Once Milo laid eyes on El Kahwa El Zarka, it was obvious why Colonel Rahmani had noticed the change in Egorov’s schedule. Though the tiny café was pleasant enough, it was in a strange spot, the ground floor of an apartment block, the kind of place frequented only by people who lived in the same building. Glass doors led to plastic chairs on concrete tiles, a twisted tree, and, inside, little black tables around a counter. Why would the old man break his routine in the upscale center of town for this?
“No good reasons,” Whippet said.
Whippet, the Paris librarian, had joined him during his layover in Charles de Gaulle’s tubular concourse, where they drank macchiatos and he filled her in on the situation. She was almost self-conscious in her focus, a thin, dark-haired Frenchwoman in her forties who had once worked for the DPSD, France’s military counterespionage outfit, before taking an early retirement. Retirement hadn’t worked out, though, and Milo’s recruiters had found her looking for work in Vietnam when they talked her into expanding the scope of her loyalty. On the plane, she gave him an update on the Chinese plastic guns she’d reported on before: Her source said that, despite never solving the weak barrel issue, the Sixth Bureau had decided to order a thousand of them for test use throughout the world, each preloaded with a single reinforced-plastic bullet. Which, Milo thought, was the kind of forward thinking that had helped Xin Zhu and his Sixth Bureau wipe out Tourism.
It had been Whippet’s idea to wait outside the café. “Never know when the Russians might sniff you out.”
“How will you recognize them?”
“I can tell Russian tailoring a kilometer away.”
As soon as Milo stepped inside the cool, shadowy café, he felt the weight of Gazala Mokrani’s cool judgment from her large dark eyes. She was in her late fifties and had a noticeable tendency to bring her cigarette within a millimeter of her lips, move it quickly away as if it had burned her, and then bring it back for a long drag. There was something hypnotic in that movement, and how it translated into scorn. She had been asked too many questions by too many men in too short a time since losing her lover.
“You’re just like them,” she said.
“Them?”
“The new Russian consul, and Colonel Rahmani.”
“Not really,” he told her. “I’m the one Kirill called. I’m the only one he trusted.”
“Why?”
“He and my father were friends.”
“That’s a terrible reason to trust someone.”
“I agree.”
She brought her cigarette to her lips, jerked it away, then took a drag.
Milo said, “Kirill wanted me to protect Joseph Keller.”
She exhaled smoke at him, then glanced past him to the bar. “I don’t know anyone with that name.”
“I think you do,” Milo said.
Again she looked at the bar, so Milo turned to look for himself. The bartender, a huge bald man with hair coming out of his ears, watched them both. Maybe waiting for a signal. And Milo had come inside alone and unarmed. He was beginning to regret that decision.
“Ms. Mokrani,” Milo said, “you have a choice. Either you let me take over the protection of Joseph Keller, or you keep him yourself. But for how long? You know that you’re being watched, right? Colonel Rahmani is very curious, and smart, but I don’t think he’s your real problem. The Russians—they killed Kirill in order to get to Keller. And they will not give up.”
Gazala knitted her brows, as if hit by a sudden pain. “You are sure they killed him?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Why would they?”
Milo shook his head. “I won’t know until I speak with Joseph Keller.”
Gazala brought her cigarette to her lips, pulled it away, then took a drag.
Whippet was still in the doorway across the street when he and Gazala left the bar together. Milo caught her eye, and she nodded that the coast was clear. For once, luck was on his side.
As Whippet crossed the street to join them, Gazala looked frightened, so he introduced them, but called Whippet Mary. Together, they followed a winding path through narrow streets surrounded by high apartment buildings. “He never liked my place,” she said.
“Egorov?” Milo asked.
“He said a woman like me should live on the water. He was that way. A charmer. But not a fool. He had been hurt, and had learned from pain.”
“Who had hurt him?”
Gazala Mokrani raised her chin, just a little, in the way of a natural-born performer. “He told me that he had devoted his life to a political system that had failed him. It wasn’t until he grew old that he realized his only responsibility was to himself, and to me.”
“So you wouldn’t describe him as a patriot?”
She narrowed her brow, considering the question. “Countries, he told me, mean nothing. They are just masks. Money is everything.”
“Did he convince you?”
A mild shrug. “Kirill Egorov was a very convincing man.”
The foyer was chilly, with iron stairs wrapping around an ancient elevator that looked like it hadn’t functioned in a long time. The walls were coarse and occasionally marked up by graffiti—but it was always low, no more than four feet up, which made Milo think that little children were the culprits. At the third floor, Gazala pressed a button on the wall and the landing lit up, the bare bulb buzzing. She used another key on her heavy door, and when she pushed it open they could hear the sound of a television playing English-language news. She waved them inside, then shut and dead-bolted the door.
“I am back,” she called in English as she unwound her scarf. “Not alone.”
A male voice said, “Fuck.”
Gazala looked at them and shook her head in annoyance.
Milo followed the direction of the voice and in the high-ceilinged living room found a white, barefoot man in a dirty shirt and slacks, scrambling to his feet in front of an old television bled of most of its color. He smoothed his unkempt hair, then wiped at his bristly cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot, but he was fit, his arms wiry with muscle. Not what Milo had expected from an accountant, but it was the same face from the MirGaz website and Keller’s Nexus page.
“Joseph Keller,” Milo said, “Kirill Egorov sent for me.”
“Name?” Keller snapped, his accent more working-class than Milo would have expected.
“Milo Weaver.”
Keller thought about that, tilting his head. “Prove it?”
Milo handed over his laminated UN card. “And you?”
Reading Milo’s details, Keller used his other hand to reach into his back pocket and take out a worn British passport with his name and photo in it. Slipped between its pages was a business card: JOSEPH KELLER, SENIOR CONTROLLER, MIRGAZ, with an address on the Frunzenskaya embankment in Moscow.
When Whippet entered the room and raised an eyebrow, Keller took a step back. “Who’s she?”
“The only way you’re getting out of here alive,” she told him.
Keller’s shoulders sank, and he handed back Milo’s ID.
“I will make tea,” Gazala said as she passed the doorway.
“What’s going to happen now?” Keller asked.
“We’re going to sit down and drink some tea. You’ll talk. After that, we’ll arrange for you to be moved someplace safer.”
“Where?”
“Europe.”
Keller thought about that, then nodded. He went to the television and turned it off.
“We need to hear it all,” Milo said. “Okay?”
Keller held his eye for a long moment. He had the look of someone who had lost everything. A barren look. Milo had seen that look before, years ago, in the face of Martin Bishop. He’d also seen that look further back, when his days smeared into the next in a constant blur of cities and languages and hotel rooms and sudden, brutal acts in service to his nation. It was the face he’d seen in the mirror.