“Are you talking about a mole?”

His face went slack, and she knew her stab in the dark had been right. A brief elation filled her, then slid away-did this mean she and Stephanie were in danger now? Milo said, “I’m trying not to lie to you.”

“Go ahead. Lie.”

“Then, no. Nothing like a mole. Nothing that serious.”

She grinned, which gave him license to do the same. She said, “What does this mean?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and gazed across the rooftops. “It means I’m going to have to disappear for a few days. Through the weekend, maybe. But I’ll certainly be back by next week.”

“Can you at least call?”

“Sure.”

“Some good-night calls for Stef might be appropriate. I think she’d appreciate it.”

“How do you think she’s doing?”

“What? With you back?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding very vulnerable.

The truth was that Tina had noticed how much quieter Stef was when Milo was around, and when he was gone she’d return to her loud, rambling self. It was, Tina had decided, fear-Stef’s fear that if she said the wrong thing her dad might pick up and leave again on one of his vague “jobs.” Seeing his expression, though, she couldn’t tell him this. So she lied. “You know Little Miss. She’s beside herself with joy having you back.”

“You think so?” Hope slid into his voice.

“Absolutely. But let’s not say you’re heading out on a job. Let’s say you’re going somewhere to interview for work. Capice?”

“Capice.”

They remained on the roof a minute more in silence; then he gave her a kiss, and they descended again to find Stephanie still at the computer. Tina told her to say good-bye to Unity, then stepped over to her window and pulled back the blinds. She didn’t see the man inside the Chevy, but from this slightly lower angle she did see the window roll down and the quick flash of hand-white, long-fingered-as it tossed out a cigarette that streamed smoke in the middle of the street.

That Thursday morning, Alan Drummond raised the window between himself and Jake, and as they struggled through midtown traffic he called Stuart Fossum at Federal Plaza. They’d known each other in the marines, and each had followed a slightly different route into intelligence, Drummond into the CIA, Fossum into the FBI. When he heard Drummond’s voice, Fossum laughed aloud. “Alan! Whenever something’s about to fall on my head, it’s always preceded by the sound of your voice.”

“Am I really that predictable?”

“Come be a G-man,” Fossum told him. “Leave those back-stabbers to their games.”

Though they hadn’t spoken since Drummond had taken over Tourism, Fossum acted as if they were still lunching once a week. “Listen, Stu. I need a favor. And I need it quiet.”

“What kind of favor are we talking about?”

“Background files on seven people.”

“Heavy clearance?”

“Shouldn’t be. They’re the aides to a senator.”

Fossum paused, considering this. “Sounds too easy. Makes me wonder why a man as important as yourself can’t just ask his secretary to do a Google search.”

“Let’s just say it’s not as secure as we’d like it to be. If the senator in question finds out I’m looking into his people…”

“Gotcha,” Fossum said, cutting him off. “You got the names for me?”

After he recited them from the list in his head, Fossum demanded an expensive meal as repayment, and they settled on Le Bernardin on Fifty-first. Then Fossum sighed. “I don’t suppose you’re ever going to tell me what office you work in, are you?”

“For the price of lunch at Bernardin, I don’t need to tell you anything.”

“Not even what this is about?”

Drummond had that story ready. “Somebody’s been sticking his hand in the campaign cookie jar. We found out about it before the senator, and we’d like to clean it up before he even knows it’s happened.”

“Sounds like the CIA wants to keep the senator sweet.”

“Now you’re with the program, Stu.”

When he got out of the elevator on the twenty-second floor, he first gazed at the far wall to see that Irwin and his sidekicks weren’t around-they seldom arrived before noon, their mornings filled with legislative conference calls-then wound his way slowly through the cubicles, fielding occasional requests along the way. Sally Hein wanted an ergonomic keyboard; she feared carpal tunnel syndrome was encroaching. Manuel Gomez wanted the Company to reimburse him for an expensive lunch he’d had with a source over at the NSA to compare notes on an Iranian mufti. Only Saeed Atassi, a Syria specialist he’d stolen from Defense, had a work-related request. He’d received disturbing intel from a Tourist in Damascus about a Syrian general liaising with an Israeli colonel to derail secret peace talks between the two countries. He’d worked up a Tour Guide on the issue but requested that, because of time constraints, a version be leaked to both governments, thereby skipping the usual route to the Senate committee that took forever to decide what to do with such things. Drummond promised an answer by day’s end.

His secretary, a heavyset brunette with a telescopic eye for detail, brought a stack of mail and a coffee to his large oak desk. He thanked her and opened his laptop, starting up a program called Tracker, which was exactly what the name suggested. It tracked the cell phones and shoulder chips of all his Tourists on a world map, giving him a God’s-eye view of the breadth of his influence. Red spots peppered the planet, most remaining still while others, on planes or high-speed trains, moved incrementally. When he dragged his cursor over a dot, a simple heads-up display gave him the work name and any recent notes attached to it. A counter along the bottom gave him the total number: thirty-seven.

He’d finished going through his mail and fielding fresh intelligence reports and delivering orders when Irwin breezed into his office. He’d been doing this more often recently, walking through the door without knocking, even when Drummond was on the telephone. The senator approached the windows overlooking Manhattan. To the city, he said, “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what, Nathan?”

“This. Working a mile up above the city. A bubble.” He stepped back and frowned at Drummond. “It’s not healthy. If you’re not mixing with the rabble, then how can you even protect the rabble’s interests? You can say a lot of bad things about politicians, but we never forget who we’re representing. They have our e-mail addresses, know our names and faces, know where we live. Everything-well, most of the things we do are there for public display. Step out of line, and someone’s standing nearby with a sledgehammer.”

Drummond pushed back from his desk and examined the senator. Despite the premature whitening of his hair, the man was full of the kind of nervous energy Drummond had seen a lot of in the military. He had youth in his mannerisms, perhaps a result of mixing with the rabble. “You might be right,” Drummond admitted. “Instead, we mix with people like you, and trust that you’re reporting back on what the rabble really want.”

“Not just what they want. What they need.”

“Of course. You here about Hang Seng?”

“Later,” Irwin said, waving that away. “You seen Milo Weaver recently?”

The question was ill placed because Irwin wanted to see its effect. Drummond understood this. He’d been expecting the question, though, and it proved that Weaver had at least been right about Irwin’s goons following him. “As a matter of fact, he came by last night. Looking for a job.”

“He wants back in?”

“Not in a million years. Wanted advice on where to look. I’m sending a recommendation over to Cy Gallagher over at Global Security. You know him?”

“Think we’ve crossed paths before.”

“Well, it’s just a recommendation. I have no idea what he’s looking for these days.”