Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

No mole.

Now, everything fell into place beautifully.

It began with a story written by Grainger. The letter would have remained in his lawyer’s office if he’d remained alive. The Company had killed him, though, and so it was sent to Henry Gray. The Company tried to clean up the mess as it too often did-by killing-but there was a mistake. Gray survived, and so did the story of the Sudanese operation run through the Department of Tourism. Again, the Company was at fault, for its attempted murder led Gray straight into the hands of Xin Zhu, a Chinese spymaster who kept Gray around to help with the investigation.

At the beginning, this had probably been the entire plan: Help a journalist humiliate the Company as payback for its reckless interference in Africa.

Then, during one of Xin Zhu’s absences he found himself in Kiev, liaising with the SSU, and learned of one Marko Dzubenko, a blustering lieutenant planning to defect. With the kind of creativity that’s rare among administrators, he asked the SSU to please not arrest Dzubenko-some sort of deal would have had to be struck. Bring him to the next embassy party, will you? In person, pretending to be a drunk blowhard, he gave Dzubenko a story he couldn’t help but use later to buy himself a new life in America.

It was beautiful because it was so clean. In the end Zhu did so little. He helped an American journalist work on a story. He told a lie to a defector. Later, when he decided Tourism needed another kick, he passed along the request for the Chinese ambassador to the UN to deliver a single sentence about the Sudan, then refuse to go into details. Zhu knew that there had been a senator working behind the scenes, and any senator would panic at the possibility that the Chinese held a scandal in their hands.

It was beautiful, too, in that its minimalism reflected the minimalism of the original operation in the Sudan. Kill one man and make it look as if the Chinese committed the murder. Zhu’s plan was even more beautiful because no one needed to be killed, or even hurt, whereas last year’s plot had killed one man initially, resulting in riots in the Sudan that had killed more than eighty; then more died just to keep it quiet. Milo was stunned by the audacity of Xin Zhu’s ingeniousness.

“What is it?” Gray insisted.

“Where’s the house?”

“What?”

“Where’s the safe house? I want to see it.”

Gray considered that, staring past Milo at the diners and shoppers, probably looking for his backup. “Why?”

“Because I’d love to meet Rick,” he said. He really did want to meet Xin Zhu but knew it wouldn’t happen. Not today, at least.

“This might all sound like a joke to you, but you won’t be safe there.”

“Henry, really. I’d love to meet him. Hell, I might even offer him my services.”

“Why are you jerking my chain?”

“I’m jerking nothing.”

Gray considered that, then shrugged and stood up. “I’m not going to be responsible for what they do to you.”

“You’re officially exempt from responsibility.”

Milo paid the bill, then followed Gray back out to the street, where he waved down a taxi. Gray negotiated with the driver while Milo went back and forth over his realizations, checking them off one after the other. He was sure of this.

When Gray turned to look at the cars behind them, Milo said, “They’re not there, are they?”

“What you don’t know could fill the Vatican.”

To reach Budaörs, the taxi driver took the same highway Milo had used to reach Budapest, then exited near the IKEA and ended up in a town of small, clay-tiled houses with muddy yards and new cars. To their left a fallow field opened up, and then a right placed them on a gravel street of new houses, with foreign cars and reinforced concrete gates. They stopped at number 16, and Milo paid the taxi bill with the last of his forints.

“Your last chance,” Gray said as he used a key on the gate.

“No cars,” Milo noted.

“They like public transport. More democratic.”

“Of course.”

Gray rang the bell on the front door, then used another key. No one waited for them, and the first room they entered was stripped down to its bare walls and hardwood floor. Gray stopped, shocked, then ran to the other rooms, finally shouting, “Motherfucker! They took my computer!”

Involuntarily, Milo started to laugh. Xin Zhu had only been interested in sending a message, and Milo was there to receive it: We know who you are and what you did. We can touch you whenever we like.

He took the pieces of his phone out of his pocket and put it back together, walking slowly through the empty rooms. He found Gray coming out of a bathroom, wiping vomit from his lips. He started to say something to Milo but changed his mind.

Milo’s phone rang. He took it to the kitchen.

“Riverrun, past Eve.”

“And Adam’s,” said Milo.

“You’re in some serious shit,” said Drummond. “Irwin’s on the warpath for you.”

“I bet he is.”

“Get yourself back home.”

“I’ll need my credit cards.”

“They’ll be working in an hour, okay?”

“One more thing,” said Milo. “You can unfreeze the department. There’s no mole.”

“What?”

Milo gave him the short version, and though he was doubtful, Drummond said, “What kind of bastard dreams up such a thing?”

“Don’t talk that way about the man I love,” Milo said, then hung up.

By the time he landed at JFK, it was Tuesday morning. He drove a rental into midtown and, knowing the lot beside 101 West Thirty-first would be full of employees’ cars, parked in a public lot on West Twenty-ninth and walked over to the Avenue of the Americas, then up the busy sidewalk to Thirty-first. Cameras positioned along the streets surrounding the Department of Tourism’s headquarters tracked his progress, and when he reached the entrance to the inconspicuous brick tower two doormen were already waiting.

In the old days, he would have known these huge men who acted as Tourism’s first barrier against intrusion, and called them by name, but these two had come along after his dismissal, and they were as mute and humorless as their predecessors. There was one familiar face, though-Gloria Martinez, who worked the front desk. She was pretty but stern; this had never stopped Milo from flirting with her in an unending game of proposal and rejection.

The last time she’d seen him, Milo was being beaten to the ground by three doormen in this cold lobby. Now, the look on her face suggested she had assumed him dead, and she showed the maximum emotion her position would allow: “Good to see you again, sir.”

“Ms. Martinez, you are, as ever, a sight for sore eyes.”

When he stopped to be photographed by the computer and stated his name for the microphone, Gloria Martinez didn’t even blink when he said, “Sebastian Hall.” She had only ever known him as Milo.

In the elevator the doormen patted him down, then used a key to access the twenty-second floor. The ride was silent, and Milo watched their stony faces in the mirrored walls.

When the doors opened, he involuntarily caught his breath. This, for six years, had been his daily destination, his nine-to-five. A quietly productive floor of cubicles and computers and busy Travel Agents combing through the intelligence sent in by a whole world of Tourists. Now, though, the most striking thing about the Department of Tourism was its emptiness. The maze of cubicles was still here, but they were empty. In a few, kneeling in mock prayer, technicians fooled with computer cables, tagging and logging hard drives, but they were like sweepers cleaning up after a parade, not even raising their heads to acknowledge the visitors heading to the offices along the far wall.