Read Online The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer - Free Book Online Page B

him. At this point we’ve just got the basics. Forty-six years old. Kiev University—foreign relations. Joined the secret police when he was twenty-four, then moved into intelligence after the Russians left. Paris was a coup for him—his previous trips were to Moscow, Tallinn, Beijing, and Ashgabat; that’s in Turkmenistan.”
    “I know where Ashgabat is.”
    “Of course you do. But it was news to me.”
    “What rank is he?” Milo asked.
    “Second lieutenant.”
    “Not so bad. Why does he want to leave?”
    “That’s the question, isn’t it?” said Drummond. “According to him, it’s personal gain. He’s being stifled at home, skipped over for promotion, while the new capitalists are making millions. He says capitalism has cheated him. From the looks of his accounts, it’s at least passed him by.” Drummond pursed his lips. “He wants a new life in America, but what does he have to buy it with? Marko’s trips were trade based, and that’s largely what he had for us. Ukrainian trade secrets?” He smiled again. “The man actually thought that would buy him a life in America!”
    Alan Drummond’s mirth lasted a few seconds longer thanexpected, then drained away when he saw his guest wasn’t encouraging it. Milo said, “Well, there’s a reason we’re sitting here talking about him. And it’s not Ukrainian exports.”
    “It’s not,” Drummond muttered. “He spent a while giving us reams of useless information, most of which we had already. He saw we were fading fast. So he panicked and pulled out his wild card. He said that there’s a mole in the Department of Tourism.”
    Silence followed, the engine rumbling beneath them. “Did he actually say those words?” asked Milo.
    “He knew about the department and specified the mole was there.”
    While the department liked to think of itself as existing in a parallel universe of absolute secrecy, Milo knew a few people who had figured out its existence—but they had been allies and friends. “The Ukrainians have someone inside? It’s hard to swallow.”
    Drummond shook his head. “Marko claims it’s a Chinese mole.”
    “Chinese?”
    “The Guoanbu.”
    Milo stared at him.
    “Short for Guojia Anquan Bu, their Ministry for State Security.”
    “I know what the Guoanbu is,” Milo said, irritated. “I’m just confused.”
    Drummond ignored his confusion for the moment. “When he mentioned Tourism, as you can imagine, the agent in charge of his interrogation was baffled. No idea what Marko was talking about. So he went up to the embassy’s security director, who was just as baffled. In fact, he was going to write Marko off as a nut job and dump him somewhere, but to cover his ass he sent a query to Langley. It landed on the assistant director’s desk, and he came directly to me. Gleefully, I might add. A mole is just the kind of thing Ascot would happily use to hang us. So I sent one of ours to talk to him, and we shipped him here.”
    “Why not to the States?”
    “He’ll get there eventually,” said Drummond. “I want you to listen to him first.”
    “Why me?”
    “Because his story concerns you and everything that came raining down last July. And the only thing in the files on it is one single-spaced page that goes out of its way to not say a thing. Which makes me a fucking ignoramus.”
    “Really?” Milo asked, not sure he could trust that Drummond was so ill informed.
    “Believe it,” he said sourly. “Dzubenko has told me a novel compared to the haiku I was handed when I took over.”
    “Wait a minute,” said Milo, raising a hand. “How does a Ukrainian second lieutenant learn about a Chinese mole in a secret CIA department? How does this make any sense?”
    “Luck,” Drummond said. “Over the last few years, the Chinese have been pouring agents into the Ukraine, and Marko spent some time with them. He doesn’t like them very much.”
    “And they told him about their mole? Come on, Alan. Besides, the Chinese almost