Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

"Under his name?"

"No. Mikhail Yevgenovich Vlastov."

A pause. "Where'd it come from?"

"Anonymous. We're looking into that now."

"Thanks for telling me, Terence. Give Milo my best."

At ten thirty, Fitzhugh used his keycard in the elevator to access the nineteenth floor, where instead of cubicles there were corridors of windowless walls marked by pairs of doors. One led to a cell, the other to the control room for each cell, full of monitors and recording equipment. He entered the control room to cell five, carrying a plain gray folder.

Nate, a hard-drinking ex-agent with the stomach of a goat, sat crunching Ruffles in front of monitors where Milo Weaver, on a floor, naked, screamed from electric shocks delivered to his exposed body parts. The sound echoed sickly in the small room.

A small, thin man in a blood-spattered white smock did his work silently-that was John. One of the doormen held Weaver's shoulders down with rubber gloves, while the other doorman, the big black one, stood by a wall, wiping his mouth and staring.

"What the hell's he doing?" Fitzhugh asked.

Reaching for another potato chip, Nate said, "Just evacuated his breakfast. It's right there by his feet."

"Christ. Get him out of there."

"Now?"

"Yes, now!"

Nate slipped on a wireless headset, tapped on the keyboard, and said, "Lawrence."

The black man stiffened and put a finger to his ear.

"Get out. Now."

While Weaver screamed, Lawrence walked slowly to the door. Fitzhugh met him in the corridor and, despite the fact that the doorman was a head taller, shoved a stiff finger into his chest. "If I ever see that again, you'll be out of here. Got it?"

Lawrence nodded, eyes moist.

"Get back to the lobby and send up someone with balls."

Another nod, and the big man walked off to the elevators.

Nate had told John to prepare for his entrance, so when Fitzhugh opened the door, Milo Weaver was crouched, leaning against the wall, blood seeping from spots across his chest and legs and groin. The remaining doorman stood at attention by the opposite wall while John packed up his electrodes. Weaver began to cry.

"It's a shame," said Fitzhugh, arms crossed over his chest, tapping the folder against his elbow. "A whole career flushed down the toilet because of a sudden desire for vengeance. It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense here," he said, tapping his temple, "nor here"-his heart. He squatted so he was level with Weaver's red eyes and opened the folder. "This is what happens when Milo Weaver defends his dignity?" He snapped the folder around to reveal page-sized color photos of Tom Grainger, crumpled in front of his New Jersey house on Lake Hopatcong. Fitzhugh went through them one at a time for Milo's inspection. Panoramic shots, showing the position of the body-five yards from those concrete steps. Close-ups: the hole through the shoulder, the other through the forehead. Two soft dumdum bullets that widened after entry, taking out a massive chunk as they left, leaving a mutilated shell of Thomas Grainger.

Milo's crying intensified, and he lost his balance, falling to the floor.

"We've got a weeper," Fitzhugh observed, standing.

Everyone in that small white room waited. Milo took loud breaths until the tears were under control, wiped his wet eyes and runny nose, then worked himself into a hunched standing position.

"You're going to tell me everything," said Fitzhugh.

"I know," said Milo.

Across the East River, Special Agent Janet Simmons worked her way through slow Brooklyn traffic, stopping abruptly for pedestrians and children leaping across Seventh Avenue. She cursed each one of them. People were like that-they blundered through their little lives as if nothing would ever cross their paths. Nothing, not automobiles, crossfire, stalkers, or even the unknown machinations of the world's security services, who could easily confuse you with someone else and drag you to a cell, or simply put a misplaced bullet in your head.

Instinctively, she parked on Seventh, near where it crossed Garfield, so that she wouldn't be seen from the window.

She'd made a lot of noise with Terence Fitzhugh, but the truth was that she had no real jurisdictional authority concerning Milo Weaver. He'd killed Tom Grainger on American soil, but both were CIA employees, which left it to the Company's discretion.

Why, then, was she so insistent? Not even she knew for sure. The murder of Angela Yates-perhaps that was it. A successful woman who had made it so far in this most masculine of professions had been killed in her prime by the man Simmons had let go in Tennessee. Did that make her responsible for Yates's death? Maybe not. She felt responsible nonetheless.

This baroque sense of responsibility had plagued her much of her life, though her Homeland therapist, a skinny, pale girl who had the nervous, awkward movements of a virgin, always turned the equation around. It wasn't that Janet Simmons was responsible for all the people in her life; it was that Janet Simmons believed she could be responsible for them. "Control," the virgin told her. "You think you can control everything. That's a serious error of perception."

"You're saying I have control issues?" Simmons taunted, but the virgin was tougher than she looked.

"No, Janet. I'm saying you're a megalomaniac. Good news is, you chose the right profession."

So, her urge to right Milo Weaver's wrongs had nothing to do with justice, empathy, philanthropy, or even equal rights for women. That didn't mean that her actions, in themselves, were not virtuous-even the virgin would admit that.

Yet for weeks her desires had been stumped by a simple lack of real evidence. She could place Weaver at the deaths of the victims, but she wanted more. She wanted reasons.

The Weavers' brownstone lay on a street of brownstones, though theirs was noticeably more run-down. The front door was unlocked, so she climbed the stairs without buzzing anyone. On the third floor, she rang the bell.

It took a moment, but finally she heard the soft pad of bare feet on wood leading up to the door; the spy hole darkened.

"Tina?" She produced her Homeland ID and held it out. "It's Janet. Just need a few minutes of your time."

The shift of the chain being undone. The door opened, and Tina Weaver stared back at her, barefoot, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. No bra. She looked the same as at their last meeting in Disney World, only more tired.

"Did I come at the wrong time?"

Tina Weaver's body shrank slightly at the sight of Simmons. "I'm not sure I should speak to you. You hounded him."

"I think Milo killed two people. Maybe three. You expect me to let that go?"

She shrugged.

"Did you know he's back?" Tina didn't ask where or when; she just blinked. "He turned himself in. He's at the Manhattan office.”

“He's all right?"

"He's in trouble, but he's fine. Can I come in?"

Milo Weaver's wife wasn't listening anymore. She was walking down the corridor toward the living room, leaving the door open. Simmons followed her to a low-ceilinged room with a big flat-screen television but old, cheap-looking furniture. Tina dropped onto the sofa, knees up to her chin, and watched Simmons take a seat.

"Stephanie's at school?"

"It's summer vacation, Special Agent. She's with the sitter.”

“They're not missing you at work?"

"Yes, well." Tina wiped something off her arm. "The library's flexible when you're the director."

"The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, at Columbia. Very impressive."

Tina's expression doubted anyone would be impressed by that. "You going to ask your questions, or what? I'm pretty good at answering. I've had plenty of practice."

"Recently?"