IT HAD been two months since she’d walked through this city, overcome by hopelessness, back to Penn Station, thinking that it was all over for her. Now it was a gorgeous day, warm without being oppressive. There was traffic, of course, and noise, and throngs of distracted pedestrians, but when she reached Bryant Park the green stretch of nature was a relief, even populated by food carts, down-and-outs distributing handbills, and New Yorkers spilled all over the grass talking on their phones while nibbling on sandwiches and soy snacks. Deeper in, she saw the young people—fifteen or so—dozing under the sun beside a pile of protest signs. These days, everyone had a reason to lift a sign. She found a bench and settled down to take it all in.
She didn’t see James Sullivan—more accurately, Milo Weaver—until he was about ten yards away, taking off his sunglasses. His suit, unlike back in San Francisco, didn’t stand out here, but she remembered those bruised, melancholic eyes, and his flakes of gray that had by now multiplied. And, she noticed, a silver wedding band. He also wore a smile. She straightened as he reached her. “Mind if I sit, Rachel?”
She tilted her head toward the empty space beside her, and when he settled down he placed his hands on his knees. Took a deep breath. “Congratulations on the new job.”
She had taken over the assistant directorship three weeks ago. It turned out that, when motivated, Paulson was able to convince the director of even the most ridiculous things, like moving a special agent too many steps up the ladder. “Shaking things up” was how it had been described in the official statement. These days, she found herself at the head of the table in that noisy conference room, lording it over Barnes, Lynch, and Kranowski, still in awe of how their acting skills hid their contempt.
“Thanks,” she said, then: “You know, it took some arm-twisting with your old employers at Langley, but we’ve collected a nice dossier on you. Father: the late Yevgeny Primakov, formerly of the KGB and FSB, and then UNESCO. Two sisters, one of whom—Alexandra—seems to do legal work for you. And you: Milo Weaver, once an agent of the ultrasecret Department of Tourism. After your father died, you moved over to UNESCO before eventually dropping off the official roster altogether.”
“Gosh,” he said, a smile on his lips. “Can’t fool the Bureau, can you?”
He was already beginning to irritate her, so to get that smile off his face she added, “A wife, Tina, and a sixteen-year-old daughter named Stephanie.”
Yes, that did it. The smile was gone. So she pushed on:
“Tell me what you really do for the UN. Tell me why the UN was funneling money to Martin Bishop, beginning in 2009. He came to you, broken, in Spain. And you encouraged him to work against the US government. Without you, none of this would have happened.”
“Well, first of all,” he said, stretching his arms out ahead of himself, “that wasn’t UN money.”
“Whose money was it?”
“Second of all, I didn’t encourage him. When he came to Spain he connected with a friend of mine, who called me.”
“Sebastián Vivas.”
Weaver nodded. “Sebastián thought I could help. Once I heard his story, and had verified it, I tried to talk Martin out of doing anything. I told him that he’d get himself killed if he went back to the States and started speaking out, particularly about what had happened in Berlin. But I couldn’t convince him. And I wasn’t going to let him go back without some kind of support. So, yes, I set him up with some income. Not to work against the US government, though.”
“No?”
He shook his head.
“And somehow Bishop survived, with your money, and for eight years Owen Jakes didn’t kill him. He was under your protection.”
“I met Jakes in a Berlin park much like this,” Weaver told her. “He understood that if Martin was hurt or killed I would turn over the evidence of the bombing to the Germans. He kept to his end of the deal, but I had no idea he’d recruited his own mole. Benjamin Mittag was a surprise.”
It was nice to hear that this smug man could be surprised now and then. “But you didn’t keep your end of the deal,” she said. “When Bishop was killed, you didn’t tell the Germans about the bombing.”
“Didn’t I?”
“Did you?”
Weaver shrugged. “What makes you think the Germans didn’t already know the story? How bad do you think their forensics are? Come on, Assistant Director. They knew all along.”
“Now you’re confusing me on purpose.”
“Welcome to my world.”
That was a phrase she would have expected to hate coming from his lips, but he hadn’t said it as a boast. In fact, he acted as if the complexity of his world was a point of sadness.
He said, “The KRL had already humiliated the German government. The last thing the Reichstag wanted was for it to get out that an FBI agent had killed them, particularly when the reason was so sordid: getting the Germans to be more cooperative. All that would do was make martyrs of the KRL and encourage more radicalism.”
She took her time, thinking through his explanation, holding it up against what she already knew. The explanation made sense to her, because like most mysteries it depended on the vagaries of human nature and a love of secrecy. That wasn’t to say she believed it; believing anything this man said felt like naïveté. She said, “This is all very enlightening, Milo, but I almost got killed trying to put together the pieces. You could have passed me something.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “But this is bigger than Martin Bishop and Bureau corruption. It’s bigger than banks helping launder money. Maybe you’ve noticed: The world is moving in a worrying direction.”
“It’s always moving in a worrying direction.”
“That’s a matter of perspective,” he said, and flicked something off his pants. “The decline of the EU, the rise of nationalist movements all over the planet. Global fragmentation. This is bigger than Martin Bishop. It’s bigger than America.”
“This?”
Weaver hesitated, then: “My father once threw away his career and much of his life in order to try to make the world a better place. I’m not sure he succeeded, but I’m also not sure that mattered. The work he did gave him a reason to wake up in the morning.”
“Is that why you’re trying to destabilize American democracy? Because you have daddy issues? Or is it to push off thoughts of suicide?”
He grinned. “Destabilize democracy? Am I really that powerful?”
“Look, I can see protecting Bishop, but you actively funded him. You were funding terrorism.”
“You’re trying to get under my skin, Rachel. We both know he wasn’t a terrorist. He needed support because he had a fight ahead of him. He was going against people with limitless resources. And after what he went through in Berlin he deserved a chance. So do you.”
Weaver reached into his jacket, took out an envelope, and handed it to her. Unsure, she opened it and found five pages of spreadsheet filled with thirty-four-digit alphanumeric codes and dollar figures in the millions.
“What’s this?”
“It’s me helping you, Rachel.”
“But what is it?”
“It’s what you need to reopen and expand the investigation into Plains Capital Bank and Investition für Wirtschaft.”
“Expand?”
“The banks don’t matter. What matters is whose money was being laundered, and why it was being laundered.”
“It was being laundered to avoid paying taxes.”
He shook his head. “That’s the clean story, and it’s a pretty one—it’s enough to interrupt the money flow for a short time. The important question to ask is where the money was headed once it was cleaned.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because I’m still figuring it out myself.”
She refolded the pages, slipped them into the envelope, and pocketed it. She wasn’t sure what she would do with the gift. She’d learned the value of holding on to incriminating information. She’d learned how to use evidence as a bludgeon.
As if reading her mind, he said, “You might want to just keep it for future use.”
Though she’d thought the same thing, she said, “Why?”
He pursed his lips. “You remember those hundred and twenty girls who were kidnapped last year in Nigeria?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m glad you do. A lot of people don’t. Or they mix it up with some other school somewhere else. And if that kind of horror can disappear from the consciousness of people, imagine how quickly a case against some multinational banks will fade.”
“You’re saying I should choose the right moment, in order to inflict the most damage.”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think I want to inflict damage?”
He hesitated, then leaned back. Waited.
“Maybe I think the stability of Western civilization is a little more important than a handful of lives.”
Milo Weaver rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Some might say that caring about a handful of lives is the definition of civilization.”
Rachel turned to look across the park to where some demonstrators were waking from their afternoon naps, yawning. Beyond them, near Forty-Second Street, Kevin Moore was watching out for her, as were seven other agents. She felt protected and at peace, free to speak her mind. “You’re full of shit,” she told him. “People like you ignore the costs of blowing up hypocrisy. My job is to make hypocrisy and corruption function as well as possible, because that’s what humans are—they’re hypocritical and weak. Rip away the hypocrisy, and there’s nothing left.”
Milo blinked, looking across the park. She wondered if he, too, had his own heavies in reserve. He said, “You sound just like Mark Paulson.”
She didn’t bother replying to that. “Tell me,” she said, “how much money did you funnel into the Massive Brigade?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I hope you don’t mind wasting that much money.”
“You think it’s wasted?”
“Martin Bishop is food for the worms.”
He shrugged. “Take a look at the streets, Rachel. Walk downtown a little further. Melt into the crowds and listen. Then tell me if it’s wasted.”