Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

Moscow, Russian Federation

Case: S09-2034-2B (Tourism)

Intel 1: (ref. Alexander) Acquired Bulgarian embassy tapes (ref. Op. Angelhead) from Denistov (attache) and will forward via U.S. embassy. 11/9/99

Intel 2: (ref. Handel) Recovered items from FSB agent (Sergei Arensky), deceased, include… copy of tapes from Bulgarian embassy (ref. Op. Angelhead). 11/13/99

He knew from the concise style that Harry Lynch had put this together. He really was an excellent Travel Agent. In 1999, touring under the name Charles Alexander, Milo had acquired some secret embassy tapes from the Bulgarian embassy in Moscow. The acquisition was called Operation Angelhead. Four days later, another Tourist-Handel-had come across a dead FSB agent, or killed him, and upon his body found a copy of the Angelhead tapes. Milo didn't know how the copy had made it to the Russian.

He flipped through the rest, pausing a moment longer on the third one, which read:

Venice, Italy

Case: S09-9283-3A (Tourism)

Intel 1: (ref. Alexander) Track Franklin Dawdle, under suspicion of fiscal fraud in amount of 3,000,000 USD. 9/10/01

Intel 2: (ref. Elliot) FSB source (VIKTOR) verifies Russian knowledge of the missing 3,000,000 via Dawdle, Frank, and the failed operation to recover in Venice. 10/8/01

Fitzhugh read it upside down. "Yes, your last operation even made it to Moscow."

Milo turned the sheets over. "Are you really that desperate, Terence? You can put a sheet like that together for any field agent. Information leaks. Did you check how many pieces of intel ended up in French or Spanish or British hands? Just as many, I'll wager."

"We don't have a French or Spanish or British passport with your face on it."

That was when Milo knew-Fitzhugh didn't care about his confession anymore. Murder was small fish when compared to being a double agent. It was the kind of catch that would add a gold star to Fitzhugh's record, and put Milo into either a lifetime of solitary or a quick grave.

"Who gave it to you?"

Fitzhugh shook his head. "We're not telling."

No-Fitzhugh had no idea who had given it to him. Milo had a pretty good idea, though, and it threatened to atomize whatever faith he had left.

Tina had awakened that morning in Myrtle Beach and taken Stephanie out to the shore feeling lighter, almost forgetting about the tears from last night's poor sleep. She felt, she realized as she settled on a rented lounge chair and watched her daughter splash in the Atlantic, like a cuckolded wife, but the other woman couldn't be surveilled or attacked because the other woman was an entire history. It was not entirely unlike when she, in junior high school, started reading the alternate histories of her own country, finding out that Pocahontas had become a pawn in colonial power struggles and, after a trip to London with John Rolfe, died of either pneumonia or tuberculosis on the voyage back.

But where those broken national myths had filled her with youthful self-righteousness and indignation, her husband's broken myths humiliated her, made her feel stupid. The only smart thing she'd done, she realized, was deny Milo his last request that they disappear with him.

Her feelings intensified when they landed at LaGuardia, then took the airport shuttle into Brooklyn. The streets were claustrophobic, and each familiar storefront was another accusation from her old life. That was how she was beginning to see her life: old and new. The old life was wonderful because of its ignorance; the new life was terrible because of its knowledge.

Their bags weighed a ton as she followed Stephanie, who rattled the apartment keys as she ran up the stairs. She reached the door while Tina was still on the second landing, opened it, then came out again and pressed her nose through the guardrail. "Mom?"

"What, honey?" she asked, hiking the bags up onto her shoulder.

"Somebody made a big mess. Is Dad home?"

At first, when she dropped the bags and galloped that last flight, she was consumed by an inexplicable surge of hope. Lies or not, Milo had come home. Then she saw that the drawers in the table by the entrance had been pulled out and turned over, leaving a pile of loose change, bus tickets, takeout menus, and keys on the floor. The mirror over the table had been taken down and turned to face the wall, and the loose backing paper had been ripped off.

She told Stephanie to wait in the hall while she examined each room. Destruction, as if an elephant had been mistakenly let in. She even thought: Come on, Tina, an elephant can't get up those stairs. She realized she was getting hysterical.

So she called the number Simmons had left and listened to her calm voice insisting that this wasn't her doing, and she would be right over, and please don't touch anything.

"Don't touch anything," Tina called as she hung up, but Stephanie wasn't in the hall. "Little Miss? Where are you?"

"In the bathroom," came the irritable answer.

How much more of this could Stephanie take? How much could she take? She hadn't told Stef about the sudden expansion of her family, the addition of a great-grandfather and a new grandfather she'd met in Disney World, but Stephanie was nobody's fool. In the hotel room this morning she'd started asking, "Who were you talking to in the old people's home?"

Tina, unable to keep lying to her own daughter, just said, "Someone who might know something about your daddy."

"Something to help him?" Despite having never been told, she knew Milo was in some kind of trouble.

"Something like that."

Tina took her out for Cokes at Sergio's, a pizza joint, and called Patrick. He sounded sober and clearheaded, so she asked him to come over.

He arrived before Simmons, and together the three of them returned to the apartment. The least-demolished room was Stephanie's, so they let her sort through her things while Tina told Patrick everything. Absolutely everything. By the time Simmons arrived, Patrick was in a state. Even during the height of his jealousy, he'd suspected none of this. Now he had to comfort Tina, who kept breaking down in tears. When Simmons stepped through the door, he turned on her.

"Don't tell us you didn't do it, okay? Because we know you did. Who else would've done it?"

Simmons ignored the blustering man and ranged through the apartment, stopping to smile and say hello to Stephanie, then took photos of each room with a little Canon. She stood in corners for multiple angles and crouched beside the disassembled television, the shattered vases (gifts, Tina explained, from her parents), the sliced sofa cushions, the small broken strongbox that had only held some family jewelry, though none of it had been taken.

"Anything missing?" Simmons asked again.

"Nothing." That, in itself, was depressing enough-after all this mess, no one had deemed her possessions worthy of stealing.

"Okay." Simmons straightened. "I've documented it all. Now it's time to clean up."

They got to work with broom and dustpan and Hefty bags Simmons had picked up from a convenience store. While she was squatting beside a broken mirror, picking up dozens of partial reflections of herself, she said, "Tina?" in her most friendly voice.

Tina was behind the television, trying to screw the rear panel back on. "Yeah?"

"You said some Company people came a few days ago. Two days before I visited. Remember?"

"Yeah."

Simmons walked over to the television, ignoring Patrick's accusing stare as he swept up shards of glass and pottery. "How do you know they were Company?"

Tina let the screwdriver drop to the floor and wiped her forehead with her wrist. "What do you mean?"

"Did they say they were Company, or did you just assume it?"

"They told me."

"Show you any ID?"