'He didn't know your name.'
'We came in at the same time. He checked it by the hour. I'd passed out after the delivery, and when I woke up, he was asleep in a chair next to my bed. There was a TV, and the Italian news came on. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I knew what the World Trade Center looked like.'
'I see.'
'You don't' said Tina, the emotion back in her voice. 'When I figured out what had happened, I started crying, and that woke Milo. I showed him what my tears were about, and when he got it, he started crying, too. Both of us, in that hospital room, wept together. From then on, we were inseparable.'
While Simmons considered this love story, Tina looked up at the clock on the DVD player-after twelve. 'Shit.' She stood. 'I have to pick up Stephanie. We're having lunch.'
'But I've got more questions.'
'Later,' Tina said. 'Unless you're planning to arrest me. Are you?'
'Can we talk later?”
“Call first.'
Simmons waited for Tina to get ready. It took only five minutes. She reappeared, cleaned up in a light summer dress, and said, 'What's the other level?'
'What?'
'Earlier, you said you were investigating Milo on two levels. We got distracted. One level was murder. What's the other?'
Simmons wished she hadn't brought it up. She wanted the time and space to get answers before Tina Weaver had an evening to think over some cover story. 'We can talk about it tomorrow.'
'Give me the Cliff Notes version.'
She told Tina about the passport. 'He's a Russian citizen, Tina. This is news to everyone.'
Tina's cheeks flushed. 'No, it's cover. Spies do that all the time. A cover for something he had to do in Russia.'
'He told you about this?'
A quick shake of the head.
'Ever hear him mention the name Mikhail Vlastov?' Again, Tina shook her head.
'Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding.' Generously, she smiled.
Down on Garfield, before splitting up, Simmons hesitantly broached what was for her the most important subject of their conversation: 'Listen, Tina. I know what you told me up there about why you wouldn't run away with Milo, but I have to admit I don't buy it. The reasons are too practical. You said no for another reason.'
Tina's face twisted briefly, heading toward a sneer, but halfway it gave up and relaxed. 'You know why, Special Agent.'
'You didn't trust him anymore.'
A queer, offhand grin passed over Tina's features. She walked to her car.
As Simmons rounded the corner onto Seventh Avenue, her phone rang.
'Hold on to your socks,' George Orbach said. The phrase confused her a moment. 'What?”
“William T. Perkins.'
'Who?' She used a remote to unlock her car.
'Father of Wilma Weaver, nee Perkins. Milo's grandfather. Lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Covenant Towers-assisted living community. Born 1926. Eighty-one years old.'
'Thanks for the math,' said Simmons, not betraying her excitement. 'Is there a reason we never knew this before?”
“We never asked.'
Incompetence, she supposed, went hand in hand with intelligence. No one had cared enough to find out if a grandfather was still breathing. 'Can you send me the address, and tell Covenant Towers I'm coming?'
'When?'
She considered that as she got into the warm, stuffy car. 'Tonight.'
'Book a flight?'
'Yes,' she said, then, checking her watch, made her decision: 'Around six o'clock, and get three seats.”
“Three?'
She got out of the car again, locked up, and walked back toward the Weavers' door. 'Tina and Stephanie Weaver will be coming with me.'
7
The truth, three lies, and some omissions. That was all Milo knew. The rest, Primakov had promised, would be taken care of. During that too-long week in Albuquerque, the old man had shared very little. Instead, he'd asked questions, just as Terence Fitzhugh was now doing. The story, from its beginning in Tennessee to its bloody end in New Jersey. He'd told it so often in New Mexico that he knew it better than his own life story. 'Give me details,' Primakov had insisted.
But he hadn't just asked about the story; he'd asked things Milo was not allowed to answer. Treasonable things. 'You want my help, don't you?' So: the hierarchy of the Department of Tourism, the numbers of Tourists, the existence of Sal and his method of contact, the relationship between Homeland and the Company, and what the Company knew and didn't know about Yevgeny Primakov himself, which was very little.
Only after five days of this had the old man finally said, 'I've got it now. Don't worry about a thing. Go in and tell them the truth. You will lie three times, and leave a few things out. I'll take care of the rest.' What 'the rest' consisted of was a mystery.
Did his faith falter? Certainly it did. It stumbled when he realized that he was being given the black hole treatment, and it nearly died when, that morning, John entered Room 5 with his briefcase full of terrible tricks. 'Hello, John,' Milo had said, but John wasn't such an amateur that he would be tricked into saying a thing. He placed his case on the floor, opened it to reveal the battery pack and wires and electrodes, and asked the two guards to please hold Milo's naked body down.
In truth, Milo's faith disappeared completely when the electric shocks were applied. They scrambled his nerves and his brain, so that he could feel no faith in anything outside that room. He could hear nothing when his body arched and shook on the cold floor. In the pauses between these sessions, he had wanted to scream the truth at them-no, he hadn't killed Grainger-that had been Lie Number One. But they never asked him a thing. The pauses were only for John to check Milo's blood pressure and recharge the machine.
The only thing that threatened to rekindle his faith made no sense to him. It was Lawrence, holding his ankles. As the pulses surged through his body, Lawrence let go of his feet and turned away, then began to vomit. John stopped his work. 'Are you okay?'
'I-' Lawrence began, then climbed to his feet, wiping his watery eyes. It hit him again, and he leaned against the wall, emptying his stomach.
John, unconcerned, reapplied the electrodes to Milo's nipples. Despite the pain, he felt a wash of relief, as if Lawrence's disgust might soon be shared by them all. He was wrong. Then Fitzhugh came in and showed him the photographs..
'You killed Grainger.'
'Yes.'
'Who else did you kill?”
“A Tourist. Tripplehorn.'
'When did you kill Grainger? Before you killed the Tourist?'
'Before. No, after.'
'Then?'
Milo coughed. 'I took a walk into the woods.”
“And then?'
'I was sick. Then I flew to Texas.”
