inside. He pulled up the throw rug, checked the floorboards, and broke open the seat of the chair, then went to the light fixture in the ceiling. He returned to the photographs and opened each frame. Nothing. Then he checked each of the three electrical outlets.
It was when he began unscrewing the outlet beneath the window that he found a hair-thin wire leading from behind the panel, up behind the curtains to the curtain rods, where it powered a camera. It was a small thing, like a webcam, but built to order with an antenna and a clip that attached to the end of the curtain rod. There was no manufacturer’s name or serial number. From its position, the camera witnessed the entire room, but it wasn’t so small that Alan wouldn’t have noticed it. He had to have known of its existence. Milo unclipped the camera and peered into the wide-angled lens, then ripped out the power cord and pocketed it.
Though he’d tried to put each item back together after taking it apart, by midnight the office looked different. The chair sagged, its seat hanging open; the computer gaped at him where he couldn’t put back the front panel. It was as if, by searching for a few hours, he’d aged the place prematurely, but he was too tired to keep at it. He grabbed his empty glass and returned to the living room, then stopped. In an armless chair Alan had once told him had been designed by Mies van der Rohe sat Dennis Chaudhury, his heavy eyelids very dark, but there was a smile on his face. “Hello, Milo.”
“How long have you been here?”
Chaudhury rocked his head from side to side. “Half hour? More? I didn’t want to interrupt your work. It’s always a nice surprise to find out someone’s doing your job for you.”
“You’re alone?”
“One friend in the lobby, another in the hall. I thought you and I could talk alone.”
As Milo came around and settled on the couch, he noticed that the hard drive was gone from the kitchen counter. “This your first visit?”
“Penelope wouldn’t leave the place. When we found out she’d gone to visit you, I was upstate. Took a while to get back. She there for the night?”
“Probably. She’s had a rough time of it.”
Chaudhury nodded as if this were sad news. “So what did you find?”
“You’ve got the hard drive. That was it.”
“Anything interesting on it?”
“It’s either wiped clean or encrypted. I don’t really know my way around computers.”
“Don’t worry-we’ve got plenty of people who do. What does Penelope say?”
“Whatever he was doing, he kept it from her.”
Another nod. “Took it hard, did she?”
“Did the Brits get back to you?”
Chaudhury considered his reply. “They say they’ll have something for us later.”
“Sounds like they’re being uncooperative.”
“A kinder word would be ‘careful.’ ”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing important,” Chaudhury said, then picked at the knee of his slacks. “You planning on going?”
“To London? No.”
“Good. I’ve already sent someone, and I don’t want you getting in the way.”
“Isn’t that overstepping your bounds? Sending field agents to London?”
Chaudhury’s self-satisfied smile faded, then he rocked his head. “You really think the Department of Homeland Security has any boundaries, Weaver?”
“Maybe not, but the better question is whether or not you have boundaries.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re not a Homelander. I’d just like to know what you really are.”
Chaudhury blinked, only briefly thrown, then touched his hands together. He sighed. “I’m on the side of the angels. Isn’t that enough?”
“That would make you the first one I’ve ever met.”
Chaudhury rubbed at a nostril, placed his hands on the seat of the chair, and pushed himself up. When he spoke, his voice was lowered. “I’m Company, Weaver. That’s all you need to know.”
“Why the pretense?”
“Because my bosses thought you might not want to help us. They seem to think you have a beef with the Company. Maybe because we stuck you in a jail for a while. We brought you back, of course, but you chose to leave the nest again. Maybe you don’t like us anymore.”
“I don’t hold grudges.”
“They’ll be so pleased to hear it.”
“Section?”
Chaudhury stuck his hands in his pockets. “What?”
“What’s your section?”
“Counterterrorism.”
“Under Bill Ferragamo?”
Another pause. “No.”
“Who?”
“I’m not playing twenty questions. You want to help me find out who abducted your friend, then great. If not, then fuck off. It’s all the same to me.”
“I’ll fuck off, then,” Milo said and walked out of the apartment. On his way to the elevator, he passed a thickset hood that looked less like CIA than like Balkan mafia.
At home, he found Tina dozing on the couch, her head in Penelope’s lap. Penelope was watching a late-night talk show in which an actress with a new film out was showing off her platform shoes. Penelope gave Milo a tired smile as he settled on a chair. “I’m sober now,” she said with something like pride.
“Good for you.”
“Did you uncover all?”
He shook his head, realizing that Tina was wrong-Penelope did trust him. She’d learned her husband was missing and wasn’t rushing off to the police; she was leaving everything to him. “Alan left the place clean,” Milo told her. “He knew what he was doing.”
“He always did.”
“What kind of security did he have in his office?”
“Security?”
“Motion detectors, cameras, that sort of thing.”
“Should he have had something?”
“I’m just asking.”
She grinned. “Well, I hope he didn’t have a camera. You know that great leather chair? We used to have sex on it all the time.” The grin faded. “Before he turned into… well, before he started pushing me away.”
Milo stared at her, wondering. “When was the last time?”
“That we had sex? ”
“In his office.”
She didn’t look like she was going to answer, but finally arched a brow. “Nearly a month ago. I actually remember the date. May 23, a Friday. We finished just minutes before you guys showed up for that roast lamb. Any more intimate questions?”
Milo shook his head. There was no way that Alan would have missed that camera, which meant either that he knew who was watching him or that he had installed it himself. Either way, three and a half weeks ago, on the evening of May 23, the camera wasn’t there; it had arrived after that date.
6
Tina took a vacation day on Thursday, and Penelope showered before joining them for coffee and leaving with
