Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

"I was going to thank you, but I didn't want to interrupt your show. And I hope the bathroom doesn't stink-I opened the window to air it out."

The man frowned at Milo 's grimy undershirt and slacks. "What happened?"

Milo looked down at himself, then pointed a thumb toward the open door of number seven. "Marie got back, and… really, man. You don't want to know."

He'd only just started on the living room, with its broken terrace door, emptying a small desk and riffling through an extensive DVD collection full of Angela's taste-The Misfits, North by Northwest, Chinatown, Some Like It Hot-when the door buzzer rang. He slipped off his shoes and padded to the foyer, wishing he'd brought the pistol, but it was only Einner. He was holding out his telephone. "It's for you."

Milo took it back to the living room, and the first thing Grainger said was "You alone?"

Einner had wandered into the kitchen; he heard the refrigerator open. "Yeah."

"I've been sacked, Milo."

"What?"

"Fitzhugh calls it vacation, but it's not that at all. He's furious I tipped you off about Homeland, and he's not happy I showed you Benjamin Harris's file."

"How did he find out?"

"I think one of the clerks told him, but it doesn't matter. I'm packing for a week in New Jersey. I've had enough of the city."

Guilt trickled into his bloodstream-the Company was the only thing the old widower had left in his life, and because of Milo it was now gone.

"What have you got?" asked Grainger. "Einner says you talked to the DGSE."

"Listen, Tom. I'm not even sure I should be running. I might just turn myself in."

"You should stay away," Grainger assured him. "I told you Simmons was meeting with Fitzhugh. She knew you were in Paris and demanded the report on Angela. I didn't show it to her, but I guess Fitzhugh got scared; he'd given in by Tuesday." He paused. "It's all about that blank spot in the surveillance, Milo. You shouldn't have asked Einner to turn off the cameras."

"You're the one who approved it."

"Which is something I'll have to live with. Now tell me what you've got."

Milo explained the most important facts. First, that the whole investigation into Angela Yates had been a ruse. "Yi Lien never brought his laptop out of the embassy. Diane Morel verifies this. That means someone was lying to you. Maybe your MI6 contact. You should get in touch with him."

"Not possible. Fitzhugh has informed Six of the end of my tenure. They know not to share information with me."

"Okay. I'm in a safe house Angela set up. I'm hoping she'll have some records around here."

"Whatever you learn won't mean a thing if you don't have physical evidence. Remember that. What happens if the apartment comes up dry?"

"I'm not sure."

"If you run into a wall, call me in New Jersey. I might be able to come up with something. You have the number?”

“Remind me, will you?"

Milo took a pen and paper from the desk and scribbled the 973 number of Grainger's lakeside house.

"One more thing," said Grainger. "With me gone, Fitzhugh is officially running Tourism. He has no idea where you are, but if he does learn that you're with Einner, you know what'll happen."

Firmer appeared, chewing a Snickers bar he'd found, gazing up at the pen-and-ink nudes Angela had decorated the place with. "I think I do."

Grainger wasn't going to depend on Milo 's predictive powers: "He'll call Einner-he has his go-code-and order him to bring you in. Catch or kill. So I suggest you lose Mr. Einner as soon as possible."

"Understood," he said as Einner gave up on the nudes and smiled at him. "And Tom?”

“Yes?"

"If Tina gets in touch, can you find a way to tell her I'm all right? That I'll be back as soon as I can?"

"Sure. But you know that woman. She never believes a word I say."

Milo hung up, gave the phone back to Einner, and asked him to look through the bedroom.

"I thought you wanted me to watch the street."

"This is more important," he said, though in truth he wanted Einner in earshot, just in case Fitzhugh made his call.

In the end, they only needed twenty minutes. Believing the Rue David d'Angers apartment to be safe, Angela had merely slipped her growing case file on the Tiger into a folder attached to the underside of the IKEA sofa that faced the small television. A stack of maybe two hundred documents, photographs, and handwritten thoughts ripped from notebooks. She'd organized them with paper clips so that anything she found on, for example, Rahman Garang could be added to a paper-clipped section with his photo and basic information on top. Milo was in awe of the lengths to which she'd gone, collecting phone records and occasional photos she'd shot herself.

He took the stack to the bedroom and found Einner in front of the open wardrobe, breaking the heels off of Angela's shoes, looking for hollow spaces. "Come on," said Milo. "Let's get out of here."

They took the papers to a brasserie in Montmartre, and over grilled racks of lamb began to sort through the information.

"You're telling me she did all this on her own?" Einner asked.

"That's what I'm telling you.”

“She was better than I thought.”

“Better than any of us thought."

Starting from the point she had told Milo about, Angela had focused on bank records for Rolf Vinterberg in Zurich. Using her connections, she had accessed the records of three other banks in town, two of which also showed a Rolf Vinterberg opening accounts that were closed soon after by Samuel Roth. She'd written on one page:

RV-Resident of Zurich

Alone?

No.

What Company?

Behind that note-to-self was a twenty-page single-spaced list of Zurich companies, divided by main activity. He had no idea why these particular ones had interested her, or what criteria she'd used. Four pages in, she had circled Ugritech SA with a black marker. How she'd come upon this particular company in the haystack of possibilities wasn't shown here, but he had to believe that Angela had her reasons, which could be hidden in any of the other pages, half of which Einner was reading through.

The name rang a bell, but he wasn't able to put a finger on it until he turned to the next page, which was a printout from the Web site of Ugritech, a company focused on spreading technology through Africa. Then he saw it-first, the photograph. A handsome man with wavy hair and a seductive smile, "director: Roman Ugrimov."

Milo exhaled loudly enough that Einner stopped reading. "Find something?"

"See anything about Ugritech there? It's a company."

Einner shook his head, then went back to his pages as Milo closed his eyes, remembering 10:27 a.m., September 11, 2001, the moment when thirteen-year-old Ingrid Kohl landed hard against Venice cobblestones. Roman Ugrimov's "And her I love, you bastard!"

There were not many people Milo could say he hated. Hatred doesn't last long in the Company, because with the amount of information you have access to, it becomes too easy to see the perspectives of those who commit heinous acts. But even knowing a fair amount about what had happened, Milo had never found a way to explain the murder of Ingrid Kohl to his satisfaction.

On September 13, after he'd made sure the pregnant woman, Tina Crowe, was out of danger, he snuck out of the hospital and marched into Ugrimov's palazzo. The visit was a futile act that he couldn't even back up with aggression because of the holes in his chest, but it was enough to make him despise Roman Ugrimov. The Russian had too much faith in his own invincibility-it didn't matter how many crimes he committed; all he had to do was write a few checks. In Italy, the police only questioned him once about the death of the girl in his charge, and soon afterward the official record reflected the story they'd chosen, or been paid, to believe: The poor girl had committed suicide.