to find that another car-a Mercedes- had been stolen two streets from where the Trabant had been deposited. This took them west again, into Austria, where Decker joined Lacey, and both found the Mercedes ditched in Salzburg. In each case, the abandoned car had been wiped entirely clean of fingerprints, which became its own kind of fingerprint-that level of cleanliness was probably a sign of Tourism.
The trail petered out in Milan, where the frequency of stolen cars made following leads impossible.
They picked up the trail again by pure luck, three months later in Tunisia, where Decker had just finished a job and was vacationing at the Hotel Bastia in L'Ariana, on the Gulf of Tunis. While working with Lacey, he'd studied a photograph of Ingersoll/Harris, and he saw that same face in the Hotel Bastia restaurant. The man with Harris's face was eating soup and staring out at the water. Decker got up, went to his room, and collected his pistol. When he returned to the restaurant, however, Harris was gone. Four minutes later, he broke into Harris's room, which was empty.
Decker called Tunis, directing the embassy to watch the train stations, harbors, and airport. One young man, just graduated from Banking Section to Security, called in that he had spotted Harris at Carthage Airport. When Decker arrived, he found a cluster of police around the men's bathroom, examining the young man's corpse. He'd been strangled.
Decker called in a list of possible destinations-if, in fact, Harris had stuck to flying-which included Lisbon, Marseille, Bilbao, Rome, and Tripoli. Grainger contacted Tourists in each of those areas, ordering them to abandon whatever they were doing and station themselves at the airports. Only by the next day, with the discovery of Bramble's corpse at Portela Airport, did they realize that Harris had flown to Lisbon.
It was nearly one when Milo finished reading. It frustrated him to know he would be a wreck in the morning, while his reason for staying up hadn't given him any fresh answers.
He stretched, filled a tall glass with vodka, and dropped a lighter into his pocket. He slipped on sandals and took the file and vodka into the stairwell, then climbed to the rooftop-access door. Once outside, looking over the Park Slope roofs leading to the hazily lit Prospect Park, he drank some of the alcohol, but just a sip. He put the file on the concrete roof and doused it with the vodka, opening the file to get the center wet as well.
He lit his little funeral pyre and stared for a long time at the flames and ash that caught on the breeze and flew away, thinking of where he'd been during the saga of Harris's move to the open market. Vienna, with Frank Dawdle, then-Vienna station chief, planning the execution of a retired Eastern Bloc lieutenant general named Brano Sev. Dawdle had been nervous, he remembered-an old man who'd spent the seventies in the field, but the eighties and nineties behind a desk-yet at the same time excited that, once again, if only as support, he was in on the action. It had been Dawdie's job to watch the house and give the signal when, as usual on a Saturday, Sev's wife left the house to go into town for shopping with their daughter. Sev always remained at home on Saturdays. According to sources, he was working on a memoir. Grainger later told him that this job was a favor to some Eastern European friends who thought it best that the old man's memories die with him. The U.S. government, Grainger suggested, had just as much to lose from this man's stories.
It went smoothly. Dawdle gave his signal, and Milo climbed into the house through a first-floor window. On the stairs, he stepped along the wall-edge to avoid creaks, and when he found the elderly cold warrior in his office, pen to paper, he was surprised by how small and meek the man looked. Milo removed his pistol, and the old man, hearing the noise, turned. There was surprise in his face, but the shocking thing was that it passed so quickly. Brano Sev's eyes, magnified by thick glasses, relaxed, and he shook his head. In German, he said: 'You certainly took your time.' Those were his last words.
Milo kicked at the embers, poured the last of the vodka, and lit the remaining pieces. It took a while, but finally everything turned to ash.
24
She had booked them into a long, red-roofed atrocity called Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort, where even the lobby was set up with stanchions and padded ropes to arrange the crowds into orderly lines, as if this were another ride. Restaurants of no recognizable real-world cuisine threaded through the complex, and after each long day of chasing Stephanie to the various attractions they collapsed in these places, ordering nachos or spaghetti, and then wandered out to the crowded 'beach' that bordered the man-made lake.
Despite an initial onrush of sarcasm, by the second day Tina was much less annoyed by Disney Reality. There was something narcotic about the easy predictability and the soft, cushioned safety that surrounded them at every moment. Ignoring the sudden outbursts of children, there was no chaos here, no unpredictable variable. There was nothing even remotely connected to the miserable stories of the planet's shadow side, that parallel world in which her husband worked.
Tuesday night, after a long phone conversation with Grainger that had interrupted their dinner, Milo even said that it might be time to quit the Company completely. 'I don't want this anymore,' he said. He seemed surprised when she didn't get up and start cheering him.
'What else would you do?”
“Anything.'
'But your skill-set, Milo. Really. And what kind of resume would you have?'
After considering this, he said, 'Consulting. Security consulting for big business.'
'Aha,' she said. 'From the military to the industrial. Very complex.'
He laughed, which pleased her, then they made love, which pleased her more.
It was a moment, one of those rare things that when you're old enough you know to appreciate, because the truth is you might never feel it again. Happiness. Despite the machinations in Milo's world, here in the fictitious land of Disney they had a little oasis.
Like anything that good, though, it was short-lived, crumbling by the third day.
' Space
She was just ahead, Milo gripping her hand. He looked down with a confused expression. 'Yeah. There it is.' He pointed. 'Space Fountain.'
'Not fountain. Mountain!'
He turned back to eyeball Tina. 'Can you understand a word this kid's saying?'
With impressive precision, Stephanie landed a quick kick on Milo 's shin. He gripped it, hopping on one leg. 'Oh! Mountain*.'
Tina hurried to catch up.
They registered themselves for the ride using the Fastpass that allowed them to wander for most of the forty- five minutes' expected wait, listen to Stephanie's one-sided conversation with Minnie Mouse, then go find some snacks that required another twenty-minute line.
Stephanie was unimpressed by the oranges Milo bought, so he explained that the vitamins were necessary for their upcoming space flight. 'Astronauts have to eat barrels of fruit before they're allowed anywhere near the space shuttle.'
She believed that for approximately five seconds then glared up at him with a half-smile and sliced through his logic: 'That makes no sense, Dad.'
'Doesn't it?'
An exasperated sigh. 'They take vitamin pills. Not oranges.”
“When was the last time you went into space, Little Miss?”
“Come on.'
Among the stanchions that forced Space Mountain guests into a line that folded back on itself ten times, Stephanie rechecked her height with the forty-four-inch marker as Milo 's phone sang. He turned away when he took it, so Tina couldn't hear the conversation. It lasted about a minute before he hung up, turned around with a smile, and said, 'You two sit together, okay?'
'And you?' said Tina. 'You're not going?'
'Of course he's going,' said Stephanie.
'I'll sit near the back. You guys get in front. Turns out there's an old friend here. I'm going to sit with him.”
