by William Hood
*
Emily turned away from Trosper and crossed the room to a dressing table. “Say what you want to about the war, I like this place. Every bit of the furnishing is authentic … Tyrolean, I guess you would call it.” She dabbed at her makeup with a paper tissue. “What’s she like, Lotte Friesler?”
Trosper looked up from his notes. “She came to us from one of the Pentagon outfits, fifteen years or so ago. Nominally, as a reports officer, one of the experts who deal with product. Her habit of pushing subordinates around was probably a reaction to her own dissatisfaction at not having started out in operations.”
“If operations are such a big thing, why didn’t she insist on a transfer?” Emily said without turning.
It was almost time to leave. Trosper pulled on his jacket. “She signed on just before the curve, a year or so before the Firm — for better or worse — actually began to encourage women to take operational assignments.”
“Why didn’t she change when it did become possible?”
“I suppose she was pretty well established in reports by then, and had begun to develop a reputation as a Soviet expert.” Trosper sniffed. “More likely, when she got right down to it, she didn’t have enough confidence in herself to make the switch.”
Emily sat before the mirror for a few more moments before saying softly, “You know, when I asked about Lotte I didn’t expect an analysis of her as a secret operative. I wanted to know something about her as a person, as a woman. Is she married? Children? Does she have lovers? A mother she’s close to? Is she pretty, plain, striking, perhaps a jolie laide? Or is she really just a creature of your precious racket?” Trosper winced. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have jumped at you about Mauthausen, it’s not your fault the Austrians are such master opportunists that some of the press seems to assume that Austria was on the Allied side during the war.” He stuffed his notes into his breast pocket. “Talking about Lotte that way was just a flashback to the days when my first thought about anyone was how they might be fitted into the racket. It’s a habit I thought I’d kicked … ” He shook his head. “As far as I know, Lotte was never married, never had children.” He offered a conciliatory smile. “I’m quite sure about a mother, but now that I think about it, I can’t recall any gossip about boyfriends.”
Trosper’s habit of bracing himself before an operation was less grand than that prescribed in the training courses as the final review of objectives and sorting out of priorities. He needed time to quiet himself and to still the anxiety he had come to recognize as a form of stage fright. Much as he enjoyed Emily’s company, he was not accustomed to have anyone with him when he was traveling on operational business. He was even less in the habit of answering questions.
“Mike Grogan and James Russell Widgery will be coming by any minute,” he said. “I’ve booked a table for you all downstairs.” He pulled on his trench coat, and bent to kiss Emily’s cheek. “If you must have the truth,” he said so softly it was as if he were speaking to himself, “I never liked Lotte very much.”
17
Salzburg
That afternoon, when Trosper telephoned Lotte, she had been blunt. “No, I do not want to come into town for dinner with you,” she said. “I eat early. If you like, you can come here after dinner. I’m in the Gaisbergstrasse, not all that far from the Hirsch, but you’ll want a taxi. Get a pencil, I’ll give you directions.” Lotte’s cool response had not moved Trosper to ask if Grogan might come along.
Now, as he hitched up the collar of his trench coat against the light, near-freezing rain, Trosper was reminded that his first and most lasting impression of Salzburg, and the entire Salzkammergut for that matter, was its miserable weather. He must have glimpsed the sun there on some occasion, but as he paid the cab driver, and hurried along the shrub-lined walk to the low, two-story building, he could not remember any such day.
There would be four small apartments, he guessed, in the building that according to the mock-Gothic lettering above the door had been constructed in “Anno Domini MCMXLII,” the high tide of Hitler’s empire. But unless the construction had begun early in the year, Trosper reminded himself, only a well-connected Nazi would have been in a position to obtain building materials in Austria. For by December 1942 the tide had turned, and a quarter of a million German troops were trapped at Stalingrad. Salzburg was an odd locale for Lotte to have chosen as a retirement hideaway. The city was choked with visitors during the music festival and throughout the lingering tourist season. Lonely in winter, expensive in any season, Salzburg’s baroque charm was not enough to erase an aspect too reminiscent of the area’s past. He rang Lotte’s bell.
“The call — and from you of all people — was a complete surprise,” she said. “I’ve been led to believe that you wouldn’t use a telephone to order up a taxi.”
In Trosper’s view, Lotte had rarely been led to believe anything. “It’s the devil’s own device,” he said as they shook hands. She had the grip of a tennis professional, was shorter than he remembered, and, perhaps because she was so thin, seemed younger.
In the moments it took for his eyes to adjust to the light, the room appeared to have a sort of eclectic coherence. But as Trosper peeled off his soggy coat, his vision cleared. The merciless, white painted walls exposed every facet of the hotchpotch of chunky, peasant-style chairs and stools that clashed with the occasional pale, smoothly turned, Swedish modern pieces, the kind that Trosper always assumed belonged in an office, preferably not his own. At the far end of the room, a potbellied fireplace bulged from the wall. A leather sling chair was at one side, and a roomy, chintz-upholstered bergère at the other. Between the two, a Swedish teak-framed sofa rested on spindly legs. Behind the sofa, a handsomely carved peasant Treuhe lay like an ornate wooden coffin. Bookshelves, tightly packed with German, French, and English volumes, ranged along the far wall. At the other side of the room, and beneath a chest-high picture window, four squat, carved chairs ringed a massive dining table. Along the back wall a narrow table sagged under trim stacks of magazines and journals. Two expensive speakers, a high-tech tuner, record player, and cassette deck were wedged beneath the table. Aside from the books and audio gear, there was nothing in the room that suggested Lotte’s presence.
Trosper surrendered his trench coat and dripping hat. Lotte moved to hang them in the narrow hallway, and bent over the radio to lower the volume. “I didn’t think it was possible to tire of Mozart, but after all these months here I’m not so sure,” she said, turning to face Trosper. “A drink? Something to make it easier for you to segue into business — this is business, isn’t it?”
“A glass of wine, something local if you have it.”
“Come off it, Alan. Have some scotch.” Lotte knelt to lift the cover of the Treuhe. “This is the only piece of real furniture I’ve bought here, and may be the only time a two-hundred-year-old blanket chest has ever served as a liquor cabinet.” She freed a half-filled bottle of bourbon, checked the label, and thrust it aside in favor of an even larger vessel of vodka. “Third time lucky,” she said, as she brought an unopened bottle of scotch to the light. “There’s no cognac left, I’m afraid, but I’m not so broke I can’t provide a little whiskey.” She poured a generous drink and gestured toward the kitchen. “Ice? Water?”
“A little ice and some Sprudel if it’s handy, please.”
“No thanks to that charlatan Dwyer, but I’ve managed to hang on to my reserve commission,” she explained as she added the soda water to Trosper’s drink. “I’m still only Major Friesler, but I do get to stock up on essentials at the PX when I do my active duty in Heidelberg.” She handed Trosper the glass and poured vodka for herself.
As he watched Lotte move about the apartment, Trosper realized that although he had for years recognized her as a familiar figure, and had accepted her reputation as a part of tribal lore, it was not until Emily’s rebuke that he had ever given any thought to her as an individual with a personal life that existed in a dimension
beyond her work. Even his reading of Lotte’s personnel file, with its detailed curriculum vitae, had focused on her role in the Firm and security history. Now, all he recalled of her background was that she was one of two children born late in the life of their parents, both tenured professors at a midwestern university. She had taken a degree in history and modern languages — Russian and German — at that university, and a graduate degree at the University of Chicago.
He wondered if he had always sensed there was a missing aspect to Lotte, a part of her personality he had never recognized. She was about five-five, and slim as a photographer’s model. But for Trosper slim was a word that had pleasant, feminine associations, akin to slender, willowy, and even lissome. Now, as he watched Lotte add wood to the fireplace, he realized she was not so much slim as wiry. Her black hair showed no touch of gray. She wore it pulled straight back and drawn close to her head as if to accentuate her prominent nose. He wondered idly whether her brunette coloring, pointed up by the pale lipstick she affected, was perpetually tanned by the sun, or merely makeup. For a moment Trosper felt a twinge of pity. He had known Lotte as a work-obsessed woman, a person whose life seemed rimmed by her profession and its ramifications. Her abrupt banishment from the racket could only have been punishment indeed.
For all this, Lotte was also known as a bitch on wheels, relentlessly demanding of any subordinate she deemed less than dedicated. Incidents akin to cruelty marked her treatment of younger women. But she knew her job, her memory was famous, and unlike many of the analysts whose work kept them behind a desk, she had acquired a measure of operational judgment.
Drink in hand, Lotte poked at the embers and added a stick of wood to the fireplace as carefully as if the fire were an art form. After a moment of prudent consideration, and a final, thoughtful thrust, she laid the poker aside.
Lotte dropped into the leather sling chair, crossed her legs, and took a sip of vodka. “I take it this is business?”
Trosper was silent, his attention wandering.
“Speak up, Alan,” she said sharply. “Is this business?”
“Duff Whyte asked me to talk to you.”
Lotte took another swallow of vodka, raised both eyebrows and smiled skeptically. “And about time … ”
“I’ve spoken to Roger Folsom and Alex Findley in San Francisco.”
“Red Roger telephoned me from Vienna, he said he’d had dinner with you in London.”
“Duff wants to … ” He paused, groping for an expression innocuous enough not to rile Lotte. “Duff wants to rationalize … ” He winced and stifled a curse at the half-forgotten slang that had slipped out. “That is, I mean, to resolve the Troika business.”
Lotte cocked her head and pursed her lips ironically before saying, “As I recall it, rationalize was one of our junk phrases, a bit of cynical cant, meaning either to resolve quickly or to kick under the rug. Which is it he has in mind?”
“Duff wouldn’t have sent me here if all he wanted was to deep-six one of Dwyer’s legacies, and I wouldn’t have got involved if that was all he was after.”
“Then what is it you’re here for?”
“I already have Roger Folsom’s views of the interrogation, and Findley’s as well as … ”
“Interrogation my backside,” Lotte interrupted. “Pure Disney World. By the time they had been at it for a few hours they were completely lost. After two sessions, it was perfectly clear that the interrogation team thought their source had overheard — that’s the word — some gossip by a couple of Moscow Center hot shots about an important agent in the Firm. In another hour or so it was transparently obvious to me that their source was none other than that seedy charmer, Volin. Before they were through, I had a wilder notion … ” Her voice trailed off as she peered intently at Trosper.
He waited before saying, “What notion was that, Lotte?”
“That Comrade Sleaze, Volin if you prefer, had made no such charge … ”
“But Volin did make the allegation,” Trosper said.
“You disappoint me,” Lotte sniffed. “You’ve been around too long to buy junk like that. Even before Volin was brought to the States, I’d read every word of his early questioning in Munich. What’s more, I sat in on two of the initial debriefings when he first arrived in Washington. Never once did he even hint that he had any serious security poop beyond what he dumped on Charlotte Mills. She was Volin’s only claim to fame — until he was selected and trained to handle her, he was nothing but a low-level swan, a gigolo. A bastard trained to prey on women.”
“All right,” Trosper said. “You’re all three in agreement about the quality of the investigation. What about the charge?”
“You mean, am I actually a Moscow Center agent?”
“I mean, what do you make of Volin’s allegations?”
“I think he was mishandled by his debriefers,” Lotte said dryly.
“You’ve all three made that point … ”
Lotte shook her head in anger. “When Dwyer learned that I’d been ‘allowed’ to participate in the questioning, he let it be known that Volin was such a prize he could only be handled by men, certainly not a ‘susceptible’ woman.”
She paused, apparently aware she was speaking too rapidly to mask her emotion, and took another sip of vodka. “After all,” she said, nodding her head several times to underline her next observation, “he was a trained stud, like some damned dog used to service timid bitches. Dwyer’s assumption was that I couldn’t spend half an hour in Volin’s presence without tearing off my clothes. So I sent Ed Meachum to represent my office, and just listened to the tapes.”
“It’s not the worst way to monitor an interrogation,” Trosper said softly.
“Baloney!” said Lotte. “The only good thing about monitoring a debriefing and not being able to jump in is that you don’t have to look your best — if you remember that old joke.”
“What makes you think Volin didn’t make the allegation about the penetration of the Firm?”
“As I said, he never mentioned it in the early debriefings when he was trying hard to impress us, even when the interrogators asked about any other operations he might know about,” she said.
“You’re not suggesting that he simply forgot to mention it?”
“Not at all, not foxy Volin … ”
“I scarcely have to remind you, Lotte, that defectors have been known to withhold data for later use, just to ensure they’re kept on the payroll … ”
“Really, Alan!” She took a sip of vodka. “It was only after he made the first, rather general allegation, and was brought back for further interrogation, that things changed. Two or three times when the interrogators were reading from prepared questions, they made references to a ‘high-level’ hostile penetration, but never once did they refer to this fantastic agent as being in the Firm.”
“So?”
“Then, overnight, from one day to the next, they suddenly began acting as if it were a simple matter of fact that the source was a well-placed member of the Firm.”
Trosper shrugged. He had read the file carefully, but had not noticed this instant transition in the transcript covering Volin’s first disclosure of the allegation.
“At one point I was so fed up,” Lotte said, “I actually suggested to the dope who was questioning me that maybe their source — I knew perfectly well it was Volin, but I never admitted it to the interrogators — was having a little fun with the guys who were questioning him. Volin damned well knew what a storm he’d stir up if he referred to an important agent and then solemnly allowed it to be drawn out of him that although he didn’t actually know, he’d always assumed that the agent was in the Firm.”
Lotte got up to stir the fire. “If there was anything at all to the gossip Volin allegedly heard, there was no reason to assume it necessarily involved the Firm,” she said. “You know how important it is for an interrogator not to lead a source. My guess is that late in the game and after Volin had so conveniently remembered hi
s allegation, one of the interrogators jumped up and shouted, ‘You mean in the Firm?’ That would have been more than enough to convince Volin — who was not stupid — that he’d struck pay dirt. Maybe when he said it, he was so panicked at the thought we were about to let him go, to resettle him somewhere, that he decided on the spot that there’d be a lot more interest if he said the source was in the Firm.”
“What about the meeting places that the source specified?” Trosper asked. “He was quite specific about the dates and places.”
“If he hadn’t thought the thing through, he probably just pulled the approximate dates and places of the alleged meetings out of his hat … ” Lotte grimaced. “Thanks to those damned computers being able to relate everything to everything else, he hit on places where in the whole bloody Firm only one of the three of us might conceivably have been meeting someone from Moscow — no matter that half a hundred other Americans might have been in the same areas at the same moment.”
Lotte got up. “Another drink?” She walked back to the Treuhe.
“A half,” Trosper said. “Just a half … ”
Lotte slipped back into the sling chair. “Dates and places,” she said heavily. “You can bet that I’ve given that some thought. The places were specific, the dates, as best I could understand it, were only approximate, but always on Sunday, or a holiday. At least that’s the most I could gather that they had on me. First, Ferney-Voltaire, a skip and a jump from Geneva. No doubt about it. I’d been sent out on TDY to handle the documents being filched by Jeep, a nutty little Bulgarian secretary Bill Torrey had recruited. She was having an affair with Ivan Borosov, one of their senior trade delegates, a regular at all the U.N. trade conferences. Because he worked late — usually on a couch with Jeep in the ambassador’s office — and was so senior, he had the keys and combinations to the vault room and the master safe. He was also bone lazy — in a week Jeep had the combinations, the keys, and the job of locking up. About that time, Jeep realized she wasn’t the only secretary Ivancho was fooling around with and she needed a shoulder to cry on. Torrey had me take her over. We pretty well looted the office by the time Borosov went back to Sofia.”