The Last Tourist

by Olen Steinhauer

  While Milo had an innate fondness for Said Bensoussan’s sense of style, that very quality made Alan wary. He’d spent much of his early career working with politicians from the Midwest, where slick old men learned how to charm you to the gills while laying traps that sprang to life as soon as you left their Capitol Hill offices. The sweeter they were, the more you had to fear, and in Said Bensoussan he sensed a North African twist on the same thing, from the compliments upon his arrival—“Look at you! You really have been taking care of yourself”—to the obsequious way he offered a drink.

  “No, no,” Alan told him, holding up a hand.

  “Well, then,” Bensoussan said, settling in his chair and giving him an I’m-very-serious-now expression, “what can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me what’s going on with Beatriz Almeida.”

  Bensoussan arched a brow. “How do you mean?”

  “She showed up at my home this morning. She’s trying to talk me into staging a coup against Milo.”

  “A coup?” Utter shock. “Did she say that?”

  “Without saying the words, yes. What’s going on?”

  Bensoussan leaned back in his chair and pinched his lower lip. “Well, Beatriz is famous for her impatience, yes? And you’re not the only one she bothers. She was in that same chair yesterday. Impatient.”

  “Tell me.”

  “She wants to go back to the budget fight. Demand Milo come to New York so that we can present new arguments.” He pinched his lip again, thinking. “Strangely, though, she doesn’t have any new arguments.”

  “But she knows his life is under threat.”

  “That she does.”

  “And that forcing him to come to New York would be extremely risky.”

  “She knows all this.”

  Alan nodded—they understood each other. “What did you say?”

  “I told her I would take it under advisement.”

  “And have you?”

  “Not yet,” Bensoussan said. “I’d like to see where things go before committing myself to rash action.”

  Did this mean that Almeida was actually trying to get Milo killed, or was that just his myopic way of looking at it? Was she angry about the arrest of Diogo Moreira, which had probably cost her some goodwill back in Lisbon? Or was it really just impatience? “Who else?” Alan asked. “Are other patrons on board?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bensoussan said. “She has been lunching with Hilmar and Aku, Katarina as well. Are they discussing Milo? I don’t know. But one question I would ask: Who was in her envelope?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I just want you to understand,” Bensoussan said. “When I received my two names, I was surprised. I knew one of them. He was an old friend, many years ago. No longer. But if I’d been given his name five years ago, when things were better between us, I don’t know how I would have acted. Would I have tried to protect him by any means necessary?”

  Bensoussan left that question unanswered, and Alan wondered, as he often did, about this patron’s motivations. Had Bensoussan told him this in the interests of full disclosure, or was it a play of his own, something to throw suspicion on Beatriz Almeida, to weaken her position?

  That was the problem with diplomats and politicians: Nothing they said could be taken at face value. They were worse than spies in that regard, but it was Alan’s cursed fate that he would forever work with them.

  When he reached the lobby, the children had cleared out, and he was wondering what kind of threat Beatriz Almeida represented. That she was a threat wasn’t a question—she was. But what kind? It was still so hard to say. Crossing UN Plaza, he called Heeler, one of six librarians who roamed North America. Last he’d checked, she was upstate. “How fast can you get to Manhattan?”

  “Three hours, give or take.”

  “Good,” he said. “Check into someplace out of the way and keep an eye on Beatriz Almeida.”

  “She’s a patron.”

  “I know.”

  “But the—”

  “I know the rules, Heeler. But we’re moving into uncharted territory.”

  33

  Both Milo and Noah had packed pistols—a SIG Sauer and a Taurus Millennium, respectively—and driven a fast hour and a half from Milan to Turin, where they showed their IDs at the front desk of UNICRI, the UN’s Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. The low, broad headquarters was old, like a lot of other UN buildings, and they took the stairs to the second floor’s rarely used secure communications room. At one end a monitor was bolted to the wall, and its controller was in the center of a long conference table. Noah lowered the blinds as Milo fooled with the controls, trying to pull up a signal.

  “Where do I type the conference code?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Let me do that.”

  Noah brought up the menu on the monitor and worked at it, finally pulling up a screen that said WAITING FOR REMOTE HOST and showed, in the lower corner, an image of the two of them in the room.

  “Want me to wait outside?” Noah asked.

  “No need for him to see your face.”

  As Noah exited to the corridor, the screen flickered, then lit up with a wide view of a similar conference room in Beijing—similar because it was also a UN space, the Development Program for China. At the Beijing conference table, with a teacup in front of him, sat an old Chinese man, bald and enormous, a man who had once been the most terrifying thing in the world to Milo.

  Xin Zhu was the closest Milo had to an enemy. There had been competitors, and there were always threats, but the history between him and the Chinese colonel from the Ministry of State Security was particularly fraught. If given the chance, he knew, Xin Zhu would crush Milo, his family, and the entirety of the Library. By wiping out the Department of Tourism he had proved himself uniquely dangerous—which was why, once he took over the Library, Milo had put every effort into finding a way to neutralize the old man. After initially blackmailing Xin Zhu, he’d meticulously documented each of their interactions. By now he had an entire book of evidence that, were it slipped to Beijing, could only result in the harsh interrogation and swift execution of the old Chinese colonel. It was the best protection Milo could manage.

  “You have not slept,” Xin Zhu finally said, his accent thick.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Bad idea,” he said. “Rest before negotiations, not after.”

  “I’m not here to negotiate. I’m here to ask about Leticia Jones.”

  “Ms. Jones?” Xin Zhu said. A smile.

  Xin Zhu was playing with him, and he wasn’t sure why. Noah had already communicated the topic of conversation. Still, this was Xin Zhu, who never made things easy. Milo leaned closer. “Leticia Jones has been taken into custody.”

  “By whom?”

  “I was hoping you would know.”

  Xin Zhu blinked languidly at him, not wanting to fill in the silence. Finally, he sighed and said, “She was in Shanghai. Correct?”

  Milo nodded.

  “Yanlord Garden. Breaking and entering.”

  “She wasn’t taken by security guards, was she?”

  Xin Zhu smiled again, broader now. “Leticia Jones taken by security guards. Imagine!” He shook his head. “No, of course not.”

  “Your people? Guoanbu?”

  Xin Zhu cleared his throat and leaned back, regarding Milo warily. “From what I can tell, no, we do not have her. Nor does the Ministry of Public Security—I called Pudong precinct myself.”

  “Do they know anything about her?”

  Xin Zhu didn’t answer. He reached for his tea, took a sip, and replaced the cup in the saucer. “Do you know of the International Defense Institute?”

  Milo did. “Private military training school outside Beijing. Run by Northwell International.”

  “Their graduates are not only Chinese,” Xin Zhu said casually. “They are Japanese, Indonesian, South Korean. More. They are so successful they are building another school on Sakhali
n Island, across the border in Russia.”

  “Sakhalin?” Milo asked, surprised by the coincidence before realizing that it was no coincidence at all, and a new connection was made. He said, “Tóuzī, the development firm, is building it.”

  A smile. “So you do know something about it.”

  Not much, Milo thought, but returned to the matter at hand: “So Leticia’s been taken by graduates of the IDI?”

  “You tell me what she was doing in Yanlord Garden, Milo, and I’ll find the answer to your question.”

  “I’d rather not,” Milo said.

  Xin Zhu shrugged theatrically, as if to say, What can I do, then?

  Milo suppressed an urge to shout. He lowered his voice: “I have a book, Xin Zhu. With the press of a button it’s published for the world to see.”

  “It’s been ten years, Milo. You don’t think I’ve come up with ways to talk my way out of trouble by now?”

  “And each of those ten years you’ve been helping me. Each year adds a dozen more pages to the book. You’ll never be able to talk fast enough.”

  Xin Zhu frowned, as if this hadn’t occurred to him. But of course it had. He never entered a meeting without knowing precisely how it would end. Milo imagined that for a man like Xin Zhu, life was dull and without surprise, but it was also safe.

  Milo said, “Sung Hui wouldn’t last long without you.”

  Xin Zhu winced at the mention of his wife, a surprisingly naked emotion from the old man. “I know the names of your family, too, Milo.”

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  Xin Zhu sighed. “You do realize, don’t you, that one day everything will flip? Black will be white. Victors will be defeated.”

  “You’re nearly seventy, Xin Zhu. You’d better work faster.”

  Another smile slipped onto the colonel’s face. “So. You want me to find Leticia Jones.”

  “I want you to get her safely out of China.”

  He opened his large hands. “Do you think that would go unnoticed, Milo? Northwell has friends in the Central Committee. I will be asked very serious questions.”

  Milo had considered this on the drive to Turin and had called Kristin to prepare for it. He took a slip of paper from his pocket and said, “I’m going to read you an IP address. It’ll give you the excuse you need.”

  “What is it?”

  “A rundown of weaknesses in Japan’s domestic intelligence apparatus.”

  Xin Zhu raised his eyebrows. “You’re handing me Japan?”

  “A carefully curated list. It will be good enough to justify your help. But not good enough to cause serious trouble.”

  Xin Zhu sighed heavily. “You must really want Leticia Jones back.” When Milo didn’t answer, he said, “And that, Milo, is how I will get you in the end.”

  34

  She didn’t know if Poitevin had escaped, and this was what troubled her most. The armed boy band shoved her back into the elevator, all three of them squeezed in tight with her, wordless, and pressed the button to return to the ground floor. Their stink filled that cramped space—one of them had an abiding affection for patchouli, while the other two preferred the musk of anxious sweat—and when the doors opened on the ground floor it was a relief to escape the smell, even though each step brought her closer to her destination.

  Years ago, when she’d been more impulsive—when she’d been a Tourist—Leticia would have done something. Either in that tiny elevator, where the walls might have worked to her advantage, or along that short walk to the glass front doors, where another armed boy watched—presumably the one Poitevin had spotted. But she’d lost that impulsiveness somewhere along the way, in Nigeria or maybe before. So she let them take her across the park to the white van she hadn’t noticed before, and when she looked across the grounds, trying to pierce the darkness with vision that had never, despite rumors, been superhuman, she saw no evidence that Poitevin was out there.

  Of course he wasn’t. If he hadn’t been captured, then he’d gotten his ass the hell out of Shanghai. It’s what she would have done, probably.

  Maybe.

  In the windowless van the stink returned, and they rocked with the bumpy road, taking hard turns that she could only imagine on the knotted map of Shanghai in her head. Certainly they had left Pudong, but had they gone east, or west? Or maybe south, toward Hangzhou Bay? Were they just traveling in circles?

  Did it matter? It didn’t.

  When they finally did stop, the boys sprang to life, hauling her out. They emerged into a basement parking lot, and her fragrant captors hustled her to another elevator—bigger this time, fluorescent bright, with numbers that went up to 72—and it rose so quickly that she felt it in her stomach.

  The corridor on the sixty-third floor was white and gray, and they passed office doors with Chinese characters until they reached a door marked with Latin characters: NORTHWELL INTERNATIONAL, LTD. Patchouli opened the door. Together, they entered a dark space full of low cubicles, all empty. Through floor-to-ceiling windows Shanghai glittered, and for a moment she was mesmerized by the beauty, almost forgetting her escorts.

  “Sit,” Patchouli barked.

  He was pointing at an Aeron office chair near the windows.

  “No, thanks,” Leticia said. “I’d rather stand.”

  Patchouli looked exasperated by her. He took a step closer. “You sit. You no sit, you go,” he said, pointing at the high window.

  It was a long way down, so she walked over to the Aeron, sat down, and crossed her legs at the knee. It was as casual a pose as she could find, but it was quickly ruined when Patchouli and the others hurried over with white zip-ties. They bound her hands behind the back of the chair, then crouched and tied her ankles to two of the rollers. Then they spun her around, and Leticia was not happy to see Patchouli holding a syringe in his dirty hand. He roughly pulled the sleeve of her left arm up to her elbow and gave her the injection.

  Then he stepped back, eyeing her, and went to join the others, who had settled into chairs around cubicles. One cleaned his fingernails with a knife. It wasn’t nice to look at, so Leticia turned to the side to look at the lights of Shanghai as, one by one, they slowly twinkled out.

  When she was slapped awake, it was light outside. All those pretty lights had been replaced by the ugly tangle of a modern metropolis, and even more disappointing than that sight was the man who had hit her. A white man of the sort of indeterminate age only wealth allows. From the shape of his shoulders and his buzz-cut scalp above old-acne cheeks, she could tell he had once been a soldier.

  “Leticia Jones,” the man said, straightening. His accent was American, and his smile wasn’t bad. “Nice to meet you. I’m Ted.”

  “Ted, huh?”

  “You feel all right? It was just a mild sedative, until I could get over here. Not sick?”

  She shook her head but said nothing.

  “Good,” he said, taking a step back and glancing out the windows. “Okay, then. Tell me, please, why Milo Weaver is interested in Liu Wei.”

  “What?”

  “You and your partner are working for Milo Weaver,” he said, swinging his fingers around as if finding a rhythm in his own words. “You broke into Liu Wei’s apartment building with the intent of getting to him. But why? Why does Milo Weaver care about this man? Why does the Library care?”

  Leticia tried to hide her surprise. Milo’s precious Library was supposed to be a closely guarded secret, so why did this asshole know about it? And despite the stupid canine code name, she didn’t work for the Library, but Ted assumed she did. It couldn’t simply be because she and Milo had met in Wakkanai, could it? Or was it because they knew who Poitevin was and had seen him with her? Given the poor quality of his spycraft, so easy to spot back in Tokyo, that could be it. Really—what kind of half-assed operation had she allied herself with?

  She said, “I don’t work for Milo Weaver. Coming here was my idea.”

  “Your idea, huh?” She was struck by the way Ted said
those words. That doubtful tone—it was a tone she knew well. All her life she’d heard it. “Where’d you get a big idea like looking into someone else’s business?”

  Yes, that was the tone all right. This was what she’d meant when she’d used the word “racism” with Milo a week ago. This Caucasian, like others before him, had misjudged Leticia, and she’d made a career out of using that to her advantage. She said, “Borno, Nigeria.”

  Ted straightened, looking surprised, so she went on.

  “I followed a money trail from Boko Haram to Liu Wei.”

  Ted chewed his lower lip, concerned. “How much of this does Milo Weaver know?”

  “Why are you so worried about Milo, Ted? Big guy like you, you’ve got everything under control.”

  The answer stunned him briefly; then he cracked a grin. “Yes, Leticia, we do. But when this much money is involved, you have to have it more than under control. You need to have it locked up.”

  “And you don’t? You’ve got the power of Northwell International behind you. That’s no small thing. And I…” Leticia stiffened, a sudden realization dawning on her. “Oh, shit,” she said, and almost laughed.

  “What is it?” Ted asked.

  She shook her head and told him something she knew he would believe: “I’m stupid.”

  “Don’t tell me that, now.”

  But she was stupid, she now saw. It had taken her too long to make the obvious connection. Milo hadn’t made it either. She said, “A woman named Joan tried to get me to work with you. She said she was from DC, but she wasn’t. Not at all. Not the Bureau, not the Agency, not Homeland. No, she was Northwell all along.”

  Ted scratched the side of his neck, but from the calm expression on his face she knew he didn’t care what she’d put together. Because he’d never planned to let her leave this office alive. That was bad news, but here she was, and, tied up, there was nothing she could do about it. So she filed that fact away for the moment and decided she might as well satisfy her curiosity.