After the long flight from New York to Berlin, he was struck by the anticlimax of standing at the curb of Tegel Airport, chilly under the muted afternoon sun. When the black BMW finally pulled up in front of him, he’d spent twenty minutes watching taxis and families pick up other arrivals, trying not to fall asleep. He put his hands on his knees in order to look through the rear window and found a small, pinched face and toothbrush mustache glowering back at him. He hadn’t seen Oskar Leintz in three years, and that had been for the funeral of his boss, Erika Schwartz, director of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Germany’s federal intelligence agency. Three years, and it still didn’t feel like long enough.
“Not dead yet?” Oskar asked in his thick Leipzig accent.
“I can never tell one way or the other with you,” Milo answered.
The driver, a woman with a severe bob and lavender lips, smiled with her eyes.
“Inside, Milo.”
Milo reached for the door handle to get in and join him, but it was locked.
“The front!” Oskar called, and Milo found the passenger door open. He got in, sinking into the musty warmth, and the woman began to drive very slowly. “You could thank us,” Oskar said after a few uncomfortable seconds. “A civilian like you, a UN bureaucrat? I don’t have to meet you at all.”
Milo might have shown some appreciation, but he and Oskar had never liked each other. Oskar considered Milo an entitled American, while Milo couldn’t quite forgive him—or Erika Schwartz—for their first meeting, a decade ago, when they had tortured him. He knew it was pettiness, but still.
“How is the family, Milo?”
“In good health.”
“Still in Zürich, on Hadlaubstrasse?”
Oskar still knew how to irritate him; anyone who pinpointed his family’s whereabouts could pull it off. “Yes,” Milo said, then twisted himself to look into the pinched face. “And your health? Not drinking yourself to an early grave, like Erika?”
Oskar was devoted to Schwartz, even now that she was living in the Black Forest, having faked her death. But Milo hadn’t poked at him for fun; he’d done it to see if the driver knew Schwartz was still alive. Apparently not, for Oskar’s mouth twitched uncomfortably, and he directed his next words to the driver: “You remember Milo, Lana? I told you about him. This man was once part of the infamous Department of Tourism. A man to be feared. A man to be reckoned with. But now? A minor UNESCO official. I wonder what he wants from us.”
Lana took a left turn, looping back toward the airport, but seemed pretty entertained. She said, “Maybe Mr. Weaver is back to his old tricks.”
“Terrifying,” Oskar judged. “Lana, I think the fear has made me weak.”
“You’re a comedy duo,” Milo said, but the funny thing was that while Oskar knew about the Library, and that Katarina Heinold was a patron, he was still making a show of ignorance. Which twisted the situation on its head. Lana thought she and Oskar were teasing Milo, when in fact Oskar was making Milo complicit in fooling his assistant. Not funny, no, but it had the feel of something like a joke, one that was in bad taste.
Finally, Oskar’s smile vanished, the fun over. “Milo,” he said, “please do tell us what’s going on. Your time is running out.”
Perhaps, if this had been someone other than Oskar Leintz, he would have told them that the Department of Tourism had been resurrected. That kind of information wasn’t really his to share, but it was an alarming development that should be known. But it was Oskar Leintz, so he just said, “You heard about Kirill Egorov?”
“You went to Algiers to meet with him.”
“You have ears everywhere.”
Oskar nodded slowly. “I do, Milo. I do.”
Milo told him of Egorov’s request, and what few details the old man had shared during their one conversation: His ward was connected to the death of Anna Usurov and had fled Moscow last month for Germany but must have continued to Paris, “because that’s where Egorov found him.”
Oskar leaned back, pursing his lips, looking very interested. Then he caught Lana’s eye in the rearview mirror. Something unspoken passed between them. To Milo, he said, “There was an uptick of activity in Budapest.”
“Budapest?”
“The GRU’s unofficial European headquarters. Viktor Orbán will let the Russians do as they like in his town. Just before Egorov was reported dead we picked up a lot of coded communication between Algiers and their listening posts in Buda, another burst when you were taken into custody by the Algerians. We could not decrypt the messages.”
“But you can guess.”
“We don’t like to guess. You know that.”
Lana drove past the spot where they’d picked up Milo and kept going. She said, “Maybe you have a guess.”
Both looked at him expectantly.
“My guess is that it has to do with Egorov and his mystery guest. Which is why I’m sharing this with you—I suspect you know who the mystery guest is. He or she came through your territory.”
Lana looked at Oskar in the rearview again. It was clear they both knew who Egorov had been protecting, but with his hard frown Oskar removed any possibility that they would share this information with Milo.
“If we do find out,” he said finally, “we will be sure to get in touch with you.”
Despite the ache in his twisted neck, Milo pressed on. “I assume you knew Egorov when he was consul in Berlin?”
“Erika knew him well. Long time, from the old days. They watched each other from across the Iron Curtain. Like she did with your father.”
“I’m told Egorov was on his way out with the Kremlin. Do you know why?”
Oskar cocked his head. “Egorov grew up in Ukraine, near Crimea, and some of his family was killed in the fighting four years ago. In an interview with Stern magazine he called Russian involvement another step toward the end of Russian greatness.”
“That would do it.”
In his pocket, one of Milo’s three phones vibrated. He checked it, saw Tina’s name, and disconnected it.
“Don’t let us stop you,” Lana said.
“I’ll be home in a few hours anyway.”
“So soon, Milo?” Oskar asked, sounding hurt. “What is the hurry? UNESCO business?”
Milo finally turned to look forward again, giving his neck a rest. “A parent-teacher conference.”
“Ah, children,” said Oskar. “Lana, did you not tell me they are delightful?”
“Never,” Lana said.