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Irwin.”
    “The senator knows everything?”
    “Of course. He was the one behind the Sudanese operation.”
    “You know this?”
    “No real evidence, but yes, I know it.”
    A pause. “Senator Irwin’s the only one keeping the department alive. I don’t think we need to worry about him. We can thank him for any operational budget we still enjoy.”
    Milo realized with dismay that the senator was quite possibly Drummond’s government sponsor, the friend who had landed him his new job in Tourism. But all he said was, “Do all these questions have a point? Sir?”
    Drummond cleared his throat. “Look, Hall. I didn’t call you here to play around with you.” He produced a looser smile, to show how human he was. “I called you because you did an excellent job in Berlin. I had my eye on you, you know.”
    “So did the Germans.”
    “You keep saying that. Did they have the German flag plastered across their foreheads?”
    “German haircuts.”
    “Well, I hope they didn’t take useful notes.”
    “I’m sure they didn’t.”
    “Good,” he said, then looked at his hands, which Milo noticed were unusually red. “I knew it was going to be a hard one. For someone like you.”
    “Hard, how?”
    “It being a girl.”
    Milo tried to appear bored. “The job itself was child’s play.”
    “I’m glad you feel that way. And the other job, the financial work?”
    “Should be wrapped up by the end of the week.”
    “Good. Because it raised some eyebrows in Manhattan when you requested that six hundred grand.”
    “You have a pen and paper?”
    “Check the armrest.”
    Milo opened the leather armrest that separated them and found two bottles of Evian, a stereo remote control, and a pen and pad. He wrote down a twenty-one-digit code, and when he handed it to Drummond he wondered what kind of circulation problem caused his redness. Another medical question. “Here’s the account’s IBAN. Money should be there by Thursday. Harry Lynch knows how to withdraw it without leaving fingerprints. Is Harry still around?”
    Drummond looked confused. He still hadn’t learned the names of his underlings at the Avenue of the Americas.
    “Doesn’t matter,” said Milo. “I just need one thing from you.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The name and number of the insurance adjuster working on the E. G. Bührle theft.”
    Drummond got him into focus. “Oh.” He nodded, finally understanding. “Very good. I’ll send that to your phone.” He ripped out the page and folded it into his shirt pocket, thinking this over, then muttered, “It’s a pity.”
    “Pity?”
    “That we have to do this. This kind of thing. But Ascot wants to run Tourism into the ground. Bleeding us, at a time when oil prices are driving airfares into the sky.”
    “So that’s what this is about. Keeping the department running.”
    “We do what we must to stay alive.”
    Milo considered asking if it was worth it, keeping alive a secret department that even Quentin Ascot, the CIA director, wanted to erase. It was a moot question, though: All government departments work on the basic understanding that their existence is enough reason to continue existing. Out the window was the blackness of countryside.
    “You going to tell me where we’re going?”
    Drummond followed his gaze. “Two weeks ago, in Paris, the embassy got a walk-in.”
    “French?”
    “Ukrainian. Name’s Marko Dzubenko. He was in town as part of an entourage for their internal affairs minister. He’d been in town only three days when he came to us.”
    “Employer?”
    “SSU,” he said, referring to the Security Service of Ukraine. “He made no secret of it, particularly once the staff threatened to kick him out of the building. He wanted us to know he was an important defector.”
    “Is he?”
    Drummond shrugged theatrically and settled against the far door. “Only if he’s trustworthy, and for the moment I don’t believe anything he tells us. Not until we know more about