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2 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
The sheriff had moved three drunks and two spousal abusers to the group cell, leaving Samuel Roth alone in a small cinder-block room with a steel door and no window. Milo peered through the door’s barred hatch. A fluorescent tube burned from the ceiling, illuminating the thin cot and aluminum toilet.
To call his search for the Tiger obsessive would have been, according to Grainger, an understatement. In 2001, soon after he’d recovered from his bullet wounds in Vienna and retired from Tourism, Milo decided that while his coworkers devoted themselves to finding the Most Famous Muslim in the World somewhere in Afghani stan, he would spend his time on terrorism’s more surgical arms. Terrorist acts, by definition, were blunt and messy. But when someone like bin Laden or al-Zarqawi needed a specific person taken out, he, like the rest of the world, went to the professionals. In the assassination business, there were few better than the Tiger.
So over the last six years, from his twenty-second-floor cubicle in the Company office on the Avenue of the Americas, he’d tracked this one man through the cities of the world, but never close enough for an arrest.
Now, here he was, the man from that embarrassingly meager file Milo knew so well, sitting comfortably on a cot, his back to the wall and his orange-clad legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. Samuel Roth, or Hamad al-Abari, or Fabio Lanzetti—or five other names they knew of. The assassin didn’t check to see who was peering in at him; he left his arms knotted over his chest as Milo entered.
“Samuel,” Milo said as a deputy locked the door behind him. He didn’t approach, just waited for the man to look at him.
Even in this light, with its harsh shadows and the way it yellowed his skin, Roth’s face recalled the three other photographs back at the office. One from Abu Dhabi, as al-Abari, his features half obscured by a white turban. A second from Milan, as Lanzetti, at a café along the Corso Sempione, talking with a red-bearded man they’d never been able to identify. The third was CCTV footage from outside a mosque in Frankfurt, where he’d planted a bomb under a black Mercedes-Benz. Each remembered image matched these heavy brows and gaunt cheeks, the pitch eyes and high, narrow forehead. Sometimes a mustache or beard hid aspects of the face, but now his only mask was a three-day beard that grew to the top of his cheekbones. His skin was splotchy in this light, peeling from an old sunburn.
Milo remained beside the door. “Samuel Roth—that’s the name we’ll use for now. It’s easy to pronounce.”
Roth only blinked in reply.
“You know why I’m here. It has nothing to do with your problems with women. I want to know why you’re in the United States.”
“Кaк вac зoвут, мудаки?” said Roth.
Milo grimaced. He was going to have to go through the motions. At least a change of language would hide their talk from these Tennessee boys. In Russian, he answered, “I’m Milo Weaver, of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Samuel Roth looked as if that were the funniest name he had ever heard.
“What?”
“Sorry,” Roth said in fluent English. He raised a hand. “Even after all this, I still didn’t expect it to work.” He had the flat, irregular accent of someone who’d absorbed too many.
“What didn’t you expect to work?”
“I’m lucky I even remember you. I forget a lot of things these days.”
“If you don’t answer my questions, I’ll hurt you. I am authorized.”
The prisoner’s eyes widened; they were bloodshot and tired.
“There’s only one reason you’d risk entering the country. Who are you supposed to kill?”
Roth chewed the inside of his cheek, then spoke in a laconic tone: “Maybe you, Company man.”
“We were tracking you since Barcelona—you know that? To Mexico, then Dallas, and that rented car to New Orleans where you picked up your girlfriend. Maybe you just wanted to know if she survived Katrina. You switched to your Italian passport—Fabio Lanzetti—before switching back in Mississippi. Changing names is a nice trick, but it’s not foolproof.”
Roth cocked his head. “You’d know that, wouldn’t you?”
“Would I?”
Samuel Roth wiped his dry lips with his fingers, stifling a cough. When he spoke, he sounded congested. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Milo Weaver—a.k.a. many other names. Alexander.” He pointed at Milo. “That’s the name I know best. Charles Alexander.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Milo said as nonchalantly as he could manage.
“You’ve got a long history,” Roth continued. “An interesting one. You were a Tourist.”
A shrug. “Everyone likes a vacation.”
“Remember 2001? Before those Muslims ruined business. Amsterdam. Back then, I only worried about people like you, people who work for governments, ruining my business. These days …” He shook his head.
Milo remembered 2001 better than most years. “I’ve never been to Amsterdam,” he lied.
“You’re curious, Milo Weaver. I’ve seen files on lots of people, but you … there’s no center to your history.”
“Center?” Milo moved two steps closer, an arm’s length from the prisoner.
Roth’s lids drooped over his bloodshot eyes. “There’s no motivation connecting the events of your past.”
“Sure there is. Fast cars and girls. Isn’t that your motivation?”
Samuel Roth seemed to like that. He wiped his mouth again to cover a large grin; above his sunburned cheeks his eyes looked very wet, sick. “Well, you’re certainly not motivated by your own well-being, or else you’d be somewhere else. Moscow, perhaps, where they take care of their agents. At least, where agents know how to take care of themselves.”
“Is that what you are? Russian?”
Roth ignored that. “Maybe you just want to be on the winning side. Some people, they like to bend with history. But history’s tricky. Today’s monolith is tomorrow’s pile of rocks. No.” He shook his head. “That’s not it. I think you’re loyal to your family now. That would make sense. Your wife and daughter. Tina and … Stephanie, is it?”
Involuntarily, Milo shot out a hand and gripped Roth’s shirt at the buttons, lifting him from the cot. This close, he could see that his dry, peeling face was riddled with pink sores. This was not sunburn. With his other hand, he squeezed Roth’s jaw to hold his face still. There was rot in the man’s breath. “No need to bring them into this,” Milo said, then let go. When Roth fell back onto the cot, his head knocked against the wall.
How had this man turned the interrogation around?
“Just trying to make conversation,” said Roth, rubbing the back of his skull. “That’s why I’m here, you know. To see you.”
Instead of questioning that, Milo went for the door. He could at least squelch Roth’s one voiced desire by removing himself from the room.
“Where are you going?”
Good—he sounded worried. Milo tapped the door, and one of the deputies started working the lock.
“Wait!” called Roth. “I have information!”
Milo jerked the door open as Roth again called, “Wait!” He didn’t slow down. He left the room and kept moving as the deputy pushed the steel door shut.
3 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
The sultry noontime heat swallowed him as he fooled with the new Company-issue Nokia he was still learning to master, finally finding the number. Between a parked blue-and-white and the dead shrubs around the station, he watched as storm clouds began to fill the sky. Grainger answered with a sharp “What is it?”
Tom Grainger sounded the kind of irate people are when they’ve been abruptly woken, but it was nearly noon. “I’m verifying it, Tom. It’s him.”
“Good. I don’t suppose he’s talking, is he?”
“Not really. But he is trying to piss me off. He’s seen a file on me. Knows about Tina and Stef.”
“Jesus. How’d he get that?”
“There’s a girlfriend. She might know something. They’re bringing her in now.” He paused. “But he’s sick, Tom. Really sick. I’m not sure he could make a journey.”
“What’s he got?”
“Don’t know yet.”
When Grainger sighed, Milo imagined him kicking back in his Aeron chair, gazing out his window across the Manhattan skyline. Faced with the dusty pale-brick buildings along Blackdale’s main street—half of them out of business but covered with Independence Day flags—Milo was suddenly jealous. Grainger said, “Just so you know—you’ve got one hour to make him talk.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“I’m telling you. Some jackass at Langley sent an e-mail off the open server. I’ve spent the last half hour fending off Homeland with make-believe. If I hear the word ‘jurisdiction’ one more time, I’ll have a fit.”
Milo stepped back as a deputy got into the police car and started it up. He returned to the station’s glass double doors. “My hopes are with the girlfriend. Whatever game he’s playing, he won’t play by my rules until I have something on him. Or if he’s under duress.”
“Can you put it to him there?”
Milo considered this as the police car left and another parked in its place. The sheriff might turn a blind eye to rough treatment, but he wasn’t sure about the deputies. There was something wide-eyed about them. “I’ll see once the girl’s here.”
“If Homeland hadn’t been shouting at me all morning, I’d tell you to break him out and bundle him for shipment. But we don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t think they’ll share him?”
His chief grunted. “It’s me who doesn’t want to share. Be a good boy and let them have him, but whatever he says to you is only for us. Okay?”
“Sure.” Milo noticed that the mustached deputy getting out of the car was Leslie, the one who’d been sent to pick up Kathy Hendrickson. He was alone. “Call you back,” Milo said and hung up. “Where’s the girl?”
Leslie held his wide-brimmed hat in his hands, nervously rotating it. “Checked out, sir. Late last night, couple hours after we released her.”
“I see, Deputy. Thanks.”
On the way back inside, Milo called home, knowing that at this hour no one would be there to pick up. Tina would check the messages from work once she realized he was running late. He kept it short and concise. He was sorry to miss Stephanie’s performance, but didn’t overplay his guilt. Besides, next week they’d all be together in Disney World, and he’d have plenty of time to make it up to his daughter. He suggested she invite Stephanie’s biological father, Patrick. “And videotape it, will you? I want to see.”
He found Wilcox in the break room, having a fight with the soda machine. “I thought you kept to lemonade, Manny.”
Wilcox cleared his throat. “I’ve had it up to here with lemons.” He wagged a chunky finger. “You let that slip to my wife, and I’ll have your ass on a platter.”
“Let’s make a deal.” Milo came closer. “I’ll keep your wife in the dark if you give me an hour alone with your prisoner.”
Wilcox straightened, head back, and peered down at him. “You’re talking alone-alone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you think that’s a good idea?”
“Why not?”
Sheriff Wilcox scratched the back of his flabby neck; his beige collar was brown from sweat. “Well, the papers are eating you guys up. Every day there’s another yokel shouting about CIA corruption. I mean, I know how to keep my mouth shut, but a small town like this …”
“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
The sheriff pursed his lips, deforming his big nose. “Matter of national security, is it?”
“The most national, Manny. And the most secure.”
4 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
When Milo returned to the cell, Samuel Roth sat up as if he’d been waiting for this chat, a sudden wellspring of energy at his disposal. “Hello again,” he said once the door had locked.
“Who showed you my file?”
“A friend. An ex-friend.” Roth paused. “Okay, my worst enemy. He’s seriously bad news.”
“Someone I know?”
“I don’t even know him. I never met him. Just his intermediary.”
“So he’s a client.”
Roth smiled, his dry lips cracking. “Exactly. He gave me some paperwork on you. A gift, he said, for some trouble he’d put me through. He said that you were the one who ruined the Amsterdam job. He also said you were running my case. That, of course, is why I’m here.”
“You’re here,” Milo said, reaching the center of the cell, “because you beat up a woman and thought she wouldn’t pay you back for it.”
“Is that what you really think?”
Milo didn’t answer—they both knew it was an unlikely scenario.
“I’m here,” Roth said, waving at the concrete walls, “because I wanted to talk to Milo Weaver, once known as Charles Alexander. Only you. You’re the only Company man who ever actually stopped me. You’ve got my respect.”
“In Amsterdam.”
“Yes.”
“That’s funny.”
“Is it?”
“Six years ago in Amsterdam, I was high on amphetamines. Completely strung out. I didn’t know half of what I was doing.”
Roth stared at him, then blinked. “Really?”
“I was suicidal. I tried to walk into your line of fire, just to finish myself off.”
“Well,” said Roth, considering the news. “Either I was never as good as I thought, or you’re so good you could beat me blind and drunk. So … it stands. You have even more of my respect now. And that’s a rare and wonderful thing.”
“You wanted to talk to me. Why not pick up a phone?”
The assassin rocked his head from side to side. “That, as you know, is unverifiable. I would’ve been handed to some clerk for an hour, answering questions. If he didn’t hang up on me, he would’ve called Tom—Tom Grainger, right?—and then the whole department would be involved. No. I only wanted you.”
