The Nearest Exit (9 page)

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 déjà 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.”

Drummond stared at him a moment, as if shocked by the suggestion. “This guy came to us. I’m not going to have John fit those electrodes to his tits just to hear him scream.” He sniffed. “Really, what was the department like before I came along?”

“You don’t want to know,” Milo said, then took a box from his pocket and dry-swallowed two more Dexedrine.

Despite a broad stomach and thinning black hair, Marko Dzubenko was a young-looking forty-six. He wore a faux-silk shirt with rolled-up sleeves, the collar open to expose an Orthodox cross buried in chest hair, watching the German edition of
Big Brother
as he chain-smoked. The only sign of age lay in the gray stubble that ran along his jaw-line.

Milo stuck out a hand as he approached. “Good evening. I’m here to ask some questions.”

His handshake was hot and dry. Instead of returning the greeting, Dzubenko shook a smoldering Marlboro at the television. “Great show, no?”

The television camera was angled high in a corner of a kitchen, and two pretty twentysomethings were arguing. “Never got around to watching it.”

“Great show,” he repeated. “I am for the Melly. I would easily do her.”

“Marko?”

“Yeah?” he said to the television.

Milo picked up the remote and turned it off. Dzubenko rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Motherfucker. I am already answer you fuckers’ questions, okay? Twenty fucking times!”

Suppressing the urge to strike him, Milo switched to Russian.
“And you’ll continue to answer the questions, or we’ll beat you, sodomize you, then dump you naked in the bad part of Mogadishu.”

Marko’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped; then he smiled and put out his cigarette. “Finally. Someone who speaks Russian with balls. Want a cigarette?” He lifted the pack.

Milo preferred his Davidoffs but knew how sharing cigarettes created an instant bond between Slavs. He produced his lighter and lit Marko’s first, then his own.

He settled on a chair that he recognized from old trips with Tina through IKEA. Then he recognized the sofa Dzubenko sat on. In fact, the whole lower floor of this two-story farmhouse outside Frauenfeld, not far from the highway, had been fitted with that Swedish company’s functional furniture. Around the house lay acres of cold, flat field, empty save for four Company guards with infrared binoculars. Upstairs, in a room the size of a closet, Drummond was watching them through video monitors. By morning, he would have a transcription of the whole conversation, with English translation.

“So, Marko. I hear you’ve got a story about the Chinese for us.”

The Ukrainian stared at the black television and shrugged. “They tell you about all the hot Kiev information? Man, you can worry about the Chinese all you want, but it’s the Kievskaya Rus’ you should really worry about.”

“Trust me, we are worried. But I’m here about the Chinese. You want to tell me how a man like you learns of a secret Chinese plot?”

Dzubenko glared at him, as if his word couldn’t be doubted, but said, “Biggest intelligence organization on the planet, so what do you think? Guoanbu. The motherfuckers are all over Kiev now. It’s getting like Chinatown. They know how important we are, how we’re positioned. Russian fuckers on one side, European Union on the other—it all rubs.”

“Friction.”

“Exactly,” he said, using his cigarette to point at Milo. “I’ve got respect for them—don’t get me wrong. They spend money on their people, place them all over the world. They’re
smart
. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when they take over my hometown and my
hard-ass bosses start treating them like princesses they’ve got boners for. Know what I mean?”

Milo didn’t, not exactly—he hadn’t been in the Ukraine since the nineties, and the Guoanbu hadn’t gained a foothold there yet—but he could imagine. “Look, I’m just surprised the Chinese shared their secrets with a Ukrainian second lieutenant.”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Dzubenko. “It was at a party. On Grushevskogo Street.”

“The Chinese embassy.”

“Of course.”

“What for?”

“What?”

“Why was there a party?”

“Oh! Chinese New Year. They’ve got their own, you know.”

“So do Ukrainians. What date?”

“Beginning of the month. February 7.”

“And they invited an SSU second lieutenant?”

Dzubenko frowned at his cigarette and chewed the inside of his mouth. “You’re trying to get a rise out of me, but it’s not going to work. I’m sure of the rightness of my position.”

“I’m just trying to understand, Marko.”

“It was my boss. Lutsenko. Bogdan Lutsenko. He’s a colonel—you can check on that in your files. He was invited, and he asked if I wanted to come along. I said,
Why not?
But I didn’t know, did I?”

“Didn’t know what?”

“How it would make me sick to my stomach, being there. And that Xin Zhu would be there soaking up all the attention.”

“Xin Zhu?”

“Guoanbu,” Dzubenko told him. “Don’t know his rank, but it must be high up. He’s a fat fucker. Big as a cow. Carries himself like some fucking sheik. Half his entourage were slant-eyes, the other half were my bosses, laughing at all his jokes.”

“What kinds of jokes?”

“Russian jokes. China’s full of those jokes, I guess. It didn’t hurt that he told them in excellent Russian. Plays on words, that
sort of thing. Had them in stitches. You know what it looked like to me?”

“What?”

“Like the defeated fawning over their new masters. That’s what it looked like to me. So I went out on the terrace and started smoking, waiting to go home. I got through two cigarettes before he came out to join me.”

“He?”

“Xin Fucking Zhu.”

Milo allowed an expression of surprise to slip into his features. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I am not. He brings his fat ass outside. It’s cold, you know, but he’s still sweating. Glowing from all the attention. That’s why he came out—inside, he’d melt. He lights up and we get talking. And the guy
is
funny, I have to admit. Even drunk—and the guy is really drunk. We talk about Kiev, and he tells me some of the places he likes. Not tourist shit—no. Some of the best clubs, the ones you have to look hard to find.”

“He goes out dancing?” Milo asked doubtfully.

“Ha!” Dzubenko spat, imagining that. “Please. He goes out looking for hot chicks, what else? We share war stories about girlfriends. Very funny, that guy. He convinces me to come back in, and I end up staying until after midnight. Fun time.”

Milo stared at him, waiting, but Dzubenko didn’t seem to want to go on. “Well?”

“I’m not saying another word until we get some vodka in here.”

“Sure,” Milo said, then switched to English. “You hear that? Get us some vodka!”

It took about two minutes. They heard trotting on the stairs, then the door opened just wide enough for Drummond to place a bottle of Finlandia and two shot glasses on the floor. The door shut. Milo poured shots and handed one over. “Budmo.”

“Hey,” Dzubenko answered, then added in English, “Mud inside your eye.”

They each put back two shots before Milo said, “Is this when it happened? You got the story at the embassy?”

“Hell no! You think Xin Zhu’s a complete idiot? That was the next week. I get a call from him, and we head out to Tak-Tak, one of his favorite clubs. Usually, guys like him, they’ll end up at the Budapest Club, maybe Zair, but Tak-Tak? Shit,
I’d
never been there. But Zhu walked in like a king. They know him there. It’s the one place he can go where he’s the only slant-eye. We get a booth in the corner where we can watch the girls and talk in private. Then he starts drinking. I like to drink—don’t misunderstand me—but this Chinaman puts them away. Unbelievable. I guess because he’s so big he can take it.”

“So he wasn’t drunk?”

“Oh, he was drunk. Easily. He just didn’t pass out.”

“Did you?”

“For a few minutes, yeah.”

“And he talked to you.”

“Like we were brothers. Want to know what I think? I think the fat bastard is lonely. I mean, he can’t really trust anyone under him, and he’s afraid of those above him. So he works his intrigues all by himself.”

“He told you this?”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“But he told you about his intrigues.”

“A little, yeah. But it wasn’t until the end of the night, when he was really wasted, that he told me this thing that’s got your friend excited. About the mole he’s been running in the fucking-secret American Department of Tourism.”

“Tell me about that, please.”

“Certainly,” Dzubenko said. He raised his shot glass, then drank. “When I told Zhu he was making this up to impress me—really, Department of
Tourism
? What kind of name is that?—he immediately broke it down. The administration of the Department of Tourism is organized into seven subject areas. One supervisor and nine Travel Agents for each section.” He grinned. “I stopped him there—
Travel agents?
I said. That’s when he told me they were kind of like analysts, collecting information from Tourism’s field agents, who are called Tourists. There are sixty-three of these guys, these Tourists, spread around the world.”

Sixty-three—not even Milo knew that number. Drummond could verify it later.