The Tourist

3

The sultry noontime heat swallowed him as he fooled with the new Company-issue Nokia he was still learning to master, finally finding the number. Between a parked blue-and-white and the dead shrubs around the station, he watched as storm clouds began to fill the sky. Grainger answered with a sharp “What is it?”

Tom Grainger sounded the kind of irate people are when they’ve been abruptly woken, but it was nearly noon. “I’m verifying it, Tom. It’s him.”

“Good. I don’t suppose he’s talking, is he?”

“Not really. But he is trying to piss me off. He’s seen a file on me. Knows about Tina and Stef.”

“Jesus. How’d he get that?”

“There’s a girlfriend. She might know something. They’re bringing her in now.” He paused. “But he’s sick, Tom. Really sick. I’m not sure he could make a journey.”

“What’s he got?”

“Don’t know yet.”

When Grainger sighed, Milo imagined him kicking back in his Aeron chair, gazing out his window across the Manhattan skyline. Faced with the dusty pale-brick buildings along Blackdale’s main street—half of them out of business but covered with Independence Day flags—Milo was suddenly jealous. Grainger said, “Just so you know—you’ve got one hour to make him talk.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you. Some jackass at Langley sent an e-mail off the open server. I’ve spent the last half hour fending off Homeland with make-believe. If I hear the word ‘jurisdiction’ one more time, I’ll have a fit.”

Milo stepped back as a deputy got into the police car and started it up. He returned to the station’s glass double doors. “My hopes are with the girlfriend. Whatever game he’s playing, he won’t play by my rules until I have something on him. Or if he’s under duress.”

“Can you put it to him there?”

Milo considered this as the police car left and another parked in its place. The sheriff might turn a blind eye to rough treatment, but he wasn’t sure about the deputies. There was something wide-eyed about them. “I’ll see once the girl’s here.”

“If Homeland hadn’t been shouting at me all morning, I’d tell you to break him out and bundle him for shipment. But we don’t have a choice.”

“You don’t think they’ll share him?”

His chief grunted. “It’s me who doesn’t want to share. Be a good boy and let them have him, but whatever he says to you is only for us. Okay?”

“Sure.” Milo noticed that the mustached deputy getting out of the car was Leslie, the one who’d been sent to pick up Kathy Hendrickson. He was alone. “Call you back,” Milo said and hung up. “Where’s the girl?”

Leslie held his wide-brimmed hat in his hands, nervously rotating it. “Checked out, sir. Late last night, couple hours after we released her.”

“I see, Deputy. Thanks.”

On the way back inside, Milo called home, knowing that at this hour no one would be there to pick up. Tina would check the messages from work once she realized he was running late. He kept it short and concise. He was sorry to miss Stephanie’s performance, but didn’t overplay his guilt. Besides, next week they’d all be together in Disney World, and he’d have plenty of time to make it up to his daughter. He suggested she invite Stephanie’s biological father, Patrick. “And videotape it, will you? I want to see.”

He found Wilcox in the break room, having a fight with the soda machine. “I thought you kept to lemonade, Manny.”

Wilcox cleared his throat. “I’ve had it up to here with lemons.” He wagged a chunky finger. “You let that slip to my wife, and I’ll have your ass on a platter.”

“Let’s make a deal.” Milo came closer. “I’ll keep your wife in the dark if you give me an hour alone with your prisoner.”

Wilcox straightened, head back, and peered down at him. “You’re talking alone-alone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you think that’s a good idea?”

“Why not?”

Sheriff Wilcox scratched the back of his flabby neck; his beige collar was brown from sweat. “Well, the papers are eating you guys up. Every day there’s another yokel shouting about CIA corruption. I mean, I know how to keep my mouth shut, but a small town like this …”

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

The sheriff pursed his lips, deforming his big nose. “Matter of national security, is it?”

“The most national, Manny. And the most secure.”

4

When Milo returned to the cell, Samuel Roth sat up as if he’d been waiting for this chat, a sudden wellspring of energy at his disposal. “Hello again,” he said once the door had locked.

“Who showed you my file?”

“A friend. An ex-friend.” Roth paused. “Okay, my worst enemy. He’s seriously bad news.”

“Someone I know?”

“I don’t even know him. I never met him. Just his intermediary.”

“So he’s a client.”

Roth smiled, his dry lips cracking. “Exactly. He gave me some paperwork on you. A gift, he said, for some trouble he’d put me through. He said that you were the one who ruined the Amsterdam job. He also said you were running my case. That, of course, is why I’m here.”

“You’re here,” Milo said, reaching the center of the cell, “because you beat up a woman and thought she wouldn’t pay you back for it.”

“Is that what you really think?”

Milo didn’t answer—they both knew it was an unlikely scenario.

“I’m here,” Roth said, waving at the concrete walls, “because I wanted to talk to Milo Weaver, once known as Charles Alexander. Only you. You’re the only Company man who ever actually stopped me. You’ve got my respect.”

“In Amsterdam.”

“Yes.”

“That’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“Six years ago in Amsterdam, I was high on amphetamines. Completely strung out. I didn’t know half of what I was doing.”

Roth stared at him, then blinked. “Really?”

“I was suicidal. I tried to walk into your line of fire, just to finish myself off.”

“Well,” said Roth, considering the news. “Either I was never as good as I thought, or you’re so good you could beat me blind and drunk. So … it stands. You have even more of my respect now. And that’s a rare and wonderful thing.”

“You wanted to talk to me. Why not pick up a phone?”

The assassin rocked his head from side to side. “That, as you know, is unverifiable. I would’ve been handed to some clerk for an hour, answering questions. If he didn’t hang up on me, he would’ve called Tom—Tom Grainger, right?—and then the whole department would be involved. No. I only wanted you.”

“Still, there are easier ways. Cheaper ways.”

“Money doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Roth said patiently. “Besides, it was fun. I had to give one last chase. Not so difficult a chase that you’d lose me, but not so easy that the FBI or Homeland Security would stumble across me when I arrived in Dallas. No, I had to set up a trail outside the country that you—because you’ve been responsible for my case these last years—would be watching. Then I had to lead you around this enormous country. I’d hoped to make it all the way to Washington, or even to your home in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t to be. A lot of things weren’t to be. I wanted to go further. I wanted to really make you work.”

“Why?”

“If I had the time,” Roth explained, “I’d be elusive with you, because it’s a known fact that no decent intelligence operative believes anything he’s told. Each agent needs to beat it out of his subject, or, better yet, discover it on his own, without the subject ever realizing he’s slipped up. But, sadly, there’s no time. It has to be little Blackdale, and it has to be direct, because I won’t be around by tomorrow.”

“Going somewhere?”

Again, that smile.

Milo wasn’t ready to believe this. It was pride, of course, balking against the idea that someone had for the last three days been leading him by the nose. “And Kathy Hendrickson?”

“She only knows that I paid her well for her performance. Yes—and for her bruises. She doesn’t know why. Really, she knows nothing,” he said, then gasped his way into a retching cough. Once it passed, he looked at his hand. “Oh.” He showed his blood-speckled palm to Milo. “Faster than I’d hoped.”

“What is?”

“My death.”

Milo stared at the Tiger’s face, at what he’d wanted to believe were the symptoms of a difficult run through the southern states. Bloodshot eyes, fatigue, and the skin itself. That yellow pallor wasn’t from the fluorescents. “Diagnosis?”

“AIDS.”

“I see.”

The lack of sympathy didn’t faze Roth. “I talked to some doctors in Switzerland—the Hirslanden Clinic, Zürich. You can check on that if you like. Look up Hamad al-Abari. Those mountain Germans are smart. Some new procedure they’ve got to examine the rate of growth through the T-cell count—something like that. They can figure out when the HIV virus got in me. Five months ago, it turns out. February. That places me in Milan.”

“What were you doing in Milan?”

“I met my contact. The intermediary I mentioned before. He goes by the name Jan Klausner, but he can’t speak decent German or Czech. From his accent, he might be Dutch. Midforties. His red beard is the only real thing about him.”

Milo remembered that file photo of Fabio Lanzetti—Milan, the Corso Sempione, with a bearded man. “We’ve got a picture of you two together.”

“Good start.”

“He gave you a job?”

“He’s been feeding me jobs for years. Actually, the first one came six years ago, not long after Amsterdam. A surprise. I worried my failure there had made the rounds, that work would dry up. But then Jan showed up. The work was irregular—one or two a year—but it paid well. His last order was for January. A job in Khartoum. Mullah Salih Ahmad.”

Milo thought back. The Sudan. January.

In January, a popular radical cleric known for inflammatory pro-al-Qaeda speeches, Mullah Salih Ahmad, had disappeared. Two days later, his garroted corpse was found in his own backyard. It had been international news for about five minutes, quickly overcome by the continuing civil war in the western Darfur region, but in the Sudan it stayed brutally current, and the blame was placed on the president, Omar al-Bashir, who seldom let critics remain in the limelight, or out of jail. Demonstrations followed, met by battle-gear police with guns. In the last month, more than forty had been killed in riots.

“Who hired you?”

The energy seemed to go out of Roth, and he stared, unfocused, past his interrogator. Milo didn’t bother breaking the trance, though he imagined SUVs full of Homeland Security barreling down the dusty Tennessee roads toward them.

Finally, Roth shook his head. “Sorry. The doctors call it AIDS dementia. I lose track of stuff, forget things. Can hardly walk.” With effort, he swallowed. “Where were we?”

“Mullah Salih Ahmad. Who hired you to kill him?”

“Ah, yes!” Through a twitch of pain, Roth seemed pleased that he could still find that memory. “Well, I didn’t know, did I? I have this contact, Jan Klausner, maybe Dutch, a red beard,” he said, unaware of his repetition. “He tells me nothing about who’s hiring him. He just pays the money, and that’s all right by me. But then there was the Ahmad job, and Jan’s master cheated me on the money. Only paid two-thirds. Klausner says it’s because I didn’t follow the instructions, which were to brand the body with some Chinese pictograms.”

“Chinese?” Milo cut in. “Why Chinese?”

“Good question, but no one tells me anything. Klausner just asks why I didn’t do this. After all, I did have a metalworker make the brands. Sadly, though, the Sudan is not overflowing with expert machinists, and what I got turned out to be made of aluminum. Can you imagine? When I heated them up, the pictograms just melted.” He coughed again, as if his body weren’t built for so many words at a time. “No Chinese—that was Klausner’s excuse for his master coming up short.” Another cough.

Milo reached into his jacket and took out a small flask. “Vodka.”

“Thanks.” The assassin took a long swig, which only made him cough more blood across his prison oranges, but he didn’t let go of the flask. He raised a finger until the coughs had trickled away, then said, “I better get it out quick, no?”

“What did the pictograms say?”

“Something like: As promised, the end. Weird, huh?”

Milo nodded.

“I could have let it go, and I considered that. But that’s bad business. If people find out I let one customer cheat me, then …” He wiped his bloodstained lips. “You understand.”

“Of course.”

Roth coughed again, less wretched this time. “Anyway, I thought for obvious reasons that it was the Chinese. They’ve invested billions into that country for oil; they supply the government with guns. They’d want to protect their investment. But then … yes. I saw the newspapers. Everyone believed the president had it done. He’d been harassing Ahmad for years. So I had it, right? There was Jan Klausner’s master, at least for this job.” He blinked a few times, and Milo feared he’d drift off again, but then he was back. “I’m an impulsive worker. In other men that spells defeat, but somewhere along the way I made it work for me. Half-second decisions are part of the job, don’t you think?”

Milo didn’t dispute the point.

“President al-Bashir, it turned out, was on a diplomatic trip to Cairo. So, impulsively, I flew there. Fancy villa, all the security out. But I’m the Tiger, right? I figure a way in. All the way in. I find him in his bedroom—alone, luckily. And I put the question to him: Omar, why are you stiffing me? But listen to me, Milo Weaver. After we’ve gone through about twenty minutes’ rigmarole, I realize he doesn’t know anything about this. Did he want Ahmad dead? Sure. The man was a pain in his ass. But did he actually order the killing?” Roth shook his head. “Sadly, no. So, like the wind, I’m gone.”

He took a sip of Milo’s vodka, letting it sit on his tongue before easing it down his throat. He looked at the flask. “Rus sian?”

“Swedish.”

“It’s nice.”

Again, Milo waited.

After another medicinal sip, Roth said, “I thought it through again and decided to search for Jan Klausner instead. I did some research—I know people, you see. People who can help. Turns out that Jan Klausner is registered in Paris, but under the name Herbert Williams, American. I went to his address, which is of course fake, but this, I believe, is where I took my wrong turn. I must have been spotted. A week later, Jan—or Herbert—he contacted me. It’s February by then. He asked me to come to Milan again to collect the rest of my money. His master had realized the error of his ways.”

“So you went,” said Milo, interested despite himself.

“Money is money. Or, it used to be.” That grin, weary now. “It went smoothly. We met in a café—February fourteenth—and he handed me a shopping bag full of euros. He also handed me, as an apology, a file on Milo Weaver, once known as Charles Alexander. Your nemesis, he tells me. This man has been after you for half a decade.” Roth frowned. “Why would he do that, Milo? Why would he give me your file? Any idea?”

“I have no idea.”

Roth bobbed his eyebrows at this mystery. “Only later, in Switzerland, once they told me the approximate time I got infected, did I remember what happened. You see, there were metal chairs at that café. Aluminum wire. Very pretty, but at some point during our coffee, I felt a little pinch from the chair. Here.” He touched the underside of his right thigh. “Poked through my pants, right into my leg. I thought it was just a lousy factory job, a little sliver of metal. It drew blood. Klausner,” he said, shaking his head at the memory, almost amused, “he got the waitress over and started bawling her out. He said his friend—meaning me—would sue them. Of course, the waitress was pretty—all Milano waitresses are—and I had to calm things down.”

“That’s how you think you got it?”

Roth shrugged with some effort. “How else? I’m sure you know from your file that I’m celibate and that I don’t shoot drugs.”

Milo considered not replying, but finally admitted, “The file on you is pretty thin.”

“Oh!” That seemed to please the assassin.

All this time, Milo had remained standing in the center of the room. By now, the position felt awkward, so he settled on the foot of the cot, by Roth’s feet. On the assassin’s upper lip a thin trail of snot glimmered. “Who do you think Klausner’s master is?”

Roth stared at him, thinking it over. “It’s hard to know. The jobs I got from him, they were inconsistent, just like your personal history. I’d always wondered this—does Mr. Klausner-Williams represent one group, or many groups? I’ve gone back and forth, finally deciding that he represents one group.” He paused, perhaps for dramatic effect. “The global Islamic jihad.”

Milo opened his mouth, then shut it. Then: “Does this bother you?”

“I’m an artisan, Milo. The only thing that concerns me is the feasibility of the job.”

“So, terrorists paid you to get rid of Mullah Salih Ahmad, one of their own. That’s what you’re saying?”

Roth nodded. “Public killings and private killings serve different purposes. You of all people know that. You don’t think al-Qaeda’s only technique is to pack little boys with bombs and send them off to a heaven of virgins, do you? No. And the Sudan—at first, I couldn’t see it either. Then I started watching. Who’s winning now? Ignore Darfur for the moment. I’m talking about the capital. Khartoum. The Muslim extremist insurgency, that’s who’s winning. They have public support like never before. Ahmad’s killing was about the best gift those bastards ever got, and with a Chinese brand on his body it would’ve been even better—blame it on the Chinese investors who prop up the president.” He shook his head. “They’ll have an Islamic paradise in no time, thanks to me.”

Judging from his features, no one would have been able to tell how much this news excited Milo. He’d asked all his questions in the quiet way of the interrogator, as if no answer were more important than another. In that same way, he said, “There’s something I don’t understand, Roth. You learned that, five months ago, you caught HIV. You learned it in a Swiss clinic. Now, it’s nearly killed you. Why aren’t you on antiretrovirals? You could live well enough for decades.”

It was Roth’s turn to look passive as he studied Milo’s face. “Milo, your file on me must be very small indeed.” Finally, he explained: “The Science of Christianity makes pure the fountain, in order to purify the stream.”