Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

"It was Beirut times fifty," said Grainger. "All of Dresden stuffed into a few minutes. It was the first wave of barbarians coming to sack Rome."

"It wasn't any of those things. Is this what you needed to talk to me about?"

Grainger turned from the glass and frowned. "You're sunburned."

Milo leaned against the LaGuardia security supervisor's messy desk and looked down. His left arm, which had hung out the driver's side window, was definitely a different tone. "You want to just wait for my report?"

"They've been calling like mad," said Grainger, ignoring the question. "Who's this Simmons bitch?"

"She's all right. Just angry. I would be, too."

Through the window, luggage clattered down a conveyor belt as Milo outlined his conversation with the Tiger. "He wanted me to track down the people who stuck him with HIV. Terrorists, he thinks. Sudan connections."

" Sudan. Great. But all he had for you was this one name. Herbert Williams. Or Jan Klausner. It's pretty sketchy."

"And the Hirslanden Clinic. He was there under the al-Abari alias."

"We'll look into it."

Milo chewed the inside of his cheek. "Send Tripplehorn. He's still in Nice, isn't he?"

"You're better than Tripplehorn," said Grainger.

"I'm not a Tourist. Besides, I'm due in Florida on Monday."

"Sure."

"Really," said Milo. "Me, the family, and Mickey Mouse.”

“So you keep telling me."

They watched passengers press closer to the carousel, knocking into each other in an exhausted panic. To Milo 's annoyance, his boss sighed loudly. He knew what that meant, and that knowledge told him why Grainger had taken the trouble to come out to LaGuardia-he wanted to railroad Milo into another trip. "No, Tom."

Grainger peered at the travelers, not bothering to reply. Milo would wait him out. He would stay silent, not even pass on the revelation that the Tiger had come from the ranks of their own Tourists. If it was true, Tom already knew it, and had kept this information from Milo for his own reasons.

Almost sadly, Grainger said, "Think you can head out tomorrow afternoon?"

"Absolutely not."

"Ask me where."

"Doesn't matter. Tina's on the warpath. I missed Stephanie's show."

"Not to worry. I called an hour ago with a personal apology for sending you out. I took the responsibility on my own shoulders.”

“You're a real saint." (

"Sure I am. I informed her that you were saving the free world.”

“She stopped believing that long ago."

"Librarians." Grainger sniffed at the travelers. "You should've listened to me. There are absolutely no odds in marrying smart women."

Truth was, Grainger actually had given him this advice a week before he and Tina married. It had always made him wonder about Terri, Grainger's now-deceased wife. "Might as well tell me about it," he said. "But no promises."

Grainger patted his back with a heavy hand. "See? That wasn't so hard."

It took them most of the sunset hour to reach Park Slope, the Brooklyn neighborhood Milo had grown to love over the last five years. When they were apartment hunting, Stephanie still just a baby, Tina had been immediately taken by the brownstones and upscale cafes, the cozy, soft-edged world of dot-com kids and successful novelists; it took Milo a while longer.

Family life was a different beast from what he'd known before-unlike Tourism, it actually was life. So he learned. First, to accept, and after acceptance came affection. Because the Slope wasn't about the nouveau riche torturing cafe workers with elaborate nonfat coffee specifications; Park Slope was about Milo Weaver's family.

The Tiger had called him a bourgeois family man. In that, at least, the assassin had been right on the mark.

At Garfield Place, he climbed out of Grainger's Mercedes with a promise to talk the next morning in the office. But he knew, as he mounted the narrow interior stairs of their brownstone, that he had already made up his mind. Family man or not, he was going to Paris.

At the third floor, he heard a television. When he rang the bell Stephanie shouted, "Door! Mom, door!" Then Tina's quick footsteps and, "Coming." When she opened it, she was buttoning her shirt.

Once she had him focused, she crossed her arms over her breasts and in a high whisper said, "You missed her show.”

“Didn't Tom talk to you?"

He tried to come in, but she wouldn't step out of the way. "That man will say anything to cover for you."

It was true, so he didn't dispute it. He just waited for her to make up her mind. When she did, she grabbed his shirt, pulled him close, and kissed him fully on the lips. "You're still in the doghouse, mister."

"Can I come in?"

Tina wasn't truly angry. She came from a family where you didn't hide your anger, because by venting it you stole its power. That's how the Crowes had always done it in Austin, and what was good enough for Texas was good enough for anywhere.

He found Stephanie in the living room, splayed on the floor with a pile of dolls, while on television cartoon animals got into trouble. "Hey, girl," he told her. "Sorry I missed the show."

She didn't get up. "I'm used to it by now."

She sounded more like her mother every day. When he leaned over and kissed her head, she wrinkled her nose.

"Dad, you stink."

"I know, hon. Sorry."

Tina threw a tube of moisturizing cream at Milo. "For that sunburn. Want a beer?”

“Any vodka?"

"Let's get some food in you first."

Tina boiled ramen noodles-one of the five things, by her own admission, that she knew how to cook-and brought out the bowl. By then, Stephanie had warmed to Milo 's presence and climbed up beside him on the sofa. She gave a rundown of the other performers at the talent show, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and the utter injustice of the winning performance-Sarah Lawton's rendition of "I Decide."

"But what about yours? We worked on it for weeks."

Stephanie tilted her head forward to glower at him. "It was a stupid idea."

"Why?"

"Because, Dad. No one understands French."

Milo rubbed his forehead. He'd thought it was a fine idea, his child performing a Serge Gainsbourg hit. It was unexpected. Innovative. "I thought you liked that song."

"Yeah."

Tina took the far end of the couch. "She was incredible, Milo. Just stunning."

"But I didn't win."

"Don't worry," he said. "One day you'll be running the New York Philharmonic, and Sarah Lawton will be serving up fries at Fuddruckers."

" Milo," warned Tina.

"I'm just saying."

A crooked smile filled Stephanie's face as she gazed into the distance. "Yeah."

Milo dug into his noodles. "We've got it on video, right?"

"Father couldn't get it in focus. And I'm too small." That was how Stephanie differentiated the men in her life: Patrick was Father; Milo was Dad.

"He told you he was sorry," said Tina.

Stephanie, not in a forgiving mood, climbed to the floor to rejoin her dolls.

"So?" said Tina. "You going to tell me?"

"This is good," Milo said through a mouthful of noodles.

"Where?"

"Where what?"

"Tom's sending you off again. That's why he called-to soften me up. He's the least subtle CIA man I've ever met.”

“Now, wait-"

"Also," she cut in, "I can see the guilt all over your face."

Milo peered over his bowl at the television. The Road Runner was defying gravity once again, as Wile E. Coyote suffered the fate of the rest of us, the ones chained to the laws of physics. Quietly, he said, "I need to go to Paris. But I'll be back by Saturday."

"You don't do that kind of work anymore."

He didn't answer. She was right, of course, but over the last year he'd disappeared on more and more "business trips," and Tina's worries had found voice. She knew enough about his life before they met to know that that man wasn't the kind of husband she'd signed up for. She'd signed on with the person who'd left all of that behind.