The Nearest Exit (44 page)

“Not staying at home anymore?”

“Just meet me, will you?”

He hopped a bus to Thirty-fourth, three blocks north of the office, and found Weaver in the hectic, crowded store, sitting on a
bench with an open knapsack full of stapled sheets. Drummond settled beside him, his open briefcase between them, and started leafing through one of the copies. He was almost surprised to receive an actual CV for Milo Weaver, with dates and fake CIA departments listed, charting a fictional but appropriately slow career advancement. While he read through it, unfolding pages in an elaborate and noisy game of distraction, Weaver removed the seven FBI files from his briefcase and slipped them into his knapsack.

As they went about their ruse, Drummond tried to get a sense of who among the crowd were Weaver’s shadows. The blond girl with the pigtails and the backpack? The biker with the handlebar mustache? The effeminate male duo holding posters for a rave? He had no idea.

Weaver was already getting up, telling him he didn’t need advice on the CV. He just needed a job. “You get that to Gallagher and let me do the rest, okay?”

“Sure, Milo. I’ll do just that.”

When he returned to the office, he gave Saeed Atassi the go-ahead to leak his Tour Guide, then went to Harry Lynch’s cubicle. The nervous Travel Agent looked terrified by the personal visit. Drummond squatted beside him. “Harry, I hear you’re a whiz with the machines.”

“I’m all right, sir.”

“Well, I need a little wizardry. Soon you’re going to see Tourists Klein and Jones start to move. They’re coming here. Is there a way you can arrange it so that no one else knows?”

A smile appeared on Harry Lynch’s face.

In alphabetical order, they were:

Derek Abbott (Legislative Assistant)

Jane Chan (Scheduler)

Maximilian Grzybowski (Chief of Staff)

William Howington (Legislative Assistant)

Susan Jackson (Press Secretary)

David Pearson (Legislative Director)

Raymond Salamon (Legislative Assistant)

It was a small staff by congressional standards, most of the legwork accomplished by a disproportionately large army of interns. What that meant, Milo realized, was that each staff member had a larger share of the federal administrative and clerical employee allowance—and a senator that paid better than others knew he was buying loyalty.

Each of the seven was represented by a manila folder he laid out on the card table in the dusty safe house on Grand Concourse, across from Franz Sigel Park. It was nearly five, and he’d spent the hours after his meeting with Drummond on four different forms of transport, leading his shadows over into New Jersey and then evading them by bus, boat, taxi, and back alleys before doubling back by
bus via the George Washington Bridge and heading up to the Bronx. With the evening came a chilly breeze that leaked in through the fire-escape window he’d broken in order to get inside, then covered with cardboard from a still-full crate of toilet paper. Only now could he begin to go through the files.

Each contained biographical information. The one whose name he had obviously zeroed in on, Jane Chan, did still have family in the old country, but in Hong Kong, not the mainland. Still, since China’s takeover in 1997, it wasn’t inconceivable the Guoanbu had made her family’s continued safety contingent on its American relative’s cooperation.

Of the rest, Chinese connections were either unknown or, in three cases, tangential. Derek Abbott had previously worked for Representative Lester Wharton of Illinois, until Wharton was arrested for receiving gifts from the Chinese honorary consul in Chicago, in exchange for trade legislation.

Susan Jackson had studied Chinese culture in college and was semifluent in Mandarin—which made little difference when she was arrested in Beijing in 2005 for joining with farmers to protest their land being taken to make room for the Olympic Stadium. China had since denied her any more visas.

David—Dave, he remembered—Pearson had visited Shanghai twice in the last decade for vacations with a Chinese girlfriend he had since broken up with and whose calls he avoided entirely.

At eight, Drummond called to ask if he was making any progress with his job search, and he gave a halfhearted yes but pointed out that there were still too many options. “Well, narrow it down,” Drummond said, stating the obvious.

“I could do that,” he answered, “but that doesn’t mean my criteria are any good.” The job search metaphor wasn’t perfect, but with a little imagination it could work.

“Maybe you need some help.”

“You got anyone?”

“A couple of guys who specialize in placements. They should be in touch by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Thanks, Alan.”

He put together a dinner of what the safe house had available: canned cannellini beans, frozen stir-fry vegetables, and rice. For some reason there was no salt in the apartment, so he made do with a bottle of soy sauce.

As he ate his heavy, bland meal, he felt a wave of doubt. What did he really have? An inconsistency between stories. A time problem. That was all he really had, in the end. He was acting like Henry Gray, starting with a conspiracy and rereading all the known facts so that they fit his theory. It was bad journalism; it was bad intelligence.

Not only were his clues scarce, but he began to question his own motives. Was he really through with Nathan Irwin? Or was his unconscious taking charge now, creating phantoms in order to target the senator?

He really didn’t know. Regardless, though they were scarce, the facts did exist, and even Drummond agreed they should be looked into.

The files, he realized with some despair, would tell him nothing. There were three primary ways of gaining an asset in a competing agency: threats, bribery, and ideology. No matter the aides’ connections to China, Xin Zhu could have visited any of them with blackmail material, an offer of money, or even an appeal to their political philosophy. Ever since the start of the Iraq War, plenty of Company men and women had grown disillusioned with their own employer. Even Milo had had enough, making him a prime candidate for some other country’s attentions—so why not some senatorial aide?

So if the mole couldn’t be discovered, it had to be provoked into showing itself.

To provoke a mole into showing itself would require his complete involvement.

Though he wanted to believe otherwise, he was already involved. He’d been neck deep in it ever since he chose to sit down and read that extensive file on Xin Zhu, and he voluntarily submerged himself when he brought the story to Drummond. He’d even stepped out of his own life to look into it, while Irwin’s thugs kept trying to track him.

He called Drummond back but heard Penelope’s voice. “Hello, Mr. Weaver. He’s on the toilet.”

“Pen!” Drummond shouted angrily in the background. “Can you tell him I’m coming by?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ll be needing a lift to JFK.”

“Are you kidding me, Mr. Weaver?”

“It’s Milo. And I’m sorry, Penelope.”

“You know what?”

“No. What?”

“It’s nice hearing that from someone other than Alan.”

On the way to Eighty-ninth Street, he called home. He chatted unspecifically with Tina about his day, then listened to Stephanie describe hers in unending specifics. She wanted to know when he was coming back; she wanted him to teach her karate.

“Karate?”

“Sarah Lawton pushed me on the ground today.”

“Did she use karate to do it?”

“I don’t know. What does it look like again?”

Drummond was waiting in the foyer, dressed in a long evening coat. Together they took the stairs to the underground parking lot, and Drummond said, “You know this will be noticed, don’t you?”

“I’m betting on it.”

They climbed into Drummond’s personal car, a breathtaking Jaguar E-Type convertible from 1974, and remained quiet until they were out on the street, dealing with the nighttime traffic. “You should probably tell me what’s going on.”

“The files won’t do us any good, Alan. The only way to bring out a mole is to scare him and make him run. From now on, we’re going to do this in the open, but make it look as if we’re trying to hide it. This is the first step—you driving me to the airport before I fly to Germany.”

“Germany?”

“If we were searching for a mole while hiding our movements, we would go to outsiders for help.”

“Oh, Jesus. Don’t tell me you mean—”

“Exactly. That’s the second step. The third step will be the difficult one. For you, I mean.”

“How do you mean, difficult?”

Milo had considered not telling him until the last minute, but he had to know that Drummond was going to follow through. Otherwise, there was no point in beginning. “Do you own a gun, Alan?”

It was around two on Friday when he reached the stone arch that spanned the creek running through this quaint neighborhood of Pullach. Oskar had been very specific about the locations of the cameras when he led Milo out, and so he knew to drive beyond the bridge and park in the lot of a tiny grocery store, where he bought two premade ham sandwiches as a middle-aged man with a mustache watched him from the cereal aisle. In English, Milo asked for the toilet and was directed outside. Milo passed the mustached man and went around the rear of the building, but instead of entering the bathroom continued ahead and into the damp woods. He worked his way slowly back to the road, then jogged toward the bridge as he reentered the woods. He followed the dry creek bed.

It wasn’t as obvious as he’d hoped. From the rear, most of these houses looked deceptively similar, and once he had to wait for twenty minutes in the underbrush as a pair of children played with plastic guns in a yard. When he finally got to Erika Schwartz’s house, it was nearly four and he was desperately hungry, so he settled in the bushes around the rear of the house and ate.

Four hours passed. Rain fell intermittently, then darkness, and by the time the headlights appeared in the driveway he was soaked and cold. He waited until the lights switched off and he heard her go inside alone. He rapped steadily on one of the rear windows. It took
a while, but he didn’t think it was because she couldn’t hear; it was simply because she moved so slowly. By the time she switched on the light in the utility room and got him in focus, his knuckles were stinging. She approached but didn’t open the door.

“You look like hell,” she called through the glass. “You look radiant, Erika.”

She grinned crookedly. “You really shouldn’t be here. I could have you killed.”

“I’ve no doubt. You might want to listen to me, though. I told you I’d help you if I could.”

“This is how you come to offer help?” She shook her head. “No one stands in the rain just to offer help. You’re standing in the rain because you want something from me.”

“I’m standing in the rain because I’d like to offer an exchange of services.”

She blinked slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, then unlocked the door and stepped back. He came inside, dripping all over the concrete floor. She opened a dryer beside a front-loading washer. “Clothes in there,” she said. “I’ll bring down a robe.” Slowly, she made her way out and closed the door.

As he undressed, the doubt returned. Was this really the only way to scare a mole? He’d used his real passport at JFK, and before his flight took off he saw one of the shadows running to the gate to catch it in time. That one—a young woman with red bangs—had remained with him in the Munich airport before handing him off to the mustached man they must have called ahead to prepare. The man had followed his rental car all the way to the Pullach grocery store, and was probably still there, watching his abandoned car in the darkness.

Maybe it wasn’t the only way, but it was having the desired effect. Irwin knew exactly where Milo Weaver was. Thus, the mole did, too.

The robe Schwartz brought down was soft and thick and very pink, and as he slipped it on she turned on the dryer, ignoring his nakedness. “Do you have something to drink?” he asked.

“I only bought one wine.”

“Just water, Erika. I’m thirsty.”

They went upstairs to the living room, passing the steel door to the panic room, and settled in the darkness. Schwartz made no move to turn on any light. She went to the kitchen and brought out a bottle of Evian, two wineglasses, and her bottle of Riesling. “So,” she said as they each began to drink. “You have come to offer me your wonderful service.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m flush with excitement.”

Milo didn’t launch into it yet. Instead, he said, “I hear Conference Room S is finally in service.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“You did tell me to ask my own people, didn’t you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “A delegation of Americans arrived today. You know what I told Oskar when they arrived with their bright ties and big smiles and vigorous handshakes?”