building entrances and the always-open car-sized entrance to a courtyard. In the afternoon, she returned to him along that same route, always alone. The courtyard, then, was where it would have to happen. If it happened at all.
Every Tourist has a past, and Alan Drummond knew all about those two things that, had the budgets been more favorable, would have barred Milo from Tourism: his wife and daughter. Drummond knew that this seemingly simple task would be more difficult for him than storming the Iranian embassy in Moscow.
Clearly, his suspicions had been right-the department still didn’t trust him, and all the jobs that had come before were mere preparation, a three-month incubation before his rebirth into Tourism. An extended test, really, culminating in job nine: an envelope, gray Berlin skies, and the desire to snuff himself rather than see this little job through.
If he’d had no daughter, would it have been easier? He made a conscious decision to not dwell on that, but his brain ignored him. He wondered, foolishly, how many evil acts it takes to make a person evil. Six? Eighteen? Just one? How many had he committed?
What does the Bigger Voice say?
Stop.
He needed to know why. Why Adriana Stanescu had been condemned to death.
He’d picked through their garbage, tracked down bank accounts, took some time to shadow the Stanescus’ acquaintances, working around the clock. The only spot on their records was an uncle, Mihai, who worked in a bakery near the Tiergarten. He’d twice been arrested for bringing Moldovans illegally into Germany. A human smuggler, but small-time; otherwise, why would he rise at four each morning and not leave work until after four in the afternoon, flour dusting his hair and stuck to all his hard-to-wash spots?
By all appearances, the Stanescus were precisely what they seemed: a hardworking immigrant family with a lovely teenaged daughter.
Yet even as he investigated, he prepared. On Wednesday, he visited a bar not far from Alligator Taxi’s central office and struck up a conversation with Gunter Wittinger, a young driver who’d been with Alligator only one year. He’d introduced himself as someone looking to break into the business, someone who needed advice. Despite what Radovan had said, his accent was good enough for this to work. Six beers later, Sebastian lifted Gunter’s Alligator ID, then slipped out while the man was in the toilet.
By Thursday-which (he saw by the incongruous pink hearts filling store windows) was Valentine’s Day-it was prepared. He knew the way in and the way out. The method of execution and the method of disposal. He had the tools-the coarse wire, duct tape, a large roll of plastic, a backsaw-but when the cashier slipped the saw into a stiff paper bag, he nearly collapsed, imagining its use.
Though he could go through all the motions, the fact was that he was ruined. He was no longer Sebastian Hall, Tourist, but Milo Weaver, father. Then he broke all the laws of good sense and called his own father.
It was irrationally stupid. If his Voice of God found out he was whispering secrets to a senior UN official, he’d be dead. Even the old man became short with him on the phone. “You don’t need me, Misha. You just think you need me.”
“No, I do need you. Now.”
“It’s a simple thing. You’ve got it all planned out. So go do it.”
“You don’t understand. She looks just like Stephanie.”
“She looks nothing like Stephanie. This girl is twice Stephanie’s age.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Milo said, because now he knew. “It’s done. Our deal is finished. I’m not killing that girl just so you can have your source.”
Milo noticed that parental responsibility had done nothing to move the old man. This, though-the threat of losing an informer within the CIA-led Yevgeny Primakov to sigh and say, “Meet me in the Berliner Dom at nine in the morning. We’ll join the crowds.”
Before leaving that morning, Milo had scrubbed down the Friedrichshain pension and thrown away his toiletries and the two changes of clothes he’d picked up at KaDeWe. No matter what happened, he’d decided, today he would be finished with this damned city. To ensure that no one back at the Avenue of the Americas could follow his treasonous path, he’d taken apart his phone.
Now it was nine, and the Bavarians were trickling inside.
He approached the ticket window. The vendor, an old woman who’d lived in Berlin since its former life as three hundred and fifty square miles of rubble, squinted suspiciously when he said he wanted to see the church. He looked as hungover as he was, but his five-euro bill was clean enough.
4
Somehow, Yevgeny Primakov had gotten into the cold church before him, though Milo had entered just behind the last Bavarian. The old man was standing beneath a window topped by a biblical painting and the beatitude Selig sind, die reines Herzens sind. Blessed are the pure of heart. Milo’s alcohol-stunted vision wasn’t strong enough to read this, but he’d visited the church before and knew it was there.
His father didn’t bother looking at him. He stood with long, knotty hands clasped behind his back, gazing up at the painting. It had been five months since their last meeting, and Yevgeny Primakov was exactly as he remembered him. Thin white hair; fragile frame; thick eyebrows and a tendency to swipe at his cheek with the fore-finger of his left hand. The same exorbitant suits, which he imagined were de rigueur at all his United Nations functions. Milo, who was taller with dark features but the same heavy eyes, could never imagine aging to look like this.
That previous meeting had been like this one-an unconscionable risk. Milo had been out of jail less than a week when, late one night, frustrated and drunk, he climbed out of his Newark apartment’s window, crawled down the fire escape, and snuck into the opposite building where his twenty-four-hour shadow had been holing up. He knew the face-the young surveillance operative had been on him since the bus from prison-and knew who he was working for. He unlocked the man’s door with a screwdriver and a homemade pick and found him dozing on a cot beneath the open window, beside a video camera with a stack of tapes and a telescopic microphone. Fast-food wrappers and cups were scattered across the floor. He woke the kid with the screwdriver to his neck and said, very quietly, “You’ll tell that Russian bastard to meet with me within forty-eight hours.”
“Er… Russian?” the kid managed.
“The one who pulls your strings. The one even the UN doesn’t know is doing its sneaky work. You call him and tell him to bring everything on the senator.”
“What senator?”
“The one that cost me my family.”
Thirty-five hours later, Primakov had met him in that same dirty room, overdressed as usual, and criticized his description of the man in question. “No,” Yevgeny told him in Russian. “You cost yourself your own family, by being a liar.” He’d brought along the file on Senator Nathan Irwin anyway.
Not that it told Milo much that he didn’t already know, because someone like Irwin made sure the crucial details of his otherwise public life remained private. The senator had been behind last year’s Sudanese debacle-the murder of a Muslim cleric, which had led to riots that had claimed more than eighty lives-and his desperation to cover it up had led to more deaths, among them two of Milo’s close friends, and prison time for Milo. “This man may be at the top of your grievances list,” Yevgeny had said, “but that doesn’t mean he’s responsible for all your life’s disappointments.”
Now, five months later, the old man stared up at the painting that had caught his fancy and spoke to the figures, again in Russian. “I’ve been looking into this. It might be retribution against the uncle. The baker. You didn’t check on him, did you?”
“He’s had some trouble with the law. I watched him. He’s clean enough.”
“Well, I did more than watch. Mihai Stanescu’s involved in immigrant affairs. He works with incoming easterners and sets them up with jobs. That’s how the girl’s family got here. Sometimes he sneaks them in. He’s got connections with the Russian mafia in Transnistria-which is another way of saying he’s got government connections. I’m guessing he’s using those immigrants to transport heroin into Germany.”
