The Tourist Page 28

  She used her cell phone, and after a moment heard George Orbach's deep but groggy voice say, "What is it?" That's when she realized it was nearly eleven.

  "You home?"

  A broad yawn. "Office. Guess I passed out.”

  “I've got something for you.”

  “Other than sleep?"

  "Take this down." She read off the particulars of Milo Weaver's childhood. "Find out if anyone in the Weaver clan is still alive. Says here they're dead, but if you can find even a distant second cousin, then I want to talk to them."

  "We dig deep, but isn't this a bit much?"

  "Five years after his parents' death, he was fluent in Russian. Tell me, George-how does an orphan from North Carolina do that?"

  "He takes a course. Studies hard."

  "Just look into it, will you? And find out if anyone's still around from the St. Christopher Home for Boys.”

  “Will do."

  "Thanks," Simmons said and hung up, then dialed another number.

  Despite the hour, Tina Weaver sounded awake. In the background, a television sitcom played. "What?"

  "Hello, Mrs. Weaver. This is Janet Simmons."

  A pause. Tina said, "Special agent, even."

  "Listen, I know we didn't get off on the right foot before."

  "You don't think so?"

  "I know Rodger interviewed you in Austin-was he all right? I told him not to press too much.”

  “Rodger was a real sweetheart."

  "I'd like to talk with you about a few things. Tomorrow all right?"

  Another pause. "You want me to help you track down my husband?"

  She doesn't know, Simmons thought. "I want you to help me get to the truth, Tina. That's all.”

  “What kinds of questions?"

  "Well," Simmons said, "you're pretty familiar with Milo's past, right?"

  A hesitant "Yeah."

  "Any surviving relatives?"

  "None that he knows of," she said, then made a wordless sound, like choking.

  "Tina? You all right?"

  "I just," she gasped. "I get hiccups sometimes.”

  “Get yourself some water. We'll talk tomorrow. Morning okay? Like, ten, ten thirty?"

  "Yeah," Tina agreed, then the line went dead.

  3

  In the morning, a Company driver picked Fitzhugh up from the Mansfield Hotel on West Fourty-fourth and dropped him off at the Avenue of the Americas building by nine thirty. Once behind the desk, he picked up the phone and dialed a number. "John?”

  “Yes, sir," said a flat voice.

  "Can you go to Room 5 and give the treatment until I get down there? No more than an hour.”

  “Face?"

  "No, not the face.”

  “Yes, sir."

  He hung up, checked his e-mail, then connected to Nexcel, signing in with Grainger's username and password. One message from Sal, that occasional oracle in Homeland:

  J Simmons has gone to DT HQ unexpectedly.

  "Thank you," he said to the computer. The message might have been of use had it come before Simmons ambushed him here at "DT HQ" yesterday. He wondered if Sal was really earning his Christmas bonuses.

  There was a stack of real mail on the desk, and among the interdepartmental memos he found a buff envelope, postmarked Denver, addressed to Grainger. Security had placed cleared stamps all over it, so he ripped it open. Inside was a brick-colored passport, issued by the Russian Federation.

  With a fingernail, he opened it to find a recent photograph of Milo Weaver with his heavy, accusing eyes and long jowl, looking in some ways like a gulag survivor. But the name beside the picture was Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov.

  "Oh, fuck me," he whispered.

  He went to the door and pointed through the cubicles at one of the Travel Agents, using a finger to beckon him. Once the door was closed again, Fitzhugh snapped his fingers, as if the name were on the tip of his tongue, which it wasn't.

  "Harold Lynch," the analyst said. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five; a sweat-heavy lock of blond hair curled over his smooth, high forehead.

  "Right. Harry, listen. There's a new lead to follow. Milo Weaver as Russian mole."

  The disbelief was all over Lynch's face, but Fitzhugh pressed the issue.

  "Opportunities. Find when he had access to information, and, soon afterward or even simultaneously, access to the FSB. Line that up with known Russian intel. Take this." He handed over the passport and envelope. "Have someone run it through whatever we've got. I want to know who sent it, how tall they are, and what their favorite food is."

  Lynch stared at the passport, overwhelmed by this sudden shift in gear.

  "Get along, now."

  No matter who sent it, the passport was an unexpected gift. Even before the interrogation had begun, Fitzhugh had been handed a serious weapon. Murder and treason-Weaver might talk his way out of one charge, but two?

  He decided to share the good news with Janet Simmons. His secretary, a heavyset woman in pink, tracked down and dialed her number. On the second ring, he heard, "Simmons."

  "You'll never guess what appeared today."

  "I probably won't."

  "Russian passport for Milo Weaver."

  She paused, and in the background he heard the hum of an engine-she was driving. "What does that make him?" she said. "A dual citizen?"

  He'd expected a little more joy from her. "It just might make him a double agent, Janet. It's not one of ours."

  "Under his name?"

  "No. Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov."

  A pause. "Where'd it come from?"

  "Anonymous. We're looking into that now."

  "Thanks for telling me, Terence. Give Milo my best."

  At ten thirty, Fitzhugh used his keycard in the elevator to access the nineteenth floor, where instead of cubicles there were corridors of windowless walls marked by pairs of doors. One led to a cell, the other to the control room for each cell, full of monitors and recording equipment. He entered the control room to cell five, carrying a plain gray folder.

  Nate, a hard-drinking ex-agent with the stomach of a goat, sat crunching Ruffles in front of monitors where Milo Weaver, on a floor, naked, screamed from electric shocks delivered to his exposed body parts. The sound echoed sickly in the small room.

  A small, thin man in a blood-spattered white smock did his work silently-that was John. One of the doormen held Weaver's shoulders down with rubber gloves, while the other doorman, the big black one, stood by a wall, wiping his mouth and staring.

  "What the hell's he doing?" Fitzhugh asked.

  Reaching for another potato chip, Nate said, "Just evacuated his breakfast. It's right there by his feet."

  "Christ. Get him out of there."

  "Now?"

  "Yes, now!"

  Nate slipped on a wireless headset, tapped on the keyboard, and said, "Lawrence."

  The black man stiffened and put a finger to his ear.

  "Get out. Now."

  While Weaver screamed, Lawrence walked slowly to the door. Fitzhugh met him in the corridor and, despite the fact that the doorman was a head taller, shoved a stiff finger into his chest. "If I ever see that again, you'll be out of here. Got it?"

  Lawrence nodded, eyes moist.

  "Get back to the lobby and send up someone with balls."

  Another nod, and the big man walked off to the elevators.

  Nate had told John to prepare for his entrance, so when Fitzhugh opened the door, Milo Weaver was crouched, leaning against the wall, blood seeping from spots across his chest and legs and groin. The remaining doorman stood at attention by the opposite wall while John packed up his electrodes. Weaver began to cry.

  "It's a shame," said Fitzhugh, arms crossed over his chest, tapping the folder against his elbow. "A whole career flushed down the toilet because of a sudden desire for vengeance. It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense here," he said, tapping his temple, "nor here"-his heart. He squatted so he was level with Weaver's
red eyes and opened the folder. "This is what happens when Milo Weaver defends his dignity?" He snapped the folder around to reveal page-sized color photos of Tom Grainger, crumpled in front of his New Jersey house on Lake Hopatcong. Fitzhugh went through them one at a time for Milo's inspection. Panoramic shots, showing the position of the body-five yards from those concrete steps. Close-ups: the hole through the shoulder, the other through the forehead. Two soft dumdum bullets that widened after entry, taking out a massive chunk as they left, leaving a mutilated shell of Thomas Grainger.

  Milo's crying intensified, and he lost his balance, falling to the floor.

  "We've got a weeper," Fitzhugh observed, standing.

  Everyone in that small white room waited. Milo took loud breaths until the tears were under control, wiped his wet eyes and runny nose, then worked himself into a hunched standing position.

  "You're going to tell me everything," said Fitzhugh.

  "I know," said Milo.

  4

  Across the East River, Special Agent Janet Simmons worked her way through slow Brooklyn traffic, stopping abruptly for pedestrians and children leaping across Seventh Avenue. She cursed each one of them. People were like that-they blundered through their little lives as if nothing would ever cross their paths. Nothing, not automobiles, crossfire, stalkers, or even the unknown machinations of the world's security services, who could easily confuse you with someone else and drag you to a cell, or simply put a misplaced bullet in your head.

  Instinctively, she parked on Seventh, near where it crossed Garfield, so that she wouldn't be seen from the window.

  She'd made a lot of noise with Terence Fitzhugh, but the truth was that she had no real jurisdictional authority concerning Milo Weaver. He'd killed Tom Grainger on American soil, but both were CIA employees, which left it to the Company's discretion.

  Why, then, was she so insistent? Not even she knew for sure. The murder of Angela Yates-perhaps that was it. A successful woman who had made it so far in this most masculine of professions had been killed in her prime by the man Simmons had let go in Tennessee. Did that make her responsible for Yates's death? Maybe not. She felt responsible nonetheless.

  This baroque sense of responsibility had plagued her much of her life, though her Homeland therapist, a skinny, pale girl who had the nervous, awkward movements of a virgin, always turned the equation around. It wasn't that Janet Simmons was responsible for all the people in her life; it was that Janet Simmons believed she could be responsible for them. "Control," the virgin told her. "You think you can control everything. That's a serious error of perception."

  "You're saying I have control issues?" Simmons taunted, but the virgin was tougher than she looked.

  "No, Janet. I'm saying you're a megalomaniac. Good news is, you chose the right profession."

  So, her urge to right Milo Weaver's wrongs had nothing to do with justice, empathy, philanthropy, or even equal rights for women. That didn't mean that her actions, in themselves, were not virtuous-even the virgin would admit that.

  Yet for weeks her desires had been stumped by a simple lack of real evidence. She could place Weaver at the deaths of the victims, but she wanted more. She wanted reasons.

  The Weavers' brownstone lay on a street of brownstones, though theirs was noticeably more run-down. The front door was unlocked, so she climbed the stairs without buzzing anyone. On the third floor, she rang the bell.

  It took a moment, but finally she heard the soft pad of bare feet on wood leading up to the door; the spy hole darkened.

  "Tina?" She produced her Homeland ID and held it out. "It's Janet. Just need a few minutes of your time."

  The shift of the chain being undone. The door opened, and Tina Weaver stared back at her, barefoot, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. No bra. She looked the same as at their last meeting in Disney World, only more tired.

  "Did I come at the wrong time?"

  Tina Weaver's body shrank slightly at the sight of Simmons. "I'm not sure I should speak to you. You hounded him."

  "I think Milo killed two people. Maybe three. You expect me to let that go?"

  She shrugged.

  "Did you know he's back?" Tina didn't ask where or when; she just blinked. "He turned himself in. He's at the Manhattan office.”

  “He's all right?"

  "He's in trouble, but he's fine. Can I come in?"

  Milo Weaver's wife wasn't listening anymore. She was walking down the corridor toward the living room, leaving the door open. Simmons followed her to a low-ceilinged room with a big flat-screen television but old, cheap-looking furniture. Tina dropped onto the sofa, knees up to her chin, and watched Simmons take a seat.

  "Stephanie's at school?"

  "It's summer vacation, Special Agent. She's with the sitter.”

  “They're not missing you at work?"

  "Yes, well." Tina wiped something off her arm. "The library's flexible when you're the director."

  "The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, at Columbia. Very impressive."

  Tina's expression doubted anyone would be impressed by that. "You going to ask your questions, or what? I'm pretty good at answering. I've had plenty of practice."

  "Recently?"

  "The Company sent some goons two days ago, right in this room."

  "I didn't know."

  "You guys aren't very good at communicating, are you?"

  Simmons rocked her head. "The different agencies cooperate like an estranged couple. But we're in counseling," she said, smiling to cover her annoyance: Fitzhugh had lied about interrogating Tina. "Fact is, we're now investigating your husband on multiple levels, with the hope of understanding how the levels connect."

  Tina blinked again. "What multiple levels?"

  "Well, murder, as I said. Two suspected murders and one verified murder."

  "Verified? Verified how?"

  "Milo confessed to killing Thomas Grainger."

  Simmons braced herself for an explosion, but got none. Wet, red-rimmed eyes, yes, and tears. Then, a quiet sobbing that shook Tina's whole body, her elevated knees swaying. "Look, I'm sorry, but-"

  "Tom?" she spat out. "Tom Fucking Grainger? No…" She shook her head. "Why would he kill Tom? He's Stef's godfather!"

  Tina cried for a few seconds, face down, then raised her head, cheeks damp.

  "What does he say?"

  "What?"

  "Milo. You said he confessed. What's his goddamned excuse?"

  Simmons wondered how to put it. "Milo claims that Tom used him, and in a fit of anger he killed the man."

  Tina wiped at her eyes. With eerie calmness, she said, "Fit of anger?"

  "Yes."

  "No. Milo, he-he doesn't have fits of anger. He's not that kind of person."

  "It's hard to know what people are really like."

  A smile filled Tina's face, but it didn't match her voice: "Don't be condescending, Special Agent. After six years, day-in-day-out, with the stress of raising a child, you get a pretty good idea what someone's like."

  "Okay," said Simmons. "I take it back. You tell me, then-why would Milo kill Tom Grainger?"

  It didn't take long for Tina to reach a conclusion: "Only two reasons I can think of. If he was ordered to do it by the Company."

  "That's one. The other?"

  "If he needed to protect his family."

  "He's protective?"

  "Not freakishly so, but yes. If he thought we were in serious danger, Milo would take whatever steps necessary to remove that danger."

  "I see," Simmons said, as if committing this to memory. "A week ago, he visited you. In Texas. You were at your parents' house, right?”

  “He wanted to talk to me.”

  “About what, exactly?"

  She chewed the inside of her mouth thoughtfully. "You know this already. Rodger told you."

  "I try not to depend on the reports. What did Milo want to talk to you about?"

  "About leaving."

  "Leaving Texas?"

&nbs
p; "Our lives."

  "I don't know what that means," Simmons lied.

  "It means, Special Agent, that he was in trouble. You, for instance, were after him for some murders he didn't do. He told me Tom was dead, but all he said was someone had killed him, and he had killed that man."

  "Who's this other man?"

  Tina shook her head. "He didn't share details. Unfortunately, that's the kind of man he-" She paused. "He always avoided details that might upset me. He just said that the only way to stay alive was to disappear. The Company would kill him, because they would think he killed Grainger. He wanted us-me and Stef-to disappear with him." She swallowed heavily, remembering. "He had these passports all ready. One for each of us, with other names. Dolan. That was the family name. He wanted us to disappear, maybe to Europe, and start life again as the Dolans." She went back to chewing her cheek.

  "And you said?"

  "We're not sitting in Europe, are we?”

  “You said no. Any reason?"

  Tina stared hard at Janet Simmons, as if shocked by her lack of intuition. "All the reasons in the world, Special Agent. How the hell do you rip a six-year-old girl out of her life, give her a new name, and not leave scars? How am I supposed to earn a living in Europe, where I can't even speak any languages? And what kind of a life is it when you're looking over your shoulder every day? Well?"

  Simmons knew it from the way the series of rhetorical questions burst out, so smoothly, as if it were a speech Tina Weaver had been practicing ever since that moment, a week ago, when she refused her husband's last request: They were reasons after the fact, the ones she used to justify her abandonment. They had nothing to do with why she'd said no in the first place.

  "Milo's not Stephanie's biological father, right?"

  Tina shook her head, exhausted.

  "That would be…" Simmons pretended to be trying to remember, but she knew all this by heart. "Patrick, right? Patrick Hardemann."

  "Yes."

  "How much of Stephanie's childhood was he around for? I mean, before Milo."