“I know where Ashgabat is.”

“Of course you do. But it was news to me.”

“What rank is he?” Milo asked.

“Second lieutenant.”

“Not so bad. Why does he want to leave?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” said Drummond. “According to him, it’s personal gain. He’s being stifled at home, skipped over for promotion, while the new capitalists are making millions. He says capitalism has cheated him. From the looks of his accounts, it’s at least passed him by.” Drummond pursed his lips. “He wants a new life in America, but what does he have to buy it with? Marko’s trips were trade based, and that’s largely what he had for us. Ukrainian trade secrets?” He smiled again. “The man actually thought that would buy him a life in America!”

Alan Drummond’s mirth lasted a few seconds longer than expected, then drained away when he saw his guest wasn’t encouraging it. Milo said, “Well, there’s a reason we’re sitting here talking about him. And it’s not Ukrainian exports.”

“It’s not,” Drummond muttered. “He spent a while giving us reams of useless information, most of which we had already. He saw we were fading fast. So he panicked and pulled out his wild card. He said that there’s a mole in the Department of Tourism.”

Silence followed, the engine rumbling beneath them. “Did he actually say those words?” asked Milo.

“He knew about the department and specified the mole was there.”

While the department liked to think of itself as existing in a parallel universe of absolute secrecy, Milo knew a few people who had figured out its existence-but they had been allies and friends. “The Ukrainians have someone inside? It’s hard to swallow.”

Drummond shook his head. “Marko claims it’s a Chinese mole.”

“Chinese?”

“The Guoanbu.”

Milo stared at him.

“Short for Guojia Anquan Bu, their Ministry for State Security.”

“I know what the Guoanbu is,” Milo said, irritated. “I’m just confused.”

Drummond ignored his confusion for the moment. “When he mentioned Tourism, as you can imagine, the agent in charge of his interrogation was baffled. No idea what Marko was talking about. So he went up to the embassy’s security director, who was just as baffled. In fact, he was going to write Marko off as a nut job and dump him somewhere, but to cover his ass he sent a query to Langley. It landed on the assistant director’s desk, and he came directly to me. Gleefully, I might add. A mole is just the kind of thing Ascot would happily use to hang us. So I sent one of ours to talk to him, and we shipped him here.”

“Why not to the States?”

“He’ll get there eventually,” said Drummond. “I want you to listen to him first.”

“Why me?”

“Because his story concerns you and everything that came raining down last July. And the only thing in the files on it is one single-spaced page that goes out of its way to not say a thing. Which makes me a fucking ignoramus.”

“Really?” Milo asked, not sure he could trust that Drummond was so ill informed.

“Believe it,” he said sourly. “Dzubenko has told me a novel compared to the haiku I was handed when I took over.”

“Wait a minute,” said Milo, raising a hand. “How does a Ukrainian second lieutenant learn about a Chinese mole in a secret CIA department? How does this make any sense?”

“Luck,” Drummond said. “Over the last few years, the Chinese have been pouring agents into the Ukraine, and Marko spent some time with them. He doesn’t like them very much.”

“And they told him about their mole? Come on, Alan. Besides, the Chinese almost never invest in long-term double agents.”

“I know this,” he said, “but don’t be so quick to doubt it.”

Milo peered out at the blackness again, then looked at Drummond. “I’m getting a sick feeling of déjà vu. Last year a friend of mine was accused of sharing secrets with the Chinese. It wasn’t true, and maybe if I’d known that from the start she wouldn’t be dead now.”

“This was Angela Yates?”

Milo nodded.

After a moment’s reflection, Drummond said, “Listen to what he has to say. I don’t want to believe it either, but if his story checks out, then I’m going to have to clean the department. It’s not the way a new director wants to spend his opening weeks, but I won’t have a choice.”

Milo’s hand twitched; he was catching Drummond’s itchy agitation. “Well, then? Who is it? Don’t tell me he held that back.”

“He has no idea. From his story, it could only be in administration. A Travel Agent, most likely. Not a Tourist.”

Milo rubbed his knees. Travel Agents collected and sorted intelligence from Tourists and tracked their positions. A mole among their ranks could pass on anything. “Who else have you called in?”

“Just Tourists. Our driver, and some extra help-I got them from the war on drugs. I’ve also collected some folks from other departments for analysis and background checks. I’ll get you their phone numbers before sending you off again.”

“Am I going somewhere?”

“You’re always going somewhere, Sebastian. If your chat with him works out, you’ll be checking on some of the Ukrainian intel Marko’s been giving me. It might not be outstanding stuff, but it’s another way to vet him, and if it isn’t legitimate it’ll give me extra reason to doubt the mole story.”

“I’m not much of an interrogator,” Milo admitted. “You should call in John. He’s rough, but he gets results.”

Drummond stared at him a moment, as if shocked by the suggestion. “This guy came to us. I’m not going to have John fit those electrodes to his tits just to hear him scream.” He sniffed. “Really, what was the department like before I came along?”

“You don’t want to know,” Milo said, then took a box from his pocket and dry-swallowed two more Dexedrine.

8

Despite a broad stomach and thinning black hair, Marko Dzubenko was a young-looking forty-six. He wore a faux-silk shirt with rolled-up sleeves, the collar open to expose an Orthodox cross buried in chest hair, watching the German edition of Big Brother as he chain-smoked. The only sign of age lay in the gray stubble that ran along his jaw-line.

Milo stuck out a hand as he approached. “Good evening. I’m here to ask some questions.”

His handshake was hot and dry. Instead of returning the greeting, Dzubenko shook a smoldering Marlboro at the television. “Great show, no?”

The television camera was angled high in a corner of a kitchen, and two pretty twentysomethings were arguing. “Never got around to watching it.”

“Great show,” he repeated. “I am for the Melly. I would easily do her.”

“Marko?”

“Yeah?” he said to the television.

Milo picked up the remote and turned it off. Dzubenko rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Motherfucker. I am already answer you fuckers’ questions, okay? Twenty fucking times!”

Suppressing the urge to strike him, Milo switched to Russian. “And you’ll continue to answer the questions, or we’ll beat you, sodomize you, then dump you naked in the bad part of Mogadishu.”

Marko’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped; then he smiled and put out his cigarette. “Finally. Someone who speaks Russian with balls. Want a cigarette?” He lifted the pack.

Milo preferred his Davidoffs but knew how sharing cigarettes created an instant bond between Slavs. He produced his lighter and lit Marko’s first, then his own.

He settled on a chair that he recognized from old trips with Tina through IKEA. Then he recognized the sofa Dzubenko sat on. In fact, the whole lower floor of this two-story farmhouse outside Frauenfeld, not far from the highway, had been fitted with that Swedish company’s functional furniture. Around the house lay acres of cold, flat field, empty save for four Company guards with infrared binoculars. Upstairs, in a room the size of a closet, Drummond was watching them through video monitors. By morning, he would have a transcription of the whole conversation, with English translation.