The Nearest Exit (42 page)

A two-year posting in Bonn followed, then under different names he spent three years in Moscow and two more each in Jerusalem and Tehran. He returned to Beijing in 1993 and set up shop within the Sixth Bureau, focusing on counterintelligence, which was where he remained to this day. His wife and son had died prematurely—no causes listed—but he had not remarried. There was one known mistress in Guangzhou. According to the file, he was a moderate drinker and smoked rarely, but when he did he preferred a Hamlet brand cigarillo, manufactured in Japan.

There had also been stories, and while sitting in Dr. Ray’s office one had come to him, while Tina stared hard.

June 1987. According to source ESTER Zhu was asked by Beijing to acquire Soviet troop positions and battle plans in the Outer Manchuria region, which was accomplished within one week. Zhu’s technique, as related to ESTER by another source, was to convince Lieutenant colonel Konstantin Denisov, then based in Ulan Bator, that his wife, Valera, had discovered the identity of his mistress in Moscow. Denisov returned to Moscow immediately, and his second-in-command, Major Oleg Sergeyev—whose assistant, Lieutenant Feodor Bunin, was in the pay of the Guoanbu before his 1989 discovery and subsequent execution—took over. Bunin, now with complete access, passed the information on to his handlers.

“You’re a fucking nut, Weaver.”

“I’m afraid not, Alan.”

Drummond submitted. He took Milo into the elevator and brought him up to the sixteenth floor, and into his life. There was a petite, rather sensual-looking blonde in the apartment, his wife, Penelope, who was unfazed by the surprise visitor. When Drummond introduced Milo and said, “Pen, we’re going to have to use the office for a little bit. You mind bringing us some ice?” she grinned devilishly and replied, “How very fifties, dear.”

Once they were settled in a room that was more like a lounge than an office, Drummond opened up a cabinet and started rattling off the names on the bottles. Milo stopped him at Smirnoff; then Penelope came in with a leather-skinned ice bucket. Milo couldn’t help but smile. “This really is the fifties,” he said to her.

“Golly shucks, it is,” she said, winking. “Thanks, hon,” said Drummond.

Milo apologized again for the interruption and watched her close the door behind herself.

Drummond handed over a glass of iced vodka and said, “Great, isn’t she?”

“Really is, Alan.”

“Flirt with her any more, and I’ll have you erased.” He sat down with his Scotch, not smiling. “Now explain yourself.”

Milo took a breath and began with the time discrepancy, but Drummond blew that off. “One minor detail? Gray probably got it wrong.”

“It makes more sense if you step back and look at everything this way, imagining that Zhu does have a mole. Why, for instance, did he give up on his operation when I arrived in Budapest?”

“You said it yourself. He’d made his point.”

“That’s one way of looking at it. But let’s say his sense of humor isn’t as excellent as I believed. Guoanbu colonels don’t waste all this time—and expense, remember—just to make a point. So what else could he get out of it? If there is a mole, then that means he completed his objectives and wanted Tourism back in operation so that the information he had would be useful.”

“What information?”

“The information on how the department works.” Milo opened his hands, but Drummond didn’t speak, just stared, so he said, “Another curious fact: Zhu knew I was in Budapest. How did he know that? If he wasn’t watching your computer tracking me, then he was hearing it through Global Security, the firm that had tracked me there—and they reported directly to Irwin.”

Drummond frowned. “You’re talking in circles, Milo. Besides, it makes no sense. You don’t protect a mole by raising the specter of a mole. Not unless you’re going to frame someone else to divert suspicion, which never happened. The fact is that we never suspected the existence of a mole in the department until Zhu started to play with us.”

“Of course not. Because there’s no mole in the department. There never was.”

“Jesus Christ, Milo. Make some sense, okay?”

“The mole is on Nathan Irwin’s staff.”

All expression washed out of Drummond’s face. He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “It’s not going to work.”

“What?”

“This. You’re still after him, aren’t you? Listen—you think that if you ruin Irwin it’s going to make your marriage any better? I’ve got news for you—”

“No, Alan. You listen. And think. What’s the one result of Xin Zhu’s operation? What’s the one lasting change?”

“It’s made me into a permanent joke,” Drummond said, then shook his head. “Okay, what’s the one lasting change?”

“Irwin in control of the department.”

Drummond shook his head. “But he’s
not
. Not really. By Friday he and his staff are out of there.”

“Which is long enough to get access to all the department’s files.”

That seemed to make Drummond uncomfortable. “Go on.”

“From the beginning, the only operation we were sure Zhu knew about was the Sudanese operation. Right? He knew it inside and out.”

“We’ve been through this—he knew it all from a letter that Thomas Grainger wrote.”

Milo set aside his glass. “A beautiful coincidence. It’s the one operation that Irwin’s people were already familiar with, because Irwin himself ran it. Irwin told me that he knew next to nothing about what the department did before he took over. He stayed far away in order to protect himself. With one notable exception. The Sudan. His inner staff had to know about it.”

“Okay,” said Drummond, allowing him this one fact, “but by Friday he’s out of the department. That’s a lot of work for such a limited period of access.”

“You’re forgetting the other result of the entire game.”

“What’s that?”

“Myrrh. You recalled everyone—at Irwin’s insistence—and he and his staff were around to oversee the redeployment. He knows the names and go-codes of every Tourist you have. If I’m right, so does Xin Zhu.”

Drummond stared into his drink and thought through the implications.

“It does make sense, Alan. You just have to look at it. The timing. The details. I keep going over it, and I can’t find anything to kill the theory.”

Drummond finished his Scotch, refilled it, then opened a humidor full of cigars but didn’t take any out. He shut it, then opened it again, a nervous gesture. “Let me get this straight. First you tell me, yes, we have one. Then we don’t. Now, you’re telling me we do?”

“Not we, Alan. Not you.”

“Irwin. Right.”

Milo waited.

Finally, Drummond looked at his hands. “Okay. I’m willing to treat it as a serious possibility. The question is, what do we do about it?”

“
We
don’t do anything, Alan. I’m not in the department anymore, and I don’t want to be. I’m bringing this to you, and I’ll help
look over some of the files, but I’m not taking part in any sting operation.”

Drummond shrugged that off. “I’ll bring in a couple of Tourists on the sly.”

“How big is Irwin’s staff? How many people are we talking about?”

“You met Grzybowski and Pearson—chief of staff and legislative director. There’ll be a lot of interns, as well as staff at his district office, but I think there’s only five more in the core D.C. group—I can get their names. Only those first two had direct access to the building and met with Tourists, but I’ll lay odds Irwin’s smuggling copies of files out of the twenty-second floor. In that case, all seven are possibilities.”

“Seven,” Milo said and sipped his vodka. “Not so many.”

“Not so few, either. Not with the kind of hunch you’re going on. If I round up seven congressional aides and put John on them, Irwin might just notice the disappearance of his entire staff. If I tell him one of them’s a mole, he’s going to ask for evidence. What do I do then? Bring
you
in?” He shook his head. “Besides, if you’re wrong the department will lose its last ally. Even if you’re right about it, Irwin will close us down before John’s even put on his gloves.” Drummond made a face, as if his Scotch had gone bad. “As much as it pains me, the only way might be to bring in some outside help. I know someone in the Bureau. Good guy, but—”

“But I’ll bet he’s interested in promotion,” Milo said. “When competing agencies start going after each other, friendship goes out the window.”

“Yeah,” Drummond said into his glass. “And if you choose another Company department, it’ll run straight up to Ascot, or to the Committee on Homeland Security. Either way, the department is dead in the water.”

“You almost sound like you give a damn, Milo.”

“Almost.”

Milo stuck out his glass, and, taking the hint, Drummond refilled it, saying, “We’ve gotten rid of everyone. If I make it a regular
Tourist case, Irwin will hear about it and the mole will disappear. There’s just the two of us and whatever Tourists I can muster without anyone noticing.”

“You bring the files,” Milo said. “I’ll help you work through them. Maybe we can narrow it down. But I’m not sticking around for the whole show.”

“We can use the Bronx safe house.”

“Good. I don’t want to see you in public again. I think Irwin’s goons are still following me.”

The Scotch stopped halfway to Drummond’s mouth. “What?”

“It’s not important. We’ll just have to be careful.”

“Jesus.”

Milo didn’t share Drummond’s anxiety; he wouldn’t even later when he was heading home again, feeling the eyes of a young guy with glasses on the same subway car. The fact was that Milo had become the kind of dreaded creature that feels more comfortable evading surveillance and calculating the flow of information than discussing his feelings with a Long Island therapist while the eyes of his wife are on him.

He said, “If so, they saw me come here, but that’s fine. I’m visiting my old employer, asking for help finding work. The important thing is that I know they’re watching. Hopefully we’ll find a way to use that to our advantage.”

“Makes me wonder why you’re bothering with this at all. Don’t you have a marriage to suture back together?”

“Maybe I like you, Alan. Maybe I don’t want to see you lose your job. Maybe—and this is sort of disturbing—maybe I really buy your line about making Tourism humane.”

“That would make you the only one,” Drummond said, then laughed despite himself. He took another sip of his Scotch. “You still like him, don’t you?”

“Irwin?”

“No, Zhu.”

Milo shrugged. “He’s played this brilliantly.”

Drummond’s smile went away. “Before this is over, I’ll lay odds you lose that hero worship.”

“We’ll call it a bet.”

They both looked up at a knock on the door. “Yes?” Drummond called.

Penelope opened the door and knotted her arms. “Fellas, this fifties thing is getting pretty old. Is one of you going to cook me some dinner, or what?”

She began angry and, as hours passed and she kept getting recorded messages from his phone, moved steadily into the realm of worry. By the time she was giving Stephanie her bath, the worry was inching closer to panic. She showed none of these conflicting emotions to Stephanie, but children are antennas tuned to the frequency of hidden emotions. Stef knew something was up, and as she wiped shampoo from her eyes she said, “Where’s Dad?”

“He had some work to do.”

“But he doesn’t have a job. He’s
unemployed
.”

“Don’t you think he’s trying to find a job?”

“This late?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Then how come you keep trying to call him?”

Tina blinked at her. She was asking these questions with no particular malice, absentmindedly pushing a plastic power boat around the tub. “I want him to pick up some groceries,” Tina lied.

“Why don’t you go downstairs and buy stuff?”

“Because I’m giving you a bath.”

“I can take my bath myself. I
am
six. I’m big enough.”

“No, Little Miss. Not alone in the house you’re not.”

So it went, distracting Tina from her anger and worry, and once the water in the bath was draining and Stephanie was wrapped in a
towel that stretched to her toes, they both heard the front door open, and Stephanie ran out in her towel shouting, “Dad! Dad!”

“Whoa,” Tina heard him tell their daughter. “You’re going to catch a cold.”

As they had done many times during their life together, they temporarily set aside their conflict and focused on Stef. He apologized for missing bathtime, sounding earnest, but it was a sign of her trust issues that she even questioned that.

They finished the drying together, and Milo read a chapter of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
to Stephanie, while Tina took care of the dishes. She set aside a plate of chicken fingers and peas for Milo and placed it inside the microwave and left the door open—she had a feeling that if she didn’t, he’d eat it cold. He sometimes became that absentminded when his mind was elsewhere. Once, when he’d been dealing with some particularly vexing problem at the office, he’d even left the house without shoes, not noticing until he’d reached the street.