The Tourist Read online

  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."

  Fitzh
ugh 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."