Milo stared back, wondering if he should call this next part one of the lies or an omission. Sometimes the distinctions were baffling. "No. I knew that your involvement couldn't explain all the secrecy. Tom wasn't in league with you."

"Right. He was in league with the Tiger."

"Which is why it took so long to figure out," Milo explained. "Grainger gave me the file to put, me off the scent; he wanted me sniffing in your direction."

Fitzhugh seemed satisfied with this.

It went on, Fitzhugh cutting in frequently for clarification, or to feign confusion. When Milo said he'd stayed on in Paris because of his suspicions, Fitzhugh said, "But you'd seen Einner's evidence. You saw the pictures."

"Yes, but what did they prove? Was she feeding Herbert Williams information, or was Williams feeding her information? Or was she being unwittingly pulled into someone else's game? Or was Williams spying on her to keep track of her investigation? Or was she actually guilty, and the man in the red beard just happened to be running both the Tiger and Angela, selling information to the Chinese? If so, who did he represent? It wasn't a single-person operation. Maybe the Chinese ran Herbert Williams as well."

"It's a goddamned Chinese puzzle."

"It sure is."

Fitzhugh answered his buzzing phone. He nodded to the caller, grunted a few times, then hung up. "Listen. It's been a long day, and you've done extremely well. We can delve deeper into the conspiracy tomorrow, okay?" He patted the table-his side, the clean side. "Excellent day's work."

"Then maybe I can get some food," said Milo.

"Sure. We'll also find you some clothes," Fitzhugh promised as he pushed back his chair and stood, smiling. "I really am pleased. And the details-they put a human face on all this miserable stuff. Tomorrow, I think, we should get a little more of that human face. Tina, for instance. Maybe we can discuss how you two are getting along. How things are with your darling stepdaughter."

"Daughter," Milo said.

"What?"

"Daughter. Not stepdaughter."

"Right." Fitzhugh raised his hands in an expression of defeat. "Whatever you say, Milo."

As his inquisitor left the room, Milo remembered Primakov's instructions. Three lousy lies, Milo. You've lived your whole life lying, why change now?

"I don't want you to be scared," Janet Simmons had whispered when Tina returned home. "We've located your grandfather-in-law, Milo's maternal grandfather, and I think it's only right you come along."

"That's impossible. They're all dead."

"Well, there's only one way to find out for sure."

Now, in a twin-engine Spirit Airlines flight from LaGuardia to Myrtle Beach, Tina held on to Stephanie, who had insisted on a window seat.

For her daughter, the sudden shift in agenda was exciting. An overnight trip to the beach, they'd called it. Christ, Little Miss was a good sport. How much had she suffered since two weeks ago, when, at Disney World, she'd woken to find a Homeland Security thug in her bedroom, looking for her father, who had suddenly disappeared? Why should she have to deal with any of this?

"How you doing, hon?"

Stephanie yawned into her cupped hand, staring at the leaden clouds. "I'm a little tired.”

“Me, too."

"Are we really going on vacation?"

"Sort of. A short one. I just need to talk to someone. After that we can chill out on the beach. Sound all right?"

She shrugged in a way that worried Tina, but said, "Why's she coming?"

"You don't like Ms. Simmons?" Tina asked while, across the aisle, Simmons punched at her BlackBerry. "I don't think she likes Dad."

A good sport, and smart to boot. Smarter, perhaps, than her mother.

Again, she wondered why she had agreed to this sudden trip. Did she really trust Special Agent Janet Simmons? Not entirely, but the carrot was too great: to finally meet a member of Milo's family. It was less about trust than curiosity. Really.

They landed a little before eight, and Tina roused Stephanie as they descended. From the window, they saw darkness marked by pinpoints of light that died out with the coastline. They weren't met by any special agents in the Myrtle Beach airport, and Simmons even had to take care of her own rental Taurus. She got driving directions from her BlackBerry.

It was Thursday evening, but it was also the height of summer, and they passed open-topped jeeps full of horny, shirtless college boys in knee-length shorts and stupid baseball caps, waving tallboys of Miller and Bud. Smiling at their attention, bottle-blondes gave them reasons to holler. Music spilled out from the clubs, though all they heard was the monotone thumpa-thumpa throb of dance music rhythms.

The Covenant Towers, nestled in a lush, wooded area on the north side of town, wasn't far from the beach, and it consisted of two long, five-story towers separated by grass and trees. "Pretty," Stephanie judged from her seat.

According to Deirdre Shamus, the pink-cheeked, perky director who had stayed beyond her regular shift to find out exactly why Homeland Security was interested in one of their residents, Covenant Towers was not a "nursing home," though medical facilities were on-site. "We encourage independence here."

William T. Perkins lived on the first floor of Tower Two, and Shamus brought them all the way to his door, greeting every resident they passed with overwrought enthusiasm. Finally, they stopped at number fourteen, a studio apartment. Shamus knocked, intoning, "Mr. Perkins! Your visitors have arrived!"

"Hold your fucking horses!" said an angry, rough voice.

Suddenly, Tina worried about Stephanie. What was behind this door? Her great-grandfather, maybe-she still couldn't quite believe that Milo wouldn't have known about him, and if he knew, he certainly would have told her. But what kind of man was he? She pulled Ms. Shamus aside. "Is there a place Stef can wait? I'm not sure I want her in there with us."

"Oh, Mr. Perkins is a firecracker, but he's-"

"Really," Tina insisted. "Like, a television room?"

"There's one down the hall.

"Thanks." To Simmons: "Be right back."

She walked Stephanie down three doors, and on the right found a room that held three sofas and a La-Z-Boy and seven elderly people staring at a rerun of Murder, She Wrote.

"Hon, you mind waiting here a little while?"

Stephanie waved Tina closer. "It smells here," she whispered.

"But can you take it? For me?"

Stephanie made a face to show just how bad it smelled, but nodded. "Not for long."

"Any problems, we'll be in room fourteen. Got it?"

On her walk back-number fourteen was now open, both Shamus and Simmons inside-Tina had a flash of paranoia. It was the kind of paranoia she'd lived with ever since Milo fled Disney World, ever since her own world had become populated by inquisitors and security agencies.

The paranoia spoke to her in Milo's voice: "This is how it goes down, Tina. Listen. They get you to send the child away. When you're done with your chat, the child's gone. Just vanished. The old people, they'll be on medication; they won't know what's happened. Simmons won't actually tell you she's got Stephanie. No. It'll all be inference and suggestion. But you'll be made to understand that she's got this document, a little thing. She'd like you to read it out for a camera. It'll say that your husband is a thief and a traitor and a murderer and please put him away for life. Do that, she'll say, and we might be able to track down dear Stephanie."

But it was just paranoia, she told herself. Just that.

She paused at the open door and looked in. Shamus was full of smiles, preparing to leave, and Simmons was settled on a chair beside a hairless, shriveled man in a wheelchair, his narrow face misshapen by age. His eyes were magnified by large, black-rimmed spectacles. The special agent beckoned her in, and the old man smiled, showing off yellowed dentures. "Meet William Perkins, Tina. William, this is Tina Weaver, your granddaughter-in-law."