Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

Afterward, Tina wanted to hear everything about Yevgeny Primakov. Simmons saw no point in hiding Milo's heritage from her, so she told the story in its entirety. By the time she finished, all three of them were in awe of this woman, Ellen, and the life she had lived. "Christ," said Tina. "That's so rock and roll."

Simmons laughed. Stephanie said, "Rock and roll?"

Back in her hotel, Simmons spent most of the night in a fit of anger. When the surprise (and even admiration) had faded, anger was all she was left with. The virgin would have again referenced her megalomania. Megalomaniacs cannot abide the idea that they are not personally in control of every variable. It becomes worse when they realize that not only are they not in control, someone else is, someone who has been directing all of their movements.

In the midst of her fury, she used the hotel phone to call the United Nations operator and demanded Yevgeny Primakov's New York number. The operator told her that Mr. Primakov had left New York that morning. According to her information, he was on vacation, but should be reachable through the Brussels offices from September 17. Simmons nearly broke the receiver, slamming it back into the cradle.

Eventually the anger did fade, if only because of exhaustion. She remembered the fresh energy she'd had in Blackdale, Tennessee.

Her engine had first been revved there and had sustained its intensity over the length of an entire month. It had to run out of gas; that only made sense.

In the morning, she took the subway south to Foley Square, went inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, suffered through security by emptying her pockets of her entire life, and asked to speak to Milo Weaver.

They brought him up in manacles again. He looked tired, but healthy. The signs of the beating he'd gotten in the Avenue of the Americas offices lingered only as bruises, and he actually looked as if he'd put on a pound or two. His eyes were no longer bloodshot.

"Hello, Milo," she said as the guard, on his knees, attached his chains to the table. "You look fit."

"It's the excellent food," he said, smiling at the guard, who grinned back as he stood. "Is it solid, Gregg?"

"Indeed it is, Milo."

"Fantastic."

Gregg left them alone and locked the door behind himself, but waited by the reinforced window to keep an eye on the situation. Simmons took a seat and wove her fingers together on the table. "You get any news in here?"

"Gregg smuggled in the Sunday Times" he said, then lowered his voice. "Don't let that get around, okay?"

Simmons used an imaginary key to lock her lips, then tossed it away. "Fitzhugh's dead. Body discovered in his hotel room yesterday morning."

Milo blinked at her, surprised-but was he surprised? She had no idea. She had read his file and uncovered the hidden nooks of his past, but Milo Weaver was still an enigma. He said, "How about that?"

"Yes. How about it?"

"Who did it?"

"The coroner says suicide. The pistol was licensed to him, and there was a note."

He showed more surprise, and again she wondered. He became serious. "What did it say?"

"A lot of things. It was a rambling note, bad writing, probably written while drunk. He had a fifth of scotch in him. A lot of it was for his wife. Apologies for being a bad husband, that sort of thing. But he did devote a few sentences to the case. He said he was responsible for Grainger's death. He said he'd been running Grainger from the beginning. Really, all the things Grainger told you. The things you said you didn't believe."

"Are you sure it was suicide?"

"There's nothing to suggest otherwise. Unless you know something else you're not telling me."

Milo stared at the white surface of the table, his breaths audible, thinking. What was he thinking about?

She said, "There's one thing I only figured out late Saturday night, probably around the time Fitzhugh died. It does kind of throw everything into question, and I'd planned on following up on it today."

"What's that?"

"The day after you came back to the Avenue of the Americas, Fitzhugh received an anonymous package-that Russian passport of yours. It was real, but the question he never answered was: Who sent it?"

"I'd like to know that, too."

She smiled. "But you already know, don't you? Your father, Yevgeny Primakov. He sent it so that, if I wasn't already, I would start to question your entire history, find your grandfather, and be led to Yevgeny himself."

Milo didn't answer. He just waited.

"It was smart. I'll admit that. He could've sent it to me directly, but he knew I wouldn't trust an anonymous package. Instead, he sent it to Terence, knowing he would be happy to share it. Terence thought it would bury you, but it did the opposite. It led me to Primakov, who just happened to have a photograph of Terence with Roman Ugrimov-Roman, who just happened to be in town, too. Amazing coincidence, don't you think?"

"I think you're imagining conspiracies, Janet."

"Maybe I am," she said agreeably, because a part of her wanted to believe that that's all it was-her imagination. Like Milo weeks before, she didn't like the feeling that she'd been led by the nose. Still, she knew it was true. "There's a certain beauty to it," she said. "Your father sends something that has the potential to expose you as a Russian spy, but instead it leads to evidence condemning Fitzhugh. Your father must love you very much to stick his neck out like that."

"That's ridiculous," said Milo. "How could he know that you'd follow that exact path?"

"Because," she said quickly, the answer already on her lips, "your father knew-if only because you told him-just how bad the relationship between Homeland and the Company is. He knew that if I smelled a mole, I would start to dig deep in order to squeeze the Company. As it turned out, they never had a mole, just an agent with a secret childhood."

Milo considered all this while staring at his cuffed hands. "Maybe that's possible, Janet-in your paranoid world, at least-but you never got enough to really nail Fitzhugh, did you? It was all circumstantial stuff. Yet Fitzhugh still shot himself. No one could predict that."

"If he really shot himself."

"I thought you believed he did."

"Fitzhugh," said Simmons, "was too much of an old fox to do that. He would've fought every step of the way.”

“So, who killed him?"

"Who knows? Maybe your father took care of that. Or maybe my investigation was making someone above Fitzhugh nervous. He made it very clear in his note that the buck stopped with him. You believe that? Do you believe that Fitzhugh was just a rogue administrator who decided to destabilize African countries in order to disrupt China's oil supply?"

Milo's shoulders slumped in an attitude of dejection. "I don't know what to think, Janet."

"Then maybe you can answer a question."

"You know me, Janet. I'm always happy to help."

"What did you do during that week in Albuquerque?"

"Like I said, I drank. I drank and ate and shat and thought. Then I took a plane to New York City."

"Yeah," she said, standing. She'd had enough of this. "That's what I thought you'd say."

He knew from the beginning how it would end, despite all the fear and doubt brought on by the strict prison regimen. It was tailor-made to encourage doubt in anything involving the outside world, even an old Russian fox. The prison said: At this hour, you wake; at that hour, you eat. Midday is time for physical exercise in the Yard. In the Yard, your mind may begin to wander outside the walls, to postulate and speculate on what might be happening at that very moment, but you're soon disrupted by the minutiae of prison socialization. A Latino gang suggests basketball isn't your game, a black gang tells you this is its bleacher. The skinheads explain that you'll run with them, because you're a brother; you're white. If, as Milo did, you reject them all out of hand, claiming that you belong to none of their cliques, then your wandering mind is again sucked back inside the walls, devoted to staying alive.