The Tourist Read online

  "Had been killed," Tina corrected. "Until that day, Milo was a field agent, and Frank-Frank Dawdle-he'd stolen three million dollars from the government."

  "Our government?"

  "Our government. That night, Milo put in his resignation. It wasn't about me, it wasn't about Frank. Not even about the Towers, which we learned about later. Milo's life had simply become unbearable."

  "And there you were."

  "There I was."

  "Let's go back a second. You were both taken to an Italian hospital, and Stephanie was born. When did Milo show up again?”

  “He never left.”

  “What do you mean?"

  "When the doctors fixed him up, they put him in a room upstairs. As soon as he woke, he snuck into a nurse's station and found my room."

  "He didn't know your name."

  "We came in at the same time. He checked it by the hour. I'd passed out after the delivery, and when I woke up, he was asleep in a chair next to my bed. There was a TV, and the Italian news came on. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I knew what the World Trade Center looked like."

  "I see."

  "You don't" said Tina, the emotion back in her voice. "When I figured out what had happened, I started crying, and that woke Milo. I showed him what my tears were about, and when he got it, he started crying, too. Both of us, in that hospital room, wept together. From then on, we were inseparable."

  While Simmons considered this love story, Tina looked up at the clock on the DVD player-after twelve. "Shit." She stood. "I have to pick up Stephanie. We're having lunch."

  "But I've got more questions."

  "Later," Tina said. "Unless you're planning to arrest me. Are you?"

  "Can we talk later?”

  “Call first."

  Simmons waited for Tina to get ready. It took only five minutes. She reappeared, cleaned up in a light summer dress, and said, "What's the other level?"

  "What?"

  "Earlier, you said you were investigating Milo on two levels. We got distracted. One level was murder. What's the other?"

  Simmons wished she hadn't brought it up. She wanted the time and space to get answers before Tina Weaver had an evening to think over some cover story. "We can talk about it tomorrow."

  "Give me the Cliff Notes version."

  She told Tina about the passport. "He's a Russian citizen, Tina. This is news to everyone."

  Tina's cheeks flushed. "No, it's cover. Spies do that all the time. A cover for something he had to do in Russia."

  "He told you about this?"

  A quick shake of the head.

  "Ever hear him mention the name Mikhail Vlastov?" Again, Tina shook her head.

  "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding." Generously, she smiled.

  Down on Garfield, before splitting up, Simmons hesitantly broached what was for her the most important subject of their conversation: "Listen, Tina. I know what you told me up there about why you wouldn't run away with Milo, but I have to admit I don't buy it. The reasons are too practical. You said no for another reason."

  Tina's face twisted briefly, heading toward a sneer, but halfway it gave up and relaxed. "You know why, Special Agent."

  "You didn't trust him anymore."

  A queer, offhand grin passed over Tina's features. She walked to her car.

  As Simmons rounded the corner onto Seventh Avenue, her phone rang.

  "Hold on to your socks," George Orbach said. The phrase confused her a moment. "What?”

  “William T. Perkins."

  "Who?" She used a remote to unlock her car.

  "Father of Wilma Weaver, nee Perkins. Milo's grandfather. Lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Covenant Towers-assisted living community. Born 1926. Eighty-one years old."

  "Thanks for the math," said Simmons, not betraying her excitement. "Is there a reason we never knew this before?”

  “We never asked."

  Incompetence, she supposed, went hand in hand with intelligence. No one had cared enough to find out if a grandfather was still breathing. "Can you send me the address, and tell Covenant Towers I'm coming?"

  "When?"

  She considered that as she got into the warm, stuffy car. "Tonight."

  "Book a flight?"

  "Yes," she said, then, checking her watch, made her decision: "Around six o'clock, and get three seats.”

  “Three?"

  She got out of the car again, locked up, and walked back toward the Weavers' door. "Tina and Stephanie Weaver will be coming with me."

  7

  The truth, three lies, and some omissions. That was all Milo knew. The rest, Primakov had promised, would be taken care of. During that too-long week in Albuquerque, the old man had shared very little. Instead, he'd asked questions, just as Terence Fitzhugh was now doing. The story, from its beginning in Tennessee to its bloody end in New Jersey. He'd told it so often in New Mexico that he knew it better than his own life story. "Give me details," Primakov had insisted.

  But he hadn't just asked about the story; he'd asked things Milo was not allowed to answer. Treasonable things. "You want my help, don't you?" So: the hierarchy of the Department of Tourism, the numbers of Tourists, the existence of Sal and his method of contact, the relationship between Homeland and the Company, and what the Company knew and didn't know about Yevgeny Primakov himself, which was very little.

  Only after five days of this had the old man finally said, "I've got it now. Don't worry about a thing. Go in and tell them the truth. You will lie three times, and leave a few things out. I'll take care of the rest." What "the rest" consisted of was a mystery.

  Did his faith falter? Certainly it did. It stumbled when he realized that he was being given the black hole treatment, and it nearly died when, that morning, John entered Room 5 with his briefcase full of terrible tricks. "Hello, John," Milo had said, but John wasn't such an amateur that he would be tricked into saying a thing. He placed his case on the floor, opened it to reveal the battery pack and wires and electrodes, and asked the two guards to please hold Milo's naked body down.

  In truth, Milo's faith disappeared completely when the electric shocks were applied. They scrambled his nerves and his brain, so that he could feel no faith in anything outside that room. He could hear nothing when his body arched and shook on the cold floor. In the pauses between these sessions, he had wanted to scream the truth at them-no, he hadn't killed Grainger-that had been Lie Number One. But they never asked him a thing. The pauses were only for John to check Milo's blood pressure and recharge the machine.

  The only thing that threatened to rekindle his faith made no sense to him. It was Lawrence, holding his ankles. As the pulses surged through his body, Lawrence let go of his feet and turned away, then began to vomit. John stopped his work. "Are you okay?"

  "I-" Lawrence began, then climbed to his feet, wiping his watery eyes. It hit him again, and he leaned against the wall, emptying his stomach.

  John, unconcerned, reapplied the electrodes to Milo's nipples. Despite the pain, he felt a wash of relief, as if Lawrence's disgust might soon be shared by them all. He was wrong. Then Fitzhugh came in and showed him the photographs..

  "You killed Grainger."

  "Yes."

  "Who else did you kill?”

  “A Tourist. Tripplehorn."

  "When did you kill Grainger? Before you killed the Tourist?"

  "Before. No, after."

  "Then?"

  Milo coughed. "I took a walk into the woods.”

  “And then?"

  "I was sick. Then I flew to Texas.”

  “Under Dolan?"

  He nodded, now back on the sure ground of the awful truth: "I tried to get my wife and daughter to disappear with me," he said, telling Fitzhugh things he already knew. "They wouldn't-at least, Tina refused." He straightened with difficulty and looked at Fitzhugh. "I had no family, no job, and both the Company and Homeland were looking for me."

  "A week followed," Fitzhugh said.
"You disappeared."

  "Albuquerque."

  "What did you do in Albuquerque?”

  “I drank. A lot. I drank until I realized it couldn't go on.”

  “Lots of people live their whole lives drunk. What makes you so special?"

  "I don't want to live on the lam. Someday," he said, then stopped and began again. "I want to return to my family someday. If they'll have me. And the only way to make this happen was to turn myself in. Mercy of the court, and all that."

  "Pretty far-fetched."

  Milo didn't dispute this.

  "That week in Albuquerque. Where did you stay?”

  “The Red Roof Inn.”

  “Who with?"

  "I was alone." Lie Number Two.

  "Who'd you talk to? A week is a long time."

  "Some waitresses-from Applebee's and Chili's. A bartender. But not about anything important." He paused. "I think I scared them."

  They stared at each other, one clothed, one naked, and Fitzhugh finally said, "We're going to go through the whole thing, Milo. Sometimes it'll feel like a test of your memory, but it's not. It's a test of your truth." He snapped his fingers close to Milo's face. "You with me?"

  Milo nodded, and the movement pained him.

  "Two chairs," Fitzhugh said to no one in particular. The remaining doorman took it to be his order, and left. "John, keep yourself available."

  John nodded curtly, lifted his case, and left looking like a blood-spattered encyclopedia salesman just after a sale.

  The doorman returned with aluminum chairs and helped Weaver into one. Fitzhugh sat opposite, and when Milo slipped to the side and fell off, he ordered a table as well. This helped, for Milo was able to collapse on its smooth white surface, streaking it with blood.

  "Tell me how it started," said Fitzhugh.

  That first day's debriefing lasted nearly five hours, chronicling the events lasting from the Fourth of July through the ill-fated Paris trip to Sunday, July 8, when Milo returned. He might have gotten the story out in less time, but Fitzhugh broke in often, questioning aspects of the tale. After the Tiger's suicide in Blackdale, Fitzhugh patted the table, annoyed that Weaver had slid down again, cheek against the blood-smeared Formica. "And this was a surprise, was it?"

  "What?"

  "Sam Roth, al-Abari, whatever. That he had been a Tourist."

  Milo placed a soiled hand on the table, palm down, and rested his chin on it. "Of course it was a surprise."

  "So let me get this straight. The Tiger-a professional with one of the world's stupider names-comes to this country solely in order to have a chat with you and then off himself."

  Milo nodded into his knuckles.

  "My question, I suppose, is: How did your file-your Tourism file, which should be resting in the upper stratosphere of top secret-how did this file end up in his hands?"

  "Grainger gave it to him."

  "Whoa!" Fitzhugh exclaimed, pushing back in his chair. "Let me be sure I heard you right. You're saying Tom was working with the Tiger? That's a big claim."

  "I'm afraid it is."

  "And Samuel Roth-you let him take his own life, right in front of you, when you knew the man was full of invaluable information."

  "I didn't have a chance to save him. He was too quick."

  "Maybe you didn't want a chance. Maybe you wanted him to die. Maybe-and this is interesting-maybe you knew he had the tooth cap and you reached into his mouth with your bare hands and pierced it for him. He was weak, after all, and your fingerprints were all over his face. It would've been a cinch for a strong man like you. Maybe you even did it on Grainger's orders-why not? You're blaming the poor man for everything else." Milo answered with silence.

  When they'd gotten to Grainger's briefing, the morning before he flew to Paris to test Angela Yates, Fitzhugh cut in again.

  "So you did finally ask him about the Tiger."

  "But he put me off," said Milo. "What was so hard about showing me the file? That's what I didn't understand. Not then. It took a long time before I got it. Too long."

  "Got what?" Milo didn't answer, so Fitzhugh leaned back, crossed one knee over the other, and said, "I know he showed you the file, Milo. When you got back from Paris. So I hope you're not going to suggest that, because I hired Benjamin Michael Harris, I'm somehow connected to this. Poor recruitment skills still aren't a crime in this country."

  Milo stared back, wondering if he should call this next part one of the lies or an omission. Sometimes the distinctions were baffling. "No. I knew that your involvement couldn't explain all the secrecy. Tom wasn't in league with you."

  "Right. He was in league with the Tiger."

  "Which is why it took so long to figure out," Milo explained. "Grainger gave me the file to put, me off the scent; he wanted me sniffing in your direction."

  Fitzhugh seemed satisfied with this.

  It went on, Fitzhugh cutting in frequently for clarification, or to feign confusion. When Milo said he'd stayed on in Paris because of his suspicions, Fitzhugh said, "But you'd seen Einner's evidence. You saw the pictures."

  "Yes, but what did they prove? Was she feeding Herbert Williams information, or was Williams feeding her information? Or was she being unwittingly pulled into someone else's game? Or was Williams spying on her to keep track of her investigation? Or was she actually guilty, and the man in the red beard just happened to be running both the Tiger and Angela, selling information to the Chinese? If so, who did he represent? It wasn't a single-person operation. Maybe the Chinese ran Herbert Williams as well."

  "It's a goddamned Chinese puzzle."

  "It sure is."

  Fitzhugh answered his buzzing phone. He nodded to the caller, grunted a few times, then hung up. "Listen. It's been a long day, and you've done extremely well. We can delve deeper into the conspiracy tomorrow, okay?" He patted the table-his side, the clean side. "Excellent day's work."

  "Then maybe I can get some food," said Milo.

  "Sure. We'll also find you some clothes," Fitzhugh promised as he pushed back his chair and stood, smiling. "I really am pleased. And the details-they put a human face on all this miserable stuff. Tomorrow, I think, we should get a little more of that human face. Tina, for instance. Maybe we can discuss how you two are getting along. How things are with your darling stepdaughter."

  "Daughter," Milo said.

  "What?"

  "Daughter. Not stepdaughter."

  "Right." Fitzhugh raised his hands in an expression of defeat. "Whatever you say, Milo."

  As his inquisitor left the room, Milo remembered Primakov's instructions. Three lousy lies, Milo. You've lived your whole life lying, why change now?

  8

  "I don't want you to be scared," Janet Simmons had whispered when Tina returned home. "We've located your grandfather-in-law, Milo's maternal grandfather, and I think it's only right you come along."

  "That's impossible. They're all dead."

  "Well, there's only one way to find out for sure."

  Now, in a twin-engine Spirit Airlines flight from LaGuardia to Myrtle Beach, Tina held on to Stephanie, who had insisted on a window seat.

  For her daughter, the sudden shift in agenda was exciting. An overnight trip to the beach, they'd called it. Christ, Little Miss was a good sport. How much had she suffered since two weeks ago, when, at Disney World, she'd woken to find a Homeland Security thug in her bedroom, looking for her father, who had suddenly disappeared? Why should she have to deal with any of this?

  "How you doing, hon?"

  Stephanie yawned into her cupped hand, staring at the leaden clouds. "I'm a little tired.”

  “Me, too."

  "Are we really going on vacation?"

  "Sort of. A short one. I just need to talk to someone. After that we can chill out on the beach. Sound all right?"

  She shrugged in a way that worried Tina, but said, "Why's she coming?"

  "You don't like Ms. Simmons?" Tina asked while, across the aisle, Simmons punched at her Blac
kBerry. "I don't think she likes Dad."

  A good sport, and smart to boot. Smarter, perhaps, than her mother.

  Again, she wondered why she had agreed to this sudden trip. Did she really trust Special Agent Janet Simmons? Not entirely, but the carrot was too great: to finally meet a member of Milo's family. It was less about trust than curiosity. Really.

  They landed a little before eight, and Tina roused Stephanie as they descended. From the window, they saw darkness marked by pinpoints of light that died out with the coastline. They weren't met by any special agents in the Myrtle Beach airport, and Simmons even had to take care of her own rental Taurus. She got driving directions from her BlackBerry.

  It was Thursday evening, but it was also the height of summer, and they passed open-topped jeeps full of horny, shirtless college boys in knee-length shorts and stupid baseball caps, waving tallboys of Miller and Bud. Smiling at their attention, bottle-blondes gave them reasons to holler. Music spilled out from the clubs, though all they heard was the monotone thumpa-thumpa throb of dance music rhythms.

  The Covenant Towers, nestled in a lush, wooded area on the north side of town, wasn't far from the beach, and it consisted of two long, five-story towers separated by grass and trees. "Pretty," Stephanie judged from her seat.

  According to Deirdre Shamus, the pink-cheeked, perky director who had stayed beyond her regular shift to find out exactly why Homeland Security was interested in one of their residents, Covenant Towers was not a "nursing home," though medical facilities were on-site. "We encourage independence here."

  William T. Perkins lived on the first floor of Tower Two, and Shamus brought them all the way to his door, greeting every resident they passed with overwrought enthusiasm. Finally, they stopped at number fourteen, a studio apartment. Shamus knocked, intoning, "Mr. Perkins! Your visitors have arrived!"