The Double Game (10 page)

“May I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you doing this? If it’s serious, like you say, then why take the risk just to go chasing after your past? Isn’t the present enough for you?”

“Do you think that’s all this is?”

“Certainly it’s part of it. Your interview with Lemaster. Your father’s little missions to the bookstore. Me. It’s almost like an analyst was taking you back through a series of repressed memories.”

“I never repressed any memories about you.”

“Didn’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve always hidden things from both of us. So have I.”

“We have?”

She shook her head, like she couldn’t quite believe I didn’t agree. Or maybe she was just being Litzi, provocative for its own sake, the way she’d always been.

“You Austrians. A nation of Freuds.”

“You Americans. So innocent about the world, except when you’re trying to run it.”

That sort of broke the mood. We left the bookstore and wandered aimlessly up the block. She briefly took my hand, squeezing it as if to make peace, but neither of us said much for a minute or two. I think we realized we’d reached a crossing point. It was time to either say good-bye or find some pretext to keep the day going.

I knew which option I preferred, although the sealed envelope tucked beneath my left arm was making demands of its own. Litzi checked her watch.

“My office must be wondering if my appointment is ever going to end.”

“You could always text them again.”

“Saying what?”

“That you’re meeting an old friend for a drink.”

She stopped in the middle of the block. Pedestrians eased around us. I watched her face as she considered what to say next.

“And after we have this drink, what then? Dinner? Probably with another drink, or a bottle of wine? Then we go back to my apartment to talk about how wonderful things used to be. And maybe then, because we are both lonely and unattached, we decide to make love for old times’ sake, or for new times’ sake, or for however we decide to justify it. Is that what you have in mind?”

I knew better than to answer. This was the Litzi I remembered, frank and analytical, offering the good with the bad in equal doses, whether you were ready or not. She picked up the thread on her own, as I’d known she would.

“No matter what may have brought us together, Bill, we are not living in one of your old books, and I am not some sort of second chance. I have loved many times since we knew each other, and some of those men meant far more to me than you ever did. My husband’s name was Klaus, and if my womb had not fallen to pieces then we would have raised sons and daughters, more than you could count. So I suppose what I am saying is that, while this is very nice, I don’t wish for either of us to be burdened by expectations.”

I smiled, which seemed to surprise her.

“I’m glad you still get straight to the point, Litzi. Although you’ve thought things through a little further along than I have. Not that I object to where you ended up, with the two of us in bed. But in the life I’ve been leading, sometimes a drink is just a drink. So would you like to have one, or should we call it a day and leave the rest to our memories, repressed or not?”

She smiled back.

“I’d forgotten how easily you could always disarm me. Me and my Austrian earnestness.” She took my arm. We resumed walking. “Let’s have that drink, and then dinner. Then you can take me home, but I won’t invite you upstairs. If you’re still around tomorrow? Well, maybe. But for tonight, how about Restaurant Sperl?”

“God, no. My dad stuffed me full of schnitzel last night at Figlmüller. And if we go to Sperl we really
will
talk about old times. I’d rather hear about all these men who were so much better than me. Pick someplace new.”

We still talked plenty about the past, of course. All the while the envelope remained with us, unopened, like an unstamped passport for entry to the rest of the week. Neither of us mentioned it until around nine o’clock, after our waiter had poured the last of the wine she’d so accurately predicted we would drink.

“I think it’s time,” she said, nodding toward it. I’d placed it on the table. The waiter had put the bill on top of it, but I knew she wasn’t referring to paying.

“I think so, too. Drum roll, please.”

“No drum roll. It would sound too much like a firing squad.”

“Oh, I doubt it will be that grim.”

But when I slipped the paper free I saw right away that the tone of this message was more somber and urgent than that of the ones before it. My handler was raising the stakes.

“TAKE HEED!” was handwritten in block letters atop a book page that had been sliced neatly from a copy of Le Carré’s
Smiley’s People.
Not another first edition, I hoped. There were two pages from the book, and a third from another novel. On the Smiley pages, three brief passages were marked in black ink. Taken as one item, they read like this:

“Moscow rules. I insist Moscow Rules.”

“And what were the contact procedures exactly?” Smiley asked.

“The safety signal was one new drawing-pin shoved high in the first wood support on the left as you entered.”

“And the counter-signal?” Smiley asked.

But he knew the answer already.

“A yellow chalk line,” said Mostyn.

Handwritten afterward, again in block letters, was a street name, “Köllnerhofgasse,” but no number, and no date or time.

“Does this mean you’re supposed to meet someone?” Litzi asked.

“Looks like it. And by Moscow Rules. I guess they want me to make sure I’m not being followed.”

The third page came from a copy of the novel
Spy Wednesday,
by William Hood, an ex-spy who began his CIA career in Vienna, where he helped run a Soviet double agent in the 1950s. He had ended it as one of James Angleton’s top deputies—so there was Angleton’s ghost yet again. After retiring, Hood had helped former CIA director Richard Helms write his memoirs. When he wrote about spy tradecraft, you could bank on its authenticity, and a tidy example of that was staring up at me from the excised page, in two marked passages:

Earlier that week, Roger Kyle had seen the numerals 3-4-7 jotted boldly across the top of page 222 of volume two of the phone books arranged alongside the bank of pay telephones in the Vienna Central Post Office.

Kyle fished a pen from his pocket and drew a line through the numerals. The emergency meeting would be on the third day of the week, Wednesday. At four, the next digit, in the afternoon. The safe house was at Frankgasse 7, the third number.

“So now you’re supposed to go look at some phone book at the Post Office?” Litzi asked.

“Does the Central Post Office even have pay phones anymore?”

“I don’t know. But the doors are unlocked till ten. If we leave now we’ll just make it.”

I’d once known the old post office well, and remembered it fondly. Christmas packages had arrived there every December from my grandparents. Dad always took me on the twenty-third to pick everything up, then we’d stop for a wurst and fries on the way home, dripping grease and sweet mustard onto the packages.

Litzi and I got there eight minutes before closing time. Only three other people were inside—a woman mailing a letter, a sweeper half in the bag, and a security man preparing to lock up. Lo and behold, there were still pay phones, with a handy supply of Vienna directories. When I flipped to page 222 of the second volume, three numbers were scrawled across the top in the same block handwriting that had been used in the message.

2-4-11

“Well, there you go,” I said, feeling the same satisfaction I did whenever I completed the
New York
Times
Saturday crossword. “Two, the second day of the week, means Tuesday, tomorrow. The four means four p.m., at number eleven, presumably on Köllnerhofgasse. Once I get there, all I have to do is look for the safety signal to make sure the coast is clear.”

“That’s the same time as the rendezvous in
Spy Wednesday,
” Litzi pointed out. “How did that one go?”

“The agent never showed. He’d been kidnapped to Moscow to be executed.”

“Well, that’s promising. What about the contact in
Smiley’s People
?”

“An Estonian named Vladimir. The KGB shot him in the face.”

Litzi shook her head but couldn’t help laughing.

“Moscow Rules don’t sound very reliable.”

“I’m sure the third time’s the charm.”

“Maybe someone should come with you.”

She said it with a smile, but also an unmistakable note of caution. That, plus Lothar’s earlier warning, reminded me that to some people this sort of information never lost its potency.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Vladimir was old and arthritic and walked with a cane.” Fleetingly, unavoidably, I thought again of Lothar, who also walked with a cane. “I can still outrun most people as long as they’re over forty.”

“Don’t joke about it.” Her smile was gone. “Those other messages sounded kind of fun. Not this one.”

True enough. Yet I found myself almost enjoying the aura of incipient danger, especially if it provided a handy pretext for seeing Litzi again.

“You’re as curious about this as I am, aren’t you?”

A shrug, an enigmatic smile.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind getting to the bottom of things.”

I suppressed a laugh.

“What?” she asked.

“‘Getting to the bottom of things.’ Those are the words Holly Martins said to Major Callaway in
The Third Man.
Do you remember what Major Callaway said?”

I quoted it to her in English, trying for my best impersonation of Trevor Howard in the role of Callaway.

“Death’s at the bottom of this, Martins. Leave death to the professionals.”

This time she didn’t smile. With good reason, as it turned out. Major Callaway was right.

10

I’d texted my father to tell him I’d be late, but I hadn’t told him why. I felt guilty about that because I knew he was eager to find out what had happened at Kurzmann’s, and by the time I kissed Litzi goodnight it was nearly eleven. True to her word, she didn’t invite me upstairs, but we were meeting again tomorrow.

Dad and I had muddled through the balance of the previous evening with the help of food and lager. Figlmüller lived up to its end of the bargain by serving schnitzels the size of catcher’s mitts, but even that old comfort hadn’t eased things between us. I still had lots of questions, and I’m sure he had a few.

As I approached his apartment I saw that the lights were on. I was counting on the news of Litzi to serve as an icebreaker. He had always been fond of her, although I couldn’t help but remember his strange reaction the first time I’d mentioned her.

“What’s that name again, son?”

“Litzi Strauss.”

“Litzi. How unusual. Is she a Jew?”

“
What?
Does that matter?”

“Certainly not. It’s just that Kim Philby’s first wife was a Litzi from Vienna. Litzi Friedmann, a Jew. That’s why I asked. But your Litzi’s a Strauss. Doesn’t sound Jewish.”

“She’s not
my
Litzi.”

“Well, not yet, anyway.”

My blush told him all he needed to know about my ambitions on that front, and he nodded in approval.

“I’m happy for you, son. Love keeps us on our toes.”

“I never said I was in love.” Redder still.

Another knowing nod, then he said smugly, “No, I suppose you didn’t.”

Stung, I struck back below the belt.

“Being in love with Mom didn’t seem to keep you on your toes.”

The light went out in his eyes, and his subsequent surrender made me miserable.

“You’re right about that, son. Good luck with her all the same.”

He never asked about her in any meaningful way again. Small talk only where Litzi was concerned, and I was the poorer for it.

I found him waiting up for me in the living room with only Johnnie Walker Black for company. Judging by the level in the bottle, they’d gotten comfortable. I was tipsy from the wine, putting us on an equal footing.

“Long day?” he asked from his easy chair, a hint of concern in his tone. “Hope it wasn’t Christoph keeping you out so late, filling your head full of nonsense?”

“Christoph couldn’t get me out of Kurzmann’s fast enough. I ran into an old friend. Litzi Strauss.”

He brightened instantly.

“Wonderful! How is she?”

“Currently unmarried, looking well, and I’m seeing her again tomorrow. Those are the three things you really wanted to know, right?”

“I suppose so.” He smiled at my peace offering. “But tell me about Kurzmann’s. I’ve been wondering all day.”

“It was pretty strange. He hardly told me anything, except that he hadn’t taken a special order like that since the year we moved to Berlin. He did mention the whole routine you used to have. The Sunday phone calls at two on the dot. The plain brown wrappers tied in string.”

“Your delivery was wrapped that way?”

“Same price, too, except in euros. Or so he claimed.” Dad shook his head in amazement. “But he wouldn’t say what the transactions meant, or who they were for.”

“Probably because he didn’t know, and he never would’ve jeopardized the arrangement by asking. That price looked even higher back in the seventies. Christoph made a pretty penny off those little visits, but I suppose they were his fee as middleman.”

“Middleman for what? And what was your role?”

“I was a courier, plain and simple. It was my job to make the pickup, then drop off the item later in the day at another address, which was also relayed by phone, some voice telling me that my shirts were ready. There was a code. The name of the cleaner’s was always the street, and the stated price was the address.”

“Not very sophisticated.”

“Not if the line was bugged. But the embassy checked pretty regularly in those days.”

“Who was the ‘they’ in all this?”

“You can probably guess.”