An American Spy (27 page)

He took a long look at her, his first sustained gaze that day. He’d been a Tourist himself, and knew that everything she showed him—the cool exterior, the impeccable beauty, the style and the humor—was simply for show. There was another woman just beneath the surface. A killer, yes, but someone who had been born to a home and been a child and a teen and a young adult, someone who had ended up in a world that most people would run from. She’d had her chance to leave when the department had crumbled, but she hadn’t taken it. He said, “Why’d you come back?”

She didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. “What else am I gonna do?”

“I’ve seen you in action—you could do a lot,” he said. “And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Every Tourist keeps an escape plan on ice. Somewhere, you’ve stashed another name and a bundle of cash.”

She wasn’t going to deny it; there was no point. A Tourist without an escape route wasn’t much of a Tourist. “Maybe I’m afraid of boredom,” she said finally. Then she asked, “You know what I did before this?”

“Tell me.”

“I was teaching English, if you can believe it. In Hong Kong.”

“You know Mandarin?”

“That must have been on the recruiter’s mind.”

“But that’s not enough,” he said after a moment, and it felt better, just a little, to think about this and not himself. “Something in your history tipped them off. Did you murder someone?”

“Nearly,” she said, thinking briefly about whatever story lay behind that one word. “No, no corpses littering my past. But I was involved with some . . .
ladies
in the Bay Area. I think I made my character clear there—I tried to get them to go militant. One of them, it turned out, was from the Company.”

That answer demanded more questions, but he only said, “You’ve got other talents. You should walk away from this. Go figure out what you really want to do.”

She seemed to seriously consider that, then said, “What happens if, after a few months, I realize that
this
is the only thing I want to do?”

“Well, it means you need to see a shrink.”

“Has that helped you?”

It was a jab at his and Tina’s couples therapy, and he wondered how and why she knew about it. “It’s a way to pass the time,” he said.

“And keep the wife off your back.”

The impulse to smash his head into the table swelled again.

He had known from the start that he would have to move his father. A corpse in the middle of the living room would, within days, attract attention, particularly in that heat wave. Like a Tourist, he’d thought in terms of time and decomposition, not in terms of parenthood.

He first searched the body, wallet with credit cards, frequent-flier cards, and hundreds of dollars and euros, which he pocketed. There was a passport, two phones, restaurant receipts, and a small sheet of paper with a single typewritten line, in capitals:

THEY ARE SAFE

Which, of course, was the note that Yevgeny had planned to leave for Milo, the note that never even made it out of his pocket.

It took a while, for though Yevgeny Primakov had lost weight in recent years, and more from blood leaked from the holes in his heart and his right lung, he had died a solid man with a barrel chest; he was heavy. Grunting, Milo finally got him into his arms and, like a groom with his bride, carried him into his and Tina’s bedroom. The springs protested from the sudden weight. Milo sat on the edge of the bed a moment and then, inexplicably, lay down beside his father’s corpse. He wanted to think clearly, to wash away all the distractions that provoked panic, for panic was what Xin Zhu was depending on. Panic was what stuttered his thinking, interrupting it every forty seconds with an image of two more corpses on this bed, scattering his thoughts into the stratosphere.

That image came back to him now, over his pork enchiladas, but in his brief vision their bodies were not in a bed but in a forest, or a park, mangled and twisted among branches. He pushed his plate away.

Leticia was halfway through her own enchiladas, which were filled with refried beans and cheese. She frowned at him. “You don’t like them?”

“Had a big breakfast,” he said, then refilled his glass with margarita.

They left at three thirty and took the traffic-clogged Route 1 to Newark Liberty International. Leticia parked in the short-term lot for Terminal C, and as she used a spare T-shirt to wipe off the seats and the dashboard and the steering wheel, Milo sighed. “Someone got their car stolen, just so we could get some Mexican food?”

His comment seemed to annoy her. She tossed the keys down by the gas pedal, got out, and shut the door with her elbow. She walked on, not bothering to check if he was following.

Once they were inside, she gave him another nugget of information about their dry destination. “We’re going to Saudi Arabia.”

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Can you be more specific?”

“Jeddah, okay? We’ve got a meeting. That’s all you’re getting now.”

They stood in line, and again Leticia took over, handing over passports. Rosa Mumu, Sudanese, and John Nadler, Canadian. They already had reservations for the 7:25 Continental flight to Frankfurt, landing the next morning at 9:15, as well as the 12:30 Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Jeddah, and upon learning this Milo felt a brief tingle of possibility. Three hours in Frankfurt could be very useful.

In the line for security, they compared notes—there was no sign of Chaudhury or the “white chick” Leticia had seen at JFK. She seemed disappointed by this, and when he pressed, she let out a little more. “Well, you know, it just bothers me. To think we’re going through all this, and whoever they are might be so stupid as to assume we actually went to Mexico.”

“If it’s Homeland, they don’t need to follow us. They just watch from the cameras.”

“Yeah.
If
,” she said. “Anyway, there’s time. Once they realize the plane landing in Mexico City doesn’t have us, they’ve got four hours to figure out where we are. If they can’t get the job done in that amount of time, then they’re not worth wasting our time with.”

He waited for more, but there was nothing she wanted to add.

It wasn’t until they were waiting at the gate, Milo nearly passing out, that he felt her elbow nudge his ribs. She was smiling. “You see
that
?”

He did. It was Dennis Chaudhury, strolling up the aisle with his newspaper. He settled in another chair at their gate, as if he were a complete stranger.

“Oh,
well
,” she said as Chaudhury opened a copy of the day’s
Times.
“The cojones on that man.”

“Want me to get rid of him?” Milo asked, stifling a yawn.

“Certainly not.” Then, giving him a look, she added, “Baby, I don’t think you
could
get rid of him if you wanted. You’ve had one too many margaritas.”

“As you command,” he said, then climbed to his feet. “I’ll just be a minute.”

He knew she was watching him, half expecting him to approach Chaudhury. Yet he didn’t have to approach the man to have a chat. He walked directly to the bathroom without looking around and, just inside, waited. A bald man was washing his hands, then left. Ten seconds later, Chaudhury entered, the newspaper folded under his arm.

That Chaudhury had no idea what awaited him was apparent in the fact that he wasn’t ready for Milo’s lunging kick into his stomach. It took all his failing strength, but the shot was true, hitting him squarely in the stomach, his toes perhaps even bruising the man’s ribs. Chaudhury stumbled back, and Milo snatched one of his floundering hands and swung him deeper into the bathroom, where he stumbled and slid across the floor, on his back, gasping. Milo also stumbled but regained his balance and dropped onto Chaudhury with his elbows down, one in his stomach, the other in his face, connecting with his jaw. Milo ached all over, but Chaudhury was bleeding now, disoriented. Milo climbed up, straddled him, and sat on his chest, then pounded a fist into his temple. He did it a second time before Chaudhury got out a single word: “Stop!”

It was a word Milo wasn’t able to conjure up himself, but once it was out in the air he realized, even running solely on adrenaline, that it was the only thing to do. Kill him, and everything would evaporate, including his family. Milo breathed heavily, staring at the tiled walls, as if the man between his legs didn’t exist. His mouth hung open, saliva dripping down his chin. He climbed to his feet and walked to the tile wall and leaned back against it. He watched Chaudhury slowly, achingly, climb to his feet and limp to the sinks. As the noise of running water filled the bathroom, Chaudhury said, “You made a fucking mistake, Milo Weaver.”

“He’ll understand.”

“Pretty presumptuous.”

Milo watched him wash his mouth and face and stare with dismay at his reflection. “You don’t have any idea, do you?”

“About what?” Chaudhury asked, angry.

“He’s got them.”

Chaudhury had a finger in his mouth, massaging his gums. He looked in the reflection at Milo, confused. “Who?”

“And my father’s dead.”

Chaudhury drew his finger out of his mouth; it was wet and pink. “You’re talking about your family.”

Milo didn’t answer. He walked over to the urinals, unzipped, and began to pee.

“Look, Milo, that wasn’t me. He Qiang—that’s the guy who would’ve done it.”

Milo stared at his clear stream. “You’re telling me his name?”

“What the fuck do I care? I’m a private contractor. He’s one of Xin’s men. He’s the one with the philosophy.”

“Tell me more,” Milo said as he put himself away and zipped up.

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know.” Chaudhury leaned close to the mirror, touching the side of his eye. “He Qiang brings the orders and pays the fees. I know of the man I’m working for—Xin Zhu—but I’ve never met him. And I like it that way.”

Milo left the urinals and ran water in the sink beside Chaudhury, rinsing his hands. “Description?”

“He Qiang? Big guy, heavy but not fat. How do you describe a Chinese face? Round, slant-eyed. Mole on his cheek that needs trimming.”

Milo used paper towels to dry his hands, then walked out.

Leticia was watching him intently as he crossed back to the gate, yawning into the back of his hand. The adrenaline was fading, leaving him wasted. He crashed down beside her.

“
So?
” Leticia asked.

“So I peed. Where’s the guy?”

“He’s in the bathroom, you idiot!”

Milo widened his eyes, then pointed at where he’d come from. “
That
bathroom?”

“What the hell are you up to?”

Milo shook his head in feigned surprise, then nodded. “Oh, look. There he is.”

As a flight attendant announced that Continental Flight 50 to Frankfurt would soon commence boarding, Chaudhury walked swiftly and purposefully out of the bathroom, and though his skin was dark, there was a definite redness on the left side of it. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, and he was pressing a wet paper towel to the side of his mouth. The red spots on the white paper were visible from where they sat. Then he did something that Milo hadn’t expected—he left. He turned away from the gate and walked away.

“That’s weird,” said Milo.

Quickly, Leticia snatched his right wrist and raised it, turning his hand around to better see the bright red, slightly swollen knuckles. With a disgusted sound, she threw it down again. “Idiot.”

“You want them to follow us, right?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Well, now they’ll be sure to have someone waiting in Jeddah. And just so you know, they are Chinese.”

She gave him a look that suggested—what? That she was impressed? That she was about to kill him? He had no idea, but in the tired euphoria that followed what he’d done he didn’t care. He had a name, He Qiang, that went with a face he’d seen outside his daughter’s summer camp, and he had a new possibility in Frankfurt. He felt more like a Tourist every moment.

13

He had eight hours to think. It was, objectively, plenty of time to find answers, or at least to reorient himself and place things in their proper perspective. However, by the time they landed at Frankfurt at ten in the morning, forty-five minutes late, nothing felt
better
in any sense of the word. Clearer, perhaps, but no better.

As they had begun to soar up the Atlantic coast, Milo had taken a short nap, because by then it was required. He’d gotten no sleep with his father’s corpse lying beside him on his bed, and a day of skipping around the metro area with Leticia and too many margaritas had pummeled him no less than the final exertion of beating Dennis Chaudhury. As Leticia plugged into the airline’s entertainment system, he closed his eyes and was soon asleep. And in a park. Holding his daughter’s hand, then running with her.

“You need another drink, baby?” Leticia asked when he woke with a start, swinging his hands.

Airplane. Leticia. Atlantic far below. A drink was the last thing he needed. He closed his eyes again and tried to think rationally. Like a Tourist.

His most urgent goal was to divide everything into what he did know, what he suspected, and what he did not know at all. From those things, hopefully he could come up with a plan of action.

He knew, for instance, that his family was no longer under his protection. He suspected that they were being held by Xin Zhu, though he only had the man’s word for that—he’d seen no objective evidence of it. Yet at the same time, he could not afford to decide it was
not
true, for to do that and be wrong would be a disaster.

Among the things that were beyond his knowledge was how far Xin Zhu would go to make sure Milo remained under his power. Obviously, the last thing he would want to do would be to kill Tina and Stephanie and let Milo know about it—in that case, he would lose control of Milo completely. However, death is only one sort of threat. Xin Zhu could easily hurt them or mutilate them and feel free to let Milo know about it, for Milo’s only recourse would be to work harder.