The Tourist. Olen Steinhauer
“If I can.”
It was something Milo had wondered for the last six years, ever since he’d decided to focus his efforts on the assassin whose bullets he’d once tried to face. He’d learned a lot about the Tiger, even backtracking to find his first verified assassination in November 1997, Albania. Adrian Murrani, the thirty-year-old chairman of the Sineballaj commune. Everyone knew Murrani had been ordered killed by the ruling neo-communists—it was a year of many sudden deaths in Albania—but in this case the gunman had been hired from abroad. Despite the stacks of physical and eyewitness evidence collected from the assassinations that followed, Milo had never come close to answering the most basic mystery about this man: “Who are you, really? We never found a real name. We didn’t even figure out your nationality.”
The Tiger smiled again, flushing. “I suppose that’s a kind of victory, isn’t it?”
Milo admitted that it was impressive.
“The answer is in your files. Somewhere in that tower facing the Avenue of the Americas. See, the only difference between you and me is that we chose different ways of tendering our resignations.”
Milo’s thoughts stuttered briefly before he understood. “You were a Tourist.”
“Brothers in arms,” he said, his smile huge. “And later, you’ll wish you’d asked another question. Know what it is?”
Milo, still spinning from the realization of Roth’s Company past, had no idea what the question could be. Then it occurred to him, because it was simple, and the assassin’s mood was so simple. “Why ‘the Tiger?’”
“Precisely! However, the truth is a disappointment: I have no idea. Someone, somewhere, first used it. Maybe a journalist, I don’t know. I guess that, after the Jackal, they needed an animal name.” He shrugged—again, it looked painful. “I suppose I should be pleased they didn’t choose a vulture, or a hedgehog. And no—before you think to ask, let me assure you I wasn’t named after the Survivor song.”
Despite everything, Milo smiled.
“Let me ask you something,” Roth said. “What’s your opinion on the Black Book?”
“The What Book?”
“Stop pretending, please.”
Within the subculture of Tourism, the Black Book was the closest thing to the Holy Grail. It was the secret guide to survival, rumored to have been planted by a retired Tourist, twenty-one copies hidden in locations around the world. The stories of the Black Book were as old as Tourism itself. “It’s bunk,” said Milo.
“We’re in agreement,” Roth answered. “When I first went freelance, I thought it might be useful, so I spent a couple years looking for it. It’s a figment of some overactive imaginations. Maybe Langley first spread it, maybe some bored Tourist. But it’s a nice idea.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. Something stable and direct in our befuddled world. A bible for living.”
“Luckily for you, you have the Bible itself.”
Roth nodded, and when he spoke again, his tone was earnest. “Please. You and me, we’re enemies—I understand that. But trust me: The man who did this to me is much worse than I am. You’ll at least look into it?”
“Okay,” said Milo, not sure how long his promise would last.
“Good.”
Samuel Roth hunched forward and lightly patted Milo’s knee, then leaned back against the wall. Without ceremony, he clenched his teeth. Something crunched in his mouth, like a nut, and Milo smelled the almond bitterness in Roth’s exhale. It was a smell he’d run into a few times in his life, from people either utterly devout or utterly frightened. The hard way out, or the easiest, depending on your philosophy.
The assassin’s veined eyes widened, close enough that Milo could see his own reflection in them. Roth seized up three times in quick succession, and Milo caught him before he fell off the cot. The yellow-tinted head rolled back, lips white with froth. Milo was holding a corpse.
He dropped the body on the cot, wiped his hands against his pants, and backed up to the door. It had been years since he’d faced this, but even back then, when he saw death more often, he’d never gotten used to it. The sudden heft. The fast cooling. The fluids that leaked from the body (there—Roth’s orange jumpsuit darkened at the groin). The quick cessation of consciousness, of everything that person—no matter how despicable or virtuous—had experienced. It didn’t matter that minutes ago he’d wanted to ridicule this man’s false piousness. That wasn’t the point. The point was that, within this concrete cell, a whole world had suddenly ceased to exist. In a snap, right in front of him. That was death.
Milo came out of his daze when the door against his back shook. He stepped away so Sheriff Wilcox could come in, saying, “Listen, I got some folks here who—”
He stopped.
“Christ,” the sheriff muttered. Fear stalled in his face. “What the hell’d you do to him?”
“He did it to himself. Cyanide.”
“But … but why?”
Milo shook his head and started for the door, wondering what Mary Baker Eddy said about suicide.
Special Agent Janet Simmons gazed at Milo across the scratched white table in the Blackdale interview room. Despite his size, her partner, Special Agent George Orbach, was clearly the inferior in their relationship. He kept getting up to leave the room, awkwardly returning with Styrofoam cups of water and coffee and lemonade.
Simmons had a fluid, engaging interview style, which Milo supposed was part of Homeland’s new training. She leaned forward a lot, hands open except when she pulled a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Early thirties, Milo guessed. Sharp, attractive features marred only by a right eye that wandered. The ways she positioned her beauty were supposed to close the psychological distance between interviewer and interviewee, making it less adversarial. She even pretended not to notice his stink.
After sending George Orbach out again to find milk for her coffee, she turned to him. “Come on, Milo. We’re on the same side here. Right?”
“Of course we are, Janet.”
“Then tell me why the Company’s working out of its jurisdiction on this one. Tell me why you’re keeping secrets from us.”
Mrs. Wilcox’s delicious lemonade was starting to give Milo a sugar high. “I’ve explained it,” he said. “We’ve been after Roth for years. We learned he’d crossed the border in Dallas, so I went to Dallas.”
“And you never thought to call us?” She arched her brow. “We do have a Dallas office, you know.”
Milo wondered how to put it. “I decided—”
“I? Tom Grainger no longer makes decisions in New York?”
“I advised,” he corrected, “that if Homeland Security were brought in, you’d send in the cavalry. The Tiger would spot it in a second, and go underground. The only way to track him was with a single person.”
“You.”
“I’ve followed his case a long time. I know his modus operandi.”
“And look how well that worked out.” Simmons winked—winked. “Another successful day for Central Intelligence!”
He refused to meet her challenge. “I think I’m being very helpful, Janet. I’ve told you that he had a cap of cyanide in his mouth. He didn’t like the idea of living in Gitmo, so he bit. You could blame Sheriff Wilcox for not giving him a cavity search,