Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

"if she does something."

"Whatever."

"I'll keep you company."

After a half hour, the sun began to set at the end of the street, cutting though the rear windows. Pedestrians returned home, desperate to shed their suits. It was a pretty street, and reminded Milo a little of his home in Brooklyn, which he was beginning to miss. He still wasn't sure why he wasn't on a plane right now-what, really, could he do to help Angela? Einner might be arrogant, but he wasn't going to frame her. And if Milo turned out to be wrong, and she was selling secrets, then he couldn't help her anyway.

"How did all this come about?" he asked.

Einner leaned back, but kept watching Angela. She was smiling at something on the tube. "You know how it came about. Colonel Yi Lien's laptop."

"But why was MI6 looking at the colonel in the first place?"

He considered Angela a moment, then shrugged. "They'd been tracking him. Two-man team, routine stuff. Just keeping an eye on the opposition."

"They told you this?"

Einner looked at him as if he were a child. "You think they talk to Tourists? Please. Only Tom's ear is worthy of their secrets.”

“Go on."

"Well, every other weekend, this colonel takes the ferry from Portsmouth to Caen. A little cottage north of Laval. One of those remodeled farmhouses."

"What about this girlfriend?"

"Renee Bernier. French."

"A budding novelist, I hear."

Einner scratched his cheek. "I've read a little of her opus. It's not bad." When Angela got up, he typed something, and the monitor switched to the bathroom as she entered, unbuttoning her skirt lazily.

"You're going to switch that off, aren't you?"

He gave Milo a sour look. "I don't get off on this, Weaver."

"What about Renee Bernier? Could she have accessed the memo?"

Einner shook his head at Milo 's simplicity. "You really think we just sit on our hands here, don't you? We're all over her. She's a devoted communist, for sure. Her novel's one big anticapitalist rant."

"I thought you said it was good."

"We're not the unwashed masses. I can tell a good writer when I read her. Even if her politics are juvenile.”

“That's very open-minded of you."

"Isn't it?" he growled, then changed cameras again as Angela flushed the toilet and returned to the couch, now wrapped in a plush white robe. "Anyway, you know the story. Colonel Lien boards the ferry from Caen after another of his lost weekends. Halfway across the Channel, he collapses. The two MI6 men resuscitate him, and take the opportunity to copy his hard drive."

"Why Angela?"

Einner blinked at him. "What?"

"Why is everyone convinced that she's the source? All this is so circumstantial."

"You don't know?"

Milo shook his head, and that provoked a blistery smile.

"That's why you're being so hard-headed about this." He tapped on the second laptop. A file marked swallow popped up. Bird names, Milo noticed. Straight out of The Ipcress File. Michael Caine, 1965.

Einner began to go through his case.

What followed was hard to keep track of. He showed Milo surveillance photographs, copies of documents, audio files, and video clips taken over the previous two months, the result of a sustained surveillance effort run by the proud Tourist sitting next to him. Some reports placed Angela at Chinese embassy parties, but even Einner admitted that that in itself wasn't damning. He even noted that Angela was using sleeping pills most nights, as if that were a sign of a guilty conscience. Then he got to the important part.

"See this man?" he said, pointing at a red-bearded thirty-something in a fitted suit. He was standing at a street crossing by the Arc de Triomphe, just behind Angela, both waiting for the light to change. Milo 's cheeks warmed-he knew this man. Einner said, "That was May 9. Here." He tapped the trackpad, and the same man was sitting behind the wheel of a taxi, no longer in a suit, while Angela was in the back. "That's May 14. This is the sixteenth." A tap, and there they both were again, in the bistro where Milo had entrapped her, sitting at separate, but nearby, tables. In this shot, however, she wasn't alone at her table. Sitting across from her was a young, earnest-looking black man, hands open, speaking insistent words at her. "June 20," Einner said, and showed Milo another street-crossing shot, again with the red-bearded man. "All we have on this man is-"

"Who's the kid?"

"What?" Einner said, annoyed at the interruption.

"Go back," Milo said, and when Einner had returned to the bistro shot he touched the screen. "This guy."

"Rahman Something…" He squeezed his eyes shut. "Garang. That's it. Rahman Garang. Suspected terrorist."

"Oh?"

"She reported it," Einner told him. "She was trying to get information from him.”

“In a public place?"

"His idea, apparently. Not very professional, but she didn't argue."

"Did she get anything?"

Einner shook his head. "We think he fucked off back to the Sudan."

" Sudan," Milo breathed, trying to sound uninterested. "And before you ask," Einner said, "no-we don't think she's helping out terrorists. She's not subhuman.”

“I'm glad you know that."

Einner went back to the last photo, of Angela crossing the street with the red-bearded man. "Anyway, this man here-”

“Herbert Williams," said Milo.

"Shit, Weaver! Would you stop interrupting?”

“That's who it is, isn't it?"

"Well, yes," Einner muttered. "That's the name he used to register with the Police Nationale. How the hell did you know?”

“What else do you have on him?"

Einner wanted an answer first, but he could see from Milo 's face that he wouldn't get one. "Well, he gave the police a Third Arrondissement address. We checked it out-a homeless shelter. So far as they know, he's never even knocked on the door. He claims to be from Kansas City. We had the Feds check on it, and Herbert Williams's records go back to 1991, when he applied for a passport."

"He had to use a social security number, right?"

"Classic scam. The number does belong to a Herbert Williams, a black male who died at the age of three in 1971."

"We've got nothing else?"

"The guy's slippery. We put some people on him after two of the June meetings, but he got away each time. He's a real pro. But look at this." Once again, he tapped the trackpad, and a countryside shot appeared. Milo 's first reaction was aesthetic-it was a beautiful shot. Wide-open space, big sky, and a small cottage off to the left. Then he noticed a car near the center. Einner's cursor became a magnifying glass, and he zoomed in. Grainy, but clear enough-two men stood beside the car, talking. One was Herbert Williams, a.k.a. Jan Klausner. The other was a fat Chinese man, Colonel Yi Lien.

"Where did you get this?"

"It's old Company material, from last year. Tom tracked it down when he learned about the colonel."

Milo rubbed his lips; they were as dry as Einner's. He was starting to hate Tom Grainger's idea of security. "You've been following her for two months. Why did you start?"

"The French station's been full of holes for years. Langley wanted to look into it, but outside the usual channels, and we decided to start with Angela Yates."

"We?"

"Me and Tom."

It was a basic part of his job that Milo wasn't privy to all the operations his office ran, and he tried to remember if there had been any clues that Angela was under investigation. The best he could come up with was when, a month before, he had asked to use Einner, who was a surveillance expert, to bug a meeting between the Sicilian Mafia and suspected Islamic militants in Rome. Grainger had only said that Einner was indisposed, and gave him Lacey instead. "So," he said, "you think all this is enough to hang her?"