The Double Game

by Dan Fesperman

  “I’ve been thinking about Lothar,” Dad said. “It would be a mistake to regard him as a malign influence. If you ever manage to pin him down, he might even be able to help.”

  “All he’s done so far is give me the creeps. Why was he on the train?”

  “It’s your handler that gives me the creeps. He certainly doesn’t mind putting you in harm’s way.”

  “True. But maybe he was also our guardian angel.”

  “It certainly seems that way. All the embassy knew was that someone had intervened on your behalf. They didn’t know who or why.”

  “But why would he have someone plant the Semyonov book next to the body?”

  Then I told them about the marked passage. Litzi seemed to shiver.

  “I’m sorry if all of this is stirring up unpleasant memories,” Dad said.

  She nodded, smiling appreciatively. Maybe this was my opening to finally clear the air, with Dad along as a sort of mediator.

  “Litzi, this morning Dad mentioned something about what happened after you and I came home from Berlin, right before I moved away.”

  Dad shot me daggers but I couldn’t stop now. He lowered his head in apparent embarrassment as I plowed forward.

  “He said it was no big deal, but how come you never told me that you’d spied on us?”

  Litzi looked at me, then at Dad, who shook his head slowly.

  “My fault entirely,” he said. “I tried telling him it was harmless and understandable, but obviously that wasn’t good enough for him.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I should have said something. I’ve always been ashamed of it. But I also have to say that if I had to do it over again I would not change a thing. You weren’t in that room to hear what they said. Your father hadn’t spent half his life telling you about those kinds of people and what they were willing to do.”

  “Really, Litzi,” Dad said, “you don’t need to explain. Bill was too young, too sheltered. He had his nose in too many books.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said, a little irritated with both of them.

  Dad stood.

  “I need to use the men’s room,” he said. “You two hash it out however you like, but you don’t owe me any explanations, Litzi.”

  She seemed grateful for the gesture, and, counter to expectations, his departure helped dissipate the tension between us.

  “Well?” I said. “What really happened back then?”

  “You know the worst of it. They threatened my family. They talked about holding me in East Germany until my father agreed to repatriate. I never really believed they would do it, but the uncertainty is what finally gets you. That and the number of times they repeated it, over and over, in that awful little room in Bad Schandau. That terrible man and his stupid Russian sidekick.”

  “Sidekick? The German in the brown coat was the only one I spoke to.”

  “They swore me to secrecy about the Russian. I was never to mention him to you or your father. Not that he ever told me a name.”

  “They brought up my father with you?”

  “He’s mostly what they wanted to talk about, once they finished scaring me with threats and browbeating. And by then the Russian was doing all the talking.”

  “What did they want to know?”

  “What he was like. Who he knew. They asked if I’d been in your house, what I’d seen there, what his habits were like.”

  “His habits?”

  “How often he came and went. Especially at night. If he ever left through the back of his building. I told them I didn’t know. ‘Well, then, find out!’ he said.” She paused, picking up her glass, then realizing it was empty. “They asked me to go through his things.”

  “Jesus, Litzi.”

  “I told them I was too scared. I made up things about how mean your father was, and what a terrible temper he had. So they said to wait until I was alone in the house with you. I said my parents wouldn’t let me be there alone. They laughed at that. The Russian said my parents also wouldn’t want me to disappear one day from the streets of Vienna. So I said I would try.”

  “Was I ever that lucky, to get you all alone in my house?”

  “Twice, remember?”

  Now I did, especially the second time, when my dad had stayed out very late. I vaguely recalled that the evening had ended on a melancholy note, which I’d attributed at the time to my imminent departure. Now I knew better.

  “When you went downstairs to steal us a drink from your father’s liquor cabinet, I went out in the hallway to his door, and opened it. I went to the bedside table and poked around some books and papers, then I froze when I heard you coming back up the stairs. I couldn’t go through with it. I hurried back and told you I’d been in the bathroom.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I made up things, mostly. Mostly I talked about his books.”

  “What did they say?”

  “I thought for sure they’d know I was lying, but they seemed very interested. They wanted to know which titles he had taken down from his shelves, and if any of the pages were marked. And then, a few days ago, you come along with all of these stories about the same kind of thing, books with marked passages and secret meanings. So of course I had to try and find out what was happening, and I can’t help but wonder if this is why I was chosen.”

  “To help me, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe it’s even the same people,” she said.

  “The Russians? That doesn’t make sense. My handler wants to find out if Lemaster was a double agent. The Russians would already know.”

  “Unless they were trying to find out if he was a faithful double agent, a real double agent.”

  Excellent point, and the possibility that it might be true cast everything I’d been doing in a new light. Even the Hammerhead might be my handler. Then, just as suddenly, the idea seemed ludicrous.

  “I don’t know, Litzi, using all of these old spy titles to lead me around just feels so, well, American, don’t you think?”

  “You don’t think Russians read all those novels? You don’t think they weren’t going through every page looking for kernels of truth, just like you were?”

  Another good point, which made my head hurt.

  “I’m scared of all this, Bill. Especially after what happened to Vladimir. I love seeing you, love being with you again. But now it seems like too much, too far. Yet every time I think of quitting, or of not getting on that train to Prague, my curiosity becomes bigger than my fear, because this has become personal for me as well. And now you know why.”

  “So you still want to go?”

  “From what your father says, it sounds like we’d better.”

  “Probably.”

  “But Prague won’t be enough, will it?”

  “Budapest, too, most likely. After that, who knows?”

  “Then I had better phone my office to clear enough time. I’ll have to come up with something good, I suppose.”

  Dad returned to the table, so she took her phone off to a corner where we wouldn’t have to hear her lying to her bosses. He looked me over carefully, as if inspecting for damage.

  “Everything all right between you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Glad to hear it. You’re a lucky man.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “All the same, be careful.”

  “I don’t intend to hurt her.”

  “I meant for yourself.”

  “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that.”

  “Just as well. I’m not quite sure how I meant it.”

  I was about to ask for an explanation when he held a finger in the air and reached into his pocket for a folded sheet of paper.

  “Almost forgot,” he said, glancing around to make sure we weren’t overheard. He lowered his voice. “I talked to Lewis Dean at the embassy.”

  “The ‘regional specialist’?”

  “I asked about that Russian you describe
d, the one you called the Hammerhead. He seemed to think it might be a fellow they used to keep tabs on years ago. They never knew his code name but called him Brass Tacks. They were pretty sure he worked for a Moscow hand named Oleg.”

  Leo’s handler. And Leo, aka Vladimir, aka Trefimov, was now dead after having put some of his oldest secrets up for sale. I nodded and tried not to look alarmed.

  “Lew checked some files for me. Dormant for ages on the subject of Brass Tacks, except for one item. They think that in the past year he went into business for himself with a bunch of other old hoods, calling themselves the Argus Consortium, which didn’t show up on anyone’s radar screens until this.” He unfolded the paper, a photocopy of a New York Times piece from two months ago. “Take a look.”

  It was a brief story from the business section about new government contracts landed by Baron Associates.

  “Isn’t Baron Breece Preston’s company?”

  “Keep reading.”

  Baron had won two new U.S. contracts for intelligence services in Afghanistan and Colombia. Rough neighborhoods. Lucrative pay. The story estimated the total payout over the next six years would be $660 million, pending congressional approval. Then came the kicker. “The new contracts,” the Times said, “cap a busy summer of expansion in which Baron also won a security contract in the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, as part of a joint venture with the Moscow-based Argus Consortium.”

  “Interesting,” I said, trying not to show how worried I was by this alliance of two such disagreeable fellows, both of them apparently connected in some way—but how?—to the trail of old clues Litzi and I were exploring.

  “Lew also said Breece Preston has apparently gone walkabout in the past few weeks.”

  “Walkabout?”

  “Disappeared almost overnight from their Afghanistan operations center. Some cover story about a health issue involving his family, but no one’s buying it, mostly because no one seems to know where he’s gone.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It’s still not too late to get out, son.”

  “Actually …” I handed back the paper, “… it’s beginning to sound like it is.”

  He grimaced and looked down at the table, but didn’t disagree. He was about to say more when he looked up and broke into a smile for Litzi, who had materialized at my shoulder holding her suitcase. Dad stood. I did the same, although I felt a little shaky.

  “All clear,” she said brightly. “We’d better get going before they change their minds.”

  We said our farewells on the sidewalk.

  “Best of luck, son.” Dad gripped me fiercely. “I’m here if you need me. And don’t forget to keep David apprised of your movements.”

  The three of us exchanged hugs. Then he went one way and we went the other. The weather was almost springlike, and to judge from her sunny smile, Litzi seemed to be shaking herself free of the ghosts that had been stalking her only minutes earlier.

  I was the moody one now, not only worrying about who might be waiting around the next corner, but also wondering what Dad had meant by his cryptic warning about Litzi. I wondered, too, what both of them knew that I still didn’t.

  21

  Folly’s rule of thumb for safe traveling on the shadow side of the Iron Curtain was simple but maddening. Beware the Friendlies. This was especially true once you disappeared into the tumbledown gloom of the cities, where you were so easily observed, stalked, followed, every step measured and recorded for the daily tick-tock of the all-knowing watchlists and logbooks.

  Your enemies, Folly reasoned, were far more reliable, predictably steadfast in their opposition. You knew where they stood, and planned accordingly. But Friendlies, especially the eager and daring ones who nonetheless managed to survive, well, how could you ever say for sure what accounted for their staying power? Was it their zeal to serve or their zeal to deceive? And, if you suspected the latter, how should you behave in their presence? How much weight should you give to their local rules of engagement? Folly took extra care never to turn his back on them, literally or figuratively, a caution he had lived by since his earliest days as a field man.

  Yet, as with all such rules, there were painful exceptions, moments when his well-cultivated mistrust had nonetheless led to miscalculation, even heartbreak. He remembered in particular a Czech named Kohut, personally recruited, admirably rewarded. One fine October evening in Prague, Kohut lay dead at Folly’s feet, his face obliterated by a Russian soft-nosed bullet. This unshakable proof of Kohut’s loyalty had arrived just as Folly had become convinced of the man’s duplicity. Such were the wages of vigilant mistrust.

  How, then, was Folly ever supposed to make progress on enemy territory while operating under such careful constraints? Answer: He didn’t. Not really. He only pretended to pick his way forward while in reality he was fighting a lifelong holding action against uncertainty and doubt.

  As a field man, the pressures of this daily stalemate had finally driven him to a desk job. As a desk man, they were driving him to bedlam. So here he was, heading back into the field once again, bound for the deepest and oldest of the shadows from his past. And, like it or not, the old rules of caution were still in force.

  Folly put down his newspaper and stared out the smudged window of the grumbling bus. The crossword lay unfinished in his lap, yet another set of enigmas beyond his capabilities. He saw that it was still raining, but the bus was at last approaching the outskirts of Prague, the very place where his formula had gone so utterly wrong.

  Those lines of Lemaster’s click-clacked through my head to the rhythm of the train as we rolled across Bohemia. The haunting words now seemed as relevant as if my controller had circled them in black ink beneath another message in his now familiar handwriting.

  Litzi, my friendliest of Friendlies, had nodded off an hour ago as we glided past huddled villages and autumn pastures. As I watched her sleep, the train lurched and her eyes fluttered open. Her expression was blank, open to almost any interpretation, but I had already given up on the idea of operating under Folly’s rules. Bedlam, indeed. Even with what I’d learned about her past, trust was the only option if we were to continue traveling together, so I squeezed her hand and watched her smile.

  “Will it be as beautiful as it was before?” she asked.

  “The better question is if we’ll have time to notice.”

  Although it wasn’t as if our Prague agenda was crowded. So far we had only two contacts—an aging bookseller and a boyhood friend. I was excited about seeing Karel Vitova. We’d tracked him down on Facebook, messaging him from Litzi’s smartphone just before we crossed the border into the Czech Republic. He answered almost immediately, with a happy-face emoticon and a string of exclamation points, plus an address for an apartment just around the corner from where he’d grown up.

  I’d met Karel around the time my dad began weaning me from the crowd of embassy kids at the American school. We’d done our part for assimilation by moving into an apartment clear across the river from where the other diplomats lived. Prague was the city where, at age twelve, I first began to run, inspired by the local propaganda for national hero Emil Zátopek, who had won three gold medals at the ’52 Olympics, beating all comers in a grueling combination of the 5K, the 10K, and the marathon. An entire fitness culture sprang up around his legend, and I met Karel at a “Zátopek Movement” cross-country race for boys, where we finished one-two in a hilly romp through Petrin Park.

  Karel’s English was far better than my Czech, and he taught me the ways of the city. In return, I instructed him in American slang and pop music, which I might have had trouble mastering myself if not for my classmates at the American school, who’d spent far more time in the States.

  It never occurred to me then that our friendship posed any risk for Karel’s family—not until we visited the machine shop where his dad worked to deliver a lunch pail. Just inside the door, next to a counter where the manager sat, there was a clock and a wooden box
, where the workers punched their time cards. Posted above it was a sign with underlined words and an exclamation mark.

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  Karel laughed.

  “It’s about you.” He translated: “Timely arrival to work strikes a decisive blow against the American aggressors!”

  I didn’t think it was funny.

  “Well, this aggressor’s hungry. Let’s get a sausage.”

  The manager, hearing our English, scowled and muttered a curse. We burst out laughing and ran into the street. Probably not the sort of thing that showed up well in his father’s personnel file.

  Litzi and I arrived at dusk with an hour to kill before meeting Karel for dinner, so we checked in to our hotel and walked through the Old Town. I kept an eye out for both Lothar and the Hammerhead, but as usual, Prague was mobbed.

  The city’s refurbished beauty bowled me over even as it dismayed me. When I was a boy the buildings were sooty and tarnished, grandeur in decline. Now every surface looked scrubbed, every brick repointed. But city boosters had overlaid it with neon, corporate logos, and all these tourists, so many of them that the locals looked like infiltrators, as beleaguered as when the Soviets were in charge. To make matters worse, there was a soccer match that night between the Czech Republic and Scotland, so the streets were filled with the blue plaid soldiers of the Tartan Army, Scotland’s die-hard, drink-harder legion of fans.

  We tried to take refuge in a pivnice, or beer pub, but all of them were thronged with Scots. Then Litzi spotted a promising oasis, a trim bar with red walls and enough bookshelves to furnish a small library.

  “How wonderful,” she said. “And it’s called Bar and Books.”

  We settled happily onto a leather bench, but a single overpriced drink was all it took for us to see that it was more of a cigar parlor for the trendy than a haven for literary types.

  “This is the future for people like us,” she said. “Books as décor, something to put on the wall where you sip your whisky.”

  A man over her shoulder caught my eye. He stood by the door, attempting to project a casual air. Was it my imagination, or was he the same fellow I’d spotted reading a Russian newspaper outside the train station?