“A sense of humor, sir.”
He took them through it all-Grainger’s letter, the failed attempt on Gray’s life, Gray’s approach to the Chinese, and Xin Zhu’s priming of Marko Dzubenko.
“It sounds to me,” Irwin said once he’d finished, “like you’re fond of this Chinaman.”
“He found a way to throw us into complete disarray and make us fear for our existence-all without harming a single person. We could learn a lot from his way of thinking.”
“Alan, what do you think?”
“About Xin Zhu?” Drummond asked, frowning.
“About the theory.”
Drummond mused on this, tilting his head from side to side. “It holds water. The strange thing, to me, was always that Marko Dzubenko and the Chinese ambassador referred to only one operation. We had to assume the Chinese had wider knowledge but preferred to only let this one out in order to pressure us. It was poker, and we had to assume they weren’t bluffing.”
“So now you’ve decided they were.”
“The Budapest safe house,” Milo cut in. “That’s what settled it for me. After helping him for months, they cut Gray off completely in the space of an afternoon. Took all his research with them. They’re not interested in him blowing our secrets.”
“Now that’s something I don’t quite get,” said Irwin. “Why wouldn’t they want to blow our secrets?”
“Because right now Xin Zhu owns that secret. He’s got the upper hand. All this was just to inform us of that fact.”
“Why now?” asked Dave Pearson, leaning against the blinds. Milo blinked at him. “What?”
“Why did they decide to let go of Henry Gray at this moment, rather than later? We’d just started the vetting process. If they’d waited another week, we might have completely gutted the department. It would have really damaged us.”
“It was me.”
“The world revolving around you again?” asked Drummond, smiling.
“Zhu learned I was in Budapest looking for Gray. It was convenient. He even told Gray that I was looking for him, and said he should meet me. He was never interested in ruining us.”
Irwin nodded slowly as it all became clear. “Jesus. The sons of bitches! I’m starting to share your admiration, Hall.” Then he turned to Max Grzybowski. “Make sure no one ever knows I said that.”
“Will do, Captain,” Max said, grinning.
“Let’s not all fall in love with Zhu,” Drummond said, shifting in his chair. “The fact is that his game cost five lives.”
“Who?” asked Milo.
“Recalling Tourists is never foolproof. You pull agents out in the middle of an operation, and some don’t make it. A couple of them were being watched and tried to hurry home too fast. One had to break out of jail to get back; he made it as far as the train yards before the dogs got him. The other two are just dead-no explanation yet.”
Everyone remained silent a moment, thinking about those deaths in far corners of the world.
“So don’t tell me Xin Zhu is some intelligence saint,” Drummond said.
Everyone in the room noticed the disgust in his voice, but Milo was the only one impressed by it.
27
Drummond walked him back to the elevator, and as they waited for it he muttered under his breath, lips unmoving, about the mess Irwin had been causing. “He’s comprehensive. It’s great when you’re going through a federal budget, but not now. I have no idea when we’ll be online again.”
“But it’s done now. Irwin can head back to Congress, and you can get back to work.”
“He’s demanding to oversee the reassignments. His assistants are advising him that if something blows up just after he’s left, he’ll get blamed for it. He’s already entered the swamp, and he wants to make sure he doesn’t track anything back onto the Senate floor.”
Milo glanced back. Irwin and his assistants were huddled together over their game plan. The technicians were far away.
Drummond said, “The Germans didn’t hurt you much, did they?”
“Just my pride. How did you know where I was?”
“When?”
“When I was at Erika Schwartz’s house. They took apart my phone, but you figured out where I was and got to her through Theodor Wartmüller. How?”
Drummond shrugged. “I guess I can share-you’ve got a tracker in your left shoulder.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do,” he insisted. “Since October all Tourists have one. Phone trackers are too easy to bust, or lose. You got yours in training, one of the hundred immunization shots.”
“No one told me?”
“We don’t tell anyone.”
Milo began to reflect on this fact, that every move he’d made had been easily tracked by Drummond on his computer. “Wait. That means you knew where I was after I kidnapped Adriana. You knew I didn’t take her body out into the countryside.”
Drummond stared back at him but said nothing. There was a kind of sadness in his face.
“You didn’t expect me to kill her, did you?”
Finally, Drummond said, “Don’t give yourself a headache. No, I didn’t want her dead, but we had to get rid of her. That’s why I chose you, the only Tourist with a child. I knew that, given a whole week, you’d find some other solution.”
“You could have told me that.”
“Maybe, but I wanted you to hide it from me. If I couldn’t figure it out, then no one else could, either.”
Milo couldn’t speak.
“And you came through-almost. What really went wrong?”
“I overestimated my friends. Then you had her killed anyway.”
“You were her last chance.”
Silence fell between them, and Milo hit the elevator button again. He didn’t know if he believed any of this, or if he just didn’t want to.
“You’re not really quitting, are you?”
“You’ll get my resignation letter by to night.”
“Jesus, Weaver. I need you here.”
The elevator opened, and Milo stepped inside. There was a pleading quality to Drummond’s voice that worried him, but he’d been through this so many times in his head that it was as if the resignation had already been filed. There were so many arguments he could make, but only one mattered: “We set up the girl. Then we killed her.”
“And because of that, we now have an open invitation at BND headquarters. They built an overpriced meeting room-Conference Room S-solely for meetings with us. After a year it’s finally being used. That’s no small thing.”
“Yet not big enough.”
Milo watched the despair grow on Drummond’s face as the doors slid shut. Beyond, one of the senator’s aides-Dave Pearson-was standing at the blinds, watching them.
By the time he was out on the street again, having nodded to the doormen and winked at Gloria, he felt something like freedom. Not freedom exactly, because he knew he would have to work to make it safely through the extensive exit interviews, but he was certainly lighter. It was the release from obligation, a rare and wonderful feeling.
He wanted to call Tina, and even stopped at a pay phone, but changed his mind. Better to go to her later, when he knew he could stay. He stuck a square of Nicorette into his mouth.
Stout was mostly empty, partly because the after-work revelers had moved farther uptown, partly because most of its remaining clientele hadn’t gotten out of work yet. He settled at the extremely long, woody bar and ordered a vodka martini. It was delicious, and he thought over all the vodka martinis he’d had over the last three months, in Moscow, Paris, Podgorica, London, Zürich, Budapest, Berlin, Rome…
While the drink’s name made most people think of Italy, the only place he’d ever had a really good one-big, ice cold, and very strong-was in Manhattan. Though Stout’s version wasn’t nearly as good as, say, the Underbar of the W Hotel on Union Square, it was still leagues ahead of any Florentine café’s, and he gave the bartender-a blonde with a slight harelip-earnest thank
s.
The other customers-five in all-were scattered at the tables behind him. One woman with a man, a pair of men, and a man on his own. The male pair, he decided, was Irwin’s contingent, and he was proved right when one of them made a call from his cell, hung up, and seconds later Irwin walked in alone. He went straight to the bar without looking around, settled next to Milo, and summoned the bartender with a snap of his fingers. She hid her annoyance admirably and delivered his Scotch on the rocks with a smile, then moved to the far end of the bar.
“So, Weaver,” Irwin said after taking his first sip. The way he said the name made Milo think of a high school principal beginning yet another session with the class troublemaker. “You do, I believe, know me?”
“I don’t think we’ve ever met, sir.”
“Of me, I should have said. You know of me.”
“I think all politically aware Americans know of you, sir.”
Irwin swirled his drink. “September twenty-eighth, October fifteenth, January seventh. Those dates ring any bells?”
“Afraid not.”
“Those are three dates you accessed files related to me personally. Phone records, my home addresses, details on my foreign trips. You,” he said, wagging a finger, then lowered it and began again. “You seem very interested in me, Milo.”
“I got bored, Nathan.”
The senator grinned.
“No, really,” Milo insisted. “We both know why I should be interested in you. You had two of my friends killed. You tried to kill me. I’m not one to hold grudges, but that’s a lot to bear. Then you had me followed. How is Raleigh, by the way?”
“Raleigh?”
“The shadow I nearly killed in Budapest.”
Irwin’s face went slack, and he wiped at the corners of his mouth, muttering, “So that’s why Cy’s not returning my calls,” and took another drink. “I made a mistake last year. I didn’t know Terence Fitzhugh would start doing things in my name.”
Terence Fitzhugh had been Irwin’s liaison with Tourism, his hand in the department. He, too, was dead. “I’ve seen the call records,” said Milo.
“Oh. Right.” Irwin considered that, then frowned, realizing his lie had been untenable. “And you’re still bored?”
“I’m tired of blaming you. I’m tired of my own anger. I’m also sick of politicians who think they’re patriots.”
“You think I’m a patriot?” The idea seemed to please him. “I think you believe you’re a patriot.”
“And you? Are you a patriot, Milo?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
That seemed to kill the conversation. Both worked on their drinks and glanced at the bartender, who finally wandered over and had to be sent away again. Finally, Irwin said, “I actually liked Grainger. He was a likable guy.”
“He was an excellent guy. There was a lot of blood when he died. I suppose you never looked at the pictures.”
“I took a glance.”
“Just to be sure?”
Irwin shrugged.
“Did you know Angela Yates?”
“Never met her.”
“She was an excellent woman. A fantastic investigator.”
“A lesbian, right?”
“Yes, Nathan. A lesbian.”
Milo was doing it again, measuring distances. Geography, geometry, and time. How long would it take him to reach out, break the senator’s neck, and get away before one of the two men at the table could pull a gun and stop him? He doubted he could do much more than bruise the senator’s windpipe before he was stopped cold. That would have been enough for his mother, he suspected.
No, the math didn’t add up, but it was comforting all the same.
Irwin said, “You know, politics is a funny thing. At first glance, there’s something glamorous about it. Then you look harder, and you start to think that behind all the glamour, all there really is is a world of spreadsheets. budgets and polls and itemized bills. That’s true enough, but the real key to any political success is the ability to read people. If you can read another politician’s real thoughts, then you’ve got something. I’m pretty good at reading politicians. People like you-simple citizens-they’re a cinch. The fact is, you’re not so good a Tourist that I can’t see through you. You’re not done with me at all.”
“Talk to Drummond. He’ll tell you I’m done.”
“Will he?”
“I’ve quit.”
Irwin raised his brows to show how interested he was. “Now, that’s something.”
“It certainly is.”
“And how does that affect us?”
“It shows how uninterested I am. I no longer care about anything that happens in this world. I’d call it a tempest in a teacup if so many people didn’t get killed.”
“Tempest in a teacup?” Irwin grunted his amusement. “I’ll have to tell that to the other guys on the committee.”
“Tell them what you like. I just want you to know that we-you and me-we’re finished. Here. Now.”
“So you can go back to your lovely family? To Tina and Stephanie?”
Two and a half feet between his hand and the senator’s neck. “Something like that.”
Perhaps reading Milo’s mind, Irwin leaned back. “Two things, Milo. First is that this doesn’t make me feel any better. Why do you think you were even brought back into Tourism?”
“Shortages.”
“Shortages, sure, but Mendel was my man, and I’m the one who made sure he brought you back in. Why do you think I did that?”
Milo went for his drink again. He didn’t like where this was going. “So you could keep an eye on me.”
“Very good. During Mendel’s tenure I could find out where you were at any moment. Now that this kid’s running things and sticking to procedure, I have to pay out of my own pocket for people to track you. Which brings me to the second thing.” Irwin reached into his jacket and brought out a six-by-four color snapshot. He placed it on the damp bar. It was of Milo in Berlin, standing at a courtyard entrance, talking with a pretty Moldovan girl. “I believe they refer to this as the money shot.”
Milo almost slipped off the bar stool, but didn’t. Then he almost strangled the senator. But didn’t.
“I’ve shelled out a lot on these private dicks, but with this I can finally call them off.” He reached into his jacket again and took out another picture. “This one’s the coup de grace.”
It certainly was. Milo and Yevgeny Primakov inside the Berliner Dom, beneath a painting, discussing the future of Adriana Stanescu. He hadn’t seen the shadows-they must have mixed with the Bavarians, just as Yevgeny had.
“Your father, yes?”
Milo didn’t answer.
“You know, before taking over the department, I was largely ignorant of what it did. Of course, I knew the broad strokes, and sometimes I stepped in when I wanted to personally oversee an operation. Yes, yes-like the Sudanese one. Otherwise my only real function was making sure it received the funds it needed to keep working. My ignorance was protection-for myself, and for the department. No one likes to perjure himself on the floor of Congress. But for the last few days my clearance has shown me everything. Everything. It’s like Pandora’s box, the records of the Department of Tourism. Some of it makes even me queasy. Particularly this,” he said, shaking the photograph before slipping it back into his jacket. “I see a man talking with his father; then the image shifts completely when I read the file. I learn that immediately afterward you kidnapped that girl and then went out of your way not to kill her. The sequence of events becomes clear, and it occurs to me that you not only didn’t do your job, but you brought in a foreign national-a representative of the United Nations, no less-to help thwart your orders.” He paused. “You shared all the details of your job with your father and asked for his help. Yes?”
Still Milo didn’t answer.
“I think we understand each other,” said Irwin. He lifted his Scotch to his lips.
The senator wasn’t gloating
, not quite. He was just trying to make himself understood. If Milo ever made an attempt to get back at him, the senator would quickly make him Europe’s most wanted man. If that wasn’t enough, he would have Milo arrested for treason.
That was how a senator protected himself in today’s world. It proved that Nathan Irwin was still a terrified man, and no matter what he said, the surveillance would continue for a good long time, even after he’d washed his hands of Tourism.
28
Despite the worries that had plagued him, Milo survived his time in that blank cell on the nineteenth floor. Because of his short tenure as a Tourist, the exit interview lasted only five days, and John’s questions were, particularly compared to their last session in July, when Milo had been accused of murdering Thomas Grainger, gentle. He could sense the open honesty in most of Milo’s answers. When the story reached Berlin, though, John paused and backtracked and sniffed; something was wrong. He began to seek out individual hours. Six to eight in the evening on Wednesday the thirteenth. Nine in the morning on Friday. John seemed troubled by Milo’s unprecedented Christian feelings, him heading to the Berliner Dom to seek out spiritual advice about a hit he wasn’t sure he could go through with. Of course John was troubled; Milo’s file stated his religious beliefs as “none.” Finally, after John put it to him that all his hours, as a Tourist, were owned by the Company, and that therefore he required complete honesty, Milo said, “Well, I guess there’s no reason to hide it anymore.”
“To hide what?”
“Stefan Hassel. I knew him from the Bührle job. We met to set up the Adriana Stanescu kidnapping. Ask Drummond-he already knows.”
“The kidnapping?”
“Yes.”
Later, when they’d dealt in excruciating detail with his stay at Erika Schwartz’s and his subsequent search for Henry Gray, John returned to Stefan Hassel. Milo had more stories ready.
On the last day, John became chatty. They’d worked together often during the previous years, when people needed to be brought down to these cells and interrogated, but the fraternity he showed was still surprising. The best he could figure was that Drummond or Irwin had told him he could relax.
The Nearest Exit Page 27