He called Drummond back but heard Penelope’s voice. “Hello, Mr. Weaver. He’s on the toilet.”

“Pen!” Drummond shouted angrily in the background. “Can you tell him I’m coming by?”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ll be needing a lift to JFK.”

“Are you kidding me, Mr. Weaver?”

“It’s Milo. And I’m sorry, Penelope.”

“You know what?”

“No. What?”

“It’s nice hearing that from someone other than Alan.”

On the way to Eighty-ninth Street, he called home. He chatted unspecifically with Tina about his day, then listened to Stephanie describe hers in unending specifics. She wanted to know when he was coming back; she wanted him to teach her karate.

“Karate?”

“Sarah Lawton pushed me on the ground today.”

“Did she use karate to do it?”

“I don’t know. What does it look like again?”

Drummond was waiting in the foyer, dressed in a long evening coat. Together they took the stairs to the underground parking lot, and Drummond said, “You know this will be noticed, don’t you?”

“I’m betting on it.”

They climbed into Drummond’s personal car, a breathtaking Jaguar E-Type convertible from 1974, and remained quiet until they were out on the street, dealing with the nighttime traffic. “You should probably tell me what’s going on.”

“The files won’t do us any good, Alan. The only way to bring out a mole is to scare him and make him run. From now on, we’re going to do this in the open, but make it look as if we’re trying to hide it. This is the first step-you driving me to the airport before I fly to Germany.”

“Germany?”

“If we were searching for a mole while hiding our movements, we would go to outsiders for help.”

“Oh, Jesus. Don’t tell me you mean-”

“Exactly. That’s the second step. The third step will be the difficult one. For you, I mean.”

“How do you mean, difficult?”

Milo had considered not telling him until the last minute, but he had to know that Drummond was going to follow through. Otherwise, there was no point in beginning. “Do you own a gun, Alan?”

It was around two on Friday when he reached the stone arch that spanned the creek running through this quaint neighborhood of Pullach. Oskar had been very specific about the locations of the cameras when he led Milo out, and so he knew to drive beyond the bridge and park in the lot of a tiny grocery store, where he bought two premade ham sandwiches as a middle-aged man with a mustache watched him from the cereal aisle. In English, Milo asked for the toilet and was directed outside. Milo passed the mustached man and went around the rear of the building, but instead of entering the bathroom continued ahead and into the damp woods. He worked his way slowly back to the road, then jogged toward the bridge as he reentered the woods. He followed the dry creek bed.

It wasn’t as obvious as he’d hoped. From the rear, most of these houses looked deceptively similar, and once he had to wait for twenty minutes in the underbrush as a pair of children played with plastic guns in a yard. When he finally got to Erika Schwartz’s house, it was nearly four and he was desperately hungry, so he settled in the bushes around the rear of the house and ate.

Four hours passed. Rain fell intermittently, then darkness, and by the time the headlights appeared in the driveway he was soaked and cold. He waited until the lights switched off and he heard her go inside alone. He rapped steadily on one of the rear windows. It took a while, but he didn’t think it was because she couldn’t hear; it was simply because she moved so slowly. By the time she switched on the light in the utility room and got him in focus, his knuckles were stinging. She approached but didn’t open the door.

“You look like hell,” she called through the glass. “You look radiant, Erika.”

She grinned crookedly. “You really shouldn’t be here. I could have you killed.”

“I’ve no doubt. You might want to listen to me, though. I told you I’d help you if I could.”

“This is how you come to offer help?” She shook her head. “No one stands in the rain just to offer help. You’re standing in the rain because you want something from me.”

“I’m standing in the rain because I’d like to offer an exchange of services.”

She blinked slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, then unlocked the door and stepped back. He came inside, dripping all over the concrete floor. She opened a dryer beside a front-loading washer. “Clothes in there,” she said. “I’ll bring down a robe.” Slowly, she made her way out and closed the door.

As he undressed, the doubt returned. Was this really the only way to scare a mole? He’d used his real passport at JFK, and before his flight took off he saw one of the shadows running to the gate to catch it in time. That one-a young woman with red bangs-had remained with him in the Munich airport before handing him off to the mustached man they must have called ahead to prepare. The man had followed his rental car all the way to the Pullach grocery store, and was probably still there, watching his abandoned car in the darkness.

Maybe it wasn’t the only way, but it was having the desired effect. Irwin knew exactly where Milo Weaver was. Thus, the mole did, too.

The robe Schwartz brought down was soft and thick and very pink, and as he slipped it on she turned on the dryer, ignoring his nakedness. “Do you have something to drink?” he asked.

“I only bought one wine.”

“Just water, Erika. I’m thirsty.”

They went upstairs to the living room, passing the steel door to the panic room, and settled in the darkness. Schwartz made no move to turn on any light. She went to the kitchen and brought out a bottle of Evian, two wineglasses, and her bottle of Riesling. “So,” she said as they each began to drink. “You have come to offer me your wonderful service.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m flush with excitement.”

Milo didn’t launch into it yet. Instead, he said, “I hear Conference Room S is finally in service.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“You did tell me to ask my own people, didn’t you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “A delegation of Americans arrived today. You know what I told Oskar when they arrived with their bright ties and big smiles and vigorous handshakes?”

“What?”

“That we’ve finally learned the value of a girl’s life.”

Milo nodded into his water. “When’s the next delegation due?”

“Monday. They have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Good.”

“Is it?”

Milo examined her heavy, damp cheeks in the light from the street, then noticed that on the cushion beside her hand was a small pistol. She looked exhausted. He said, “Everything stays in this room. Agreed?”

Erika Schwartz shrugged.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, “there was a scare in the department. We had reason to believe there was a double agent working among us.”

“Double agent?” asked Schwartz. “For whom?”

“For the Chinese.”

She waited.

“We followed the clues, but they didn’t add up. Or, they did, but they proved there wasn’t one at all.”

Schwartz waited patiently.

“Now, though, it appears that we were twice fooled. We believe we do have a mole.”

Schwartz appeared unfazed. “We? I heard you had left the CIA.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Sounds like a CIA problem to me.”

“I’m afraid it’s your problem, too, Erika. Which is why I’ve come to you. The Company now has access to a lot more of your secrets than it did a month ago, and, ergo, so do the Chinese.”

“Thanks to a young girl.”

Milo didn’t say a thing.

She said, “Are you here just to deliver bad news?”

“We’d like your help with this problem.”

“We, again. Who is this abstract pronoun, exactly?”

“Myself, and Alan Drummond.”

Schwartz blinked at him, blank, her eyelids a confusion of tiny wrinkles when they closed. Then, even in the darkness, she found a loose hair on the thigh of her slacks and brushed it away. “The CIA employs twenty thousand people-that’s the number it will admit to. Is there really no one else you can go to? Not one?”