Jake stopped beside the tower at 200 East Eighty-ninth Street, and Drummond collected his briefcase and climbed out, showing an open hand in farewell. As the Ford sped off, he nodded at the old doorman whose name he never remembered.
The doorman apparently knew who he was. “There’s someone waiting for you, sir.”
“Yes?”
He nodded at the long couch in the foyer, and Drummond suddenly lost his appetite. Milo Weaver got up to meet him. He wasn’t smiling.
“You could’ve called beforehand,” Drummond told him. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
“How did you find out where I live?”
“It’s not a state secret, Alan.”
Drummond frowned, then looked at the elevator. He wanted to ignore him and take that elevator straight up to the sixteenth floor, to Penelope, but Weaver had the wild-eyed look of someone who wouldn’t be ignored. “So why the hell are you here?”
“Can we talk upstairs?”
“Absolutely not. I’m not having my wife get friendly with you.”
“Right. Wife,” Weaver said, as if he’d forgotten this important detail. He looked over Drummond’s shoulder at the doorman, who had returned to the sidewalk but watched them carefully through the glass doors.
“The place isn’t bugged, Milo.”
Weaver nodded, then wiped at his nose, a move that covered his mouth as he spoke. “We were wrong, Alan. There is a mole, and he’s been in place for a while.”
“You’re a fucking nut, Weaver.”
Milo shook his head, his heavy eyes full of conviction. Drummond knew then that a quiet dinner with Penelope was now a vain hope. Maybe Weaver had been right all along-the world really did revolve around him.
Part Three. Is He STILL YOUR HERO?
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12
TO THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2008
1
The argument had come to Milo all at once in a voice that his mother would have known. Big. The bigger voice that would never lie to him.
It proved that, no matter what Tina or Bipasha Ray thought, he really had been listening to his wife.
I even take it a step further sometimes and think that maybe his genius lies in the fact that the original cover, the first one I’ve peeled off and thrown away, that that’s the real one. That I’ve long ago abandoned what really is Milo Weaver. That it’s somewhere in the trash and I’ll never find it again.
How had the sequence of thoughts played out? He wasn’t sure. “Genius”-that word had probably made him think of Xin Zhu, whom he still admired deeply. Zhu had been on his mind anyway, for over the last days elements from Yevgeny’s file had come to him unbidden at unpredictable times. Like in the middle of couples therapy, at the mention of the word “genius.” Tina had planted the seed: A genius gives you the real story with the first layer of cover, so that once you’ve discarded it, it’s no longer viable.
Then he remembered her saying, How much time has to pass before your life stops being classified, huh? It never occurs to you that by then it might be too late.
Time. Too late.
The inverse: too early.
He recalled Marko Dzubenko and his drunken time with Xin Zhu. On the Chinese New Year, February 7.
But there was one thing this Zhu couldn’t figure out, and it irritated him. This Weaver guy. He was the one who figured out what was going on, and as a result everyone wanted him. Homeland Security wanted him for murder. The Company wanted him dead so the story wouldn’t get out. But this man, Zhu said, he lives the most charmed of lives. He survived. That really confused him. He said Weaver spent a couple months in prison, and his marriage fell apart, but he did survive. Now, not only was he still living and breathing, he was even working for his old employer again. He wanted to know how he pulled off that trick.
Then Henry Gray, on Sunday, March 2:
We’d had a ton of progress over the last week…
What kind of progress?
Well, we learned what happened to you, for instance.
What happened to me?
You survived, didn’t you? Grainger’s letter told us you were investigating, but we weren’t sure if you were one of the casualties or not. Everyone wanted your ass, after all. You got out of prison and went to live in New Jersey-we knew that-but then you disappeared, and we didn’t know until this week that you really were still alive.
How’d you figure that out?
Ask Rick. He came in with the information.
The timing was wrong. Xin Zhu already knew about Milo’s return to Tourism, but he waited until that last week with Gray to let the journalist know what he had been aware of all along.
He remembered that part of Xin Zhu’s technique was to become the kind of man you would like. For Gray, he was a serious and angry spy. For Dzubenko, he was a drunkard and a womanizer. What if he’d done the same to Milo? Because he did like Xin Zhu, a brilliant spymaster with an acute sense of humor, that quality so lacking in their business. What if Milo’s Zhu wasn’t the real one either?
None of this, though, would have come to him had he not read that carefully collated file that his father had broken into his apartment to leave for him. His father, it turned out, knew much more about Xin Zhu than Drummond did, and Milo had stayed up until four in the morning, reading about the fifty-seven-year-old man from Xianyang, near the ancient city of Xi’an, who had been swept up by the Cultural Revolution, then eaten by it as his middle-school education landed him in the Down to the Countryside Movement, which sucked up five years of his life, until 1974, farming wheat in Inner Mongolia. He survived, and upon his return went to work for the Central Investigation Division, moving on to the Guoanbu in the eighties. In 1982, he married Qi Wan (1960-1989), and that same year his only child-a son, Delun (1982-2007)-was born.
A two-year posting in Bonn followed, then under different names he spent three years in Moscow and two more each in Jerusalem and Tehran. He returned to Beijing in 1993 and set up shop within the Sixth Bureau, focusing on counterintelligence, which was where he remained to this day. His wife and son had died prematurely-no causes listed-but he had not remarried. There was one known mistress in Guangzhou. According to the file, he was a moderate drinker and smoked rarely, but when he did he preferred a Hamlet brand cigarillo, manufactured in Japan.
There had also been stories, and while sitting in Dr. Ray’s office one had come to him, while Tina stared hard.
June 1987. According to source ESTER Zhu was asked by Beijing to acquire Soviet troop positions and battle plans in the Outer Manchuria region, which was accomplished within one week. Zhu’s technique, as related to ESTER by another source, was to convince Lieutenant colonel Konstantin Denisov, then based in Ulan Bator, that his wife, Valera, had discovered the identity of his mistress in Moscow. Denisov returned to Moscow immediately, and his second-in-command, Major Oleg Sergeyev-whose assistant, Lieutenant Feodor Bunin, was in the pay of the Guoanbu before his 1989 discovery and subsequent execution-took over. Bunin, now with complete access, passed the information on to his handlers.
“You’re a fucking nut, Weaver.”
“I’m afraid not, Alan.”
Drummond submitted. He took Milo into the elevator and brought him up to the sixteenth floor, and into his life. There was a petite, rather sensual-looking blonde in the apartment, his wife, Penelope, who was unfazed by the surprise visitor. When Drummond introduced Milo and said, “Pen, we’re going to have to use the office for a little bit. You mind bringing us some ice?” she grinned devilishly and replied, “How very fifties, dear.”
Once they were settled in a room that was more like a lounge than an office, Drummond opened up a cabinet and started rattling off the names on the bottles. Milo stopped him at Smirnoff; then Penelope came in with a leather-skinned ice bucket. Milo couldn’t help but smile. “This really is the fifties,” he said to her.
“Golly shucks, it is,” she said, winking. “Thanks, hon,” said Drummond.
Milo apologized again
for the interruption and watched her close the door behind herself.
Drummond handed over a glass of iced vodka and said, “Great, isn’t she?”
“Really is, Alan.”
“Flirt with her any more, and I’ll have you erased.” He sat down with his Scotch, not smiling. “Now explain yourself.”
Milo took a breath and began with the time discrepancy, but Drummond blew that off. “One minor detail? Gray probably got it wrong.”
“It makes more sense if you step back and look at everything this way, imagining that Zhu does have a mole. Why, for instance, did he give up on his operation when I arrived in Budapest?”
“You said it yourself. He’d made his point.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But let’s say his sense of humor isn’t as excellent as I believed. Guoanbu colonels don’t waste all this time-and expense, remember-just to make a point. So what else could he get out of it? If there is a mole, then that means he completed his objectives and wanted Tourism back in operation so that the information he had would be useful.”
“What information?”
“The information on how the department works.” Milo opened his hands, but Drummond didn’t speak, just stared, so he said, “Another curious fact: Zhu knew I was in Budapest. How did he know that? If he wasn’t watching your computer tracking me, then he was hearing it through Global Security, the firm that had tracked me there-and they reported directly to Irwin.”
Drummond frowned. “You’re talking in circles, Milo. Besides, it makes no sense. You don’t protect a mole by raising the specter of a mole. Not unless you’re going to frame someone else to divert suspicion, which never happened. The fact is that we never suspected the existence of a mole in the department until Zhu started to play with us.”
“Of course not. Because there’s no mole in the department. There never was.”
“Jesus Christ, Milo. Make some sense, okay?”
“The mole is on Nathan Irwin’s staff.”
All expression washed out of Drummond’s face. He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “It’s not going to work.”
“What?”
“This. You’re still after him, aren’t you? Listen-you think that if you ruin Irwin it’s going to make your marriage any better? I’ve got news for you-”
“No, Alan. You listen. And think. What’s the one result of Xin Zhu’s operation? What’s the one lasting change?”
“It’s made me into a permanent joke,” Drummond said, then shook his head. “Okay, what’s the one lasting change?”
“Irwin in control of the department.”
Drummond shook his head. “But he’s not. Not really. By Friday he and his staff are out of there.”
“Which is long enough to get access to all the department’s files.”
That seemed to make Drummond uncomfortable. “Go on.”
“From the beginning, the only operation we were sure Zhu knew about was the Sudanese operation. Right? He knew it inside and out.”
“We’ve been through this-he knew it all from a letter that Thomas Grainger wrote.”
Milo set aside his glass. “A beautiful coincidence. It’s the one operation that Irwin’s people were already familiar with, because Irwin himself ran it. Irwin told me that he knew next to nothing about what the department did before he took over. He stayed far away in order to protect himself. With one notable exception. The Sudan. His inner staff had to know about it.”
“Okay,” said Drummond, allowing him this one fact, “but by Friday he’s out of the department. That’s a lot of work for such a limited period of access.”
“You’re forgetting the other result of the entire game.”
“What’s that?”
“Myrrh. You recalled everyone-at Irwin’s insistence-and he and his staff were around to oversee the redeployment. He knows the names and go-codes of every Tourist you have. If I’m right, so does Xin Zhu.”
Drummond stared into his drink and thought through the implications.
“It does make sense, Alan. You just have to look at it. The timing. The details. I keep going over it, and I can’t find anything to kill the theory.”
Drummond finished his Scotch, refilled it, then opened a humidor full of cigars but didn’t take any out. He shut it, then opened it again, a nervous gesture. “Let me get this straight. First you tell me, yes, we have one. Then we don’t. Now, you’re telling me we do?”
“Not we, Alan. Not you.”
“Irwin. Right.”
Milo waited.
Finally, Drummond looked at his hands. “Okay. I’m willing to treat it as a serious possibility. The question is, what do we do about it?”
“We don’t do anything, Alan. I’m not in the department anymore, and I don’t want to be. I’m bringing this to you, and I’ll help look over some of the files, but I’m not taking part in any sting operation.”
Drummond shrugged that off. “I’ll bring in a couple of Tourists on the sly.”
“How big is Irwin’s staff? How many people are we talking about?”
“You met Grzybowski and Pearson-chief of staff and legislative director. There’ll be a lot of interns, as well as staff at his district office, but I think there’s only five more in the core D.C. group-I can get their names. Only those first two had direct access to the building and met with Tourists, but I’ll lay odds Irwin’s smuggling copies of files out of the twenty-second floor. In that case, all seven are possibilities.”
“Seven,” Milo said and sipped his vodka. “Not so many.”
“Not so few, either. Not with the kind of hunch you’re going on. If I round up seven congressional aides and put John on them, Irwin might just notice the disappearance of his entire staff. If I tell him one of them’s a mole, he’s going to ask for evidence. What do I do then? Bring you in?” He shook his head. “Besides, if you’re wrong the department will lose its last ally. Even if you’re right about it, Irwin will close us down before John’s even put on his gloves.” Drummond made a face, as if his Scotch had gone bad. “As much as it pains me, the only way might be to bring in some outside help. I know someone in the Bureau. Good guy, but-”
“But I’ll bet he’s interested in promotion,” Milo said. “When competing agencies start going after each other, friendship goes out the window.”
“Yeah,” Drummond said into his glass. “And if you choose another Company department, it’ll run straight up to Ascot, or to the Committee on Homeland Security. Either way, the department is dead in the water.”
“You almost sound like you give a damn, Milo.”
“Almost.”
Milo stuck out his glass, and, taking the hint, Drummond refilled it, saying, “We’ve gotten rid of everyone. If I make it a regular Tourist case, Irwin will hear about it and the mole will disappear. There’s just the two of us and whatever Tourists I can muster without anyone noticing.”
“You bring the files,” Milo said. “I’ll help you work through them. Maybe we can narrow it down. But I’m not sticking around for the whole show.”
“We can use the Bronx safe house.”
“Good. I don’t want to see you in public again. I think Irwin’s goons are still following me.”
The Scotch stopped halfway to Drummond’s mouth. “What?”
“It’s not important. We’ll just have to be careful.”
“Jesus.”
Milo didn’t share Drummond’s anxiety; he wouldn’t even later when he was heading home again, feeling the eyes of a young guy with glasses on the same subway car. The fact was that Milo had become the kind of dreaded creature that feels more comfortable evading surveillance and calculating the flow of information than discussing his feelings with a Long Island therapist while the eyes of his wife are on him.
He said, “If so, they saw me come here, but that’s fine. I’m visiting my old employer, asking for help finding work. The important thing is that I know they’re watching. Hopefully we’ll find a way to u
se that to our advantage.”
“Makes me wonder why you’re bothering with this at all. Don’t you have a marriage to suture back together?”
“Maybe I like you, Alan. Maybe I don’t want to see you lose your job. Maybe-and this is sort of disturbing-maybe I really buy your line about making Tourism humane.”
“That would make you the only one,” Drummond said, then laughed despite himself. He took another sip of his Scotch. “You still like him, don’t you?”
“Irwin?”
“No, Zhu.”
Milo shrugged. “He’s played this brilliantly.”
Drummond’s smile went away. “Before this is over, I’ll lay odds you lose that hero worship.”
“We’ll call it a bet.”
They both looked up at a knock on the door. “Yes?” Drummond called.
Penelope opened the door and knotted her arms. “Fellas, this fifties thing is getting pretty old. Is one of you going to cook me some dinner, or what?”
2
She began angry and, as hours passed and she kept getting recorded messages from his phone, moved steadily into the realm of worry. By the time she was giving Stephanie her bath, the worry was inching closer to panic. She showed none of these conflicting emotions to Stephanie, but children are antennas tuned to the frequency of hidden emotions. Stef knew something was up, and as she wiped shampoo from her eyes she said, “Where’s Dad?”
“He had some work to do.”
“But he doesn’t have a job. He’s unemployed.”
“Don’t you think he’s trying to find a job?”
“This late?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Then how come you keep trying to call him?”
Tina blinked at her. She was asking these questions with no particular malice, absentmindedly pushing a plastic power boat around the tub. “I want him to pick up some groceries,” Tina lied.
“Why don’t you go downstairs and buy stuff?”
“Because I’m giving you a bath.”
“I can take my bath myself. I am six. I’m big enough.”
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