sight of Simmons, Orbach, and the other two men waving pistols. But no Milo Weaver. Grainger, it turned out, had warned him off.
Then, a week ago, Tom Grainger came up dead in New Jersey. It was a strange scene. The outline of Grainger's corpse in the front yard was straightforward enough, but what about the three windows that had been broken from the outside? What about the unidentified blood at the foot of the stairs, just inside the front door? What about the seven bullets lodged in the stairs themselves-9mm, SIG Sauer? No one offered an explanation, though it was clear enough that a third person had been on the scene. Fitzhugh pretended to be baffled by the whole thing.
In Austin, Tina Weaver disappeared for three hours. When Rodger Samson questioned her, she admitted that Milo had wanted her and Stephanie to leave the country with him. She'd refused. He'd vanished again, and Janet had believed that she would never see Milo Weaver again. Then, that morning, she'd received the enlightening call from Matthew, Homeland's plant in what the CIA considered its ultra-secret Department of Tourism.
Why had Milo turned himself in?
She opened the manila envelope that Gloria Martinez had handed her, and began to read.
Born June 21, 1970, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Parents: Wilma and Theodore (Theo) Weaver. In October 1985, a Raleigh News & Observer clipping told her, 'an accident occurred on 1-40 near the Morrisville exit when a drunk driver ran head-on into another car.' The driver, David Paulson, was killed, as were the occupants of the second car, Wilma and Theodore Weaver of Cary. 'They are survived by their son, Milo.'
She typed the requisite facts into her Word document.
Though no documentary evidence backed it up, a report explained that Milo Weaver, at fifteen, moved into the St. Christopher Home for Boys in Oxford, North Carolina. The lack of documentation was excused by another newspaper clipping, circa 1989, reporting that a fire had destroyed the St. Christopher complex and all its records, one year after Milo left North Carolina behind.
By then, a scholarship had taken him to Lock Haven University, a tiny school in a sleepy Pennsylvania mountain town. A few pages charted an irregular student who, while never arrested, was suspected by local police as being 'involved with drug-users and spends much time in the old house at the corner of West Church and Fourth where marijuana parties are a regular occurrence.' He'd arrived at the school majoring in 'undecided' but by the end of his first year had settled on international relations.
Despite its size, Lock Haven boasted the largest student exchange program on the East Coast. During his third year, in the fall of 1990, Milo arrived in Plymouth, England, to study at Marjon, the College of St. Mark and St. John. According to these early CIA reports, Milo Weaver quickly found a circle of friends, most from Brighton, who were involved in socialist politics. While calling themselves Labour, their true beliefs led more down the path of 'ecoanarchism'-a term, Simmons noted, that wouldn't come into popular use for nearly another decade. An MI5 plant inside the group, working in cooperation with the CIA, reported that Weaver was ideal for an approach. 'The ideals of the group are not his, but his desire to take part in something larger than himself predicates most of his endeavors. He has fluent Russian and excellent French.'
The approach occurred during a weekend trip to London in late December, a month before Weaver was scheduled to return to Pennsylvania. The MI5 plant-'Abigail'-brought him to the Marquee Club on Charing Cross, where, slipping into a rented back room, he was introduced to the London head of station, who in the reports was referred to as 'Stan.'
The conversation must have been favorable, because a second meeting was arranged for three days later in Plymouth. Milo then dropped out of school and, lacking a UK visa, went underground with his environmental anarchist friends.
It was a strikingly last recruitment, which Simmons also noted in her Word document, but of that first job there was nothing else, and the file referred the researcher to File WT-2569-A91. Still, she knew Milo's role in the operation lasted only until March, because that was when he was put onto the CIA payroll and sent to Perquimans County, North Carolina, where, along the Albemarle Sound, he trained for four months at the Point, a Company school less well known than the Farm but just as accredited.
Milo was sent to London, where he worked (twice, if the file was to be believed) with Angela Yates, another wanderer brought into the Company family. One report suggested they were lovers; another report insisted that Yates was a lesbian.
Milo Weaver began to settle into the Russian expatriate community, and though the actual case files lay elsewhere, Simmons could chart a career of insinuation. He mixed with all levels of Russian expats, from diplomats to petty crooks. His focus was twofold: shed light on the burgeoning mafia gaining a foothold in the London underworld, and uncover the occasional spies sent from Moscow while the Soviet Empire suffered its death throes. Though he did well with the criminal element-in the first year his information led to two major arrests-he excelled at spycatching. He had at his disposal three major sources within the Russian intelligence apparat: denis, franka, and tadeus. In two years, he uncovered fifteen undercover agents and convinced a stunning eleven to work as doubles.
Then, in January 1994, the reports changed tone, noting Milo's slow decline into alcoholism, his trenchant womanizing (not, apparently, with Angela Yates), and the suspicion that Milo himself had been turned into a double by one of his sources, tadeus. Within six months, Milo was fired, his visa was revoked, and he was given a plane ticket home.
Thus ended the first stage of Milo Weaver's career. The second documented stage began seven years later, in 2001, a month after the Twin Towers fell, when he was rehired, now as a 'supervisor' in Thomas Grainger's department, the details of which were vague. Of the intervening years from 1994 to 2001, the file said nothing.
She knew what that meant, of course. Weaver's dissolution in 1994 had been an act, and for the next seven years Milo Weaver had been working black ops. Since he was part of Grainger's ultra-secret department, Weaver had been a 'Tourist.'
It was a nice sketch of a successful career. Field agent to ghostagent to administration. Those lost seven years might have held the answers she sought, but they would have to remain a mystery. If she admitted to Fitzhugh what she knew of Tourism, Matthew would be compromised.
Something occurred to her. She flipped back through the sheets until she'd returned to the report on Milo Weaver's childhood. Raleigh, North Carolina. Orphanage in Oxford. Then two years at a small liberal arts college before arriving in England. She compared these facts to 'Abigail's' report: 'He has fluent Russian and excellent French.'
She used her cell phone, and after a moment heard George Orbach's deep but groggy voice say, 'What is it?' That's when she realized it was nearly eleven.
'You home?'
A broad yawn. 'Office. Guess I passed out.”
“I've got something for you.”
“Other than sleep?'
'Take this down.' She read off the particulars of Milo Weaver's childhood. 'Find out if anyone in the Weaver clan is still alive. Says here they're dead, but if you can find even a distant second cousin, then I want to talk to them.'
'We dig deep, but isn't this a bit much?'
'Five years after his parents' death, he was fluent in Russian. Tell me, George-how does an orphan from North Carolina do that?'
'He takes a course. Studies hard.'
'Just look into it, will you? And find out if anyone's still around from the St. Christopher Home for Boys.”
“Will do.'
'Thanks,' Simmons said and hung up, then dialed another number.
Despite the hour, Tina Weaver sounded awake. In the background, a television sitcom played. 'What?'
'Hello, Mrs. Weaver. This is Janet Simmons.'
A pause. Tina said, 'Special agent, even.'
'Listen, I know we didn't get off on the right foot before.'
'You don't think so?'
'I know Rodger interviewed you in Austin-was he all right? I told him not to press too much.”
“Rodger was a real sweetheart.'
