The Nearest Exit

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12

TO THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2008

1

The argument had come to Milo all at once in a voice that his mother would have known. Big. The bigger voice that would never lie to him.

It proved that, no matter what Tina or Bipasha Ray thought, he really had been listening to his wife.

I even take it a step further sometimes and think that maybe his genius lies in the fact that the original cover, the first one I’ve peeled off and thrown away, that that’s the real one. That I’ve long ago abandoned what really is Milo Weaver. That it’s somewhere in the trash and I’ll never find it again.

How had the sequence of thoughts played out? He wasn’t sure. “Genius”-that word had probably made him think of Xin Zhu, whom he still admired deeply. Zhu had been on his mind anyway, for over the last days elements from Yevgeny’s file had come to him unbidden at unpredictable times. Like in the middle of couples therapy, at the mention of the word “genius.” Tina had planted the seed: A genius gives you the real story with the first layer of cover, so that once you’ve discarded it, it’s no longer viable.

Then he remembered her saying, How much time has to pass before your life stops being classified, huh? It never occurs to you that by then it might be too late.

Time. Too late.

The inverse: too early.

He recalled Marko Dzubenko and his drunken time with Xin Zhu. On the Chinese New Year, February 7.

But there was one thing this Zhu couldn’t figure out, and it irritated him. This Weaver guy. He was the one who figured out what was going on, and as a result everyone wanted him. Homeland Security wanted him for murder. The Company wanted him dead so the story wouldn’t get out. But this man, Zhu said, he lives the most charmed of lives. He survived. That really confused him. He said Weaver spent a couple months in prison, and his marriage fell apart, but he did survive. Now, not only was he still living and breathing, he was even working for his old employer again. He wanted to know how he pulled off that trick.

Then Henry Gray, on Sunday, March 2:

We’d had a ton of progress over the last week…

What kind of progress?

Well, we learned what happened to you, for instance.

What happened to me?

You survived, didn’t you? Grainger’s letter told us you were investigating, but we weren’t sure if you were one of the casualties or not. Everyone wanted your ass, after all. You got out of prison and went to live in New Jersey-we knew that-but then you disappeared, and we didn’t know until this week that you really were still alive.

How’d you figure that out?

Ask Rick. He came in with the information.

The timing was wrong. Xin Zhu already knew about Milo’s return to Tourism, but he waited until that last week with Gray to let the journalist know what he had been aware of all along.

He remembered that part of Xin Zhu’s technique was to become the kind of man you would like. For Gray, he was a serious and angry spy. For Dzubenko, he was a drunkard and a womanizer. What if he’d done the same to Milo? Because he did like Xin Zhu, a brilliant spymaster with an acute sense of humor, that quality so lacking in their business. What if Milo’s Zhu wasn’t the real one either?

None of this, though, would have come to him had he not read that carefully collated file that his father had broken into his apartment to leave for him. His father, it turned out, knew much more about Xin Zhu than Drummond did, and Milo had stayed up until four in the morning, reading about the fifty-seven-year-old man from Xianyang, near the ancient city of Xi’an, who had been swept up by the Cultural Revolution, then eaten by it as his middle-school education landed him in the Down to the Countryside Movement, which sucked up five years of his life, until 1974, farming wheat in Inner Mongolia. He survived, and upon his return went to work for the Central Investigation Division, moving on to the Guoanbu in the eighties. In 1982, he married Qi Wan (1960-1989), and that same year his only child-a son, Delun (1982-2007)-was born.

A two-year posting in Bonn followed, then under different names he spent three years in Moscow and two more each in Jerusalem and Tehran. He returned to Beijing in 1993 and set up shop within the Sixth Bureau, focusing on counterintelligence, which was where he remained to this day. His wife and son had died prematurely-no causes listed-but he had not remarried. There was one known mistress in Guangzhou. According to the file, he was a moderate drinker and smoked rarely, but when he did he preferred a Hamlet brand cigarillo, manufactured in Japan.

There had also been stories, and while sitting in Dr. Ray’s office one had come to him, while Tina stared hard.

June 1987. According to source ESTER Zhu was asked by Beijing to acquire Soviet troop positions and battle plans in the Outer Manchuria region, which was accomplished within one week. Zhu’s technique, as related to ESTER by another source, was to convince Lieutenant colonel Konstantin Denisov, then based in Ulan Bator, that his wife, Valera, had discovered the identity of his mistress in Moscow. Denisov returned to Moscow immediately, and his second-in-command, Major Oleg Sergeyev-whose assistant, Lieutenant Feodor Bunin, was in the pay of the Guoanbu before his 1989 discovery and subsequent execution-took over. Bunin, now with complete access, passed the information on to his handlers.

“You’re a fucking nut, Weaver.”

“I’m afraid not, Alan.”

Drummond submitted. He took Milo into the elevator and brought him up to the sixteenth floor, and into his life. There was a petite, rather sensual-looking blonde in the apartment, his wife, Penelope, who was unfazed by the surprise visitor. When Drummond introduced Milo and said, “Pen, we’re going to have to use the office for a little bit. You mind bringing us some ice?” she grinned devilishly and replied, “How very fifties, dear.”

Once they were settled in a room that was more like a lounge than an office, Drummond opened up a cabinet and started rattling off the names on the bottles. Milo stopped him at Smirnoff; then Penelope came in with a leather-skinned ice bucket. Milo couldn’t help but smile. “This really is the fifties,” he said to her.

“Golly shucks, it is,” she said, winking. “Thanks, hon,” said Drummond.

Milo apologized again for the interruption and watched her close the door behind herself.

Drummond handed over a glass of iced vodka and said, “Great, isn’t she?”

“Really is, Alan.”

“Flirt with her any more, and I’ll have you erased.” He sat down with his Scotch, not smiling. “Now explain yourself.”

Milo took a breath and began with the time discrepancy, but Drummond blew that off. “One minor detail? Gray probably got it wrong.”

“It makes more sense if you step back and look at everything this way, imagining that Zhu does have a mole. Why, for instance, did he give up on his operation when I arrived in Budapest?”

“You said it yourself. He’d made his point.”

“That’s one way of looking at it. But let’s say his sense of humor isn’t as excellent as I believed. Guoanbu colonels don’t waste all this time-and expense, remember-just to make a point. So what else could he get out of it? If there is a mole, then that means he completed his objectives and wanted Tourism back in operation so that the information he had would be useful.”

“What information?”

“The information on how the department works.” Milo opened his hands, but Drummond didn’t speak, just stared, so he said, “Another curious fact: Zhu knew I was in Budapest. How did he know that? If he wasn’t watching your computer tracking me, then he was hearing it through Global Security, the firm that had tracked me there-and they reported directly to Irwin.”

Drummond frowned. “You’re talking in circles, Milo. Besides, it makes no sense. You don’t protect a mole by raising the specter of a mole. Not unless you’re going to frame someone else to divert suspicion, which never happened. The fact is that we never suspected the existence of a mole in the department until Zhu started to play with us.”

“Of course not. Because there’s no mole in the department. There never was.”

“Jesus Christ, Milo. Make some sense, okay?”

“The mole is on Nathan Irwin’s staff.”

All expression washed out of Drummond’s face. He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “It’s not going to work.”

“What?”

“This. You’re still after him, aren’t you? Listen-you think that if you ruin Irwin it’s going to make your marriage any better? I’ve got news for you-”

“No, Alan. You listen. And think. What’s the one result of Xin Zhu’s operation? What’s the one lasting change?”

“It’s made me into a permanent joke,” Drummond said, then shook his head. “Okay, what’s the one lasting change?”

“Irwin in control of the department.”

Drummond shook his head. “But he’s not. Not really. By Friday he and his staff are out of there.”

“Which is long enough to get access to all the department’s files.”

That seemed to make Drummond uncomfortable. “Go on.”

“From the beginning, the only operation we were sure Zhu knew about was the Sudanese operation. Right? He knew it inside and out.”

“We’ve been through this-he knew it all from a letter that Thomas Grainger wrote.”

Milo set aside his glass. “A beautiful coincidence. It’s the one operation that Irwin’s people were already familiar with, because Irwin himself ran it. Irwin told me that he knew next to nothing about what the department did before he took over. He stayed far away in order to protect himself. With one notable exception. The Sudan. His inner staff had to know about it.”

“Okay,” said Drummond, allowing him this one fact, “but by Friday he’s out of the department. That’s a lot of work for such a limited period of access.”

“You’re forgetting the other result of the entire game.”

“What’s that?”

“Myrrh. You recalled everyone-at Irwin’s insistence-and he and his staff were around to oversee the redeployment. He knows the names and go-codes of every Tourist you have. If I’m right, so does Xin Zhu.”

Drummond stared into his drink and thought through the implications.

“It does make sense, Alan. You just have to look at it. The timing. The details. I keep going over it, and I can’t find anything to kill the theory.”

Drummond finished his Scotch, refilled it, then opened a humidor full of cigars but didn’t take any out. He shut it, then opened it again, a nervous gesture. “Let me get this straight. First you tell me, yes, we have one. Then we don’t. Now, you’re telling me we do?”

“Not we, Alan. Not you.”

“Irwin. Right.”

Milo waited.

Finally, Drummond looked at his hands. “Okay. I’m willing to treat it as a serious possibility. The question is, what do we do about it?”

“We don’t do anything, Alan. I’m not in the department anymore, and I don’t want to be. I’m bringing this to you, and I’ll help look over some of the files, but I’m not taking part in any sting operation.”

Drummond shrugged that off. “I’ll bring in a couple of Tourists on the sly.”

“How big is Irwin’s staff? How many people are we talking about?”

“You met Grzybowski and Pearson-chief of staff and legislative director. There’ll be a lot of interns, as well as staff at his district office, but I think there’s only five more in the core D.C. group-I can get their names. Only those first two had direct access to the building and met with Tourists, but I’ll lay odds Irwin’s smuggling copies of files out of the twenty-second floor. In that case, all seven are possibilities.”

“Seven,” Milo said and sipped his vodka. “Not so many.”

“Not so few, either. Not with the kind of hunch you’re going on. If I round up seven congressional aides and put John on them, Irwin might just notice the disappearance of his entire staff. If I tell him one of them’s a mole, he’s going to ask for evidence. What do I do then? Bring you in?” He shook his head. “Besides, if you’re wrong the department will lose its last ally. Even if you’re right about it, Irwin will close us down before John’s even put on his gloves.” Drummond made a face, as if his Scotch had gone bad. “As much as it pains me, the only way might be to bring in some outside help. I know someone in the Bureau. Good guy, but-”

“But I’ll bet he’s interested in promotion,” Milo said. “When competing agencies start going after each other, friendship goes out the window.”

“Yeah,” Drummond said into his glass. “And if you choose another Company department, it’ll run straight up to Ascot, or to the Committee on Homeland Security. Either way, the department is dead in the water.”

“You almost sound like you give a damn, Milo.”

“Almost.”

Milo stuck out his glass, and, taking the hint, Drummond refilled it, saying, “We’ve gotten rid of everyone. If I make it a regular Tourist case, Irwin will hear about it and the mole will disappear. There’s just the two of us and whatever Tourists I can muster without anyone noticing.”

“You bring the files,” Milo said. “I’ll help you work through them. Maybe we can narrow it down. But I’m not sticking around for the whole show.”

“We can use the Bronx safe house.”

“Good. I don’t want to see you in public again. I think Irwin’s goons are still following me.”

The Scotch stopped halfway to Drummond’s mouth. “What?”

“It’s not important. We’ll just have to be careful.”

“Jesus.”

Milo didn’t share Drummond’s anxiety; he wouldn’t even later when he was heading home again, feeling the eyes of a young guy with glasses on the same subway car. The fact was that Milo had become the kind of dreaded creature that feels more comfortable evading surveillance and calculating the flow of information than discussing his feelings with a Long Island therapist while the eyes of his wife are on him.

He said, “If so, they saw me come here, but that’s fine. I’m visiting my old employer, asking for help finding work. The important thing is that I know they’re watching. Hopefully we’ll find a way to use that to our advantage.”

“Makes me wonder why you’re bothering with this at all. Don’t you have a marriage to suture back together?”

“Maybe I like you, Alan. Maybe I don’t want to see you lose your job. Maybe-and this is sort of disturbing-maybe I really buy your line about making Tourism humane.”

“That would make you the only one,” Drummond said, then laughed despite himself. He took another sip of his Scotch. “You still like him, don’t you?”

“Irwin?”

“No, Zhu.”

Milo shrugged. “He’s played this brilliantly.”

Drummond’s smile went away. “Before this is over, I’ll lay odds you lose that hero worship.”

“We’ll call it a bet.”

They both looked up at a knock on the door. “Yes?” Drummond called.

Penelope opened the door and knotted her arms. “Fellas, this fifties thing is getting pretty old. Is one of you going to cook me some dinner, or what?”

2

She began angry and, as hours passed and she kept getting recorded messages from his phone, moved steadily into the realm of worry. By the time she was giving Stephanie her bath, the worry was inching closer to panic. She showed none of these conflicting emotions to Stephanie, but children are antennas tuned to the frequency of hidden emotions. Stef knew something was up, and as she wiped shampoo from her eyes she said, “Where’s Dad?”

“He had some work to do.”

“But he doesn’t have a job. He’s unemployed.”

“Don’t you think he’s trying to find a job?”

“This late?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Then how come you keep trying to call him?”

Tina blinked at her. She was asking these questions with no particular malice, absentmindedly pushing a plastic power boat around the tub. “I want him to pick up some groceries,” Tina lied.

“Why don’t you go downstairs and buy stuff?”

“Because I’m giving you a bath.”

“I can take my bath myself. I am six. I’m big enough.”

“No, Little Miss. Not alone in the house you’re not.”

So it went, distracting Tina from her anger and worry, and once the water in the bath was draining and Stephanie was wrapped in a towel that stretched to her toes, they both heard the front door open, and Stephanie ran out in her towel shouting, “Dad! Dad!”

“Whoa,” Tina heard him tell their daughter. “You’re going to catch a cold.”

As they had done many times during their life together, they temporarily set aside their conflict and focused on Stef. He apologized for missing bathtime, sounding earnest, but it was a sign of her trust issues that she even questioned that.

They finished the drying together, and Milo read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Stephanie, while Tina took care of the dishes. She set aside a plate of chicken fingers and peas for Milo and placed it inside the microwave and left the door open-she had a feeling that if she didn’t, he’d eat it cold. He sometimes became that absentminded when his mind was elsewhere. Once, when he’d been dealing with some particularly vexing problem at the office, he’d even left the house without shoes, not noticing until he’d reached the street.

“She asleep?” she asked when he came out.

“Not yet. She wants to Skype with some friend in Botswana. Did you know she had a friend in Botswana?”

“That’s Unity Khama. It’s a class project. We used to do pen pals, but these days they don’t even know what a pen is.”

He snorted a laugh and heated up the dinner.

“So I guess you’ve got some talking to do,” she said.

“Can you wait a sec?”

He left as the microwave bleeped, and when he returned again he was carrying both of their coats. “Here,” he said, handing hers over. “Put this on. We’ll go upstairs.”

“What about Stef?”

“I told her we’d be out a few minutes, and not to unlock the door for anyone. Come on. She’ll be fine.”

“Why can’t we talk here?”

“Can you just indulge me?”

She wasn’t entirely sure, but she was willing to try. Dr. Ray had said that mistrust breeds more mistrust, and that the danger of this was that it spiraled out of control, particularly when it remained locked inside you. So she said, “Milo, right now I’m not feeling very indulgent.”

“I wouldn’t either,” he admitted, “but please.”

She put on her coat and went back to check on Stephanie, who was talking via video link to Unity, a bright-eyed black girl in Gaborone. They were both laughing, so she left them to their jokes and withdrew.

When they left the apartment, Milo made a show of locking the door from the outside, then led her upstairs to the rooftop-access door, which took a heavy key. A cold evening breeze scattered their hair. She said, “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of bugs.”

“Then I won’t tell you. But I’m trying not to hide things from you anymore. You don’t deserve it.”

“I think I’ve heard that before.”

“A few weeks ago, when I saw Yevgeny in Berlin, he told me that I didn’t give people enough credit, least of all you. He was right. You don’t deserve that. Come here,” Milo said and led her to the edge of the roof. Beyond it rooftops led toward Prospect Park; to the left lights twinkled in the distance, heading toward Manhattan. Milo was pointing directly down, though, to the right, at Garfield Street. “See that Chevy? The blue one.”

“Yeah?”

“The guy in it, he’s following me. I can’t be sure how long, but probably ever since I returned home.”

“It’s probably just a neighbor,” she pointed out. “Neighbors don’t spend the night in their cars.”

“Why’s he following you?”

“I’m guessing he’s working with some people who were following me in Europe. They’re working for a senator.”

The word “senator” didn’t belong in that sentence. “Wh-” she began. “What senator?”

“Nathan Irwin, a Minnesota Republican.”

“Fucking Republicans,” she muttered.

“It’s nothing to be worried about,” he assured her. “I’m just trying to explain why we’re talking up here. They probably didn’t bug our apartment, but I’m not taking chances.”

She looked at him, at the Chevy, and then back. The wind was making her eyes water, and she hoped he wasn’t going to misinterpret it as weeping. She waited.

“About Dr. Ray’s. I’m sorry, really sorry. But when we were talking my mind just switched into autopilot, and I realized something very important. About the department.”

“The department you don’t work for anymore.”

“Yes. But I… look. I’m trying to tell you without actually telling you. Not because I’m trying to hide anything, but because it’s not the kind of thing you should know. Maybe it wouldn’t put you in danger, but maybe it would. I’m not willing to take the chance.”

“Then try to make some kind of sense, Milo. Figure it out.”

He seemed to accept the gentle scolding; he nodded. “I had to go talk to the new director about it, because if I’m right, then the department is in serious trouble. It could be destroyed.”

She could see he was trying, and she appreciated that. “Didn’t you tell me the other night that it didn’t deserve to exist? What changed your mind?”

“It’s easy to say that, but the department’s made up of people. You start worrying about all the people who’re going to lose their jobs, and some other people who are now in real danger.”

“Are you talking about a mole?”

His face went slack, and she knew her stab in the dark had been right. A brief elation filled her, then slid away-did this mean she and Stephanie were in danger now? Milo said, “I’m trying not to lie to you.”

“Go ahead. Lie.”

“Then, no. Nothing like a mole. Nothing that serious.”

She grinned, which gave him license to do the same. She said, “What does this mean?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and gazed across the rooftops. “It means I’m going to have to disappear for a few days. Through the weekend, maybe. But I’ll certainly be back by next week.”

“Can you at least call?”

“Sure.”

“Some good-night calls for Stef might be appropriate. I think she’d appreciate it.”

“How do you think she’s doing?”

“What? With you back?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding very vulnerable.

The truth was that Tina had noticed how much quieter Stef was when Milo was around, and when he was gone she’d return to her loud, rambling self. It was, Tina had decided, fear-Stef’s fear that if she said the wrong thing her dad might pick up and leave again on one of his vague “jobs.” Seeing his expression, though, she couldn’t tell him this. So she lied. “You know Little Miss. She’s beside herself with joy having you back.”

“You think so?” Hope slid into his voice.

“Absolutely. But let’s not say you’re heading out on a job. Let’s say you’re going somewhere to interview for work. Capice?”

“Capice.”

They remained on the roof a minute more in silence; then he gave her a kiss, and they descended again to find Stephanie still at the computer. Tina told her to say good-bye to Unity, then stepped over to her window and pulled back the blinds. She didn’t see the man inside the Chevy, but from this slightly lower angle she did see the window roll down and the quick flash of hand-white, long-fingered-as it tossed out a cigarette that streamed smoke in the middle of the street.

3

That Thursday morning, Alan Drummond raised the window between himself and Jake, and as they struggled through midtown traffic he called Stuart Fossum at Federal Plaza. They’d known each other in the marines, and each had followed a slightly different route into intelligence, Drummond into the CIA, Fossum into the FBI. When he heard Drummond’s voice, Fossum laughed aloud. “Alan! Whenever something’s about to fall on my head, it’s always preceded by the sound of your voice.”

“Am I really that predictable?”

“Come be a G-man,” Fossum told him. “Leave those back-stabbers to their games.”

Though they hadn’t spoken since Drummond had taken over Tourism, Fossum acted as if they were still lunching once a week. “Listen, Stu. I need a favor. And I need it quiet.”

“What kind of favor are we talking about?”

“Background files on seven people.”

“Heavy clearance?”

“Shouldn’t be. They’re the aides to a senator.”

Fossum paused, considering this. “Sounds too easy. Makes me wonder why a man as important as yourself can’t just ask his secretary to do a Google search.”

“Let’s just say it’s not as secure as we’d like it to be. If the senator in question finds out I’m looking into his people…”

“Gotcha,” Fossum said, cutting him off. “You got the names for me?”

After he recited them from the list in his head, Fossum demanded an expensive meal as repayment, and they settled on Le Bernardin on Fifty-first. Then Fossum sighed. “I don’t suppose you’re ever going to tell me what office you work in, are you?”

“For the price of lunch at Bernardin, I don’t need to tell you anything.”

“Not even what this is about?”

Drummond had that story ready. “Somebody’s been sticking his hand in the campaign cookie jar. We found out about it before the senator, and we’d like to clean it up before he even knows it’s happened.”

“Sounds like the CIA wants to keep the senator sweet.”

“Now you’re with the program, Stu.”

When he got out of the elevator on the twenty-second floor, he first gazed at the far wall to see that Irwin and his sidekicks weren’t around-they seldom arrived before noon, their mornings filled with legislative conference calls-then wound his way slowly through the cubicles, fielding occasional requests along the way. Sally Hein wanted an ergonomic keyboard; she feared carpal tunnel syndrome was encroaching. Manuel Gomez wanted the Company to reimburse him for an expensive lunch he’d had with a source over at the NSA to compare notes on an Iranian mufti. Only Saeed Atassi, a Syria specialist he’d stolen from Defense, had a work-related request. He’d received disturbing intel from a Tourist in Damascus about a Syrian general liaising with an Israeli colonel to derail secret peace talks between the two countries. He’d worked up a Tour Guide on the issue but requested that, because of time constraints, a version be leaked to both governments, thereby skipping the usual route to the Senate committee that took forever to decide what to do with such things. Drummond promised an answer by day’s end.

His secretary, a heavyset brunette with a telescopic eye for detail, brought a stack of mail and a coffee to his large oak desk. He thanked her and opened his laptop, starting up a program called Tracker, which was exactly what the name suggested. It tracked the cell phones and shoulder chips of all his Tourists on a world map, giving him a God’s-eye view of the breadth of his influence. Red spots peppered the planet, most remaining still while others, on planes or high-speed trains, moved incrementally. When he dragged his cursor over a dot, a simple heads-up display gave him the work name and any recent notes attached to it. A counter along the bottom gave him the total number: thirty-seven.

He’d finished going through his mail and fielding fresh intelligence reports and delivering orders when Irwin breezed into his office. He’d been doing this more often recently, walking through the door without knocking, even when Drummond was on the telephone. The senator approached the windows overlooking Manhattan. To the city, he said, “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what, Nathan?”

“This. Working a mile up above the city. A bubble.” He stepped back and frowned at Drummond. “It’s not healthy. If you’re not mixing with the rabble, then how can you even protect the rabble’s interests? You can say a lot of bad things about politicians, but we never forget who we’re representing. They have our e-mail addresses, know our names and faces, know where we live. Everything-well, most of the things we do are there for public display. Step out of line, and someone’s standing nearby with a sledgehammer.”

Drummond pushed back from his desk and examined the senator. Despite the premature whitening of his hair, the man was full of the kind of nervous energy Drummond had seen a lot of in the military. He had youth in his mannerisms, perhaps a result of mixing with the rabble. “You might be right,” Drummond admitted. “Instead, we mix with people like you, and trust that you’re reporting back on what the rabble really want.”

“Not just what they want. What they need.”

“Of course. You here about Hang Seng?”

“Later,” Irwin said, waving that away. “You seen Milo Weaver recently?”

The question was ill placed because Irwin wanted to see its effect. Drummond understood this. He’d been expecting the question, though, and it proved that Weaver had at least been right about Irwin’s goons following him. “As a matter of fact, he came by last night. Looking for a job.”

“He wants back in?”

“Not in a million years. Wanted advice on where to look. I’m sending a recommendation over to Cy Gallagher over at Global Security. You know him?”

“Think we’ve crossed paths before.”

“Well, it’s just a recommendation. I have no idea what he’s looking for these days.”

“I’m sure that even Cy could find a use for Weaver’s skill set,” Irwin said, then gave him a nod of greeting and wandered out again.

Later, walking to the lunch he’d promised Stuart Fossum, he used his personal phone to call two Tourists. Practicing bad security, he’d scribbled their six-digit go-codes on scrap paper before leaving the office, and read them off. One Tourist he recalled from Bolivia, the other from Mauritania.

He paid for the lunch-Fossum’s insistence on seared Kobe beef with a truffled herb salad made the expensive meal ludicrous-with his own credit card. His guest handed over the folder of seven files without a word, then launched into an extended harangue about the CIA. Drummond played along with it, but cut the meal short when his phone rang and he was called back to the office. In fact, it was Milo who called. Sticking to their prearranged signal, Milo said, “Did you talk to your friend Gallagher yet?”

“Not yet. Later in the afternoon.”

“Look, I put together a CV last night that I think you should show him. Little more fleshed out. Can I bring it by now?”

“I’m not in the office.”

“Can we meet at the Staples in Herald Square? I’m heading there to do up a copy. Then I’m off to Jersey.”

“Not staying at home anymore?”

“Just meet me, will you?”

He hopped a bus to Thirty-fourth, three blocks north of the office, and found Weaver in the hectic, crowded store, sitting on a bench with an open knapsack full of stapled sheets. Drummond settled beside him, his open briefcase between them, and started leafing through one of the copies. He was almost surprised to receive an actual CV for Milo Weaver, with dates and fake CIA departments listed, charting a fictional but appropriately slow career advancement. While he read through it, unfolding pages in an elaborate and noisy game of distraction, Weaver removed the seven FBI files from his briefcase and slipped them into his knapsack.

As they went about their ruse, Drummond tried to get a sense of who among the crowd were Weaver’s shadows. The blond girl with the pigtails and the backpack? The biker with the handlebar mustache? The effeminate male duo holding posters for a rave? He had no idea.

Weaver was already getting up, telling him he didn’t need advice on the CV. He just needed a job. “You get that to Gallagher and let me do the rest, okay?”

“Sure, Milo. I’ll do just that.”

When he returned to the office, he gave Saeed Atassi the go-ahead to leak his Tour Guide, then went to Harry Lynch’s cubicle. The nervous Travel Agent looked terrified by the personal visit. Drummond squatted beside him. “Harry, I hear you’re a whiz with the machines.”

“I’m all right, sir.”

“Well, I need a little wizardry. Soon you’re going to see Tourists Klein and Jones start to move. They’re coming here. Is there a way you can arrange it so that no one else knows?”

A smile appeared on Harry Lynch’s face.

4

In alphabetical order, they were:

Derek Abbott (Legislative Assistant)

Jane Chan (Scheduler)

Maximilian Grzybowski (Chief of Staff)

William Howington (Legislative Assistant)

Susan Jackson (Press Secretary)

David Pearson (Legislative Director)

Raymond Salamon (Legislative Assistant)

It was a small staff by congressional standards, most of the legwork accomplished by a disproportionately large army of interns. What that meant, Milo realized, was that each staff member had a larger share of the federal administrative and clerical employee allowance-and a senator that paid better than others knew he was buying loyalty.

Each of the seven was represented by a manila folder he laid out on the card table in the dusty safe house on Grand Concourse, across from Franz Sigel Park. It was nearly five, and he’d spent the hours after his meeting with Drummond on four different forms of transport, leading his shadows over into New Jersey and then evading them by bus, boat, taxi, and back alleys before doubling back by bus via the George Washington Bridge and heading up to the Bronx. With the evening came a chilly breeze that leaked in through the fire-escape window he’d broken in order to get inside, then covered with cardboard from a still-full crate of toilet paper. Only now could he begin to go through the files.

Each contained biographical information. The one whose name he had obviously zeroed in on, Jane Chan, did still have family in the old country, but in Hong Kong, not the mainland. Still, since China’s takeover in 1997, it wasn’t inconceivable the Guoanbu had made her family’s continued safety contingent on its American relative’s cooperation.

Of the rest, Chinese connections were either unknown or, in three cases, tangential. Derek Abbott had previously worked for Representative Lester Wharton of Illinois, until Wharton was arrested for receiving gifts from the Chinese honorary consul in Chicago, in exchange for trade legislation.

Susan Jackson had studied Chinese culture in college and was semifluent in Mandarin-which made little difference when she was arrested in Beijing in 2005 for joining with farmers to protest their land being taken to make room for the Olympic Stadium. China had since denied her any more visas.

David-Dave, he remembered-Pearson had visited Shanghai twice in the last decade for vacations with a Chinese girlfriend he had since broken up with and whose calls he avoided entirely.

At eight, Drummond called to ask if he was making any progress with his job search, and he gave a halfhearted yes but pointed out that there were still too many options. “Well, narrow it down,” Drummond said, stating the obvious.

“I could do that,” he answered, “but that doesn’t mean my criteria are any good.” The job search metaphor wasn’t perfect, but with a little imagination it could work.

“Maybe you need some help.”

“You got anyone?”

“A couple of guys who specialize in placements. They should be in touch by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Thanks, Alan.”

He put together a dinner of what the safe house had available: canned cannellini beans, frozen stir-fry vegetables, and rice. For some reason there was no salt in the apartment, so he made do with a bottle of soy sauce.

As he ate his heavy, bland meal, he felt a wave of doubt. What did he really have? An inconsistency between stories. A time problem. That was all he really had, in the end. He was acting like Henry Gray, starting with a conspiracy and rereading all the known facts so that they fit his theory. It was bad journalism; it was bad intelligence.

Not only were his clues scarce, but he began to question his own motives. Was he really through with Nathan Irwin? Or was his unconscious taking charge now, creating phantoms in order to target the senator?

He really didn’t know. Regardless, though they were scarce, the facts did exist, and even Drummond agreed they should be looked into.

The files, he realized with some despair, would tell him nothing. There were three primary ways of gaining an asset in a competing agency: threats, bribery, and ideology. No matter the aides’ connections to China, Xin Zhu could have visited any of them with blackmail material, an offer of money, or even an appeal to their political philosophy. Ever since the start of the Iraq War, plenty of Company men and women had grown disillusioned with their own employer. Even Milo had had enough, making him a prime candidate for some other country’s attentions-so why not some senatorial aide?

So if the mole couldn’t be discovered, it had to be provoked into showing itself.

To provoke a mole into showing itself would require his complete involvement.

Though he wanted to believe otherwise, he was already involved. He’d been neck deep in it ever since he chose to sit down and read that extensive file on Xin Zhu, and he voluntarily submerged himself when he brought the story to Drummond. He’d even stepped out of his own life to look into it, while Irwin’s thugs kept trying to track him.

He called Drummond back but heard Penelope’s voice. “Hello, Mr. Weaver. He’s on the toilet.”

“Pen!” Drummond shouted angrily in the background. “Can you tell him I’m coming by?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ll be needing a lift to JFK.”

“Are you kidding me, Mr. Weaver?”

“It’s Milo. And I’m sorry, Penelope.”

“You know what?”

“No. What?”

“It’s nice hearing that from someone other than Alan.”

On the way to Eighty-ninth Street, he called home. He chatted unspecifically with Tina about his day, then listened to Stephanie describe hers in unending specifics. She wanted to know when he was coming back; she wanted him to teach her karate.

“Karate?”

“Sarah Lawton pushed me on the ground today.”

“Did she use karate to do it?”

“I don’t know. What does it look like again?”

Drummond was waiting in the foyer, dressed in a long evening coat. Together they took the stairs to the underground parking lot, and Drummond said, “You know this will be noticed, don’t you?”

“I’m betting on it.”

They climbed into Drummond’s personal car, a breathtaking Jaguar E-Type convertible from 1974, and remained quiet until they were out on the street, dealing with the nighttime traffic. “You should probably tell me what’s going on.”

“The files won’t do us any good, Alan. The only way to bring out a mole is to scare him and make him run. From now on, we’re going to do this in the open, but make it look as if we’re trying to hide it. This is the first step-you driving me to the airport before I fly to Germany.”

“Germany?”

“If we were searching for a mole while hiding our movements, we would go to outsiders for help.”

“Oh, Jesus. Don’t tell me you mean-”

“Exactly. That’s the second step. The third step will be the difficult one. For you, I mean.”

“How do you mean, difficult?”

Milo had considered not telling him until the last minute, but he had to know that Drummond was going to follow through. Otherwise, there was no point in beginning. “Do you own a gun, Alan?”

5

It was around two on Friday when he reached the stone arch that spanned the creek running through this quaint neighborhood of Pullach. Oskar had been very specific about the locations of the cameras when he led Milo out, and so he knew to drive beyond the bridge and park in the lot of a tiny grocery store, where he bought two premade ham sandwiches as a middle-aged man with a mustache watched him from the cereal aisle. In English, Milo asked for the toilet and was directed outside. Milo passed the mustached man and went around the rear of the building, but instead of entering the bathroom continued ahead and into the damp woods. He worked his way slowly back to the road, then jogged toward the bridge as he reentered the woods. He followed the dry creek bed.

It wasn’t as obvious as he’d hoped. From the rear, most of these houses looked deceptively similar, and once he had to wait for twenty minutes in the underbrush as a pair of children played with plastic guns in a yard. When he finally got to Erika Schwartz’s house, it was nearly four and he was desperately hungry, so he settled in the bushes around the rear of the house and ate.

Four hours passed. Rain fell intermittently, then darkness, and by the time the headlights appeared in the driveway he was soaked and cold. He waited until the lights switched off and he heard her go inside alone. He rapped steadily on one of the rear windows. It took a while, but he didn’t think it was because she couldn’t hear; it was simply because she moved so slowly. By the time she switched on the light in the utility room and got him in focus, his knuckles were stinging. She approached but didn’t open the door.

“You look like hell,” she called through the glass. “You look radiant, Erika.”

She grinned crookedly. “You really shouldn’t be here. I could have you killed.”

“I’ve no doubt. You might want to listen to me, though. I told you I’d help you if I could.”

“This is how you come to offer help?” She shook her head. “No one stands in the rain just to offer help. You’re standing in the rain because you want something from me.”

“I’m standing in the rain because I’d like to offer an exchange of services.”

She blinked slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, then unlocked the door and stepped back. He came inside, dripping all over the concrete floor. She opened a dryer beside a front-loading washer. “Clothes in there,” she said. “I’ll bring down a robe.” Slowly, she made her way out and closed the door.

As he undressed, the doubt returned. Was this really the only way to scare a mole? He’d used his real passport at JFK, and before his flight took off he saw one of the shadows running to the gate to catch it in time. That one-a young woman with red bangs-had remained with him in the Munich airport before handing him off to the mustached man they must have called ahead to prepare. The man had followed his rental car all the way to the Pullach grocery store, and was probably still there, watching his abandoned car in the darkness.

Maybe it wasn’t the only way, but it was having the desired effect. Irwin knew exactly where Milo Weaver was. Thus, the mole did, too.

The robe Schwartz brought down was soft and thick and very pink, and as he slipped it on she turned on the dryer, ignoring his nakedness. “Do you have something to drink?” he asked.

“I only bought one wine.”

“Just water, Erika. I’m thirsty.”

They went upstairs to the living room, passing the steel door to the panic room, and settled in the darkness. Schwartz made no move to turn on any light. She went to the kitchen and brought out a bottle of Evian, two wineglasses, and her bottle of Riesling. “So,” she said as they each began to drink. “You have come to offer me your wonderful service.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m flush with excitement.”

Milo didn’t launch into it yet. Instead, he said, “I hear Conference Room S is finally in service.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“You did tell me to ask my own people, didn’t you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “A delegation of Americans arrived today. You know what I told Oskar when they arrived with their bright ties and big smiles and vigorous handshakes?”

“What?”

“That we’ve finally learned the value of a girl’s life.”

Milo nodded into his water. “When’s the next delegation due?”

“Monday. They have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Good.”

“Is it?”

Milo examined her heavy, damp cheeks in the light from the street, then noticed that on the cushion beside her hand was a small pistol. She looked exhausted. He said, “Everything stays in this room. Agreed?”

Erika Schwartz shrugged.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, “there was a scare in the department. We had reason to believe there was a double agent working among us.”

“Double agent?” asked Schwartz. “For whom?”

“For the Chinese.”

She waited.

“We followed the clues, but they didn’t add up. Or, they did, but they proved there wasn’t one at all.”

Schwartz waited patiently.

“Now, though, it appears that we were twice fooled. We believe we do have a mole.”

Schwartz appeared unfazed. “We? I heard you had left the CIA.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Sounds like a CIA problem to me.”

“I’m afraid it’s your problem, too, Erika. Which is why I’ve come to you. The Company now has access to a lot more of your secrets than it did a month ago, and, ergo, so do the Chinese.”

“Thanks to a young girl.”

Milo didn’t say a thing.

She said, “Are you here just to deliver bad news?”

“We’d like your help with this problem.”

“We, again. Who is this abstract pronoun, exactly?”

“Myself, and Alan Drummond.”

Schwartz blinked at him, blank, her eyelids a confusion of tiny wrinkles when they closed. Then, even in the darkness, she found a loose hair on the thigh of her slacks and brushed it away. “The CIA employs twenty thousand people-that’s the number it will admit to. Is there really no one else you can go to? Not one?”

Milo didn’t answer.

Schwartz took a long breath. “You began this conversation by suggesting you had something to offer me. Maybe you should start with that.”

“We’ll give you the means to bring down Theodor Wartmüller. The videotape.”

“Of him with the girl?”

Milo nodded.

Schwartz found another hair on her slacks, picked at it with her stubby fingers, and said, “If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the videotape was the only thing I wanted. Now I’ve had some time to think. If it goes public, it’ll cause more grief than solutions. Theodor knows that, too. I’m not sure it’s of any use to me now.”

“You don’t want it?”

“I didn’t say that. I’d rather I held on to it than you. I’m simply saying that it won’t solve my troubles. And it certainly won’t bring down Teddi.”

“Then I’ll give you other means,” said Milo.

“You have other means just sitting around?” A slow grin grew on her face, and she sighed. “Of course you do. Frame-ups are child’s play for the Department of Tourism.”

Milo felt her watching his face for some reaction. He gave none, and Schwartz finally shook her head.

“That’s not enough.”

“What is enough?”

“The person who broke her neck.”

“That’s not up to me.”

“Then call Alan Drummond right now and ask him.”

They both knew calling wasn’t an option, so Milo said, “I’ll give you the name myself. All right?”

Schwartz nodded slowly, very serious. “So, to be clear. I will receive the original videotape, the identity of Adriana Stanescu’s killer, and the means with which to prosecute Theodor Wartmüller.”

Milo wondered if it was really worth it. He supposed it was, but for all this she would do only one small thing. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. Now can I tell you what you’re going to do to earn all these riches?”

“I am breathless, Milo. Really, I am.”

6

He landed at noon and took a taxi back into town, thinking over his escape route. The woman with the red bangs had been on his flight, ten rows up, and while he wanted them to know where he’d been, he didn’t want them knowing his destination: the Bronx safe house, which would now be housing two Tourists.

He peered back at the highway. It was a busy time of day, and any of the cars could have been on him-or none. So he asked the driver to take him to Williamsburg and the Hasidic neighborhood he and Tina used to visit for Israeli specialties-any shadow would look as out of place there as he would. However, once they reached the long, lifeless streets, Milo remembered that it was Saturday; this part of Williamsburg was abandoned. It wasn’t the kind of place to try to lose a shadow.

“Bedford and Seventh,” he told the driver.

As they headed north, the streets filled with hip young Brooklynites at sidewalk tables, munching bagel sandwiches and sushi. He got out in front of a Salvation Army thrift store, then crossed Bedford and bought a Coke at a corner market beside the L-train subway stop. He peered out the window.

“Twenty-five cents,” the woman behind the register said as she handed over his change.

There: An old Suzuki pulled up in front of the Salvation Army.

A tall black man got out and stood beside his door, watching faces. If he was irritated, he didn’t show it.

“You need something else?” asked the woman.

The man left his car and walked left, toward Sixth, and Milo hurried out, took the corner and descended into the subway. As his head sank beneath the sidewalk, the black man turning, scanning, caught his eye.

Milo used his MetroCard as the train arrived at the station. His shadow ran up to the turnstile, stopping, slapping his pockets. Cursing. The subway doors closed. Milo smiled as the train headed out.

The L-train had the advantage of crossing five different lines inside Manhattan, and he chose one at random, then crisscrossed the island, taking locals and expresses until he was sure he was alone. In the Bronx, he picked up groceries-instant noodles and bread and ham and coffee-and by the time he finally climbed the stairs to the safe house, the sun was setting. He listened at the door but heard nothing. He knocked and waited.

There was a quick shadow over the spy hole, and a man’s voice said, “We’re not buying anything.”

“The Word of God is free,” Milo said.

There was an awkward pause.

“Let me in,” Milo said. “It’s Weaver.”

Another pause; then the man unlocked the door and opened it a crack. He had dark eyes. “Riverrun, past Eve,” he said.

“And Adam’s,” Milo answered. “Come on.”

The Tourist at the door introduced himself as Zachary Klein. He was a big man who gave off the air of a dunce, though no Tourist is a dunce. The other was a distractingly attractive black woman named Leticia Jones who didn’t rise from the cot as she offered a hand. She had huge eyes and a mirthless smile. “You going to brief us, or what? If I have to spend another night with this lout you’ll have to call an ambulance.”

“Drummond hasn’t told you anything?”

“He said to wait for you,” Klein told him.

Milo began to unpack his groceries, then saw that the refrigerator and cabinets were already full. “You guys went out?”

“I told her not to,” said Klein.

“I’m not eating canned food,” said Jones. “That’s just not what I do.”

“See what I’ve had to deal with?” said Klein.

“This cracker will eat anything.”

Milo almost started to laugh. Despite his easy camaraderie with James Einner, it was a general rule that Tourists should work alone. He’d even tried to explain it in the Black Book, writing, It’s part of the essential nature of Tourism that Tourists cannot abide one another. In the extremely rare instance that two Tourists strike up a friendship, it’s over in two weeks, max.

We are taught, and we learn through experience, that everything and everyone is a potential hazard. Children, butchers, seamstresses, bank managers and particularly other intelligence agents. We’re taught this because it’s true. The better the intelligence agent, the bigger the threat. So what happens when two Tourists-two of the most devious models of intelligence agent the world has seen-are in the same room? Paranoia ensues, and the walls go wet with blood.

Happily, though, the walls were still clean, and both Tourists were still breathing. The only way to defuse the situation was to give them a reason to be here, so he took them to the files both of them had already no doubt memorized. “One of these is a Chinese mole.”

“Yeah,” said Jones. “It’s Chan.”

“Look who’s the racist,” said Klein.

“Shut up.”

“Both of you shut up, okay?”

They stared at Milo.

“Good,” he said. “Now can you please break into these people’s homes and find out what’s not listed in these files? They have to be done by Monday morning. And please don’t leave a mess. If the mole thinks we’re tossing his apartment, he’s going to walk before we’ve identified him.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Klein.

“Use your imagination.”

As if they’d been replaced with new people, Klein and Jones were suddenly professional and efficient. That was how Tourists worked-with a job in front of them, they were swift and effective; lacking any work, they were destructive and wasteful, many turning into prima donnas. In this case, Klein and Jones began with a map of the Washington, D.C., area, charting a path from Montgomery County down to Charles County. Despite their animosity, they decided to work together on each home in order to move more quickly. By eight, they had settled on the details and had left the safe house to take separate trains to D.C., and Milo was alone again. He called home and chatted with Stephanie, and then Tina, who asked if he didn’t want to just come over for a few hours. She said that he was missed. It was intoxicating stuff, and the lure of their shared bed, just a subway ride away, was incredibly tempting.

Afterward, he called Drummond.

“Your friends are gone now. They should be done by Monday.”

“But they’ll be in touch in the meantime?”

“They’ve got my number.”

“Let me know if the skies open up for you at any point.”

“Are you still on board, Alan?”

“Ask me again after you’ve collected your information. Maybe I won’t need to do a thing.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“I’m not betting on anything anymore.”

Image

Milo’s phone woke him at five in the morning. Klein and Jones had gotten to work quickly, and it was Jones who called in their first report. Milo looked for a pen and paper while she rattled off her information. “William Howington. Twenty-eight, white male-”

“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Milo cut in.

“The man’s got a serious cocaine habit going on. Plus a bucket of ecstasy-looks like he uses them as breath mints.”

Drugs were a compromising habit, but enough to make someone spy for a foreign power? “What else?”

“He’s writing a novel. Roman à clef, if I understand the opening. Who do you think Representative Albert Sirwin could be?”

“That’s interesting, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Too bad,” said Jones. “Six more to go.”

They called in Raymond Salamon’s search by noon Sunday, and Susan Jackson’s by three. Salamon’s apartment was clean-“too clean,” Klein suggested-while Jackson’s was stuffed with Chinese artifacts. She was the one who had studied Chinese culture, had visited Beijing, and even been kicked out of China for her demonstrations in support of landless farmers. There were letters and postcards in Mandarin stacked on her desk, and Leticia Jones-who, it turned out, was fluent-went through them quickly, checking for obvious signs of clandestine communication. Of course, it’s the nature of clandestine communication that it’s not obvious, so she settled on taking snapshots of a representative selection for later perusal. From photos and postcards, they did learn of a lover-Feng Liang, a Beijing University student who had been arrested with her. There were letters from him and aborted drafts to him, and on her computer they found an entire romantic history in the form of e-mails.

Maximilian Grzybowski and Derek Abbott were roommates, sharing a loft in Georgetown. Klein and Jones waited for them to head out for their Sunday night thrills and spent a couple of hours perusing an extensive DVD collection of pornography and action thrillers, then worked their way through the laptops. Neither kept any sensitive information, though Grzybowski did have a hidden folder that, once Klein figured out the password, turned out to be full of more pornography-gay pornography. A decade or two ago, the threat of this becoming public might have been reason enough to spill classified secrets, but no longer.

After one on Monday morning, they made it to Jane Chan’s apartment-curiously empty-and discovered what they were half-expecting to find, extensive mementos of Hong Kong. Family pictures, letters and e-mails, and packages of gifts she’d received from her uncles, aunts, and cousins. Besides Susan Jackson’s love affair, it was the most damning material they had come across. Both women, so far, seemed the most open to coercion.

They also discovered that Jane Chan was carrying on an affair with the last person on their list, David Pearson, the legislative director Milo had met in Drummond’s office with Max Grzybowski. She had photographs of the two of them together, sometimes in various stages of undress, dated as far back as December. Jones offered her assessment. “If I was a mole, I’d certainly start screwing someone senior to me. Best way to get what you’re not supposed to have.”

It was a good point, and when they went over to Pearson’s apartment in Alexandria they found that Chan was sharing his bed. Jones left to collect Starbucks coffees for herself and Klein, and when, at seven, Pearson and Chan left looking like a perfect couple and climbed into Pearson’s Mazda to head to work, they moved in.

Pearson’s apartment, besides the smell of sex in the bedroom, was as clean as Raymond Salamon’s had been, so they could focus almost entirely on his laptop, which used two-factor authentication and 128-character pass phrases. Klein, though, had spent part of his youth as a hacker and needed about an hour and a half before shouting, “Eureka!”

His excitement was short-lived. The security was there only to protect Pearson’s personal life, his photos and family e-mails and his… poems. There were more than two hundred poems, ranging from haiku to terza rima, in a folder named, unimaginatively enough, VERSE. Most focused on history and love. There was nothing damning here, and the best they could manage was to notice what was missing-among the photographs of friends and family and even the Chinese ex-girlfriend with whom he’d twice visited Shanghai, Pearson had no photographs of himself with Jane Chan, though Chan’s photos went back three months. “The man’s obviously got yellow fever,” Jones told Milo during her call, “but Chan’s got no future with him.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t want any evidence of their relationship on his computer,” Milo suggested. “Irwin probably frowns on his aides dating.”

Jones wasn’t convinced. “No, honey. He’s just not that into her.”

It was peculiar, but in the end not peculiar enough to matter, nor to give Milo any insight. While the two women-Chan and Jackson-were their primary suspects, the truth was that it could be any of them.

7

Oskar had spent Monday morning filing background checks; it was the one dependably steady job since Erika had committed her transatlantic career suicide two years before. He sometimes recalled Franz’s advice-Schwartz has had her time, Oskar. There’s no need to be on hand to witness the collapse-and reexamined his reasons for sticking with a boss whose end was always nigh. Other times, though, he discounted it entirely, seeing Franz for what he really was: Theodor Wartmüller’s lapdog, terrified of losing scraps from his master’s table. Today, while visiting the office Franz shared with the now absent Brigit, he saw Franz as something in between the extremes.

“Here’s last week’s vetting reports.”

Without looking up from his laptop, Franz said, “It’s Monday, Oskar. That makes you a weekend late.”

“I was otherwise occupied.”

“Were you?”

Franz sometimes sustained entire conversations without looking up, so Oskar wasn’t dissuaded by the sight of the man’s thinning scalp. “Is Theodor in?”

Franz raised his head. It was that, the attention, that set Oskar’s nerves on edge. “He’s in a meeting. In S.”

“Right. The Americans.”

“Yes.”

Franz returned to his screen, but Oskar didn’t move. Finally, he looked at Oskar again. “Was there something else?”

“Could you call him out of the meeting?”

Franz laughed in a way that suggested laughter was unfamiliar, and not entirely comfortable. “You must be kidding!”

“It has to do with the Americans.”

“Then you can tell him after they’ve left.”

Oskar shook his head. “It might be useless by then.”

“You really are a riddle, Herr Leintz.”

“Well?”

“Well, do it yourself. I’m not taking responsibility for interrupting him.”

Oskar withdrew and in the corridor passed the young, pretty secretaries that, despite his devotion to Rebecka, the Swede, he always chatted up in the break room. Now, he gave each a smile that few returned. They knew he didn’t belong up here on the second floor. Ahead, he saw old Jan stepping into Conference Room S with a tray of cups. He jogged to catch up and caught the door before it closed.

Inside, men were laughing. He took in their faces, a broad spectrum of American types. The spectacled academic, two big football players, one business elite, even two black faces and an Asian-Japanese, he guessed-face. Seven. Plus Theodor Wartmüller at the head of the table, shaking his flushed face at some joke, and Brigit Deutsch in a knee-length skirt and high heels, leaning against the end of the table, basking in the attention all these men were giving her.

As Jan silently replaced empty coffee cups with full ones, Oskar peered through the slit in the door, finally catching Brigit’s eye. Her joy seemed to dissipate, replaced by… could it be embarrassment? Then she got hold of herself and gave Oskar a short, sharp shake of the head. He didn’t withdraw. Instead he motioned at Wartmüller, and waited.

Finally, she bowed to Wartmüller’s ear and whispered. Wartmüller found Oskar in the doorway. His smile remained as he said, “Just a moment, gentlemen,” and got up.

There was no anger when he came out into the corridor, just condescension. “Oskar! I can’t say you’ve chosen the best time for a chat.”

“Sorry, sir, but it couldn’t wait.”

“It couldn’t wait another half hour?”

“It couldn’t wait until the Americans had left.”

A pair of secretaries passed, and Oskar moved closer to the room’s window, covered by venetian blinds. Wartmüller followed him. “Well?”

“Listen, I… I don’t feel entirely comfortable coming to you with this, but I don’t have a choice. Loyalty only goes so far, and then you have to start answering to your conscience.”

Wartmüller eyed him. “What are you getting at, Oskar?”

“It’s Erika. She’s been taking things into her own hands. Things that you should be aware of, particularly if you’re speaking openly with the Americans.”

“Please, Oskar. Time is precious.”

He took a long, exaggerated breath. “Last week-Friday-she met with Milo Weaver.”

“Milo-why?”

“They’ve formed an alliance. I can’t say what Erika’s getting out of it-she won’t tell me-but I do know that she’s helping Weaver investigate a mole in the CIA.”

Wartmüller considered that for a moment, though in the end he simply repeated the word. “Mole?”

“A Chinese mole. When I asked her what this had to do with us, she said that until the mole was tracked down, everything we said to the Americans would end up in Beijing. So I told her-I said that we had to bring you in. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know what to hold back.”

“And what did she say to that?” Wartmüller said distantly, a finger brushing his chin.

“She said that you would get in her way. Just to spite her. She said that you would stop her from talking to them.”

“To whom?”

“To the men in the room right now. She’s waiting for them in the parking lot.”

Wartmüller rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his right hand. “You’re telling me that Erika’s standing outside, waiting to tell the Americans that they’ve got a mole?”

“Yes, sir.”

Then he said exactly what Erika had said he would say. “Listen, Oskar. I want you to tell me everything you know about this mole theory. What department? How long has he been around?”

Oskar shook his head. “She’s only told me what I’ve told you. Except…”

“Except what?”

“She wanted me to pull up everything we have on an American senator. Nathan Irwin. Republican.”

“Okay,” said Wartmüller, thinking through all of this.

“It’s hard,” said Oskar.

“Certainly is.”

“No, I mean this. Going behind her back. I don’t want you to think this is how I treat my superiors.”

Wartmüller got a distant look again; then he focused and smiled grimly, placing a heavy hand on Oskar’s shoulder. “Oskar, listen to me. You have no reason to feel guilty. Understand? You’ve done the right thing.”

“Thank you, sir. That helps.”

An hour later, when he was back at his desk, Erika came in slowly, moving her immense body from support to support-the doorway, the back of a chair, the corner of his desk. She said, “It’s freezing outside.”

“It is,” said Oskar.

“Any idea if Wartmüller’s visitors have gone yet?”

“I believe they left about twenty minutes ago.”

“Hmm.” She moved back to her chair, both hands gripping it. “I suppose someone showed them the rear exit. You think that’s possible, Oskar?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling. “Anything’s possible.”

8

The call came through at 1:23 P.M. on Tuesday, while Drummond was in the conference room, discussing with the fraud section the movement of funds between three banks-Cayman, Swiss, and Pakistani-and its connection (recently discovered by Malik Tareen, a Tourist who’d been in Lahore for nearly six months) to an Afghan tribe known to be hosting Taliban fighters. Unlike his predecessors, Drummond brought in two advisers from the director’s office to listen and offer advice on the next step, and it was generally agreed that while Tourism could squelch the money trail, the army should be brought in to deal with the tribe. Since the army didn’t know of Tourism’s existence, the information would have to flow through the deputy director of the National Clandestine service, who was one of the few people below the director’s office cleared to have knowledge of Tourism.

With Irwin back in Washington, this was Drummond’s second day as absolute sovereign, and it had been a beautiful day so far-no bad news had come through, no signs of impending disaster-and then his secretary told him of the call on line twelve. His mind was still on banking when he answered, and his “Drummond here” had none of the force it usually carried.

“It’s me,” said Milo.

Drummond blinked at Ascot’s men, who pretended not to be listening in. “Yes. How’s the job search coming?”

“I’m heading to an interview in D.C. right now. You’re on.”

“Okay,” he said, but Weaver had already hung up.

He wrapped up the meeting and returned to the floor to find Harry Lynch hunched over his keyboard, the remnants of a tuna sandwich all over his desk. “Harry, can you come to my office?”

“Uh, sir. Yes.”

He got up and followed Drummond to the far end of the floor, and once they were inside Drummond said, “Shut it, please.”

Lynch closed the door.

“Sit down. Please.”

Cordial behavior always seemed to trouble Lynch, and he lowered himself into a chair slowly, as if anything faster would lead to a reprimand.

“Thanks for taking care of those recalls for me, Harry. Are we still under the radar?”

Lynch nodded. “I’ve moved them around occasionally so no one will think they’re comatose.”

“Good idea. I’ve got one more thing to ask-can you flag seven passports so that no one else in the building knows about it?”

“Virtual keyboard,” said Lynch, shrugging.

“Excuse me?”

“I open a virtual keyboard on the screen and use the mouse to type my instructions. That way, the in-house keystroke recorder doesn’t pick it up.”

“Sounds simple,” Drummond said.

Lynch didn’t answer either way.

Drummond unfolded his wallet, took out a slip of paper, and handed it over. “Here are the passport numbers. I’ll need you to put my personal cell phone down as the initial contact, and the order is to hold the person until I’ve arrived.”

“No problem.”

“Or,” Drummond began, thinking through everything. “Me, or Milo Weaver.”

Lynch blinked a few times. “Milo’s still around?”

“Advising. And that, too, stays between you and me. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” Lynch grinned happily, his discomfort gone, and Drummond felt a pang of jealousy-the mention of his own name would lighten the moods of very few people.

Once Lynch was gone, he picked up his phone, but before he could dial, Irwin called on line seven. “That’s funny, Nathan. I was just about to call you.”

“Hilarious,” said Irwin. “Say, do you know how I can get in touch with Weaver? He’s not answering his phone.”

“No idea, sir. I haven’t talked to him since last week.”

“He say anything about going to Germany?”

“No… Why would he be in Germany?”

“Well, if you do hear from him, tell him I might have found some consulting work. Good pay and benefits. Tell him to call me.”

“I’ll do that. Say, are you going to be free this evening?”

A pause. “Why?”

“Because I’m heading to D.C. now, and I wanted to go over some departmental issues with you.”

“Don’t think so,” said Irwin. “The Democrats are holding some so-called nonpartisan dinner; they’re insisting I come.”

“You might want to skip it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I want to talk to you about Milo Weaver.”

“Weaver-but you just said-”

“It’s not the kind of thing we can discuss over the phone.” Irwin paused. “Okay, then. You come by my Georgetown place at eight.”

“I’m going to need you to come to me. I’ll be at the Washington Plaza.”

“You’re being very mysterious, Alan. I don’t think I like that at all.”

“Sorry, sir. But I’ll need you to come to me. It’s the only way I’ll feel safe.”

“Now I’m completely confused. Why wouldn’t you feel safe in my house?”

“It’ll all make sense this evening. Eight o’clock, like you said, but at the Plaza. I’ll call you with the room number so you don’t have to ask the desk for it.”

Image

Milo reached Union Station by five, then took a taxi to Thomas Circle NW, where he met Klein and Jones in the Washington Plaza’s lounge, the International Bar, where From Russia with Love-the best of the cinematic Bonds-played on the flat-screen behind the bar. The film matched the sixties decor, but no one among the after-work business crowd was watching it. They took a leather U-shaped booth against the wall, and Milo ordered a round of coffees. Then he handed out cheap cell phones he’d picked up the day before. “Take apart your Company phones and use these.”

“You don’t think that’s overkill?”

“We’re not taking any chances. And we’ll maintain continual contact,” he told them. “These are answered on the first ring.”

“He talks like we’re schoolkids,” muttered Klein.

Jones smiled, her full lips spreading flatly over her teeth. “Hmm. A schoolmaster.”

He wasn’t entirely sure they were taking this seriously enough, but Drummond had assured him that these were two of his best Tourists. They seemed to enjoy their roles-Klein, the grumpy dunce; Jones, the exotic seductress. “We’re going in order of suspicion, least to greatest.” Since there were only seven names, there was no need for note-taking. They knew who each was and where each lived, and all that was required of these Tourists was that they locate and follow each one, calling Milo if any strayed from his or her expected route.

Once they’d gone through the sequence, Leticia Jones called over a waiter and asked for a gin martini. In answer to Milo’s look, she said, “I’m not staying up all night without at least one drink.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Milo countered.

So Klein started waving for another waiter. “I’m having a beer, then.”

Milo resisted the urge, even as he stared jealously at Jones’s drink. At seven, he got up to pay the bill, then told them to go. Jones touched his arm as she left, saying, “Chill out, baby. Mommy and Daddy will take care of you.”

He watched her sashay around tables on her way out, garnering appreciative male gazes the whole way.

Image

Drummond left work early to take the Acela Express from Penn Station, which got him to D.C. by seven. Stuck on the crowded train, steamy from the heat of so many bodies, he kept wishing he’d taken his Jag. Even in light traffic, though, speeding whenever possible, it would have taken him nearly four hours. It wasn’t a day for chancing tardiness. So he endured the trip and waited in line for a taxi to Thomas Circle and checked into the Washington Plaza under his own name. On his way up to the room he called Irwin. “Room 620.”

The senator sounded rushed and uncomfortable. “You going to give me a hint, Alan?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“This better be worth the inconvenience.”

When he got to the room, Drummond removed a tiny Scotch from the refrigerator, and as he unscrewed it the room phone rang. Milo said, “Where?”

“Six twenty.”

The line went dead.

Drummond threw back the Scotch, then unpacked his briefcase. There were some loose files and, beneath them, wrapped in a gray bath towel, his pistol.

It was an M9 the service pistol the marines had handed him, which they’d switched to in the late eighties in order to create uniformity with NATO firearms. A good weapon, it had never jammed, though when he’d been issued it the etched metal grip had irritated him. That only took a month to adjust to, though, and when he picked it up it felt as natural as grabbing his other hand in prayer.

Yet once he’d rechecked the full clip and cleared the breech, he went back for the second, and last, Scotch. With a background that included two miserable years in Afghanistan, the prospect of using the pistol didn’t disturb him; using it in a D.C. hotel room on a senator did. Particularly when the reasoning was based on a single agent’s epiphany.

Yet the epiphany was too damaging to ignore, so he placed the M9 on the dresser, behind the television, and checked his watch. It was seven fifty-two.

Image

Downstairs, Milo had watched Drummond arrive, and, after asking the front desk to patch him through to his room and getting the room number, he took a position at the far end of the foyer with a bouquet of flowers he’d purchased at the gift shop. He checked his wristwatch continually so that the staff would imagine he was waiting on a late date and leave him alone.

Irwin arrived focused on the space in front of himself, so Milo didn’t need to hide behind his flowers. Irwin, crossing to the elevators, looked like a man with an unpleasant but necessary task ahead of him, someone who wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Milo waited. No obvious shadows had preceded Irwin, and for the next five minutes no one else appeared. He got up and went to the elevators, but stepped back to let a family go up alone. He waited for the next one and took it to the sixth floor. He knocked on room 620 and heard voices-Drummond: “Can you get that, Nathan? Room service”-then the door opened. Senator Irwin, shocked, stared back. Behind him, Drummond was moving to the television.

“What the hell?” said Irwin. “Alan? What the hell have you-” He stopped in midsentence, because he’d turned to find Drummond pointing a gun at him.

Milo stepped inside and locked the door. He said to Drummond, “You didn’t tell him yet?”

“Tell me what?” Irwin demanded.

Alan Drummond looked uncomfortable, but he held the pistol like a pro, his hand steady. “Sit down, Nathan. We just want you to make a few phone calls.”

9

The first was Raymond Salamon. Despite the fifteen-minute fight the senator put up, threatening them both with things worse than expulsion, he finally called Salamon and put on his most authoritative voice. “Ray, you’d better get your ass down to Thomas Circle. Now. I’ve got some Company guys who need to talk to you.”

“CIA? What-what’s this about?”

“You tell me, Ray. What’ve you been doing that these thugs are looking for you?”

“I-nothing, sir.”

“Well, if that’s true, then there’s nothing to worry about. Just get down here five minutes ago, wait in front of the Washington Plaza, and we’ll get it all straightened out.”

“Okay.”

“And Ray? Don’t you dare tell anyone else about this. Not yet. We clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Salamon was true to his word. He arrived in a swift ten minutes, and Milo approached him in the drop-off area that was busy with taxis and bellboys. “Raymond Salamon?”

“Uh, yes,” he said.

“Right this way.”

He led the frightened aide into the hotel, and in the elevator Salamon tried to ask questions. Milo answered with hard silence. When they finally made it to room 620, Salamon relaxed visibly at the sight of Irwin, and Irwin gave him a grudging wink. “I knew you were a straight shooter, Ray.”

“Your phone, please,” said Milo.

“Go ahead, Ray. Give the man your phone. And settle down on the chair. We’re in for a long night.”

Because Maximilian Grzybowski and Derek Abbott lived together, Klein was stationed outside their apartment waiting for one to leave. When Abbott stepped out, Klein called in, and Irwin dialed Abbott’s number. The same sternness, but with a few more fraternal quips-Abbott was clearly one of Irwin’s favorites. The same orders, though: Come immediately to the Washington Plaza to speak to the CIA. Tell no one.

Fifteen minutes later, Milo was leading Abbott into the hotel, and Irwin was calling Grzybowski. While they waited, Abbott kept asking Salamon what he knew, and Salamon shrugged meekly. Abbott said, “What’s the deal?”

“The deal,” Irwin snapped, “is that I’m being forced to do this, and I’m not going to believe the charges until these men have proved them to me. And if they don’t prove them, then their careers are in the toilet.”

When Grzybowski joined them, though, he showed none of the patience the first two had been demonstrating. He, unlike them, had spent time in the Department of Tourism, and knew that the man holding the pistol was just another bureaucrat. “Didn’t I tell you, sir? Drummond couldn’t stand losing control of his department, and he was bound to get you back for the humiliation. Jesus. Like fucking high school.”

It was eleven o’clock by the time Milo met William Howington at the opening of the hotel’s looped drive, behind a line of four taxis. He was the first not to immediately follow him into the hotel. “I don’t know who the hell you are.”

“Irwin said to meet him here, right? I’m taking you to him.”

Howington wouldn’t be convinced until he’d called to receive a direct order from Irwin. When they reached the room, his mouth hung open. “Is this a surprise party?”

Milo had not expected any revelations by this point. Though anything was possible, these four men had nothing in their files to suggest they could be working for Zhu. Of the remaining three-Susan Jackson, Jane Chan, and David Pearson-all had had some sort of connection to China, but only the women still had emotional ties to that area: Jackson to mainland China, Chan to Hong Kong. Of those two, Milo’s suspicions rested more with Jackson, who could be used to keep her lover, Feng Liang, safe. Chan had family that could have been used as collateral, but Milo doubted a man with Zhu’s labyrinthine mind would choose an Asian to spy for him.

So his preference was to call Jackson last, but there was a problem. According to Leticia Jones, Chan and Pearson were spending the evening in with some DVDs and delivery pizza. If they called Pearson, he would have to tell Chan where he was going, and Chan-if she were the mole-would be tipped off. Call Chan first, and the same would be true of Pearson.

Klein, who had been watching Jackson’s apartment for the previous hour, told Milo that she had gone to bed alone. “Go ahead,” Milo told Irwin. “Call Jackson.”

He woke her up. “Susan, you need to get down here right away.”

“I just fell asleep. What is it?”

“It’s your career. Now get dressed and meet me at Thomas Circle. The Plaza. The CIA needs to talk with you.”

“CIA? Why?”

“They think you’ve been a bad girl, Susan-and they’re doing a hell of a job convincing me. So get down here and start arguing your side, and don’t call anyone else about this until it’s been cleared up. Understood?”

All the lights in the apartment came on. It took Jackson eleven minutes to dress in sweats and climb into a waiting taxi. Klein followed most of the way, until it let her off on the sidewalk outside the hotel. Milo was already waiting for her, talking with Klein on the phone. “Go join Jones. Once you’re in place we’ll finish this up.”

Jackson, too, doubted Milo was who he said he was, so rather than manhandle her he waited for her to call Irwin. On their way inside, she said, “What do you think I did?”

His phone was ringing. It was Jones. “Pearson is leaving. He looks nervous.”

“Panicked?”

“No, just nervous. He’s checking his watch.”

“The woman’s still in there?”

“Yes. But Klein won’t be here for another five or ten minutes.”

“Stay with her,” Milo ordered. If they called Pearson while he was out, the legislative director would likely still call Chan, if only to explain why he wasn’t returning-they were lovers, after all. “We’ll call Chan next.”

He hung up, and as they waited for the elevator, Jackson said, “Jane Chan?”

He looked at her.

“You’re going to call Jane Chan next? What kind of game is this?”

They boarded the elevator. Milo said, “It’s not a game.”

“It certainly isn’t. If you think Jane’s some kind of criminal, or terrorist, then you’re completely insane.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Jackson was angry now. “You wake people up in the middle of the night to interrogate them? That’s Gestapo tactics. And the CIA doesn’t even have the authority to screw around with people inside the country. What the hell is going on?”

He wasn’t sure why-perhaps because he’d suspected her so strongly, or because she had a history of clashing with the Chinese authorities-but he answered her. “We’re looking for a Chinese mole. It’s one of Irwin’s seven aides, which is why we called you.”

She blinked as the doors opened on the sixth floor. “Jane?”

“She and Pearson are our final suspects.”

“Oh.”

She said that with a strange, unexpected despair. “What?”

“I called her.”

“Chan?”

She nodded. Milo grabbed her elbow and pulled her out of the elevator. “When?”

“Just before I left. I told her-”

“What did you tell her?”

“Just that the CIA was accusing me of something, and I had to go defend myself. I told her-well, it just made sense-I gave her the heads-up. If you were looking into me, then you might start asking her questions.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you ever had a friend?”

Milo opened the door to the room, and all eyes turned to Jackson, who was still stunned. Milo was already on the phone to Jones. “She knows. Go in now.”

Drummond, in the corner, looked as if the pistol had become too heavy for him. “What?”

Milo looked around the room. “Everyone, you’re free to go. Irwin, you come with me and Alan.”

“Well, isn’t this fucking anticlimactic,” said Max Grzybowski.

It was twelve fifteen when the three men reached Irwin’s long black Chrysler parked around the corner on M Street. Drummond got behind the wheel; Irwin took the backseat, Milo the passenger seat. As they left Thomas Circle, Milo’s phone rang. Again, it was Jones. “I’ve got some bad news for you, Milo.”

“Go ahead.”

“The woman, Chan? She’s sitting on the sofa with two bullets in her chest. Stone cold.”

10

It took nearly twenty minutes to cross the Potomac, head down the Jefferson Davis Highway, and exit into the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria. They found Leticia Jones in Pearson’s apartment, standing over Chan’s body, shaking her head. Chan was small, eyes closed on her wide face. Her skin was brutally white, the blood having drained out of two small holes in her chest; one of the bullets had struck high and punctured her aorta. The floor around the sofa was black and sticky.

“It’s no good,” said Jones.

Milo stood beside her. “What’s that?”

Leticia Jones didn’t feel up to explaining herself. She pointed at the window to the building’s courtyard. “That was already open, and here,” she said, crouching on the rug, “are the shells.” She pointed a long, red fingernail at a 9 mm casing moored in the blood, then another. “Super-close range.”

“When did Pearson leave?”

“Got to be forty minutes by now. I guess he wasn’t just picking up milk.”

Drummond approached them from behind. “If I found this on my couch, I wouldn’t be back yet either.”

Whether or not she was the mole, Milo hated to find her dead. He tried to work through how this had happened, avoiding the obvious answer: It had happened because Milo had decided to put his plan into action. Aloud, he said, “Jackson calls Chan to tell her about us. Chan panics and calls Zhu, or whoever her contact is. Zhu sends someone to get rid of her. All in-what? A half hour from Jackson’s call to when Pearson left?”

No one answered at first. Irwin was standing in a far corner of the apartment, a handkerchief to his mouth, eyes red. Drummond coughed, then said, “They knew you were sniffing around, Milo. You made sure of that. Zhu kept someone on hand in case there needed to be some killing. I would.”

Drummond’s phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it. Milo looked at Jones. “Clean, isn’t it?”

“Sort of.”

“The shooter got all the way from that window to here and put two bullets in her chest-and she didn’t even try to get up? She may have been asleep when he came in, but when she was shot she was sitting up.”

“Like I said,” Jones reminded him, “it’s no good.”

Klein wandered in from the kitchen, a pint of Häagen-Dazs in his large palm, eating. They both looked at him. “What?” he said.

Drummond came back holding his phone aloft. “It’s Reagan National. They’ve got Pearson.”

He had been picked up in Terminal B with a ticket for the six fifty-five Air Canada flight to Montreal. Klein drove alone; Milo joined Jones in her car; Drummond drove Irwin, who by now was showing real signs of shock. The ride with Leticia Jones was silent most of the way, until Milo said, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No one should be dead.”

Jones didn’t bother answering that.

Reagan National Airport, like JFK, had its own series of back corridors that led to interrogation rooms. The one in which they’d placed Pearson had a table and chairs and a window reinforced with wire mesh. Before going in, they peered at him through the window. The man that Milo remembered from Drummond’s office, talking into his cell phone with the easy confidence of young power, was now a mess. Hair awry, clothes disheveled, and a blank, wet stare.

“Who’s going to start?” asked Drummond.

Before anyone could argue, Milo stepped inside the room. David Pearson hardly gave him a look as he walked to the table and sat down opposite. “Talk, Dave.”

Pearson stared at his hands, which were flat on the table. “I don’t know who he was. But she did. She told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That they would get her. She knew.”

“Who’s they?”

“Her masters in Beijing.”

“I don’t follow.”

He kept his gaze fixed solidly on his chewed nails and shook his head. “She called. Susan. She told Jane that the CIA was bringing her in for some questions, and Jane-I didn’t understand it at first-she panicked. She told me she had to go. She had to leave. I asked why. She wasn’t making any sense. Then she told me. She said she was working for the other side. For… it really sounds ludicrous. For the Chinese. She said she’s been working for them for years.”

“Did she say why?”

Finally, Pearson looked at him. “Her family. She was protecting them. Do you know what that means?”

Milo didn’t answer.

“She said-and she kept telling me how sorry she was-she said that she used the information I shared with her. I mean, we talked about everything, Jane and me. Everything.”

“Tell me what happened next.”

“Well, I was angry. You can imagine. Can you?”

“Sure.”

“I told her I couldn’t speak to her. I walked out.”

“Outside?”

“No. To the bedroom. She was in the living room, and I went to the bedroom and slammed the door. And this…” He trailed off. “The last words I spoke to her were in anger. My God.”

“Go on.”

He finally took his hands off the table and put them in his lap, which made him look cold, though his face was shiny with sweat. “After some time-ten, fifteen minutes? I don’t even know. I came out again. And there she was, on the couch. The window was open-it was cold in the room-and she was dead.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

Pearson shook his head. “The TV was on. No, I didn’t hear any gunshots.” He frowned, as if this had never occurred to him. “Do you think they used a silencer?”

Milo stared at the corner of Pearson’s mouth, which was twitching uncontrollably.

“What happened next?”

“I ran. Stupid, maybe. But I thought… well, I thought that they didn’t know I was there in the other room. As soon as they figured that out I would be next. Witness, that sort of thing. So I wanted to run as fast as I could.”

“Why Montreal?”

“Why not?” he said, then shook his head. “Actually, it was the next flight out of the country, so I took it.” He frowned. “Am I under arrest for running away?”

Milo got up. “You want anything? Coffee?”

“Alcohol,” said Pearson. “Something to settle me down.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Milo said and left.

In the dim outer room, Irwin had collapsed in an office chair, while Jones and Drummond were standing by the window, arms crossed. They’d heard everything from speakers.

“It’s tight,” Leticia Jones said. “The story, I mean.”

“Think so?” Milo asked, turning to watch Pearson reexamining his fingernails. “What I don’t understand is how they did it so quickly. Maybe they had a gunman in the area, but the decision? That had to be Zhu’s call. And it’s-what time is it in Beijing?”

“One in the afternoon,” said Jones.

“She calls-who? Not Zhu directly. Her controller. Wakes up her controller. The controller contacts Zhu. Zhu makes a decision, relays it back to the controller, and the controller contacts the gunman. The gunman climbs up into the apartment and kills her. All this in… twenty minutes, a half hour? It’s efficient; I’ll give it that.”

Pearson had moved on to his wristwatch, removed it, and begun to examine it.

“The television was off,” said a voice, and they all turned to find Irwin, white-faced and old, staring through them. “He turned off the television after finding her body.”

No one spoke for a moment. It was a small thing, but it reminded Milo of something else. “And he didn’t say anything about Chan making a phone call. She received the call from Susan, they argued, and he stormed off. Fifteen minutes later she’s dead. When did she call her controller?”

Irwin made a long exhale, like a deflating tire. “Jesus Christ.”

11

There was no point giving him what they knew and didn’t know, so when he returned to the room he lied. “We just heard from our people-your prints are all over the shell casings. You killed her.”

Pearson looked shocked. “What? No!”

“Did Zhu tell you to kill her? Or was that your idea? I’m guessing it was your idea, because Zhu would have done it properly. He would have moved her body so that it looked like she had run away from an intruder. Shot her in the back. Or he’d simply hide her body. But not you. You were in a panic; you did it all wrong. You walked right up to her, and she sat up-she trusted you, of course. Then you whipped out the pistol and did it. Then you turned off the television and opened the window and dreamed up the story of the assassin.”

Pearson’s eyes were drier now, but he still held on to his confusion. “You don’t understand anything. I loved Jane. We were going to be married.”

Milo wasn’t listening; he was too taken by his own thoughts. “That was Zhu’s idea, wasn’t it? The relationship. He probably told you from the beginning-stay close to Chan. If you’re ever discovered, you can shift the blame to her. Pillow talk. Yes,” Milo said, now sure. “You both knew everyone would buy her as a mole-but a round-eye like you? Never.”

“Shut up!”

“We were watching your place when you left. You came out walking. Like a man who’d just killed someone, not like someone afraid for his life. You checked your watch, because you wanted some grounding. But you still had your head on your shoulders. People who’ve just committed murder still have their heads. People who’ve just discovered their fiancée’s corpse-they don’t.”

At some point, Pearson had begun to shake. It started with the left hand, where he wore his watch, then moved to the right. Milo could hear his foot tapping the tiled floor and noticed the occasional jerk of his chin. It was too much for him. Pearson was a white-collar spy; he wasn’t used to things like blood and bullets. Few people were. His body was fighting against itself, against Pearson’s will, against the act it had committed. Then the body won, and Pearson heaved and vomited clear liquid across the tabletop.

“So,” said Milo. “You want to tell me?”

Releasing the truth was not as difficult as Pearson had likely imagined. You begin with one truth, and the rest slides through that open hole with little effort. Yes, he had killed her. Yes, it had been his own idea. “I’d come up with it when I found out that you’d been in Germany, getting their help to track me down. I didn’t know if I could do it or not, but I asked Li for a gun and a silencer.”

“Li?”

“I don’t know if that’s his real name. My contact. He gave me one yesterday, left it in my mailbox.”

“Where is it now?”

“A Dumpster. Somewhere between home and here. Don’t ask me which one.”

“Why Montreal?”

Pearson rocked his head from side to side. “That was the plan. If things fell through and I could make it, I should go to Montreal, to the consulate there.”

“Was there a Plan B?”

“I hope so. Because that’s all I have to depend on now.”

Milo stared at him. There were other questions, important ones such as what kinds of information Pearson had given Zhu, and what Pearson was getting from the relationship, but right now Milo was interested in one thing. “Did you ever meet Xin Zhu personally?”

Pearson shrugged. “Twice. Once in Shanghai. Once here.”

“In D.C.?”

“Your Ukrainian source was right-he’s a big man. Enormous. But he’s not a drinker. Not a womanizer. What he is is very serious. He’ll do anything to get revenge. He knows what he needs, and he knows exactly how to get it. He’s daunting. He knew exactly how to get at me, and he knew exactly how to get me into Tourism. And I imagine that, by now, if there is a Plan B, it’s fully in effect. I’d watch out if I were you.”

“He wants revenge for the Sudan.”

“Yes,” said Pearson. “Not all fathers can hold a grudge so intensely.”

Milo wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Fathers?”

Pearson leaned back, his fingers tapping out some code on the table. “Yes. You do know about that, don’t you?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Delun. His son. You know about him, right?”

Milo’s scalp began to itch, but he resisted scratching. “Go on.”

“Killed last year. In the Sudan. He was working for Sinopec, the Chinese oil company, and got swept up in one of those riots triggered by the murder of Mullah Salih Ahmad. The murder you guys did.” When Milo didn’t answer, he added, “Machete. He was chopped up by men with machetes.”

It was a simple fact, something that a little more research would have revealed-research that Milo had been too distracted to perform.

It changed everything.

The man he so admired, the cool, complicated spymaster directing all the action from abroad was not so cool after all. He was driven in the same way Milo would be driven if someone ever did anything to Stephanie. He wasn’t ruled by ideology or nationalism or even the pleasure of the game, not at the moment. Revenge motivated him, and in that case all predictions went out the window. There were plenty of rules governing espionage, but no rules regulating revenge.

And then…

Milo said, “Does he know you’ve been picked up?”

Pearson gazed up at him with huge eyes. “I hope Li told him.”

“Li knows?”

“Well, he was here in the airport, wasn’t he? Saw those goons around the X-ray machine cart me off.”

Milo wasn’t sure of anything now. Wasn’t sure what Zhu was thinking, nor even what he himself was thinking. He only felt a cool panic stutter into his body. Zhu knew so much more than they did, and had been ahead of them every step of the way. Now-

“Myrrh,” Milo said, almost shouting, as he turned to the observation window.

Drummond’s voice came disembodied from the darker room. “What?”

Milo pushed open the door to find them all-Drummond, Jones, Klein, Irwin-staring at him. He focused on Drummond. “Now. Order them all back. Zhu knows we’re going to recall all the Tourists as soon as possible. Their names and codes are the most important thing he’s gotten out of this. He might not give them up so easily.”

Drummond didn’t react at first, only stared. Then he took out his phone and called the office and told the night staff exactly what to do. His hands, Milo noticed, were beet red and trembling.

12

It was after three in the morning, and talking to Pearson was exhausting him. He’d learned, in generalities, that Pearson’s cooperation with Zhu had begun three years before, with an offer of money. There was nothing to pull at the heartstrings in his story. Pearson was simply a man who wanted more, who enjoyed the clandestine games that came with the job description. He met semiregularly with Li, who as far as Pearson knew had no direct involvement with the embassy, and passed on files and discussed office gossip. Over the last year, though, since his son’s death, Zhu had begun to demand more information, particularly on Tourism, which Pearson had assured him was responsible for the Sudanese unrest. Finally, in December, Zhu showed up in Washington and met Pearson face-to-face to explain that his requests had a personal nature to them, and they agreed on a new payment rate, deposited into a Cayman bank, to prepare for Pearson’s move into the Department of Tourism itself. “It was a lot of money-more than I’d even asked for. He wanted the whole farm.”

“So that’s what you gave him?”

“I’m a traitor, but I’m not a corrupt capitalist. I give a fair return.”

As if on cue, Drummond walked in, gripping his phone. He said, “Go ahead.”

“What?”

Drummond couldn’t speak. He gave Milo the telephone and walked out again, slamming the door behind himself. “Hello?” Milo said into it.

“Uh, where is Mr. Drummond?” asked a young female voice.

“He just handed you to me. What’s going on?”

“It’s the phones, sir. They’re all off.”

“They? Who?”

“The phones,” she repeated. “All the Tourists, except three, have gone black. I’ve contacted them directly with the Myrrh code, but the rest… I don’t know what to do. They’ve all turned off their cells.”

“You still know where they are,” Milo reminded her.

“Of course, but there’s no way to contact them.”

“Thank you,” Milo said and hung up. He felt an urge to throw himself across the stained table and strangle Pearson. Instead, he returned to the observation room and told Klein and Jones to turn on their Company phones. “Right now, please.”

There were a few seconds of silence as they reassembled and powered up their phones; the small room suddenly came alive with start-up melodies, then the beep-beep of messages received.

Each had an identical message, “Myrrh, myrrh,” which had been sent more than an hour before that moment. Each also had another message, sent twenty minutes before the Myrrh code. Jones’s read:

L: Stanley Wallis, Kasr el Madina Hotel, Cairo. Total silence.

The L stood for liquidate, and “total silence” meant that Jones should disassemble her phone and refuse all outside communication until the job was done. Klein’s message was identical, though it pointed him to Peter Schiffer, Hotel Belle Epoque, Bern.

Drummond verified that Stanley Wallis and Peter Schiffer were Tourists, muttering under his breath that Schiffer was the new work name for James Einner. Then he got down on his knees, sat, and lay back, flat on the grimy tile floor, eyes shut. “Holy shit,” he said to no one in particular. “He’s making us kill ourselves.”

Irwin, Milo noticed, was in a near-fetal position in his chair, eyes open and round. Only Jones and Klein, the two Tourists, seemed to be holding it together.

Even Milo felt himself starting to lose it. Throughout the world at that moment, thirty-seven men and women had just received orders to murder one another. Any time now the killings would begin, and there was nothing any of them could do about it.

Drummond sat up but remained on the floor, looking as if he’d just woken. He sighed loudly. “So, Milo. Is he still your hero?”

Milo wasn’t listening. He wanted to be far away. He wanted to be home. He took out Drummond’s phone and dialed an international phone number, and by the third ring Erika Schwartz picked up.

“It’s done,” he told her. “Alan will mail the tape. For Wartmüller, go to Lugano, to this address,” he said and gave her a street and number. “Garage number six, combination 54-12-35. It’s probably not what you expect, but with a little creativity you can end his career with it.”

Schwartz said, “You sound terrible, Milo. There were problems?”

“Oh, no, Erika. Everything’s just fine.”

“Then perhaps you can give me the final thing you promised.”

“The final thing?”

“The name of her killer.”

Milo had forgotten. He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll do that-but I don’t think it’ll do you any good now.”

“Why not?”

13

On all the continents they began to move, drawn by words on small screens. An L followed by a name, and each name received the reverse order, to take out the one coming to see him. On a large screen on the twenty-second floor of the building on the corner of West Thirty-first and the Avenue of the Americas, the red spots on every continent shifted, and then, over hours, pairs converged. They left cities to find new cities, and those in the countryside and in places with no names sought out the crowded centers.

In the office, the late-morning light spilling in, they watched and zoomed in on individual cities like spectators to a disaster who morbidly replay the same tape over and over again. A red spot moved closer to another red spot until they were atop one another, and then one moved away, leaving behind a blue spot. Then nearby-never farther than a half mile from the point of contact, and sometimes in the same place-the original spot stopped and turned blue.

“Who’s doing that?” asked Irwin, wiping at his nose with Kleenex he’d stolen from a cubicle. “One kills another, and who’s killing the first one?”

No one bothered to answer him.

Out in the field of cubicles Travel Agents made desperate calls to hotels in the world’s cities, asking to speak to people who never answered their room phones or the knocks on their doors. They knew what total silence meant.

Hanoi, Jerusalem, Moscow, Johannesburg, London, Cairo, Tokyo, Mexico City, Seoul, Dhaka, New Delhi, Brasilia, St. Petersburg, Buenos Aires, Tashkent, Tehran, Vancouver, Phnom Penh, Bern.

In Cairo, there was no joining of spots. Just a red spot inside the Kasr el Madina that turned blue. Milo asked Drummond to zoom in on Bern, then smiled sadly as he saw that Peter Schiffer, once known as James Einner, was in Marians Jazzroom on Engestrasse.

Milo used another computer to find the club’s Web site. There was a phone number. He called, and after three rings a woman picked up. A trombone wailed in the background. In German he explained there was an emergency. An accident. The wives of two men in the club had been seriously injured. Could he please talk to Peter Schiffer and James Einner? The woman was hesitant. “We’re packed.”

“Really,” said Milo. “This is an emergency.”

He could hear her shouting the names. There was a break in the music that helped her project across the small club that Milo knew so well. Minutes passed, and finally she picked up again and said, “I’m sorry, but they’re not here.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, man. I’m sure.”

But there he was, in the rear corner. He wouldn’t answer, though. He followed orders too well. “One last thing.”

“Better be quick.”

“Please write down a message. They’ll be there. Give it to either one of them.”

“What’s the message?”

“Myrrh.”

“What?”

He spelled it for her. “And put my name on it. Milo Weaver.” He spelled that, too.

He returned to the others mesmerized by the spots changing colors in Drummond’s office. Irwin was in a chair, his face in his hands. Drummond was hypnotized, keeping score. Klein and Jones stood back a few paces, watching wryly, though when Jones spoke there was no humor in her voice. “That’s seventeen. There-Brasilia-eighteen.” She looked at Milo. “All this because someone’s kid died?”

He didn’t answer her; no one did.

Milo stood beside Drummond, who made a soft whimpering sound each time a spot changed color. He sometimes zoomed back so that the world became pockmarked with red blemishes slowly overwhelmed by blue. The scales tipped, the blue winning, but that didn’t slow the color’s brutal forward march. Milo kept his eye on Switzerland. Bern.

Red.

Red.

Red.

While he stared he remembered another of those insipid rules of Tourism that had come from his own pen:

A TOURIST KNOWS FAILURE BETTER THAN HE

KNOWS HIS MOTHER

Which was what Peter Schiffer, or James Einner, read at that moment.

He was sitting in Marians Jazzroom, pressed into the soft purple couch that ran the length of the back wall, hardly even listening to the trio on the bandstand-drums, bass, trombone. He squinted in the dim light, reading the pamphlet that he’d spent two months tracking down. Malmö, Toulouse, Milan. Now Bern, where the handwritten child’s notebook had been hidden behind this very seat.

He’d discovered it before the club began to fill up for the seven thirty show, so distracted by his search that he wasn’t even concerned by the order he’d received some hours before-L: ZACHARY KLEIN. WILL COME TO YOU AT BELLE EPOQUE. UNTIL COMPLETE, TOTAL SILENCE. While he had followed the order by disassembling his phone, he wasn’t about to sit around in his hotel, even one as pleasant as the Belle Epoque, when the Black Book was within his reach.

Someone knew he was here-the barmaid had called out both his work names-but not even that mattered. He maintained his absolute silence and continued to read as the woman shouted rudely above the horn solo. Einner glanced at her irritated face (someone on the phone in her hand was insisting), then returned to reading.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he thought of the book, but he supposed it wasn’t the kind of thing you could digest in one reading. Some of the advice seemed strangely pedestrian, while other bits made him pause and think back over his own actions. Did he, as the Black Book stated was crucial, know empathy? He wasn’t sure.

Did he know failure better than he knew his own mother?

No. He hadn’t failed enough to be so familiar with it, but the Book had words even for his situation:

If you’re new to the game and have only known success, you won’t want to hear this. Sure, you’ll think, some Tourists run into failure, but there’s always a chance I’ll be that lucky one who slips between the blades.

You’re wrong. Sometimes you’ll end an operation having achieved all your objectives, only to learn-maybe years later-that you failed in some unknowable way. In fact, it’s more likely you’ll fail as often as you succeed.

It was, like a lot of the Book, depressing stuff, and he ordered a locally distilled grappa to cut the edge off of it.

Don’t be dismayed; you’re still better than most agents. On average (based on a classified 1986 study) a Tourist succeeds 58% of the time, whereas a regular Clandestine service Operations officer succeeds 38% of the time. You’ll be happy to note that FBI agents tend toward the 32% range, though the KGB-in 1986-had a success rate of 41%. Although the numbers for MI-6 agents have never been released, the State Department estimates something in the high thirties, while as of 1995 (according to a leaked French report) DGSE agents had an appalling success rate of 28%.

As a Tourist, there is only one way to deal with failure-treat it as if it were success.

On his left, an attractive blonde sat waiting for her boyfriend to return from the bathroom. She was bored with the music, had been for their entire stay, while her boyfriend-a sandy-haired twenty-something who was all elbows-had bounced and bobbed to the rhythms like a spastic duck. It was the season for the International Jazzfestival Bern, and there were a lot of his type around. The blonde leaned toward Einner and said in German, “You come a club to read?”

He gave her a smile. “I come to pick up girls, but the only good-looking one here has a date already.”

“Really? Where is she?”

He maintained his smile until she blushed, pleased. He finished his drink and left, feeling warm and whole and decided to walk back to the hotel rather than calling a taxi. If this poor, doomed Klein was waiting for him, then so be it. He walked up Engestrasse, then crossed the bridge over the railroad tracks to reach Tiefenaustrasse and continued toward the Aare, where he passed the occasional wanderer and necking couple along the banks of the river. He pressed his hands into his pockets, the chill refreshing after the stuffy club, and remembered a story from the Book, the bleakest one.

True story, Tourist. Listen up.

There was a man who, if legends were allowed in our profession, would have been the Paul Bunyan of Tourism. Sixteen years of continual work-seven years longer than a Tourist’s life expectancy-and even the opposition admitted that he did his work with panache. He had friends on their side, friends who’d do anything for him, even as he worked to destroy them. He had an exceptional life, a woman in every port-though he stuck to airline stewardesses because they were the only ones who could relate to him. They understood that he had no base, no home, and that his country was his feet.

Airline employees are the only ones who get that-remember.

After sixteen years he decided it was time to turn in his spurs. He’d collected enough scars for three grandfatherhoods full of stories, and he’d put away enough money to buy a small island. But it was love that really did him in, as it does most of us.

Don’t turn the page. It gets better.

“Better” was a poor word to describe what followed, he thought as he passed an old man on a bench, gloved hand propped atop a cane beside his knee. Einner gave him a welcoming nod, but the man didn’t seem to notice him. He, too, was elsewhere.

He forgot, this Tourist. He forgot that what we do, everything we do, sticks to us. He bought that house in the city, then a second one in the Rockies. He married that last stewardess who, fortuitously, had also tired of all the air miles.

And they did it. Five years went by. There was a child, then a second. His old comrades tried now and then to get in touch, but he sent them away. This was a new life, unlike all the little lives he once lived in all those cities. Some friends worried; they warned him that it wasn’t that easy. It couldn’t be.

“But it is,” he told them, and returned to his soft bed with his soft wife and children and acres of peace.

Then, five years, seven months, and six hours into this grand experiment of living, he wakes in a sweat. His wife, dozing beside him, is no longer his wife. She’s reverted to a Face. Just a Face. Like the ones he remembers from all those airports and train stations and bus terminals, it’s filled with every possibility of betrayal. Because that’s what Faces are to the Tourist. Each Face is an opportunity to be caught, turned in, tortured, ransacked, slugged. Betrayed. It’s the sweet paranoia that keeps us alive.

James Einner had been a Tourist for three years. He liked his job. He enjoyed that sweet paranoia that kept him alive. To say he enjoyed the killing would have been a stretch, but there was real pleasure in planning a murder and, more importantly, assembling the escape plan. He enjoyed gaining people’s confidence, and the adrenaline rush when someone let slip the crucial secret nugget that, had he not been working so well, never would have slipped out of their lips. They were all Faces, sure, but they were people, too. Adversaries demanded some level of respect, even when he was about to kill them. Even when they did that one thing that brought him no pleasure, and in fact cut him off at the knees: begged for their lives.

This can’t be happening, right? What about those five wonderful years? He goes to look in on his children. Children. At least they don’t betray. But he remembers a job in Tangier, another in Beirut, a bad time in Delhi. Cities where they use children to carry explosive devices and messages and collect information. Everyone betrays. That’s the nature of living. And children, they’re just more Faces.

So he goes down to the basement, where he keeps his guns locked up, and grabs the old Walther PPK that was his protection of choice in the old days. Then he takes them out. One by one. And it’s a mess. It’s a damned shame. Once it’s done, he knows, because violence has cleared his head again. He remembers that he ignored their screams as if they were the statistical screams of passengers in a plummeting jetliner.

His friends were right; they all were. But a Tourist is vain, particularly retired ones, and this one can’t bear to stay around and admit his error. He sucks on the Walther that once was his best friend.

On both banks the city rose up, and he headed back inland, finally reaching the art deco Hotel Belle Epoque. He preferred modern monstrosities, but an acquaintance in Paris had suggested the place. The acquaintance, however, was obviously more of an art lover than he was.

He collected his key from the charming girl at the front desk, who told him there had been no visitors. However, there had been one phone message. She handed it over.

Image

“Any idea what this means?” he asked the girl.

She had no idea-the caller had said he would understand-and as he took the stairs to his room he worked over what to do. Return yet again? It seemed impossible. The mole had been disproved, and he had been ordered to wait for a contact. But what if his cell phone had been compromised? Perhaps that order had been a ruse? Either way, one or both of the orders were wrong.

The hair he’d slipped into the door was still where he’d left it, so he went in and turned on the television instinctively. There was only one thing to do-call in and get Drummond himself to issue his order. So he lowered the volume on the television and picked up the hotel phone. There was a knock on his door. He put the phone back in its cradle and took a revolver out of the closet and said, “Yes?”

“Seven two six oh three nine.”

Einner looked down at his gun and slipped it into his waistband. He opened the door to find a small Asian man-not Chinese; Malaysian, perhaps-looking sternly back at him as he said, “Four two-” He didn’t get any further. The man was holding an old Croatian pistol, a PHP, with a short suppressor screwed into it. He pulled the trigger, and the force of the bullet in his stomach knocked Einner back a few steps. There was no pain, not yet, just a weight in his gut that made it hard to reach around to the small of his back to get at his revolver. Nevertheless, he tried as the man took a step forward and shot him once more in the forehead.

His vision went first; then everything began to shut down. But death, like love, is relative. In those final seconds so much can come, and like a judgment he never even knew he had made against himself, his last thoughts replayed a road and trees to the south of Gap, France. The accident he’d set up. Finding the French agent dead against the steering wheel, the girl in shock. Offering his help. Carrying her to his SUV. Her saying nothing. Stopping again and telling the girl that they needed to get out. “A friend lives right through there. Through those trees. He’s a doctor.” Then carrying her because her legs weren’t working well enough. Her slow questions, and the smell of her surprisingly pungent sweat. Holding his breath and thinking only of the next step. Walking, until he saw the two trees, crossed, as if they’d been waiting for years just for this. “Sit down here a sec. I need to rest.”

“Where is this house,” she said flatly.

“Right through there,” he said, and when she looked away he stepped close and reached out, but she had already turned back, eyes large. Thinking only of the next step, he turned her away again and lifted her up and grabbed her jaw and pulled sharply until the crack came and his legs were liquid and he fell with her and all was finished.

I know what you’re thinking, because each Tourist reacts the same way to this story. You don’t believe it. Or, if you do, you think this man was unbalanced from the beginning. You’d be wrong. He was the best. He was better than you can ever hope to be.

If you think this could never happen to you, you’re as much of a fool as he was.

14

Two weeks later, on the day after the final Panikhida, which ended the forty-day mourning period within the Eastern Orthodox Church, Andrei Stanescu touched down at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, United States. His single beat-up handbag, bought at a market in Ungheni for their move west, held some basic toiletries, one change of clothes, and a crumpled map of Manhattan and its boroughs marked up by his indecipherable shorthand. He showed his Moldovan passport to a brisk and humorless border guard behind Plexiglas, who asked him some questions about his visit. They were nothing. In his life he’d been asked serious questions by border guards and militia and government officials. This was nothing.

“What is the purpose of your stay?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your stay. Why are you here?”

“For to see America.”

“So you’re a tourist?”

“Yes. A tourist.”

He peered at the fresh visas-the Schengen visa that had recently been renewed, as well as the American tourist visa that would allow him two months to do as he pleased. In fact, there was only one thing he was pleased to do, and besides, the two hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket would not last him two months. It would last long enough. Then? Then he would either use the return ticket or he wouldn’t; that part wasn’t up to him. It was up to God.

He was better now than when he tracked Erika Schwartz and cornered her at that convenience store in Pullach. He hadn’t been thinking straight. He’d come off three days of no sleep, and in that time he hadn’t even called in to work; his taxi had sat unused until he drove it to Munich to demand some kind of satisfaction. Though, as promised, she did call in the morning with the unfortunate news that there were no tenable leads on his daughter’s murder, he knew the sound of a brush-off, and knew that this was what she was giving him. He didn’t know why, because when they’d talked outside the church he’d believed that this was a woman who wanted to make a little justice in an unjust world. He’d been wrong.

He’d prepared in advance and knew to go to the AirTrain station. The price, as expected, was five dollars. At Howard Beach, he bought a plastic two-dollar subway ticket from an angry Negro behind another window, who kept telling him to use the machines against the wall. But Andrei was firm. He pushed the five-dollar bill through the window and repeated, “Ticket. Hoyt Street Fulton Mall.”

“Okay, man. Here’s the MetroCard. Now you find Hoyt your own self,” he said, pointing at a map on the wall.

He understood far more English than he could speak, most of it learned from subtitled movies that filled the television back in Moldova. He also understood maps, for during his two years of obligatory military service he’d excelled in all forms of navigation. So finding Hoyt Street station from where he stood was not difficult. There, he saw, he could change trains and change again after another stop until he reached Fifteenth Street-Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

“It will be easy,” Rick had told him in slow, watery Russian-a language Andrei knew all too well. “Getting there is the easy part. Getting prepared is easy. After that, it’s up to you. It’s your show. You know what they say about the pure-hearted, Andrei. You have nothing to worry about.”

It had been a surprise when the Alligator dispatch operator radioed him with a pickup from Tegel and said that the caller had requested him in particular. “Me?”

“Yes, you, Andrei.”

The smiling, fat Chinaman waiting with no luggage at all decided to take the passenger seat-carsickness, he explained-so Andrei cleared off his loose receipts, his jacket, and the paper bag that had held his lunch, and the man settled in with a loud series of grunts. “Tiergarten, bitte.”

While Andrei drove, the man rested his gloved hands on his lap and asked in Russian if Andrei spoke Russian. That should have been a sign, but Andrei just shrugged. “Da.”

“Dobriy,” said the Chinaman. “Mr. Stanescu, you don’t know me, but I requested you be my driver today.”

“I heard that,” Andrei answered. “Your story has been heard around the world, even in my country.”

“If you’re a journalist I’ll let you out here.”

“Please. I’m no journalist.” He reached into his coat and removed a square purple envelope and began to unseal it. “I’m a friend. Or, at least, I hope you’ll consider me one. I’d just like to help you.”

The Chinaman hadn’t been the first person to recognize him. Sometimes in the middle of a ride, a passenger would get a fresh glimpse of him in the rearview mirror and gasp as his memory clicked. Usually his fares chose silence, though sometimes-and it was more often women who did this-they opened their mouths and began long, pointless monologues on what he must be feeling, and how they felt when they learned of his daughter’s death. He never knew what they expected from him in return-appreciation? He doubted they understood that what they really provoked from him was hatred.

So he said, “Help isn’t possible, sir. Please don’t trouble yourself.”

“I’m not the only one, am I?” said the Chinaman, reading his mind. “Forget about the others. They’re fools. There’s only one way to help a man in your position. Here,” he said, nodding at the side of the road. “Pull over a moment.”

They had just left the highway and entered Charlottenburg, not far from Sophie-Charlotte-Platz. “Why?” asked Andrei.

“Because I don’t want you to have an accident when you see this.”

He pulled over, wondering how much time he should allow before kicking this bastard out of his taxi. He didn’t need to see anything to risk having a wreck. All he had to do was be reminded of Adriana. The man opened the envelope and removed a single photograph. It was familiar, too familiar, but clearer than the one Erika Schwartz had shown him. The man-that man-talking to Adriana by the entrance of the courtyard. She was beautiful. He touched the photograph, touched her, and then the Chinaman took it away, saying, “He killed her.”

“No,” Andrei answered, not even wondering how a Chinese man had gotten hold of the image. “It was someone else.”

“Who told you that?”

“German intelligence.”

The Chinaman smiled and shook his head. “Spies protecting spies. This man, the one who killed your daughter, is an American spy.”

“No, he’s a tourist.”

“That’s what they call them. But he’s a spy.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know everything about this man. If you’d like, I can share that information with you.”

Andrei looked again at the photo in this stranger’s hand and felt as if he might vomit. Confusion was beginning to set in. He swallowed, wondering why all the spies he knew were obese. “Who are you?”

“Call me Rick. And know that I’m sickened by what this man did.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back in America.”

“Then it’s no good. I can’t go there.”

“I can help with that.”

It was too stuffy in the car, and Andrei got out to light a cigarette, but the rush of traffic kept blowing out his matches. He moved to the sidewalk and got it lit and took a deep drag. The Chinaman didn’t bother getting out, just rolled down the window and stared at him with his Asian eyes. Andrei walked away, puffing on his cigarette, then returned. Above the roar of traffic the man called Rick began talking, and he had to squat beside the window to hear. He, too, was a father. Or he had been until those same spies had killed his only son. “I felt like you, but I knew the only way to ever get back my life was to deal with it. You can stay here, Andrei. You can forget we ever talked. But it will never leave you-trust me. It will make you sick at night when everything is quiet and you remember her again.” Rick’s eyes were wet, as if this were how he had spent his own nights, but perhaps that was just the wind. “The only way to make some kind of peace is to know that you’ve done everything you can do.”

“Are you religious?” Andrei asked.

“I believe in the order of things.”

Andrei nodded at this, then tossed away his cigarette and got behind the wheel again. Rick rolled up his window. Andrei said, “You’re talking about revenge.”

Rick thought for a moment, then quoted: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

That had been six days ago. Now, as he switched trains in Brooklyn, examining the signs above his head to make sure he didn’t lose his way, he repeated that verse. It was busy here, and he was just another speck in the mass of many nations that poured through the New York transportation system every day.

Until Prospect Park, everything had been predicted, for he had sat down with Rick and gone over each moment in his journey westward. He’d made his illegible notes on the map Rick supplied, and circled the corner of Garfield and Seventh Avenue. First, though, he had to go to the park.

He’d taken an early flight, and with the change in time zones it was still only a little before three in the afternoon. The day was bright but chilly, and as he settled on a bench he saw couples and people with dogs, some on leads and others running loose. Dogs of a confusing variety of breeds. There were also businessmen on cell phones. It was, he realized, much like Germany, and he wondered why so many Moldovans he knew were desperate to come here. He thought of Vasile, another taxi driver, who would be sick with jealousy if he knew where Andrei was. But no one knew. Rick had been insistent about this. “Not even Rada.”

Poor Rada, who woke up that morning and couldn’t help but dress in black again, despite the end of the official mourning. This man, Milo Weaver, hadn’t just killed Adriana. He’d killed Rada. He’d killed Andrei, too.

So when he left that morning with his small bag he’d explained that he was taking over Vasile’s morning shift. As if she knew, she’d asked him to call someone else to take it over. She wanted him at home, with her-she had already called in sick again. She wasn’t sure she could bear the empty apartment alone today. He’d had to be firm-“Calling in sick like this, you’re going to lose your job. Someone has to earn money”-but he’d given her the kindest kiss he could manage.

“Andrei?” said a voice with an accent that skipped over the rolled r in his name.

He looked up to find another Chinese man. A skinny man, taller than he’d expected, wearing a trench coat. He carried a paper shopping bag with

BARNEYS

NEW YORK

written on it.

“Ja?” he said, then remembered where he was. “Yes. I am Andrei. You are Li?”

“About time,” the man said, then launched into a stream of English Andrei couldn’t understand at all and set the bag at his feet. He ended with “Okay?”

Andrei nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

For a second the man stared at him, his face full of doubt, then turned and walked away.

Andrei waited, breathing through his mouth because his nose had become stopped up, and watched the dogs racing across the park, stumbling and jumping over one another and chewing on each other and pinning each other down. Tongues lashed against their faces as they ran, and their eyes were huge with pleasure.

15

She recalled Venice. After all, it was the three of them again-the three of them and a strange man. Angela Yates was the only missing actor, and she was dead. She’d been dead for eight months.

That was later. At the moment it occurred, she recalled nothing. It was a moment unto itself, with no past or future, and her instincts took over: She reached for Stephanie and pulled her close.

They had just left the apartment. It was nearly seven-they were running late for their reservation at Long Tan, and Little Miss was talking. “If you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway, then…” She didn’t finish her sentence. Not because of what happened, but because she couldn’t find the words to express how much the English language had let her down. A minute later, Tina would share her inarticulateness.

He didn’t stand out. In a city like New York few people stand out, but the small man in the soiled, waist-length jacket sitting on their stoop with a leather bag and a shopping bag from Barneys looked like any number of visitors in this city of visitors. Beyond him, a black couple pushed a baby carriage along the sidewalk, and across Garfield the Vietnamese florists were checking on the breathtaking variety of flowers arranged on the sidewalk outside their convenience store every day. The man, hearing them come out, turned to look. He had a round, flabby face and deep-set eyes, and besides the stubble that went nearly up to his eyelids he had plenty of hair. The hair on top of his head looked oily.

Tina turned to lock the door while Milo told Stephanie, “Language doesn’t always make sense. Take Russian, for example-”

He stopped because he, too, had noticed the man now staring at them. With a hand that moved as if it were a separate creature entirely, Milo grabbed Stephanie by the arm and pushed her behind him, placing his own body between this man and his girls.

“It is you,” the man said in heavily accented English.

With a voice harder than any she’d heard in her life, Milo said, “Go back inside, Tina.”

Tina had already locked up and pocketed the key. “What?”

“Inside. Take Stef.”

“Milo Weaver,” said the man on the steps.

“Inside, Tina.”

Her hands were shaking, but she got the door open and pulled Stephanie, who knew better than to ask questions right now, inside. They shut the door and watched through the window as Milo took a step down and began to speak softly to the man.

The window was thin, and they could catch phrases:… should go home… can’t solve anything… not at my house… Then they switched to German. The word “Stanescu” came to them, and Tina realized with an unsettling shift in her stomach that Stanescu was the name of the Europe an girl who’d been killed.

Then she recalled this man’s face (it looked so different in reality) from some video on CNN, with the weeping mother. The poor man, Tina thought, looking down at him over Milo’s shoulder. Then the poor man reached into the Barneys bag and removed a small pistol. All the air left her and she reached for Stephanie, who was glued to the glass, saying, “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!” Tina pulled her tight to her stomach and tugged her backward. “Stop, Mom!”

Tina wouldn’t stop. She understood enough about bullet trajectories to know that if that man tried to shoot Milo and missed, the bullet would come at them. She wouldn’t have her daughter in the way of that. Nor would she have Stephanie watch her father get shot. Tina had watched that before, in Venice, and knew how horrible it was.

She was hardly thinking as she lifted Stephanie, kicking, onto her shoulder, and with strength she didn’t know she had carried her up two flights and used her free hand to unlock the door and get inside. Stephanie ran for the window to look down, and Tina took out her phone and dialed 911. “There’s a man with a gun,” she told the bland emergency operator as a single gunshot rang out. She dropped the phone and ran to the window, where Stephanie was screaming for her father. Tina looked down-the little man was rushing around the corner onto Seventh, and Milo was sitting on the front steps.

She rushed to the door and spun around, pointing at Stephanie, who had begun to cry. Frail girl, shaking hands. “Stay here!” Tina shouted, then fled downstairs, thinking, I’m a terrible mother. She couldn’t help it. She was what she was.

By the time she reached the front steps three people were standing over Milo, two with cell phones to their ears, one holding Milo’s arm and speaking calmly to him. Milo was hunched forward, a bright red hand clutching at his stomach. Blood was all over the three concrete steps, and he was making guttural sounds. She pushed the stranger aside and got close to Milo’s face. His lips were too red, and so were his teeth, and when he coughed, bloody spittle shot out onto her blouse. “Honey,” she said. “Hey, baby. Look at me.”

From somewhere in the sky, she heard Stephanie calling to her, and looked up to see her head poking out of their window. “It’s okay!” Tina called. “He’s going to be fine! Just stay there!”

Milo was speaking. It was a whisper, so she leaned close. “It’s okay,” he said, as if he were repeating her words.

“It’s not okay,” she told him, “but it will be. The ambulance will be here.”

“Ambulanza,” he said, smiling as a drop of blood rolled down his chin. It was the Italian word for ambulance, she realized, then remembered Venice just as he was remembering it.

When a fresh wave of pain hit him, he leaned forward and squeezed her arm so hard it hurt. He buried his face in her breasts. She was calmer now-panic had given way to shock-and she asked if anyone (there were now a dozen people standing around) could see the ambulance. Two stout men ran to the corner to look. She held on to Milo’s head as he whispered something into her cleavage. She tilted his head back. “What, hon?”

“I deserve this,” he said.

“No. No one deserves this.”

“You don’t,” he said. “Little Miss doesn’t.” He coughed up more blood.

When she looked down she saw that so much blood had come out that it looked as if they had both been shot, and she knew that wasn’t good. She took his face in her hands and made him look into her eyes. “Lover? Lover. Stay awake. Okay?”

He nodded, but closed his eyes as he did so, which terrified her. She slapped him once on the cheek, hard, and his eyes opened again. “Dominatrix,” he said, smiling. Then: “Push me back.”

“What?”

“To see her.”

She pushed his shoulders slowly, but when his face contorted in pain she asked for help from one of the men standing uselessly around. Finally, his back against the steps and his head leaned all the way back, he was staring skyward. Stephanie was still looking out the window, crying, and he gave her a smile and tried to call up to her, but couldn’t get the breath for it. So he told Tina what to say.

“Little Miss! Your dad’s going to be all right! He doesn’t want you to worry, and doesn’t want you to crack your knuckles anymore!”

Stephanie paused her tears to look at her hands, which were clasped together, cracking maniacally. She released them.

By the time the ambulance arrived, nearly two dozen people were standing on either side of the street in front of their apartment, and the driver had to shout at them to get out of the way. A pair of Latino medics got out of the rear with a stretcher, and while one examined Milo’s stomach the other talked quietly with him about the sequence of events that had led to his injuries. Sometimes Tina cut in with her own version-“I went upstairs, to protect our daughter,” she said defensively, and the medic waved her away. Soon Milo was strapped into the stretcher and Tina was telling him that they would be right behind him.

She then changed and found a new shirt to replace the one Stephanie had ripped on the windowsill, the crowd had dispersed, leaving only a few curiosity-seekers staring at the bloody front stoop, which Tina tried to distract Stephanie from. Though New York Methodist was just up the street, she still used the car, chatting away in what she thought was a calming voice while Stephanie sat silently beside her, peering out the window.

They had spent an hour in the waiting room, receiving occasional reports from a tired doctor who assured her that Milo would live, but there would be a long recovery time. The bullet had entered the small intestine. After she left, Stephanie sank into a disturbing silence, and Tina remembered something from their last session with Dr. Ray. Milo had begun to fade again, worrying her, but then he launched into a non sequitur. “Back when I was still working, I sometimes had these lapses. I’d be in some city, and some unexpected detail would throw me. A dog, a car, some music-always something different.”

“How do you mean, throw you?”

“Divert me. I’d suddenly feel a physical need to call home. To talk to Tina and Stephanie. I even called a couple times, but luckily they didn’t answer.”

“You never mentioned this,” Tina said.

“Because it was reckless,” he told her. “Which is why it disturbed me. I didn’t want to call, but I had to.” He looked at Dr. Ray. “Any idea what that was?”

Dr. Ray frowned, then shrugged as if the question were entirely preposterous. “Well, it sounds like love to me. Doesn’t it?”

The memory faded as a man in a gray suit with disheveled hair and pink hands stepped into the room. He looked around the crowd of waiting families, finally alighting on them, and came over. He gave Stephanie a smile and nodded at Tina. “How’s Milo?”

“Who are you?”

“Oh, sorry. Alan Drummond. Milo used to work for me.”

“In the Department of Tourism?”

His face went blank. “I’m not sure what you mean.” Stephanie leaned against Tina’s arm and yawned.

“I’ve finally made an honest man of him,” Tina said. “Not that it matters now. The department doesn’t exist anymore, does it?”

Alan Drummond moved his mouth as if he were trying to find a way to spit out his tongue. “Are you going to tell me how Milo is? I heard he was shot.”

“Stomach. He’ll pull through.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“Are you?”

A flash of anger passed through his features; then he took the free chair beside Tina. “Yes, Tina. I happen to like the guy.”

“Then maybe you should be out catching the guy who did this.”

“As you pointed out, I’m unemployed now. But for the sake of argument, who did this?”

“A little man. His name is Stanescu.”

“You’re sure?”

“Milo said that name when they were talking.”

“They talked?”

“Not long. In German. I recognized the man from television. Then he shot Milo.”

Remembering, Tina looked down at Stephanie, whose eyes were closed. She was listening, though; Tina was sure of it.

She said, “The name-does this have to do with… you know. The girl?”

Drummond didn’t look like he understood, then he worked back in his memories and finally got it. “Oh, no. I’m sure it doesn’t.”

Christ, but these people could lie so well.

16

Though she picked up a bottle as usual and even exchanged a few words with Herr al-Akir, when her home phone rang at nine thirty-five, she hadn’t even opened the bottle. Instead, she was sitting at the kitchen table, her cell phone beside her landline, staring at the two phones. Waiting.

She had expected the call to come later, and when she heard Berndt Hesse’s hoarse voice-he’d never been used to long bouts of talking-she thought he sounded confused. “Can you get over to Schwabing?”

“If it’s necessary, Berndt. What’s wrong?”

“I’d rather tell you in person. Come to Theodor’s house. You… you know where it is?”

“It’s been a long time, and it’ll take me a while. Could you remind me of the address?”

She drove the half hour to the northern Munich suburb without speeding, and on the way considered calling Oskar. She wanted to at least know if she should be prepared for failure, but there was no point to it. Either it had gone according to plan, or it hadn’t.

Instead, she thought of Milo Weaver, and the unexpected connection that had come to her after their brief phone call two weeks ago. She’d hung up, and like a spotlight the realization had swept over her body. No, she had never known Milo Weaver, but his name had come up during an interrogation with an American woman, a terrorist. Three decades ago.

Ellen Perkins, in 1979, had been stewing in a German prison because she was one of those many young people who believed that with a gun, Marx, and some catchphrases, an entire civilization could be torn down. However, this one had a son she had secretly shipped off to America to live with her sister. Over the interrogation table, Erika had explained that she knew about the boy, Milo, and tried to use this knowledge to leverage a little cooperation.

Perkins had been harder than she looked, and the day after the interview she hanged herself in her cell, using the pants of her own prison uniform. She knew how to kill a conversation.

Then, almost thirty years later, she’d interrogated the son. What a truly remarkable world it was.

Theodor Wartmüller’s Potsdamer Strasse apartment was high up in one of the many postwar buildings that had been rebuilt to prewar specifications. Two blue Bundespolizei BMWs were parked at awkward angles on the sidewalk in front of it, and farther down the street was a van from N24, the twenty-four-hour news channel. There were also people who, having seen the police and the man outside the building with a huge camera on his shoulder, were standing around, full of dumb curiosity. It took her ten minutes to find a parking space on the next street and walk back, passing Teddi’s MINI and cutting through the crowd, waving her BND card to the policeman on duty at the front door. A reporter she recognized from television asked if she believed the story about Wartmüller. She said, “No comment,” and continued inside.

The entryway was empty, though another policeman-a local one-stood at the elevator and checked her ID again before letting her take it up to the fifth floor. It was there that everyone had collected. Berndt, Franz and Birgit, Gaby from the public relations department, Robert from Administration, Hans from Operations, Claudia from Fraud. No one was speaking aloud. Only whispers filled the living room of Wartmüller’s immense apartment. They were grouped around objects-an art nouveau floor lamp, a Restoration sofa, the drinks cabinet. When she entered, they all looked at her, but only Berndt detached himself from Hans to come over.

“About time you got here.”

“What’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Paintings. From the E. G. Bührle Museum.”

“The robbery in February?” she said, trying to sound shocked. “What does that have to do with Teddi?”

“Two paintings. The final missing ones. They were found here in his apartment.”

Erika shook her head. “What do you mean, found? No one just finds something. You come in and search for it. How did that happen?”

“Anonymous call to Interpol. Interpol brought it to the Feds. They arrived with a warrant a few hours ago.”

“Where were the paintings?”

Berndt opened his mouth, then closed it, as if his next words couldn’t be believed. “Under his bed. Theodor says he’s never seen them before in his life.”

She exhaled loudly. “The real question is who contacted the press.”

He shrugged.

She found Theodor in the guest bedroom-the master bedroom had been taped off for forensics to go over-guarded by two policemen. She didn’t bother asking them to leave, because they wouldn’t anyway. The bedroom, like all the rooms, had a huge window through which he could easily escape-and through which anyone who knew the alarm code could easily get in.

He was sitting at the bottom of the bed, feet on the floor and elbows on his knees, staring at a large, very dark photograph. It was too dark to make out the subject, and she wondered if it was one of those postmodern works, called something like Blackness #23.

He finally raised his eyes to look at her; they were full of red veins. He’d been crying. He knew, just as she knew, that his career was over. Maybe he could get himself out of this, maybe not. The rumors were enough. His face on international television; his biography suddenly of public interest. He would have to start again. The knowledge of this was all over his face, and she was impressed that he had put it together so quickly.

She considered things to say. She could play so many different roles. She could tell from his eyes that he knew, though, and there was no point going through the motions. She was too tired for that, and so was he.

So without a word passing between them, she returned to the living room and joined various conversations about how to control the damage. Even out here, no one was wondering if Theodor had stolen those paintings. No one cared, not even Franz and Birgit. He’d been abandoned so quickly that even as someone-Claudia, perhaps?-suggested that Erika take over the department for a while, she could only feel a dull, quiet sympathy for the lonely man in the other room.

Her phone rang. It was Oskar. He was breaking the rules, and she almost didn’t answer. She carried the phone to the doorway, where another policeman was standing with an unlit cigarette, wondering if he could smoke in the stairwell. “Oskar. It’s a surprise to hear from you so late. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s Milo Weaver. He’s been shot. Alan Drummond claims Andrei Stanescu did it.”

“Andrei? The father-not the uncle?”

“They’re sending over CCTV footage from JFK Airport. He’s on a plane now, headed back to Berlin.”

“The father,” she said again. “That’s a surprise.”

She fell silent, watching the policeman finally give up and slip the cigarette into a box and put the box into his pocket. She wondered if violence lived in the blood, passed from mother to son, dooming both to abrupt, early deaths.

Oskar said, “What’s your order? Drummond wants him arrested when he lands.”

She’d stopped thinking of Milo Weaver, languishing in some American hospital, and had moved on to Andrei Stanescu, and the fact that he would risk everything for a single shot at the man who had taken his daughter. There’s violence in us all, she thought, but only said, “Can you blame him?”