The Nearest Exit (45 page)

“What?”

“That we’ve finally learned the value of a girl’s life.”

Milo nodded into his water. “When’s the next delegation due?”

“Monday. They have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Good.”

“Is it?”

Milo examined her heavy, damp cheeks in the light from the street, then noticed that on the cushion beside her hand was a small pistol. She looked exhausted. He said, “Everything stays in this room. Agreed?”

Erika Schwartz shrugged.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, “there was a scare in the department. We had reason to believe there was a double agent working among us.”

“Double agent?” asked Schwartz. “For whom?”

“For the Chinese.”

She waited.

“We followed the clues, but they didn’t add up. Or, they did, but they proved there wasn’t one at all.”

Schwartz waited patiently.

“Now, though, it appears that we were twice fooled. We believe we do have a mole.”

Schwartz appeared unfazed. “We? I heard you had left the CIA.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Sounds like a CIA problem to me.”

“I’m afraid it’s your problem, too, Erika. Which is why I’ve come to you. The Company now has access to a lot more of your secrets than it did a month ago, and, ergo, so do the Chinese.”

“Thanks to a young girl.”

Milo didn’t say a thing.

She said, “Are you here just to deliver bad news?”

“We’d like your help with this problem.”

“We, again. Who is this abstract pronoun, exactly?”

“Myself, and Alan Drummond.”

Schwartz blinked at him, blank, her eyelids a confusion of tiny wrinkles when they closed. Then, even in the darkness, she found a loose hair on the thigh of her slacks and brushed it away. “The CIA employs twenty thousand people—that’s the number it will admit to. Is there really no one else you can go to? Not one?”

Milo didn’t answer.

Schwartz took a long breath. “You began this conversation by suggesting you had something to offer me. Maybe you should start with that.”

“We’ll give you the means to bring down Theodor Wartmüller. The videotape.”

“Of him with the girl?”

Milo nodded.

Schwartz found another hair on her slacks, picked at it with her stubby fingers, and said, “If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the videotape was the only thing I wanted. Now I’ve had some time to think. If it goes public, it’ll cause more grief than solutions. Theodor knows that, too. I’m not sure it’s of any use to me now.”

“You don’t want it?”

“I didn’t say that. I’d rather I held on to it than you. I’m simply
saying that it won’t solve my troubles. And it certainly won’t bring down Teddi.”

“Then I’ll give you other means,” said Milo.

“You have other means just sitting around?” A slow grin grew on her face, and she sighed. “Of course you do. Frame-ups are child’s play for the Department of Tourism.”

Milo felt her watching his face for some reaction. He gave none, and Schwartz finally shook her head.

“That’s not enough.”

“What is enough?”

“The person who broke her neck.”

“That’s not up to me.”

“Then call Alan Drummond right now and ask him.”

They both knew calling wasn’t an option, so Milo said, “I’ll give you the name myself. All right?”

Schwartz nodded slowly, very serious. “So, to be clear. I will receive the original videotape, the identity of Adriana Stanescu’s killer, and the means with which to prosecute Theodor Wartmüller.”

Milo wondered if it was really worth it. He supposed it was, but for all this she would do only one small thing. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. Now can I tell you what you’re going to do to earn all these riches?”

“I am breathless, Milo. Really, I am.”

He landed at noon and took a taxi back into town, thinking over his escape route. The woman with the red bangs had been on his flight, ten rows up, and while he wanted them to know where he’d been, he didn’t want them knowing his destination: the Bronx safe house, which would now be housing two Tourists.

He peered back at the highway. It was a busy time of day, and any of the cars could have been on him—or none. So he asked the driver to take him to Williamsburg and the Hasidic neighborhood he and Tina used to visit for Israeli specialties—any shadow would look as out of place there as he would. However, once they reached the long, lifeless streets, Milo remembered that it was Saturday; this part of Williamsburg was abandoned. It wasn’t the kind of place to try to lose a shadow.

“Bedford and Seventh,” he told the driver.

As they headed north, the streets filled with hip young Brooklynites at sidewalk tables, munching bagel sandwiches and sushi. He got out in front of a Salvation Army thrift store, then crossed Bedford and bought a Coke at a corner market beside the L-train subway stop. He peered out the window.

“Twenty-five cents,” the woman behind the register said as she handed over his change.

There: An old Suzuki pulled up in front of the Salvation Army.

A tall black man got out and stood beside his door, watching faces. If he was irritated, he didn’t show it.

“You need something else?” asked the woman.

The man left his car and walked left, toward Sixth, and Milo hurried out, took the corner and descended into the subway. As his head sank beneath the sidewalk, the black man turning, scanning, caught his eye.

Milo used his MetroCard as the train arrived at the station. His shadow ran up to the turnstile, stopping, slapping his pockets. Cursing. The subway doors closed. Milo smiled as the train headed out.

The L-train had the advantage of crossing five different lines inside Manhattan, and he chose one at random, then crisscrossed the island, taking locals and expresses until he was sure he was alone. In the Bronx, he picked up groceries—instant noodles and bread and ham and coffee—and by the time he finally climbed the stairs to the safe house, the sun was setting. He listened at the door but heard nothing. He knocked and waited.

There was a quick shadow over the spy hole, and a man’s voice said, “We’re not buying anything.”

“The Word of God is free,” Milo said.

There was an awkward pause.

“Let me in,” Milo said. “It’s Weaver.”

Another pause; then the man unlocked the door and opened it a crack. He had dark eyes. “Riverrun, past Eve,” he said.

“And Adam’s,” Milo answered. “Come on.”

The Tourist at the door introduced himself as Zachary Klein. He was a big man who gave off the air of a dunce, though no Tourist is a dunce. The other was a distractingly attractive black woman named Leticia Jones who didn’t rise from the cot as she offered a hand. She had huge eyes and a mirthless smile. “You going to brief us, or what? If I have to spend another night with this lout you’ll have to call an ambulance.”

“Drummond hasn’t told you anything?”

“He said to wait for you,” Klein told him.

Milo began to unpack his groceries, then saw that the refrigerator and cabinets were already full. “You guys went out?”

“I told her not to,” said Klein.

“I’m not eating canned food,” said Jones. “That’s just not what I do.”

“See what I’ve had to deal with?” said Klein.

“This cracker will eat anything.”

Milo almost started to laugh. Despite his easy camaraderie with James Einner, it was a general rule that Tourists should work alone. He’d even tried to explain it in the Black Book, writing,
It’s part of the essential nature of Tourism that Tourists cannot abide one another. In the extremely rare instance that two Tourists strike up a friendship, it’s over in two weeks, max
.

We are taught, and we learn through experience, that everything and everyone is a potential hazard. Children, butchers, seamstresses, bank managers and particularly other intelligence agents. We’re taught this because it’s true. The better the intelligence agent, the bigger the threat. So what happens when two Tourists—two of the most devious models of intelligence agent the world has seen—are in the same room? Paranoia ensues, and the walls go wet with blood.

Happily, though, the walls were still clean, and both Tourists were still breathing. The only way to defuse the situation was to give them a reason to be here, so he took them to the files both of them had already no doubt memorized. “One of these is a Chinese mole.”

“Yeah,” said Jones. “It’s Chan.”

“Look who’s the racist,” said Klein.

“Shut up.”

“Both of you shut up, okay?”

They stared at Milo.

“Good,” he said. “Now can you please break into these people’s homes and find out what’s not listed in these files? They have to be done by Monday morning. And please don’t leave a mess. If the mole thinks we’re tossing his apartment, he’s going to walk before we’ve identified him.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Klein.

“Use your imagination.”

As if they’d been replaced with new people, Klein and Jones were suddenly professional and efficient. That was how Tourists worked—with a job in front of them, they were swift and effective; lacking any work, they were destructive and wasteful, many turning into prima donnas. In this case, Klein and Jones began with a map of the Washington, D.C., area, charting a path from Montgomery County down to Charles County. Despite their animosity, they decided to work together on each home in order to move more quickly. By eight, they had settled on the details and had left the safe house to take separate trains to D.C., and Milo was alone again. He called home and chatted with Stephanie, and then Tina, who asked if he didn’t want to just come over for a few hours. She said that he was missed. It was intoxicating stuff, and the lure of their shared bed, just a subway ride away, was incredibly tempting.

Afterward, he called Drummond.

“Your friends are gone now. They should be done by Monday.”

“But they’ll be in touch in the meantime?”

“They’ve got my number.”

“Let me know if the skies open up for you at any point.”

“Are you still on board, Alan?”

“Ask me again after you’ve collected your information. Maybe I won’t need to do a thing.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“I’m not betting on anything anymore.”

Milo’s phone woke him at five in the morning. Klein and Jones had gotten to work quickly, and it was Jones who called in their first report. Milo looked for a pen and paper while she rattled off her information. “William Howington. Twenty-eight, white male—”

“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Milo cut in.

“The man’s got a serious cocaine habit going on. Plus a bucket of ecstasy—looks like he uses them as breath mints.”

Drugs were a compromising habit, but enough to make someone spy for a foreign power? “What else?”

“He’s writing a novel. Roman à clef, if I understand the opening. Who do you think Representative Albert Sirwin could be?”

“That’s interesting, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Too bad,” said Jones. “Six more to go.”

They called in Raymond Salamon’s search by noon Sunday, and Susan Jackson’s by three. Salamon’s apartment was clean—“
too
clean,” Klein suggested—while Jackson’s was stuffed with Chinese artifacts. She was the one who had studied Chinese culture, had visited Beijing, and even been kicked out of China for her demonstrations in support of landless farmers. There were letters and postcards in Mandarin stacked on her desk, and Leticia Jones—who, it turned out, was fluent—went through them quickly, checking for obvious signs of clandestine communication. Of course, it’s the nature of clandestine communication that it’s not obvious, so she settled on taking snapshots of a representative selection for later perusal. From photos and postcards, they did learn of a lover—Feng Liang, a Beijing University student who had been arrested with her. There were letters from him and aborted drafts to him, and on her computer they found an entire romantic history in the form of e-mails.