“Plane.”
“Five planes. New York to Seattle. Drove to Vancouver and then flew to Tokyo. From there, to Mumbai. Mumbai to Amman. Amman to London. Each plane, another name. His own only on the first flight to Seattle.”
Alan had circled the planet to reach London. “How long did this take?”
“Four days. In Mumbai and Amman, he left the airports briefly; in Tokyo, he stayed in the international terminal and waited for the next flight.”
“You got this from MI-5?”
“Some of it. They knew he flew in from Jordan; I filled in the rest.”
“What else do they know?”
“Arrived in London very late on Thursday the twelfth. Checked into the Rathbone and on Friday made a single call from his room, to a third-floor room registered to one Gephel Marpa. Want me to spell that?”
“Please.” Once he’d done so, Milo said, “Tibetan?”
“Very good. Long-standing member of Free Tibet. London resident, which means Mr. Marpa came to the hotel on purpose.”
“So they met?”
“Maybe-no one knows. At least, Five isn’t saying yet. Saturday afternoon, after Alan Drummond disappeared, Marpa left the hotel and returned to his home in South London.”
“What did Alan do for meals?”
“Room service.”
“So he flies there Thursday, spends Friday in his room. Maybe talks to Marpa, maybe not. Someone shuts off the security cameras, and he walks out.”
His father nodded.
“Why sabotage the cameras in the first place? He knew the street cameras would get him.”
Yevgeny took a deep breath. “Who’s to say?”
“Leticia Jones,” Milo said after a moment. “She was in the same hotel; she turned off the cameras.”
His father shook his head. “It wasn’t her.”
“How do you know?”
“Can’t I retain a little mystery?” he asked, some of his old charm coming through. “Trust me, son: Your alluring Tourist didn’t turn them off.”
Milo frowned at him, wondering if his father knew who had turned off the cameras but didn’t want to share. There could be any number of reasons for his reluctance, ones that, perhaps, had no bearing on Alan’s situation. Milo said, “If it wasn’t to hide Alan leaving the hotel, it was to hide the movements of someone who went in to speak to him first. Alan might have walked out on his own, but I’ll lay odds that someone else convinced him he had to leave. Threat, or whatever.”
Brows raised, Yevgeny said, “One of many possibilities.”
Milo stared past his father a moment, to where a waiter stood near the register in the back, talking on a cell phone. “I don’t get it,” he said finally. “Alan flies around the world to get to London, arranges to meet a Tibetan dissident in the hotel, then never goes to the man’s room. Then he walks. I want to see that video footage.”
“You’ll have to get it yourself. My contact has seen it but can’t smuggle out a copy.”
Their food arrived, wreathed in a pleasantly pungent smell, and Milo noticed with dismay that his father’s lips soon became damp and littered with flakes of fish. He felt the urge to reach across with his napkin and wipe it for him, but no matter how far gone he was Yevgeny would never allow that.
“How’s your work?” Milo asked.
Yevgeny chewed and considered the question. He raised his utensils in a half-shrug. “It goes on and on. I’ve never told you the details of my days, have I?”
Milo shook his head. Though he knew that, for the past six years, his father had been running a secret intelligence-gathering department within the UN, he had no idea what his job actually demanded. Milo knew he ran agents, but not how many or how often.
It requires a lot of travel. Not as much as a Tourist, of course, but a lot for a man my age. These days, there’s all that security to deal with-my UN credentials aren’t as ironclad as they used to be. And the work’s expanding; I’ve even had to bring on an assistant to keep everything organized. I would retire, but I don’t know who to pass it on to.”
“Your assistant,” Milo suggested, “let him take over, and you can stay in touch in case problems arise.”
“ Her. And, no-I know that she doesn’t want the job. This is why I keep suggesting you give up this idiotic employment search and just come join me.”
“I’ve had enough of traveling,” Milo said. “Besides, I really don’t want to work for my father.”
Yevgeny folded his hands beneath his moist chin and stared. “Perhaps you’re right, Milo. I’m not entirely sure you’d have the stamina for the job.”
“Reverse psychology hasn’t worked since I was sixteen.”
Yevgeny reached forward and patted Milo’s hand. “Everything is worth a try.”
Before leaving, Milo ordered some to-go baklava and waited by the front door while Yevgeny put the lunch on his card. As they walked eastward, they settled on dinner with Tina and Stephanie the next evening; then Milo told him about Dennis Chaudhury, likely of the Central Intelligence Agency. Yevgeny frowned at the story, then took out a handkerchief and wiped some grease from his lips. “He sounds very ignorant, this Mr. Chaudhury.”
“I’m sure he knows more, but it’s done now. He thinks he’s gotten all he can get from me.”
“Have you verified he is who he says he is?”
“I’ve got the number of his boss.”
“A number he gave you?” Yevgeny said doubtfully.
“I’ll talk to the guy in the morning, then run the information myself. It doesn’t matter, though. The Company will run its investigation, and either they’ll share results or they won’t.”
Yevgeny paused, turning to get a good look at his son, then shrugged and continued walking. “I’m surprised you can let all this go so easily.”
It wasn’t as easy as his father suspected, but now it was easier. Alan had walked out of that hotel on his own two feet. Alan had been running an operation-perhaps still was-and London had been part of a ham-fisted attempt to draw Milo into it. It had been clumsy and stupid, and that was argument enough to keep his distance from Alan Drummond.
“Happy birthday, by the way.”
On the local 4 train, heading home, he worked to ignore some fresh pain in his gut, a mixture of lunch and the old bullet wound, as well as Alan Drummond-who, he’d decided, no longer deserved his attention.
As so often in his life, however, his own desires were inconsequential. History moves forward, and none of us live alone, no matter how hard we try. The desires of others manipulate our hours and days to their own obscure purposes.
He knew this as truth as he raised his gaze from the white foam box of sweets in his lap and saw, sitting opposite him, a sensual, fresh-skinned black woman with a broad smile on her face. She wasn’t looking at him, but he was the only thing on the train she was interested in.
8
It was instinct, reaching into his pocket and, with one hand, popping the battery out of his phone. Not looking at her was instinct, too, as was the sudden attention he gave to his peripheral vision as he climbed to his feet and disembarked at Union Square. As he crossed Fourth Avenue to the park, to his left the enormous Metronome gushed white clouds, the time reading 13:54.
There was no point looking back. Leticia-or Gwendolyn, or Rosa-would approach him after she’d made sure he wasn’t being tailed. So he followed the edge of the park north, past some huge outdoor party full of young people and patrolling police, to East Seventeenth, where he popped a Nicorette and headed down into the W Hotel’s Underbar. After the sunlight, his eyes had to adjust to the darkness to take in the couples scattered throughout. He headed directly to the bar. A distractingly attractive bartender asked how he was doing; he told her he was doing
