“Early thirties, maybe. Not tall-my height.”
Milo rubbed at his face as if taking all this in, but he was running through his memories. He knew of no Hector Garza from the old office, even though, in the aftermath of the department’s demise, he’d gone over the list of administrative employees with Alan to help figure out transfers. One of the four surviving Tourists, Jose Santiago, might fit that description. “Anyone else?”
“He didn’t have a lot of friends. Not anymore. Just you.”
Thirty seconds passed, then Tina said, “Did you get ice cream?”
“What?” said Milo.
“Dessert.”
“I forgot.”
Penelope said, “Wait a minute.”
“What?” said Tina.
Penelope shook her head, and a lopsided grin appeared on her face. “He told me. He told me.”
“Told you what?” asked Milo.
She settled her clasped hands over her stomach and said, “I’d forgotten. I mean, it was something like two months ago-just after you were shot,” she said to Milo. “When he was fired. He asked me- Christ, how come I forgot this?”
“Just tell us,” said Milo.
“Well, he told me that he knew about something that was a danger to the country, and he said that he thought he knew how he could neutralize it.”
“Why did he tell you that?”
A sad smile crossed her face. “He was asking permission. He asked if me if he should work on it or not.”
“What did you say?” Tina asked.
The smile disappeared. “I told him I was all for it.”
“And you never connected that to how he’d been acting?” asked Milo.
“He never mentioned it again,” she said, staring into his eyes defensively. “Two months ago he brought it up, late in the night-he’d woken from a bad dream-and then never again.” She shook her head. “We were on vacation. I forgot about it.”
No one spoke for a few moments, until Penelope said, “Don’t you think you owe it to him?”
Both looked at her, but she was speaking to Milo.
“You really were his only friend.”
He rubbed at his nose. “I’m doing what I can.”
“But you’re still here.”
Milo slowly got to his feet. “Give me your keys, then.”
As she dug through her purse, Milo’s phone let out the chirp-chirp of an incoming message. He dug it out of his pants. It was from Janet Simmons, and once he’d read it he cursed beneath his breath, then read it again.
NO SIGN OF YOUR FRIEND IN OUR RECORDS.
LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED THE CAVALRY.
“Something wrong?” asked Tina.
He deleted the message and gave her a smile. “I just wish life was simpler.”
Penelope, her index finger through a ring laden with keys, let out a contemptuous snort. “Maybe you should have chosen a different career path.”
His stomach was acting up again as he walked to the subway, but it wasn’t the old bullet wound; it was anxiety, the fear that the Chinese, who had until now been on the other side of the world, were now here, in his backyard, for who else could Dennis Chaudhury be working for? He hated himself for his stupidity, for having spoken openly with a complete stranger. A stranger he’d met with, just down the street from his home. This was what happened when you began to enjoy life outside the Company. You forgot that no one is above deception. You became as naive as all the other civilians. Now, Alan had drawn the Chinese right into the middle of his life.
Rumbling underground in a half-full car, though, he realized that he couldn’t even hold onto this conclusion. A Company agent might pose as a Homelander, or perhaps the NSA was following up on signals intelligence it didn’t feel like sharing with the Company. Even the FBI could be running Chaudhury, wanting to cover its tracks by posing as Homeland Security.
What about Britain? Alan had disappeared in London, and MI-5 would be interested in knowing why an ex-CIA man had disappeared on its turf. If the Company was staying quiet, then Five might send someone over, or ask Six to do so.
Once he’d opened himself up to that possibility, he considered the Germans, who had once been hunting Sebastian Hall. The overbearing Erika Schwartz of the BND had learned that Hall was in fact Weaver months ago and would certainly be interested in his reappearance in London. Drummond, he remembered, had been speaking German on the phone
…
Without knowing what, exactly, Alan had been working on, he had no idea what other countries could be added to the list. Trying to figure out whom Chaudhury worked for was an exercise in confusion.
Because of the weekly dinners, the doorman at 200 East Eighty-ninth, the Monarch, recognized Milo’s face. He tapped the brim of his hat and let Milo in, but said, “I’m sorry, sir, the Drummonds are out.”
Milo held up the keys. “I know. I’m picking up something for Penelope.”
“Can I help, sir?”
“Probably not, but thanks. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
He took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, then paused in the carpeted corridor to work his way through the ten keys Penelope carried everywhere. He got it right on the third try and slipped inside.
It was a huge place, easily three times larger than his apartment, and fitted out in a vaguely retro style that Milo had always admired. He went to the open-plan kitchen and poured himself a glass of flat tonic water, then passed the Bauhaus sofa on his way to the office, a leathery affair with an old, lumbering Dell computer beneath the oak desk.
The first thing he noticed was that the computer was unplugged, and the Ethernet cable had been taken out. The simplest security-if it wasn’t attached to the Internet, no one could hack it without first breaking into the apartment. Without electricity, Penelope wouldn’t be as tempted to use it. So he plugged it in and, as it powered up, browsed the shelves that ran the length of one wall. History books-military, political, and cultural. American foreign policy. Napoleonic battle tactics. Soviet expansionism. The funding of Islamic terrorism. There were a few hundred titles here, organized fastidiously by author. On the bottom shelf, laid flat because of their size, were books on design.
It was a remarkably tidy office-the office, perhaps, of an unemployed man-and the opposite wall was decorated with framed pictures. Old family photos: grainy, some ripped and pieced back together, of Boston socialites going back to the 1920s. Mixed in were recent black-and-white close-ups of leaves, fruits, and tombstones-he remembered that Penelope had taken up photography. In the corner was an elegant drinks cabinet full of bottles. Throwing caution to the wind, Milo added vodka to his tonic.
When the computer asked for a password, he typed 1ntrep1d, and the hard drive began to click and whir. He opened the desk drawers but found only pens, a stainless steel letter opener, a few blank Post-it pads, and a ream of printer paper. The computer went quiet, and on the monitor, he saw a blue, empty desktop. He opened the C- drive and found only system folders and a few basic applications. Drummond had either cleaned the computer before leaving, or everything was right there, but hidden. He turned it off again, unplugged it, then dragged the computer case out from beneath the desk. It took about three minutes to figure out how to pop open its front, and he removed the hard drive. In the kitchen he found a Ziploc bag and sealed it inside, leaving it on the counter.
For the next two hours he went through the office again, slowly, pausing only to sip at his drink. He went through the books one at a time, fanning them to find loose slips of paper, which were always bookmarks or receipts used as bookmarks. He turned around each of the photographs on the wall. He pulled apart the desk, checking inside its shell with his hands and beneath the drawers. He went through the printer paper, then disassembled the laser printer. He used the letter opener to unscrew the back of the computer case and looked
