“So, Marko. I hear you’ve got a story about the Chinese for us.”

The Ukrainian stared at the black television and shrugged. “They tell you about all the hot Kiev information? Man, you can worry about the Chinese all you want, but it’s the Kievskaya Rus’ you should really worry about.”

“Trust me, we are worried. But I’m here about the Chinese. You want to tell me how a man like you learns of a secret Chinese plot?”

Dzubenko glared at him, as if his word couldn’t be doubted, but said, “Biggest intelligence organization on the planet, so what do you think? Guoanbu. The motherfuckers are all over Kiev now. It’s getting like Chinatown. They know how important we are, how we’re positioned. Russian fuckers on one side, European Union on the other-it all rubs.”

“Friction.”

“Exactly,” he said, using his cigarette to point at Milo. “I’ve got respect for them-don’t get me wrong. They spend money on their people, place them all over the world. They’re smart. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when they take over my hometown and my hard-ass bosses start treating them like princesses they’ve got boners for. Know what I mean?”

Milo didn’t, not exactly-he hadn’t been in the Ukraine since the nineties, and the Guoanbu hadn’t gained a foothold there yet-but he could imagine. “Look, I’m just surprised the Chinese shared their secrets with a Ukrainian second lieutenant.”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Dzubenko. “It was at a party. On Grushevskogo Street.”

“The Chinese embassy.”

“Of course.”

“What for?”

“What?”

“Why was there a party?”

“Oh! Chinese New Year. They’ve got their own, you know.”

“So do Ukrainians. What date?”

“Beginning of the month. February 7.”

“And they invited an SSU second lieutenant?”

Dzubenko frowned at his cigarette and chewed the inside of his mouth. “You’re trying to get a rise out of me, but it’s not going to work. I’m sure of the rightness of my position.”

“I’m just trying to understand, Marko.”

“It was my boss. Lutsenko. Bogdan Lutsenko. He’s a colonel-you can check on that in your files. He was invited, and he asked if I wanted to come along. I said, Why not? But I didn’t know, did I?”

“Didn’t know what?”

“How it would make me sick to my stomach, being there. And that Xin Zhu would be there soaking up all the attention.”

“Xin Zhu?”

“Guoanbu,” Dzubenko told him. “Don’t know his rank, but it must be high up. He’s a fat fucker. Big as a cow. Carries himself like some fucking sheik. Half his entourage were slant-eyes, the other half were my bosses, laughing at all his jokes.”

“What kinds of jokes?”

“Russian jokes. China’s full of those jokes, I guess. It didn’t hurt that he told them in excellent Russian. Plays on words, that sort of thing. Had them in stitches. You know what it looked like to me?”

“What?”

“Like the defeated fawning over their new masters. That’s what it looked like to me. So I went out on the terrace and started smoking, waiting to go home. I got through two cigarettes before he came out to join me.”

“He?”

“Xin Fucking Zhu.”

Milo allowed an expression of surprise to slip into his features. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I am not. He brings his fat ass outside. It’s cold, you know, but he’s still sweating. Glowing from all the attention. That’s why he came out-inside, he’d melt. He lights up and we get talking. And the guy is funny, I have to admit. Even drunk-and the guy is really drunk. We talk about Kiev, and he tells me some of the places he likes. Not tourist shit-no. Some of the best clubs, the ones you have to look hard to find.”

“He goes out dancing?” Milo asked doubtfully.

“Ha!” Dzubenko spat, imagining that. “Please. He goes out looking for hot chicks, what else? We share war stories about girlfriends. Very funny, that guy. He convinces me to come back in, and I end up staying until after midnight. Fun time.”

Milo stared at him, waiting, but Dzubenko didn’t seem to want to go on. “Well?”

“I’m not saying another word until we get some vodka in here.”

“Sure,” Milo said, then switched to English. “You hear that? Get us some vodka!”

It took about two minutes. They heard trotting on the stairs, then the door opened just wide enough for Drummond to place a bottle of Finlandia and two shot glasses on the floor. The door shut. Milo poured shots and handed one over. “Budmo.”

“Hey,” Dzubenko answered, then added in English, “Mud inside your eye.”

They each put back two shots before Milo said, “Is this when it happened? You got the story at the embassy?”

“Hell no! You think Xin Zhu’s a complete idiot? That was the next week. I get a call from him, and we head out to Tak-Tak, one of his favorite clubs. Usually, guys like him, they’ll end up at the Budapest Club, maybe Zair, but Tak-Tak? Shit, I’d never been there. But Zhu walked in like a king. They know him there. It’s the one place he can go where he’s the only slant-eye. We get a booth in the corner where we can watch the girls and talk in private. Then he starts drinking. I like to drink-don’t misunderstand me-but this Chinaman puts them away. Unbelievable. I guess because he’s so big he can take it.”

“So he wasn’t drunk?”

“Oh, he was drunk. Easily. He just didn’t pass out.”

“Did you?”

“For a few minutes, yeah.”

“And he talked to you.”

“Like we were brothers. Want to know what I think? I think the fat bastard is lonely. I mean, he can’t really trust anyone under him, and he’s afraid of those above him. So he works his intrigues all by himself.”

“He told you this?”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“But he told you about his intrigues.”

“A little, yeah. But it wasn’t until the end of the night, when he was really wasted, that he told me this thing that’s got your friend excited. About the mole he’s been running in the fucking-secret American Department of Tourism.”

“Tell me about that, please.”

“Certainly,” Dzubenko said. He raised his shot glass, then drank. “When I told Zhu he was making this up to impress me-really, Department of Tourism? What kind of name is that?-he immediately broke it down. The administration of the Department of Tourism is organized into seven subject areas. One supervisor and nine Travel Agents for each section.” He grinned. “I stopped him there-Travel agents? I said. That’s when he told me they were kind of like analysts, collecting information from Tourism’s field agents, who are called Tourists. There are sixty-three of these guys, these Tourists, spread around the world.”

Sixty-three-not even Milo knew that number. Drummond could verify it later.

“He said that the Department of Tourism was the dirtiest part of America’s filthy intelligence machine.”

“And he said he had a mole in this secret department?”

Dzubenko nodded and held out his empty glass; Milo refilled it.

“He offer any evidence of this?”

“Well, I’ve got some experience in this sort of thing. Learning what’s true and what’s not.”

“I imagine you do.”

“Sure. I knew that with this fat fucker the best thing was to play on his vanity. I told him he was a liar. I told him no one would have a secret department with that kind of name, certainly not the Americans. They’d call it Alpha Bravo. Or Operation Free-Fucking-Eagle. Something like that. We had some girls with us by then-so we talked in English-but in Russian I’d tell the girls he was a big fat liar. You see what I was doing? I was using his manhood to get the evidence from him.”

“Extremely clever,” said Milo. “I suppose he rose to the challenge.”

“You suppose right. First he made me swear to keep my mouth shut-this was just for me. Then he told me about one of the Tourism Department’s operations, in the Sudan. One that was supposed to cripple China’s oil supply. This was back in July, and-get this-it all surrounded the Tiger.”