The Tourist (26 page)

His burning arms almost didn't make it, but he threw a leg over the corner of the terrace floor, which helped. All his extremities now worked painfully for one purpose, and soon he was crouched on the outside edge of the terrace, the pain all over him, shocked that he was still alive. He climbed over the rail and squatted, staring at his red, numb, shaking hands. He didn't have time for this. He grabbed the duct tape and tore off ten two-foot-long strips, plastering them on the glass door until he'd made a square of tape. He punched his elbow into the center of it. Glass shattered, but quietly, and remained attached to the tape.

He peeled off the tape, exposing a jagged hole in the glass, stuck his arm through, and unlocked the door from the inside.

Without bothering to take in the apartment, he walked directly to the front door and, using a key hanging from a wall hook, unlocked it. He went to number six again and rang the bell. Formula One lowered in volume, then the little window opened. The young man gaped at him.

"Sorry again," said Milo, "but I left my knapsack in your bathroom." The man, stunned, started to reply, then changed his mind and disappeared. After thirty seconds the door opened and he handed over the knapsack. "How did you get out?"

"I was going to thank you, but I didn't want to interrupt your show. And I hope the bathroom doesn't stink--I opened the window to air it out."

The man frowned at Milo's grimy undershirt and slacks. "What happened?"

Milo looked down at himself, then pointed a thumb toward the open door of number seven. "Marie got back, and . . . really, man. You don't want to know."

3 3

He'd only just started on the living room, with its broken terrace door, emptying a small desk and riffling through an extensive DVD collection full of Angela's taste--
The Misfits, North by Northwest, Chinatown, Some Like It
Hot
--when the door buzzer rang. He slipped off his shoes and padded to the foyer, wishing he'd brought the pistol, but it was only Einner. He was holding out his telephone. "It's for you."

Milo took it back to the living room, and the first thing Grainger said was "You alone?"

Einner had wandered into the kitchen; he heard the refrigerator open.

"Yeah."

"I've been sacked, Milo."

"What?"

"Fitzhugh calls it vacation, but it's not that at all. He's furious I tipped you off about Homeland, and he's not happy I showed you Benjamin Harris's file."

"How did he find out?"

"I think one of the clerks told him, but it doesn't matter. I'm packing for a week in New Jersey. I've had enough of the city." Guilt trickled into his bloodstream--the Company was the only thing the old widower had left in his life, and because of Milo it was now gone.

"What have you got?" asked Grainger. "Einner says you talked to the DGSE."

"Listen, Tom. I'm not even sure I should be running. I might just turn myself in."

"You should stay away," Grainger assured him. "I told you Simmons was meeting with Fitzhugh. She knew you were in Paris and demanded the report on Angela. I didn't show it to her, but I guess Fitzhugh got scared; he'd given in by Tuesday." He paused. "It's all about that blank spot in the surveillance, Milo. You shouldn't have asked Einner to turn off the cameras."

"You're the one who approved it."

"Which is something I'll have to live with. Now tell me what you've got."

Milo explained the most important facts. First, that the whole investigation into Angela Yates had been a ruse. "Yi Lien never brought his laptop out of the embassy. Diane Morel verifies this. That means someone was lying to you. Maybe your MI6 contact. You should get in touch with him."

"Not possible. Fitzhugh has informed Six of the end of my tenure. They know not to share information with me."

"Okay. I'm in a safe house Angela set up. I'm hoping she'll have some records around here."

"Whatever you learn won't mean a thing if you don't have physical evidence. Remember that. What happens if the apartment comes up dry?"

"I'm not sure."

"If you run into a wall, call me in New Jersey. I might be able to come up with something. You have the number?"

"Remind me, will you?"

Milo took a pen and paper from the desk and scribbled the 973 number of Grainger's lakeside house.

"One more thing," said Grainger. "With me gone, Fitzhugh is officially running Tourism. He has no idea where you are, but if he does learn that you're with Einner, you know what'll happen."

Firmer appeared, chewing a Snickers bar he'd found, gazing up at the penand-ink nudes Angela had decorated the place with. "I think I do." Grainger wasn't going to depend on Milo's predictive powers: "He'll call Einner--he has his go-code--and order him to bring you in. Catch or kill. So I suggest you lose Mr. Einner as soon as possible."

"Understood," he said as Einner gave up on the nudes and smiled at him.

"And Tom?"

"Yes?"

"If Tina gets in touch, can you find a way to tell her I'm all right? That I'll be back as soon as I can?"

"Sure. But you know that woman. She never believes a word I say." Milo hung up, gave the phone back to Einner, and asked him to look through the bedroom.

"I thought you wanted me to watch the street."

"This is more important," he said, though in truth he wanted Einner in earshot, just in case Fitzhugh made his call.

In the end, they only needed twenty minutes. Believing the Rue David d'Angers apartment to be safe, Angela had merely slipped her growing case file on the Tiger into a folder attached to the underside of the IKEA sofa that faced the small television. A stack of maybe two hundred documents, photographs, and handwritten thoughts ripped from notebooks. She'd organized them with paper clips so that anything she found on, for example, Rahman Garang could be added to a paper-clipped section with his photo and basic information on top. Milo was in awe of the lengths to which she'd gone, collecting phone records and occasional photos she'd shot herself.

He took the stack to the bedroom and found Einner in front of the open wardrobe, breaking the heels off of Angela's shoes, looking for hollow spaces. "Come on," said Milo. "Let's get out of here." They took the papers to a brasserie in Montmartre, and over grilled racks of lamb began to sort through the information.

"You're telling me she did all this on her own?" Einner asked.

"That's what I'm telling you."

"She was better than I thought."

"Better than any of us thought."

Starting from the point she had told Milo about, Angela had focused on bank records for Rolf Vinterberg in Zurich. Using her connections, she had accessed the records of three other banks in town, two of which also showed a Rolf Vinterberg opening accounts that were closed soon after by Samuel Roth. She'd written on one page:

RV--Resident of Zurich

Alone?

No.

What Company?

Behind that note-to-self was a twenty-page single-spaced list of Zurich companies, divided by main activity. He had no idea why these particular ones had interested her, or what criteria she'd used. Four pages in, she had circled Ugritech SA with a black marker. How she'd come upon this particular company in the haystack of possibilities wasn't shown here, but he had to believe that Angela had her reasons, which could be hidden in any of the other pages, half of which Einner was reading through. The name rang a bell, but he wasn't able to put a finger on it until he turned to the next page, which was a printout from the Web site of Ugritech, a company focused on spreading technology through Africa. Then he saw it--first, the photograph. A handsome man with wavy hair and a seductive smile, "
DIRECTOR
: Roman Ugrimov." Milo exhaled loudly enough that Einner stopped reading. "Find something?"

"See anything about Ugritech there? It's a company." Einner shook his head, then went back to his pages as Milo closed his eyes, remembering 10:27
A.M
., September 11, 2001, the moment when thirteen-year-old Ingrid Kohl landed hard against Venice cobblestones. Roman Ugrimov's
"And her I love, you bastard!"
There were not many people Milo could say he hated. Hatred doesn't last long in the Company, because with the amount of information you have access to, it becomes too easy to see the perspectives of those who commit heinous acts. But even knowing a fair amount about what had happened, Milo had never found a way to explain the murder of Ingrid Kohl to his satisfaction.

On September 13, after he'd made sure the pregnant woman, Tina Crowe, was out of danger, he snuck out of the hospital and marched into Ugrimov's palazzo. The visit was a futile act that he couldn't even back up with aggression because of the holes in his chest, but it was enough to make him despise Roman Ugrimov. The Russian had too much faith in his own invincibility--it didn't matter how many crimes he committed; all he had to do was write a few checks. In Italy, the police only questioned him once about the death of the girl in his charge, and soon afterward the official record reflected the story they'd chosen, or been paid, to believe: The poor girl had committed suicide.

"Here it is," Einner said.

Milo blinked at the sheet being held out for him to read. "What?"

"Ugritech. Here."

It was a photocopy of a
he Temps
article, in French, dated November 4, 2006, that told of Sudanese minister of energy and mining Awad al-Jazz's diplomatic visit to Europe, listing the countries on his agenda. He was seeking investors for a new electrical infrastructure, to replace the one that had been decimated by civil war. In the second column, with a blue ballpoint pen, Angela had circled a meeting between Ugritech director Roman Ugrimov and the energy minister, at Ugrimov's home in Geneva. Present at the meeting were "various American investors." No address given.

There, then, was the connection Angela had found. She was phenomenal.

Milo in turn shared Angela's suspicion that the money used to pay the Tiger had come through Ugritech. Luck, he realized, had played into her calculations--had it not been for that terrible day in 2001, she wouldn't have given Ugritech a second look.

Why, he wondered, hadn't she shared this with him? Was it possible she hadn't trusted him?

"So where does this take us now?" asked Einner.

"Me," said Milo. "I've taken too much from you already."

"You've got me interested now. We've got Sudanese assassinations, tech companies buying them, and disappearing Chinese laptops. What else could a Tourist ask for?"

Milo tempered his arguments so that Einner wouldn't suspect that he was doing this for his own self-preservation, but nothing could convince him. Einner had started, in his words, "a job," and damned if he wasn't going to see it through.

"So, where?"

Milo wondered again if this was all a mistake. Not just bringing Einner along, but this whole chase. It occurred to him that, had he let himself be taken in Disney World, it all might have been wrapped up by now. Grainger's call had left him no time for reflection. He might, at this very moment, have been sitting in his living room, eating ramen noodles and listening to Stephanie's particular take on the world. But a Tourist soon learns that might-have-beens are a luxury for others. Tourism allows no time for regret, and in fact regret is a plague to the Tourist. So he put his regrets aside and said, "We're going to Geneva. Is the car filled up?"

Einner rocked his head from side to side. "Wait here. I think it's time for a new set of wheels."

34

Tina sometimes had the feeling that she didn't appreciate things enough. She remembered how she'd been in Venice, of all places, hating the heat and dirt and packs of tourists and--yes--the oppressively heavy baby in her stomach. As if all those constituted the worst the world could dish out. Then she'd met Frank Dawdle and learned that things could get much worse.

She'd let those opening Venice days go by utterly unappreciated. She was a genius at missing what was in front of her, and she wondered if, somehow, she was doing it again here in Austin on a Saturday afternoon. There were some parallels. Her significant other was gone in a puff of smoke, and she found herself sweating too much on her parents' back porch. Austin heat is not unlike Venice heat in that it's wet, sapping your whole body when you leave the protection of airconditioned houses. And, as in Venice, she was alone, just her and her daughter.

"Lemonade?" asked her mother, sticking her head out the sliding glass door and reminding her she wasn't really alone. Not technically.

"Sure, Mom. Thanks."

"Be right back."

Hanna Crowe closed the door to keep in the artificial cool, and Tina gazed at the brown crabgrass and two dying poplars recently planted by the privacy fence. This was nothing like Venice. In these suburbs north of Austin, water was a precious commodity, and land spread wide and empty. People lived separated by high fences. This was a completely different world.

Hanna brought an enormous plastic cup full of iced lemonade and sat beside her daughter on the lawn chair. For a while, they just stared at the dead grass. Hanna looked younger than her fifty-six years, her skin permanently pink from the Texas sun. She often wished aloud that she'd been born with her husband Miguel's southof-the-border tan, but just as often praised her daughter's olive complexion for carrying the best of both worlds. Finally, Hanna said, "Haven't heard from him, have you?"

"He won't call again."

"Sure he will."

Tina was annoyed that her mother couldn't, or wouldn't, get her head around this. "He can't, Mom. The Company thinks he's done something wrong, and he needs to show them he's innocent before he can get in touch."

"But just one call--"

"No, Mom. One call, and they trace his location like that," she said with a snap of her fingers. "He can't risk it yet." Her mother smiled sadly. "You know what it sounds like, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know. Paranoia." Hanna nodded.

"But it's not. You've seen the sedan parked over in front of the Sheffields', right? I pointed it out to you."