broad strokes, and sometimes I stepped in when I wanted to personally oversee an operation. Yes, yes-like the Sudanese one. Otherwise my only real function was making sure it received the funds it needed to keep working. My ignorance was protection-for myself, and for the department. No one likes to perjure himself on the floor of Congress. But for the last few days my clearance has shown me everything. Everything. It’s like Pandora’s box, the records of the Department of Tourism. Some of it makes even me queasy. Particularly this,” he said, shaking the photograph before slipping it back into his jacket. “I see a man talking with his father; then the image shifts completely when I read the file. I learn that immediately afterward you kidnapped that girl and then went out of your way not to kill her. The sequence of events becomes clear, and it occurs to me that you not only didn’t do your job, but you brought in a foreign national-a representative of the United Nations, no less-to help thwart your orders.” He paused. “You shared all the details of your job with your father and asked for his help. Yes?”
Still Milo didn’t answer.
“I think we understand each other,” said Irwin. He lifted his Scotch to his lips.
The senator wasn’t gloating, not quite. He was just trying to make himself understood. If Milo ever made an attempt to get back at him, the senator would quickly make him Europe’s most wanted man. If that wasn’t enough, he would have Milo arrested for treason.
That was how a senator protected himself in today’s world. It proved that Nathan Irwin was still a terrified man, and no matter what he said, the surveillance would continue for a good long time, even after he’d washed his hands of Tourism.
28
Despite the worries that had plagued him, Milo survived his time in that blank cell on the nineteenth floor. Because of his short tenure as a Tourist, the exit interview lasted only five days, and John’s questions were, particularly compared to their last session in July, when Milo had been accused of murdering Thomas Grainger, gentle. He could sense the open honesty in most of Milo’s answers. When the story reached Berlin, though, John paused and backtracked and sniffed; something was wrong. He began to seek out individual hours. Six to eight in the evening on Wednesday the thirteenth. Nine in the morning on Friday. John seemed troubled by Milo’s unprecedented Christian feelings, him heading to the Berliner Dom to seek out spiritual advice about a hit he wasn’t sure he could go through with. Of course John was troubled; Milo’s file stated his religious beliefs as “none.” Finally, after John put it to him that all his hours, as a Tourist, were owned by the Company, and that therefore he required complete honesty, Milo said, “Well, I guess there’s no reason to hide it anymore.”
“To hide what?”
“Stefan Hassel. I knew him from the Buhrle job. We met to set up the Adriana Stanescu kidnapping. Ask Drummond-he already knows.”
“The kidnapping?”
“Yes.”
Later, when they’d dealt in excruciating detail with his stay at Erika Schwartz’s and his subsequent search for Henry Gray, John returned to Stefan Hassel. Milo had more stories ready.
On the last day, John became chatty. They’d worked together often during the previous years, when people needed to be brought down to these cells and interrogated, but the fraternity he showed was still surprising. The best he could figure was that Drummond or Irwin had told him he could relax.
“They’re all gone now, you know.”
“They?”
“The Tourists. New names, new covers, new go-codes. New phones, even. It’s a relief. You ever had to oversee the interviews of thirty-eight people at once? It’s a pain, I can tell you.”
“I can imagine.”
John even smiled-a rare event. “Okay. There’s one last thing I want to go over. You told me before that you admired Xin Zhu because of the cleverness of his scheme.”
“Yes-but not just because it was clever. There are a lot of clever people in the world. What I admire is the fact that no one was hurt, not directly. All he did was bruise some egos. Don’t you admire it?”
“What I feel doesn’t matter. We’re talking about you.”
“What you’re asking is if I admire him so much that I might work for him in the future. That’s what you’re hinting at, isn’t it?”
“Not necessarily. But… you might as well answer your own question.”
“First I’ll need to know what kind of health plan he offers.”
“Ha ha, Milo. Good one.”
Before he was released on Monday, he sat down beside a machine on a table in a locked closet. Though it looked a lot like an old sewing machine, John assured him that it was in fact magnetic in nature. He swiveled it out so that it pressed hard against the top of Milo’s left shoulder, then typed a code into a keypad on the rear. There was no sound, no movement, nothing to tell Milo it had even been plugged in, but John swiveled it back into place and said, “Congratulations. You’re no longer being tracked.” They shook hands at the elevator, where John said, “I’d say don’t be a stranger, but be a stranger,” and when he boarded the doorman made that elusive statement comprehensible by informing him that he no longer had clearance to board this elevator ever again.
Milo wished Gloria Martinez all the joy in the world before stepping out onto the busy sidewalk. They’d returned all the items he’d given up three months ago upon his arrival-keys, phone, and a wallet with fifty-four dollars-as well as his iPod. No driver’s license, no passport, no credit cards-all his Milo Weaver documents were in his Newark apartment.
He didn’t go to New Jersey. Instead, he took the F train to Fifteenth Street-Prospect Park and then walked to Garfield Place. He reached the door by three, and though he had a key he didn’t use it. He settled on the front steps and sipped some water he’d bought on the way, watching young professionals heading back home. He tried to listen to more Bowie, but the battery in his iPod was dead.
He thought what anyone thinks when one life has ended and another is about to begin. He wondered what shape the new life would take. Not the practicalities, but this other part, the part that lived on the third floor of the brownstone behind him. The part of his life that had provoked him to make dangerous phone calls on his way to commit art heists.
He hadn’t forgotten anything, and Senator Irwin’s threats were still on his mind, but all fears lose their malevolence over time. It can take decades, a few months, or in Milo’s case just a few days. Milo had no interest in taking on the senator. He had what he wanted, and he wasn’t going to do anything to risk losing that.
They arrived a little after six, and while Stephanie threw herself into him and began a lecture on the dangers of him sitting out in the cold-a regurgitation of one of her mother’s speeches-Milo watched Tina for signs. She locked up the car and came around with a wary look. “Something wrong with your nose?”
“I’m accident-prone.”
She nodded as she approached. “When’s the flight out?”
“I got sick of airports.”
She watched him run his fingers through Stephanie’s hair. “You here to break our hearts?”
They ordered Thai takeout and ate in the living room without turning on the television once the whole evening. School was treating Stephanie roughly, it seemed, and later Tina said the teacher blamed her declining grades on their separation. “Half America’s marriages are broken, and this is the best she can come up with?”
“Let’s go meet with her this week. Together.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Tina answered.
That’s when the reality of his return to family life hit Milo with the strength of one of Heinrich’s blows. Plans for the future. Responsibilities. It wasn’t freedom he’d been wanting all this time, just a different kind of obligation. Later, after Stephanie was in bed, he even said, “What about Dr. Ray?”
“She tells me she’s kept our Wednesday slot open. You up for it?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know?” she said after a moment.
“No, I don’t.”
