“Thanks.”
Dzubenko turned on the television and added, “Poka,” an informal good-bye.
“Poka, Marko,” Milo said, and as he closed the door behind himself, he heard a German talk show hostess ask, with utter earnestness, You mean that, after all the things he did, you slept with him again? The studio audience let its contempt show with a synchronized Boo.
9
Drummond was coming down the stairs. “So?”
“It all fits.”
They stepped onto the dark porch, and cold, erratic gusts hit them. In the distance, against the glow of headlights on the highway, the silhouette of a guard stood smoking a cigarette. In the foreground, the Lincoln started up, but Drummond didn’t bother stepping down to the grass. He didn’t say a thing, so Milo said, “He tells me we have sixty-three Tourists in all. Is that about right?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I used to know how many we had in Europe, but that was my focus. Grainger never shared the big number.”
“It’s the number we’re supposed to have, yes.” He coughed into his hand. “This is some serious bad news, but I want to vet him more before freezing things.”
“Freeze?”
“I don’t want the Chinese picking off our Tourists for sport. If we do have a mole, then I’m using the Myrrh code.”
Myrrh was the universal recall, the order of last resort. “Shouldn’t you wait for a second source?”
“Dzubenko is the second source.”
“What?”
Drummond chewed on something, perhaps the inside of his mouth. “As soon as I got his story, I started asking around. Any Chinese intel on double agents. There were a few leads, but these kinds of rumors are a dime a dozen. They always sound convincing until you ask for compromised material, then they dry up. But a friend over in Asia- Pacific told me about someone they’ve got in the Guoanbu. A woman. She’d been in the Third Bureau, which deals with Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, for a couple years. Nice, solid source for low-level intel. Then, in late December, there was a personnel shuffle, and she ended up in the Sixth Bureau, counterintelligence, and a small office on the outskirts of Beijing, run by one Xin Zhu.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Drummond shook his head. “Don’t get too excited. Zhu runs his department like al Qaeda runs its operations-in cells. Each individual works on a fragment, completely insulated from the person working at the next desk. This discipline is kept in check by the knowledge-or rumor, it doesn’t matter-that a percentage of them are only there to spy on the others for the boss. Sounds like a dreadful place to work.”
Milo didn’t bother saying that it sounded familiar. “She does have some access, though, right? We could backtrack the intel that crosses her desk.”
Again, he shook his head. “Nothing she’s worked on has dealt with any Western sources. Zhu kept her with her specialty, and the best she gets is occasional dirt on Macau and Taiwanese politicians. Only once did she come across what you and I are interested in. Once. And that was just blind luck, and lust. A couple weeks after she started working there, Zhu’s own secretary, An-ling Shen, began showing interest in her. She let him take her out one night. He’s an insignificant man physically-portly, nearsighted-and knows there’s only one way to woo an attractive younger woman into bed. With secrets. So he told her that his boss, Xin Zhu, had an important source within the CIA.”
Milo waited, but Drummond didn’t continue. “And that’s it?”
“Sadly, she didn’t sleep with him. Her controller asked her to give it a try, but she has her limits. Can’t blame her, though. It might have been a test. That was my friend’s guess, and it would have been mine, too, if it hadn’t been for Marko Dzubenko. But,” he said, sighing a cloud of white, “Marko does exist, and I see it all entirely differently. I believe it.”
“That’s a lot of loose tongues,” Milo pointed out. “Both Zhu and his secretary.”
“People are flawed.”
“What do we have on Xin Zhu?”
“It’s tough getting information out of the Guoanbu. He’s a colonel-we do know that. Late fifties. There was a verified residence in Germany during the early eighties. No wife we know of, but rumors-unverified, so far-of one son. Last mention of his name was in ’96, when the State Council approved a consolidation plan that recalled a lot of their Western undercover agents, the ones living as businessmen and academics and journalists. He was against it, but Jia Chunwang, the minister of state security, gave him a semipublic rebuke. After that, Zhu essentially disappears from the records. His office is a marginal outpost of the Sixth Bureau, and our girl on the inside can’t even tell us the scope of its purpose. Were it not for Marko Dzubenko, we’d just assume Zhu’s department dealt with regional politics.”
“I still don’t buy it,” Milo said. “You’ve got Xin Zhu. By all appearances he’s politically dead in the water. He’s a heavy drinker with a weakness for women. Not only that, but he’s sharing extremely classified information with a nobody-a Ukrainian lieutenant who ends up defecting soon afterward. He’s also got a loose-lipped, horny secretary. How does a man with all these flaws end up a colonel, and a colonel running a mole in our department?”
“You’re not the only one to ask that,” Drummond said after a moment. “The Tourist who first met with Dzubenko brought that up. Which brings us to another theory, one that I’m starting to warm to. It’s that Zhu has reached the end of his rope. After the humiliation of the midnineties, he’s grown bitter. The mole, then, isn’t his. It’s the brainchild of one of his competitors, and he’s sabotaging it to block that person’s career.”
“That would make the drunkenness an act. As well as the secretary’s indiscretions-which would mean that he knows the girl works for us.”
“Or not,” said Drummond. “There’s no way to know. Marko certainly wouldn’t know the difference. In any case, what’s indisputable is that this Chinese colonel shared information he couldn’t have unless he had some kind of connection to Tourism. Do you know what the biggest threat to Tourism is?”
“Other than a mole?”
Drummond shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. A mole would be a terrible blow. Still, we could reorganize and regroup. Myrrh is a radical decision, but it’s the safest. Bring everyone back, hand out new names and go- codes, replace staff. The crucial thing for us is to keep it quiet. I’ve already assured Ascot that we’ve discounted Marko’s story, so if he gets wind that we really are hunting a mole, he’ll shut us down in a heartbeat.” He stared at Milo significantly. “Everything we do from here on out is under the radar.”
“Understood.”
Drummond chewed the inside of his mouth again. “While a mole would hurt, Tourism could survive. That’s not our biggest threat. The biggest threat to Tourism is knowledge of its existence.”
“Which the Chinese have. So does a Ukrainian lieutenant.”
“They’re not the only ones. The French have an inkling of it, and so do the Brits. There are sites on the Internet that speculate about us, too. Which is as it should be. Right now, Tourism is a myth. It’s a fable that people either consider poppycock or believe in. The believers are terrified that we might exist, because a myth is far more frightening than reality.”
He finally stepped off the porch, and Milo followed him to the car. He moved slowly, and Milo had to measure his steps to avoid bumping into him.
“What do you think would happen if someone popped up with real evidence of our existence? Don’t strain yourself-I’ll tell you. An investigation would be launched. An official one. Senators and representatives would start asking questions. They would wonder just how much we cost-and that answer, as we both know, is embarrassing. We would go from being a frightening story spies tell each other at night to being just another overpriced Company department whose failures start making the newspapers on a regular basis. We would become a joke, just as all the known departments already are. People-American citizens-would start blogging about us and protesting our
