Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

"It's infuriating," she told him. "You listen to the French rant about how we're a lumbering military giant, that we're making the world unsafe for everyone. None of them see our mistakes as honest mistakes. Know what I mean? Every time we do something they don't like, we're accused of trying to control the world's oil, or trying to nudge Europe off the world stage." She shook her head. "Don't they realize we're in an unprecedented situation? No country in history has ever had as much power and responsibility as we've got. We're the first truly global empire. Of course we're going to make mistakes!"

It was an interesting perspective, even if he didn't agree with it. Despite Grainger's love of that word, Milo no longer went for the easy label of "empire" to describe his country. Instead, he thought it was a vanity committed by Americans who wanted to see Rome in the mirror, who wanted to mythologize themselves. But all he said was, "Do the French give you trouble?"

"Behind the scenes, away from the public, they're very cooperative. In fact, they've been helping me on a pet project."

"Yes?"

She smiled, tight-lipped, her cheeks flushed. "It could be a major coup for my career. The big fish.”

“You've got me interested."

Angela gave him a flirtatious wink. "An animal name.”

“Animal?"

"Grrowl," she breathed, a kitschy seduction. He, too, was reddening. "The Tiger."

It hurt to see how proud she was as she leaned forward, whispering the story of an investigation she'd been running the last eight months. "Since November. After he took out Michel Bouchard, the foreign minister. Remember that?"

Milo did. Grainger had sent Tripplehorn to Marseille to look into the assassination, but the French had quickly tired of his questions. "We sent someone, but he was stonewalled."

She opened a hand in an expression of c'est la vie. "I had a friend, Paul, working the case. Knew him through the Marseille consulate. Unlike a lot of his coworkers, he didn't have a problem accepting my help. I knew it was the Tiger. I knew it."

"All I heard was that, after a few months, the French verified it was him."

"French, my ass. It was me. With Paul's help, of course." She winked, drank more wine, and said, "Bouchard was with his mistress in the Sofitel. A little vacation away from the wife." She cleared her throat. "Very continental."

Milo smiled.

"Anyway, they'd been to some party-really, these people don't even try to hide their indiscretions-and came back roaring drunk. They got to the hotel, and his bodyguards walked him up to the room. It had been searched beforehand, of course, and they left him alone. The usual followed, and then, early the next morning, the girl woke up screaming." Angela reached for her wine again, looked at it, but didn't drink. "She hadn't heard a thing. The coroner said his throat was cut around three in the morning. The killer had gotten in through the balcony, done his job, and slipped out again. They found some marks on the roof, where he'd climbed down. Rope.”

“And the girl?"

"Basket case. She and the bed were soaked in blood. Paul told me she'd had a dream about pissing herself. That was as close as she came to being aware of anything."

Milo topped off their glasses, emptying the carafe.

"There was no reason to think it was the Tiger. A man like Michel Bouchard has so many enemies. Hell, even we would've been happy to see him go. You heard his Armistice Day speech?"

Milo shook his head.

"He accused us of trying to take over Africa. The French think they're the guardians of that continent, and he's been lobbying us to release AIDS drugs willy-nilly to everyone."

"Something wrong with that?"

Angela looked at him, and he wasn't sure what the look meant. "Maybe, but like the rest of Europe he sees our refusal as a conspiracy to, I don't know, depopulate the continent so we can roll in and suck up its oil. Or something like that," she said and drank. "Anyway, he was killed ten days after that speech."

"You think we knocked him off?"

She let out a half-laugh. "Please. A French foreign minister? Give me someone important. No, it looked like the oldest reason-money. He was up to his neck in property speculation and had run up too many loans. He was going to dark places for his capital. The man invested millions in Uganda and the Congo while he was negotiating their development loans. If he'd survived, he'd be facing charges. Luckily for him, one of his lenders took care of the problem." Another shrug. "The man died a hero."

"And the Tiger?"

As she took a breath, Angela's eyes sparkled. This, then, was where she entered the story. "Luck, really. Like I said, I was convinced it was the Tiger. It didn't match his modus, but what other known assassin has the audacity to pull this off? Answer: No one. So I asked around, and it turned out that Tom Grainger-he's still your boss, right?" Milo nodded.

"Well, Tom had three photos of him. From Milan, Frankfurt, and the Arab Emirates. Paul and I went through all the hotel security footage. Took forever, I can tell you, and we still came up empty. But I persisted. You know how persistent I can be-hey, what's that look?"

Milo didn't know he had a look, and said as much. In fact, he was wondering why Grainger hadn't told him about the photo request. Angela let it go.

"We went public. By then it was January, and it was the only thing to do. I printed up the Italian shot and sent it all around Marseille. Stores, banks, hotels. The works. Nothing. Came up completely dry. Weeks passed. I returned to Paris. Then, in February, Paul called. Some teller at the Union Bank of Switzerland said she recognized the face."

"How did her memory suddenly start working?"

"You forget how long French vacations are. She'd been skiing."

"Oh."

"Back to Marseille, then, and we went over the bank's footage. Bingo-there he was. November 18, three days before the assassination, emptying and closing an account of three hundred thousand dollars. Samuel Roth was listed as the account's cosigner-that's one of the Tiger's aliases. Of course, he had a passport to identify himself, and we got the copy they made. But more importantly, we had the account."

Milo 's hands were on the table, on either side of his glass. "Yes?"

To stretch out the suspense, Angela took another sip. She was enjoying this. "Opened November 16 in Zurich under the name Rolf Vinterberg."

He leaned back, amazed that, in mere months, she had followed a trail farther than he had in the last six years. "So? Who's Rolf Vinterberg?"

"Hard to say. Address is just a door on a Zurich side street. He opened the account with cash. The Zurich branch camera catches a man with a hat. Tall. And the name's trash."

"How come I never heard any of this? Weren't you reporting to Langley?"

She looked uneasy, then she shook her head.

Admiration mixed with frustration. If she hadn't been so paranoid, they could have pooled their resources. But Angela didn't want to dilute the credit-this kind of catch really was a career-maker. He said, "I've been after him for years. Did you know that?"

There was no reason she would have known. She looked into her glass and shrugged. "Sorry." She wasn't sorry, though.

"I met with him on Wednesday. In the States."

"The Tiger?"

He nodded.

Her pink cheeks drained of color. "You're joking."

"He's dead, Angela. Took cyanide. Turned out one of his employers stuck him with HIV. Unlike us, his employer knew he was a Christian Scientist."

"Christian-what}" She didn't seem to understand. "He was what?"

"He wouldn't take drugs for it, so it was killing him."

She couldn't speak, could only drink her wine and stare at him. Angela had spent the last eight months building up an investigation-an impressive one, he had to admit-that would finally take her to the next level in her career, and with a few words, Milo had dashed those months of hope.