knew now, he would have killed Chaudhury in D.C.
When they reached the counter, Leticia opened her small purse and took out two well-thumbed passports. “Two for the nine thirty-five to Mexico City.”
“You have reservations?” asked the clerk, a diminutive brunette with olive skin.
“It’s under Frederickson,” she said and nodded at Milo. “That’s him.” She leaned across the counter, and in a high whisper added, “ He’s in a mood today. ”
Like you wouldn’t believe, he thought.
The clerk suppressed a grin, then checked their passports-Gwendolyn Davis and Sam Frederickson-and printed out boarding passes. “Any luggage to check?”
“Just us,” said Leticia, then grabbed Milo’s arm. “Come on, honey.”
While they waited in the winding line for security, he saw Chaudhury with a cell phone to his ear, calling in their status. Leticia seemed to notice him staring, so he said, “You reserved the tickets.”
“You gotta reserve,” she said. “This plane’s always full.”
“What if I’d said Cancun?”
She smiled. “Mr. Frederickson made a lot of reservations for this morning.”
They made it smoothly through security, and as they were slipping their shoes back on Milo said, “Should I be confused?”
“Well, I hope so.”
They reached Gate 5 a little before nine, but there was no space for them to sit, so they leaned against a column. Milo’s damaged intestine was speaking to him in the coagulated voice of despair, and he was sure he couldn’t pull this off. He couldn’t sit in a plane with Leticia Jones and fly to Mexico. The only thing he could conceivably do was lie on the hard floor, close his eyes, and die. Would that save them? He didn’t know, but he suspected it might. Then Leticia said, “Chill out, baby. You act like you’ve never been on a plane before.”
“I’d just like to know what’s going on.”
“So you can report it to your masters in Beijing?”
It was a sign of his utter incompetence that he stared at her hard for a whole second, shocked, and he read in her face the slight turn in mood that told him it had been a joke that, perhaps, was no longer a joke. She was wondering if she was going to have to kill him. He said, “What are you talking about?”
“Lighten up and just play along,” she said, then again looked down the busy corridor.
“You’re waiting for someone.”
“Maybe someone will come, maybe not.”
When boarding began, they joined the cattle-rush of passengers, stuck somewhere in the middle of the sweating horde, and once they were a couple of passengers from the front Leticia tugged his sleeve and said, “Time to go.” Docilely, he followed her out of the crowd and to the other side of the terminal, where they stood in another line at Dunkin’ Donuts and bought coffees and croissant sandwiches. He picked at his food, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to keep it down, for it just reminded him of the scent of Chinese food in the apartment, and then everything else.
They sat at Gate 12, which was mostly empty, and ignored the announcement calls for their passport names. Finally, the Mexico City flight took off, and they left through security. There was no sign of Chaudhury. They waited at a taxi stand, and when they got into a cab Leticia asked for Union Square Park. The driver, a light-skinned North African, turned on the meter and called in the ride, but when they reached Queens Boulevard Leticia handed him a fifty and asked him to take them instead to Port Morris, in the Bronx, but to keep it quiet from the dispatch. It took him two seconds of reflection to accept her proposal.
Though buses were the obvious next mode of transportation from Port Morris, it turned out that Leticia had left a hybrid Ford Escape a couple of streets inland. It was just after eleven.
Only once they were driving did she decide to relieve the tension. “We’re not flying out until after seven, so don’t worry yourself, but I hope you saw those shadows in the airport. You did, didn’t you?”
“An Indian guy,” said Milo.
“And…?”
He blinked at her. “Is this a test?”
“There was a white chick with him. I doubt I lost them-at least, I hope not-but I think we’re being pretty convincing.”
“Who are they?”
“Chinese, probably, but maybe Homeland’s gotten wind of something.” She sniffed, and he wondered if that was a pointed remark. Had his call to Janet Simmons been heard by everyone? But she only said, “It’s best we assume the Chinese.”
“Leticia?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Where the hell are we going?”
“We’re going for a bite and a drink. Couldn’t you use one?”
She drove up the Major Deegan Expressway and then across the Hamilton and Washington bridges to reach New Jersey, where she took Bergen Boulevard down to North Bergen, full of heavy redbrick buildings and shops. She turned off the main drag beside the park and finally pulled up at a corner Mexican restaurant called Puerto Vallarta, which was busy with a lunchtime crowd. She’d called ahead and reserved a seat under the name Jenny.
As they were seated, Leticia asked for a pitcher of margaritas. “Smile, baby,” she told Milo, but he thought he might explode. He thought that if she made another joke he would smash his head against the table until he bled. Maybe that would cut through the black, dizzying funk that had invaded him as he sat beside his father’s body in his living room. He drank two more shots of vodka from the bottle, looking at the old man’s matted hair and the loose skin on his fingers, trying to escape his memories and regrets and focus on what this meant, and what it required of him.
When the pitcher came, she filled his glass and said, “Drink up now. It’s gonna be dry as hell where we’re going.”
He raised his head at that. It was a hint, but he didn’t bother speculating aloud. He sipped his margarita, then, like a man just out of the desert, poured it down his throat until it was nearly empty. Either it would help him or it would kill him. That was how he was starting to see the world.
“I think your doctor would frown on that,” she said, slipping a straw into her glass.
He took a long look at her, his first sustained gaze that day. He’d been a Tourist himself, and knew that everything she showed him-the cool exterior, the impeccable beauty, the style and the humor-was simply for show. There was another woman just beneath the surface. A killer, yes, but someone who had been born to a home and been a child and a teen and a young adult, someone who had ended up in a world that most people would run from. She’d had her chance to leave when the department had crumbled, but she hadn’t taken it. He said, “Why’d you come back?”
She didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. “What else am I gonna do?”
“I’ve seen you in action-you could do a lot,” he said. “And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Every Tourist keeps an escape plan on ice. Somewhere, you’ve stashed another name and a bundle of cash.”
She wasn’t going to deny it; there was no point. A Tourist without an escape route wasn’t much of a Tourist. “Maybe I’m afraid of boredom,” she said finally. Then she asked, “You know what I did before this?”
“Tell me.”
“I was teaching English, if you can believe it. In Hong Kong.”
“You know Mandarin?”
“That must have been on the recruiter’s mind.”
“But that’s not enough,” he said after a moment, and it felt better, just a little, to think about this and not himself. “Something in your history tipped them off. Did you murder someone?”
“Nearly,” she said, thinking briefly about whatever story lay behind that one word. “No, no corpses littering my past. But I was involved with some… ladies in the Bay Area. I think I made my character clear there-I tried to get them to go militant. One of them, it turned out, was from the Company.”
That answer demanded more questions, but he only said, “You’ve got other talents. You should walk away from this. Go figure out what you really want to do.”
She seemed to seriously consider that, then said, “What happens if, after a few months, I realize that this is
