“Because that’s who I went to, all right?”
“After you woke up?”
“When your own country is trying to kill you, it’s not called treason. It’s called survival.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
Gray looked like he didn’t believe Milo, but it didn’t matter anymore; he had backup, after all. “I woke in that hospital, and I knew that as soon as James Einner figured out I was alive, I was dead. Days, weeks, whatever. In the end, dead. I couldn’t go to the Hungarians, because they would just hand me to the CIA. And what did I have? Nothing, except a story. Einner might have stolen the letter, but he couldn’t take this,” he said, tapping his skull.
“After months in a coma, you remembered it all?”
“Not all. Fragments. Zsuzsa remembered more than I did. We worked together on it before I left.”
“Before you disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“So by the time you disappeared you had something of value to give the Chinese.”
“Exactly.” Gray chewed the end of his straw. “I got the hell out of the hospital and went to Benczur utca. I went to the front desk of the embassy and asked for political asylum. I was passed on to someone who took down my story.”
Milo followed the brown straw from Gray’s pursed, damp lips down to the forest in his glass. Gray had gone to the Chinese-what were the odds? Milo said, “You gave them the whole story right away?”
“Pieces. The important pieces-the Sudan, the Tiger, the mullah. I wanted their protection for the rest. I told them I’d be staying at the Marco Polo-it’s a hostel in town. Took them two days, then I got a call. They wanted to meet me, but not at the embassy. They gave me some address out in Budakalasz. That’s north of here. I took the tram and then walked a while. They picked me up on the way and drove me someplace completely different.”
“They were careful.”
“Of course they were. I was important to them.”
Milo noticed pride in Gray’s voice. “Where did you go?”
“South. Budaors, off the M1. There was a fat guy there. Chinese-they were all Chinese. We talked.”
“Name?” Milo said through a suddenly dry mouth.
“He told me to call him Rick. It was a joke-he wanted me to know that the Chinese people really could pronounce the letter r.” He grinned-clearly, Gray liked Rick. “Knowing his real name wouldn’t do either of us any good. It didn’t matter to me-I was just afraid for my life. Rick wanted to help me. I would tell him all I knew about this story-everything I could remember from the letter-and he would help me do the research in safety. This was crucial. Only by publishing the story would I be safe.”
Milo didn’t answer. He rested his chin on his knuckles, trying to digest the sequence. Gray told the Chinese about the Sudan. Why? Because Milo’s own friend, Tom Grainger, had written a letter. That letter would have stayed with Gray were it not for James Einner and his botched murder-and it wouldn’t have been sent in the first place had Nathan Irwin not ordered Grainger’s execution.
Where, really, did the blame lie?
As if reading his mind, Gray said, “I’m not going to make apologies, you know. It’s you people who put me in this situation.”
“I’m not asking for apologies,” said Milo. “Go on.”
“Well, that’s what we did. I wrote down everything I remembered from the letter, and he worked with me to remember what I’d forgotten. He had some interrogation techniques-no waterboarding, nothing like that, just mind tricks, free association. When I remembered something, he would leave and go to verify details along the way. When I had trouble, he’d prod me with things he knew-secret things-to see if they brought up more information.”
“Until you had reconstructed the whole letter.”
“Yes. And he was angry. Rick was. He didn’t know about the operation in the Sudan, and I could see how pissed off it made him. People say the Chinese are inscrutable, but that’s bullshit. They’re as hot-tempered as the rest of us.”
“Did he say anything? That he was going to take revenge?”
“You’re not listening. I’m his revenge. My story-it’s going to bust open the Department of Tourism. Expose it. Rick says that for a department like that, the only real threat is exposure. We don’t even need to show people how bad it is, just that it exists. Then the politicians and journalists will do the rest of the work. Pick it apart until there’s nothing left of it. But we have to prove it exists.”
It was eerie how perfectly that echoed Drummond’s own fears. “So how do you prove it exists?”
“Elbow grease. Work. They hooked up the safe house with broadband, and I got to work. Wasn’t easy-it’s taken two months. Rick came back from his trips with new information to help out.”
“What kind?”
“Financial records, biographies of some of the players. Thomas Grainger, for instance. I learned all about him. Angela Yates, your friend who was killed. You.”
“What did you learn about me?”
He grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Yes,” Milo said without smiling. “I would.”
Gray’s smile disappeared. “The usual. Family, the job-that you used to be one of those Tourists but had moved into administration-and that you were the one guy who had been interested in uncovering what happened in the Sudan. That it cost you your family, and your freedom. In some ways, of the two of us I’m the one who got off light.”
Milo leaned back, not liking the easy way Gray placed them both in the same category. He hated that this man knew so much about him. “How far have you come?”
“Far enough. I’ve already written the first two articles on the department. I e-mailed one to the New York Times this morning.”
That surprised Milo; then it didn’t. It was why Gray was willing to meet him now. He’d already unleashed the Chinese revenge. E-mail was notoriously insecure, of course. By now it would have been flagged and a Company representative would be sitting with the editor-in-chief, ready to make a deal. “They won’t print it.”
“Then I’ll try the Washington Post. And I’ll keep trying until I’ve got a sympathetic ear.” He had the earnest tone of a true believer. “The evidence is there-the fiscal black holes that pay for the department, the links between Senator Nathan Irwin and the oil lobby wanting to push the Chinese out of Africa. It was international-you know that, right? They had help from French oil. It wasn’t just an American plot; it was a Western plot. This is as big as stories come, Milo, and I’m not going to let it go.”
25
The waitress returned, and Gray ordered another round. Milo hardly noticed. He was working his way through everything, feeling paralyzed by the slow buildup of revelations. Rick was, he felt sure, Xin Zhu, the Chinese spymaster. Before following that to its logical conclusion, though, he felt he had to deal with the remarkable coincidence of their meeting now. “Last night, when you called Zsuzsa, did you clear it with Rick?”
“Of course I did. We’d had a ton of progress over the last week, and I was writing like mad. I was exhausted. I wanted to see her again.”
“What kind of progress?”
“Well, we learned what happened to you, for instance.”
“What happened to me?”
“You survived, didn’t you? Grainger’s letter told us you were investigating, but we weren’t sure if you were one of the casualties or not. Everyone wanted your ass, after all. You got out of prison and went to live in New Jersey- we knew that-but then you disappeared, and we didn’t know until this week that you really were still alive.”
“How’d you figure that out?”
“Ask Rick. He came in with the information.”
