Budapest? Then Milo got it. She was slipping in a piece of fiction to see if he would refute it, thus proving that the rest of her story was true. She really was good. “I don’t know who this guy is, but yes, I’ve been traveling in Europe. It’s called establishing a client base, Miss Schwartz. It’s what you do when you want to sell health insurance to expats.”
“Of course. And in Budapest, you were a journalist for the Associated Press. You can go through all the stories you like, Mr. Weaver, but I do know who you are. So what’s the point? You could waste time-that’s always possible. You could live in the hope that if you stretch out your silence your people will finally come to collect you, or they’ll pressure my people to let you go. But listen to me, Mr. Weaver, because this is important: No one knows you’re here. Your people don’t know. My people don’t know. No one would imagine that I know anything about your whereabouts. They won’t even ask me. So this can last a few hours, a few days, or even months.” When she paused, her breaths came out loudly, as if speaking so long had been an exertion. “It’s all the same to me. But it won’t be the same to you.”
As Heinrich returned with two glasses, Milo wondered again about Budapest. Was she really making it up? Heinrich filled the glasses with what Milo could now see was Riesling and gave one to Schwartz. She sipped it and made a pleasant expression. “It’s really very good. From Pfalz. Go ahead.”
Milo accepted the second glass. She was right. It was cold and crisp and soothed his sore throat. He drank slowly, watching Oskar, Heinrich, and Erika Schwartz. The third man was somewhere behind him.
Schwartz said, “I’m not unreasonable. You should know that. Though I believe you killed Adriana Stanescu, the method of her death is less interesting to me than the reason for it.”
“I’ve done a lot of questionable things in my life,” Milo told her, “but I never killed any girl.”
“You did kidnap her. Of that there’s no doubt.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Oskar, can you please show Mr. Weaver to Mr. Weaver?”
Oskar went to the television. He ejected the tape, then found another unlabeled one among a short stack and slipped it in.
There it was. With a date and a time code and-there-Milo himself, waiting for her. Looking at the camera, or-no. He was looking at the blue Opel tailing him. The Opel was in the foreground, while Milo…
She was tall and full of life, and seeing it from the outside filled him with self-disgust. There he was, the cretin who stepped out and said Entschuldigung, then showed off his fake ID. Then led her to her doom.
When Oskar stopped the tape, Milo was out of breath. He could hardly manage the words “That’s not me.”
“No?” she said, unfazed. “Oskar?”
Oskar reached into his jacket and removed a standard 10 by 15 cm photograph and held it up for Milo to examine. Milo in the doorway to that courtyard, talking animatedly with Adriana Stanescu. The image was cleaned up; it was undeniable.
Oskar waited until he’d had an eyeful, then put it away.
“Photoshop,” Milo said, his breath back now. “Special effects. I don’t know why, but you’re trying to frame me.”
“You’ve been busy. The week before kidnapping her, you robbed an art museum in Zürich. That, of course, is how we came across your work name.”
The gears turned in Milo’s head. Radovan Panić, who had lifted his passport. Goddamned Radovan and his family-centered morality.
“So we know who you are. We know of at least two of the crimes you’ve committed. We know you work for the CIA-or, at least, you did work for them until last summer, when you spent a couple of months in jail. I won’t even ask about that-that’s how unobtrusive I am. I only want to learn about Adriana Stanescu. I want to know why you were ordered to kill her.”
He slumped and looked at the glass in his hand. He could dig it into Oskar’s little eye, but by that point Heinrich would be on top of him, beating him senseless. Then it would all begin again, this time strapped into that cot.
Time-that was what he needed. Time to think through it all. Anything would do, just as long as it bought him another hour.
He said, “No one ordered a thing.”
“You did it for the fun of it?”
“I have a problem. I killed her for my own pleasure, but it didn’t feel like I thought it would feel. It was…” He dropped his glass, the shattering sound making everyone jump, then began to weep quietly into his hands.
Schwartz grunted, then smiled. She gripped the arms of her chair and pushed herself to her feet. “Oskar, let’s go upstairs. Mr. Weaver needs more time for reflection.”
Oskar stood up, but Milo didn’t drop his act. Once they were at the stairs again, Schwartz turned back. “Heinrich, Gustav-could you help Mr. Weaver with his thinking?”
“Jawohl,” said Heinrich, getting up to switch the videotapes back again. Milo heard the springs make an awkward noise as Gustav rose from the cot.
13
“What do you think?” Erika asked once they reached the second floor. The climb had winded her, so Oskar helped her to a sofa near the window. Neither of them turned on a lamp, and they sat in darkness.
“He’s a professional liar.”
“Well, that’s obvious, Oskar. He knows he’s not fooling us with that sad pervert act. We know too much. Did you see his face? The surveillance video threw him.”
“Do you have anything to eat?” he asked.
“Chicken in the refrigerator. Bread on top. Make two, will you?”
As Oskar made chicken sandwiches in the semidarkness of the kitchen, she stared into the middle distance, a few feet short of a Tawaraya Sōtatsu print of Japanese demons. She’d always hated the painting, but it had been a gift from the Japanese embassy, and it was important to display her few gifts. At this moment, she even appreciated having the Sōtatsu, because such an abysmal work couldn’t distract her from the problem of how to approach Milo Weaver.
Annoyingly, she again felt that vague familiarity. It was in his facial features, and in his resolute obstinancy. But from where? She wasted time on this, going back over the past twenty years, but she was sure: She’d never met this man before. So she set it aside and returned to the problem.
It was a classic interrogation conundrum: How much does the subject know of what you know? Is it better to feign more knowledge or less? Is it better to share more or less?
That Weaver came from an allied agency made it no easier. At some point she would let him go, and there would be repercussions. Though she wasn’t particularly concerned for her own position-she was, after all, already on the way out-there was no reason for this escapade to end Oskar’s career. There was also Wartmüller himself. A political animal, yes, but essentially a good man. She didn’t think her actions would taint him directly, but in Teddi’s eyes the future of their relationship with the Americans was of paramount concern. Sitting in front of the Sōtatsu, with an American in her basement, she could admit that, despite her apprehensions, it might be true.
Milo Weaver’s attempts to obfuscate had told her one crucial thing: He was working for someone. Either he was still a CIA asset, or he was an ex-Company man working with organized crime. Either way, he was protecting an organization of some sort by taking the blame upon himself.
But was he really, though? That head-in-the-hands routine had been just that: a routine. No one really could have believed it. So perhaps by confessing so poorly he was in fact professing the truth-that he, in fact, was a lone murderer-and supposed his obvious act would throw them off.
No. She didn’t get the sense that this man thought so far ahead, or so deeply.
Or-and this was the problem with thinking too hard about anything truly unknowable-was this all part of his act? Was Adriana perhaps beside the point, a diversion while he protected something else?
Now the one detail she felt she had learned from this initial interview dissolved before her.
Erika was no novice wh
en it came to interrogations, and she knew that the question of his allegiance had to be answered, even if the answer was wrong. Interrogations are fluid, but they exist in time, moving steadily forward. When they stall, rot sets in. Decision is the only way to keep them moving forward. Either Weaver still worked for the CIA, or he didn’t. If he didn’t, then he had gone private, and under different names had expanded his self-employment to include art heists, kidnapping, and murder.
If he did still work for the CIA?
In that case, she asked herself, what kind of agent would be involved in such a spectrum of illegal activity? What kind of Renaissance man was dropped off the Company books and sent to travel around Europe with no known home base? There really was only one answer, but it was difficult to swallow.
She’d heard the rumors ever since the early seventies, when she began in the business, and a quarter of her country lived under a different name and regime. There had been a spate of disappearances: East German agents who had set up shop in Bonn, West Berlin, and Hamburg. One moment they were living their lives in full view of the Federal Republic’s surveillance men, then they weren’t. They were usually agents of known interest to the Americans, and when Erika tried to find out their fates she was always frustrated by the cleanest crime scenes she had ever come across. She discussed the phenomenon with her boss; his later career was annihilated by an uncovered Nazi past, but at that time he was held in high respect. He took a cursory glance at her notes and muttered, “Tourists.”
“They weren’t tourists, sir.”
“They certainly weren’t, Erika,” he said, then lit his pipe and proceeded to tell her of the legend that had spread during the decade following the fall of Berlin, of a secret sect of American agents that required none of the comforts of normal humans. No steady identity, no home, no moral center beyond the virtue of work. “What Hitler could have done with men like these,” she remembered him saying.
They were called Tourists because they were as connected to the world as a tourist is to the countries he visits-which is to say, they were not connected at all. They appeared and then disappeared. While her boss described these men-and the occasional woman-in awed tones, Erika found herself disappointed by his gullibility.
“Don’t be absurd. It’s called disinformation. It’s the open secret that makes you fear them.”
“I used to think that, too,” he said, then told a story. Berlin, August 1961. On the twelfth, a Saturday, he and his colleague found a dead American along the border with a Minox and handwritten notes. The camera contained photos of an outdoor garden party, with, among other guests, DDR president-or, as he was officially called, chairman of the council of state-Walter Ulbricht. The notes said that they were gathered to sign an order to close the border and construct a wall. “So we knew it hours before it happened. We took it to our CIA friends that night, but they were more interested in the corpse of their agent.”
“Why?”
“Because they had no idea who he was. Since no one could identify him, we decided not to act on the information. It might have been another Bolshevik trick. By midnight, when they closed down the border, we realized it wasn’t. The little quirks of history are fascinating, aren’t they?”
“How does this connect to Tourists?”
“Well, we didn’t know what to do with the body. The Americans were still claiming it wasn’t theirs. It certainly wasn’t ours. So we started showing his photo around. Next thing we knew, we had five more names. Two from the Russians, one from the Brits, another American name, and a German name. Then, a surprise-the CIA’s London station chief, of all people, showed up and demanded the body. Swept the thing away, and every time we requested information about it, we were asked, Who are you talking about? The man who took the body was Frank Wisner, the rumored founder of the Department of Tourism.”
“That proves nothing.”
“Of course it doesn’t. If it did, then they wouldn’t be doing their job. It’s funny, though-each of this man’s assumed identities had a price on its head. The Russians wanted both names for murder, the Brits wanted theirs for forgery, and we wanted ours for industrial sabotage. A wide range of talents for a single man.”
Thirty-five years later, that conversation came back to her as she considered the range of crimes that could be attributed to this one person.
Either Weaver no longer worked for the CIA, or he did. If he did, then he looked and smelled much like a fabled Tourist. Which was why, only minutes later, Erika nearly died.
They were eating dry chicken sandwiches in the darkness when she asked what they’d found on Weaver when they picked him up. “A phone, but clean,” said Oskar. “No phone numbers in the memory. It’s nothing special.”
“You expected secret gadgets, maybe?”
He shrugged, then wiped a crumb from his chin. “There was a bag. Clothes, mostly. Pills-Dramamine, things for the bowels, pain relievers, that sort of thing. A key ring.”
“Keys?”
He shook his head. “It’s got a car remote on it, but no actual keys. An iPod, but all that’s on it is music. David Bowie, actually. The man seems obsessed.”
“Pockets?”
“Receipts. From London, mostly. A couple Polish ones. And a personal note written on hotel stationery.”
“Love letter?”
Oskar reached into his pocket and handed over the note. “I don’t think he knew it was there. He seemed surprised when I showed him. He laughed.”
She turned the slip so that it caught the streetlight from outside. She read, then read it again and felt the blood rush into her cheeks. “What does he say about it?”
“He says it’s kind of lovely.”
She read it a third time, then folded it and recited it from memory: “Tourism, like Virginia, is for lovers. Turn that frown upside down, man.” She shook her head, unable to control the wild, involuntary grin, and then swallowed. She wasn’t paying attention, though, and a rough wedge of chicken lodged in her esophagus.
“What?” said Oskar.
She waved her hands, pointed at her throat, and tried in vain to speak. Oskar rushed over. She felt the oxygen leaving her body, her arms going cold. Oskar got behind her and pushed her up, grunting, then wrapped his arms around her layers of fat and jerked his fist into her stomach, or thereabouts, several times. A slimy piece of chicken shot out of her mouth and landed on the rug. She gasped as Oskar came around to check on her.
“Thank you,” she managed.
“You’re all right?”
“Do you believe in fate, Oskar?”
“No.”
His pragmatism was coming along just fine. “Good. Let’s find out what kind of Tourist our friend is.”
14
When Erika Schwartz finally returned with Oskar, Milo was feeling disgusted with himself. She’d given him what he’d aimed for-time, an extra hour to think over his predicament. Yet he’d come up with nothing, and found himself dwelling on the irony of his situation: At a time when the Department of Tourism was worried about a Chinese mole, it was because of Adriana Stanescu that he’d been captured.
That’s because you serve them, the little voices. You’re a fool.
Schwartz settled across from Milo. Her cheeks and forehead were red, and he wondered if stairs really were that hard on her. What kind of health was she in? Might a few well-placed words bring on a heart attack? Oskar, too, seemed flustered. Perhaps they’d been arguing-another thing that might work to his advantage.
She said, “I will act based upon my suppositions, while my suppositions will be based on my limited knowledge. Does that seem reasonable to you?”
“Sure.”
Schwartz opened her plump hands. “For the moment, we’ll set aside the events in Zürich. Let’s stay with Adriana. My supposition is that you were asked to kill her. Maybe you were asked to kidnap her, and then the order was changed-the distinction doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that, like any hired gun, this was probably al
l you knew. The name of the victim, perhaps the method of disposal. Simple facts, from which you could improvise as you wished, so long as the orders were followed.”
Milo stared at her, a blank slate. Then: “This is crazy. When my embassy finds out-”
“Please,” she said, raising a hand. “As I’ve made clear, what interests me is the why of her murder. Not the how. The who, I hope, will become clear once I know the why.” She blinked, as if confused. “I did make that clear, yes?”
Milo didn’t answer, but Oskar said, “I believe you did, Erika.”
“Good.” She crossed her hands in her lap and then, noticing crumbs, flicked them away. “So what I’m realizing now is that you, Mr. Weaver, won’t be as much help to me as I’d hoped. You’re a killer, which means it’s not your purview to know the why of your orders. I also doubt you know anything about the girl you killed. Which is why I’m going to tell you about her.” She smiled. “Don’t get me wrong-I don’t think anyone as versatile as yourself will have his heart softened by a story or two. I just think it’s a good thing for humans to know the full measure of their actions. Does that sound pompous?”
“Certainly not,” said Oskar.
Something upstairs had convinced her to try this new angle. Maybe it was guesswork, or just the acute senses of an experienced interrogator, but she had decided to tell Milo the one thing that he had been desperate to know: the story behind Adriana Stanescu. So he said, “It sounds very reasonable.”
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