you have our decision.”
“Please.”
“Why did you ask to meet here, in the middle of the Red Sea?”
“I explained that before. My associate here wants to see the face of the man who will help carry this out. He believes in faces more than words.”
“Is that why he does not speak?” the man asked, looking hard at Milo.
“He’s a politician,” Leticia said quickly, perhaps too quickly. “He knows that speaking aloud makes him part of something.”
“I do not believe you,” the man said, and as he said the words, his driver and the other man raised their rifles. The sentence had been a prearranged code. Milo’s hand was in his pocket, clutching the Bernardelli, but Leticia spoke calmly.
“If you don’t believe me, then turn around and go. We’ll find someone else who’s not so afraid.”
“Someone who’s more stupid,” he said, almost phrasing it as a question, and they stared at one another for about ten seconds before the man raised a hand from his robe, flat, fingers together, and the men lowered their guns. The driver started the engine, filling their world with noise again. “Ma’a salaama,” the man called to Leticia, but did not raise his hand again.
She answered in kind.
Once they were gone, leaving frothy waves in their wake, Milo gave the pistol back to Fekry and went to sit beside Leticia at the bow. She watched the black water, then looked at him. “What?”
“You’re trying to panic the Chinese. You’re trying to panic Xin Zhu.”
“Look who’s the smartest boy in class,” she said, but the joke seemed to give her no joy.
Remembering that she had also met with Islamic militants in China, he pushed further. “Information overload. You’re diverting his attention from the real attack. Just one or two diversions and he can ignore them, but five or six, and he has no choice but to pay attention.”
She looked satisfied by his astuteness.
“Alan’s idea?”
“Originally, yeah.”
“Are you going to tell me what the real attack is?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I knew.”
“You really don’t know?”
She shook her head, and when he asked if this didn’t bother her, she said, “I’m just happy I haven’t been shelved. They’ll tell me when it’s time.”
“Irwin and Collingwood.”
“The IRS,” she said, finally grinning, “but I’m getting the feeling that this isn’t going to work.”
“Whether or not these people accept it is beside the point,” he said. “The important thing is letting the Chinese know that you’re trying to do something. That you’re talking to Darfur rebels.”
“Sure,” she said, “but we’ve misjudged a lot here. I talked to the Uighurs, and they weren’t interested. I talked to the Tibetans after Alan disappeared-they wouldn’t even listen to me. I hope the others are having more luck.”
“The two other Tourists.”
“One.”
“What?”
She sighed loudly. “In Frankfurt, I got the news. They got Tran Hoang in South Korea. So it’s serious, kid.”
She leaned back on her outstretched arms as Fekry started up the engine. Milo found her lack of confidence unnerving, and it made him think of his own irrational confidence, the one that kept telling him that he could gain the upper hand and turn events to his advantage. As a Tourist, Milo had once believed that the only way to deal with failure was to treat it as if it were success. To Tourists, success and failure are the same thing.
As they headed back to shore, beneath the engine’s grumble they heard a haunting sound rolling over the water. Leticia checked her gold wristwatch. “Four fourteen. Hijri prayers.”
He wasn’t a Tourist, not really, and there was no reason to think he would ever gain the upper hand in any of this.
15
Leticia woke him a little after noon with a kiss on the nose as more prayers floated through their open window, and after he showered, she presented him with clothes. On three hours of sleep, she’d spent the morning on Tahlia Street, where she’d found a light Ralph Lauren suit with a green silk tie. Once he was dressed, she used a hotel comb to pull at his hair. “We should get rid of that gray,” she said fussily.
“I like my gray.”
She stepped back, judging his appearance, then said, “You know how a little gray makes a man distinguished? Well, that’s only true for some men. On you, it just looks old.”
“I’m only thirty-eight, Leticia.”
“Making it all the more sad.”
She modeled her own purchase, a black sleeveless drop-waist dress from Prada, with a pair of leather boots that reached to just below her knees, leaving most of her thigh bare. He wondered where she was getting this money. Those bottomless Tourism credit cards were a thing of the past.
It didn’t matter, though. None of these people mattered anymore. He’d had a night to reflect on everything, to truly grasp his helplessness, and had come to a decision. As soon as he talked to the Germans, it would be settled, and Alan Drummond, Xin Zhu, Nathan Irwin, and even Leticia Jones could go to hell.
“So?” Leticia asked.
“Very nice.”
“You know, we’ve still got time.”
Milo briefly considered it, for what did any of those old rules mean now? If you cut yourself free, you’re free of everything, even selfishness. He gave her a wink and collected his cash. “I’ll be in the lobby.”
“No questions?” she asked. “Not interested in where we’re going next?”
“You’ll tell me eventually,” he said and left.
Though her partner didn’t appear, the tall German woman crossed the lobby soon after he arrived. She gave him a significant look, then headed to a counter lined with in-house telephones and lifted one. He followed, grabbing another phone two down from her. He put the receiver to his ear, listening to the beep-beep of the dial tone as she said, “Take the stairs to the first floor,” then hung up and walked away.
He followed her instructions, and in a long corridor of identical doors he waited until, halfway down, one opened but no one came out. He approached quickly, because Leticia would be in the lobby soon, and when he stepped inside, he found a small, mustached man sitting on the corner of the made bed, hands resting on his knees. It was Erika Schwartz’s assistant, whom Milo had only known as Oskar, a happy participant in Milo’s torture a few months ago. Milo closed the door behind himself. In German, Oskar said, “Tell me one reason I should be sitting right here, talking to you.”
“I don’t know, Oskar. You’re the one who’s sitting here.”
“That’s my boss’s decision. Strangely, she feels like she owes you.”
“For the cigarette burns?”
Oskar wiped at the corners of his mustache. “Something else, apparently.” He stood then, and though he tried, he couldn’t quite manage a threatening stance. “She helped your idiotic father, and we nearly got ourselves busted for the favor.”
“My father?”
Oskar just stared.
“When?”
Oskar shrugged. “He asked for help extracting your wife and daughter, and-guess what? No wife and
