Drummond got him into focus. “Oh.” He nodded, finally understanding. “Very good. I’ll send that to your phone.” He ripped out the page and folded it into his shirt pocket, thinking this over, then muttered, “It’s a pity.”
“Pity?”
“That we have to do this. This kind of thing. But Ascot wants to run Tourism into the ground. Bleeding us, at a time when oil prices are driving airfares into the sky.”
“So that’s what this is about. Keeping the department running.”
“We do what we must to stay alive.”
Milo considered asking if it was worth it, keeping alive a secret department that even Quentin Ascot, the CIA director, wanted to erase. It was a moot question, though: All government departments work on the basic understanding that their existence is enough reason to continue existing. Out the window was the blackness of countryside.
“You going to tell me where we’re going?”
Drummond followed his gaze. “Two weeks ago, in Paris, the embassy got a walk-in.”
“French?”
“Ukrainian. Name’s Marko Dzubenko. He was in town as part of an entourage for their internal affairs minister. He’d been in town only three days when he came to us.”
“Employer?”
“SSU,” he said, referring to the Security Service of Ukraine. “He made no secret of it, particularly once the staff threatened to kick him out of the building. He wanted us to know he was an important defector.”
“Is he?”
Drummond shrugged theatrically and settled against the far door. “Only if he’s trustworthy, and for the moment I don’t believe anything he tells us. Not until we know more about him. At this point we’ve just got the basics. Forty-six years old. Kiev University-foreign relations. Joined the secret police when he was twenty-four, then moved into intelligence after the Russians left. Paris was a coup for him-his previous trips were to Moscow, Tallinn, Beijing, and Ashgabat; that’s in Turkmenistan.”
“I know where Ashgabat is.”
“Of course you do. But it was news to me.”
“What rank is he?” Milo asked.
“Second lieutenant.”
“Not so bad. Why does he want to leave?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” said Drummond. “According to him, it’s personal gain. He’s being stifled at home, skipped over for promotion, while the new capitalists are making millions. He says capitalism has cheated him. From the looks of his accounts, it’s at least passed him by.” Drummond pursed his lips. “He wants a new life in America, but what does he have to buy it with? Marko’s trips were trade based, and that’s largely what he had for us. Ukrainian trade secrets?” He smiled again. “The man actually thought that would buy him a life in America!”
Alan Drummond’s mirth lasted a few seconds longer than expected, then drained away when he saw his guest wasn’t encouraging it. Milo said, “Well, there’s a reason we’re sitting here talking about him. And it’s not Ukrainian exports.”
“It’s not,” Drummond muttered. “He spent a while giving us reams of useless information, most of which we had already. He saw we were fading fast. So he panicked and pulled out his wild card. He said that there’s a mole in the Department of Tourism.”
Silence followed, the engine rumbling beneath them. “Did he actually say those words?” asked Milo.
“He knew about the department and specified the mole was there.”
While the department liked to think of itself as existing in a parallel universe of absolute secrecy, Milo knew a few people who had figured out its existence-but they had been allies and friends. “The Ukrainians have someone inside? It’s hard to swallow.”
Drummond shook his head. “Marko claims it’s a Chinese mole.”
“Chinese?”
“The Guoanbu.”
Milo stared at him.
“Short for Guojia Anquan Bu, their Ministry for State Security.”
“I know what the Guoanbu is,” Milo said, irritated. “I’m just confused.”
Drummond ignored his confusion for the moment. “When he mentioned Tourism, as you can imagine, the agent in charge of his interrogation was baffled. No idea what Marko was talking about. So he went up to the embassy’s security director, who was just as baffled. In fact, he was going to write Marko off as a nut job and dump him somewhere, but to cover his ass he sent a query to Langley. It landed on the assistant director’s desk, and he came directly to me. Gleefully, I might add. A mole is just the kind of thing Ascot would happily use to hang us. So I sent one of ours to talk to him, and we shipped him here.”
“Why not to the States?”
“He’ll get there eventually,” said Drummond. “I want you to listen to him first.”
“Why me?”
“Because his story concerns you and everything that came raining down last July. And the only thing in the files on it is one single-spaced page that goes out of its way to not say a thing. Which makes me a fucking ignoramus.”
“Really?” Milo asked, not sure he could trust that Drummond was so ill informed.
“Believe it,” he said sourly. “Dzubenko has told me a novel compared to the haiku I was handed when I took over.”
“Wait a minute,” said Milo, raising a hand. “How does a Ukrainian second lieutenant learn about a Chinese mole in a secret CIA department? How does this make any sense?”
“Luck,” Drummond said. “Over the last few years, the Chinese have been pouring agents into the Ukraine, and Marko spent some time with them. He doesn’t like them very much.”
“And they told him about their mole? Come on, Alan. Besides, the Chinese almost never invest in long-term double agents.”
“I know this,” he said, “but don’t be so quick to doubt it.”
Milo peered out at the blackness again, then looked at Drummond. “I’m getting a sick feeling of deja vu. Last year a friend of mine was accused of sharing secrets with the Chinese. It wasn’t true, and maybe if I’d known that from the start she wouldn’t be dead now.”
“This was Angela Yates?”
Milo nodded.
After a moment’s reflection, Drummond said, “Listen to what he has to say. I don’t want to believe it either, but if his story checks out, then I’m going to have to clean the department. It’s not the way a new director wants to spend his opening weeks, but I won’t have a choice.”
Milo’s hand twitched; he was catching Drummond’s itchy agitation. “Well, then? Who is it? Don’t tell me he held that back.”
“He has no idea. From his story, it could only be in administration. A Travel Agent, most likely. Not a Tourist.”
Milo rubbed his knees. Travel Agents collected and sorted intelligence from Tourists and tracked their positions. A mole among their ranks could pass on anything. “Who else have you called in?”
“Just Tourists. Our driver, and some extra help-I got them from the war on drugs. I’ve also collected some folks from other departments for analysis and background checks. I’ll get you their phone numbers before sending you off again.”
“Am I going somewhere?”
“You’re always going somewhere, Sebastian. If your chat with him works out, you’ll be checking on some of the Ukrainian intel Marko’s been giving me. It might not be outstanding stuff, but it’s another way to vet him, and if it isn’t legitimate it’ll give me extra reason to doubt the mole story.”
“I’m not much of an interrogator,” Milo admitted. “You should call in John. He’s rough, but he gets results.”
