Milo didn’t want Oskar anywhere near his family, but there was nothing to do about it now. When they parked, Oskar raised his hand to them, and Tina immediately crossed the street to meet him. “Mrs. Weaver,” he said, offering a hand, “I am so happy to finally meet you. Oskar Leintz.”
“You’ve known Milo a long time?”
“We are old friends.”
“He’s not a friend,” Milo cut in, hurrying to join them. “Professional acquaintance. Sort of.”
With a sudden expression of mawkish sadness, Oskar said, “Milo, that hurts.”
Stephanie showed no interest in any of this, only focused on her Nexus chat with Halifa.
“We’ll go to a café,” Milo said.
Tina shook her head. “Do you like Totenbeinli, Mr. Leintz?”
“Who does not?” he answered with a smile. “And please: Oskar.”
“Then come in, Oskar,” she said, and led him to their building. After a moment to collect himself, Milo followed.
Totenbeinli, or “legs of the dead,” were hard almond cookies that went well with coffee, and Oskar praised the batch that Tina had baked the week before. “You should open a restaurant,” he said.
“I like your acquaintance,” Tina told Milo.
As Oskar ate, Milo climbed upstairs to find Alexandra in the guest bedroom and told her of their visitor. Together, they came down to the kitchen and hovered, waiting for Oskar to finish flirting with Tina. Eventually, the three of them ended up in the living room. Stephanie was already up in her room, and Tina stayed behind in the kitchen as Oskar settled on the sofa, cradling his second cup of coffee.
“You live well here, Milo.”
“I do.”
“Better than you deserve.”
Milo sat in a chair across from him as Alexandra kept sentry at the wall. “Why are you here?”
Oskar sniffed and set down his cup. “Erika always had a soft spot for you. I do not know why.”
“She still does,” Milo said.
Oskar’s expression stiffened, and his eyes shot over to Alexandra.
“She knows,” Milo said.
Oskar shook his head, disgusted. “We had a deal, Weaver.”
Indeed, they had made a deal. The year 2015 had been a busy one in the West, with Brexit and the American presidential election looming, the continuing Ukrainian crisis, and Syrian refugees pouring into Europe and changing the political landscape. The Library had found itself at the intersection of all those power struggles. The BND had, too, and in a series of moves that soon passed beyond anyone’s control, Erika’s office had been responsible for the murder of three Russian agents. The Kremlin demanded her extradition, threatening to cut off Germany’s natural gas, and as under-siege politicians inched toward giving her up, Milo had helped to stage Schwartz’s quiet death in her suburban house in Pullach. The “deal” Oskar referred to had been a pact of silence that protected Schwartz’s continued existence and quiet retirement in the Black Forest, as well as maintaining the secret of the Library, which in 2015 was nearly revealed to the general public.
“Only three of us know,” Milo told him. “I couldn’t keep it from Alexandra or Alan.”
“Typisch,” Oskar muttered, then raised his head. “Anyway, Erika asked me to tell you about Joseph Keller.”
“Who?”
“The man Kirill Egorov was protecting in Algiers.”
Interested, Alexandra moved to a chair and sat down.
“He is a bookkeeper,” Oskar said. “British. Worked for Sergei Stepanov.”
“The head of MirGaz?” Alexandra asked.
Oskar nodded. “Two years ago, MirGaz absorbed its two largest competitors to become the world’s largest natural gas producer. Joseph Keller moved from London to Moscow, and he helped make Stepanov richer than he already was. Certainly richer than he needed to be. Arguably richer than he deserved to be.”
“But it didn’t work out,” Milo said.
“Oh, it did. He was there for a year, with a wife and two little boys, in a gated community outside Moscow. Living well, by all accounts. Until a month ago, when he boarded a plane and flew to Düsseldorf. It is a three-and-a-half-hour flight, and two and a half hours into the flight the Russians requested an Interpol Red Notice on him. Capture and send back home. We noticed it and called the Russian embassy. Asked what was going on. No one knew, and they said they would call us back. A half hour later, the Russians changed it to a Blue Notice. Just locate and get information on him.”
“Weird,” said Alexandra.
“We thought so, too. We suspect someone panicked and sent the Red Notice, then realized it was drawing too much attention and changed it. The story was that Keller had embezzled government accounts. But why were they afraid of the attention?” He opened his hands in an expression of ignorance. “So we used some Interpol contacts to slow approval of the notice, just by another half hour, so Joseph could make it through passport control. Then we put a team on him. We watched him max out his card to buy as many euros as he was allowed—about six thousand. Then he took a taxi to the train station and boarded the very next train, as if he didn’t care where it was going.”
“Where was it going?” asked Milo.
“South, to Cologne. From there he changed trains to reach Brussels, then Paris. We put one of our irregulars on it. He shared a hostel room with him, then took him out to a club. That is where it went wrong. Quite unexpectedly, two men threw him into a van and drove off. It was the last anyone saw of him.”
“What do the French say?”
Oskar scratched at his cheek, uncomfortable. “Well, we did not inform them of our presence.”
“Really?” That was Alexandra, surprised.
Oskar glared at her. “In the heat of the moment, we sometimes do lose track of protocol.”
Alexandra nodded, understanding, and Milo closed his eyes, trying to picture the sequence of events. “Luggage?” he asked.
Oskar cleared his throat, now looking even more uncomfortable. “Apparently, yes. Not luggage, but a plastic bag with documents.”
“What documents?”
“Pages. Our agent didn’t know what they were.”
Again, Alexandra let her surprise show. “You’re saying he didn’t look?”
Oskar shook his head sadly. “As I said, he was an irregular.”
Though it was disappointing, Milo wasn’t surprised. As much intelligence is gained as lost by stupidity. “So how does this connect to Kirill Egorov?” he asked.
“At that time, Egorov was in Paris for a conference on African security. Though no one saw Keller again, one of the two kidnappers was later spotted with Egorov. They were his people.”
“Did anyone follow up with Egorov?”
“We had someone approach him in Algiers, but he claimed ignorance.”
Alexandra settled deeper into her chair, frowning.
“What did the Russians do after that?” asked Milo. “Is the Blue Notice still active?”
Oskar smiled. “No—but it was followed, within hours, by Red Notices from the UK, USA, China, and Israel.”
“Why?”
“Different reasons. America connected the accountant to the Massive Brigade. Britain to computer hacking. China to money laundering. Israel to something else.” He waved a hand. “I forget.”
“All that for Joseph Keller?”
“Unlikely, isn’t it?” Oskar said. “But even more unlikely is this: Within two or three days, all the Interpol notices were canceled. Until you told me about Egorov’s request, I had assumed the Russians had just killed Keller in Paris. That, I think, is what everyone believed. But if Egorov was being straight with you, everybody was wrong.”
Milo nodded, seeing it now. “Egorov cheated his bosses. He let Keller live.”
“That is our working assumption,” Oskar agreed.
Even Alexandra seemed convinced.
“What about Anna Usurov?” Milo asked. “Egorov said she was connected.”
Oskar shrugged. “Maybe. Once you told me that, we looked into the records. Usurov’s body was found the morning of August 16. That is the same morning Joseph Keller boarded his plane to Germany. Further investigation revealed that the night before, both Keller and Usurov attended a gala party for MirGaz at the Moscow Ritz.” He smiled and opened his hands. “That is everything I have to share.”
“Thank you,” Milo said. It was perhaps the first time in history he’d thanked Oskar Leintz without irony. “Erika isn’t your boss anymore—you could easily have ignored her request.”
Oskar shrugged.
“Why didn’t you?”
Oskar rocked his head, musing on that. Then he said, “Because you are stupid, Milo. You go around asking too many questions. You are no longer protected by the American government, and your Library is no protection at all. Yet you keep asking. Eventually, you are going to be killed just for being a nuisance. And at least for now, neither Erika nor I want you to die. Maybe you will be useful one day. Stranger things have happened.” He smiled at his own joke, then got serious, leaning forward. “So take this answer, but then forget it. Rest assured that the adults will take care of it.”