The Tourist Read online

  "Milo Weaver?" said a thin, wiry voice.

  "Uh huh."

  "Einner. You landed all right?”

  “Well, yes, I-"

  " New York tells me you've got the package. Do you?”

  “I hope so."

  "Answer yes or no, please.”

  “Sure."

  "The subject takes lunch every day at twelve thirty precisely. I suggest you wait for her outside her place of work."

  Feeling more desperate for his nostalgic interlude, Milo looked for an ashtray; there was none. He tapped out a Tennessee-bought Davidoff, deciding to ash into the cup and drink the wine from the bottle. "That'll give me time to nap. It was a long flight."

  "Oh, right," said Einner. "I forgot how old you are."

  Milo was too stunned to say what his mind muttered: I'm only thirty-seven.

  "Don't worry, Weaver. We'll have you out of here in time for your vacation. I don't even know why they bothered flying you in."

  "We done?"

  "I understand the subject is an old friend of yours.”

  “Yes." Milo took a drag, losing his grip on his sense of humor, while someone nearby coughed loudly. "Don't let that get in the way."

  Milo suppressed the urge to shout a reply. Instead, he hung up as, a few seats away, a young man started a coughing fit into his hand, glaring at him.

  Milo suddenly realized why. Round eyes watched him tap ash into his plastic cup, and he waited for the hammer to fall. It was swift-the cashier, having noticed the crime in action, called over a stock boy who had been crouched by the canned coffee mixtures, and he followed her pointed finger to Milo 's corner. The boy, eighteen or so, wiped his hands on his orange apron as he weaved expertly between tables toward him. "Monsieur, ici vous ne pouvez pas fumer."

  Milo considered standing his ground, then noticed the big sign with the symbol for no smoking on the wall, a few feet from him. He raised his hands, smiling, took one last drag, and dropped the cigarette into the plastic cup. He poured in some of the wretched wine to extinguish it. The stock boy, behind a bashful grin, was relieved not to have to throw this man out.

  Grainger had booked him into the Hotel Bradford Elysees, one of those classical, overpriced monstrosities along the Rue Saint Philippe du Roule that, were anyone to ever audit the books of the Department of Tourism, would be the first thing to go. He asked the front desk for a wake-up call at eleven thirty-about four hours from then-and picked up a Herald Tribune. In the ornate Bradford Elysees elevator, he read headlines. They weren't pretty.

  More car bombs in Iraq, killing eight U.S. and Canadian soldiers, and more riots in Khartoum, Sudan: a photo of a full square of angry men-thousands-waving placard photographs of the dead Mullah Salih Ahmad, a white-bearded holy man with a white taqiyah covering his bald scalp. Other signs in Arabic, the caption told him, called for the head of President Omar al-Bashir. On page eight, he found a single-paragraph story saying that Homeland Security had apprehended a suspected political assassin, whom they refused to name.

  Yet the most important news was unwritten: Milo Weaver had arrived in Paris to set up one of his oldest friends.

  Mawkishly, he remembered when both of them were young field agents in London. Lots of codes and clandestine meetings in out-of- the-way pubs and arguments with British intelligence about the mess their countries were just starting to make of the post-communist world. Angela was smart and stable-a near-contradiction in their business-and she had a sense of humor. In intelligence, those three things together are so rare that when you find them, you don't let go. Given the amount of time they spent together, everyone assumed they were a couple. This served them both. It kept her homosexuality out of conversations, and saved Milo from diplomats' wives setting him up with their nieces.

  For two months after the Venice fiasco, Angela couldn't speak to him-that's how much killing her boss, Frank Dawdle, had disturbed her. But the next year, when Milo became simultaneously a husband and a dad to a baby girl, Angela came to the wedding in Texas and showered happy praise on Tina. They had remained in touch, and when Angela came to town Tina always insisted they take her out to dinner.

  He lay on the hotel bed without undressing and considered calling Tom. What to say? He'd already argued Angela's innocence. Should he report that James Einner was a dunce, unequipped to handle the operation? Tom didn't care what Milo thought of Einner.

  The truth-and for a moment it disturbed him-was that, six years ago, as a Tourist, he never would have questioned any of this. The job would have been simple and clean. But he wasn't a Tourist anymore, and for that he had no regrets.

  11

  The American embassy was separated from the Champs-Elysees by the long, rigorous Jardin des Champs-Elysees. He parked along Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt and walked the length of the park, passing old Parisians on benches with bags of bread crumbs dangling between their knees, luring pigeons, while the midday sun burned hot and moist.

  Paris in July is a bleak place to be. The locals have started to flee on their welfare-state vacations, and in their place Japanese, Dutch, Americans, Germans, and Brits stand in lines leading to ticket counters, their necks craned, waving brochures at perspiring cheeks, shouting at errant children. The elderly tourists move in packs, clutching walkers or fooling with wheelchairs, while the young stop periodically to bitch about the hard sidewalks and whisper, surprised, about how many black people there are in Paris.

  Most of them, just before leaving home, watched Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron dance through white-bread streets and are shocked by today's rues and avenues. Instead of fat old men with mustaches offering slices of cheese with aperitifs, they're faced with white boys in dirty dreadlocks playing movie sound tracks on beat-up guitars, suspiciously pushy Africans selling miniature Eiffel Towers and models of the Louvre pyramid, and hordes of tourists like themselves, guided by stern elderly French women waving colored flags to keep them on track.

  Of course, there was plenty of beauty in Paris, but, given his reason for being there, Milo could hardly see it.

  He found a bench at the Place de la Concorde end of the park, facing tree-lined Avenue Gabriel and the embassy at number 2. He gave a smile to the old woman beside him on the bench, surrounded by pigeons. She returned his smile and tossed crumbs at the birds. It was only twelve ten, so he searched his pockets for cigarettes before guilt overwhelmed him and he let them be. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the white wedding-cake building with three uniformed marines in its yard wearing automatic rifles.

  "Bonjour, monsieur," said the old woman.

  Milo gave her a half-smile, no more than politeness. "Bonjour."

  "Etes-vous un Touriste?"

  A single tooth was missing from the front of her grin. She winked. He said, "Oui."

  "Monsieur Einner voudrait savoir si vous avez le paquet." Mr. Einner would like to know if you have the package.

  Milo looked around. There-parked along Avenue Gabriel was a white van advertising fleurs. Smoke sputtered from its exhaust pipe, the only running motor in sight.

  Flower delivery van. Einner had obviously spent his training period watching too many old spy movies.

  He turned back and switched to English. "Tell him to come ask himself."

  Her smile remained, but she didn't say anything. The wire she wore had already picked up his words. Across the park, the flower delivery van's rear door popped open, and a tall blond man crossed the grass toward them. James Einner's face was very red, his cherry lips sealed tight. Once he was in punching distance, Milo noticed that his red lips were peeling. He wondered if Einner had herpes, and made a mental note to update his file when he returned to New York.

  "Hello, James," said Milo.

  "Just answer the fucking question, Weaver. You're pissing all over our security."

  Milo smiled; he couldn't help himself. "Yes, James. I have the package."

  Einner saw nothing funny in any of this. "You're not in an office, Weaver. This is the rea
l world."

  Milo watched him storm back to the van. The old woman was stifling a laugh, biting her lip so that her giggles wouldn't be heard over the microphone.

  Twelve thirty came and went, and Milo started to worry. The black half-moon cameras along the edge of the embassy, and others attached to streetlamps, had no doubt been marking his progress. Some pale technicians in the embassy basement, sitting all day in front of monitors, had by now noticed his loitering and put him through the face-recognition software. Certainly they knew who he was. He didn't know whether they'd pass the information on to Angela Yates. If they did, might she choose to stay inside to avoid him? Maybe she suspected the embassy was watching her, and-regardless of her guilt or innocence-would choose to slip away from him entirely. Milo preferred that possibility.

  Then, at twelve fifty-seven, she emerged from the embassy, nodding at the stiff marine who opened the door for her. She wore a light, colorful scarf that showed she was falling for French fashion. A thin mauve sweater was tight over her breasts, and her beige skirt stopped where her patent leather boots started, just below her knees. Five years in Paris had done an excellent job on Angela Yates, formerly of Madison, Wisconsin.

  She left through the electrified gate, continued west on the sidewalk, then north to the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, and stopped to get euros from a Rothschild Banque ATM. Milo followed from his side of the street.

  She was a brisk walker, and perhaps that was a sign she knew he was following. If so, she didn't bother looking back to check. Angela had never been a nervous agent. In London, she'd been the best.

  The last time they'd seen each other, a year ago, had been at the Peter Luger Steak House with Tina and Stephanie. In his memory there was a lot of laughter. Angela had come to town for some seminar, and over two-inch steaks and baked potatoes she imitated the various speakers' monotone voices. Even Stef had found the humor in it.

  She turned up Rue Duras and stepped into a small, packed bistro with gilded windows. Milo crossed to her side of the street, galloping around a wild Renault, and stood by the framed menu, peering through the glass as she approached the bar. A fat man in an apron greeted her with big smiles. This was her regular. The manager put a hand on her shoulder and guided her between hunched backs, around harried waiters, to the far wall, and a small table for two. Perhaps, Milo thought as he entered, she was expecting company.

  The manager, having finished with Angela, scuffled up to him with an expression of sympathetic pain. "Je suis desole, monsieur. Comme vous pouvez voir, pas d'place."

  "It's all right," he answered in English. "I'm joining the lady."

  The manager gave a nod before running off to evict a young couple that had wandered in behind him-a tall, handsome man and a butch-looking woman with swollen eyes.

  As he approached her table, Angela stared at an opaque sheet of paper with the day's specials written in calligraphy, black hair hanging over her face. When Milo reached the opposite chair, she looked up and, with an expression of shock in her lavender eyes, said, " Milo! Holy shit! What are you doing here?"

  Yes, she'd seen him on the embassy cameras. And, yes, she'd expected company-him. He leaned down to kiss her flushed cheeks. "I was out on the street, looked up, and saw a beautiful lesbian walking in here."

  "Sit down, you old fart. Tell me all about absolutely everything."

  They ordered a carafe of house red and quickly fell into the rhythm of small talk they had both been trained to use to their advantage in spy school. But neither of them was trying, which was nice. It was good to see her again. Milo wanted to know what she'd been up to.

  There hadn't been much, she admitted. A year ago, not long after their night at Peter Luger's, she'd had a falling-out with her girlfriend-some French aristocrat-and since then she'd focused entirely on her work. Never much of a social butterfly, Angela compensated for her heartbreak by rising in rank. She not only ran the embassy's CIA station but also oversaw the entire diplomatic network in France, covering consulates and American presence posts in Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Rennes, Strasbourg, Marseille, Nice, and Toulouse.

  She was proud of her accomplishments- Milo could see this. She'd personally directed the uncovering of three leaks in the last nine months. The excitement in her face when she described-in abstracts, of course-the capture of the last one was classic Angela, the same excited face she'd used when Milo told her, six years ago, that he was getting married. She seemed much the same as she'd been back then and, notably, was still more of a patriot than Milo had ever been.

  "It's infuriating," she told him. "You listen to the French rant about how we're a lumbering military giant, that we're making the world unsafe for everyone. None of them see our mistakes as honest mistakes. Know what I mean? Every time we do something they don't like, we're accused of trying to control the world's oil, or trying to nudge Europe off the world stage." She shook her head. "Don't they realize we're in an unprecedented situation? No country in history has ever had as much power and responsibility as we've got. We're the first truly global empire. Of course we're going to make mistakes!"

  It was an interesting perspective, even if he didn't agree with it. Despite Grainger's love of that word, Milo no longer went for the easy label of "empire" to describe his country. Instead, he thought it was a vanity committed by Americans who wanted to see Rome in the mirror, who wanted to mythologize themselves. But all he said was, "Do the French give you trouble?"

  "Behind the scenes, away from the public, they're very cooperative. In fact, they've been helping me on a pet project."

  "Yes?"

  She smiled, tight-lipped, her cheeks flushed. "It could be a major coup for my career. The big fish.”

  “You've got me interested."

  Angela gave him a flirtatious wink. "An animal name.”

  “Animal?"

  "Grrowl," she breathed, a kitschy seduction. He, too, was reddening. "The Tiger."

  12

  It hurt to see how proud she was as she leaned forward, whispering the story of an investigation she'd been running the last eight months. "Since November. After he took out Michel Bouchard, the foreign minister. Remember that?"

  Milo did. Grainger had sent Tripplehorn to Marseille to look into the assassination, but the French had quickly tired of his questions. "We sent someone, but he was stonewalled."

  She opened a hand in an expression of c'est la vie. "I had a friend, Paul, working the case. Knew him through the Marseille consulate. Unlike a lot of his coworkers, he didn't have a problem accepting my help. I knew it was the Tiger. I knew it."

  "All I heard was that, after a few months, the French verified it was him."

  "French, my ass. It was me. With Paul's help, of course." She winked, drank more wine, and said, "Bouchard was with his mistress in the Sofitel. A little vacation away from the wife." She cleared her throat. "Very continental."

  Milo smiled.

  "Anyway, they'd been to some party-really, these people don't even try to hide their indiscretions-and came back roaring drunk. They got to the hotel, and his bodyguards walked him up to the room. It had been searched beforehand, of course, and they left him alone. The usual followed, and then, early the next morning, the girl woke up screaming." Angela reached for her wine again, looked at it, but didn't drink. "She hadn't heard a thing. The coroner said his throat was cut around three in the morning. The killer had gotten in through the balcony, done his job, and slipped out again. They found some marks on the roof, where he'd climbed down. Rope.”

  “And the girl?"

  "Basket case. She and the bed were soaked in blood. Paul told me she'd had a dream about pissing herself. That was as close as she came to being aware of anything."

  Milo topped off their glasses, emptying the carafe.

  "There was no reason to think it was the Tiger. A man like Michel Bouchard has so many enemies. Hell, even we would've been happy to see him go. You heard his Armistice Day speech?"

  Milo shook his head. />
  "He accused us of trying to take over Africa. The French think they're the guardians of that continent, and he's been lobbying us to release AIDS drugs willy-nilly to everyone."

  "Something wrong with that?"

  Angela looked at him, and he wasn't sure what the look meant. "Maybe, but like the rest of Europe he sees our refusal as a conspiracy to, I don't know, depopulate the continent so we can roll in and suck up its oil. Or something like that," she said and drank. "Anyway, he was killed ten days after that speech."

  "You think we knocked him off?"

  She let out a half-laugh. "Please. A French foreign minister? Give me someone important. No, it looked like the oldest reason-money. He was up to his neck in property speculation and had run up too many loans. He was going to dark places for his capital. The man invested millions in Uganda and the Congo while he was negotiating their development loans. If he'd survived, he'd be facing charges. Luckily for him, one of his lenders took care of the problem." Another shrug. "The man died a hero."

  "And the Tiger?"

  As she took a breath, Angela's eyes sparkled. This, then, was where she entered the story. "Luck, really. Like I said, I was convinced it was the Tiger. It didn't match his modus, but what other known assassin has the audacity to pull this off? Answer: No one. So I asked around, and it turned out that Tom Grainger-he's still your boss, right?" Milo nodded.

  "Well, Tom had three photos of him. From Milan, Frankfurt, and the Arab Emirates. Paul and I went through all the hotel security footage. Took forever, I can tell you, and we still came up empty. But I persisted. You know how persistent I can be-hey, what's that look?"

  Milo didn't know he had a look, and said as much. In fact, he was wondering why Grainger hadn't told him about the photo request. Angela let it go.

  "We went public. By then it was January, and it was the only thing to do. I printed up the Italian shot and sent it all around Marseille. Stores, banks, hotels. The works. Nothing. Came up completely dry. Weeks passed. I returned to Paris. Then, in February, Paul called. Some teller at the Union Bank of Switzerland said she recognized the face."