The Tourist (32 page)

For what seemed like a long time, Milo stared at the body. In reality, it wasn't more than a quarter of a second, but time is a relative thing, and, looking down at Grainger's corpse, time stretched long enough for him to realize with a shock as strong as a sniper's bullet that he'd been wrong. Grainger had told the truth. The old man knew that after speaking to Milo, he would be a dead man. So, too, would Milo.

As another bullet buzzed past, he threw himself back, dropped, and rolled behind the three concrete steps leading from the front door. He took out the Luger and breathed loudly through his lips, thinking:
Three bullets.
Suppressor. Suppressors decrease accuracy range, so the shooter is not far away.
Question: Would the shooter come to him, or would he wait?

Answer: It was Tuesday, which meant mail. He seemed to remember morning deliveries at, say, nine thirtyish. The shooter would know this, too. It was now nine o'clock.

He couldn't leave his position, because the shooter would be trained on these three lousy steps, waiting. At some point in the next half hour, though, he would have to approach. Milo closed his eyes and listened. He tried to hold back all the thoughts that buzzed inside him now, but it was impossible. Grainger had been telling the truth. The truth. It was the only explanation. Get rid of the old man before he could spill the truth in one of those camera-ridden cells on the nineteenth floor of the Avenue of the Americas. Get rid of Milo before he could pass on any messages. Everything, Fitzhugh had decided, would end here, by a quiet lake. And what of Tina and Stephanie? They would be in Austin, under surveillance. That, he knew. But by whom? By the Company, or Homeland?

He surprised himself by hoping that Janet Simmons was keeping an eye on them.

If he got out of here alive--

No,
when
he got out of here alive. That was another Tourism rule. Never doubt your ability to survive. With doubts come mistakes. When he got out of here alive, he--

Stop.
One thing at a time. Listen. Nothing exists except sound. When a man walks, he cannot aim.

There: crunch
crunch.

Milo rose, Luger at arm's length, elbow bent slightly, and pivoted as he walked backward. Two hundred yards away, maybe, out of range, a figure in hunting camouflage stopped and raised his rifle. Milo disappeared behind the house.

He needed close quarters, so he ran down the lake side of the house until he found the window to the dining room. He used an elbow to break it, the sound of shattering glass echoing across the lake. As he climbed inside, he heard feet running across dry earth.

He dropped to the carpet, lost track of his pistol, then found it under one of the chairs. He went to the living room windows that faced the front of the house. Standing a few feet back, Milo peered out in time to catch sight of the shooter, the long-barreled rifle hanging from his back and a SIG Sauer in his gloved hand, working his way around the house. Before he disappeared, Milo saw that he was a tall man, nose thick and bent from old breaks; the bottom half of his face, below the hunter's cap, was covered in a thick red beard.

Milo returned to the doorway to the dining room, looped an arm around the frame, and aimed at the broken window. He watched and waited until, from the opposite side of the house--guest bedroom, if his internal floor plan was right--another window shattered. He hurried to the closed door, popped it open, and aimed. But the broken window was empty. There--another window breaking, the living room. He hurried back, again finding nothing.

Tripplehorn had given himself three possible entrances in three different rooms. Milo climbed the stairs and waited on the landing, squatting to make a smaller target.

From his position, he could hear the Tourist climb into the house, but wasn't sure which window he was using. It didn't matter. However he'd entered the house, he would have to use the stairs to reach Milo. For three minutes, he only heard footsteps and doors opening suddenly. No one appeared at the bottom of the steps. Tripplehorn was searching the first floor before continuing to the next. Finally, he heard a high voice with an indeterminable accent say, "You'd better come down here."

"Why should I, Tripplehorn?"

A pause. "That's a funny name. Wish I knew who it was."

"It's me. Milo Weaver. I run the European desk."

"Don't know who you're talking about."

"I used to go by Charles Alexander."

Another pause, then a whisper that might have been
Shit.
Tourists had no qualms about killing other Tourists--this, in fact, was always a possibility--but Einner had been kind enough to point out that the name Charles Alexander had made the rounds.

"Who sent you?" asked Milo, the hand on his pistol sweaty now.

"You know who runs me."

"It used to be that man in the front yard."

"Grainger?" said the Tourist. "He's given few orders recently." Milo's eyes were damp, so when Tripplehorn threw himself past the stairs, firing upward, his reaction was delayed. The Tourist shot blindly, loud bullets drilling into the upper steps, and Milo shot back twice, but too late. Tripplehorn disappeared on the other side of the stairs.

"You've got no position," Milo called. "Just get out of here."

"I'm patient."

Milo took a breath and stood slowly "You've got ten minutes until the mailman comes. You can't be patient." As he spoke, he took two steps down, feet by the wall to avoid creaks.

"I'll kill the postman, too," said Tripplehorn. Milo was five steps down; ten more to go. "How's Fitzhugh going to explain that away? I doubt you're supposed to kill civilians." Another pause. Milo stopped. Tripplehorn said, "If I did leave, you know I'd still be waiting out there."

Milo couldn't keep moving and speaking at the same time; Tripplehorn would hear his voice nearing. He said, "And what would you do? Shoot me while the cops are here, looking at the body? Come on, Tripplehorn. It's over. You know it."

"If you are who you say you are, then you know I can pull it off." As he said those words, Milo descended two quick steps. He didn't answer.

"If you are Alexander, you know that failure isn't an option." Two more steps. Now he was six from the bottom. That would do.

"Alexander? You still with me?"

With his arm extended, the pistol was only three steps from the corner. Behind it, Tripplehorn said, "Well, maybe you're right. Maybe I should just go with half the job done," and then launched himself out into the open, his gun raised high so he wouldn't again shoot too low.

By the time he got off his second, wild shot, Milo had put a bullet in his chest, knocking him backward. He dropped and slid against the front door, leaving a smear of blood. His arm was still out, clutching his pistol, and he was blinking up at Milo.

"Shit," he whispered, gurgling. "You got me."

"You should've worn a vest."

Tripplehorn's hunting jacket was drenched now, making the darkandlight-green design a little more monochrome. Milo kicked the pistol from his hand; it slid into the living room. He squatted close to Tripplehorn's head, remembering that face from the Corso Sempione, sitting across from the Tiger, giving the assassin a bag of money and a shot of HIV. "Tell me who's running you," said Milo.

Tripplehorn coughed blood onto the hardwood floor. He shook his head.

Milo didn't have the heart to force it out of the man. He knew, or he believed he knew, that Terence Fitzhugh was running him. There was nothing else to say. He shot Tripplehorn in the forehead. He searched the corpse, taking his cell phone and the little automobile unlocker that he had so admired when Einner used it in Europe.

He left by the front door, continuing past Grainger's corpse and into the woods. There, he was sick. As he crouched in the leaves, he realized it wasn't the normal sickness that overcomes a person at the sight of death. It was the sickness of too much adrenaline and too little to eat. That troubled him even more than the deaths, that he was no longer reacting like a real human being.

He stared at his vomit in the grass. He was thinking and feeling like a Tourist now. Unbalanced.

Despairing over this, his Tourist side calculated the next step. He didn't even cringe from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and returned to the house.

Five minutes later, from behind the shattered living room window, he clutched Grainger's car keys and watched the little mail truck bounce over ruts in the driveway until it had a direct view of Grainger's body. It stopped, and a fat man in a white uniform climbed out. He approached, halving the distance to the corpse, then turned and ran. He got into his truck, turned it around in a cloud of dust, and roared off.

Ten minutes, max.

Milo opened the front door and heaved Tripplehorn's body, now wrapped in Hefty bags, down the front steps, past the corpse, and to Grainger's Mercedes. He put Tripplehorn into the trunk, then got behind the wheel. He drove fast to the main road, then turned right, toward the mountains, as the low whine of police sirens grew somewhere behind him. He'd found a good dropping point in the upper reaches of Route 23

when Tripplehorn's phone buzzed silently on the passenger seat,
PRIVATE

NUMBER
. On the fourth ring, he picked up but said nothing. Fitzhugh said, "The American handed Leamas." Milo paused, knowing it but unsure. With an accentless voice, he whispered, "Another cup of coffee."

"Is it done?"

"Yes."

"Both?"

"Yes."

"No trouble?"

"None."

A sigh. "Good. Take some time off. I'll be in touch." Milo hung up, remembering what that go-code had come from.
The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold:

The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said,

"Why don't you go back and sleep?"

If only I could,
he thought.

42

There were three of them. They took shifts. The heavy one on the night-toearly-morning shift wore a mustache as if he hadn't heard the seventies were long past--this one, she christened George. Jake watched the house from around 6:00
A.M
. to 2:00
P.M
.--he was a gangly fellow with no hair on top and a thick novel always pressed open against the steering wheel. The one out there now was Will--or he was until Monday afternoon, when she walked out to the red sedan with a huge cup of lemonade and learned his real name.

He watched through his impenetrable aviator sunglasses and straightened when he realized her destination. He jerked a pair of earphones from his head, reminding her of Milo and his iPod, and rolled down his window as she approached.

"Afternoon," she said. "Thought you might be thirsty." She'd flustered him. "I'm, uh . . . I'm all right."

"Don't be a stiffy," she said, winking. "And take off those glasses so I can see your eyes. Can't trust someone without eyes." He did so, blinking in the bright light. "Really, I don't think I should--"

"Please." She forced the cup through the window so that his choices were either to take it or let it spill in his lap.

He peered around, as if afraid of witnesses. "Thanks." She straightened.

"You have a name?"

"Rodger."

"Rodger," she repeated. "Of course, you know my name already." Embarrassed, he nodded.

"Just bring us the cup when you're done."

"I'll do that."

When she got inside, Miguel, stretched on the sofa watching the History Channel, asked why she was looking so pleased with herself. It was something Milo had once said about enemies. Though he seldom spoke of his history as a field agent, aphorisms sometimes slipped from his lips. They'd been watching an old movie on television where two enemy agents, who'd spent the first half of the film shooting at one another, sat at a cafe and talked quietly about all that had come before. "I don't get it," she'd said. "Why doesn't he shoot him?"

"Because it does no good now," he'd answered. "Killing him serves no purpose. When they don't have to be at each other's throats, spies chat if they can. You learn things that might be useful later on." Less than an hour later, Rodger knocked on the door. Hanna answered it, blinked as he took off his glasses, and said, "Is that my cup?" He admitted it was and handed it over as Tina appeared, calling, "Might as well come in, Rodger."

"I don't think that's such a--"

"You're supposed to make sure I don't run off, right?" He cleared his throat. "Well, it's not exactly that. We're just watching out for you."

Hanna said, "What?"

"That's rich," Tina said, then smiled.
"I'm joking,
Rodger. Please. It's hot out there."

This was how they began to talk. Tina poured him another lemonade, and they sat at the kitchen table while her parents left them alone. It wasn't an interrogation, really. She just admitted she knew nothing about what was going on, and deserved to know something. It wasn't Rodger's place to share anything, though, and he remained hesitant, even as he accepted his third lemonade.

"I know what she thinks," Tina told him. "Your boss, Janet Simmons. She told me my husband is a killer. I mean, does that make any sense to you? Why would he kill one of his oldest friends?" She shook her head. "It makes no sense to you either, does it?"

He shrugged, as if it were all too complicated for a simple man like him.

"Listen," he said finally. "This doesn't have to be some big conflict. Special Agent Simmons is good at her job; she's got years of experience. From the way she tells it, the evidence is strong. And then he fled." He raised his hands, palms out. "That's all I know, okay?" That really was all he knew--she could see it in his naive face. She felt as if she were in Starbucks, angry with the cashier, but needing to yell at some absent manager.

What, really, could she do? Simply wait in the hope that Milo would call again? She'd been unfair during the last call, and had spent the whole week regretting it. Where was he? Was he even alive? Christ, she knew nothing. Then, Tuesday night, it had happened. The message. It came to her Columbia account, a bulk-e-mail sent to twenty other names to hide the fact that it was only for her. She knew this because the other addresses had each been misspelled, just slightly. The return address was [email protected]. It read: