Zero History

“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.