Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

“Jesus. How'd he get that?"

"There's a girlfriend. She might know something. They're bringing her in now." He paused. "But he's sick, Tom. Really sick. I'm not sure he could make a journey."

"What's he got?"

"Don't know yet."

When Grainger sighed, Milo imagined him kicking back in his Aeron chair, gazing out his window across the Manhattan skyline. Faced with the dusty pale-brick buildings along Blackdale's main street-half of them out of business but covered with Independence Day flags- Milo was suddenly jealous. Grainger said, "Just so you know-you've got one hour to make him talk."

"Don't tell me."

"I'm telling you. Some jackass at Langley sent an e-mail off the open server. I've spent the last half hour fending off Homeland with make-believe. If I hear the word 'jurisdiction' one more time, I'll have a fit."

Milo stepped back as a deputy got into the police car and started it up. He returned to the station's glass double doors. "My hopes are with the girlfriend. Whatever game he's playing, he won't play by my rules until I have something on him. Or if he's under duress."

"Can you put it to him there?"

Milo considered this as the police car left and another parked in its place. The sheriff might turn a blind eye to rough treatment, but he wasn't sure about the deputies. There was something wide-eyed about them. "I'll see once the girl's here."

"If Homeland hadn't been shouting at me all morning, I'd tell you to break him out and bundle him for shipment. But we don't have a choice."

"You don't think they'll share him?"

His chief grunted. "It's me who doesn't want to share. Be a good boy and let them have him, but whatever he says to you is only for us. Okay?"

"Sure." Milo noticed that the mustached deputy getting out of the car was Leslie, the one who'd been sent to pick up Kathy Hendrickson. He was alone. "Call you back," Milo said and hung up. "Where's the girl?"

Leslie held his wide-brimmed hat in his hands, nervously rotating it. "Checked out, sir. Late last night, couple hours after we released her."

"I see, Deputy. Thanks."

On the way back inside, Milo called home, knowing that at this hour no one would be there to pick up. Tina would check the messages from work once she realized he was running late. He kept it short and concise. He was sorry to miss Stephanie's performance, but didn't overplay his guilt. Besides, next week they'd all be together in Disney World, and he'd have plenty of time to make it up to his daughter. He suggested she invite Stephanie's biological father, Patrick. "And videotape it, will you? I want to see."

He found Wilcox in the break room, having a fight with the soda machine. "I thought you kept to lemonade, Manny."

Wilcox cleared his throat. "I've had it up to here with lemons." He wagged a chunky finger. "You let that slip to my wife, and I'll have your ass on a platter."

"Let's make a deal." Milo came closer. "I'll keep your wife in the dark if you give me an hour alone with your prisoner."

Wilcox straightened, head back, and peered down at him. "You're talking alone-alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you think that's a good idea?”

“Why not?"

Sheriff Wilcox scratched the back of his flabby neck; his beige collar was brown from sweat. "Well, the papers are eating you guys up. Every day there's another yokel shouting about CIA corruption. I mean, I know how to keep my mouth shut, but a small town like this…"

"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

The sheriff pursed his lips, deforming his big nose. "Matter of national security, is it?"

"The most national, Manny. And the most secure."

When Milo returned to the cell, Samuel Roth sat up as if he'd been waiting for this chat, a sudden wellspring of energy at his disposal. "Hello again," he said once the door had locked."Who showed you my file?"

"A friend. An ex-friend." Roth paused. "Okay, my worst enemy. He's seriously bad news.”

“Someone I know?"

"I don't even know him. I never met him. Just his intermediary.”

“So he's a client."

Roth smiled, his dry lips cracking. "Exactly. He gave me some paperwork on you. A gift, he said, for some trouble he'd put me through. He said that you were the one who ruined the Amsterdam job. He also said you were running my case. That, of course, is why I'm here."

"You're here," Milo said, reaching the center of the cell, "because you beat up a woman and thought she wouldn't pay you back for it."

"Is that what you really think?"

Milo didn't answer-they both knew it was an unlikely scenario.

"I'm here," Roth said, waving at the concrete walls, "because I wanted to talk to Milo Weaver, once known as Charles Alexander. Only you. You're the only Company man who ever actually stopped me. You've got my respect."

"In Amsterdam.”

“Yes."

"That's funny.”

“Is it?"

"Six years ago in Amsterdam, I was high on amphetamines. Completely strung out. I didn't know half of what I was doing."

Roth stared at him, then blinked. "Really?"

"I was suicidal. I tried to walk into your line of fire, just to finish myself off."

"Well," said Roth, considering the news. "Either I was never as good as I thought, or you're so good you could beat me blind and drunk. So… it stands. You have even more of my respect now. And that's a rare and wonderful thing."

"You wanted to talk to me. Why not pick up a phone?"

The assassin rocked his head from side to side. "That, as you know, is unverifiable. I would've been handed to some clerk for an hour, answering questions. If he didn't hang up on me, he would've called Tom-Tom Grainger, right?-and then the whole department would be involved. No. I only wanted you."

"Still, there are easier ways. Cheaper ways."

"Money doesn't mean anything anymore," Roth said patiently. "Besides, it was fun. I had to give one last chase. Not so difficult a chase that you'd lose me, but not so easy that the FBI or Homeland Security would stumble across me when I arrived in Dallas. No, I had to set up a trail outside the country that you-because you've been responsible for my case these last years-would be watching. Then I had to lead you around this enormous country. I'd hoped to make it all the way to Washington, or even to your home in Brooklyn, but it wasn't to be. A lot of things weren't to be. I wanted to go further. I wanted to really make you work."

"Why?"

"If I had the time," Roth explained, "I'd be elusive with you, because it's a known fact that no decent intelligence operative believes anything he's told. Each agent needs to beat it out of his subject, or, better yet, discover it on his own, without the subject ever realizing he's slipped up. But, sadly, there's no time. It has to be little Blackdale, and it has to be direct, because I won't be around by tomorrow."

"Going somewhere?"

Again, that smile.

Milo wasn't ready to believe this. It was pride, of course, balking against the idea that someone had for the last three days been leading him by the nose. "And Kathy Hendrickson?"

"She only knows that I paid her well for her performance. Yes-and for her bruises. She doesn't know why. Really, she knows nothing," he said, then gasped his way into a retching cough. Once it passed, he looked at his hand. "Oh." He showed his blood-speckled palm to Milo. "Faster than I'd hoped."

"What is?"

"My death."

Milo stared at the Tiger's face, at what he'd wanted to believe were the symptoms of a difficult run through the southern states. Bloodshot eyes, fatigue, and the skin itself. That yellow pallor wasn't from the fluorescents. "Diagnosis?"

"AIDS."

"I see."

The lack of sympathy didn't faze Roth. "I talked to some doctors in Switzerland -the Hirslanden Clinic, Zurich. You can check on that if you like. Look up Hamad al-Abari. Those mountain Germans are smart. Some new procedure they've got to examine the rate of growth through the T-cell count-something like that. They can figure out when the HIV virus got in me. Five months ago, it turns out. February. That places me in Milan."