she said.

Francisco verified that they were at the gate for the Hong Kong flight as Alexandra was entering the airport, but it turned out that Cathay Pacific’s Flight 746 was full. She and Oskar booked themselves on a Qatar flight, four hours later. Oskar called for someone to watch Dubai, in case Milo and Leticia left the flight during the layover. Alexandra had two agents in Hong Kong, and she called them to head to the airport. Oskar insisted on sending two of his own. “That’s overkill,” Alexandra told him. “Jones will see it immediately.” They settled on one of Alexandra’s and one of his.

She remained in phone contact with Francisco before and after security, and once he reported that Milo and Leticia had entered the jet bridge leading to Flight 746, he told her, “It’s real, but I’ll wait to be sure.”

Alexandra and Oskar were in the air when the call came from Dubai-Flight 746 had landed and taken off again. One of Oskar’s people, a Swede named Gunnar, was able to get on board and had verified that Milo and Leticia were sitting together in coach, above the wing.

They stopped briefly in Doha, Qatar, by which time Flight 746 was over India, and by the time Alexandra and Oskar were nearly out of Indian airspace, Flight 746 had landed in Hong Kong at six in the morning, Sunday. Oskar followed Gunnar’s reports of their progress to the taxi ranks, while Alexandra’s phone bleeped messages from an agent named Dachshund of their progress outside the airport, heading toward town. It didn’t take long before a heavily made-up stewardess leaned over Alexandra and Oskar and whispered threats if they didn’t turn off their phones. She pointed at the back of the seats in front of them, where two radiotelephones were embedded into the rear of the headrests. “That’s why we have these,” she said. Neither Alexandra nor Oskar, however, wanted to use a credit card. Not for this trip.

Their solution was to creep back to the toilets, one at a time to avoid suspicion, and squat in the cramped space, typing out messages and reading replies, and by the time they were approaching Hong Kong International they had accumulated enough of a narrative to begin speculations.

Upon landing after their eleven-hour flight, Milo and Leticia had taken a taxi directly to the grand Peninsula Hotel. Leticia paid the driver-she was the only one carrying a bag. They entered the hotel, one of Oskar’s men following. He reported that they made it almost to the elevators before Milo placed a hand on Leticia’s arm and whispered to her. There seemed to be a disagreement, for Leticia clearly wanted to reach the elevator, but Milo kept squeezing her arm to restrain her. Finally, Leticia acquiesced, and they left the hotel. Outside (from here, Alexandra’s man, Dachshund, reported), rather than asking for a taxi, they walked around the corner to Nathan Road, then back to the next hotel at the intersection with Middle Road, the Kowloon, where they checked into a room under the names Gwendolyn Davis and John Nadler.

“They saw something they didn’t like,” Alexandra said as their plane descended toward the island.

“You mean your brother saw something he didn’t like. Jones wasn’t sure. The lobby was full-somebody there spooked Milo.”

“Maybe it was your guy.”

“Impossible,” Oskar said, then chewed his upper lip, stretching out his thin mustache.

“They weren’t checking in,” she pointed out after a moment. “So who were they there to see? Alan Drummond?”

“Maybe Xin Zhu.”

“Can your people access the hotel records?”

Oskar winked and took out his phone again.

Sure enough, by the time they were in their taxi, riding down the highway skirting the green, mountainous edge of Lantau Island and watching the arched backs of green islets sticking out of the water, Oskar’s phone bleeped and informed him that, as of yesterday, one Sebastian Hall had been checked into room 212.

They crossed the Lantau Link and on Tsing Yi headed south to Stonecutters Island’s walls of colored containers and stacked highways before diving deep into Kowloon’s dense metropolis of skyscrapers and harbors. Signs in Chinese and English pointed them toward Victoria Harbor, and with so many signs and faces to look at neither bothered to talk any further about their purpose in being there. It wasn’t the paranoia of Xin Zhu or Milo Weaver; it was the sensory pleasure of being faced with such a richness of colors.

Once they got out in front of the Peninsula Hotel’s classic European facade along Salisbury Road, a white-gloved doorman opening the door for her, Alexandra immediately spotted Dachshund, a tall Malaysian with a mustache. He gave her only a cursory glance, signifying that things were normal. Inside, Oskar pointed out his agent, a short, heavyset woman talking loudly with what appeared to be a plainclothes security guard, distracting his attention from their entrance.

Alexandra handed Oskar her passport. “You check in for both of us. I’m going up.”

“I’m coming,” Oskar said, his smile disappearing.

“I’ve talked to him before. We have a relationship. Call me when you’ve got the room.”

He stared at her a moment, hard, then headed back to the front desk.

She shared the elevator with an elderly Chinese woman who got out on two, which gave Alexandra a chance to see that the second floor was empty of human surveillance, as was the third floor. It was after nine in the morning, and some doors had newspapers like mats in front of them, others soiled room service trays. She took the stairwell back down to the second floor. By then, the elderly woman was inside her room, and Alexandra was alone. She found 212 quickly enough, and took a breath. She tapped on the door. Silence. She banged with knuckles and, just as before, laid on a thick Yorkshire. “Charlie? I know you’re in there!” Pause. Nothing. She’d expected him to at least say something, given their rapport. Three more bangs with the side of her fist. “Charlie, I’m not leaving! I-”

The door to 212 clicked and, almost simultaneously, swung open. Light from the hall made only minor work of the darkness in the room, where the blinds had been pulled tight, and all she saw of the man was what was visible from behind the door frame. The toe of a patent leather shoe. A grayish hand pointing a SIG SAUER 9 mm at her. Half of a face.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re not Charlie.”

“No,” said the man. “Now go back to where you came from. Now. ”