The Tourist

Milo put his vodka on the coffee table and went to the kitchen.

'The evidence,' Grainger called.

Instead of answering, Milo returned with a thick roll of duct tape.

Grainger's smile faded. 'For Christ's sake, Milo. Can't we just have a conversation?'

Milo pulled off a length with a loud grinding sound. 'No, Tom. We can't.'

Grainger knew better than to fight back as Milo attached the end to the back of his chair, then pulled the roll around his body five times, securing the old man to the chair from his shoulders to his elbows. He ripped off the end with his teeth and pressed it flat against the back of the chair. Then he stepped back, checking his handiwork, and returned to the sofa.

'You're going to have to feed me my scotch,' said Grainger.

'I know.'

'Stick and carrot?'

'Bait and switch,' Milo suggested, then blinked. He could hardly make out Grainger's face. It was the sun. When he wasn't looking, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains.

'So tell me,' Grainger said as Milo turned on a floor lamp, 'what evidence have you collected? Not suppositions, mind you. Not hearsay. Evidence.'

Milo returned to the sofa. 'You set me up, Tom. You had me flee from Disney World when I didn't have to run. I was under suspicion, but that was all. Right?'

Grainger, trying without success to shift under his bonds, nodded.

'It was you all along. You passed money to Roman Ugrimov, who then passed it to the Tiger. You controlled Tripplehorn, who ran the Tiger. That was why you hid the Tiger's Tourism file from me for so long. It had nothing to do with Fitzhugh recruiting him.'

'Yes,' Grainger admitted after a moment. 'I hid the file from you for those reasons, but I showed it to you later because Terence Fitzhugh recruited him.'

'Let's not get off track. You ran the Tiger. Angela, like me, was hunting for the Tiger. So you had her killed. That was another Tripplehorn job.'

'Yes.'

'Colonel Yi Lien had nothing to do with anything. You just placed Tripplehorn in a few strategic spots and let the cameras do the work.'

Almost reluctantly, Grainger said, 'MI6-well, I made that up, didn't I?'

'So, it follows that you ordered the assassination of Mullah Salih Ahmad in the Sudan.'

'Yes.' Since Milo didn't seem to want to follow it up immediately, he repeated the word he'd used earlier: 'Evidence? You do have some evidence behind all this, don't you?'

Milo wasn't sure if he should answer. To admit there was no real physical evidence might make the man clam up. Still, Grainger was adept enough to see through his lie, and would want to know precisely what the evidence was.

But his silence was enough. Grainger shook his head morosely. 'Shit, Milo. You don't have any, do you?'

'No.'

'What have you been doing these last days? Boozing?' Milo stood up, as if to remind him who was running this conversation, then grabbed the glass of scotch and brought it to Grainger's lips. Once he'd gotten a good sip, Milo put the glass back, down and said, 'Please, Tom. Just tell me what the hell's going on.'

Grainger considered that, then nodded. 'If you can't figure it out yourself, then okay. It's the oldest reason in the book. It's why we can't keep our hands to ourselves anymore.'

'Oil,' said Milo.

Grainger tried to shrug, but the duct tape limited his movement. 'Sort of, yes. On the surface. But the answer that gets the gold star is empire. And you get bonus points if you mention China.'

40

Once he'd started talking, Grainger couldn't stop. The duct tape kept him in place, but his head tilted and shifted freely as he explained details of a story that (it seemed to Milo) he had been wanting to get out for a long time.

'Listen, Milo-and try not to be childish about this. You've got a continent wet with oil, as well as some of the most corrupt governments this world has ever seen. You think the Sudan's a land of peace and love? They were tearing out each other's throats before we ever decided on our little intervention. And we tried to do it peacefully. You know that. Our people met with the energy minister at Ugrimov's house. We put it to him: Stop selling crude to the Chinese, and sell it to us instead. We'll lift the embargo. Hell, we even offered to pay more. You hear me? The president gets more money to build his palaces and statues to his own glory. But he's a proud man. Politicians who murder their own people usually are. The energy minister gave him a call, and he refused us outright. So we cajoled. We threatened. We finally told him that if he didn't take our deal we'd make his life, and his country, more of a hell than it already was.'

'So it was just about oil. Is that really what you're saying?”

“Milo, you sound like one of those protesters who still bring up the Exxon Valdez eighteen years after the fact. It's about the big picture. That's all it's ever about. We don't mind losing a little oil here and there. A country doesn't want to sell to us? We're not going to get our feathers ruffled. This is not about oil; it's about the century that's upon us. It's about China. They get seven percent of their crude oil from the Sudan. Each year, China uses more oil-it requires more to grow its economy. Losing seven percent won't decimate China now, but what about next year? Ten years from now? China needs all the oil it can get its hands on. One-third of its imported oil is African. They can't afford to lose it.'

'But you keep saying the same thing, Tom. Oil.'

Below the strips of duct tape, his hand on the arm of the chair shifted, and he raised a finger. 'Wait. That's just the beginning. Because what will China have to do to make sure they get their oil? They need a stable Africa, don't they? They go to the United Nations. They ask for intervention in the Sudan. And for as long as is conscionable, the United States will veto these resolutions. That's the beauty of being a permanent member of the Security Council. You can veto whatever you like. Keep vetoing until China is pushed into a corner. Until-and this is the important part-they're forced to intervene on their own. Send in thousands of their own People's Army. We've got our Iraq, and it's draining us silly. If we can't pull out, we can at least pull some old enemies down. It's time to give China a few Iraqs. See how they manage.'

Milo kept his hands folded in his lap, staring at the old man. He was full of life, as if letting these secrets loose had given him a transfusion. 'You agree with this tactic?'

Grainger made as much of a shrug as the tape would allow. 'It's insidious, I'll give it that. And there is a certain beautiful logic to it. Little strikes, a single assassination, and you can collapse an entire country. Governments have a great way of fostering the belief that they're immutable. It's seldom true.'

'You haven't answered my question.'

'I believed in it for a long time, Milo. For years. But it got messy, didn't it? If you just knock out a terrorist sympathizer, like the mullah, then who can really complain? You're doing the world a service. When chaos follows, you can call it a surprise. Well, it was seldom that simple. There were witnesses who had to be gotten rid of. Angela's friend Rahman, for example.”

“Then Angela herself.'

'Yes,' said Grainger. 'We tried to get rid of her with libel. You know that. When she called me looking for photos of the Tiger, I knew she'd gotten close. So we set her up for treason. Either make her retire or, at worst, put her in jail a while-not long, just long enough for the trail to go cold. But by then the cracks were apparent, even to an idiot like me. Too many dead witnesses. So when it came time to put the final screws on Angela, I decided to put you in there. After all, you'd gotten closer than anyone else-you'd actually met the Tiger. So I thought that you could be the one. You were an old friend of Angela's. Like those assassinations, I could do one small thing, then let chaos take over, and pretend to my masters that I didn't know it would end up this way.'

'You wanted me to unravel it.'