Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

“Until you had reconstructed the whole letter.”

“Yes. And he was angry. Rick was. He didn’t know about the operation in the Sudan, and I could see how pissed off it made him. People say the Chinese are inscrutable, but that’s bullshit. They’re as hot-tempered as the rest of us.”

“Did he say anything? That he was going to take revenge?”

“You’re not listening. I’m his revenge. My story-it’s going to bust open the Department of Tourism. Expose it. Rick says that for a department like that, the only real threat is exposure. We don’t even need to show people how bad it is, just that it exists. Then the politicians and journalists will do the rest of the work. Pick it apart until there’s nothing left of it. But we have to prove it exists.”

It was eerie how perfectly that echoed Drummond’s own fears. “So how do you prove it exists?”

“Elbow grease. Work. They hooked up the safe house with broadband, and I got to work. Wasn’t easy-it’s taken two months. Rick came back from his trips with new information to help out.”

“What kind?”

“Financial records, biographies of some of the players. Thomas Grainger, for instance. I learned all about him. Angela Yates, your friend who was killed. You.”

“What did you learn about me?”

He grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes,” Milo said without smiling. “I would.”

Gray’s smile disappeared. “The usual. Family, the job-that you used to be one of those Tourists but had moved into administration-and that you were the one guy who had been interested in uncovering what happened in the Sudan. That it cost you your family, and your freedom. In some ways, of the two of us I’m the one who got off light.”

Milo leaned back, not liking the easy way Gray placed them both in the same category. He hated that this man knew so much about him. “How far have you come?”

“Far enough. I’ve already written the first two articles on the department. I e-mailed one to the New York Times this morning.”

That surprised Milo; then it didn’t. It was why Gray was willing to meet him now. He’d already unleashed the Chinese revenge. E-mail was notoriously insecure, of course. By now it would have been flagged and a Company representative would be sitting with the editor-in-chief, ready to make a deal. “They won’t print it.”

“Then I’ll try the Washington Post. And I’ll keep trying until I’ve got a sympathetic ear.” He had the earnest tone of a true believer. “The evidence is there-the fiscal black holes that pay for the department, the links between Senator Nathan Irwin and the oil lobby wanting to push the Chinese out of Africa. It was international-you know that, right? They had help from French oil. It wasn’t just an American plot; it was a Western plot. This is as big as stories come, Milo, and I’m not going to let it go.”

The waitress returned, and Gray ordered another round. Milo hardly noticed. He was working his way through everything, feeling paralyzed by the slow buildup of revelations. Rick was, he felt sure, Xin Zhu, the Chinese spymaster. Before following that to its logical conclusion, though, he felt he had to deal with the remarkable coincidence of their meeting now. “Last night, when you called Zsuzsa, did you clear it with Rick?”

“Of course I did. We’d had a ton of progress over the last week, and I was writing like mad. I was exhausted. I wanted to see her again.”

“What kind of progress?”

“Well, we learned what happened to you, for instance.”

“What happened to me?”

“You survived, didn’t you? Grainger’s letter told us you were investigating, but we weren’t sure if you were one of the casualties or not. Everyone wanted your ass, after all. You got out of prison and went to live in New Jersey-we knew that-but then you disappeared, and we didn’t know until this week that you really were still alive.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“Ask Rick. He came in with the information.”

Milo nodded at this. “So you had all the information you needed, and you wanted to see your girlfriend.”

“But Rick wanted to be cautious. Last night he finally told me it was safe to call.”

“And me? Did he know I was around?”

“What do you think?” said Gray. “Yeah. He said you might be around. And that I shouldn’t worry about you.”

Milo thought a moment, then said, “They’re done with you. You do realize that, right? You’re on your own now.”

Gray shook his head. “I might look like I’m alone and helpless, but trust me-they’ve got my back. They want this story out as much as I do.”

Milo turned to gaze at the crowds in the mall. “They’re not there.”

“These guys are much better than you think.”

Milo stared at him, at the confidence he was working hard to sustain. Gray hadn’t asked the most important question, which was whether or not Milo was working for Tourism again. Either it hadn’t occurred to him, or it had, and he was too terrified to ask. That’s how people worked. They avoided the things that most terrified them, even if knowing could save their lives.

Milo changed tactics. “Why do you think your friend Rick wants to expose the Department of Tourism?”

Gray blinked at his denseness. “Why do you think? To ruin it. To finish it off, so it won’t keep blustering into China’s business.”

“Rick’s a smart guy,” said Milo. “He knows that as soon as you get rid of Tourism, another department will take its place. There’s always clandestine funds available. He gets rid of Tourism, and he loses the one secret he has on the Company. That’s not how a spy works. When you get hold of intelligence, you keep it and use it. You only give it up if you’re forced to do so.”

The lesson was lost on Gray. He raised a hand and patted the air. “Rick’s no more complicated than the rest of us, Milo. He was angry about the Sudan. An angry man isn’t going to fool around with intelligence games.”

Milo doubted that. What Gray couldn’t really know in his bones was that espionage rarely, if ever, provoked wild emotions from men like Rick. Xin Zhu and Alan Drummond and Nathan Irwin-and even Milo himself for a while-worked from behind desks, and, to them, losses and gains were extended mathematical equations. Variables represented trade alliances, corporate influence, nuclear programs, spheres of influence, and the occasional human being. No one could get so upset over math.

“What kind of man is Rick?”

“Physically? Fat, but he carries his weight well.”

“Personality? Is he a joker?”

“Oh, the R joke.” Gray shook his head. “That was his single one-liner during the past two months. This guy doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t drink or smoke. He’s like an angry priest.”

“What about women?”

“Never came up, not really. But I get the sense that if he has one it’s a little wife back in Beijing he would never think of cheating on.”

Just the kind of man you’d trust, thought Milo. While Marko’s drunk, womanizing Xin Zhu was tailor-made for him. Milo wiped his mouth to suppress a smile of admiration.

Not just admiration but awe, because he’d followed everything through to its logical conclusion. Zhu had played this brilliantly.

Henry Gray had been used from the start. Thomas Grainger had tried to use him, posthumously, to reveal an operation he had grown disgusted with (disgust was one of the few emotions administrators knew intimately), and then Xin Zhu had used him to collect enough intelligence about Tourism so that he could pretend to have a mole working in it.

Because there was no mole in Tourism, and there never had been.

He couldn’t help it; the smile flowered on his face. Gray leaned forward and said, “What?”