Leticia didn’t like Milo’s attitude, but she understood it. There was only one outcome that interested him, and that was the safety of his family and the people who had worked for him this last decade. Milo wasn’t an ideologue; he wasn’t fighting for some better version of the world, and for someone like him the aims were always primitive and foundational: Take care of me and mine, and try not to kill too many people along the way.
Fair enough.
To a certain extent, Leticia felt the same. The first principle of life is to stay alive, because without that nothing else can be accomplished. However, once survival was assured, there were other things to consider. Nigeria had taught her that. Other places, too, but Nigeria had hammered it home. And unlike Milo, she’d lived a long time without the incessant chatter of family and colleagues that always distracted you from the big picture. The big picture was this: Northwell and its clients were the reason why little girls in Nigeria were being ripped from their homes and raped and brainwashed and forced into labor. She could list a thousand travesties to justify bringing them down, but there was no need. A single girl was enough to convince her that whatever happened to Northwell couldn’t be a slap on the wrist; it had to be crushing.
She just wasn’t sure they were going to be able to do the job today. The groundwork they’d done in the last three months had been the minimum, a quickly assembled house of cards. If it failed today, she doubted they’d get another chance. And if it succeeded … well, she had no illusion that there wouldn’t be more work to do.
But she didn’t fight him. She hurried ahead to open the door and step into the airy, glass-fronted entryway, where security guards were waiting to check their IDs. She handed over hers and stepped through another metal detector, wondering why she didn’t just leave.
She knew why. It was because the other thing she’d learned was that going it alone never really got her what she wanted. Even today’s half measures were better than what years on the road had gotten her.
But it was more than that, wasn’t it?
Yes. She was tired. Tired of the disposable life, where when the dark moods came there was no one to turn to, only a mirror, and in that mirror the emptiness could no longer be ignored. Then she’d come to Zürich and discovered something in Milo’s Library that she didn’t even know she’d needed.
At the far end of the corridor, some journalists were huddled with their phones, and when Leticia, then the others, approached they looked up, squinting. But none of her crew were well-known politicians worthy of a byline, so they went back to their phones.
Looking to Alexandra, Leticia said, “Parsenn-Pischa, right?”
Alexandra nodded, and Poitevin joined her as she went through the floor plan in her head, calmly walking past small meeting rooms called Flüela and Sertig. Before reaching the journalists, she turned down a broad staircase under a banner that said ANNUAL MEETING 2019 to the large main hall, where workers were breaking down displays and screens and stacking chairs. Off to the right, nondescript bureaucrats and businesspeople networked in low tones and sudden bright laughter, but Leticia led her people to the left, past the kitchen and VIP entrance, up concrete stairs to automatic glass doors marked with a blue sign with a large orange B.
When they stepped through to B-Wing, she and Poitevin paused. It was a small area that wrapped around an elevator, and to their immediate right narrow stairs led up to the third floor. She waited until all of them—the bureaucrats, their guards, and the remnants of the Library, thirteen in all—were through the doors, then turned to Milo. “One floor up,” she said. “I’ll go first.”
She began to ascend, Poitevin right behind her, and paused at the top step, where she could see on a far wall a sign that said B3—the characters overlapped, she noticed, like the M3 of the Massive Brigade. Then she stepped forward and turned right, where, on the far wall, between two sets of double doors, a small TV displayed:
PARSENN-PISCHA
PRIVAT
Between her and that TV, though, seven men and two women stared at her. One of them was Haroun Ghali, while another, wiping his nose with the back of a hand, was the man who had faked incompetence until the moment he murdered Noah and Kristin—the man they only knew as Joseph Keller. And there, in the back: Karim Saleem, from Nigeria.
Haroun was at the front, and he stood stiffly about ten yards away. He put a hand on his jacket, at the hip, but then dropped it. Instinct had made him reach for a gun that wasn’t there.
“Leticia,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching in amusement or panic—she couldn’t be sure which. “You really did a job on Lance.”
“Sorry,” she said as the others emerged from the stairwell behind her.
Haroun looked them over, frowning. “So what brings you here?”
Milo appeared at her side and kept walking forward, so she stayed with him until they were both facing Haroun. The other Tourists crept closer. Milo said, “I need to talk with Grace Foster.”
“That’s not happening.”
“We don’t want to fight,” Milo said, “but we will. Please tell her we’re here.”
Haroun looked back to his colleagues, who formed a shallow arc of tense figures ready to attack. They didn’t need guns to do serious damage. Joseph Keller’s expression tensed when he met Milo’s gaze, but Milo maintained his self-control—admirably, Leticia thought. His features betrayed none of the fury that she knew was bubbling inside of him.
“This is just a conversation,” Milo said. “Like you, we’re not armed.” He spread out his arms. “Check, if you like.”
Haroun looked back and forth between the two of them, then raised his head to peer at the others again. It struck Leticia that Abdul’s brother was out of his depth. He was a man who had been trained for action and little else. Conversation was uncomfortable to him. Back in Nigeria, Karim Saleem’s act as a Literacy Across the World humanitarian had been forced and awkward, which was why she’d dug deeper. Northwell might have used the Tourist playbook, but they’d picked up only what they really wanted: the hierarchy, methods, and fighting skills. They’d ignored the most important part: the twisted logical skills of the Tourist that made for the perfect storyteller. The misdirection and the instinctual camouflage. No, what they had here was bargain-basement Tourism.
“Hold on,” Haroun finally said, then turned to head inside, telling his colleagues to keep an eye on them. He opened a door and slipped inside the two rooms they’d reserved, the Parsenn and the Pischa.
“What do you think?” Milo asked.
“I think he’s confused.”
“Me, too.” Milo glanced back at the intelligence officers and spoke without moving his lips. “They’re going to try something serious in there.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but if they don’t think CIA will take care of Northwell, they’ll do it themselves.”
Alexandra approached and said, “So?”
“Your brother thinks there’s going to be trouble.”
“So what do we do?” Alexandra asked.
Milo looked back again, and Leticia did too. Francis checked his watch and chewed the inside of his mouth. Oskar’s frowning face was deep with lines as Vetrov glanced distractedly at his phone. Only Li Fan seemed relaxed, her eyes shifting to look right back at them, as if trying to decide which of them to eat first.
Milo said, “What do they want?”
“The same damned things we want,” Leticia said.
The far door opened. Haroun held it open, and out came the bitch. Grace Foster hesitated at first, as if only now believing what Haroun had told her inside, then collected herself and walked over, her high heels clicking rapidly. She eyed Leticia, a disappointed look, then approached Milo. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re here to talk to your group.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Get out of here while you still can.”
The half-circle of cut-rate Tourists tightened, and Leticia planted her feet wide, preparing to fight.
Milo sighed, trying to look merely put-out. “You see the people behind me? Do you know who they are?”
She looked past him, recognizing them all.
“They’re on board. It’s settled. I’m offering you a way out. No one gets killed. No one even gets arrested.”
Again she looked past him. “I don’t see the Agency.”
“That’s between you and them. But this, right now, is the only way you get out of Davos with your freedom and your lives intact.”
Leticia couldn’t tell how Foster was taking all of this. Her white cheeks didn’t flush, and she held on to Milo’s gaze. God, she was cool. “What,” she asked, “do you intend to say?”
“We’ll explain that it’s over. Everyone’s done well, everyone’s profited from their investment. But now it ends. They rip up their Northwell contracts, and all is forgotten.” He opened his hands. “If not, or if you don’t let us inside, each of your clients ends up in prison when they return home.”
Finally, a smile reached Foster’s face. “You think they’ll scare that easily?”
“If they’re smart they will.”
She raised her chin to look down at him condescendingly. “You don’t know these kinds of people, do you? They live on a different planet from you. From me, too. Prisons, laws—they’ll tie your friends up in court for years while ripping them to pieces in public. No one scares them.”
Leticia’s optimism, low as it was, sank even further. The bitch was right. And Milo wasn’t getting it. Despite all the things he had done and seen over the years, Milo Weaver was naïve. He still thought shame existed in the world. He still had faith in process. Had she really hooked her cart to this man?
After thinking a moment, Grace Foster shrugged. What did she have to lose? “Okay, then. Make your pitch. But she,” Foster said, pointing at Leticia, “stays out here.”
Smart girl, Leticia thought.
It took a moment, Haroun and his colleagues patting down everyone except Li Fan, who slapped Haroun’s hand and simply said, “No.” Haroun didn’t try again, and Foster didn’t press the issue. While they bickered, Francis scratched at his forehead, looking embarrassed. Oskar kept checking his phone, and Vetrov pulled on white gloves, which didn’t seem very GRU to her. Then the bitch led Milo, Alexandra, and the four intelligence officers inside. This time she got a view of the space, of chairs and backs lined up in front of a podium by a glass wall. Behind the podium, Anthony Halliwell, against a backdrop of the Northwell logo on a projector screen, said, “twenty percent growth,” then noticed the visitors and paused. What struck her was the number of people in the audience. She’d expected a dozen. But there were so many more.
As the door shut, she turned to find Haroun staring at her with an expression she couldn’t interpret. So she walked slowly over to Poitevin and Dalmatian and the four bodyguards whose names she didn’t know. They stood together, facing the others, who, she hoped without hope, would be the last Tourists she would ever have to face.