“Something like that.”
“I don't buy it.'
Milo stared at her. 'I'd been through a lot, Janet. You never know how you're going to react.'
'And, by killing your boss, you've obliterated the only evidence that might have proven at least some small part of your story.'
'I never claimed to be a genius.'
The silence was broken by Janet Simmons's ringing phone. She looked at the screen, then walked to the corner, a finger pressed against her free ear as she answered it. Both men watched. She said, 'Yes. Wait a minute. Slow down. What? Yeah-I mean, no. I didn't do that. Believe me, I had nothing to do with it. No-don't do that. Don't touch anything until I'm there. Got it? I'll be'-she glanced back at them-'a half hour, forty-five minutes. Just wait, okay? See you then.'
She snapped her phone shut. 'I've got to go right now.'
Both men blinked.
'Can we pick this up again tomorrow?'
Milo didn't bother answering, but Fitzhugh stood, muttering, 'I guess so.'
Simmons looked around the interview room. 'And I want him out of here.'
'What?' said Fitzhugh.
'I've cleared a solitary cell at the MCC. I want him moved there by the morning.'
MCC was the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a pretrial holding facility next to Foley Square in Lower Manhattan.
'Why?' asked Milo.
'Yes,' said Fitzhugh, annoyed. 'Why?'
She looked at Fitzhugh and spoke as if she were voicing a threat: 'Because I want to be able to talk to him in a place you don't control completely.'
The air seemed to escape the room as she, miraculously, held both their gazes. Then she left.
Milo said, 'Looks to me like Ms. Simmons doesn't trust the CIA.'
'Well, fuck her,' said Fitzhugh. 'She doesn't tell me when my own interrogation ends.' He shoved a thumb over his shoulder. 'You know why she's hot and bothered now, don't you?'
Milo shook his head.
'We've got a Russian passport with your face on it, under the name Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov.'
Milo looked taken aback by that, because he was. Whatever plan Yevgeny had hatched, exposing his secret life couldn't be part of it. 'Where'd you get it?'
'That doesn't concern you.'
'It's a forgery.'
'I'm afraid not, Milo. Not even the Company makes them this good.'
'So what's it supposed to mean?'
Fitzhugh reached again into his jacket and took out some folded sheets. He flattened them on the table. Milo didn't bother looking at them; instead, he watched the old man's eyes. 'What's that?' he said flatly.
'Intel. Compromised intel that ended up in Russian hands. Intel you had access to immediately before it was compromised.'
Slowly, Milo's gaze moved from Fitzhugh's eyes to the papers. The first one read:
Moscow, Russian Federation
Case: S09-2034-2B (Tourism)
Intel 1: (ref. Alexander) Acquired Bulgarian embassy tapes (ref. Op. Angelhead) from Denistov (attache) and will forward via U.S. embassy. 11/9/99
Intel 2: (ref. Handel) Recovered items from FSB agent (Sergei Arensky), deceased, include… copy of tapes from Bulgarian embassy (ref. Op. Angelhead). 11/13/99
He knew from the concise style that Harry Lynch had put this together. He really was an excellent Travel Agent. In 1999, touring under the name Charles Alexander, Milo had acquired some secret embassy tapes from the Bulgarian embassy in Moscow. The acquisition was called Operation Angelhead. Four days later, another Tourist- Handel-had come across a dead FSB agent, or killed him, and upon his body found a copy of the Angelhead tapes. Milo didn't know how the copy had made it to the Russian.
He flipped through the rest, pausing a moment longer on the third one, which read:
Venice, Italy
Case: S09-9283-3A (Tourism)
Intel 1: (ref. Alexander) Track Franklin Dawdle, under suspicion of fiscal fraud in amount of 3,000,000 USD. 9/10/01
Intel 2: (ref. Elliot) FSB source (VIKTOR) verifies Russian knowledge of the missing 3,000,000 via Dawdle, Frank, and the failed operation to recover in Venice. 10/8/01
Fitzhugh read it upside down. 'Yes, your last operation even made it to Moscow.'
Milo turned the sheets over. 'Are you really that desperate, Terence? You can put a sheet like that together for any field agent. Information leaks. Did you check how many pieces of intel ended up in French or Spanish or British hands? Just as many, I'll wager.'
'We don't have a French or Spanish or British passport with your face on it.'
That was when Milo knew-Fitzhugh didn't care about his confession anymore. Murder was small fish when compared to being a double agent. It was the kind of catch that would add a gold star to Fitzhugh's record, and put Milo into either a lifetime of solitary or a quick grave.
'Who gave it to you?'
Fitzhugh shook his head. 'We're not telling.'
No-Fitzhugh had no idea who had given it to him. Milo had a pretty good idea, though, and it threatened to atomize whatever faith he had left.
11
Tina had awakened that morning in Myrtle Beach and taken Stephanie out to the shore feeling lighter, almost forgetting about the tears from last night's poor sleep. She felt, she realized as she settled on a rented lounge chair and watched her daughter splash in the Atlantic, like a cuckolded wife, but the other woman couldn't be surveilled or attacked because the other woman was an entire history. It was not entirely unlike when she, in junior high school, started reading the alternate histories of her own country, finding out that Pocahontas had become a pawn in colonial power struggles and, after a trip to London with John Rolfe, died of either pneumonia or tuberculosis on the voyage back.
But where those broken national myths had filled her with youthful self-righteousness and indignation, her husband's broken myths humiliated her, made her feel stupid. The only smart thing she'd done, she realized, was deny Milo his last request that they disappear with him.
Her feelings intensified when they landed at LaGuardia, then took the airport shuttle into Brooklyn. The streets were claustrophobic, and each familiar storefront was another accusation from her old life. That was how she was beginning to see her life: old and new. The old life was wonderful because of its ignorance; the new life was terrible because of its knowledge.
Their bags weighed a ton as she followed Stephanie, who rattled the apartment keys as she ran up the stairs.
