Dan Fesperman - The Double Game

“Turns out,” Dad continued, “that Angleton had three operatives, all of them ostensibly employed by the Soviet desk but in reality reporting to him. Which meant they were paid twice, of course.”

“So even within the Agency they were double agents, sort of.”

“That’s certainly how the Soviet desk saw it. Angleton called them his ‘flying squad.’ Apparently only a few of his assistants knew about it.”

“Where’d you hear all this, the funeral?” He smiled cagily. “No wonder I couldn’t get anything out of you at dinner.”

“Of course, by the time Lemaster let the cat out of the bag in that interview, Angleton had been in retirement eleven years. But there was still hell to pay. You saw what those people were like. They still argue about crap that happened in 1948, so you can imagine what kind of a row they’d have over-”

He was interrupted by a ringing telephone, a land line jangling down the hall in his bedroom. It startled us both, but him even more. He looked over at the clock on an end table, then back at me, then again at the clock, which seemed strange, but I said nothing. It was exactly two o’clock.

The phone continued to ring.

“Excuse me,” he said, sounding shaken. He headed off toward his bedroom. I took up a position at the end of the hall to listen.

“Cage,” he said, answering in the Austrian style. There was a pause. Then, sternly and in German: “No. This is Warfield, but William is here. Are you sure that’s who you wish to speak to? Very well.”

Then, louder and in English: “Bill, it’s for you.”

His brow was creased as he handed me the receiver. He hovered in the doorway as I answered, rude by his standards.

“This is William Cage.”

I turned my back for privacy, but sensed his lingering presence. I’d been back for half an hour and we were already spying on each other. The answering voice was neither tense nor urgent. It was an older man, Viennese accent. The line was clear, so the call was probably local.

“This is Christoph, at Kurzmann Buchladen.” A bookstore. “I have your special order, delivered today in the name of Dewey.”

There it was, the promised message, although I hadn’t expected it so soon.

“A delivery? Now?”

“We are closed Sunday. We open tomorrow at eight o’clock. On Johannesgasse.”

“Where did you-?”

He’d hung up. When I turned around my father was staring from the doorway.

“Was that Kurzmann’s?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’m an old customer, although not for years. Did you special-order something?”

“No.”

I toyed with trying the name “Dewey” on him, but if I told him that, then I would have to explain more than I was ready to. His reaction to the phone call had already aroused my suspicion, and, judging from what he said next, my reaction had aroused his.

“Do they have something for you?”

“So he said.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t order anything? You’re positive that that call came from completely out of the blue?”

“Yes.”

He eyed me dubiously, probably because of the guilty look on my face. But he was hiding something, too. We moved back to the living room and, like boxers returning to the ring, took up our previous positions. Then, for whatever reason-the strange call, the jet lag, or even the sight of all those spy novels, these words spilled from my mouth:

“This is almost like something out of a Lemaster novel, don’t you think?”

He reacted as if I’d slapped him.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because it is? Do you remember any scenes like this? Or could I be thinking of another author?”

“All right, Bill. Enough.” His tone was stern, as if I was in high school again and he’d just found a roach clip in the bathroom. “Who told you to ask me these questions?”

“Nobody.”

“Likely story, but I suppose after that wacky funeral nothing should surprise me. I did wonder what sort of repercussions would come out of that unholy mix of people, but I never imagined you’d be part of them. So, who did you speak to before flying over here? Someone at State? Or maybe even the Agency?”

“The CIA?” I didn’t have to fake sounding incredulous because I really was.

“So the Agency, then. Is that the real reason you’re here?”

“Dad, no one told me to ask you anything.” He gave me a long look, unconvinced. I stared right back. “Have I ever been able to lie to your face and get away with it?”

“No.” He seemed to relax. “But something made you ask.”

“My imagination, probably. Why’d you assume I’d been talking to the Agency?”

“Ask Christoph.”

“The bookseller?”

“When you pick up the delivery. Ask him why I’d think this was some sort of job for the Agency. Ask him as well who else has been in touch with him on this matter, and for God’s sake do it discreetly. Then tell me what he says.”

“You’re serious?”

“Absolutely. And, son?”

“Yes?”

“If you’re thinking this is some sort of lark, or intellectual exercise, then I urge you to disabuse yourself of that notion straightaway.”

“Based on what?”

“That’s all I’m going to say until you’ve talked to Christoph.”

At first I thought he was bluffing, but as the silence lengthened, Dad stared out the window into the gray afternoon. I coughed and picked up my coffee cup, but it was empty, so I set it back down, uncertain what to do next. We still had five hours to kill before dinner, eighteen before the bookstore opened. It was going to be a long and awkward afternoon.

I arrived five minutes early, only to find that Kurzmann Buchladen was already open for business. There was even a customer ahead of me, a dissipated-looking fellow in a long wool coat and a floppy brown hat that slouched on his head like a dumpling. I took him at first for a wino, then noticed how assiduously he was working the shelves, like an ingenious piece of farm machinery that can simultaneously harrow, weed, and cultivate. Three volumes were tucked beneath his left arm and a fourth bulged from a coat pocket. He looked up as the door shut behind me, jingling a bell. Then he wrote me off as inconsequential and resumed his harvesting.

I looked around. Sellers of rare and antiquarian books are often messy housekeepers, but even by those standards the conditions at Kurzmann’s were unforgivable. The framed prints and maps hanging from the walls were dusty and crooked. Several had cracked glass. The watermarked ceiling was beaded with moisture-a death sentence for all that cloth and pulp below-and the musty air smelled faintly of cat urine. Mounted on the wall behind the register was an ancient color engraving of Prince Metternich, Europe’s original celebrity power broker, the Kissinger of his day. He glared out at the merchandise in apparent disdain.

Creaking floorboards drew my attention toward the back, where a short balding man in an unbuttoned vest emerged from the gloom. A tape measure was draped around his neck, as if he were a tailor who’d been called away from his sewing.

“Yes?” he asked in English, pegging my nationality. He ignored the other customer, and looked surprised by my presence, which was odd given yesterday’s phone call.

“Are you Christoph?” I asked in German. He answered in the same language.

“Do I know you?”

“You telephoned yesterday about a special order. I’m Bill Cage.”

A book slapped to the floor in the aisle where the other man was browsing. He snatched up the dropped copy and glanced my way with a gleam in his eye, or maybe I imagined it. The only noise was the muffled sound of rush hour traffic from the Ring, half a block away.