Zero History (30 page)

“We’re not a big agency. I’m covered for a hundred and thirty-six dollars per day, meals and incidentals. More for a hotel, but here, not really enough. This is the most expensive place I’ve ever seen.”

“But you’re a special agent.”

“Not
that
kind of special. And I’ve already got pressure going on, from my boss.”

“You do?”

“He doesn’t see the cooperation via the legate and the Brits going anywhere. And he’s right, it isn’t. He isn’t crazy about me running around London on per diem, conducting investigations outside U.S. territory, without the proper coordination. He wants me back.”

“You’re leaving?”

“That’s bad for you?” She looked as though she were about to laugh.

“I don’t know,” he said, “is it?”

“Relax,” she said, “you aren’t rid of me that easily. I’m supposed to go home and work through the FBI to get the Brits on board, which would be slow as molasses even if it worked. The guy I’ve got the really serious hard-on for, though, he’d be gone anyway.” Thinking about this person, Milgrim noticed, made her eyes look beady, and that brought back his initial reaction to her in Covent Garden. “Recruiting a U.S. citizen in the U.K. is okay,” she said, “but interacting with non-U.S. citizens, in furtherance of a criminal investigation or a national security matter? Not so much.”

“No?” Milgrim had the feeling, somehow, that he’d just penetrated some worryingly familiar modality, one that felt remarkably like a drug deal. Things were going seriously
transactional
. He looked around at the other diners. One of them, seated alone, was reading a book. It was that kind of place.

“If I did that,” she said, “the Brits would get very upset. Fast.”

“I guess you wouldn’t want that.”

“Neither would you.”

“No.”

“Your tasking is about to get a lot more specific.”

“Tasking?”

“How’s your memory?”

“The past ten years or so, nonlinear. I’m still putting it together.”

“But if I tell you a story, a fairly complicated one, now, you’d retain the general outline, and some of the detail?”

“Hubertus says I’m good with detail.”

“And you won’t inflate it, distort it, make up crazy shit when you tell it to someone else later?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because that’s what the people we tend to work with do.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re pathological liars, narcissists, serial imposters, alcoholics, drug addicts, chronic losers, and shitbirds. But you’re not going to be like that, are you?”

“No,” said Milgrim.

The waitress arrived with their bowls of pho.

“Curriculum vitae,” she said, and blew on her pho, the shaved beef still bright pink. “Forty-five years old.”

“Who is?”

“Just listen. 2004, he resigns his commission, fifteen years an officer in the U.S. Army. Rank of major. Last ten years of that, he was with First Special Forces Group in Okinawa, Fort Lewis near Tacoma. Spent most of his career deploying in Asia. Lots of experience in the Philippines. After 9/11, he does deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. But
before
the Army figures out how to do counterinsurgency. Resigns because he’s a classic self-promoter. Believes he has a good chance at striking it rich as a consultant.”

Milgrim listened intently, methodically sipping broth from the white china spoon. It gave him something to do, and that was very welcome.

“2005 through 2006, he tries to get work as a civilian contractor with CIA, interrogations and whatnot.”

“Whatnot?”

She nodded, gravely. “They see, to their credit, that his talents and expertise don’t really go that way. He knocks around the Gulf region for two years, pitching security consulting services for oil companies, other big corporations in Saudi, UAE, Kuwait. Tries to get his foot in the door as a consultant with the rich Arab governments, but by this time the big dogs in that industry are up and running. No takers.”

“This is Foley?”

“Who’s Foley?”

“The man who followed us in Paris.”

“Did he look forty-five to you? You might not make such a good informant after all.”

“Sorry.”

“2006 to present. This is where it gets good. Going back to what he knew best before 9/11, he exploits old contacts in the Philippines and Indonesia. Moves his business to Southeast Asia, which is a gold mine for him. The big companies are more focused on the Middle East at this point, and smaller operators can pick up more cash in Southeast Asia. He starts by doing the same security consulting work for corporate clients in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Hotel chains, banks … He games the political connections of those corporate clients into consulting work for those governments. Now he’s teaching tactics, counterinsurgency strategies, which he’s maybe only barely qualified to do. Interrogation, which he’s not qualified to do. And more. Whatnot. Instructing police units, probably the military too, and here’s where he starts to seriously get into arms procurement.”

“Is that illegal?”

“Depends how you do it.” She shrugged. “Of course, he also has some former service buddies working for him by this point. While he’s teaching tactics, he’s also specifying the equipment these outfits will need. He starts small, outfitting counterterrorist police squads with special weapons and body armor. Stuff sourced from American companies where he has ties of friendship. But if general officers of these countries’ militaries get visibility on what he’s doing, and get a chubby from it, which some of them are highly disposed to do, and are also impressed by his Rambo routine, your classic multitalented American commando but with more business acumen, they can start talking to him about equipment needed by their militaries’ conventional forces.” She put her spoon down. “So here’s where we start talking real money.”

“He’s selling arms?”

“Not quite. He becomes a hookup artist. He’s hooking up deals with contacts in the United States, people who work for companies that build tactical vehicles, UAVs, EOD robots, mine detection and removal equipment …” She sat back, picking up her spoon again. “And uniforms.”

“Uniforms?”

“What did your Blue Ant guys think they’d picked up on in South Carolina?”

“An Army contract?”

“Right, but the wrong army. At this point, anyway. And at this point, the man I’ve just described to you regards your employers as direct and aggressive competitors. Those pants are his first shot at contracting equipment himself. He won’t just be the hookup.”

“I don’t like the way this sounds,” Milgrim said.

“Good. What you need to remember, with these guys, is that they don’t
know
they’re con men. They’re wildly overconfident. Omnipotence, omniscience—that’s part of the mythology that surrounds the Special Forces. I had those guys hitting on me every last day in Baghdad.” She held up her fist, showing Milgrim her plain gold wedding band. “Your guy can walk in the door and promise training in something he personally doesn’t know how to do, and not even realize he’s bullshitting about his own capabilities. It’s a special kind of gullibility, a kind of psychic tactical equipment, that he had installed during training. The Army put him through
schools
that promised to teach him how to do
everything
, everything that matters. And he believed them. And that’s who your Mr. Bigend has interested in his ass today, if not seriously after it.”

Milgrim swallowed. “So who’s Foley?

“The designer. You can’t make uniforms without a designer. He was at Parsons, the New School for Design.”

“In New York?”

“Kind of doubt he fit in. But never mind him. Michael Preston Gracie’s who I’m after.”

“The major? I don’t understand what it is he’s done.”

“Crimes that involve lots of official acronyms. Crimes that would take me all night to explain accurately. I hunt in an underbrush of regulations. But the good thing about these guys, for me, is that the smaller the transgression, the sloppier they’ll handle it. I watch the underbrush for twigs they’ve broken. That was Dermo, in this case.”

“Dermo?”

“D-R-M-O. Defense Reutilization and Marketing Offices. They sell off old equipment. He manipulates old Army buddies. Illegally. Equipment’s sold on to foreign entities, be they companies or governments. ICE notices a shipment, all curiously shiny-new. No ITAR violations but they note the shiny, the new. I look into it, turns out those radios were never meant to be sent to DRMO at all. Look a little closer and the DRMO buy wasn’t right either. See he’s involved in lots of these purchases, lots of contracts. Nothing huge, but the money seriously adds up. Those pants of yours look to me like the start of a legitimization phase. Like he’s started listening to lawyers. Might even be a money-laundering angle there. What did I tell you his name was?”

“Gracie.”

“First name?”

“Peter.”

“I’ll give you a mnemonic: Elvis, Graceland.”

“ ‘Elvis, Graceland’?”

“Preston, Gracie. Presley, Graceland. What’s his name?”

“Preston Gracie.
Mike
.”

She smiled.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Tell Bigend.”

“But then he’ll know about you.”

“Only as much as you tell him. If we were back in the States, I’d play this another way. But you’re my only resource here, and I’m out of time. Tell Bigend there’s this hard-ass federal agent who wants him made aware of Gracie. Bigend has money, connections, lawyers. If Gracie fucks with him, let’s make sure he knows who to fuck back
at
.”

“You’re doing what Bigend does,” Milgrim said, more accusingly than he intended. “You’re just doing this
to see what happens
.”

“I’m doing it,” she said, “because I find myself in a position to. Maybe, somehow, it’ll cause Michael Preston Gracie to fuck up. Or get fucked up. Sadly, it’s just a gesture. A gesture in the face of the shitbird universe, on behalf of my ongoing frustration with its inhabitants. But you need to tell Bigend, fast.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got Gracie’s flight schedule on APIS, via CBP. He’s on his way here. Atlanta by way of Geneva. Looks like he’s laying over for a meeting there, four hours on the ground. Then he’s into Heathrow.”

“And you’re leaving?”

“It’s a piss-off, but yeah. And my kids and husband miss me. I’m homesick. I guess it’s time.” She put down her spoon, switching to chopsticks. “Tell Bigend. Tonight.”

T
hanks for meeting on such short notice,” said Meredith Overton, seated in the armchair directly beneath the rack of narwhale tusks. She wore a tweed jacket that might have come from Tanky & Tojo, if they cut things for women. She’d phoned on Hollis’s way back from her meeting with Bigend, in the strange, high, surgically clean silver pickup driven by Aldous, one of the tall black minders.

“It’s perfect timing,” Hollis said. “I’ve just seen him. He’d be delighted to have a team of Blue Ant researchers look for your shoes.”

“Provided I give him the identity of the Gabriel Hounds designer.”

“Yes,” said Hollis.

“I can’t,” said Meredith. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You can’t?”

“Sorry. Attack of conscience. Well, not an attack. My conscience is in fairly decent shape. That’s the problem. I was trying to do a run around it, because I want my shoes. George and I were up all night, discussing it, and it became apparent that it’s just not something I’m willing to do. George agrees, of course. As much as he wants your advice about working with Inchmale.”

“He has that,” Hollis said. “I thought I’d made that clear, in Paris. I’m a one-woman sisterhood that way. Counseling the stricken.”

Meredith smiled. The Italian girl arrived with coffee. It was something like the cocktail hour now, Hollis supposed, and the room, while not crowded, was filling with a peculiar murmur, leaning by undetectable increments toward the later evening’s full rout. “That’s kind of you,” Meredith said. “Do you know Japan?”

“Tokyo, mainly. We played there. Huge venues.”

“I went there when I was putting my second season together. The first season, all the shoes had been leather. I was more comfortable with that. For the second season, I wanted to do some in fabric. A classic summer sneaker. I needed some kind of artisanal canvas. Dense, long-wearing, but a great hand. Special.”

“Hand?”

“How it feels, to the touch. Someone had suggested I talk to this couple in Nagoya. They had an atelier there, above a little warehouse on the outskirts of a place called Ichinomiya. I can tell you that because they’re no longer there. They were making jeans there, in deadstock fabric from a mill in Okayama. Depending on the length of the roll, they might get three pairs of jeans, they might get twenty, and once the roll was gone, it was gone. I’d heard they’d also been buying canvas from that same mill, Sixties stuff. I wanted to see it and, if it was good, talk them into selling me a few rolls. They’d tried it for jeans, but it was too heavy. They were lovely people. There were stacks of samples of their jeans. Old photographs of American men in workwear. All of their machines were vintage, except the one they used for riveting. They had a German Union Special chain-stitching machine. A 1920s belt-loop machine.” She smiled. “Designers become machine nerds. Machines define what you can do. That and finding the right operators for them.” She added sugar to her black coffee, stirred it. “So I’m up in the loft, very top of the building, where they had these rolls of canvas, on shelves, lots of them. They’re all different, the light’s not great, and I realize I’m not alone. The Japanese couple are downstairs, on the second floor, making jeans, and they haven’t said anything about anyone else being there. I can hear the machines they’re using. Below them, there’s a place that makes cardboard cartons. They have machines too, a sort of distant thumping undertone. But I can hear a woman singing, like she’s singing to herself. Not loud. But close. From toward the back of the building. Up in the loft, with me. The jeans people haven’t said anything about anybody else, but they barely speak English. Absolute focus on their work. They make two or three pairs a day, just the two of them. Self-taught. So I put the roll I’m looking at back on the shelf. Old metal shelves, about four feet deep, and I follow the sound of her singing.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And at the very back of the loft, there’s light, good light, over a table. Actually it’s a hollow-core door, on a couple of big cardboard cartons. She’s working on a pattern. Big sheets of tissue, pencils. Singing. Black jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of those jackets you’re wearing. She looks up, sees me, stops singing. Dark hair, but she’s not Japanese. Sorry, I say, I didn’t know anyone was here. That’s okay, she says, American accent. Asks me who I am. I tell her, and tell her I’m there to look at canvas. What for? Shoes, I tell her. Are you a designer? Yes, I say, and show her the ones I’m wearing. Which are my shoes, from the first season, cowhide, from the Horween factory, Chicago, big white vulcanization, like deck shoes, but really they’re like the very first skate shoes, the ones the first Vans took off from. And she smiles at me, and steps out from behind the table, so I can see she’s wearing them, the same shoes, my shoes, but in the black. And she tells me her name.”