Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

Each of those Travel Agents, he knew, hated him.

It wasn't him in particular they hated, but Terence Albert Fitzhugh as a concept. He'd seen it in Company offices throughout the world. A kind of love develops between department heads and their employees. When a department head is ousted, or killed, departmental emotions grow volatile. When that department is, like Tourism, invisible to the outside world, the staff depends on its chief that much more.

He would deal with their hatred later. Now, he shut the blinds and went to Grainger's computer. Even a week after his death, it was still a mess, because Tom Grainger had been a mess-one of those old cold warriors who'd spent too much time depending on pretty secretaries to keep order. When faced with their own computers, these old men ended up with the most cluttered desktops on the planet. 1 le had made everything else into a mess as well.

At first, of course, Fitzhugh thought he had cleaned up Grainger's mess. Tripplehorn had received his orders, and when Fitzhugh called back, the Tourist confirmed in a strangely flat voice that the job was done. Fine.

Then, at the scene, he'd noticed the blood inside the house. Why had Tripplehorn taken away Weaver's body? There was no need for that. The next day, forensics almost gave him a coronary-the blood wasn't Weaver's. They didn't know whose it was, but he did.

Tripplehorn had not answered his phone; Milo Weaver had.

Then, after a frantic week of scouring the country, a miracle.

Fitzhugh accessed the network server, typed in his code, and replayed the video of that morning. A surveillance technician had done a quick edit of footage from various cameras. It began outside the building, among the throng of midtown commuters jostling wearily to their jobs. A time code ticked at the bottom of the screen: 9:38. Among the crowd was a head that the technician had marked with a roving arrow. It started on the other side of the Avenue of the Americas, paused, and jogged through a gridlock of yellow taxis to their side.

Cut to: a second camera, on their sidewalk. By then he'd been identified, and in the lobby the doormen were taking positions. On the street, though, Weaver seemed to reconsider. He stopped, letting people bump into him, as if suddenly confused by north and south. Then he continued to the front door.

A high lobby camera, looking down. From here, he could see where the doormen had positioned themselves. The big black guy, Lawrence, was at the door, while another waited by the palm tree. Two more hid in the elevator corridor, just out of sight.

Lawrence waited for him to enter, then stepped up to him. There was a moment when everything seemed all right. Agreeably, they chatted in low tones as the other three doormen approached. Then Weaver noticed them approaching, and panicked. That's the only explanation Fitzhugh could come up with, because Milo Weaver turned on his heel, swiftly, but Lawrence was ready for that; he'd already grabbed Weaver's shoulder. Weaver punched Lawrence in the face, but the other three doormen had arrived, and they piled on him.

It was a remarkably quiet scene, just a little scuffling and the gasp of the pretty desk clerk-Gloria Martinez-just out of sight. When they all got to their feet, Weaver was cuffed behind his back, and three doormen led him to the elevators.

Strangely, Weaver smiled as he passed the front desk, even winked at Gloria. He said something that the camera didn't pick up. The doormen heard it, though, and so did Gloria: "I think I lost my tour group." What a card.

He lost his sense of humor once he reached his cell on the nineteenth floor.

"Why did you kill him?" was Fitzhugh's opening gambit. Whatever Weaver said now would tell Fitzhugh what to do next.

Milo blinked at him, hands chained behind his back. "Who?”

“Tom, for Christ's sake! Tom Grainger!"

A pause, and in that moment of silence, Fitzhugh didn't know what the man would say. Finally, Weaver shrugged. "Tom had Angela Yates killed. That's why. He set her up to look like a traitor, then killed her. He lied to you and me. He lied to the Company." Then he pushed it further: "Because I loved that man, and he used me."

Had Milo killed Tripplehorn, and then, for his own reasons, shot Tom Grainger? If so, it was a burst of cool, fresh air in Fitzhugh's muggy life. He said, "I don't give a shit what you thought about him. He was a CIA veteran and your direct superior. You killed him, Weaver. What am I supposed to think? I'm your superior now-should I worry that if you smell something you don't like I'll be next on the slab?"

It hadn't been time for questions yet, though, so he made a show of frustration, claiming he had meetings to attend. "Reorganization. Restructuring. Cleaning up your goddamned mess."

On the way out, he'd whispered to Lawrence, "Strip him to his birthday suit and give him the black hole."

Lawrence, with his bloodshot eye, betrayed a moment of disgust. "Yes, sir."

The black hole was simple. Strip a man naked, give him a little while to become comfortable with his nakedness, and, after an hour or so, turn off the lights.

Blackness in itself was disorienting, but on its own it had no impact. It was just blackness. The "hole" came sometime later-hours, maybe minutes, when the doormen, wearing infrared goggles, returned two at a time and beat the hell out of him. No light, just disembodied fists.

Take away time, light, and physical security, and a man quickly wants nothing more than to sit in a well-lit room and tell you everything he knows. Weaver would remain in the hole until tomorrow morning, by which time he would welcome even Fitzhugh's presence.

Back in the office, he read through Einner's report, delivered after their travels to Paris and Geneva. Despite Milo's attack on him, Einner insisted that Milo could not have been responsible for Angela's death. "He had the opportunity to switch her sleeping pills, but not the motive. It became obvious that he wanted to find her killer more than I did."

In a blue font, Fitzhugh added his own assessment-"Rampant Speculation"-to Einner's report, then typed his initials and the date.

A little after four, someone knocked. "Yes? Come in."

Special Agent Janet Simmons opened the door.

He tried not to let his irritation show. Instead, he thought the same thing he'd thought during their first meeting-that she might have been an attractive young woman if she hadn't put so much effort into appearing otherwise. Dark hair pulled severely back, some navy suit with too-loose slacks. Lesbian slacks, Fitzhugh secretly called them.

"Thought you were still in D.C.," he said.

"You got Weaver," she answered, gripping her hands behind her back.

Fitzhugh leaned back in the Aeron, wondering how she'd learned that.

"He came to us. Just walked his ass through the front door.”

“Where's he now?"

"Couple floors down. We're giving him the silent treatment. But he's already admitted to killing Tom.”

“Any reasons?"

"Fit of anger. Thought Grainger had used him. Betrayed him."

She reached the available chair, touched it, but didn't sit. "I'll want to talk to him, you know.”

“Of course.”

“Soon."

Fitzhugh rocked his head from side to side to show that he was a man of multiple minds-not schizophrenic, but complicated. "Soon as possible. Be sure of that. But not today. Today there's no talking. And tomorrow, I'll need a full day alone with him. Security, you know."

Simmons finally sat in the chair, her wandering eye gazing over Manhattan while her good eye locked on to him. "I'll pull jurisdiction if I have to. You know that, right? He killed Tom Grainger on American soil."

"Grainger was one of our employees. Not yours."

"Beside the point."

Fitzhugh eased back in the chair. "You act as if Weaver's your nemesis, Janet. He's just a corrupt Company man."