The Tourist (21 page)

Nearly two hours had passed by the time he reached Tampa International. Milo parked in the short-term lot a little after midnight, wiped down the steering wheel, and took his knapsack with him into the north entrance.

Once he'd passed the sliding glass doors, he grabbed a complimentary airport map and settled on a bench. There was a mail drop one floor up on the transfer level. From his seat, he read the monitors listing departure cities and times. It turned out that the "International" in the airport's name was a little misleading, since the best they could manage was a single London flight each day and a couple of Canadian destinations. Not that it mattered; he wasn't planning on leaving the country just yet.

There--Delta could take him to JFK at 7:31
A.M
., an hour and a half after Simmons would realize he wasn't on the Orlando flight. He hoped that would give him time.

At the Delta counter, three other people stood in front of him--a father, mother, and teenaged son, also heading to New York. That's when it caught up with him, and he felt dizzy, thinking of Janet Simmons back in that apartment, interrogating his family. He should have stayed. He'd spent six years shielding Tina from his job, and in a matter of days all that work had been undone. He'd told her too much about Angela's murder, and now she was in the middle of something she had no way of understanding, because Milo didn't understand it either. Why did he have to run?

He had to run because the old go-code had been used, and even after six years it was still hardwired to his feet. Grainger would only have used it if there was no other way.

"Sir?" said the Delta clerk. "You wanted to go somewhere?" His 747 touched down at JFK just after 10:00
A.M
.--the pilot apologized to everyone for being nine minutes late. The large woman who'd been squeezing Milo tight against the window turned out to be afraid of flying, and told him in a manic southern accent that she didn't care how late they were, just as long as she could walk on solid earth again. He said he could see her point. Her name was Sharon; he said his was Lionel. She asked if he was from the city, and, sticking to the original Dolan's particulars, he told her he was from

Newark, and that his wife and daughter were still in Florida; he'd had to fly back unexpectedly for work. His answer seemed to disappoint her. He took stock of his possessions. He'd had to dump the clothes hanger in Florida to avoid awkward questions from Tampa airport security, but he knew seven other ways to pick up a car if necessary. He had his Dolan passport and Dolan credit cards, but didn't want to use the cards more than he had to. Best to work with cash, and in his wallet he still had two hundred and sixty dollars, which wouldn't take him far in New York. He spent twenty-five dollars on a shuttle service into town, reaching Grand Central by one. He got out in the shadow of the MetLife Building, then went to the Grand Hyatt, grabbing a tourist map and taking a seat in the huge, mirrored lobby, next to a marble fountain.

It took five minutes to settle on his path. The Avenue of the Americas was out of the question. Even if he called to set up a meeting with Grainger elsewhere, he had no idea what his position was with the Company. All Grainger had said was "Go." After the risk of last night's call, Milo didn't want to sink him into deeper trouble.

He descended into the subway and spent seven dollars on a day pass, then took the train north to Fifty-third Street and the Museum of Modern Art. He skipped the milling crowds waiting to enter the galleries and went to the gift store. He'd visited a month ago with Tina and Stephanie during the thousandth Van Gogh exhibition. They'd come for Stephanie's benefit, but other than a few comments on his choice of colors, she didn't have much use for the one-eared Dutchman. It was in the gift shop that she'd come alive. Milo, too, had enjoyed the store and puzzled for a long time over an interesting piece of jewelry he hoped was still there. He came around to the glass cases and found it: the magnetic bracelet collection, designed by Terrence Kelleman.

"Can I help you?" said a teenaged boy in a MoMA shirt on the other side of the case.

"That, please."

It was remarkable in its simplicity. A series of a hundred or so quarterinch-long nickel-plated rods clinging together solely by magnetism. He snapped it open to test the strength, then put it back together. He tried another link--yes, it might work.

"I'll take it," he told the boy.

"Gift wrap?"

"I think I'll wear it now."

Forty-five dollars lighter, it took another twenty minutes to get south again, to the Lord & Taylor on Fifth and West Thirty-eighth. He browsed by the entrance, on the edge of the expansive cosmetics department, examining the security. It was a simple two-pillar alarmdetector with shielded power cables leading to the wall. It didn't matter, but was good to know.

He took the stairs up to the third floor, where a field of men's clothes was on display. For the next half hour he looked at suits, finally settling on a mid-priced Kenneth Cole three-button job. It was a bit long in the arms, covering his new bracelet, but otherwise fit perfectly, and was neither ostentatious nor cheap. It would do--that is, it would satisfy one of Tourism's many important rules, which is to always look like a businessman.

Still in the dressing room, he popped off the bracelet and rubbed the end against each of the store's magnetized alarm strips. He knew that in theory this should work, but wasn't convinced until, after rubbing for a full minute, he heard the soft snap of the strip unlocking. He removed it carefully. Once the shirt, slacks, and shoes were also free, he transferred his wallet and keys to his new clothes.

When he came out, one of the younger salesmen was watching. Milo looked around conspicuously, rising to see over racks of clothes. "Janet?" he called, then walked over to the salesman. "Hey, did you see a short woman, yea high, with a nose ring?"

The salesman helpfully looked around with him. "Maybe she's downstairs in the women's section."

"She can't stay still." Milo pointed at the stairs. "Can I run down and show this off?"

The salesman shrugged. "Sure."

"Cool. Thanks." Milo went back to the dressing room and took his knapsack.

"You can leave that," the salesman informed him.

"You think I don't watch
Cops}
I'll keep it on me. That all right?"

"Sure. You just bring that suit back."

"Like I said, I've seen
Cops.
Think I want to end up on a police car's hood?"

The salesman laughed; Milo winked.

By three, dressed in Kenneth Cole, he was at a pay phone on Ninth Avenue, just around the corner from Penn Station and across the street from a shamrock-motif bar called the Blarney Stone. He slipped in a coin and dialed Grainger's private mobile number. After three rings, he heard the old man's voice: "Uh, yes?"

Milo spoke in an imitation of Sharon's southern drawl. "Yeah, this Thomas Grainger?"

"Yes."

"Well, look, I'm Gerry Ellis from Ellis Dry Cleaning. Yesterday, you dropped your shirts off here. Someone went and lost the receipt, but we know it's a home delivery. Right?"

Grainger paused, and in that brief space Milo feared he wasn't going to understand. But he did: "Yes. That's right."

"Well, listen. We've got your address, but we don't have the delivery time. When were we supposed to drop it off this evening?" A pause. "Make it six o'clock. Is that all right?"

"No problem, Mr. Grainger. We'll be there."

Milo went into the Blarney Stone. It was a dark, dismal-looking place with photographs of famous Irish people from literary, cinematic, and musical history. He took a stool at the bar, across from Bono and two down from a thin, unshaven man who looked very much like a regular. The bartender--an over-the-hill redhead-- sounded more Jersey than Dublin.

"What'll you have?"

"Vodka. Smirnoff."

"We've got Absolut."

"Then I'll have Absolut."

As she measured out a shot, he turned so he had a clear view through the window to the pay phone across the street. He took out a Davidoff. The bartender delivered his shot. "You know you can't, right?"

"What?"

"That." She pointed at the cigarette between his lips. "Right. Sorry." For the next half hour, Milo kept his post at the bar. It was enough time to learn that no one had traced his call and come to collect forensic evidence, and enough time for the bartender to offer some conversation, him to reject it, and the regular to question his manners. Milo considered taking out his frustration on the drunk, but feared it would end in murder, so he paid his bill and left quietly.

He took the 1 train north to West Eighty-sixth, where he found an inconspicuous French cafe with fresh bread and very small coffees among the tall old-New York apartment towers. He sat at an outdoor table so he could smoke.

There was nothing in the papers. If Simmons had something incontrovertible on him, she might get Homeland to post his photograph in the major newspapers with some vague terrorist attributes. Then again, she might not. Homeland seldom posted terrorists' photos, because they didn't want them escaping to fight another day.

Without more information--without knowing what, exactly, had triggered his attempted arrest--it was impossible to predict what Simmons would do next.

What he needed was a theory of everything, but each piece didn't quite line up with the others. The Tiger, for instance. That he had led Milo on a chase in order to gain vengeance on the client who had killed him--he could believe that. But how, he wondered, had that client gained access to Milo's file? All the Tiger had said was that he'd seen a "file." Company or foreign?

Then Angela. She hadn't been selling secrets to the Chinese, but someone had--how else had they gotten that memo? He returned to the Chinese. Had the People's Republic's intelligence service, the Guoanbu, known that she was under investigation? Or did they know she was looking into their precious oil source, the Sudan? Had she gotten too close to something without knowing?

His head spun.
Anyone
could have switched her sleeping pills. The French? They had probably realized, soon into Einner's flower-van surveillance, that Angela was being watched. But again: Why? She was on good terms with French intelligence.

The answer--if, indeed, he ever found one--would come via Herbert Williams, a.k.a. Jan Klausner, the Tiger's client. A man with a face but no identity, serving the interests of X.

Too many variables; too much unknown. He clutched at his cigarette and inhaled deeply. Then, remembering, he took out his iPod and asked France Gall to sing away his anxiety. . . but she just couldn't pull it off.
2 6

Tom Grainger's enormous apartment at 424 West End Avenue, at Eightyfirst Street, had been purchased by his wife, Terri, two years before she succumbed to breast cancer. The West River House was a magnificent place for any Company man to live in, and occasionally people grumbled suspicions about how he could live so well. But other than the penthouse and a little lakeside home in New Jersey, Grainger owned nothing, most of his own money having been sapped during his wife's long and unsuccessful treatment.

For twenty minutes, as the sun moved behind the towers, Milo watched from the shadows of the glass-shelled Calhoun School across the street. Other residents returned from jobs, the perky doorman chatting with each one, and a few deliverymen from FedEx, Hu Sung Chinese, and Pizza Hut arrived. He walked around to the underground parking lot on Eighty-first and followed a Jag down the incline. He took a circuitous path around the edge of the lot, avoiding security cameras.

It was a path he'd charted out before, on other occasions when he'd wanted to meet the old man undetected and discuss things neither was supposed to know. The only trick was the entrance to the stairwell, which was watched by a camera lodged in the ceiling. There wasn't anything to do about that other than to cross into its

field of vision facing away from the camera, so that all it picked up was a man of average height heading inside.

He climbed the whole way up to the eighteenth floor and rested in the stairwell, waiting in the silence for six o'clock to arrive. When it came, he tugged open the door and peered into the soft-lit corridor, then jerked back. In a chair at the end of the corridor sat one of the FedEx deliverymen, a box leaned against his chair, fooling with an iPod.

Milo squatted by the cracked door and closed his eyes, waiting for the sound of him making his delivery, or the pleasant
ding
of the elevator arriving to take him back to the lobby, but after five more minutes he still heard nothing. That's when he knew. Again, he peered out, and this time the man's eyes were shut, the iPod plugged into one ear. From the other, Milo noticed a flesh-colored wire that led down to his collar. Softly, he let the door fall shut. It was the call. The Company had either traced Grainger's warning call from last night, or--and he now realized his mistake--using the phone logs, they had traced the cal from Gerry Ellis Cleaners to a pay phone.

There was nothing, then, to do. Milo returned to the bottom of the stairwell, removed his jacket and held it in a ball to his stomach, then entered the parking lot backward. To the camera, he looked like someone carrying a box. He left the building.

Tom Grainger was no fool. He'd been in the field during half the cold war and certainly knew what was going on. So Milo returned to the shadow of the Calhoun School, sat on a ledge, and waited. After an hour, a passing hippie bummed a cigarette, and in answer to the man's question, Milo said he was waiting on his girlfriend. "Women these days, eh?" said the hippie.

"Yeah."

Milo's patience paid off. A little after seven, the city now lit by its own artificial illumination, the doorman let Grainger out. Milo watched him turn the corner onto Eighty-first, heading toward Central Park. Grainger didn't look around. A minute later, the doorman appeared again, opening the door for another man--in a suit, not a FedEx uniform--who stepped out onto the sidewalk and, talking on his cell phone, also walked down Eighty-first. He knew that second man--Reynolds, a forty-five-year-old ex-field agent who'd recently ended his embassy tenure. Milo followed, a half block back.