Milo waited, but Drummond didn’t continue. “And that’s it?”

“Sadly, she didn’t sleep with him. Her controller asked her to give it a try, but she has her limits. Can’t blame her, though. It might have been a test. That was my friend’s guess, and it would have been mine, too, if it hadn’t been for Marko Dzubenko. But,” he said, sighing a cloud of white, “Marko does exist, and I see it all entirely differently. I believe it.”

“That’s a lot of loose tongues,” Milo pointed out. “Both Zhu and his secretary.”

“People are flawed.”

“What do we have on Xin Zhu?”

“It’s tough getting information out of the Guoanbu. He’s a colonel-we do know that. Late fifties. There was a verified residence in Germany during the early eighties. No wife we know of, but rumors-unverified, so far-of one son. Last mention of his name was in ’96, when the State Council approved a consolidation plan that recalled a lot of their Western undercover agents, the ones living as businessmen and academics and journalists. He was against it, but Jia Chunwang, the minister of state security, gave him a semipublic rebuke. After that, Zhu essentially disappears from the records. His office is a marginal outpost of the Sixth Bureau, and our girl on the inside can’t even tell us the scope of its purpose. Were it not for Marko Dzubenko, we’d just assume Zhu’s department dealt with regional politics.”

“I still don’t buy it,” Milo said. “You’ve got Xin Zhu. By all appearances he’s politically dead in the water. He’s a heavy drinker with a weakness for women. Not only that, but he’s sharing extremely classified information with a nobody-a Ukrainian lieutenant who ends up defecting soon afterward. He’s also got a loose-lipped, horny secretary. How does a man with all these flaws end up a colonel, and a colonel running a mole in our department?”

“You’re not the only one to ask that,” Drummond said after a moment. “The Tourist who first met with Dzubenko brought that up. Which brings us to another theory, one that I’m starting to warm to. It’s that Zhu has reached the end of his rope. After the humiliation of the midnineties, he’s grown bitter. The mole, then, isn’t his. It’s the brainchild of one of his competitors, and he’s sabotaging it to block that person’s career.”

“That would make the drunkenness an act. As well as the secretary’s indiscretions-which would mean that he knows the girl works for us.”

“Or not,” said Drummond. “There’s no way to know. Marko certainly wouldn’t know the difference. In any case, what’s indisputable is that this Chinese colonel shared information he couldn’t have unless he had some kind of connection to Tourism. Do you know what the biggest threat to Tourism is?”

“Other than a mole?”

Drummond shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. A mole would be a terrible blow. Still, we could reorganize and regroup. Myrrh is a radical decision, but it’s the safest. Bring everyone back, hand out new names and go-codes, replace staff. The crucial thing for us is to keep it quiet. I’ve already assured Ascot that we’ve discounted Marko’s story, so if he gets wind that we really are hunting a mole, he’ll shut us down in a heartbeat.” He stared at Milo significantly. “Everything we do from here on out is under the radar.”

“Understood.”

Drummond chewed the inside of his mouth again. “While a mole would hurt, Tourism could survive. That’s not our biggest threat. The biggest threat to Tourism is knowledge of its existence.”

“Which the Chinese have. So does a Ukrainian lieutenant.”

“They’re not the only ones. The French have an inkling of it, and so do the Brits. There are sites on the Internet that speculate about us, too. Which is as it should be. Right now, Tourism is a myth. It’s a fable that people either consider poppycock or believe in. The believers are terrified that we might exist, because a myth is far more frightening than reality.”

He finally stepped off the porch, and Milo followed him to the car. He moved slowly, and Milo had to measure his steps to avoid bumping into him.

“What do you think would happen if someone popped up with real evidence of our existence? Don’t strain yourself-I’ll tell you. An investigation would be launched. An official one. Senators and representatives would start asking questions. They would wonder just how much we cost-and that answer, as we both know, is embarrassing. We would go from being a frightening story spies tell each other at night to being just another overpriced Company department whose failures start making the newspapers on a regular basis. We would become a joke, just as all the known departments already are. People-American citizens-would start blogging about us and protesting our existence. Tell us what our tax dollars are doing, they would say. And what excuses would we have for our epic budget and the way we have to rob art museums in order to fund ourselves in the crunch times? Please.”

He stopped, and even in the darkness Milo could see his boss’s face was as red as his hands.

“We’d be finished before we got a chance to defend ourselves. Not that we even have a defense.”

They stood in silence broken by the high grass tinkling in the wind and the dull rumble of the Lincoln. Milo felt that he should say something, but he had nothing to say. At this point Drummond seemed to just be thinking aloud, musing over the immediate and more distant future.

“I’ll contact you about Dzubenko’s other stories,” he said finally. “I’ll have you and some other Tourist check their veracity. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out we have a Ukrainian mole, and the Ukrainians are positioning us to run up against the Chinese.”

“Or maybe there’s no mole at all.”

“Maybe,” said Drummond. “Your cover still computers?”

“Dropped that a while ago-couldn’t sustain a conversation. Expat insurance.”

“You can’t talk computers but you can talk actuarial tables?”

“If forced.”

Drummond grunted amusement but said nothing. When they reached the car, Milo unconsciously opened the door for his boss. Drummond got in and looked up at him. “We’re running things differently now. It’s not the old Tourism anymore.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Anyway, I don’t believe in lying to my employees. If I want something from you, I’ll tell you directly. If I don’t want you to know something, I’ll just tell you it’s above your clearance. What’s important is that you won’t have to do a lot of second-guessing with me-I’m an obvious man.”

He’d said it earnestly, so Milo said, “That means you’re either an idealist-”

“-or a fool,” Drummond finished. “Yeah. I’ve heard it all already. And this thing with the girl, the Moldovan. Not my idea of good foreign policy, but it really was necessary.”

“I’m sure it was,” said Milo.

“I doubt you are. But it’s like any new administration. Before you can move forward you have to take care of the screwups of the previous administration.”

“Maybe you want to tell me why it had to be done.”

“Sorry,” said Drummond. “That’s above your clearance.”

Milo shut the door, then came around the other side and got in beside him. The man behind the wheel began driving along the pocked field toward the main road.

“I’m glad I met you face-to-face,” Drummond told him. “Turns out you’re smarter than your file made you out to be.”

“That’s very reassuring to hear, sir.”