the Tiger in Amsterdam. Over the ensuing six years, the man had been spotted and lost in Italy, Germany, the Arab Emirates, Afghani stan, and Israel. Now, he’d been trapped in a last-chance motel near the Mississippi border, turned in by a Louisiana prostitute.
“Nothing more?” he asked the sheriff. “No one else tipped you off? Just the woman?”
The flesh under Wilcox’s chin vibrated. “That’s it. But this guy, Sam Roth … is that even his real name?”
Milo decided that the sheriff deserved something for his hospitality. “Manny, we’re not sure what his name is. Each time he pops up on our radar, it’s different. But his girlfriend might know something. Where’s she now?”
The sheriff toyed with his damp glass, embarrassed. “Back at the motel. Had no cause to keep hold of her.”
“I’ll want her, too.”
“Leslie can pick her up,” Wilcox assured him. “But tell me—your chief said something about this—is that boy really called the Tiger?” “If it’s who we think it is, yes. That’s what he’s called.”
Wilcox grunted his amusement. “Not much of a tiger now. Pussycat, more like. He walks funny, too, kind of weak.”
Milo finished his lemonade, and Wilcox offered more. He could see how the police got hooked on Mrs. Wilcox’s homebrew. “Don’t be fooled, Sheriff. Remember last year, in France?”
“Their president?”
“Foreign minister. And in Germany there was the head of an Islamist group.”
“A terrorist?”
“Religious leader. His car exploded with him in it. And in London that businessman—”
“The one who bought the airline!” Wilcox shouted, happy to know at least this one. “Don’t tell me this joker killed him, too. Three people?”
“Those are the three from last year we can definitely pin on him. He’s been in business at least a decade.” When the sheriff’s brows rose, Milo knew he’d shared enough. No need to terrify the man. “But like I said, Sheriff, I need to talk to him to be sure.”
Wilcox rapped his knuckles on his desk, hard enough to shake the computer monitor. “Well, then. Let’s get you talking.”
The sheriff had moved three drunks and two spousal abusers to the group cell, leaving Samuel Roth alone in a small cinder-block room with a steel door and no window. Milo peered through the door’s barred hatch. A fluorescent tube burned from the ceiling, illuminating the thin cot and aluminum toilet.
To call his search for the Tiger obsessive would have been, according to Grainger, an understatement. In 2001, soon after he’d recovered from his bullet wounds in Vienna and retired from Tourism, Milo decided that while his coworkers devoted themselves to finding the Most Famous Muslim in the World somewhere in Afghani stan, he would spend his time on terrorism’s more surgical arms. Terrorist acts, by definition, were blunt and messy. But when someone like bin Laden or al-Zarqawi needed a specific person taken out, he, like the rest of the world, went to the professionals. In the assassination business, there were few better than the Tiger.
So over the last six years, from his twenty-second-floor cubicle in the Company office on the Avenue of the Americas, he’d tracked this one man through the cities of the world, but never close enough for an arrest.
Now, here he was, the man from that embarrassingly meager file Milo knew so well, sitting comfortably on a cot, his back to the wall and his orange-clad legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. Samuel Roth, or Hamad al-Abari, or Fabio Lanzetti—or five other names they knew of. The assassin didn’t check to see who was peering in at him; he left his arms knotted over his chest as Milo entered.
“Samuel,” Milo said as a deputy locked the door behind him. He didn’t approach, just waited for the man to look at him.
Even in this light, with its harsh shadows and the way it yellowed his skin, Roth’s face recalled the three other photographs back at the office. One from Abu Dhabi, as al-Abari, his features half obscured by a white turban. A second from Milan, as Lanzetti, at a café along the Corso Sempione, talking with a red-bearded man they’d never been able to identify. The third was CCTV footage from outside a mosque in Frankfurt, where he’d planted a bomb under a black Mercedes-Benz. Each remembered image matched these heavy brows and gaunt cheeks, the pitch eyes and high, narrow forehead. Sometimes a mustache or beard hid aspects of the face, but now his only mask was a three-day beard that grew to the top of his cheekbones. His skin was splotchy in this light, peeling from an old sunburn.
Milo remained beside the door. “Samuel Roth—that’s the name we’ll use for now. It’s easy to pronounce.”
Roth only blinked in reply.
“You know why I’m here. It has nothing to do with your problems with women. I want to know why you’re in the United States.”
“Кaк вac зoвут, мудаки?” said Roth.
Milo grimaced. He was going to have to go through the motions. At least a change of language would hide their talk from these Tennessee boys. In Russian, he answered, “I’m Milo Weaver, of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Samuel Roth looked as if that were the funniest name he had ever heard.
“What?”
“Sorry,” Roth said in fluent English. He raised a hand. “Even after all this, I still didn’t expect it to work.” He had the flat, irregular accent of someone who’d absorbed too many.
“What didn’t you expect to work?”
“I’m lucky I even remember you. I forget a lot of things these days.”
“If you don’t answer my questions, I’ll hurt you. I am authorized.”
The prisoner’s eyes widened; they were bloodshot and tired.
“There’s only one reason you’d risk entering the country. Who are you supposed to kill?”
Roth chewed the inside of his cheek, then spoke in a laconic tone: “Maybe you, Company man.”
“We were tracking you since Barcelona—you know that? To Mexico, then Dallas, and that rented car to New Orleans where you picked up your girlfriend. Maybe you just wanted to know if she survived Katrina. You switched to your Italian passport—Fabio Lanzetti—before switching back in Mississippi. Changing names is a nice trick, but it’s not foolproof.”
Roth cocked his head. “You’d know that, wouldn’t you?”
“Would I?”
Samuel Roth wiped his dry lips with his fingers, stifling a cough. When he spoke, he sounded congested. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Milo Weaver—a.k.a. many other names. Alexander.” He pointed at Milo. “That’s the name I know best. Charles Alexander.”
“No
