The Tourist

1

Terence Albert Fitzhugh stood in what had once been Tom Grainger's twenty-second-floor office. No longer. Through the ceiling-high windows behind the desk lay a vista of skyscrapers, the canopy of the urban jungle. Beyond the blinds on the opposite wall lay a field of cubicles and activity where all the young, pale Travel Agents made sense of Tourist chatter, culling it into slim Tour Guides that eventually made it to Langley, where other analysts produced their own policy-ready reports for the politicians.

Each of those Travel Agents, he knew, hated him.

It wasn't him in particular they hated, but Terence Albert Fitzhugh as a concept. He'd seen it in Company offices throughout the world. A kind of love develops between department heads and their employees. When a department head is ousted, or killed, departmental emotions grow volatile. When that department is, like Tourism, invisible to the outside world, the staff depends on its chief that much more.

He would deal with their hatred later. Now, he shut the blinds and went to Grainger's computer. Even a week after his death, it was still a mess, because Tom Grainger had been a mess-one of those old cold warriors who'd spent too much time depending on pretty secretaries to keep order. When faced with their own computers, these old men ended up with the most cluttered desktops on the planet. 1 le had made everything else into a mess as well.

At first, of course, Fitzhugh thought he had cleaned up Grainger's mess. Tripplehorn had received his orders, and when Fitzhugh called back, the Tourist confirmed in a strangely flat voice that the job was done. Fine.

Then, at the scene, he'd noticed the blood inside the house. Why had Tripplehorn taken away Weaver's body? There was no need for that. The next day, forensics almost gave him a coronary-the blood wasn't Weaver's. They didn't know whose it was, but he did.

Tripplehorn had not answered his phone; Milo Weaver had.

Then, after a frantic week of scouring the country, a miracle.

Fitzhugh accessed the network server, typed in his code, and replayed the video of that morning. A surveillance technician had done a quick edit of footage from various cameras. It began outside the building, among the throng of midtown commuters jostling wearily to their jobs. A time code ticked at the bottom of the screen: 9:38. Among the crowd was a head that the technician had marked with a roving arrow. It started on the other side of the Avenue of the Americas, paused, and jogged through a gridlock of yellow taxis to their side.

Cut to: a second camera, on their sidewalk. By then he'd been identified, and in the lobby the doormen were taking positions. On the street, though, Weaver seemed to reconsider. He stopped, letting people bump into him, as if suddenly confused by north and south. Then he continued to the front door.

A high lobby camera, looking down. From here, he could see where the doormen had positioned themselves. The big black guy, Lawrence, was at the door, while another waited by the palm tree. Two more hid in the elevator corridor, just out of sight.

Lawrence waited for him to enter, then stepped up to him. There was a moment when everything seemed all right. Agreeably, they chatted in low tones as the other three doormen approached. Then Weaver noticed them approaching, and panicked. That's the only explanation Fitzhugh could come up with, because Milo Weaver turned on his heel, swiftly, but Lawrence was ready for that; he'd already grabbed Weaver's shoulder. Weaver punched Lawrence in the face, but the other three doormen had arrived, and they piled on him.

It was a remarkably quiet scene, just a little scuffling and the gasp of the pretty desk clerk-Gloria Martinez-just out of sight. When they all got to their feet, Weaver was cuffed behind his back, and three doormen led him to the elevators.

Strangely, Weaver smiled as he passed the front desk, even winked at Gloria. He said something that the camera didn't pick up. The doormen heard it, though, and so did Gloria: "I think I lost my tour group." What a card.

He lost his sense of humor once he reached his cell on the nineteenth floor.

"Why did you kill him?" was Fitzhugh's opening gambit. Whatever Weaver said now would tell Fitzhugh what to do next.

Milo blinked at him, hands chained behind his back. "Who?”

“Tom, for Christ's sake! Tom Grainger!"

A pause, and in that moment of silence, Fitzhugh didn't know what the man would say. Finally, Weaver shrugged. "Tom had Angela Yates killed. That's why. He set her up to look like a traitor, then killed her. He lied to you and me. He lied to the Company." Then he pushed it further: "Because I loved that man, and he used me."

Had Milo killed Tripplehorn, and then, for his own reasons, shot Tom Grainger? If so, it was a burst of cool, fresh air in Fitzhugh's muggy life. He said, "I don't give a shit what you thought about him. He was a CIA veteran and your direct superior. You killed him, Weaver. What am I supposed to think? I'm your superior now-should I worry that if you smell something you don't like I'll be next on the slab?"

It hadn't been time for questions yet, though, so he made a show of frustration, claiming he had meetings to attend. "Reorganization. Restructuring. Cleaning up your goddamned mess."

On the way out, he'd whispered to Lawrence, "Strip him to his birthday suit and give him the black hole."

Lawrence, with his bloodshot eye, betrayed a moment of disgust. "Yes, sir."

The black hole was simple. Strip a man naked, give him a little while to become comfortable with his nakedness, and, after an hour or so, turn off the lights.

Blackness in itself was disorienting, but on its own it had no impact. It was just blackness. The "hole" came sometime later-hours, maybe minutes, when the doormen, wearing infrared goggles, returned two at a time and beat the hell out of him. No light, just disembodied fists.

Take away time, light, and physical security, and a man quickly wants nothing more than to sit in a well-lit room and tell you everything he knows. Weaver would remain in the hole until tomorrow morning, by which time he would welcome even Fitzhugh's presence.

Back in the office, he read through Einner's report, delivered after their travels to Paris and Geneva. Despite Milo's attack on him, Einner insisted that Milo could not have been responsible for Angela's death. "He had the opportunity to switch her sleeping pills, but not the motive. It became obvious that he wanted to find her killer more than I did."

In a blue font, Fitzhugh added his own assessment-"Rampant Speculation"-to Einner's report, then typed his initials and the date.

A little after four, someone knocked. "Yes? Come in."

Special Agent Janet Simmons opened the door.

He tried not to let his irritation show. Instead, he thought the same thing he'd thought during their first meeting-that she might have been an attractive young woman if she hadn't put so much effort into appearing otherwise. Dark hair pulled severely back, some navy suit with too-loose slacks. Lesbian slacks, Fitzhugh secretly called them.

"Thought you were still in D.C.," he said.

"You got Weaver," she answered, gripping her hands behind her back.

Fitzhugh leaned back in the Aeron, wondering how she'd learned that.

"He came to us. Just walked his ass through the front door.”

“Where's he now?"

"Couple floors down. We're giving him the silent treatment. But he's already admitted to killing Tom.”

“Any reasons?"

"Fit of anger. Thought Grainger had used him. Betrayed him."

She reached the available chair, touched it, but didn't sit. "I'll want to talk to him, you know.”

“Of course.”

“Soon."

Fitzhugh rocked his head from side to side to show that he was a man of multiple minds-not schizophrenic, but complicated. "Soon as possible. Be sure of that. But not today. Today there's no talking. And tomorrow, I'll need a full day alone with him. Security, you know."

Simmons finally sat in the chair, her wandering eye gazing over Manhattan while her good eye locked on to him. "I'll pull jurisdiction if I have to. You know that, right? He killed Tom Grainger on American soil."

"Grainger was one of our employees. Not yours."

"Beside the point."

Fitzhugh eased back in the chair. "You act as if Weaver's your nemesis, Janet. He's just a corrupt Company man."

"Three murders in a month-the Tiger, Yates, and Grainger. That's a bit much, even for a corrupt Company man."

"You can't seriously think he killed all of them."

"I'll have a better idea once I've spoken to him."

Fitzhugh ran his tongue over his teeth. "Tell you what, Janet. Give us another day alone with him. Day after tomorrow-Friday- I'll let you sit in on the conversation." He held up three stiff fingers. "Scout's honor."

Simmons considered that, as if she had a choice. "Day after tomorrow, then. But I want something now.”

“Like what?"

"Milo's file. Not the open one-that's useless. I want yours.”

“That'll take a little-"

"Now, Terence. I'm not giving you time to misplace it, or take out all the juicy stuff. If I'm waiting to talk to him, then I better have some interesting reading."

He pursed his lips. "There's no need to be aggressive about this. We both want the same thing. Someone kills one of my people, and I want him scratching concrete for the rest of his life."

"Glad we're agreed," she said, though gladness left no mark on her face. "I still want that file."

"Can you at least wait ten minutes?”

“I can do that."

"Wait in the lobby. I'll send it down."

"What about the wife?" she asked as she stood. "Tina. Have you questioned her?"

"Briefly in Austin, after Weaver made contact, but she knows nothing. We're not bothering her anymore; she's been through enough."

"I see." Without offering a handshake, she walked out, leaving Fitzhugh to watch her march in her lesbian slacks through the maze of cubicles.

He lifted the desk phone and typed 49, and after a doorman's military opening gambit-"Yes, sir"-he cut in: "Name.”

“Steven Norris, sir."

"Listen carefully, Steven Norris. Are you listening?”

“Uh, yes. Sir."

"If you ever send a goddamned Homelander upstairs again without clearing it with me first, you're out of here. You'll be guarding the front gate of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad wearing a George Bush T-shirt instead of body armor. Got it?"

2

She'd taken a room on the twenty-third floor of the Grand Hyatt, atop Grand Central Station. Like any room Janet Simmons worked in, it quickly became a mess. She despised hotel blankets, stripping them off immediately to make a pile at the bottom of the bed. To this, she added the extra pillows (one was more than enough for her), room service menus, the alphabetical book of guest services, and all the sundry extras that overflowed the bedside tables. Only then, finally cleared of distractions, could she sit on the bed, open her laptop, and start a new Word document to transcribe her thoughts.

Simmons didn't like Terence Fitzhugh. There was the irritating way his eyes measured her bustline, but that wasn't it. What she hated was his sympathetic frowns, as if everything she said was a piece of revelatory, disappointing news. It was pure Beltway theater. When she stormed his D.C. office after the murder of Angela Yates, he gave her that same kind of treatment, with an "I'm going to get right on top of this, Janet. Be assured."

She'd expected nothing, and so it was a shock when an envelope arrived the next afternoon at her office at 245 Murray Lane. A highly censored, anonymous surveillance report on Angela Yates. And there it was. At 11:38 p.m. Milo Weaver entered her apartment. Surveillance was paused (no reason given-in fact, there was no reason listed for the surveillance at all). By the time the cameras were on again, Weaver was gone. An estimated half hour later, Angela Yates died from barbiturates. A single window of opportunity, and there was Milo Weaver.

Later, at Disney World, she'd found a frightened but stubborn wife and a cute, sleepy kid, both puzzled by the sight of Simmons, Orbach, and the other two men waving pistols. But no Milo Weaver. Grainger, it turned out, had warned him off.

Then, a week ago, Tom Grainger came up dead in New Jersey. It was a strange scene. The outline of Grainger's corpse in the front yard was straightforward enough, but what about the three windows that had been broken from the outside? What about the unidentified blood at the foot of the stairs, just inside the front door? What about the seven bullets lodged in the stairs themselves-9mm, SIG Sauer? No one offered an explanation, though it was clear enough that a third person had been on the scene. Fitzhugh pretended to be baffled by the whole thing.

In Austin, Tina Weaver disappeared for three hours. When Rodger Samson questioned her, she admitted that Milo had wanted her and Stephanie to leave the country with him. She'd refused. He'd vanished again, and Janet had believed that she would never see Milo Weaver again. Then, that morning, she'd received the enlightening call from Matthew, Homeland's plant in what the CIA considered its ultra-secret Department of Tourism.

Why had Milo turned himself in?

She opened the manila envelope that Gloria Martinez had handed her, and began to read.

Born June 21, 1970, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Parents: Wilma and Theodore (Theo) Weaver. In October 1985, a Raleigh News & Observer clipping told her, "an accident occurred on 1-40 near the Morrisville exit when a drunk driver ran head-on into another car." The driver, David Paulson, was killed, as were the occupants of the second car, Wilma and Theodore Weaver of Cary. "They are survived by their son, Milo."

She typed the requisite facts into her Word document.

Though no documentary evidence backed it up, a report explained that Milo Weaver, at fifteen, moved into the St. Christopher Home for Boys in Oxford, North Carolina. The lack of documentation was excused by another newspaper clipping, circa 1989, reporting that a fire had destroyed the St. Christopher complex and all its records, one year after Milo left North Carolina behind.

By then, a scholarship had taken him to Lock Haven University, a tiny school in a sleepy Pennsylvania mountain town. A few pages charted an irregular student who, while never arrested, was suspected by local police as being "involved with drug-users and spends much time in the old house at the corner of West Church and Fourth where marijuana parties are a regular occurrence." He'd arrived at the school majoring in "undecided" but by the end of his first year had settled on international relations.

Despite its size, Lock Haven boasted the largest student exchange program on the East Coast. During his third year, in the fall of 1990, Milo arrived in Plymouth, England, to study at Marjon, the College of St. Mark and St. John. According to these early CIA reports, Milo Weaver quickly found a circle of friends, most from Brighton, who were involved in socialist politics. While calling themselves Labour, their true beliefs led more down the path of "ecoanarchism"-a term, Simmons noted, that wouldn't come into popular use for nearly another decade. An MI5 plant inside the group, working in cooperation with the CIA, reported that Weaver was ideal for an approach. "The ideals of the group are not his, but his desire to take part in something larger than himself predicates most of his endeavors. He has fluent Russian and excellent French."

The approach occurred during a weekend trip to London in late December, a month before Weaver was scheduled to return to Pennsylvania. The MI5 plant-"Abigail"-brought him to the Marquee Club on Charing Cross, where, slipping into a rented back room, he was introduced to the London head of station, who in the reports was referred to as "Stan."

The conversation must have been favorable, because a second meeting was arranged for three days later in Plymouth. Milo then dropped out of school and, lacking a UK visa, went underground with his environmental anarchist friends.

It was a strikingly last recruitment, which Simmons also noted in her Word document, but of that first job there was nothing else, and the file referred the researcher to File WT-2569-A91. Still, she knew Milo's role in the operation lasted only until March, because that was when he was put onto the CIA payroll and sent to Perquimans County, North Carolina, where, along the Albemarle Sound, he trained for four months at the Point, a Company school less well known than the Farm but just as accredited.

Milo was sent to London, where he worked (twice, if the file was to be believed) with Angela Yates, another wanderer brought into the Company family. One report suggested they were lovers; another report insisted that Yates was a lesbian.

Milo Weaver began to settle into the Russian expatriate community, and though the actual case files lay elsewhere, Simmons could chart a career of insinuation. He mixed with all levels of Russian expats, from diplomats to petty crooks. His focus was twofold: shed light on the burgeoning mafia gaining a foothold in the London underworld, and uncover the occasional spies sent from Moscow while the Soviet Empire suffered its death throes. Though he did well with the criminal element-in the first year his information led to two major arrests-he excelled at spycatching. He had at his disposal three major sources within the Russian intelligence apparat: denis, franka, and tadeus. In two years, he uncovered fifteen undercover agents and convinced a stunning eleven to work as doubles.

Then, in January 1994, the reports changed tone, noting Milo's slow decline into alcoholism, his trenchant womanizing (not, apparently, with Angela Yates), and the suspicion that Milo himself had been turned into a double by one of his sources, tadeus. Within six months, Milo was fired, his visa was revoked, and he was given a plane ticket home.

Thus ended the first stage of Milo Weaver's career. The second documented stage began seven years later, in 2001, a month after the Twin Towers fell, when he was rehired, now as a "supervisor" in Thomas Grainger's department, the details of which were vague. Of the intervening years from 1994 to 2001, the file said nothing.

She knew what that meant, of course. Weaver's dissolution in 1994 had been an act, and for the next seven years Milo Weaver had been working black ops. Since he was part of Grainger's ultra-secret department, Weaver had been a "Tourist."

It was a nice sketch of a successful career. Field agent to ghostagent to administration. Those lost seven years might have held the answers she sought, but they would have to remain a mystery. If she admitted to Fitzhugh what she knew of Tourism, Matthew would be compromised.

Something occurred to her. She flipped back through the sheets until she'd returned to the report on Milo Weaver's childhood. Raleigh, North Carolina. Orphanage in Oxford. Then two years at a small liberal arts college before arriving in England. She compared these facts to "Abigail's" report: "He has fluent Russian and excellent French."

She used her cell phone, and after a moment heard George Orbach's deep but groggy voice say, "What is it?" That's when she realized it was nearly eleven.

"You home?"

A broad yawn. "Office. Guess I passed out.”

“I've got something for you.”

“Other than sleep?"

"Take this down." She read off the particulars of Milo Weaver's childhood. "Find out if anyone in the Weaver clan is still alive. Says here they're dead, but if you can find even a distant second cousin, then I want to talk to them."

"We dig deep, but isn't this a bit much?"

"Five years after his parents' death, he was fluent in Russian. Tell me, George-how does an orphan from North Carolina do that?"

"He takes a course. Studies hard."

"Just look into it, will you? And find out if anyone's still around from the St. Christopher Home for Boys.”

“Will do."

"Thanks," Simmons said and hung up, then dialed another number.

Despite the hour, Tina Weaver sounded awake. In the background, a television sitcom played. "What?"

"Hello, Mrs. Weaver. This is Janet Simmons."

A pause. Tina said, "Special agent, even."

"Listen, I know we didn't get off on the right foot before."

"You don't think so?"

"I know Rodger interviewed you in Austin-was he all right? I told him not to press too much.”

“Rodger was a real sweetheart."

"I'd like to talk with you about a few things. Tomorrow all right?"

Another pause. "You want me to help you track down my husband?"

She doesn't know, Simmons thought. "I want you to help me get to the truth, Tina. That's all.”

“What kinds of questions?"

"Well," Simmons said, "you're pretty familiar with Milo's past, right?"

A hesitant "Yeah."

"Any surviving relatives?"

"None that he knows of," she said, then made a wordless sound, like choking.

"Tina? You all right?"

"I just," she gasped. "I get hiccups sometimes.”

“Get yourself some water. We'll talk tomorrow. Morning okay? Like, ten, ten thirty?"

"Yeah," Tina agreed, then the line went dead.

3

In the morning, a Company driver picked Fitzhugh up from the Mansfield Hotel on West Fourty-fourth and dropped him off at the Avenue of the Americas building by nine thirty. Once behind the desk, he picked up the phone and dialed a number. "John?”

“Yes, sir," said a flat voice.

"Can you go to Room 5 and give the treatment until I get down there? No more than an hour.”

“Face?"

"No, not the face.”

“Yes, sir."

He hung up, checked his e-mail, then connected to Nexcel, signing in with Grainger's username and password. One message from Sal, that occasional oracle in Homeland:

J Simmons has gone to DT HQ unexpectedly.

"Thank you," he said to the computer. The message might have been of use had it come before Simmons ambushed him here at "DT HQ" yesterday. He wondered if Sal was really earning his Christmas bonuses.

There was a stack of real mail on the desk, and among the interdepartmental memos he found a buff envelope, postmarked Denver, addressed to Grainger. Security had placed cleared stamps all over it, so he ripped it open. Inside was a brick-colored passport, issued by the Russian Federation.

With a fingernail, he opened it to find a recent photograph of Milo Weaver with his heavy, accusing eyes and long jowl, looking in some ways like a gulag survivor. But the name beside the picture was Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov.

"Oh, fuck me," he whispered.

He went to the door and pointed through the cubicles at one of the Travel Agents, using a finger to beckon him. Once the door was closed again, Fitzhugh snapped his fingers, as if the name were on the tip of his tongue, which it wasn't.

"Harold Lynch," the analyst said. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five; a sweat-heavy lock of blond hair curled over his smooth, high forehead.

"Right. Harry, listen. There's a new lead to follow. Milo Weaver as Russian mole."

The disbelief was all over Lynch's face, but Fitzhugh pressed the issue.

"Opportunities. Find when he had access to information, and, soon afterward or even simultaneously, access to the FSB. Line that up with known Russian intel. Take this." He handed over the passport and envelope. "Have someone run it through whatever we've got. I want to know who sent it, how tall they are, and what their favorite food is."

Lynch stared at the passport, overwhelmed by this sudden shift in gear.

"Get along, now."

No matter who sent it, the passport was an unexpected gift. Even before the interrogation had begun, Fitzhugh had been handed a serious weapon. Murder and treason-Weaver might talk his way out of one charge, but two?

He decided to share the good news with Janet Simmons. His secretary, a heavyset woman in pink, tracked down and dialed her number. On the second ring, he heard, "Simmons."

"You'll never guess what appeared today."

"I probably won't."

"Russian passport for Milo Weaver."

She paused, and in the background he heard the hum of an engine-she was driving. "What does that make him?" she said. "A dual citizen?"

He'd expected a little more joy from her. "It just might make him a double agent, Janet. It's not one of ours."

"Under his name?"

"No. Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov."

A pause. "Where'd it come from?"

"Anonymous. We're looking into that now."

"Thanks for telling me, Terence. Give Milo my best."

At ten thirty, Fitzhugh used his keycard in the elevator to access the nineteenth floor, where instead of cubicles there were corridors of windowless walls marked by pairs of doors. One led to a cell, the other to the control room for each cell, full of monitors and recording equipment. He entered the control room to cell five, carrying a plain gray folder.

Nate, a hard-drinking ex-agent with the stomach of a goat, sat crunching Ruffles in front of monitors where Milo Weaver, on a floor, naked, screamed from electric shocks delivered to his exposed body parts. The sound echoed sickly in the small room.

A small, thin man in a blood-spattered white smock did his work silently-that was John. One of the doormen held Weaver's shoulders down with rubber gloves, while the other doorman, the big black one, stood by a wall, wiping his mouth and staring.

"What the hell's he doing?" Fitzhugh asked.

Reaching for another potato chip, Nate said, "Just evacuated his breakfast. It's right there by his feet."

"Christ. Get him out of there."

"Now?"

"Yes, now!"

Nate slipped on a wireless headset, tapped on the keyboard, and said, "Lawrence."

The black man stiffened and put a finger to his ear.

"Get out. Now."

While Weaver screamed, Lawrence walked slowly to the door. Fitzhugh met him in the corridor and, despite the fact that the doorman was a head taller, shoved a stiff finger into his chest. "If I ever see that again, you'll be out of here. Got it?"

Lawrence nodded, eyes moist.

"Get back to the lobby and send up someone with balls."

Another nod, and the big man walked off to the elevators.

Nate had told John to prepare for his entrance, so when Fitzhugh opened the door, Milo Weaver was crouched, leaning against the wall, blood seeping from spots across his chest and legs and groin. The remaining doorman stood at attention by the opposite wall while John packed up his electrodes. Weaver began to cry.

"It's a shame," said Fitzhugh, arms crossed over his chest, tapping the folder against his elbow. "A whole career flushed down the toilet because of a sudden desire for vengeance. It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense here," he said, tapping his temple, "nor here"-his heart. He squatted so he was level with Weaver's red eyes and opened the folder. "This is what happens when Milo Weaver defends his dignity?" He snapped the folder around to reveal page-sized color photos of Tom Grainger, crumpled in front of his New Jersey house on Lake Hopatcong. Fitzhugh went through them one at a time for Milo's inspection. Panoramic shots, showing the position of the body-five yards from those concrete steps. Close-ups: the hole through the shoulder, the other through the forehead. Two soft dumdum bullets that widened after entry, taking out a massive chunk as they left, leaving a mutilated shell of Thomas Grainger.

Milo's crying intensified, and he lost his balance, falling to the floor.

"We've got a weeper," Fitzhugh observed, standing.

Everyone in that small white room waited. Milo took loud breaths until the tears were under control, wiped his wet eyes and runny nose, then worked himself into a hunched standing position.

"You're going to tell me everything," said Fitzhugh.

"I know," said Milo.

4

Across the East River, Special Agent Janet Simmons worked her way through slow Brooklyn traffic, stopping abruptly for pedestrians and children leaping across Seventh Avenue. She cursed each one of them. People were like that-they blundered through their little lives as if nothing would ever cross their paths. Nothing, not automobiles, crossfire, stalkers, or even the unknown machinations of the world's security services, who could easily confuse you with someone else and drag you to a cell, or simply put a misplaced bullet in your head.

Instinctively, she parked on Seventh, near where it crossed Garfield, so that she wouldn't be seen from the window.

She'd made a lot of noise with Terence Fitzhugh, but the truth was that she had no real jurisdictional authority concerning Milo Weaver. He'd killed Tom Grainger on American soil, but both were CIA employees, which left it to the Company's discretion.

Why, then, was she so insistent? Not even she knew for sure. The murder of Angela Yates-perhaps that was it. A successful woman who had made it so far in this most masculine of professions had been killed in her prime by the man Simmons had let go in Tennessee. Did that make her responsible for Yates's death? Maybe not. She felt responsible nonetheless.

This baroque sense of responsibility had plagued her much of her life, though her Homeland therapist, a skinny, pale girl who had the nervous, awkward movements of a virgin, always turned the equation around. It wasn't that Janet Simmons was responsible for all the people in her life; it was that Janet Simmons believed she could be responsible for them. "Control," the virgin told her. "You think you can control everything. That's a serious error of perception."

"You're saying I have control issues?" Simmons taunted, but the virgin was tougher than she looked.

"No, Janet. I'm saying you're a megalomaniac. Good news is, you chose the right profession."

So, her urge to right Milo Weaver's wrongs had nothing to do with justice, empathy, philanthropy, or even equal rights for women. That didn't mean that her actions, in themselves, were not virtuous-even the virgin would admit that.

Yet for weeks her desires had been stumped by a simple lack of real evidence. She could place Weaver at the deaths of the victims, but she wanted more. She wanted reasons.

The Weavers' brownstone lay on a street of brownstones, though theirs was noticeably more run-down. The front door was unlocked, so she climbed the stairs without buzzing anyone. On the third floor, she rang the bell.

It took a moment, but finally she heard the soft pad of bare feet on wood leading up to the door; the spy hole darkened.

"Tina?" She produced her Homeland ID and held it out. "It's Janet. Just need a few minutes of your time."

The shift of the chain being undone. The door opened, and Tina Weaver stared back at her, barefoot, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. No bra. She looked the same as at their last meeting in Disney World, only more tired.

"Did I come at the wrong time?"

Tina Weaver's body shrank slightly at the sight of Simmons. "I'm not sure I should speak to you. You hounded him."

"I think Milo killed two people. Maybe three. You expect me to let that go?"

She shrugged.

"Did you know he's back?" Tina didn't ask where or when; she just blinked. "He turned himself in. He's at the Manhattan office.”

“He's all right?"

"He's in trouble, but he's fine. Can I come in?"

Milo Weaver's wife wasn't listening anymore. She was walking down the corridor toward the living room, leaving the door open. Simmons followed her to a low-ceilinged room with a big flat-screen television but old, cheap-looking furniture. Tina dropped onto the sofa, knees up to her chin, and watched Simmons take a seat.

"Stephanie's at school?"

"It's summer vacation, Special Agent. She's with the sitter.”

“They're not missing you at work?"

"Yes, well." Tina wiped something off her arm. "The library's flexible when you're the director."

"The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, at Columbia. Very impressive."

Tina's expression doubted anyone would be impressed by that. "You going to ask your questions, or what? I'm pretty good at answering. I've had plenty of practice."

"Recently?"

"The Company sent some goons two days ago, right in this room."

"I didn't know."

"You guys aren't very good at communicating, are you?"

Simmons rocked her head. "The different agencies cooperate like an estranged couple. But we're in counseling," she said, smiling to cover her annoyance: Fitzhugh had lied about interrogating Tina. "Fact is, we're now investigating your husband on multiple levels, with the hope of understanding how the levels connect."

Tina blinked again. "What multiple levels?"

"Well, murder, as I said. Two suspected murders and one verified murder."

"Verified? Verified how?"

"Milo confessed to killing Thomas Grainger."

Simmons braced herself for an explosion, but got none. Wet, red-rimmed eyes, yes, and tears. Then, a quiet sobbing that shook Tina's whole body, her elevated knees swaying. "Look, I'm sorry, but-"

"Tom?" she spat out. "Tom Fucking Grainger? No…" She shook her head. "Why would he kill Tom? He's Stef's godfather!"

Tina cried for a few seconds, face down, then raised her head, cheeks damp.

"What does he say?"

"What?"

"Milo. You said he confessed. What's his goddamned excuse?"

Simmons wondered how to put it. "Milo claims that Tom used him, and in a fit of anger he killed the man."

Tina wiped at her eyes. With eerie calmness, she said, "Fit of anger?"

"Yes."

"No. Milo, he-he doesn't have fits of anger. He's not that kind of person."

"It's hard to know what people are really like."

A smile filled Tina's face, but it didn't match her voice: "Don't be condescending, Special Agent. After six years, day-in-day-out, with the stress of raising a child, you get a pretty good idea what someone's like."

"Okay," said Simmons. "I take it back. You tell me, then-why would Milo kill Tom Grainger?"

It didn't take long for Tina to reach a conclusion: "Only two reasons I can think of. If he was ordered to do it by the Company."

"That's one. The other?"

"If he needed to protect his family."

"He's protective?"

"Not freakishly so, but yes. If he thought we were in serious danger, Milo would take whatever steps necessary to remove that danger."

"I see," Simmons said, as if committing this to memory. "A week ago, he visited you. In Texas. You were at your parents' house, right?”

“He wanted to talk to me.”

“About what, exactly?"

She chewed the inside of her mouth thoughtfully. "You know this already. Rodger told you."

"I try not to depend on the reports. What did Milo want to talk to you about?"

"About leaving."

"Leaving Texas?"

"Our lives."

"I don't know what that means," Simmons lied.

"It means, Special Agent, that he was in trouble. You, for instance, were after him for some murders he didn't do. He told me Tom was dead, but all he said was someone had killed him, and he had killed that man."

"Who's this other man?"

Tina shook her head. "He didn't share details. Unfortunately, that's the kind of man he-" She paused. "He always avoided details that might upset me. He just said that the only way to stay alive was to disappear. The Company would kill him, because they would think he killed Grainger. He wanted us-me and Stef-to disappear with him." She swallowed heavily, remembering. "He had these passports all ready. One for each of us, with other names. Dolan. That was the family name. He wanted us to disappear, maybe to Europe, and start life again as the Dolans." She went back to chewing her cheek.

"And you said?"

"We're not sitting in Europe, are we?”

“You said no. Any reason?"

Tina stared hard at Janet Simmons, as if shocked by her lack of intuition. "All the reasons in the world, Special Agent. How the hell do you rip a six-year-old girl out of her life, give her a new name, and not leave scars? How am I supposed to earn a living in Europe, where I can't even speak any languages? And what kind of a life is it when you're looking over your shoulder every day? Well?"

Simmons knew it from the way the series of rhetorical questions burst out, so smoothly, as if it were a speech Tina Weaver had been practicing ever since that moment, a week ago, when she refused her husband's last request: They were reasons after the fact, the ones she used to justify her abandonment. They had nothing to do with why she'd said no in the first place.

"Milo's not Stephanie's biological father, right?"

Tina shook her head, exhausted.

"That would be…" Simmons pretended to be trying to remember, but she knew all this by heart. "Patrick, right? Patrick Hardemann."

"Yes."

"How much of Stephanie's childhood was he around for? I mean, before Milo."

"None of it. We split up while I was pregnant.”

“And you met Milo…”

“On the day I gave birth."

Simmons raised her brows; her surprise was honest. "Now, that's serendipity."

"You could say so."

"You met in…"

"Is this really necessary?"

"Yes, Tina. I'm afraid it is."

"Venice."

"Venice?"

"Where we met. Vacation. I was eight months pregnant, alone, and I ended up spending time with the wrong guy. Or the right guy. Depending on your perspective."

"The right guy," Simmons said helpfully, "because you met Milo."

"Yes."

"Can you tell me about this? Really, everything does help.”

“Help you put my husband behind bars?”

“I told you before. I want you to help me get to the truth." Tina put her feet on the floor and sat up so she could face Simmons head-on. "Okay. If you really want to know.”

“I do."

5

Tina couldn't get over how hot it was. Even here, at an open-air cafe along the Grand Canal, just short of the arched stone monstrosity of the Rialto Bridge, it was unbearable.

Venice, surrounded by and veined with water, should have cooled off some, but all the water did was raise the humidity, the way the river did in Austin. But in Austin she hadn't carried an eight-month heater in her bloated belly that swelled her feet and played havoc with her lower back.

It might have been more bearable, were it not for the crowds. The entire world's population of sweaty tourists seemed to have come to Italy at the same time. They made it impossible for a pregnant woman to move comfortably along the narrow, bumpy passages and avoid the African vendors selling Louis Vuitton knockoffs, ten hanging from each arm.

She sipped her orange juice, then forced herself to gaze at, and appreciate, a passing vaporetto overflowing with camera-toting tourists. Then she returned to the paperback she'd opened on the table-What to Expect When You're Expecting. She was on the page in chapter twelve that dealt with "stress incontinence." Great.

Stop it, Tina.

She was being remarkably unappreciative. What would Margaret, Jackie, and Trevor think? They had pooled their meager resources and bought her this final splash-out five-day/four-night Venetian holiday before the baby arrived to put the last nail in the coffin of her social life. "And to remind yourself that that prick isn't the only example of manhood out there," Trevor had said.

No, philandering Patrick wasn't the only example of manhood out there, but the examples she'd come across here weren't encouraging. Lazy-eyed Italians whistled and hissed and muttered invitations at any piece of ass that walked by. Not her, though-no. Pregnant women reminded them too much of their own blessed mothers-those women who hadn't beaten their sons anywhere near enough.

Her belly not only protected her from the men, but encouraged them to open doors for her. She received smiles from complete strangers, and a few times old men pointed at high facades and gave her history lessons she couldn't understand. She started to think things were looking up, at least until last night. The e-mail.

Patrick, it turned out, was in Paris with Paula. All those P's confused her. He wanted to know if she could "swing through town" so she and Paula could finally meet. "She really wants to," he'd written.

Tina had crossed an ocean to get away from her problems, and then-

"Excuse me."

On the other side of her table stood an American, somewhere in his fifties, bald on top, grinning down at her. He pointed at the free chair. "May I?"

When the waiter came, he ordered a vodka tonic, then watched another vaporetto glide past. Perhaps bored with the water, he started watching her face as she read. He finally spoke: "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Oh," she said. "No, thanks." She gave him a smile, just enough to be polite. Then she took off her sunglasses.

"Sorry," he stuttered. "Just that I'm here alone, and it looks like you are, too. You'd get a free drink out of it."

Maybe he was all right. "Why not? Thanks…" She raised her brows.

"Frank."

"Thanks, Frank. I'm Tina."

She stuck out her hand, and they shook with stiff formality. "Champagne?"

"You didn't see." She grabbed the arms of her chair and scooted it back a foot. She touched her large, rounded belly "Eight months now."

Frank gaped.

"Never seen one of these before?"

"I just…" He scratched his hairless scalp. "That explains it. Your glow."

Not again, she wanted to say but cut herself short. She could at least be pleasant.

When the waiter arrived with his vodka tonic, he ordered her another orange juice, and she pointed out that a simple orange juice was outrageously expensive here. "And look how much they give you," she said, holding up her tiny glass. "Outrageous."

She wondered if she was being too negative again, but Frank pushed it further (complaining about the Vuitton knockoffs she'd seen before) until they were both complaining pleasantly about the idiocies of tourism.

In answer to his questions, she told him she was a librarian at MIT's art and architecture library in Boston, and she let out just enough casual, sarcastic asides to make it clear that the father of her baby had left in a particularly poor fashion. "You've got my whole life already. What are you, a journalist?"

"Real estate. I work out of Vienna, but we've got properties all over the place. I'm settling a deal on a palazzo not far away."

"Really?"

"Sold it to a Russian bigwig. So much money, you wouldn't believe."

"I probably wouldn't."

"The papers have to be signed in the next forty-eight hours, but in the meantime I'm entirely free." He considered his next words carefully. "Can I take you out to the theater?"

Tina slipped on the sunglasses again. Despite herself, she remembered Margaret's most insistent advice five months ago when Patrick first walked out: He's a boy, Tina. A child. What you need is an older man. Someone with a sense of responsibility. Tina wasn't seriously considering anything like that, but there was always a certain logic to Margaret's unasked-for wisdom.

Frank turned out to be a pleasant surprise. He left her alone until five, when he arrived in a tailored suit, carrying a pair of Teatro Malibran tickets and a single orange lily that smelled hallucinogenic.

She knew little about opera and had never considered herself a fan. Frank, despite having feigned ignorance, turned out to be something of an expert. He'd somehow gotten seats in the platea, the stalls on the floor of the opera, so they had an unencumbered view of the Prince, the King of Clubs, and Truffaldino in The Love for Three Oranges. He sometimes leaned in to whisper a plot point she might have missed-it was performed in French-but the plot hardly mattered. It was an absurdist opera about a cursed prince forced to go on a quest for three oranges, in each of which slept a princess. The audience laughed more often than Tina did, but the jokes she got she enjoyed.

Afterward, Frank treated her to dinner at a marginal trattoria and told her stories about his long years living in Europe. She found his description of the expatriate lifestyle particularly enticing. Then he insisted on buying her breakfast, which she first took as a rudely hopeful suggestion. She'd misjudged, though, and all he did was walk her back to the hotel, kiss her cheeks in the European manner, and wish her a good night. A real gentleman, unlike those Italian men lurking on every corner.

She woke early on Tuesday and, after a quick wash, began to pack her things for the next morning's flight home. It was a shame- now that she had finally recovered from her jet lag and met an interesting, cultured man, it was time to leave. She thought her last day might best be used taking a boat trip out to Murano to see the glassblowers.

She brought it up to Frank after he picked her up and they had reached the huge, pigeon-infested glory of St. Mark's Square. "This time it's my treat," she told him. "There's a boat leaving in an hour."

"I wish," he said earnestly, guiding her to an open-air cafe. "It's the damned job. The Ruskie can call for me at any moment, and if I'm not available it'll fall through."

It was during their continental breakfast that Frank went silent, staring past her shoulder, tense.

"What is it?" She followed his gaze, spotting a bald, thick-necked man in a black suit cutting through the crowds toward them.

"The palazzo." He bit his lower lip. "I hope they don't want to meet now."

"It's fine. We'll hook up later."

The tough-looking bald man reached the edge of their table. His head was shiny with sweat. "You," he said, his Russian accent thick. "It's ready."

Frank patted his lips with a napkin. "Can't it wait until we're finished eating?"

"No."

Frank glanced, embarrassed, at Tina. He put the napkin on the table with shaking hands. Was that fear? Or just excitement over a huge commission? Then he smiled at her. "You want to see the place? It's really fabulous."

She looked at the remnants of her breakfast, then at the Russian. "Maybe I shouldn't-"

"Nonsense," Frank cut in. To the Russian, he said, "Of course it's no problem, right?"

The man looked confused.

"Exactly." Frank helped Tina to her feet. "Not too fast," he told the Russian. "She's not built like you."

As soon as they passed the palazzo's front door and faced the steep, narrow steps leading up into the gloom, Tina regretted having come along. She should have known better. The bald Russian looked like the kind of Slavic thug that always populated action movies those days, and the steady walk from St. Mark's all the way up here had mauled her feet. Now, she was faced with this mountain to climb.

"Maybe I should wait down here," she said.

Frank's expression was almost horrified. "I know it looks tough, but you won't regret it. Trust me."

"But my-"

"Come" the Russian said, already halfway up the first flight.

Frank reached out a hand. "Let me help."

So she let him help. He had, after all, been a perfect gentleman so far. She used the memory of the previous night-the opera and the dinner-to distract her from the ache in her heels as Frank helped her up to the oak door at the top of the steps. She looked back, but only saw that bleak, indeterminate gloom of ancient buildings. Then the gloom disappeared as the Russian opened the door.

When she stepped inside, she realized Frank had been right. It really was worth it.

He took her across the hardwood floor to a modernist wooden sofa. The Russian went into another room. "You weren't kidding," she said, twisting to take everything in.

"What did I tell you?" He stared at the door that had been left open an inch. "Listen, let me go take care of the papers in private, then I'll see about a little tour."

"Really?" She felt much like a surprised child, cheeks flushed. "That'd be great."

"I'll be quick." He touched her shoulder, which was warm and damp from the effort of getting up here, and followed the Russian into the next room.

At MIT, she'd learned so much about overdesigned pieces of furniture from magazines-Abitare, I.D., Wallpaper-but had never seen them in reality. In the corner sat a Kilin lounge chair made of black leather and imbuia wood, designed by Sergio Rodrigues. A Straessle International chariot chaise, circa 1972, faced it. Tina herself was supported by a slatted rosewood couch designed by Joaquim Tenreiro. Banally, she wondered how much this room had cost.

She heard a sound and looked up to see a gorgeous girl-early teens-step in from the terrace. She had straight brown hair to her waist, pearly skin, and bright eyes. She wore a pink summer dress that showed off the pubescence of her silhouetted body.

"Hi," said Tina, smiling.

The girl's eyes alighted on Tina's stomach. She said some excited German words and joined her on the couch. Hesitantly, she held a small hand over Tina's belly. "I can?"

Tina nodded, and the girl stroked her. It was soothing, and brought color to the girl's cheeks. Then she tapped her own stomach. "I have. Too."

Tina's smile faded. "You're pregnant?"

The girl frowned, unsure, then nodded excitedly. "Ja. I have baby. Will have baby."

"Oh." Tina wondered how the girl's parents were reacting. "Ingrid."

Tina took the small, dry hand. "I'm Tina. You live here?"

Ingrid didn't seem to understand, but then the inner door opened and a tall older man with wavy gray hair and an immaculate suit stepped through, smiling, followed by a meek-looking Frank.

Ingrid clapped her hands over Tina's belly. "Schau mal, Roman!"

Roman walked over, and Tina let him take her hand and kiss her knuckles. "Nothing more beautiful than an expectant woman. Pleased to meet you, Miss…?"

"Crowe. Tina Crowe. Are you Ingrid's father?"

"A proud uncle. Roman Ugrimov."

"Well, Mr. Ugrimov, your place is really beautiful. Just amazing." Ugrimov nodded his thanks, then said, "Ingrid, meet Mr. Frank Dawdle."

The girl stood and politely shook Frank's hand. Ugrimov, behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders and, looking directly at Frank, said, "Ingrid here is everything to me, you see? She is my entire world."

Ingrid smiled bashfully. Ugrimov had said this with a little too much conviction.

Frank said, "Tina, I think we should be going."

She was disappointed-she actually had wanted to see the rest of the palazzo-but there was an unsettling tone in Frank's voice that made her think it might be better to leave. Besides, the collision of Ingrid's pregnancy and her uncle's attentions left her feeling uneasy.

So she got up-a little wobbly, and Ingrid came to steady her- then took Frank's arm. He mouthed, Sorry-probably for the tour. It didn't matter.

The bald thug walked them back down, which was so much easier than coming up, and at the halfway point they heard Ingrid's voice from behind them-she was laughing, a loud, nasal hee-haw, like a mule.

By the time the bald man opened the door to the square, she realized that something about this wasn't right, so once they'd paused in the shade of the stoop and the Russian had closed the door behind them, she said, "I don't get it, Frank. If he's just now signing the papers for that place, then why's he already moved in?"

Frank wasn't listening. Hands propped on his hips, he was staring off to the left, up the street. A woman about Tina's age stepped out of a doorway and began to run toward them. With a surprisingly menacing voice, she called, "Frank!"

First thought: Is that Franks wife?

From the right, a man also ran toward them. His jacket swished from side to side as he galloped across the stones, and in his hand-a gun. What was he, then? But she didn't have time to follow her thoughts because she heard Roman Ugrimov's voice shouting down at them from above-yes, everything was suddenly converging-"And her I love, you bastard!"

Tina stepped forward, then back, because Frank was looking up at the sky. A punch of scream filled the air, then stretched out to a low wail that rose quickly in pitch, like a train speeding past.

The Doppler effect, her brain reminded her for no discernible reason.

Then she saw what was falling. Pink fluttering-brown hair-a body, a girl, that girl-Ingrid. And then-

At 10:27 a.m. Ingrid Kohl landed three feet from Tina. A thump and crunch, ruptured bone and flesh. Blood. Silence.

She couldn't breathe. Her body seized up. She couldn't even scream yet, not until Frank produced a pistol, shot three times, and fled. The woman-wife? girlfriend? thief?-bolted after him. Tina tripped and fell backward, hard, on the cobblestones. All she could do now was scream.'

The other man, the one with the pistol, appeared at her side. He looked lost, staring at the mess of pink and red three feet from her. Then he noticed Tina, and briefly her screams ceased; she was afraid of him and his gun. But the screams came back of their own volition. "I'm in labor! I need a doctor!"

"I-" said the man. He looked in the direction where Frank and that woman had run; they were gone. He settled on the ground beside her, exhausted.

"Get a fucking doctor!" she shouted, and then they both heard three short cracks of a gun being fired.

The man looked at her again, as if she were a ghost fading away, then took out his cell phone. "It'll be all right," he said as he dialed. He spoke in Italian to someone. She recognized the word ambulanza. When he finally hung up-that's when she realized he'd been shot, somewhere in the chest. His shirt was almost black with shiny, fresh blood.

By then, though, a gush of maternal pragmatism had swept over her: It didn't matter that he'd been shot; he'd already called the ambulance. Her baby was as safe as it could be, given the circumstances. She calmed down, her contractions slowing, and the man, staring at her, gripped her hand tight, almost too tight, as if he hardly knew she was there. Down the street, the woman she'd later learn was named Angela Yates appeared again, crying. The man watched his accomplice sadly.

Tina said, "Who the hell are you?"

"What?"

She took a moment to regulate her breaths. "You've got a gun."

As if this were shocking news, the man released the pistol; it clattered to the ground.

"What," she said, then exhaled the pain of contraction through pursed lips, blowing three times. "What the hell are you?"

"I-" He squeezed her hand tighter, nearly choking on his words. "I'm a tourist."

6

Six years later, Janet Simmons noticed how the memory could still make Tina choke. Weaver's wife stared, mouth hanging open, at the coffee table, so as not to look at the woman asking all these questions.

"That, then, was Milo?"

Tina nodded.

Hesitantly, Simmons prodded: "What do you think he meant? That he was a tourist. In a situation like that, it's about the last thing someone would say."

Tina wiped her eyes with the side of her thumb and finally looked up. "The situation was that he had two bullets in his right lung and he was bleeding to death. In situations like that, probability goes out the window."

Simmons conceded the point, but that one word told her two things. First, that in 2001 Milo really had been a wreck, so much so that he was ready to admit to a complete stranger his ultra-secret job title. Second: Milo had recovered quickly enough so that Tina had no idea that it was a job title. "What was he doing there? In Venice. He told you, I guess. He had a gun, there was shooting, and the man you'd spent a day with had fled."

"Had been killed," Tina corrected. "Until that day, Milo was a field agent, and Frank-Frank Dawdle-he'd stolen three million dollars from the government."

"Our government?"

"Our government. That night, Milo put in his resignation. It wasn't about me, it wasn't about Frank. Not even about the Towers, which we learned about later. Milo's life had simply become unbearable."

"And there you were."

"There I was."

"Let's go back a second. You were both taken to an Italian hospital, and Stephanie was born. When did Milo show up again?”

“He never left.”

“What do you mean?"

"When the doctors fixed him up, they put him in a room upstairs. As soon as he woke, he snuck into a nurse's station and found my room."

"He didn't know your name."

"We came in at the same time. He checked it by the hour. I'd passed out after the delivery, and when I woke up, he was asleep in a chair next to my bed. There was a TV, and the Italian news came on. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I knew what the World Trade Center looked like."

"I see."

"You don't" said Tina, the emotion back in her voice. "When I figured out what had happened, I started crying, and that woke Milo. I showed him what my tears were about, and when he got it, he started crying, too. Both of us, in that hospital room, wept together. From then on, we were inseparable."

While Simmons considered this love story, Tina looked up at the clock on the DVD player-after twelve. "Shit." She stood. "I have to pick up Stephanie. We're having lunch."

"But I've got more questions."

"Later," Tina said. "Unless you're planning to arrest me. Are you?"

"Can we talk later?”

“Call first."

Simmons waited for Tina to get ready. It took only five minutes. She reappeared, cleaned up in a light summer dress, and said, "What's the other level?"

"What?"

"Earlier, you said you were investigating Milo on two levels. We got distracted. One level was murder. What's the other?"

Simmons wished she hadn't brought it up. She wanted the time and space to get answers before Tina Weaver had an evening to think over some cover story. "We can talk about it tomorrow."

"Give me the Cliff Notes version."

She told Tina about the passport. "He's a Russian citizen, Tina. This is news to everyone."

Tina's cheeks flushed. "No, it's cover. Spies do that all the time. A cover for something he had to do in Russia."

"He told you about this?"

A quick shake of the head.

"Ever hear him mention the name Mikhail Vlastov?" Again, Tina shook her head.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding." Generously, she smiled.

Down on Garfield, before splitting up, Simmons hesitantly broached what was for her the most important subject of their conversation: "Listen, Tina. I know what you told me up there about why you wouldn't run away with Milo, but I have to admit I don't buy it. The reasons are too practical. You said no for another reason."

Tina's face twisted briefly, heading toward a sneer, but halfway it gave up and relaxed. "You know why, Special Agent."

"You didn't trust him anymore."

A queer, offhand grin passed over Tina's features. She walked to her car.

As Simmons rounded the corner onto Seventh Avenue, her phone rang.

"Hold on to your socks," George Orbach said. The phrase confused her a moment. "What?”

“William T. Perkins."

"Who?" She used a remote to unlock her car.

"Father of Wilma Weaver, nee Perkins. Milo's grandfather. Lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Covenant Towers-assisted living community. Born 1926. Eighty-one years old."

"Thanks for the math," said Simmons, not betraying her excitement. "Is there a reason we never knew this before?”

“We never asked."

Incompetence, she supposed, went hand in hand with intelligence. No one had cared enough to find out if a grandfather was still breathing. "Can you send me the address, and tell Covenant Towers I'm coming?"

"When?"

She considered that as she got into the warm, stuffy car. "Tonight."

"Book a flight?"

"Yes," she said, then, checking her watch, made her decision: "Around six o'clock, and get three seats.”

“Three?"

She got out of the car again, locked up, and walked back toward the Weavers' door. "Tina and Stephanie Weaver will be coming with me."

7

The truth, three lies, and some omissions. That was all Milo knew. The rest, Primakov had promised, would be taken care of. During that too-long week in Albuquerque, the old man had shared very little. Instead, he'd asked questions, just as Terence Fitzhugh was now doing. The story, from its beginning in Tennessee to its bloody end in New Jersey. He'd told it so often in New Mexico that he knew it better than his own life story. "Give me details," Primakov had insisted.

But he hadn't just asked about the story; he'd asked things Milo was not allowed to answer. Treasonable things. "You want my help, don't you?" So: the hierarchy of the Department of Tourism, the numbers of Tourists, the existence of Sal and his method of contact, the relationship between Homeland and the Company, and what the Company knew and didn't know about Yevgeny Primakov himself, which was very little.

Only after five days of this had the old man finally said, "I've got it now. Don't worry about a thing. Go in and tell them the truth. You will lie three times, and leave a few things out. I'll take care of the rest." What "the rest" consisted of was a mystery.

Did his faith falter? Certainly it did. It stumbled when he realized that he was being given the black hole treatment, and it nearly died when, that morning, John entered Room 5 with his briefcase full of terrible tricks. "Hello, John," Milo had said, but John wasn't such an amateur that he would be tricked into saying a thing. He placed his case on the floor, opened it to reveal the battery pack and wires and electrodes, and asked the two guards to please hold Milo's naked body down.

In truth, Milo's faith disappeared completely when the electric shocks were applied. They scrambled his nerves and his brain, so that he could feel no faith in anything outside that room. He could hear nothing when his body arched and shook on the cold floor. In the pauses between these sessions, he had wanted to scream the truth at them-no, he hadn't killed Grainger-that had been Lie Number One. But they never asked him a thing. The pauses were only for John to check Milo's blood pressure and recharge the machine.

The only thing that threatened to rekindle his faith made no sense to him. It was Lawrence, holding his ankles. As the pulses surged through his body, Lawrence let go of his feet and turned away, then began to vomit. John stopped his work. "Are you okay?"

"I-" Lawrence began, then climbed to his feet, wiping his watery eyes. It hit him again, and he leaned against the wall, emptying his stomach.

John, unconcerned, reapplied the electrodes to Milo's nipples. Despite the pain, he felt a wash of relief, as if Lawrence's disgust might soon be shared by them all. He was wrong. Then Fitzhugh came in and showed him the photographs..

"You killed Grainger."

"Yes."

"Who else did you kill?”

“A Tourist. Tripplehorn."

"When did you kill Grainger? Before you killed the Tourist?"

"Before. No, after."

"Then?"

Milo coughed. "I took a walk into the woods.”

“And then?"

"I was sick. Then I flew to Texas.”

“Under Dolan?"

He nodded, now back on the sure ground of the awful truth: "I tried to get my wife and daughter to disappear with me," he said, telling Fitzhugh things he already knew. "They wouldn't-at least, Tina refused." He straightened with difficulty and looked at Fitzhugh. "I had no family, no job, and both the Company and Homeland were looking for me."

"A week followed," Fitzhugh said. "You disappeared."

"Albuquerque."

"What did you do in Albuquerque?”

“I drank. A lot. I drank until I realized it couldn't go on.”

“Lots of people live their whole lives drunk. What makes you so special?"

"I don't want to live on the lam. Someday," he said, then stopped and began again. "I want to return to my family someday. If they'll have me. And the only way to make this happen was to turn myself in. Mercy of the court, and all that."

"Pretty far-fetched."

Milo didn't dispute this.

"That week in Albuquerque. Where did you stay?”

“The Red Roof Inn.”

“Who with?"

"I was alone." Lie Number Two.

"Who'd you talk to? A week is a long time."

"Some waitresses-from Applebee's and Chili's. A bartender. But not about anything important." He paused. "I think I scared them."

They stared at each other, one clothed, one naked, and Fitzhugh finally said, "We're going to go through the whole thing, Milo. Sometimes it'll feel like a test of your memory, but it's not. It's a test of your truth." He snapped his fingers close to Milo's face. "You with me?"

Milo nodded, and the movement pained him.

"Two chairs," Fitzhugh said to no one in particular. The remaining doorman took it to be his order, and left. "John, keep yourself available."

John nodded curtly, lifted his case, and left looking like a blood-spattered encyclopedia salesman just after a sale.

The doorman returned with aluminum chairs and helped Weaver into one. Fitzhugh sat opposite, and when Milo slipped to the side and fell off, he ordered a table as well. This helped, for Milo was able to collapse on its smooth white surface, streaking it with blood.

"Tell me how it started," said Fitzhugh.

That first day's debriefing lasted nearly five hours, chronicling the events lasting from the Fourth of July through the ill-fated Paris trip to Sunday, July 8, when Milo returned. He might have gotten the story out in less time, but Fitzhugh broke in often, questioning aspects of the tale. After the Tiger's suicide in Blackdale, Fitzhugh patted the table, annoyed that Weaver had slid down again, cheek against the blood-smeared Formica. "And this was a surprise, was it?"

"What?"

"Sam Roth, al-Abari, whatever. That he had been a Tourist."

Milo placed a soiled hand on the table, palm down, and rested his chin on it. "Of course it was a surprise."

"So let me get this straight. The Tiger-a professional with one of the world's stupider names-comes to this country solely in order to have a chat with you and then off himself."

Milo nodded into his knuckles.

"My question, I suppose, is: How did your file-your Tourism file, which should be resting in the upper stratosphere of top secret-how did this file end up in his hands?"

"Grainger gave it to him."

"Whoa!" Fitzhugh exclaimed, pushing back in his chair. "Let me be sure I heard you right. You're saying Tom was working with the Tiger? That's a big claim."

"I'm afraid it is."

"And Samuel Roth-you let him take his own life, right in front of you, when you knew the man was full of invaluable information."

"I didn't have a chance to save him. He was too quick."

"Maybe you didn't want a chance. Maybe you wanted him to die. Maybe-and this is interesting-maybe you knew he had the tooth cap and you reached into his mouth with your bare hands and pierced it for him. He was weak, after all, and your fingerprints were all over his face. It would've been a cinch for a strong man like you. Maybe you even did it on Grainger's orders-why not? You're blaming the poor man for everything else." Milo answered with silence.

When they'd gotten to Grainger's briefing, the morning before he flew to Paris to test Angela Yates, Fitzhugh cut in again.

"So you did finally ask him about the Tiger."

"But he put me off," said Milo. "What was so hard about showing me the file? That's what I didn't understand. Not then. It took a long time before I got it. Too long."

"Got what?" Milo didn't answer, so Fitzhugh leaned back, crossed one knee over the other, and said, "I know he showed you the file, Milo. When you got back from Paris. So I hope you're not going to suggest that, because I hired Benjamin Michael Harris, I'm somehow connected to this. Poor recruitment skills still aren't a crime in this country."

Milo stared back, wondering if he should call this next part one of the lies or an omission. Sometimes the distinctions were baffling. "No. I knew that your involvement couldn't explain all the secrecy. Tom wasn't in league with you."

"Right. He was in league with the Tiger."

"Which is why it took so long to figure out," Milo explained. "Grainger gave me the file to put, me off the scent; he wanted me sniffing in your direction."

Fitzhugh seemed satisfied with this.

It went on, Fitzhugh cutting in frequently for clarification, or to feign confusion. When Milo said he'd stayed on in Paris because of his suspicions, Fitzhugh said, "But you'd seen Einner's evidence. You saw the pictures."

"Yes, but what did they prove? Was she feeding Herbert Williams information, or was Williams feeding her information? Or was she being unwittingly pulled into someone else's game? Or was Williams spying on her to keep track of her investigation? Or was she actually guilty, and the man in the red beard just happened to be running both the Tiger and Angela, selling information to the Chinese? If so, who did he represent? It wasn't a single-person operation. Maybe the Chinese ran Herbert Williams as well."

"It's a goddamned Chinese puzzle."

"It sure is."

Fitzhugh answered his buzzing phone. He nodded to the caller, grunted a few times, then hung up. "Listen. It's been a long day, and you've done extremely well. We can delve deeper into the conspiracy tomorrow, okay?" He patted the table-his side, the clean side. "Excellent day's work."

"Then maybe I can get some food," said Milo.

"Sure. We'll also find you some clothes," Fitzhugh promised as he pushed back his chair and stood, smiling. "I really am pleased. And the details-they put a human face on all this miserable stuff. Tomorrow, I think, we should get a little more of that human face. Tina, for instance. Maybe we can discuss how you two are getting along. How things are with your darling stepdaughter."

"Daughter," Milo said.

"What?"

"Daughter. Not stepdaughter."

"Right." Fitzhugh raised his hands in an expression of defeat. "Whatever you say, Milo."

As his inquisitor left the room, Milo remembered Primakov's instructions. Three lousy lies, Milo. You've lived your whole life lying, why change now?

8

"I don't want you to be scared," Janet Simmons had whispered when Tina returned home. "We've located your grandfather-in-law, Milo's maternal grandfather, and I think it's only right you come along."

"That's impossible. They're all dead."

"Well, there's only one way to find out for sure."

Now, in a twin-engine Spirit Airlines flight from LaGuardia to Myrtle Beach, Tina held on to Stephanie, who had insisted on a window seat.

For her daughter, the sudden shift in agenda was exciting. An overnight trip to the beach, they'd called it. Christ, Little Miss was a good sport. How much had she suffered since two weeks ago, when, at Disney World, she'd woken to find a Homeland Security thug in her bedroom, looking for her father, who had suddenly disappeared? Why should she have to deal with any of this?

"How you doing, hon?"

Stephanie yawned into her cupped hand, staring at the leaden clouds. "I'm a little tired.”

“Me, too."

"Are we really going on vacation?"

"Sort of. A short one. I just need to talk to someone. After that we can chill out on the beach. Sound all right?"

She shrugged in a way that worried Tina, but said, "Why's she coming?"

"You don't like Ms. Simmons?" Tina asked while, across the aisle, Simmons punched at her BlackBerry. "I don't think she likes Dad."

A good sport, and smart to boot. Smarter, perhaps, than her mother.

Again, she wondered why she had agreed to this sudden trip. Did she really trust Special Agent Janet Simmons? Not entirely, but the carrot was too great: to finally meet a member of Milo's family. It was less about trust than curiosity. Really.

They landed a little before eight, and Tina roused Stephanie as they descended. From the window, they saw darkness marked by pinpoints of light that died out with the coastline. They weren't met by any special agents in the Myrtle Beach airport, and Simmons even had to take care of her own rental Taurus. She got driving directions from her BlackBerry.

It was Thursday evening, but it was also the height of summer, and they passed open-topped jeeps full of horny, shirtless college boys in knee-length shorts and stupid baseball caps, waving tallboys of Miller and Bud. Smiling at their attention, bottle-blondes gave them reasons to holler. Music spilled out from the clubs, though all they heard was the monotone thumpa-thumpa throb of dance music rhythms.

The Covenant Towers, nestled in a lush, wooded area on the north side of town, wasn't far from the beach, and it consisted of two long, five-story towers separated by grass and trees. "Pretty," Stephanie judged from her seat.

According to Deirdre Shamus, the pink-cheeked, perky director who had stayed beyond her regular shift to find out exactly why Homeland Security was interested in one of their residents, Covenant Towers was not a "nursing home," though medical facilities were on-site. "We encourage independence here."

William T. Perkins lived on the first floor of Tower Two, and Shamus brought them all the way to his door, greeting every resident they passed with overwrought enthusiasm. Finally, they stopped at number fourteen, a studio apartment. Shamus knocked, intoning, "Mr. Perkins! Your visitors have arrived!"

"Hold your fucking horses!" said an angry, rough voice.

Suddenly, Tina worried about Stephanie. What was behind this door? Her great-grandfather, maybe-she still couldn't quite believe that Milo wouldn't have known about him, and if he knew, he certainly would have told her. But what kind of man was he? She pulled Ms. Shamus aside. "Is there a place Stef can wait? I'm not sure I want her in there with us."

"Oh, Mr. Perkins is a firecracker, but he's-"

"Really," Tina insisted. "Like, a television room?"

"There's one down the hall.

"Thanks." To Simmons: "Be right back."

She walked Stephanie down three doors, and on the right found a room that held three sofas and a La-Z-Boy and seven elderly people staring at a rerun of Murder, She Wrote.

"Hon, you mind waiting here a little while?"

Stephanie waved Tina closer. "It smells here," she whispered.

"But can you take it? For me?"

Stephanie made a face to show just how bad it smelled, but nodded. "Not for long."

"Any problems, we'll be in room fourteen. Got it?"

On her walk back-number fourteen was now open, both Shamus and Simmons inside-Tina had a flash of paranoia. It was the kind of paranoia she'd lived with ever since Milo fled Disney World, ever since her own world had become populated by inquisitors and security agencies.

The paranoia spoke to her in Milo's voice: "This is how it goes down, Tina. Listen. They get you to send the child away. When you're done with your chat, the child's gone. Just vanished. The old people, they'll be on medication; they won't know what's happened. Simmons won't actually tell you she's got Stephanie. No. It'll all be inference and suggestion. But you'll be made to understand that she's got this document, a little thing. She'd like you to read it out for a camera. It'll say that your husband is a thief and a traitor and a murderer and please put him away for life. Do that, she'll say, and we might be able to track down dear Stephanie."

But it was just paranoia, she told herself. Just that.

She paused at the open door and looked in. Shamus was full of smiles, preparing to leave, and Simmons was settled on a chair beside a hairless, shriveled man in a wheelchair, his narrow face misshapen by age. His eyes were magnified by large, black-rimmed spectacles. The special agent beckoned her in, and the old man smiled, showing off yellowed dentures. "Meet William Perkins, Tina. William, this is Tina Weaver, your granddaughter-in-law."

Perkins's hand had been rising to shake hers, but it stopped. He looked at Simmons. "The hell are you talking about, woman?"

"Toodle-oo!" Shamus said as she left them to their privacy.

9

It was hard for William T. Perkins to take. At first he claimed he had no grandson at all, then that he had none named Milo Weaver. His protestations were riddled with curses, and Tina got the impression that William T. Perkins had been a right bastard during his eighty-one years on the planet. He'd had two daughters, yes, but they'd left in their late teens without "so much as a single how-doyou-do."

"Your daughter Wilma, sir. She and her husband, Theodore, had Milo. Their son. Your grandson," Simmons pressed. Finally, as if these words represented incontrovertible evidence, Perkins slumped, admitting that, yes, he did have a single grandchild.

"Milo," he said and shook his head. "The kind of name you give a dog. That's what I always thought. But Ellen-she never gave a damn what I thought about anything. Neither of them did."

"Ellen?" said Tina.

"Trouble from the start. Did you know that in 1967, age seventeen, the girl took LSD? Seventeen! By eighteen, she was sleeping with some Cuban communist. Jose Something-or-other. Stopped shaving her legs, went completely off the board."

"Excuse me, Mr. Perkins," said Simmons. "We're not sure who Ellen is."

Perkins blinked his magnified eyes at her, confused a moment.

"Ellen's my damned daughter, of course! You're asking about Milo's mom, aren't you?"

Tina inhaled audibly. Simmons said, "We thought Wilma was Milo's mother."

"No," he corrected, exasperated. "Wilma took the baby-I guess he was four or five then. She and Theo couldn't have one of their own, and Ellen-Christ knows what she was up to then. She was all over the fucking map. Wilma wasn't talking to me either, but I learned from Jed Finkelstein-Wilma still deigned to talk to the Jew-that it was Ellen's idea. She was running around with some Germans by then. Mid-seventies, and the police were even after her. Guess she decided a kid would just slow her down. So she asked Wilma to take him." A whole-body shrug, then he slapped his knees. "Can you imagine? Just drop the baby off, and wash your hands of it!"

Simmons said, "Mr. Finkelstein-do you know where he is now?"

"Six feet under as of 1988."

"So, what was Ellen actually doing?"

"Reading Karl Marx. Reading Mao Zedong. Reading Joseph Goebbels, for all I know. In German.”

“German?"

He nodded. "She was in Germany-the west one-when she gave up on motherhood. That girl always gave up on things once it got tough. I could've told her-being a parent is no walk in the park."

"But you didn't talk to her at all during this time."

"Now, that was her choice. Total silence for her flesh and blood while she went off with her Kraut comrades."

"Except her sister, Wilma."

"What?" Another moment of confusion.

"I said, Except for Wilma. She kept in touch with her sister."

"Yes." He sounded disappointed by this. Then he brightened as a memory hit him: "Finkelstein-you know what he told me? He was German, you know, and he read those newspapers. He said Ellen was picked up by the police. Put in jail. Know what for?"

Both women stared at him, expectant.

"Armed robbery. That's what for. She and her merry band of commies actually sank to robbing banks! Tell me, how does that help save the workers of the world?"

"Under her name?" Simmons asked sharply.

"Her name?"

"Was her name in the newspaper?"

He considered that, then shrugged. "Her picture was. Finkelstein didn't say-wait! Yes. It was some German name, wasn't it? Elsa? Yes, Elsa. Close to Ellen, but no cigar."

"What year?"

"Seventy-eight? No-nine. Nineteen seventy-nine."

"And when you learned this, did you contact anyone? The embassy? Did you try to get her out of jail?"

Silence returned like an unwelcome guest to William T. Perkins. He shook his head. "I didn't even tell Minnie. Ellen wouldn't have wanted that. She'd cut us off completely. Didn't want us to come to her rescue."

Tina wondered how many times in the last twenty-eight years this old man had repeated this to himself. His only justification for abandoning his daughter was weak, but it was all he had, like Tina's justifications for abandoning her husband.

When Simmons straightened, she looked to Tina like the consummate professional. Her face and tone were hard but not unbending. She was here for a reason, and she would only stay long enough to satisfy her needs. "Let me make sure I've got this right. Ellen leaves home and falls in with a bad crowd. Drug users, then political malcontents. Communists, anarchists, whatever. She travels a lot. Germany. In 1970 she has a baby. Milo. Around seventy-four or -five, she gives Milo to her sister, Wilma, and her husband, Theodore. They raise him as their own. Last you hear of Ellen is in 1979 when she's arrested for a bank robbery in Germany. Was she released?"

With the facts laid out so concisely, William Perkins seemed shocked by the story. In pieces, perhaps, it made sense, but lined up like this it became tragic, or simply unbelievable. The story was having the same numbing effect on Tina.

When Perkins spoke, it was a whisper: "I don't know if she was released. Never checked. And she never contacted me."

Tina started to cry. It was embarrassing, but she had no control anymore. Everything was turning up shit.

Perkins stared at her, shocked, then turned questioningly to Simmons, who shook her head for his silence. She rubbed Tina's shaking back and whispered, "Don't make any judgments yet, Tina. Maybe he doesn't even know this. Remember: We're just trying to get to the truth."

Tina nodded as if those words made sense, then pulled herself together. She sniffed, wiped her nose and eyes, and took a few breaths. "Sorry," she told Perkins.

"Not to worry, dear," he said and leaned forward to pat her knee, which disturbed her. "We all need the waterworks now and then. Doesn't make anyone a sissy."

"Thanks," Tina said, though she didn't know what she was thanking him for.

"If we can," said Simmons, "let's get back to Milo."

Perkins sat straighter to show how much energy he still had. "Shoot."

"Ellen disappears in seventy-nine, then six years later, in 1985, Wilma and Theo die in a car crash. Is that right?”

“Yes." No reflection, just fact.

"And then Milo was sent to an orphanage in Oxford, North Carolina. Correct?"

He didn't answer at first. He frowned, ticking off his memories beside what he'd heard, then shook his head. "No. His father took him."

"Father?"

"You got it."

Tina stifled the next wave of weeping, but that only brought on nausea. Everything-everything-she knew about Milo's life was a lie. Which made a large chunk of her own life a lie. All facts were now up for debate.

"The father," said Simmons, as if she knew all about this-perhaps she did. "Now, he showed up just after the funeral, I suppose? Maybe at the funeral itself?"

"Wouldn't know exactly."

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't go to the funeral, did I?”

“Okay, so what happened?"

"I didn't want to go," he said. "Minnie kept at me. It was our daughter, for Christ's sake. Our daughter, who wouldn't speak to me when she was alive. So why should I talk to her when she's dead? And what about Milo? He's our grandson, she kept saying. Who's going to take care of him now? I said, Minnie, we haven't been in his life for fifteen years; why do you think he wants us now? But she didn't see things that way. And you could say she was right. Maybe." He held up his hands. "Okay, I can admit that now, but back then I couldn't. Back then I was stubborn," he said with a wink that brought bile to Tina's throat. "So she went. I stayed, and she went. Cooked for myself nearly a week before she came back. But she didn't have a kid on her arm, and she didn't even seem upset about it. I told her I didn't want to hear, but she told me anyway. That's how Minnie was."

"What did she tell you?" asked Tina, her sick body paralyzed.

"I'm getting to that," he said and sniffed. "Turns out Milo's father had been watching the news, I guess, and he came to claim his son. That's according to Minnie. And get this-not only was he some absent father, but he was a Ruskie. Can you believe it?"

"No," Tina whispered. "I can't believe it."

Simmons had left doubt at the door. "What was this Russian's name?"

William T. Perkins squeezed his eyes shut and clasped his forehead, as if hit by a stroke, but it was only his way of dredging up memories that hadn't been touched in decades. He took away his hand, red-faced. "Yevy? No. Geny-yes. Yevgeny. That's what Minnie called him. Yevgeny."

"Last name?"

He exhaled a sigh, spittle white on his lips. "That, I don't remember."

Tina needed air. She stood, but the higher elevation couldn't help her get out of this cloud of sudden, brutal changes. Both looked at her as she settled down again and worked out the words: "Yevgeny Primakov?"

Simmons stared at her, shocked.

Perkins chewed his upper lip. "Could be. But my point is, this pinko pops up out of nowhere and talks Minnie into letting him have the boy."

Simmons cut in: "Didn't Milo have any say in it?"

"What do I know?" Then he conceded he might know something: "Way I see it, the boy didn't know Minnie, did he? This old woman shows up and wants him to come home with her. On the other hand, there's a Ruskie who says he's his father. You know how those Russians are. They'll convince you the sky's red. Probably filled his head with all kinds of stories of how wonderful Russia is and why doesn't he come enjoy it? If I was fifteen-God forbid-I'd go east with my daddy. Not head off with some old biddie obsessed with pot roasts and dusting." He paused. "That's what Minnie was like, if you must know."

"What about social services? Certainly they wouldn't just let this foreigner walk off with a fifteen-year-old boy. Would they?"

Perkins showed them his palms. "What do I know? Don't listen to me. I wasn't even there. But…" He wrinkled his brow. "These kinds of guys, they've got money, don't they? Money gets you everything."

"Not everything," Simmons insisted. "The only way Mr. Primakov would get him is the will. If your daughter put him in the will, giving him paternal rights."

Perkins shook his head. "Impossible. Wilma may not have liked us. She may have hated me. But she wouldn't've given the boy to some Russian. I didn't raise a stupid girl."

Simmons checked on Tina with a glance and a sly wink. She seemed satisfied by the talk, though Tina couldn't get her head on straight enough to understand what, exactly, she'd gotten. None of this helped Milo. Simmons said to Perkins, "Maybe you can tell me one last thing."

"Will if I can."

"Why did Wilma and Ellen hate you so much?" Perkins blinked five times.

"What I mean is," she continued, as if running a job interview, "what exactly did you do to your daughters?"

Silence, then a long exhale that could have meant that the old man was preparing to bare his soul and sins to these strangers. It didn't mean that. His voice was suddenly young and full of venom as he pointed at the door: "Get out of my fucking home!"

As they left, Tina knew that she would tell Simmons everything. Milo was a liar, and at that moment she hated him.

It wasn't until they picked up Stephanie from the television room full of doting old people that she realized something else. "Oh, Christ."

"What?" said Simmons.

She looked into the special agent's eyes. "When we got back from Venice, Milo came with me to take care of Stephanie's birth records in Boston. He begged me to let him give her a middle name. I hadn't planned on one, didn't really care, and it seemed to mean a lot to him."

"What's her middle name?"

"Ellen."

10

About a half hour before they arrived, two doormen removed the Chinese takeout boxes, replaced his water bottle, and cleaned blood off the table, chair, and floor. It was a relief of sorts, because over the night, the stink of old kung pao and sweat had kept him on the edge of nausea.

Then Fitzhugh stepped inside, followed by Simmons. Milo hadn't seen her since Disney World, hadn't talked to her since Blackdale. She looked tired, as if she, too, had spent a sleepless night caged with her own stink.

Remember, Yevgeny had said, Simmons is your salvation, but don't treat her that way.

So Milo crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not talking to her."

Simmons produced a smile. "Nice to see you, too."

Fitzhugh wasn't bothering with smiles. "Milo, it's not up to me, and it's not up to you."

"You don't look well," said Simmons.

Milo's left eye was swollen and purple, his lower lip broken, and one of his nostrils ringed with blood. The worst bruises were under his orange jumpsuit. "I keep walking into walls."

"So I see."

Before Fitzhugh could reach for it, she had taken his chair. He asked the doorman for another. They waited. During that minute and a half of silence, Simmons stared hard at Milo, and Milo returned the gaze without blinking.

When the chair arrived, Fitzhugh settled down and said, "Remember what we said before, Milo. About classified topics."

Simmons frowned.

"I remember," said Milo.

"Good," said Fitzhugh. "There's something I want to discuss first." He reached into his jacket pocket, but Simmons placed a hand on his lapel.

"Not yet, Terence," she said, then let go. "I want the story first.”

“What's that?" Milo sat up. "What's he got in there?" Fitzhugh took out his hand again, empty. "Don't worry about it, Milo. The story first. Okay? From where we left off." Milo looked at him.

"You were just about to head to Disney World," Simmons said, proving that she'd at least been given an interview summary from yesterday. She opened her hands like a well-trained interviewer. "I have to say, your last-minute escape from there was pretty snappy. Nicely done."

"Is she going to talk like this the whole time?" Milo put the question to Fitzhugh, who shrugged.

"Just talk," said Simmons. "If I think sarcasm's appropriate, I'll use it."

"Yes," Fitzhugh agreed. "Get on with it." To Simmons: "And try to temper the sarcasm, okay?"

He told the story of Disney World as it had happened, with a single omission: Yevgeny Primakov's appearance at Space Mountain. Though he had lied to Tina about so much, he hadn't lied about the purpose of the old man's visit-he had wanted to know what had happened to Angela Yates.

It was easy to leave out that meeting, because it had no bearing on the cause-and-effect that is the one concern of interrogators the world over. This ease allowed him to observe how the two people across from him acted.

Fitzhugh sat rigid, straighter than he had the day before. Whereas yesterday he had seemed as if he had all the time in the world, today he was in a rush, as if the contents of the interview no longer mattered. Occasionally, he would say, "Yeah, yeah. We already know that."

Each time, though, Simmons would cut in: "Maybe I don't, Terence. You know how uninformed Homeland is." Then, to Milo: "Please. Go on." She wanted to know everything.

So Milo obliged. He told his tale in a slow, purposeful way, leaving no detail untouched. He even mentioned the color of Einner's Renault, to which Simmons said, "It was a nice car, was it?"

"This agent has good taste."

Later in the day, when Weaver finally got to his meeting with Ugrimov, Simmons cut in again and said to Fitzhugh: "This Ugrimov. Do we have him on our arrest lists?"

Fitzhugh shrugged. "I don't know anything about the guy. Milo?"

"No," said Milo. "He's never broken a law in the United States. He can come and go as he pleases, but I don't think he ever does."

Simmons nodded, then placed both her hands flat on the table. "Anyway, we'll get to this in a little bit, but one thing's been nagging at me. After making all these connections, you went and killed Tom Grainger, right?"

"Right."

"In a fit of anger?”

“Something like that.”

“I don't buy it."

Milo stared at her. "I'd been through a lot, Janet. You never know how you're going to react."

"And, by killing your boss, you've obliterated the only evidence that might have proven at least some small part of your story."

"I never claimed to be a genius."

The silence was broken by Janet Simmons's ringing phone. She looked at the screen, then walked to the corner, a finger pressed against her free ear as she answered it. Both men watched. She said, "Yes. Wait a minute. Slow down. What? Yeah-I mean, no. I didn't do that. Believe me, I had nothing to do with it. No-don't do that. Don't touch anything until I'm there. Got it? I'll be"-she glanced back at them-"a half hour, forty-five minutes. Just wait, okay? See you then."

She snapped her phone shut. "I've got to go right now."

Both men blinked.

"Can we pick this up again tomorrow?"

Milo didn't bother answering, but Fitzhugh stood, muttering, "I guess so."

Simmons looked around the interview room. "And I want him out of here."

"What?" said Fitzhugh.

"I've cleared a solitary cell at the MCC. I want him moved there by the morning."

MCC was the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a pretrial holding facility next to Foley Square in Lower Manhattan.

"Why?" asked Milo.

"Yes," said Fitzhugh, annoyed. "Why?"

She looked at Fitzhugh and spoke as if she were voicing a threat: "Because I want to be able to talk to him in a place you don't control completely."

The air seemed to escape the room as she, miraculously, held both their gazes. Then she left.

Milo said, "Looks to me like Ms. Simmons doesn't trust the CIA."

"Well, fuck her," said Fitzhugh. "She doesn't tell me when my own interrogation ends." He shoved a thumb over his shoulder. "You know why she's hot and bothered now, don't you?"

Milo shook his head.

"We've got a Russian passport with your face on it, under the name Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov."

Milo looked taken aback by that, because he was. Whatever plan Yevgeny had hatched, exposing his secret life couldn't be part of it. "Where'd you get it?"

"That doesn't concern you."

"It's a forgery."

"I'm afraid not, Milo. Not even the Company makes them this good."

"So what's it supposed to mean?"

Fitzhugh reached again into his jacket and took out some folded sheets. He flattened them on the table. Milo didn't bother looking at them; instead, he watched the old man's eyes. "What's that?" he said flatly.

"Intel. Compromised intel that ended up in Russian hands. Intel you had access to immediately before it was compromised."

Slowly, Milo's gaze moved from Fitzhugh's eyes to the papers. The first one read:

Moscow, Russian Federation

Case: S09-2034-2B (Tourism)

Intel 1: (ref. Alexander) Acquired Bulgarian embassy tapes (ref. Op. Angelhead) from Denistov (attache) and will forward via U.S. embassy. 11/9/99

Intel 2: (ref. Handel) Recovered items from FSB agent (Sergei Arensky), deceased, include… copy of tapes from Bulgarian embassy (ref. Op. Angelhead). 11/13/99

He knew from the concise style that Harry Lynch had put this together. He really was an excellent Travel Agent. In 1999, touring under the name Charles Alexander, Milo had acquired some secret embassy tapes from the Bulgarian embassy in Moscow. The acquisition was called Operation Angelhead. Four days later, another Tourist-Handel-had come across a dead FSB agent, or killed him, and upon his body found a copy of the Angelhead tapes. Milo didn't know how the copy had made it to the Russian.

He flipped through the rest, pausing a moment longer on the third one, which read:

Venice, Italy

Case: S09-9283-3A (Tourism)

Intel 1: (ref. Alexander) Track Franklin Dawdle, under suspicion of fiscal fraud in amount of 3,000,000 USD. 9/10/01

Intel 2: (ref. Elliot) FSB source (VIKTOR) verifies Russian knowledge of the missing 3,000,000 via Dawdle, Frank, and the failed operation to recover in Venice. 10/8/01

Fitzhugh read it upside down. "Yes, your last operation even made it to Moscow."

Milo turned the sheets over. "Are you really that desperate, Terence? You can put a sheet like that together for any field agent. Information leaks. Did you check how many pieces of intel ended up in French or Spanish or British hands? Just as many, I'll wager."

"We don't have a French or Spanish or British passport with your face on it."

That was when Milo knew-Fitzhugh didn't care about his confession anymore. Murder was small fish when compared to being a double agent. It was the kind of catch that would add a gold star to Fitzhugh's record, and put Milo into either a lifetime of solitary or a quick grave.

"Who gave it to you?"

Fitzhugh shook his head. "We're not telling."

No-Fitzhugh had no idea who had given it to him. Milo had a pretty good idea, though, and it threatened to atomize whatever faith he had left.

11

Tina had awakened that morning in Myrtle Beach and taken Stephanie out to the shore feeling lighter, almost forgetting about the tears from last night's poor sleep. She felt, she realized as she settled on a rented lounge chair and watched her daughter splash in the Atlantic, like a cuckolded wife, but the other woman couldn't be surveilled or attacked because the other woman was an entire history. It was not entirely unlike when she, in junior high school, started reading the alternate histories of her own country, finding out that Pocahontas had become a pawn in colonial power struggles and, after a trip to London with John Rolfe, died of either pneumonia or tuberculosis on the voyage back.

But where those broken national myths had filled her with youthful self-righteousness and indignation, her husband's broken myths humiliated her, made her feel stupid. The only smart thing she'd done, she realized, was deny Milo his last request that they disappear with him.

Her feelings intensified when they landed at LaGuardia, then took the airport shuttle into Brooklyn. The streets were claustrophobic, and each familiar storefront was another accusation from her old life. That was how she was beginning to see her life: old and new. The old life was wonderful because of its ignorance; the new life was terrible because of its knowledge.

Their bags weighed a ton as she followed Stephanie, who rattled the apartment keys as she ran up the stairs. She reached the door while Tina was still on the second landing, opened it, then came out again and pressed her nose through the guardrail. "Mom?"

"What, honey?" she asked, hiking the bags up onto her shoulder.

"Somebody made a big mess. Is Dad home?"

At first, when she dropped the bags and galloped that last flight, she was consumed by an inexplicable surge of hope. Lies or not, Milo had come home. Then she saw that the drawers in the table by the entrance had been pulled out and turned over, leaving a pile of loose change, bus tickets, takeout menus, and keys on the floor. The mirror over the table had been taken down and turned to face the wall, and the loose backing paper had been ripped off.

She told Stephanie to wait in the hall while she examined each room. Destruction, as if an elephant had been mistakenly let in. She even thought: Come on, Tina, an elephant can't get up those stairs. She realized she was getting hysterical.

So she called the number Simmons had left and listened to her calm voice insisting that this wasn't her doing, and she would be right over, and please don't touch anything.

"Don't touch anything," Tina called as she hung up, but Stephanie wasn't in the hall. "Little Miss? Where are you?"

"In the bathroom," came the irritable answer.

How much more of this could Stephanie take? How much could she take? She hadn't told Stef about the sudden expansion of her family, the addition of a great-grandfather and a new grandfather she'd met in Disney World, but Stephanie was nobody's fool. In the hotel room this morning she'd started asking, "Who were you talking to in the old people's home?"

Tina, unable to keep lying to her own daughter, just said, "Someone who might know something about your daddy."

"Something to help him?" Despite having never been told, she knew Milo was in some kind of trouble.

"Something like that."

Tina took her out for Cokes at Sergio's, a pizza joint, and called Patrick. He sounded sober and clearheaded, so she asked him to come over.

He arrived before Simmons, and together the three of them returned to the apartment. The least-demolished room was Stephanie's, so they let her sort through her things while Tina told Patrick everything. Absolutely everything. By the time Simmons arrived, Patrick was in a state. Even during the height of his jealousy, he'd suspected none of this. Now he had to comfort Tina, who kept breaking down in tears. When Simmons stepped through the door, he turned on her.

"Don't tell us you didn't do it, okay? Because we know you did. Who else would've done it?"

Simmons ignored the blustering man and ranged through the apartment, stopping to smile and say hello to Stephanie, then took photos of each room with a little Canon. She stood in corners for multiple angles and crouched beside the disassembled television, the shattered vases (gifts, Tina explained, from her parents), the sliced sofa cushions, the small broken strongbox that had only held some family jewelry, though none of it had been taken.

"Anything missing?" Simmons asked again.

"Nothing." That, in itself, was depressing enough-after all this mess, no one had deemed her possessions worthy of stealing.

"Okay." Simmons straightened. "I've documented it all. Now it's time to clean up."

They got to work with broom and dustpan and Hefty bags Simmons had picked up from a convenience store. While she was squatting beside a broken mirror, picking up dozens of partial reflections of herself, she said, "Tina?" in her most friendly voice.

Tina was behind the television, trying to screw the rear panel back on. "Yeah?"

"You said some Company people came a few days ago. Two days before I visited. Remember?"

"Yeah."

Simmons walked over to the television, ignoring Patrick's accusing stare as he swept up shards of glass and pottery. "How do you know they were Company?"

Tina let the screwdriver drop to the floor and wiped her forehead with her wrist. "What do you mean?"

"Did they say they were Company, or did you just assume it?"

"They told me."

"Show you any ID?"

Tina thought about that, then nodded. "At the door, yes. One was Jim Pearson, the other was… Max Something. I can't remember his last name. Something Polish, I think."

"What did they ask you about?"

"You know what they asked about, Special Agent."

"No, actually. I don't."

Tina came out from behind the television while Patrick looked for the best defiant pose. By the time Tina settled on the sofa, he had found it: He moved behind her, a hand on each shoulder. "Do you really need to interrogate her again?"

"Maybe," Simmons said. She took the chair across from the sofa, the same place she'd sat during their first interview here. "Tina, it may be nothing, but I'd really like to know what kinds of questions they asked."

"You think they're the ones who did this?"

"Maybe, yes."

Tina thought about it. "Well, they started with the usual. Where was Milo? And they wanted to know what Milo had told me in Austin."

"When he asked you to leave with him," Simmons said encouragingly.

Tina nodded. "I told them the other Company people had already been through that-your people, too-but they said maybe I'd forgotten something that would help them. They were actually pretty nice about it all. Like high school career counselors. One of them-Jim Pearson-he went down a list of items to see if anything rang a bell for me."

"He had a list?"

"In a little spiral notebook. Names, mostly. Names of people I didn't know. Except one.”

“Which one?"

"Ugrimov. Roman Ugrimov. You know, the Russian I told you about, from Venice. I had no idea why they'd bring him up now, so I dutifully said that I'd met him once, and that he'd killed a girl and I didn't like him. They asked when, I said 2001, and they said they didn't need to hear about it." Tina shrugged.

"What other names?"

"Foreign names, mostly. Rolf… Winter, or something like that."

"Vinterberg?"

"Yeah. And some, I guess, Scottish name. Fitzhugh.”

“Terence Fitzhugh?"

Again, Tina nodded. The look on Simmons's face encouraged her to go on. "When I said I didn't know anything about him, who he was or otherwise, they didn't believe me. I don't know why. It was all right that I didn't know Vinterberg, but Fitzhugh?" She shook her head. "That, they didn't buy. They said things like, Milo didn't tell you anything about Fitzhugh and some money? I said no. They kept pushing. At one point, Jim Pearson said, What about Fitzhugh in Geneva, with the minister of- But Max hit him in the arm and he never got around to finishing the question. Finally, once they saw I was really annoyed, they packed up their shit and left."

While she'd been talking, Simmons had again produced her BlackBerry. She was typing. "Jim Pearson and Max…"

"I don't know."

"But they had Company IDs."

"Yeah. They looked fine to me. I know Milo's pretty well-it keeps ending up in the wash."

"And they never said why they were asking about Fitzhugh?"

Tina shook her head. "I got the feeling Max thought they were saying too much." She paused. "You really think those are the guys who made this mess? They annoyed me, but I wouldn't expect this from them."

"Like I said, Tina. It wasn't Homeland. I'd have heard about it.”

“And the Company?"

"Maybe, but I haven't heard anything from them either."

Tina grinned. "You're still in counseling, right?"

"Exactly." Simmons got to her feet. "Okay, let's get this place finished, and if you come across something that doesn't belong here, let me know."

They spent the next three hours reassembling electronics, picking up broken pictures, and restuffing cushions. It was frustrating work for all involved, and halfway through it, Patrick opened a bottle of vodka for general use. Simmons declined with thanks, but Tina poured herself a tall shot and drank it down in one go. Stephanie watched all of this wryly. She spent most of the time in her own room, repositioning dolls that had been taken from their proper homes. Around seven, as they were finishing, she came out of her room holding a cigarette lighter that advertised a Washington D.C., bar, the Round Robin, at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

"How about that," said Simmons, slipping on a latex glove and turning it over in her hand.

"What is it?" asked Tina, a little bubble of adrenaline rising at the sight of physical evidence.

"Strange, is what it is." Simmons held it up to the light. "I know the place-big politicians' haunt. It might be nothing though."

"That's pretty bad tradecraft," said Tina. "Leaving something behind."

Simmons slipped the lighter into a ziplock bag and pocketed it. "You'd be surprised just how lousy most agents are."

"I wouldn't be," Patrick assured them all, and Tina almost smiled-the poor man was feeling left out.

As she prepared to go, Simmons's phone rang. She took it into the kitchen. Tina caught a momentary, uncharacteristic sound of glee from the special agent's lips. "You're kidding! Here? Perfect."

When she emerged from the kitchen, though, she was all business again, and after thanking Patrick for his help she pulled Tina into the hall and told her that, in the morning, she'd be meeting with Yevgeny Primakov. Tina's feet went cold. "He's in New York?"

"He'll be at the UN headquarters. It's a nine o'clock appointment. Do you want to meet him?"

Tina considered it, then shook her head. "I need to go to the library, take care of stuff I've let slip." She paused, knowing that Simmons could see through the lie-the truth was that she was terrified. "But maybe later, you could… I don't know…"

"I'll give you a full report. Sound all right?"

"Not really," said Tina, "but it'll have to do."

12

Fitzhugh ate at the same Chinese restaurant on Thirty-third they'd ordered Weaver's takeout from. He chose a table near the back to avoid interruptions, and to ponder the Nexcel message he'd received from Sal.

J Simmons sent request at 6:15 PM to DHS acting director requesting license to access bank and phone records of Terence A Fitzhugh. At present, request is under consideration.

Over Szechuan chicken, he tried to think through this. It proved what he'd been sensing, that Simmons didn't trust him at all. It was in her tone, the entire way she dealt with him. Interagency rivalries were one thing, but this level of tension… she treated him as if he were the enemy. And now, she was asking Homeland's director for access to his records.

So he'd nipped it in the bud with a phone call. The request for access, he had been assured, would be denied.

Even so, he felt himself on the defensive, and that wasn't what he needed now. He should be leading the attack in order to control all possible damage by putting away Milo Weaver and ending this investigation.

The passport. That was his trump card. He still didn't know who had sent it. Forensics had only produced a single white hair: Caucasian male, aged fifty to eighty, a diet high in protein-but that described half of the intelligence world. He no longer cared who his benefactor was; his only concern was to wrap up this case before Simmons found a way to ruin all their hard work.

His thoughts were interrupted by a stranger who approached and said in French, "It's been so long," reaching out his hand to shake. Fitzhugh, stuck in the mental rhythms of his worries, was caught off guard. Staring up at the handsome, sixty-something face under wavy white hair, he took the heavy hand. Where did he know this man from?

"Excuse me," Fitzhugh said as they shook. There was something familiar in the face, but he wasn't sure. "Do I know you?"

The man's smile faded, and he switched to English-not his native language, but spoken in a kind of easy swing. "Oh. Bernard, right?"

Fitzhugh shook his head. "You have the wrong person. I'm sorry."

The man held up his hands, palms out. "No, my mistake. Sorry to bother you."

The man walked off, and though Fitzhugh expected him to return to a table, he actually left through the front door. He'd been so convinced Fitzhugh was his friend Bernard that he had come in from the street. French? No-in his accent he'd caught Slavic traces. Czech?

Eleven blocks uptown, on the twenty-third floor of the Grand Hyatt, Simmons was sitting on her stripped bed, typing queries into the Homeland database, looking for the record of a Company agent, Jim Pearson. It came up empty. She tried variations on the name, then sent a message to Matthew, her plant inside Tourism, asking him to check the Langley computers, in case Jim Pearson's records hadn't made the trip to Homeland.

While waiting for the answer, she looked for whatever she could find on Yevgeny Primakov. In the morning, she would meet him in the lobby of the UN's General Assembly building, which, as George had put it, was "un-fucking-believable."

Unbelievable, indeed. From what she read on the United Nations site, Yevgeny Primakov worked in the financial section of the Military Staff Committee of the Security Council, with an office in Brussels. An accountant? She doubted that. Was his presence in New York a beautiful coincidence? Or had he made sure to be there in case he was called upon by the United States to answer questions about his son?

She accessed a secure section of the Homeland site, and her searches turned up a skeletal history of Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Primakov, onetime colonel. He was inducted into the KGB in 1959, and in the mid-sixties began his travels. Known destinations: Egypt, Jordan, West and East Germany, France, and England. When the KGB morphed into the FSB after the fall of the Soviet Union, Primakov stayed on, heading a department of military counterintelligence until 2000, when he retired and began a new career with the United Nations.

They had little more on him, though in 2002 the U.S. representative to the UN requested a background check on Primakov. No reason given, and the resulting report was not available.

During the last years, Homeland had been absorbing FBI files connected to terrorism, past and present. It was within this clerical subsection that she found a single sheet on Ellen Perkins, who was convicted in absentia for being an accomplice in two crimes: the 1968 robbery of a branch of the Harris Bank in Chicago, and, in early 1969, the attempted arson of the Milwaukee police's District Seven headquarters. Last spotted in Oakland, California, before disappearing completely.

Given what William Perkins had told her about Ellen-robbing banks in Germany-she was surprised to find nothing else under her name, or under Elsa Perkins. It took a Google search-Elsa Perkins Germany armed robbery-to come across a site dedicated to the history of seventies' German terrorist groups. Baader-Meinhof, the Red Army Faction, the Socialist Patients' Collective, and the Movement 2 June, which counted among its members one Elsa Perkins, American. According to the webmaster,

Perkins joined the Movement 2 June in October 1972. By most estimates, she was seduced into the Movement by the charismatic Fritz Teufel. She lasted longer than most members, but was arrested in 1979 and sent to Stammheim-Stuttgart Prison. In December of that same year, she committed suicide in her cell.

Milo's door opened. Three doormen stepped in, and he noticed that the swelling around Lawrence's eye was beginning to subside. It was Lawrence who held the manacles, which he attached to Milo's wrists and ankles; then the three of them went with their shuffling prisoner down the corridor to the elevators, where they used a special keycard to access the parking lot on the third underground floor.

They took Milo to a white van not unlike armored police vans seen in movies. In the rear, two steel benches stretched its length, punctured by holes through which Lawrence threaded the chains. Once they were out on the street, heading south, Milo could see through the tinted rear window that it was nighttime, and asked if it was Friday or Saturday. Lawrence, sitting across from him, checked his watch. "Still Friday, just about."

"And the eye? Looks better."

Lawrence touched it. "I'll survive."

In Lower Manhattan, the van arrived at Foley Square, took a side street around the Metropolitan Correctional Center, then descended into the secure underground lot. The driver showed his identification and prisoner-transfer order to the guards, who raised the gate and let them through. They parked beside a steel elevator and waited until the doors had opened before unlocking Milo and moving him to it.

"They have room service here?" Milo asked innocently.

The two other doormen stared uncomprehendingly at him, but Lawrence smiled. "Private cells, at least."

"Like I didn't have that before.”

“Come on, man."

Simmons's mail program bleeped for her attention, and she read Matthew's reply. The last record of a Company agent by the name of Jim Pearson was in 1998, when the forty-year-old agent with that name died of a congenital heart defect.

So Jim Pearson wasn't a Company agent-no real surprise there. All the ruse took was a fake badge. There was also no Jim Pearson in Homeland. What, really, did she have? Of course: the cigarette lighter that Stephanie had found in her room. Round Robin. A haunt of Washington politicians and their entourages.

She opened two browser windows, one to the House of Representatives, one to the U.S. Senate. In each she found the personnel directories and typed Jim Pearson. The House gave up nothing, but the Senate had a single Jim Pearson, who worked as an "assistant scheduler" to Minnesota Republican Nathan Irwin. There was no photograph, just his name. She followed links to Nathan Irwin's page and studied the list of twenty aides in his employ. There again was Jim Pearson, and a few lines above him was Maximilian Grzybowski, "legislative assistant." One of those unfamiliar Polish names that could easily slip a harried woman's mind.

At ten, when his phone rang, Fitzhugh was back at the Mansfield Hotel. He'd brought a bottle of scotch back to the room, but tried not to drink too much of it. "Carlos?" said the senator. His voice sounded tense.

Fitzhugh cleared his throat. "It's taken care of?"

A pause. "There never was a request."

"Wait a minute. Say that again."

"I'm saying, Carlos, that you made me look like a fool. I'm talking to the top man, and when he calls me back he tells me no one ever asked anything about you. Nothing. You may not understand this, but you only get a few favors from these kinds of people. I just wasted one of mine."

"If there was nothing," Fitzhugh began, but the senator had already hung up.

He felt like he was going to be sick. Not because of Nathan Irwin's anger-he'd worked in Washington long enough to know a senator's anger lasts only until the next good deed you do for him. What upset him was that Sal's message, sent through the proper channels, had been wrong. For the past six years, Sal had been Tourism's best source inside Homeland Security. His information was never contradicted. This time he'd made a mistake.

Or perhaps, Fitzhugh worried as he plunged deeper into the scotch, Homeland had uncovered Sal, and was now using him to feed disinformation into Tourism. Was that possible?

He set his scotch aside and dragged out his laptop. It took a moment to power it up and access the Nexcel account, but as soon as he did he drafted a quick e-mail to Sal:

Information proved wrong. Is it a mistake, or were plans changed? Are you compromised?

He sent it off with a hard click on the trackpad button, only afterward realizing his mistake. If Sal were compromised, then Homeland would be watching his account. What would they do? Write back in his name? Probably. What reply, then, would prove he was compromised? That is, what would Homeland want him to believe?

13

The taxi worked its way through the morning traffic up First Avenue, then let her off on Raoul Wallenberg Walk. She hurried across the lawn, passing plainclothes security men and New York troopers. It was nearly nine. She cut through a long line of tourists that led to metal detectors and showed her Homeland ID to a Vietnamese guard. He passed her to two uniformed women who patted her down and went over every inch of her body with a handheld explosive detector.

The United Nations General Assembly building has a long, sixties-modern lobby, littered with paintings of past secretaries general, low leather couches, and placards with slogans and lists of upcoming events. Simmons found a spot beneath the suspended Foucault pendulum, knowing that Yevgeny Primakov would have to come to her, since she didn't have a photo of him. He apparently had one of her-this meeting place, according to Orbach, had been his idea.

As she stood there, looking expectant, the faces of the world passed by in the form of assistants and interns from all the UN countries. She remembered her last visit, not long after her divorce, when she thought that there was something special about this place. The warmth of internationalism had filled her, just briefly, and she'd even considered working for this amalgam of nations. Like most

Americans, though, in the years that followed she heard more about its failures than its successes, and when the Department of Homeland Security came calling, and the recruiter described how this new department wouldn't be hogtied by the red tape that plagued so many institutions, she succumbed to her innate patriotism.

"Look up," said an old man, smiling. His accent was Russian.

She peered up at the gold-plated sphere that swung directly from a wire.

"It's a nice thing to have around," said Primakov, clasping his hands behind his back and staring up with her. "It's the physical evidence that the planet rotates, despite how things feel where we're standing. It reminds us that what our eyes see and our senses feel isn't always the complete truth."

She stared at the mechanism a moment longer, just for politeness, then stuck out a hand. "I'm Janet Simmons, Homeland Security."

Instead of shaking, he brought her knuckles to his mouth; he kissed them. "Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Primakov of the United Nations, at your service."

When he let her hand go, she slipped it into her blazer pocket. "I wanted to ask about your son, Milo Weaver."

"Milo Weaver?" He paused. "I have two wonderful daughters- around your age, I believe. A pediatric surgeon in Berlin and a litigator in London. But a son?" He shook his head, smiling. "No son."

"I'm talking about the son you had with Ellen Perkins in 1970."

His broad, confident smile didn't falter. "Are you hungry? I missed my breakfast, which in America is a crime. The diner breakfast is America's great contribution to world cuisine."

Simmons nearly laughed. "Sure. Let's get some breakfast."

Together, they crossed the lawn again, Primakov sometimes nodding at others heading in the opposite direction, toting briefcases. He was in his element, a man at ease with his position in the world, even under the threat of a Homeland Security agent dredging up old secrets. He had a single nervous gesture, though: He sometimes raised a fleshy finger to his cheek and swiped at it, as if ushering away a fly. Otherwise, he was all old-world elegance in his tailored gray suit, blue tie, and perfectly fitting dentures.

The diner he'd promised turned out to be an overpriced nouveau American restaurant with a separate breakfast menu. When the hostess offered a window seat, Primakov licked his lips, swatted at his cheek, and suggested a booth in the rear of the restaurant.

He ordered the "Hungry Man" plate of scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, ham, and home fries, while Simmons stuck with coffee. Playfully, he accused her of trying to lose weight, "which is baffling, because you have a perfect figure, Ms. Simmons. If anything, you should add a few kilos."

She wondered when a man had last talked to her this way. Not in a while. She called over the waitress and ordered an English muffin.

Before the food came, they went through some of Primakov's particulars. He openly admitted to having risen to the rank of colonel in the KGB, staying on during its transformation into the FSB. By the midnineties, though, he had become disillusioned. "We kill our own journalists, you know that?"

"I've heard."

He shook his head. "It's a pity. But from inside, there's little you can do about it. So I considered my options and in 2000, the new millennium, decided to work for the world at large, rather than my own nation's petty interests."

"Sounds commendable," she said, remembering her own brief thoughts in that direction. "But the UN must be frustrating."

He raised his bushy brows and conceded with a nod that this was true. "The failures are what reach your newspapers. The successes- those are just boring, aren't they?"

The waitress returned with two warm plates. Once the old man had begun eating, Simmons said, "I want you to tell me about it. I'm not interested in digging up dirt. I just want to know who Milo Weaver really is."

Chewing, Primakov stared at her. "Right. That Milo person you mentioned."

She gave him the most endearing a smile she knew how to make. "Yevgeny. Please. Let's start with Ellen Perkins."

Primakov looked at her, then at his food, and then, with an exaggerated shrug, set down his utensils. "Ellen Perkins?"

"Yes. Tell me about her."

The old man flicked something from his lapel-a woman's hair, it looked like-then snatched at his cheek. "Because you're so charming and beautiful, I have no choice. Russian men are like that. We're too romantic for our own good."

One more endearing smile. "I appreciate it, Yevgeny."

So he began.

"Ellen was special. You have to know that first of all. Milo's mother wasn't just another pretty face, as you say in America. In fact, she wasn't really that beautiful, physically. In the sixties, the revolutionary cells of the world were full of long-haired angels. Hippies who stopped believing in peace, though they still believed in love. Most of them had no real conception of what they were doing. Like Ellen, they were from broken homes. They just wanted a new family. If they had to die, so be it. At least they'd die for a reason, unlike those poor boys in Vietnam." He used his fork to point at Simmons. "Ellen, though-she saw through the romance. She was an intellectual convert."

"Where did you meet?"

"Jordan. One of Arafat's training camps. She'd spent the last few years being radicalized in America, and when I met her she was inspired by the PLO and the Black Panthers. She was a bit ahead of her time, you see. At that time-sixty-seven-there was no one in America she could talk to. So, with a couple of equally disenfranchised friends, she showed up in Jordan. She met Arafat himself, as well as me. She was far more impressed by Arafat."

He paused, and Simmons realized she was supposed to fill in the silence. "What were you doing there?"

"Spreading international peace, of course!" A wry smile. "The KGB wanted to know how much money to spend on these fighters, and who we could recruit. We didn't really care about the Palestinians;

we just wanted to stick a thorn in America's great Middle Eastern ally, Israel."

"Ellen Perkins became a KGB asset?"

He swiped at his cheek. "That was the plan, wasn't it? But Ellen saw right through me. She saw that I didn't care as much about world revolution as I did about keeping my job. The more names I added to my roster of friendly warriors, the more secure my pension became. She saw that. She called me a hypocrite!" He shook his head. "I'm not kidding. She started listing the atrocities the Soviet Union had committed. The Ukraine famine, trying to starve West Berlin, Hungary in fifty-six. What could I say? I dismissed the Ukraine as a madman's mistake-Stalin's, that is. For Berlin and Hungary, I talked up counterrevolutionaries from the West, but Ellen had no time for my excuses. Excuses-that's what she called them."

"So she wouldn't work with you," Simmons said, thinking she understood.

"Quite the contrary! As I said, Ellen was smart. Jordan was just foreplay. If you understand my meaning. Her little ragtag group would learn to shoot and blow things up, but afterward they would need support. At the time, Moscow was generous. She wanted to use me. I, on the other hand, was failing in my duty already. You see, I'd fallen in love with her. She was ferocious."

Simmons nodded, as if all this made sense to her, but it didn't. She was too young to have known the nuances of the cold war, and her parents' stories of the revolutionary sixties made it sound like the Decade of Cliche. Falling in love with a revolutionary meant falling in love with a suicide bomber chanting disconnected verses from the Qu'ran. That was a few steps beyond her imaginative abilities. "Her father, William-Ellen didn't talk to him, did she?"

All the good humor bled from Primakov's face. "No, and I never would have encouraged her to do so. That man is a true shit. Do you know what he did to Ellen? To Ellen and her sister, Wilma?"

Simmons shook her head.

"He deflowered them. At the age of thirteen. It was their comingof-age present." Decades on, the anger was still with him. "When I think of all the good people who died, who were killed by my people and your people over the last sixty years, I find it humiliating-yes, humiliating-that a man like that continues to breathe."

"Well, he's not living well."

"Living at all is too good for him."

14

She wouldn't make Weaver's ten o'clock interview at the MCC, so she excused herself and called from beside the cash register. Fitzhugh answered after two rings. "Yes?"

"Listen, I'm running late, maybe a half hour."

"What's going on?"

She almost told him, but changed her mind. "Please, just wait for me in the MCC lobby."

By the time she returned, Primakov had finished half his breakfast. She apologized for the interruption, then pushed on: "So. You became Ellen's lover."

"Yes." He wiped his lips with a napkin. "In the fall of 1968, for about two months, we were lovers, to my delight. Then, one day, she was gone. She and her friends had simply vanished. I was in shock."

"What happened?"

"Arafat himself told me. They'd tried to sneak out that night. They were caught, of course, and held in a little room on the outskirts of the camp. He was called to make a judgment. Ellen explained that she and her friends were taking the fight out of the Middle East and into America. They would attack U.S. support for Israel at its roots."

"You mean, kill Jews?"

"Yes," said Primakov. "Arafat believed it and let them go, but Ellen…" He raised and shook his hands in evangelical praise. "What a woman! She'd fooled one of the world's great liars. She wasn't interested in killing Jews-Ellen was no anti-Semite."

After a year in a PLO training camp, daily indoctrination, and maps of Israel marked up with targets? Simmons wasn't sure she believed that. "How do you know?"

"She told me herself. Six months later, in May 1969."

"And you believed her."

"Yes, I did," he said, and his sincerity almost made her believe as well. "By then, I'd been transferred to West Germany to look into those revolutionary student groups that were just starting to destroy banks and department stores. One day in Bonn, I heard that an American girl was looking for me. My heart leapt-really, it did. I wanted it to be her, and it was. She was alone now, on the run. She and her friends had robbed a bank and set fire to a police station. She fled to California, for help from her beloved Black Panthers. They told her she was insane. Then she remembered Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin's bombing of the Schneider department store the previous year. She thought she'd find some common sentiments in Germany." He sighed, licking his lips. "And that, my dear, she did. Then, within a few weeks of her arrival, she heard about a chubby Russian asking a lot of questions."

"Chubby?"

He looked down at his thin frame. "I didn't worry enough in those days."

"How did the meeting go?"

Primakov rocked his head, smiling at this thought or that. "At first, it was all business. As Ellen would say, sexual affairs that obstruct the normal processes of the revolution are nothing more than destructive bourgeois sentimentality. Maybe she was right, I don't know. All I know is that I was even more in love with her, and when she demanded an outline of West German revolutionary activity, I obliged instantly. I introduced her to some comrades who, generally, thought she was a wreck. They thought some of her more radical views showed signs of imbalance. You see, German freedom fighters worked as a family, but by then Ellen was rejecting even the notion of family as bourgeois. Anyway," he said, "we became lovers again, then she got pregnant. Toward the end of sixty-nine. She was on the Pill, but I suppose it slipped her mind occasionally. She was, after all, very busy planning the overthrow of all Western institutions."

Primakov stroked his cheek again, and Simmons waited.

"She wanted an abortion. I argued against it. I was becoming increasingly bourgeois in those days, and I wanted a child to bind us together. But with that shit as a father, how could she ever view families in a positive light? So I said, If revolutionaries don't have children, how is the revolution to continue? I think that finally convinced her. The name Milo was her idea. I later learned that Milo had been her beloved dog when she was young. Strange. That was also when she changed her own name to Elsa. It was partly for security-I supplied new papers-but it was also psychological. A baby was her entree into a new revolutionary world. She felt she should be reborn as a liberated woman."

"You stayed together?"

Again, he rocked his head. "That's the irony, you see. I wanted Milo because I thought he would pull Ellen closer to me. But now, she was one hundred percent liberated. I was just a petit-bourgeois male. An occasional penis-that's what she called me. She had other occasional penises at her disposal. I became one of a crowd."

"That must have hurt."

"It did, Special Agent Simmons. It truly did. At best, I was an occasional babysitter, while she went off with her comrades to start their famous trail of destruction. I'd gained a son, but I'd lost her. Finally, in a fit of frustration, I demanded-demanded, mind you- that we get married. What was I thinking? I'd made the final bourgeois compromise, and she didn't want her son poisoned by my wicked ideas. By then it was seventy-two, and the Red Army Faction was in full swing. Moscow was breathing down my neck to get control of these kids. When I told them it was out of our hands, they recalled me." Primakov opened his hands to show that everything was out of them. "I was desperate by then. I even tried kidnapping Milo." He laughed quietly. "Really, I did. I assigned two of my best men to the task, but by then a new agent from Moscow had started sniffing around. He notified the Center, and they abruptly changed my agents' orders. My own men were now to take me, at gunpoint, back to Moscow." He took a long breath and let it out loudly, staring across the now-busy restaurant. "That, my dear, is how I left West Germany in disgrace."

"What do you know about what followed?"

"A lot," he admitted. "I still had access to reports. I followed Ellen's career the way little girls follow their favorite pop singers. The RAF trials were headlines all over Europe. Ellen wasn't picked up, though. I heard that she had fled to East Germany with her baby, then that she had returned to join the Movement 2 June. And then, in 1974, police discovered the body of Ulrich Schmiicker in the Grunewald, outside Berlin. He'd been killed by his own Movement 2 June comrades." He paused, frowning. "Was Ellen there? Did she take part in Schmucker's execution? I don't know. But within three months she resurfaced in North Carolina, at her sister's house. She asked Wilma to take Milo as her own. Ellen must have known that things wouldn't end well for her, and this was the only way to protect him. She made no demands for a radical education, only insisted that he not be brought, ever, to his grandparents. And he never was."

"She was arrested."

Primkov nodded. "In 1979. Later that year she hung herself with her own pants."

Janet Simmons leaned back, overcome by the feeling that she'd just listened to an entire life. A mysterious life, full of holes, but a life nonetheless. Her desire, at that moment, was to sit down with Ellen Perkins and ask why? for each decision she'd ever made. She couldn't understand Primakov's love for such an obviously unbalanced woman, but the fascination… She shook herself free of these thoughts. "So, Milo was in North Carolina with his aunt and uncle. Did he know who they were, who his mother was?"

"Yes, of course. Wilma and Theo were honest people, and Milo was four when he came to them-he remembered his mother. But it was a secret. Ellen believed-maybe rightly-that if the authorities knew who Milo was, they'd use him as leverage to get at her. So Wilma and Theo told everyone they'd gotten him from an adoption agency. Wilma told me that Ellen would sometimes arrive under a false name to visit Milo. Usually, they'd only learn about the visit afterward. She'd tap on Milo's window, he'd climb out, and they'd go walking through the night. It terrified Wilma. She worried that Milo would go with anyone who tapped on his window. Then, of course, the visits stopped when he was nine.”

“Did they tell him what happened?"

"After a while, yes. He already knew about me. Occasionally- maybe once a year-I visited. I didn't try to bring him back with me. He was an American. He had no need for another father-Theo was a good man. Only at their funeral did I learn that I'd inherited custody. If I had any doubts, they disappeared when I met Minnie, Milo's grandmother, who kept making excuses for why her husband, Bill, hadn't come to his own daughter's funeral. I wasn't going to let them take him."

"So he did go to Russia."

"Yes," said Primakov, then narrowed his eyes. "He didn't put that on his Company application, did he? Not on his school transcripts either. That was my idea. Back then, we still thought of the world as divided between East and West. A different East and West from now. I didn't want that working against him in the future. So we settled on a little fiction. Three years in an orphanage after his aunt and uncle's death. There was no need for anyone to know they weren't his real parents. For all purposes, they were his parents."

"It's a bit much to ask a kid," Simmons suggested. "To lie about three years of his life."

"Most kids, maybe. But not Milo. Remember, he received visits from a mother who was a wanted criminal. Each visit, Ellen reminded him that their relationship was a secret. He already had a special place in his brain for a secret life. I just added a few things to it."

"But the cold war ended," she insisted. "You could have set the record straight."

"Tell that to him," said Primakov. "I did. But Milo asked me how his employers would react if they knew a twenty-year-old kid had pulled the wool over their eyes? Milo knows how institutions work. Point out their flaws, and they'll bite you for the favor."

This, Simmons had to concede, was true.

"He hated Russia, you know. I tried-I tried every day to show him the beauty of Moscow and his Russian heritage, but he'd spent too long in America. All he saw was the corruption and dirt. He actually told me, right in front of my daughters-and in flawless Russian, which only made it worse-that I worked for the People's Oppressors. But what really hurt was when he said I wasn't even aware of my crimes, that I was stuck in a petit-bourgeois cocoon." He paused, brows raised. "See what I mean? I suddenly felt as if Ellen were standing there, shouting at me."

The irony made even Janet Simmons smile. "But you didn't leave him alone, did you? Two weeks ago, you crashed his vacation. Why?"

Primakov chewed the inside of his mouth as if realigning his dentures. "Ms. Simmons, you're obviously getting at something with all this. I've been open with you because I know Milo is in your custody, and I don't believe any of this will harm my son. Like you say, it's not the cold war anymore. But if you want me to go on, I need something from you. I need you to tell me what's going on with Milo. I saw him at Disney World, yes, but since then I haven't seen or heard from him."

"He's being held for murder."

"Murder? Who?"

"Among others, Thomas Grainger, a CIA officer."

"Tom Grainger?" he said, then shook his head. "I don't believe it. Tom was as close to a father figure as Milo, as an adult, ever had. Certainly more than I was."

"He's confessed to the murder."

"Did he say why?"

"I'm not at liberty to share that."

The old man nodded, a finger grazing his cheek. "Of course, I did hear about Tom's death. I'm not saying this because he's my boy, you understand. I'm bourgeois enough to believe in fair punishment for a crime."

"I don't doubt that."

"I just don't think…" He paused, looking into her cool eyes. "Forget it. I'm an old man, and I talk a lot of tripe. Disney World. That's what you wanted to know about."

"Yes."

"Simple. I wanted to know what had happened to Angela Yates. She was an excellent agent, a real compliment to your great nation.”

“You knew her?"

"Sure," he said. "I even approached Miss Yates with the offer of a job."

"What kind of job?"

"Intelligence. She was an intelligent woman."

"Wait a minute," Janet began, then stopped. "Are you telling me you tried to turn Angela Yates?"

Primakov nodded, but slowly, as if measuring how much he could say. "Homeland Security, the CIA, and NSA-they all try to turn members of the United Nations every hour of every day. Is it so unforgivable for the United Nations to try the same?"

"I-" Again, she had to stop. "You talk as if you've got some intelligence agency here."

"Please!" Primakov exclaimed, again showing his hands. "The United Nations has nothing of the sort. Your country, for one, wouldn't abide it. Of course, if someone wants to share some knowledge with us, we'd be foolish not to accept it."

"What did Angela say?"

"An unequivocal no. Very patriotic, that one. I even tried to sweeten the pot. I told her the United Nations was interested in going after the Tiger. But still, she refused."

"When was this?"

"Last year. October."

"Do you know how much work she did tracking the Tiger after that?"

"I have some idea.”

“How?"

"Because I fed her information whenever I had it to share." They watched each other a moment, then Primakov continued.

"Look. We didn't want the credit for catching the Tiger. We only wanted him stopped. His assassinations were disrupting European economies and causing unrest in Africa. Usually, she didn't know the information came from us. She considered herself extremely lucky. You can argue she was."

"What about Milo?"

"What about him?"

"Why didn't you feed him information? He was following the Tiger."

Primakov thought about his answer before speaking: "Milo Weaver is my son. I can love him, yes. I can make sure my parentage doesn't ruin his career. But I also know that, as my son, he has my own limitations."

"Such as?"

"Such as not being as clever as Angela Yates. He caught the Tiger, yes, but only because the Tiger wanted to be caught." Primakov blinked at her. "Don't get me wrong, Ms. Simmons. Milo's very clever. He's just not quite as smart as his old, now dead, friend."

Primakov took a bite of cold egg, and Simmons said, "You really are very well informed, Yevgeny."

He inclined his head. "Thank you."

"What do you know about Roman Ugrimov?"

Primakov dropped his fork; it clattered on the plate. "Excuse me, Ms. Simmons, but Roman Ugrimov is as much of a shit as Milo's grandfather. Another pedophile-did you know? Some years ago he killed his underaged pregnant girlfriend in Venice simply to make a point." He pushed away his plate, his appetite now completely ruined.

"You know him personally?"

"Not as well as you do."

She drew back. "Me?"

"The CIA, at least. The Company makes the strangest bedfellows."

"Wait," said Simmons. "He may have crossed paths with some employees, but the Company doesn't work with Roman Ugrimov."

"Please, don't pretend," the old man told her. "I've got photographs of him dining happily with one of your administrators."

"Which administrator?”

“Does it matter?"

"Yes, actually. It does. Who met with him?"

Primakov pursed his lips, thought, and shook his head. "I don't remember, but I can send over a copy of the pictures if you like. A year old. Geneva."

"Geneva," Simmons whispered, then straightened. "Can you have it sent over today?"

"Whenever you like."

She produced a pen and a notepad and began writing. "I'll be at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Here's the address. Your people can just give it to security, with my name on it." She ripped off the sheet and handed it over.

Primakov read, squinting, then folded it in half. "It will take a few hours to track down. Will one o'clock suffice?"

"Perfect." She checked her watch-it was a quarter after ten. "Thank you very much, Yevgeny." They stood, and he held out his hand. She placed hers in his and waited as he brought her knuckles again to his lips and kissed them.

"The pleasure has been all mine," he told her, very seriously. "Remember Foucault's pendulum, Ms. Simmons. My son may say he's guilty of murder, but despite years apart, I know him better than you do. He'd never kill his father."

15

The interview room at the MCC was much like the one in the Avenue of the Americas building, with one crucial difference: a window. It was small, high, and secured with bars, but it gave Milo his first glimpse of sunlight in three days. He hadn't realized how much he had missed it.

Still in manacles, he had been secured to his chair by a polite guard named Gregg, and after five minutes they entered. While Simmons remained the consummate professional, Fitzhugh seemed off his game. There were fresh bags under his eyes, and he kept his arms crossed defensively over his chest. Something was up.

Milo continued with his story. Landing at JFK, the car rental, driving to Lake Hopatcong, parking a half mile away, and walking through the woods. As before, Simmons didn't let the narrative move too quickly, picking at details as they came.

The conversation with Grainger came out in summary. "He was scared. I could tell that right away. At first, he claimed he had nothing to do with Tripplehorn meeting Ugrimov and the Tiger. Then he admitted he knew something about it, but the orders hadn't come from him. They'd come from above him."

"From whom?"

He shook his head, glancing at Fitzhugh, who was chewing the inside of his mouth. "Wouldn't say," Milo told her. "He tried to make it into a conspiracy. High reaches of power, that sort of thing. He said that it was all part of a plan to disrupt China's oil supply.”

“You believed him?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, I believed in the aims of what was happening. But I think the buck stopped with him. In fact, I know it. I already talked about how upset he was that Ascot had taken over the Company."

"Yes," said Simmons. "I read the transcript of that."

"Tom was terrified. At the time, I thought he was just worried about his section, that a lot of people would get the axe. Maybe he was, but it wasn't enough to upset him that much. He was afraid his little side project would become derailed. Who kept the Tiger's file from me? Tom. Who made sure Angela and I never worked together to catch him? Tom."

"Yes," Simmons admitted. "And who gave the Tiger your file, assuring that he'd come to you at some point?" When Milo didn't answer immediately, she answered the question herself: "Tom."

Milo shook his head. "That backfired. He made sure the Tiger had my file, and hoped the Tiger would come and take care of me himself."

"Tom thought the Tiger would kill you."

"Yes."

"Go on."

Milo explained that Grainger was desperate to dig himself out of his hole. "What's the best way to do that? You shift the blame to those above you."

"People like Mr. Fitzhugh here?" Simmons suggested, smiling.

At first, Fitzhugh didn't smile, then he did, forcefully, and leaned forward. "Yes, Milo. Did Grainger try to soil my good name?"

"Sure he did. But what else could he say? He accused everyone he could think of. Everyone except himself."

"And so you killed him," Fitzhugh said, urging the story on.

"Yes. I killed him."

Simmons crossed her arms over her breasts and stared at Milo a moment. Then: "Inside the house, just inside the front door, someone else died. Blood everywhere. Also, three windows were broken. In the stairs to the second floor we found seven slugs."

"Yes. That would be Tripplehorn."

"You killed this man?"

"I interrogated Tom for a few hours on Monday night. I don't know how he did it, but somehow he made contact. Maybe he'd already expected me and had prepared. But in the morning Tripplehorn arrived. He trapped me on the stairs, and I was lucky to get him."

"Where was Tom when this occurred?"

"In the kitchen. I guess he broke the windows, looking for a way out-"

"Away out?" Simmons interrupted. "But the windows were broken from the outside."

Milo paused, looking uncomfortable, but he was glad Simmons had a clear memory for details. "Like I said, I don't know. All I know is, Tom got out. I was next to Tripplehorn's body when I saw him running past. I didn't even think. I was furious. I took Tripplehorn's rifle, aimed, and shot twice."

"Once in the forehead, once in the shoulder."

Milo nodded.

"He was running away?"

"Yes."

"Yet he was shot from the front."

Milo blinked, trying not to show his pleasure. Primakov had been right about everything. "I shouted his name. He stopped and turned back."

Her expression suggested she knew this already. "One thing's strange, though."

Milo, staring at the table, didn't bother asking what that strange thing was.

"You got rid of Tripplehorn's body, but not Grainger's. Why'd you do that, Milo?"

He shook his head, not meeting her eyes. "I thought that if I got rid of Tripplehorn, then ballistics would match the bullets to his gun. The hunt would shift from me to him. What I forgot was that he doesn't really exist. He was black ops.”

“You mean, a Tourist?"

Milo raised his eyes to meet hers, while Fitzhugh shifted in his seat, saying, "What're you talking about, Janet?"

"Let's cut the bullshit, okay? We've known about your special field agents for years. Just answer the question."

Milo looked to Fitzhugh for guidance, and the older man, chewing his cheek, finally nodded.

"Yes," said Milo. "He was a Tourist."

"Thank you. Now that that's out of the way, can we go on?"

He told them about disposing of Tripplehorn's corpse in the mountains near Lake Hopatcong, but claimed not to remember exactly where. Then he'd sent a coded e-mail to Tina from an Internet cafe.

"The barbecue party," Simmons said with a grin. "That was good. Only figured it out after Tina told us."

"Then you also know that it was a failure. She wouldn't leave with me."

"Don't take it personally," said Simmons. "Not many people would just drop everything and disappear."

"Either way, I was stuck. I didn't want to leave without my family, and my family wouldn't leave with me."

"So you drove to Albuquerque," Fitzhugh cut in. "Stayed at the Red Roof Inn."

"Yeah."

"This is verified?" asked Simmons.

Fitzhugh nodded, then looked up at the sound of someone knocking on the door. He opened it a crack. The voice of a guard wafted in: "This is for Special Agent Janet Simmons."

"Who's it from?" asked Fitzhugh, but Simmons was already on her feet, pulling the door open and taking the flat manila envelope from the guard.

"Just a sec, guys," she said, then stepped into the corridor.

Fitzhugh looked at Milo, sighing heavily. "It's a hell of a thing."

"What is?"

"All this. Tom Grainger. Did you have any idea he could be so manipulative?"

"I hardly even believe it now."

Simmons returned with the envelope under her arm. Her cheeks, both men noticed, were nearly fuchsia.

"What's the news?" asked Fitzhugh, but she ignored him and returned to her chair.

She stared hard at Milo, thinking something over, then placed the envelope flat on the table, her hand on top of it. "Milo, I want you to explain the Russian passport."

He wanted to know what was in that envelope, but said, "Terence mentioned it. It's a forgery, or a trick. I'm not a Russian citizen."

"But your father is.”

“My father's dead."

"Then how did he show up in Disney World two weeks ago to have a secret meeting with you?”

“What?" said Fitzhugh.

Simmons ignored him. "Answer me, Milo. Your wife might not be the kind of person to disappear with you, but she's just as human as the rest of us. You introduced her to Yevgeny Primakov without ever telling her that she was meeting her father-in-law. And two days ago, we went to see your grandfather on your mother's side. William Perkins. Ring any bells?"

The air went out of Milo. His scalp buzzed. How had she done it? Trust me, his father had said, but this couldn't have been part of any plan, exposing all this. He turned to Fitzhugh. "There's nothing to say about this. I'm devoted to this country and the Company. Don't listen to her."

"Talk to me" said Simmons.

"No," said Milo.

"Milo," Fitzhugh began, "I think you better-"

"No!" he shouted, and started jumping in his chair, the noise of rattling chains filling the small room. "No! Get out of here! This conversation is over!"

The guards were already inside, two of them, holding Milo's shoulders, kicking his feet off the floor and pressing him down. "Get rid of him?" one asked Fitzhugh.

"No," said Simmons, standing. "Keep him there. Terence, come with me."

They left, and Milo calmed beneath the guards' hands. This had not been part of any plan-his outburst had come from somewhere else. It was the nervous reaction to that secret place being cracked open. Now they knew. Not just them, though, but Tina.

He slumped until his forehead settled on the table. Tina knew. She knew now what her husband was and had always been. A liar.

Did any of this even matter anymore? All he'd wanted was to go home again, and now, probably, that was one place he was no longer welcome.

Without knowing it, he began to hum. A melody.

Je suis une poupee de cire,

Une poupee de son

He stopped himself before it broke him completely.

Through the closed door, he heard Fitzhugh shouting something indecipherable, then footsteps leading away. Simmons entered alone, the envelope under her arm, the flush in her cheeks fading. She spoke to the guards: "I want you to turn off the cameras and microphones. Got it? All of them. When you've done that, knock three times on the door but don't come in. Yes?"

The two men nodded, glancing down at the prisoner, then left.

She took her seat across from Milo, placed the envelope on the table, and waited. She said nothing, and Milo said nothing, only shifted for a better position, the chains making a little noise. He decided not to speculate on what was going on-speculation was killing him. When, finally, they heard three clear knocks on the door, Simmons allowed herself a soft smile. She used the friendly voice she'd first used in Blackdale, Tennessee, the one she'd been taught in interrogation training, and leaned forward, the better to close the psychological distance.

She pulled out the photographs one by one until the three were beside each other on the table, facing Milo. "Do you recognize these men, Milo?"

It was a restaurant, Chinese. Two men shaking hands. He gritted his teeth, finally understanding.

You'll know. You'll know when it's time for the Third Lie.

When he spoke, his voice was crackly from his shouting fit. "Light's not too good."

She considered this statement, as if it had basis in fact; it didn't. "Well, that one looks like Terence, doesn't it?"

Milo nodded.

"The other man-his friend-does that face look familiar?"

Milo made a show of examining the face. He shook his head. "Hard to say. I don't think I know him."

"It's Roman Ugrimov, Milo. Surely you remember his face."

Milo wouldn't admit to anything. He pursed his lips and shook his head.

She collected the photographs and slipped them back into the envelope. Then she pressed her hands together, at her cleavage, as if in prayer. Her voice was sweetness and light. "We're all alone here, Milo. Terence is out of the building. He's out of the picture now. You can stop protecting him."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he answered, but it was a whisper.

"Cut it out, okay?" she said softly. "Nothing will happen to you if you simply tell me the truth. I promise."

Milo considered that, looked ready to say something, then changed his mind. He took a raspy breath. "Janet, despite our personal issues, I do trust that you'll stick to your promise. But that might not be good enough."

"For you?"

"And others."

Janet sat back, eyes narrowing. "Who? Your family?" Milo didn't answer.

"I'll take care of your family, Milo. No one's going to touch them."

He flinched, as if she'd touched a nerve.

"So stop protecting him, okay? He can't do anything. He can't even hear us. You and me, Milo, we're completely alone. Tell me the real story."

Milo considered this, then shook his head. "Janet, none of us are ever alone." He exhaled, glanced at the door, and leaned close so his whispered Lie Number Three would be better heard. "I made a deal with him."

"Terence?"

He nodded.

She watched him a moment, and he waited to see if she could fill in the details herself. "To take the rap for Grainger's murder," she speculated.

"Yes."

"And blame Grainger for everything else?"

Milo didn't bother confirming this. He only said, "I was promised a short jail term, and he…" Milo swallowed. "And he would leave my family alone. So if you plan on doing something about this, you had better be ready to protect them with your life."

16

He'd known, even before walking into that interview room off of Foley Square, that things were sinking fast. It was the note from Sal:

Not compromised. My last communication was about JS's trip to DT HQ. How is it wrong?

It was a tragic reply, no matter how he looked at it. There were three possibilities.

1. It was not Sal on the line. He had been exposed, and someone at Homeland was writing him confusing e-mails, using Sal's name.

2. Sal was there, but again, he was compromised, and his new masters were telling him what to say.

3. Sal was there, but didn't know he was compromised. Someone had decided to slip Fitzhugh an extra message and watch him sweat it out.

All three possibilities were bad news.

But he'd collected his wits before the interview. The truth was that nothing could connect him to the Tiger, the death of Angela Yates, or even Grainger. The whole operation had been run through

Grainger, who was dead, which meant that, other than Milo Weaver, there was nothing left to threaten him. It was a dead case-it should be a dead case.

Self-assurances can only take you so far. Simmons had first thrown him off guard with that revelation about Weaver's parentage-how had they not found this before? Then she asked him into the corridor.

"Tell me why two aides to Senator Nathan Irwin were questioning Tina Weaver about you. Can you do that?"

"What?" He'd never heard anything about this before. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Janet Simmons's cheeks were brilliant in their flush, as if they'd each been slapped hard. "You told me before that you didn't know anything about Roman Ugrimov. That's correct?"

Fitzhugh nodded.

"Which I guess means you've never met him."

"That's exactly what it means. What's this about?"

"Then what's this?" She let him open the envelope himself. He pulled out three page-sized photographs. A Chinese restaurant, shot from a wide-angle hidden camera pointed at a small rear table.

"Wait a minute," he began.

"You and Ugrimov look pretty friendly to me," said Simmons.

His vision fogged as he thought back to the previous night. Just a mistake, a man who mistook him for someone else. He tried to get Janet Simmons in focus. "Who gave you these?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does!" he shouted. "This is a setup, don't you see? This was taken last night! The man-he thought I was someone else… that's what he said. He shook my hand, then apologized because he thought I was someone named…" He tried to remember. "Bernard! That's it! He said Bernard!"

"These were taken last year in Geneva." Her quiet voice contrasted with his hysteria.

Then, finally, he understood. It was her. It had always been her. Janet Simmons and the Department of Homeland Security had come gunning for him. Why, he didn't know. Maybe in retaliation for Sal. All this-her pretense of wanting Milo Weaver behind bars, of being frustrated by Tom Grainger-it was all a ruse to distract him from her real aim, which was to bury Terence Albert Fitzhugh. Christ, he thought. They didn't even care about the Tiger or Roman Ugrimov. Bait and switch. It was all about him.

Finally, some words had come to him. "Whatever you think you know, it's just fantasy. I don't know Roman Ugrimov. I'm not the guilty party here." He pointed at the door. "That's the guilty party, Janet, and you can falsify all the evidence you like. It won't change a thing."

He'd stormed out and found his way to this bar full of tourists, not far from his hotel. Scotch had always been his drink, because that's what his father and his grandfather had sworn by, but all around him idiots from south of the Mason-Dixon guzzled beer, while their women sipped wine coolers and laughed at their men's stories.

How could it have gone so bad, so quick? What had he done wrong?

He tried to pull back, to see the situation from a distance, but it was hard. He knew, if only from his good work in Africa, that a few well-placed acts could be interpreted in any number of ways. Was he interpreting correctly? Was he in touch with the underlying truth of the evidence in front of him?

After six, someone at the jukebox put on Journey, which felt like his cue to leave. He slipped into the movement of weekend tourists heading to Broadway shows, wanting to be just another part of their anonymous body, but at the next corner, spotting a pay phone a block from the Mansfield, he realized he couldn't. He needed help.

He shoved in coins and called the number he tried not to abuse, and Senator Irwin answered on the fifth ring with a wary "Hello?"

"It's me," said Fitzhugh, then remembered what he was supposed to say: "Carlos. It's Carlos."

"Well, how are you, Carlos?"

"Not well. I think my wife's got me figured out. She knows about the girl."

"I told you, Carlos, you've got to cut that out. It does no one any good."

"And she's heard about you."

Silence followed.

"It'll be all right," Fitzhugh insisted. "But I might need some help. You know, someone to cover for me.”

“Want me to send someone?”

“Yeah. That would be great.”

“You still meeting her at the hotel?"

"Yes," said Fitzhugh, pleased by the senator's patience. "I'm meeting her there at…" He checked his watch in the light of the setting sun. "She'll be there at ten this evening."

"Better make it eleven," Senator Irwin told him.

"Sure. Eleven."

The senator hung up first, and Fitzhugh settled the dirty receiver in the cradle and wiped his hands on his pants. A bellboy recognized him with a smile and a nod, and Fitzhugh returned the greeting. He had about five hours to get sober, so he went to the Mansfield's M Bar and ordered coffee. But after a half hour and a few words with the twenty-year-old bartender, a pretty aspiring actress, he changed his mind. A little buzz wouldn't ruin him. Three more scotches, and he stumbled up to his room.

What to do about Simmons? The senator had enough pull to transfer her to one of those dreary regional Homeland offices, up around Pierre, South Dakota, perhaps. Simply keep her away until the investigation could be completed and Weaver sentenced to prison for killing Grainger. He no longer placed his bets on Weaver being a Russian mole-that was a bird in the tree. The bird in the hand was murder, and Weaver's beautiful confession. He might change his story at the last minute, of course, but with Simmons out of the way Fitzhugh could work with the story already recorded. Really, he assured himself, finding what was left of his scotch beside the bed and pouring himself one more shot, it was just a matter of removing Simmons from the present equation-that would make everyone, even the irritated senator, happy and safe.

Punctually at eleven, a knock on the door woke him. He'd slipped off into an easy nap without realizing it. Through the spy hole was a man as old as himself, gray on the sides, one of the senator's aides. He opened the door and offered a hand, but when they shook the man didn't offer his name. That's how these special men were; they didn't use names. Fitzhugh locked the door, turned on the television for covering noise, and offered the man a drink from Grainger's bottle. The man politely refused.

"We should get down to business," the man said. "Tell me everything."

17

Special Agent Janet Simmons arrived on Monday, July 30, the morning after Milo's third night at the MCC. The path to Milo Weaver had begun the previous morning, Sunday, when her cell phone buzzed her awake at 5:00 a.m. It was the local Homeland office, which thought she might be interested in some 911 chatter. She was, and took a taxi over to the Mansfield Hotel.

She spent three hours looking over the room and all Fitzhugh's personal effects. She used her Canon to photograph the note he'd left behind. She had a long talk with the homicide inspector, a twenty-year veteran who had seen it all. This was just another sad man in a city that, when it wasn't ecstatic, slipped into a too-easy depression. A Company representative arrived on the scene at nine and thanked her for her swift appearance, but insisted her help was no longer needed.

She'd returned to the Grand Hyatt feeling numb but hungry, ate a large breakfast in the Sky Restaurant, and thought back over the trail of information she'd collected during the previous four days. In her room, she gazed at the photograph of Terence Fitzhugh and Roman Ugrimov in Geneva, then made a call to Washington. Immigration, she was told, did have a flight plan for one Roman Ugrimov, who had flown into JFK on Thursday, July 26, and flown out again on a late flight Saturday, July 28. Yesterday.

She called George and asked for photographs of one Jim Pearson and one Maximilian Grzybowski, aides to Senator Nathan Irwin from Minnesota. An hour later, they were in her in-box.

By four, she had reached Park Slope, but this time she didn't bother parking out of sight of the apartment. She found a spot on Garfield, near the front door, and rang the bell to warn Tina there was a visitor. Because of the broken pieces that had to be thrown away, the apartment was airier now, lighter. A pleasant place to spend a Sunday afternoon. Simmons had picked up a box of cookies on the way over to reward Stephanie for finding the cigarette lighter, and the girl seemed pleased Simmons had even remembered. Then they sat on the sofa and Simmons opened her laptop and shared the pictures of Jim Pearson and Maximilian Grzybowski. Though she'd half expected it, Tina's shaking head and insistence that these men were complete strangers still made her feel as if she'd opened a box full of despair.

Afterward, Tina wanted to hear everything about Yevgeny Primakov. Simmons saw no point in hiding Milo's heritage from her, so she told the story in its entirety. By the time she finished, all three of them were in awe of this woman, Ellen, and the life she had lived. "Christ," said Tina. "That's so rock and roll."

Simmons laughed. Stephanie said, "Rock and roll?"

Back in her hotel, Simmons spent most of the night in a fit of anger. When the surprise (and even admiration) had faded, anger was all she was left with. The virgin would have again referenced her megalomania. Megalomaniacs cannot abide the idea that they are not personally in control of every variable. It becomes worse when they realize that not only are they not in control, someone else is, someone who has been directing all of their movements.

In the midst of her fury, she used the hotel phone to call the United Nations operator and demanded Yevgeny Primakov's New York number. The operator told her that Mr. Primakov had left New York that morning. According to her information, he was on vacation, but should be reachable through the Brussels offices from September 17. Simmons nearly broke the receiver, slamming it back into the cradle.

Eventually the anger did fade, if only because of exhaustion. She remembered the fresh energy she'd had in Blackdale, Tennessee.

Her engine had first been revved there and had sustained its intensity over the length of an entire month. It had to run out of gas; that only made sense.

In the morning, she took the subway south to Foley Square, went inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, suffered through security by emptying her pockets of her entire life, and asked to speak to Milo Weaver.

They brought him up in manacles again. He looked tired, but healthy. The signs of the beating he'd gotten in the Avenue of the Americas offices lingered only as bruises, and he actually looked as if he'd put on a pound or two. His eyes were no longer bloodshot.

"Hello, Milo," she said as the guard, on his knees, attached his chains to the table. "You look fit."

"It's the excellent food," he said, smiling at the guard, who grinned back as he stood. "Is it solid, Gregg?"

"Indeed it is, Milo."

"Fantastic."

Gregg left them alone and locked the door behind himself, but waited by the reinforced window to keep an eye on the situation. Simmons took a seat and wove her fingers together on the table. "You get any news in here?"

"Gregg smuggled in the Sunday Times" he said, then lowered his voice. "Don't let that get around, okay?"

Simmons used an imaginary key to lock her lips, then tossed it away. "Fitzhugh's dead. Body discovered in his hotel room yesterday morning."

Milo blinked at her, surprised-but was he surprised? She had no idea. She had read his file and uncovered the hidden nooks of his past, but Milo Weaver was still an enigma. He said, "How about that?"

"Yes. How about it?"

"Who did it?"

"The coroner says suicide. The pistol was licensed to him, and there was a note."

He showed more surprise, and again she wondered. He became serious. "What did it say?"

"A lot of things. It was a rambling note, bad writing, probably written while drunk. He had a fifth of scotch in him. A lot of it was for his wife. Apologies for being a bad husband, that sort of thing. But he did devote a few sentences to the case. He said he was responsible for Grainger's death. He said he'd been running Grainger from the beginning. Really, all the things Grainger told you. The things you said you didn't believe."

"Are you sure it was suicide?"

"There's nothing to suggest otherwise. Unless you know something else you're not telling me."

Milo stared at the white surface of the table, his breaths audible, thinking. What was he thinking about?

She said, "There's one thing I only figured out late Saturday night, probably around the time Fitzhugh died. It does kind of throw everything into question, and I'd planned on following up on it today."

"What's that?"

"The day after you came back to the Avenue of the Americas, Fitzhugh received an anonymous package-that Russian passport of yours. It was real, but the question he never answered was: Who sent it?"

"I'd like to know that, too."

She smiled. "But you already know, don't you? Your father, Yevgeny Primakov. He sent it so that, if I wasn't already, I would start to question your entire history, find your grandfather, and be led to Yevgeny himself."

Milo didn't answer. He just waited.

"It was smart. I'll admit that. He could've sent it to me directly, but he knew I wouldn't trust an anonymous package. Instead, he sent it to Terence, knowing he would be happy to share it. Terence thought it would bury you, but it did the opposite. It led me to Primakov, who just happened to have a photograph of Terence with Roman Ugrimov-Roman, who just happened to be in town, too. Amazing coincidence, don't you think?"

"I think you're imagining conspiracies, Janet."

"Maybe I am," she said agreeably, because a part of her wanted to believe that that's all it was-her imagination. Like Milo weeks before, she didn't like the feeling that she'd been led by the nose. Still, she knew it was true. "There's a certain beauty to it," she said. "Your father sends something that has the potential to expose you as a Russian spy, but instead it leads to evidence condemning Fitzhugh. Your father must love you very much to stick his neck out like that."

"That's ridiculous," said Milo. "How could he know that you'd follow that exact path?"

"Because," she said quickly, the answer already on her lips, "your father knew-if only because you told him-just how bad the relationship between Homeland and the Company is. He knew that if I smelled a mole, I would start to dig deep in order to squeeze the Company. As it turned out, they never had a mole, just an agent with a secret childhood."

Milo considered all this while staring at his cuffed hands. "Maybe that's possible, Janet-in your paranoid world, at least-but you never got enough to really nail Fitzhugh, did you? It was all circumstantial stuff. Yet Fitzhugh still shot himself. No one could predict that."

"If he really shot himself."

"I thought you believed he did."

"Fitzhugh," said Simmons, "was too much of an old fox to do that. He would've fought every step of the way.”

“So, who killed him?"

"Who knows? Maybe your father took care of that. Or maybe my investigation was making someone above Fitzhugh nervous. He made it very clear in his note that the buck stopped with him. You believe that? Do you believe that Fitzhugh was just a rogue administrator who decided to destabilize African countries in order to disrupt China's oil supply?"

Milo's shoulders slumped in an attitude of dejection. "I don't know what to think, Janet."

"Then maybe you can answer a question."

"You know me, Janet. I'm always happy to help."

"What did you do during that week in Albuquerque?"

"Like I said, I drank. I drank and ate and shat and thought. Then I took a plane to New York City."

"Yeah," she said, standing. She'd had enough of this. "That's what I thought you'd say."