The Tourist Page 8

  "Angela? From-our-wedding Angela?"

  "They think she's selling information."

  "Come on." She made a face. "Angela's the poster girl for Us-Against-Them. She's more patriotic than John Wayne."

  "That's why I need to go," said Milo, looking up as Wile E. Coyote climbed out of a sooty hole after having plummeted a mile. "Those internal investigation guys-they won't take that into consideration."

  "Okay. But you're back by Saturday. We will fly to Disney World without you. Isn't that right, Little Miss?"

  "For sure," Stephanie said to the television.

  Milo held up his hands. "Promise."

  Tina rubbed his knee, and he pulled her close, smelling her freshly washed hair as he gazed at the television. That's when he realized he'd been wrong: Wile E. Coyote wasn't subject to the same laws of physics as the rest of us. Against all odds, he always survived.

  Tina sniffed, then pushed him away. "Jesus, Milo. You stink."

  9

  To visit the tower at the intersection of West Thirty-first and the Avenue of the Americas, you first had to know that you were being tracked by cameras that covered every inch of sidewalk and road around the building. So by the time you entered, you were expected, and Gloria Martinez, the dour forty-year-old Company desk clerk, was ready with your ID. Milo made a sport of flirting with Gloria, and she in turn made a sport of rebuffing him. She knew his wife was, as she put it, half- Latina, and because of this she occasionally thought it important to remind him, "Watch out, and keep sharp things away from your bed."

  Milo accepted this wisdom along with the breast-pocket ID, smiled for the camera attached to her terminal, and promised her, for the third time, "a secret vacation in Palm Springs." In reply, she drew a cutting finger across her neck.

  At the next stage of entry, by the six-pack of elevators, stood three enormous football players they called doormen. These men held the keys that allowed access to the four secret floors, stretching from nineteen to twenty-two, that constituted Tom Grainger's domain. On this day, Lawrence, a tall, hairless black man, took him up. Even after five years of the same daily grind, Lawrence still waved a metal detector over Milo 's body in the elevator. It bleeped around his hip, and, like every day, Milo pulled out his keys, phone, and loose change for examination.

  They passed the nineteenth floor, that eerily sterile interview level of narrow corridors and numbered doors where, when necessary, the Geneva Convention became a joke. The twentieth was empty, set aside for future expansion, and twenty-one contained the extensive library of printed Tourism files, a backup of the computer originals. The doors finally opened on the twenty-second floor.

  Were a visitor to accidentally reach the Department of Tourism, he would find nothing out of the ordinary. It was an enormous open-plan office, stuffed with low-walled cubicles where pale Travel Agents hunched over computers, digging through mountains of information in order to write up their biweekly reports-or, in the vernacular, Tour Guides-for Tom Grainger. It had the feel, Milo always thought, of a Dickensian accounting office.

  Before 9/11 and the collapse of the previous office at 7 World Trade Center, the Department of Tourism had been divided along geographic lines. Six sections devoted to six continents. Afterward, as this new office was put together and all the intelligence agencies were being scrutinized, Tourism rearranged itself along thematic lines. At present, there were seven sections. Milo 's section focused on terrorism and organized crime, and the many points at which they intersected.

  Each section employed nine Travel Agents and one supervisor, giving the Avenue of the Americas (not counting an undisclosed number of Tourists spread around the globe) a staff of seventy-one, including its director, Tom Grainger.

  One-quarter, Grainger had said. One-quarter of these people would have to go.

  The old man was in a meeting with Terence Fitzhugh, Langley 's assistant director of clandestine operations, who sometimes arrived unexpectedly to address aspects of Grainger's incompetence. While Milo waited outside the office, Harry Lynch, a twenty-something Travel Agent from Milo's section, frog-marched a bundle of laser-printed sheets down the hall, stopping when he noticed Milo. "How'd it go?"

  Milo blinked at him. "How'd what go?"

  " Tennessee. I caught the radio traffic late Tuesday, and I knew-I knew-that this was our guy. It took a while to verify, but I had a feeling in my spine."

  Lynch felt a lot of things in his spine, a gift Milo was suspicious of. "Your backbone was right, Harry. Great job."

  Lynch glowed with pleasure and ran back to his cubicle.

  Grainger's door opened, and Fitzhugh stepped out. He towered over Grainger as he pointed at Milo with a manila envelope. "Weaver, right?" Milo admitted this was fact, and complimented his long memory-they hadn't spoken in half a year, and then only briefly. In a show of comradely affection, Fitzhugh slapped Milo 's shoulder. "Too bad about the Tiger, but you just can't predict these things, can you?"

  Grainger, behind him, was noticeably silent.

  "But we're rid of one more terrorist," Fitzhugh continued, stroking the thick silver hair above his ear. "That scores one for the good guys."

  Dutifully, Milo agreed with the sporting metaphor. "So, what's on your plate now?”

  “Just Paris."

  " Paris?" Fitzhugh echoed, and Milo noticed a flicker of apprehension in his features. He turned to Grainger. "You got the budget to send this guy to Paris, Tom?"

  "It's Yates," Grainger informed him.

  "Yates?" Fitzhugh repeated again; perhaps he was hard of hearing. "She's one of his oldest friends. It's the only sure way of pulling this off."

  "Gotcha," Fitzhugh said, then patted Milo 's arm and walked away, singing, "Oo-la-la!"

  "Get in here," said Grainger.

  The old man returned to his Aeron, settling against the bright backdrop of Manhattan, and placed an ankle on the corner of his broad desk. He did that a lot, as if to remind visitors whose office this really was.

  "What did he want?" Milo asked as he took a seat.

  "Like I told you, they're reaming me over the budget, and then you go and mention Paris.”

  “Sorry."

  Grainger waved the problem away. "One thing before we get into this. Your new friend, Simmons, has apparently done a rush-job autopsy on the Tiger. She wants to prove you killed him. You didn't give her any reason to think that, did you?"

  "I thought I was very cooperative. How did you hear about the autopsy?"

  "Sal. Our friend at Homeland."

  Grainger wasn't the only one with a friend in Homeland Security. Milo remembered the hubbub over the president's announcement, nine days after the Towers, that he was establishing a new intelligence agency. The Company, the Feds, and the NSA lined up to squeeze in as many of their own employees as possible. "Sal" was Tourism's plant, and periodically Grainger talked with him through an anonymous e-mail service called Nexcel. Milo had used it a few times himself.

  "As you suspected," Grainger continued, "it was cyanide. Hollow tooth. According to Homeland's doctor, he only had a week or so left to him anyway. However, your prints are all over his face. Want to explain?"

  "At the beginning of the interview, I attacked him."

  "Why?"

  "I told you before-he brought up Tina and Stef.”

  “You lost your cool.”

  “I was short on sleep."

  "Okay." Grainger reached out to tap the oak desktop, referring Milo to an unmarked gray file in the center. "Here's the Angela thing. Go ahead."

  Milo had to get out of his chair to retrieve the dull-looking folder that showed off the newest Company security technique: Top secret files were now left unmarked, to better avoid attracting interest. He left it closed in his lap. "What about the Swiss clinic?"

  Grainger pursed his wide lips. "As he said. Registered under Hamad al-Abari."

  "So you'll put Tripplehorn on it?"

  "We've only got eleven Tourists in Europe right now. Elliot died
last week near Bern. The rest, including Tripplehorn, are all occupied."

  "Elliot? How?"

  "Accident on the Autobahn. He'd been off the grid a week before we finally matched him up with the body."

  Because of security, Milo didn't know any of the Tourists' real names, their ages, or even what they looked like-only Grainger and a few others, including Fitzhugh, had that level of clearance. The news of Elliot's death still bothered him. He scratched his ear, wondering about the man he only knew through a code name. How old was he? Did he have children? "You're sure it was accidental?"

  "Even if I wasn't, I doubt we'd get the money for a proper investigation. That's the level of purgatory we've entered." When he saw the doubt in Milo 's face, his tone softened. "No, Milo. It was an accident. Head-on, and the other driver was killed, too."

  Milo finally opened the file. A couple of sheets of printed facts and a photograph-a mug shot of a fat Chinese man in a People's Liberation Army colonel's uniform.

  "The Brits discovered it," Grainger said. "Well, 'discover' is a strong word. They were lucky bastards. All routine, apparently. Six was keeping an eye on the opposition."

  In Milo's experience, MI6 didn't have the manpower to keep an eye on each foreign diplomat in the country, even ones as important as the one in this photo-Colonel Yi Lien-but he didn't interrupt.

  "The trip wasn't strange. The colonel took the ferry over to France every weekend.”

  “No Chunnel?"

  "Fear of closed spaces-that's in his file. So he does the ferry, then drives on to a little cottage he's got in the Brittany countryside."

  "Bought under his name?"

  Grainger reached for his computer's mouse, but he was sitting too far back and had to drop his foot in order to reach it. "Of course not. Under a…" He clicked twice and squinted at the screen. "Yes. Renee Bernier. Twenty-six, from Paris.”

  “Mistress."

  "Budding novelist, it says here." Another click. "She uses the place to write, I suppose."

  "And meet with the colonel.”

  “Everybody's got to pay rent."

  "Walk me through this," said Milo. "Colonel Yi Lien takes the ferry over to his French chalet. Spends the weekend with his girl. Then he boards the ferry. And drops dead?"

  "Not dead. Heart attack."

  "And MI6 is there to resuscitate him."

  "Of course."

  "And they go through his bag.”

  “What's with the attitude, Milo?”

  “Sorry, Tom. Go on."

  "Well, the colonel's a paranoid sort. Doesn't trust anyone in his own embassy, and for good reason. He's sixty-four, unmarried, with a declining career. He knows that pretty soon someone's going to suggest it's time to pack up for Beijing, and he doesn't want that. He likes London. He likes France."

  "And why wouldn't he?"

  "Right. But since he trusts no one, he keeps his laptop with him at all times. Big security risk. So our friends in MI6 took the opportunity, on the ferry, to copy his hard drive."

  "Very resourceful."

  "Aren't they?" Grainger clicked his mouse again, and his printer, buried in the bookshelf alongside a row of untouched antiquarian books, hummed as it spat out a page.

  "And Colonel Lien? What happened to him?"

  "Irony of ironies. He was recalled to Beijing not long after the heart attack."

  Since Grainger wasn't going anywhere, Milo retrieved the printout.

  It was an interoffice memo from the U.S. embassy in Paris, top secret. A relay from the ambassador to Frank Barnes, the head of the

  Diplomatic Security Service in France, concerning new guidelines in dealing with the Chinese ambassador to France, who would temporarily be monitored by a three-man team.

  "And Six just shared this with us for free?"

  "They're our special friends," he said, smiling. "Actually, one of my personal special friends passed this on to me."

  "Does your special friend think Angela passed this on to Lien? Is that what Six thinks?"

  "Calm down, Milo. All they did was pass on the memo. The rest, we figured out on our own."

  Like Tina, Milo still couldn't believe that Angela Yates, "poster girl for Us-Against-Them," would give away state secrets. "Has this been verified? The ferry; the heart attack?"

  "Like I told you yesterday," Grainger said with theatrical patience, "Yi Lien's coronary made the British papers. It's public record."

  Milo dropped the memo on Grainger's desk. "So what's the evidence?"

  "That paper went through three sets of hands. The ambassador and Frank Barnes, of course. And the embassy's chief of security. That would be Angela Yates. We've cleared Barnes, and I hope you won't demand an exegesis of the ambassador."

  He'd already listened to this overview yesterday in Grainger's car. But now, the physical reality of the memo was making him queasy.

  "When was the last time you saw Yates?”

  “About a year. But we've kept in touch.”

  “So you're still on good terms?" Milo shrugged, then nodded.

  "Good." Grainger looked at his mouse-it was a bulbous thing with a blue-lit scroll wheel. "Did you and she ever…?‹“

  “No."

  "Oh." He sounded disappointed. "Doesn't matter. I want you to give her this." He opened a drawer and took out a black, thumb-sized (lash drive, five hundred megabytes. It clattered on Milo 's side of the desk.

  "What's on it?"

  "A mock-up report on Chinese oil concerns in Kazakhstan. The kind of thing they'll want to see."

  "I don't know, Tom. You may have cleared Barnes, but you still haven't convinced me Angela's to blame."

  "It's not your job to be convinced," Grainger told him. "You'll find out more from your contact. Trust me, there is evidence."

  "But if Yi Lien's gone, then…"

  "Networks always survive recalls, Milo. You know that. What we don't know is who's at the top of the food chain now."

  Milo looked at Grainger's hairless scalp, thinking this over. It was a simple enough matter, and he was glad to be brought in; he could at least make sure they dealt fairly with Angela. But the Company didn't work like that-it didn't buy international air tickets because it felt like being fair. He was being brought in because Angela trusted him. "How long will it take?"

  "Oh, not long," Grainger said, pleased the subject had changed. "You fly there, meet her, and hand over the drive. The story is that she'll hold it for a contact named Jim Harrington who'll arrive in Paris on Monday to pick it up. That'll give her"-he raised his hands- "if, of course, it is her-only two days to copy it."

  "Is Harrington real?"

  "He's flying to Paris from Beirut. He knows what to do, but he doesn't know why.”

  “I see."

  "You'll get it done in no time. Hop an evening flight and be back home by Saturday morning.”

  “That's encouraging.”

  “Don't be sarcastic."

  Milo knew why he was annoyed. It wasn't that he'd missed his coffee that morning, nor that he was feeling an acute desire for a cigarette. It wasn't even the miserable fact that he was preparing to set up a friend for treason-that only made him sick. He said, "When were you planning to tell me about the Tiger?"

  Grainger, looking very innocent, said, "What about him?"

  "That he was one of ours. That he was a Tourist."

  The old man's expression lost its innocence. "You believe that?"

  "I've spent the last six years tracking him. Don't you think this piece of information might have helped?"

  Grainger stared at him for about ten seconds, then rapped his knuckles on the desk. "Let's talk when you get back. Okay? We don't have time for it now."

  "The story's really that long?"

  "It is. Your plane leaves at five, and you need to type up some explanation of the Blackdale fiasco that doesn't make us look like complete idiots. Also, put in all your receipts-I'm not paying for undocumented expenses anymore."

  Milo grunted an affirma
tive.

  "I'll tell James Einner to expect you. He's your liaison in Paris."

  "Einner?" said Milo, suddenly awake. "You really think we need a Tourist for this?"

  "Overkill never killed anyone," Grainger said. "Now go. Everything's been forwarded to your terminal."

  "And the Tiger?"

  "As I said. When you get back."

  10

  Milo had always felt comfortable in large airports. It wasn't that he loved to fly-that, particularly after the Towers, had become an increasingly unbearable experience with its various secure levels of undress. The only things he enjoyed forty thousand feet above sea level were the cleverly packaged airline meals and the day's music choices on his iPod.

  Once he was on the ground again, though, in a properly designed airport, he always felt that he was wandering through a tiny city. Charles de Gaulle, for instance, was properly designed. Its striking sixties architecture-what designers in the sixties imagined a beautiful future would look like-made for a strangely nostalgic utopia of crowd control architecture and consumer pleasures, reinforced by the soft ding over loudspeakers followed by a lovely female voice listing the cities of the world.

  Nostalgia was a good word for it, a false nostalgia for a time he was too young to know. It was why he loved Eurovision winners from 1965, the unreal Technicolor of those midcareer Bing Crosby films, and (despite his promises to the contrary) the perfect pair of a Davidoff cigarette and a bracing vodka, served at an airport bar.

  He hadn't wandered Charles de Gaulle in years, and he soon realized things had changed. He passed a McDonald's and some bakeries, settling on the vaguely precious La Terrasse de Paris. There was no bar, instead a cafeteria-style area where he searched in vain for vodka. The only things available were small wines-red and white. Frustrated, he settled on four deciliters of some chilled mass-market Cabernet that cost nine euros. His plastic cup, the cashier told him, was complimentary.

  Milo found an empty table by the rear wall, bumping into backs and luggage on the way, and settled down. Six in the morning, and the place was packed. His cell phone sang its irritating song, and it took him a moment to find the thing in his inner pocket, private number. "Yeah?"