Olen Steinhauer - An American spy

“I find that hard to believe,” Milo finally said, for this man looked like the epitome of satisfaction.

“Again, the satisfaction is about something else.” He got rid of his smile. “As for everything that you’ve been involved with, it is just as I explained on the phone. I learned someone was planning on doing not only me but my country harm. I’ve reacted to the best of my abilities. Now, I think I may have succeeded in neutralizing the threat.”

“But you never learned what it was, did you?”

“It was nothing, Milo Weaver. That was the great magic trick. An elaborate fireworks display to cover something tiny-the movements of a traitor. Once you cut away the distractions, it’s all clear. Even you and your Tourists were lied to.”

As Irwin and Collingwood had made clear, it had never been about revenge.

Xin Zhu reached into his jacket and took out a box of filtered cigarillos. Hamlet brand. It was one of the few known facts that had made it into the CIA file on him.

Seeing that Milo was watching, he held out the box. “Would you like one?”

“No, thanks.”

He took one out and tapped it against his knuckle, packing the tobacco. “So, do you know where Alan is?”

Milo shook his head and watched as Xin Zhu lit up with a match, puffing at the flame, breathing smoke. “He’s going to kill you, you know.”

“Alan Drummond?” Xin Zhu laughed, more smoke spilling out. “Really? Well, that would be something.”

“And if he can’t do that, he’ll go after your young wife.”

All expression dropped from Xin Zhu’s face. “What did you say?”

“He’s a serious man. Don’t underestimate him.”

He considered Milo for a moment, then puffed on his cigarillo and stood up. It was evidently an effort for him. “Okay, Milo Weaver. I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

“How long are you going to keep me?”

“Not so long,” he said. “We’ll contact your people, set up a trade. You’ll be home before you know it. Good-bye, Milo.”

“Good-bye, Zhu,” Milo said and watched the big man walk out, leaving puffs of smoke in his wake.

They came only five hours later, though to Milo it felt like ten. He’d eaten more rice and drunk a pot of tea, but his stomach was in knots and he was unable to sleep on the cool, damp floor. There were footsteps, a few words exchanged, then the loud squeak of his door’s rusty hinges. Two soldiers entered in uniform, rifles over their shoulders, and one shouted at him in Mandarin. He took it to mean that he should stand. The soldiers grabbed him by the upper arms and hustled him down the stone corridor, past many more steel doors, to uneven stairs. There, the soldiers stopped him and pulled a bag made of soft black fabric over his head. He tripped as they headed up the stairs and through a pair of doors. Stop. A guttural conversation of half-words, then ahead. He tripped over something in the floor, and the soldiers caught him. Doors opened. Cold-they were outside. Wind buffeted him, then a voice in heavily accented English said, “Climb up.” He reached blindly ahead and found the edge of a truck’s flatbed. He climbed, and once up started to stand again. “Lay down,” said the voice. The truck started up and began to move.

Forty minutes, an hour. Their path took them through a cacophony of car horns and engines and Chinese voices and food smells mixing with gasoline fumes. Eventually, the city noises faded away. The truck shook rabidly once they left the paved road, knocking him around, and after a while the truck slowed, then stopped, the engine cut. In the silence, he waited to be taken out, but all that happened was that someone walked toward him, crunching across gravel, then stopped near his head. A new voice, still heavily accented, said, “Tom Grainger was a friend of yours?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that. Tom had been more than a friend, but he’d been dead nearly a year. “Yes,” he said.

The voice said, “We heard here that you were the one who killed him. Is this true?”

“No,” Milo said.

“Do you know who did kill him?”

“Yes. That man is dead now, too.”

“A Tourist?”

Pause. “Yes.”

“Killed by Xin Zhu?”

“No,” Milo said. “By me.”

He heard the man sigh, then walk away again, gravel crunching. The truck was started again. He didn’t hear another voice until, after a while, the road beneath them became smoother and the truck again slowed and stopped, idling. The original voice, the one he’d heard while being taken from the prison, said, “Take it off. We’re here.”

Milo sat up painfully, then tugged off the hood, expecting a flood of light to pour in, but he was instead faced with a nighttime field broken only by lamps laid out regularly in two lines leading outward. Behind him in the truck was a blank-faced Chinese soldier nodding him forward. He climbed down onto tarmac and saw, once the truck drove away, another twin-engine airplane with only a few internal lights on. Its stairs were lowered, but no one came out. Milo looked at the fading red lights on the rear of the truck, then the blackness all around, and realized the blackness was from trees on either side of the long runway. He approached the plane and waited at the foot of the stairs indecisively until a shadowy form filled the open hatch above. A woman’s voice said, “Come on, Milo. We don’t have all day.” It was Alexandra.

As he climbed the stairs he felt the fear rising in him, but it was the fear he’d packed away in the back room of his head while in the prison. His legs were cold, the joints tough, and he felt like the Tin Man, too easily rusted.

She was smiling when he reached her, holding a blanket that she wrapped around his shoulders as she guided him to the empty seats. As he settled down, she said, “You stink, Milo.”

“I wet my pants.”

“I think we have a change of clothes.”

She started to walk to the rear, but he grabbed her forearm. “What’s going on?”

“You’re heading home.”

“Please,” he said, tugging. “Tell me.”

She relented and settled into the chair opposite his. In the dim light, she looked even younger than thirty-two, so fresh and clean. She said, “We couldn’t do anything about Hong Kong. We were there, of course, and I knew that Alan Drummond wasn’t in that room, but once the Chinese started shooting I had to get out of there. I hope you understand.”

He frowned at her, not quite understanding. What was she apologizing for?

“Anyway,” she said, “Erika talked to a Chinese friend, but it didn’t help. He needed something from the Americans-a simple trade would do the trick-but America wasn’t ready to bargain. However, we’d learned enough by then to scare the pants off of that senator of yours. So I made some calls. You’d be surprised how much business you can get done by bluffing.”

“Leticia?”

She shrugged, then checked a small wristwatch. “We’ll see. We’ve got until three thirty to get out of here.”

“What time is it now?”

“Five till two.”

Milo turned to look out the bubble window but saw only blackness. “On the drive here,” he said, “someone asked me about Tom Grainger.”

She cocked her head. “Tom Grainger?”

“My old boss. A friend. He wanted to know if I’d killed Tom. I told him I hadn’t, and that the man who’d killed him was dead.”

“Good answer,” she said, but neither bothered to speculate further.

A light appeared in the distance, at the far end of the runway, then grew, separating into two headlights. It was another military flatbed, and by the time it stopped, they were standing at the open hatch. “Don’t go out,” Alexandra warned. “It’s part of the deal-we don’t exit the plane. There’s a sniper in the woods, just to make sure.”