“You expected me?” I asked.
Milo Weaver blinked a few times, as if he were just waking up, then glanced at his wristwatch, saying, “Of course.”
I hesitated, then stuck out a hand. “Abdul Ghali.”
He didn’t take it, but he did step aside and open his hand to a small room stocked with a mattress, a column of a dozen books, a sink, a hot plate, and a small table with two chairs. There was a door that presumably led to another room, but it was closed.
“Take a seat,” he said.
I settled at the table, discovering that one of the chair’s legs was shorter than the others, and this instability kept me from relaxing.
“And put the gun and phone on the table.”
I got up again and reached behind myself to take the Colt out of my waistband. Laying it on the table, I felt a sense of relief—that, at least, was out of the way. Then I placed my personal phone next to it.
“Unlock it?” Weaver asked, and I used my thumbprint, then handed it back. He looked at the screen, swiped to the next page, and his eyes widened. “Shit—Nexus?”
“What?”
He ignored me, then pressed on the application and deleted it.
“Hey!” I shouted involuntarily, but he didn’t care about me or my conversations with my son. He just powered off the phone and set it back on the table.
“Is that your only one?” he asked.
I’d forgotten about Collins’s phone, and while I might have bluffed my way through it, something told me that it wouldn’t be the right move. I handed it over and watched him disassemble the flip phone and remove its battery. I held up both hands. “Want to search me?”
Weaver didn’t answer. He went to the stack of books and took a pack of Benson & Hedges off the top. He lit one with a Zippo and, as an afterthought, offered the pack; I shook my head. As he smoked, he stood looking down at me. He made no move to relocate the pistol farther away; nor did he speak. He seemed to be measuring me with his eyes.
“I have some questions,” I said finally.
“Did you draft them?”
I shook my head no.
“Who? Foster?”
“I don’t know who drafted them,” I said, not knowing who Foster was. “I saw your file, but most of it was redacted.” He just stared, so I went on. “All I gathered was some of the outlines—your work history, your family. Your connection to the Massive Brigade.”
“Massive Brigade?” he asked, seeming surprised. “Really?”
“Are you denying it?”
He shook his head. “But I haven’t been in touch with them for a long time.”
There—that had to be a lie. I looked closely, trying to find tells in his face and hands, in his posture. Some kind of baseline to use for his other answers. But I found nothing. Hoping for another chance, I thought of question eight: “What about Joseph Keller? Can you tell me what happened to him?”
Weaver stiffened, closing up. He took a drag.
“Look,” I went on, “this is not my usual gig. It’s the first stamp in my passport for years. I just need to ask these questions, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
But Weaver only stared at me, sucking on his damned cigarette, blinking from the smoke.
I said, “They’ve been looking for you since October. You vanished. Then you showed up on their radar. Here, in Laayoune. The edge of the world. And I was called in.”
“Why you?”
“Me? Language. Background.”
“What background?”
“Sahrawi.”
He nodded, then looked toward the window and its closed blinds, as if alerted to a sound, but there’d been nothing. “They’ve been good to me,” he said toward the window. “The Sahrawi.”
“A hospitable people,” I said, then regretted it. I sounded like a tourist guide.
Weaver didn’t seem to notice. He just turned back to me and said, “Office?”
“Africa desk. Langley.”
“But why you? What are you bringing to the table?”
He was asking the question I hadn’t been able to answer myself. Familiarity with Arabic or Sahrawi culture might be a plus for this job, but it certainly wasn’t a requirement. Why not send Collins across town? After a day of pondering I had convinced myself, immodestly, that I had been recruited for some intangible virtues Paul had been too reserved to point out in front of Sally and Mel, but whatever those virtues were they were so hidden that not even I could find them. I told Weaver, “I’m bringing myself to the table.”
Understandably, he wasn’t impressed.
“So will you play ball?” I asked.
Another smile swept across Weaver’s face. He wiped at his dry lips. “Sporting metaphors. Haven’t heard one in a long time.”
I waited, but he didn’t follow up. “So?”
“You found me here,” he said finally, “so you’ll find me anywhere.”
“Certainly.”
“Maybe,” he corrected.
I looked around at the mottled walls that might not have seen a fresh coat of paint since they were built. “You can give it a try,” I told him. “Say the word, and I’ll walk out of here. I’ll tell them you’d already left town. But then, in a month or two, I’ll come knock on your door again. Me or someone else. Just do us a favor and choose someplace like Cannes, or Bermuda.”
This time, Weaver’s smile was open and full. He approached the table and took my gun and placed it on the stack of books along with the cigarettes. The titles of the books, I saw, were in three languages—French, English, and Russian. Weaver came back and sat down opposite me. “Shoot.”
“Isn’t that a sporting metaphor?” I asked.
Weaver wagged an index finger at me and grinned.
I had memorized the questions while sitting in my cubicle at Langley, and although the first question, asking where he’d been since October, was a fine way to begin, I instead chose number fourteen. I leaned my elbows on the table, which proved as rickety as the chair, and said, “They’d like to know the origins of your investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“I don’t know. I’m assuming you know.”
“That’s a big one,” Weaver said, indirectly admitting he did know what investigation I was referring to. “Quite a commitment.”
“They’re not all so big, but once that’s answered maybe the other questions will fall into place.”
He cocked his head, regarding me. “Bad interrogation style. You’re supposed to start with the small, easily disproven questions.”
“I didn’t realize this was an interrogation,” I told him, and watched, slightly put off, as he laughed quietly to himself.
“Every human exchange,” Weaver said, “is an interrogation.”
I wasn’t going to debate the point, so I just said, “Do you mind if I record this?”
“Go ahead.” When I started to get up to go for my phone he said, “Not that,” went to the kitchenette, and picked up something I hadn’t noticed before, a digital voice recorder.
“You prepared for this,” I told him.
He handed me the device.
“You knew I was coming.”
“Of course I did,” he said. “I sent for you. For someone like you.”
It was more than a surprise; it was a shock. Everyone I’d spoken with believed they were on top of this situation. We’d believed we were way ahead of this man.
Or maybe we were, and Milo Weaver, like any good spy, was just a talented showman.
“Why would you send for me?” I asked.
“Because we’re out of time.”
“Out of time for what?”
“For what comes next.”
It was an annoying answer, so I turned my attention to the recorder. As I got my bearings with it, he said, “Okay, then. You know about Tourists, right? The Department of Tourism?”
The way he said this, I knew that I should know, and that it had nothing to do with tourist expenditures or the annual count of visitors to the United States. I shook my head and pressed RECORD.
He considered me, blinking slowly. “Really—why did they send you?”
My earlier reasoning—language, culture, some unnamed personal virtue—felt less and less plausible. But we weren’t going to get anywhere with him mocking my ignorance. “I do know about the Library,” I said.
He just looked at me, waiting.
“I know it is, or was—its status isn’t clear—an intelligence service hidden inside the United Nations. I know that your father created it, and that you took it over. And at some point you changed the rules. The Library became an active player. This, I’m told, led to its downfall.”
That seemed to take the air out of him. “Is that the way they see it?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know. This is just from one source.”
He settled into a chair. “Maybe that’s right. Maybe it is all on me.”
“So you’re admitting the Library did engage in active measures?”
He looked into my face, then nodded. “In 2009 I took an active measure when I decided to save Martin Bishop’s life. We know how that turned out, but I guess I didn’t learn my lesson, because four months ago I tried to save Joseph Keller’s life.”
“Then you killed him,” I said.
His smile was so sad. He shook his head slowly and said, “Joseph Keller never had a chance, Abdul.”
And then everything exploded.