Afterward, he called Drummond.

“Your friends are gone now. They should be done by Monday.”

“But they’ll be in touch in the meantime?”

“They’ve got my number.”

“Let me know if the skies open up for you at any point.”

“Are you still on board, Alan?”

“Ask me again after you’ve collected your information. Maybe I won’t need to do a thing.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“I’m not betting on anything anymore.”

Image

Milo’s phone woke him at five in the morning. Klein and Jones had gotten to work quickly, and it was Jones who called in their first report. Milo looked for a pen and paper while she rattled off her information. “William Howington. Twenty-eight, white male-”

“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Milo cut in.

“The man’s got a serious cocaine habit going on. Plus a bucket of ecstasy-looks like he uses them as breath mints.”

Drugs were a compromising habit, but enough to make someone spy for a foreign power? “What else?”

“He’s writing a novel. Roman à clef, if I understand the opening. Who do you think Representative Albert Sirwin could be?”

“That’s interesting, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Too bad,” said Jones. “Six more to go.”

They called in Raymond Salamon’s search by noon Sunday, and Susan Jackson’s by three. Salamon’s apartment was clean-“too clean,” Klein suggested-while Jackson’s was stuffed with Chinese artifacts. She was the one who had studied Chinese culture, had visited Beijing, and even been kicked out of China for her demonstrations in support of landless farmers. There were letters and postcards in Mandarin stacked on her desk, and Leticia Jones-who, it turned out, was fluent-went through them quickly, checking for obvious signs of clandestine communication. Of course, it’s the nature of clandestine communication that it’s not obvious, so she settled on taking snapshots of a representative selection for later perusal. From photos and postcards, they did learn of a lover-Feng Liang, a Beijing University student who had been arrested with her. There were letters from him and aborted drafts to him, and on her computer they found an entire romantic history in the form of e-mails.

Maximilian Grzybowski and Derek Abbott were roommates, sharing a loft in Georgetown. Klein and Jones waited for them to head out for their Sunday night thrills and spent a couple of hours perusing an extensive DVD collection of pornography and action thrillers, then worked their way through the laptops. Neither kept any sensitive information, though Grzybowski did have a hidden folder that, once Klein figured out the password, turned out to be full of more pornography-gay pornography. A decade or two ago, the threat of this becoming public might have been reason enough to spill classified secrets, but no longer.

After one on Monday morning, they made it to Jane Chan’s apartment-curiously empty-and discovered what they were half-expecting to find, extensive mementos of Hong Kong. Family pictures, letters and e-mails, and packages of gifts she’d received from her uncles, aunts, and cousins. Besides Susan Jackson’s love affair, it was the most damning material they had come across. Both women, so far, seemed the most open to coercion.

They also discovered that Jane Chan was carrying on an affair with the last person on their list, David Pearson, the legislative director Milo had met in Drummond’s office with Max Grzybowski. She had photographs of the two of them together, sometimes in various stages of undress, dated as far back as December. Jones offered her assessment. “If I was a mole, I’d certainly start screwing someone senior to me. Best way to get what you’re not supposed to have.”

It was a good point, and when they went over to Pearson’s apartment in Alexandria they found that Chan was sharing his bed. Jones left to collect Starbucks coffees for herself and Klein, and when, at seven, Pearson and Chan left looking like a perfect couple and climbed into Pearson’s Mazda to head to work, they moved in.

Pearson’s apartment, besides the smell of sex in the bedroom, was as clean as Raymond Salamon’s had been, so they could focus almost entirely on his laptop, which used two-factor authentication and 128-character pass phrases. Klein, though, had spent part of his youth as a hacker and needed about an hour and a half before shouting, “Eureka!”

His excitement was short-lived. The security was there only to protect Pearson’s personal life, his photos and family e-mails and his… poems. There were more than two hundred poems, ranging from haiku to terza rima, in a folder named, unimaginatively enough, VERSE. Most focused on history and love. There was nothing damning here, and the best they could manage was to notice what was missing-among the photographs of friends and family and even the Chinese ex-girlfriend with whom he’d twice visited Shanghai, Pearson had no photographs of himself with Jane Chan, though Chan’s photos went back three months. “The man’s obviously got yellow fever,” Jones told Milo during her call, “but Chan’s got no future with him.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t want any evidence of their relationship on his computer,” Milo suggested. “Irwin probably frowns on his aides dating.”

Jones wasn’t convinced. “No, honey. He’s just not that into her.”

It was peculiar, but in the end not peculiar enough to matter, nor to give Milo any insight. While the two women-Chan and Jackson-were their primary suspects, the truth was that it could be any of them.

7

Oskar had spent Monday morning filing background checks; it was the one dependably steady job since Erika had committed her transatlantic career suicide two years before. He sometimes recalled Franz’s advice-Schwartz has had her time, Oskar. There’s no need to be on hand to witness the collapse-and reexamined his reasons for sticking with a boss whose end was always nigh. Other times, though, he discounted it entirely, seeing Franz for what he really was: Theodor Wartmüller’s lapdog, terrified of losing scraps from his master’s table. Today, while visiting the office Franz shared with the now absent Brigit, he saw Franz as something in between the extremes.

“Here’s last week’s vetting reports.”

Without looking up from his laptop, Franz said, “It’s Monday, Oskar. That makes you a weekend late.”

“I was otherwise occupied.”

“Were you?”

Franz sometimes sustained entire conversations without looking up, so Oskar wasn’t dissuaded by the sight of the man’s thinning scalp. “Is Theodor in?”

Franz raised his head. It was that, the attention, that set Oskar’s nerves on edge. “He’s in a meeting. In S.”

“Right. The Americans.”

“Yes.”

Franz returned to his screen, but Oskar didn’t move. Finally, he looked at Oskar again. “Was there something else?”

“Could you call him out of the meeting?”

Franz laughed in a way that suggested laughter was unfamiliar, and not entirely comfortable. “You must be kidding!”

“It has to do with the Americans.”

“Then you can tell him after they’ve left.”

Oskar shook his head. “It might be useless by then.”

“You really are a riddle, Herr Leintz.”

“Well?”

“Well, do it yourself. I’m not taking responsibility for interrupting him.”

Oskar withdrew and in the corridor passed the young, pretty secretaries that, despite his devotion to Rebecka, the Swede, he always chatted up in the break room. Now, he gave each a smile that few returned. They knew he didn’t belong up here on the second floor. Ahead, he saw old Jan stepping into Conference Room S with a tray of cups. He jogged to catch up and caught the door before it closed.

Inside, men were laughing. He took in their faces, a broad spectrum of American types. The spectacled academic, two big football players, one business elite, even two black faces and an Asian-Japanese, he guessed-face. Seven. Plus Theodor Wartmüller at the head of the table, shaking his flushed face at some joke, and Brigit Deutsch in a knee-length skirt and high heels, leaning against the end of the table, basking in the attention all these men were giving her.