Dan Fesperman - The Double Game

“Auto registration papers, please.”

Shit.

I made a show of searching the glove compartment and rifling through the map, then spread my hands in a plaintive shrug.

“I seem to have misplaced them.”

He turned and spoke to his partner, which set off a flurry of activity. The flashlight beam went back to the tags, and the cops nodded as they spoke. One went to his car and got on the radio while the other one stood by my door, backing away a step and eyeing me closely. We were in trouble.

Litzi unlatched her door, and the cop on my side perked up like a soldier on alert. He dropped his right hand to the holster of his sidearm and shouted to his colleague.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Let me handle this.”

She slowly opened the door and stepped carefully into the night. Now both cops had their hands on their guns.

“Litzi, what are you doing?”

“Stay in the car.” Her tone conveyed absolute authority and poise. Impressive, if unnerving.

The policemen approached from either side. They looked calmer now. She turned away me from me and began speaking to them in a tone too low for me even to tell what language she was using. Within a few seconds the three of them were conferring with hand gestures and nods, like a committee meeting with Litzi presiding. The cop from the rear car returned to his vehicle and again got on the radio. I saw him speak into his handset, wait awhile, and then nod as he spoke again. He came back up front and took the other cop aside.

Their body language was interesting. A few shrugs, a sag of the shoulders, and a burst of animated movement. The cop who made the radio call seemed to be trying to calm the other one. All the while, Litzi watched patiently from a few feet away, arms folded. The first policemen then got into his car, slammed the door, and drove away in a spray of gravel.

The second one spoke briefly to Litzi and turned to go. He was about to get in his car when Litzi barked something that made him sigh and nod. He walked behind the Mercedes and, like a suspect under arrest, spread his legs wide and placed his hands against the trunk.

“He’s going to push,” Litzi shouted. “Start the engine and see if you can get us out.”

Amazing. I did as she asked-why not, everything she was doing seemed to be working-and after a few seconds of heaving and rocking, the Mercedes gained just enough traction to crawl onto the shoulder.

Litzi shouted her thanks and hopped in. The cop wiped his hands on his trousers, got back into his cruiser, and drove away.

“That was miraculous. How did you manage?”

“I told them I was German, that it was my husband’s car and you were my boyfriend, and that, well, it was a long story. But they believed me.”

“German? What if they’d asked for your passport?”

“I told them I left it at the hotel.”

“What if they’d phoned the hotel?”

“Do you have any more questions, officer? It worked, didn’t it?”

I wanted to believe her, but it didn’t sound like the sort of half-baked story that would have passed muster with cops. But if I gave voice to those doubts, where would we be then?

“Okay. No more stops, though. Not until Prague.”

Within fifteen minutes the rain stopped. Within half an hour the moon peeped through torn clouds as leaves blew across the highway. Litzi had hardly said a word.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” she finally said.

“Why do you say that?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore. Even Valerie Humphries noticed something. She said you were jealous of what I knew, and that you must know something, too.”

“That woman spent forty years being paid to be suspicious. What would you expect her to say? But as long as you’re being suspicious about everyone, try starting with your friend Karel.”

“Why, because his dad spied on me?”

“How did your handler know about the Cave, that place where the two of you used to play?”

I squeezed the steering wheel, not wanting to admit that the question had already crossed my mind.

“I don’t know what to think about anybody anymore.”

Even my father, I almost added, and Litzi seemed to realize I’d held something back. She lowered her seat and again curled up on her side, this time facing away from me.

I drove on toward Prague, alone with my worries.

The morning brought sunlight and a better mood. With nothing on our schedule until nightfall, when I was due to meet Bruzek at his bookstore, we slept late and awoke refreshed.

I went down to the lobby for a copy of the local English-language daily, then ordered a room service breakfast while Litzi showered. We moved the tray next to the open window, Litzi in her robe and me in a T-shirt and jeans. Whatever tension had existed the night before, a mutual calm now prevailed, and neither of us wanted to spoil it.

Litzi’s phone beeped, and she smiled when she saw the message.

“From your father,” she said. “Some friend of his ran down that email address.”

I eagerly looked over her shoulder, but the news was disappointing. The messages from K-Fresh 62 had been routed via servers in Vienna and London from points unknown, and the identity was registered to a John Brown of New York, New York. An obvious fake who knew how to cover his tracks.

“So much for that lead,” I said, gloomy again.

Litzi smiled and took my hand.

“We should do something fun this afternoon,” she said. “Go off by ourselves somewhere, if only for a while.”

“With only the Mullet for company? I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

She dropped my hand.

“Sorry,” I said. “But I think we’re running out of safe havens.”

“No. You’re right. If we go anywhere, we should stay in a crowd.”

She shook open the newspaper and disappeared behind it. I poked at my eggs and toast while she ate her yogurt and fruit.

But the strong coffee was like a tonic, and as the caffeine kicked in it felt for a moment as if were an old married couple, comfortably recuperating from a night on the town. Outside our window the eaves were still dripping from the storm, and we could hear pigeons in the gutter, fretting through the debris. Then Litzi set down her cup with a clatter of china.

“My God!” She dropped the paper onto our breakfast, staring at the page.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bruzek is dead. Killed in his store, just after closing time.”

She showed me the story.

“Murdered?”

“An accident, it says.” She continued reading. “A shelf of books in his office. It fell on him. A relative-probably Anton, but it doesn’t say-heard the crash and found him underneath, buried under all those books. Apparently the shelving struck his head. An ambulance was called, but it was too late.”

I read the story. Two columns of type on an inside page, with a mug shot of Bruzek that must have been taken at least twenty years ago.

“Patricide,” I mumbled in disbelief.

“What?”

“The books. He bumped into those shelves while we were talking, and they creaked and swayed like a big tree about to fall. But he told me not to worry. HHe said the books were his children, and would never harm him.”

“How awful. For Anton, too.”

“Do you think that…?”

“Don’t even say it. Maybe it really was an accident.”

I shook my head.

“It’s too much of a coincidence.”

She pushed away the newspaper. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“I have brought you nothing but harm,” she said.

“Easy. It’s not your doing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course not.”

Although it had crossed my mind that events had taken a decidedly dangerous turn almost from the moment Litzi and I had joined forces. I doubted she was to blame, but we did seem like an unlucky combination. Since our reunion at the Braunerhof there had been two deaths, two close scrapes with the police, and a sighting of a stalker outside Valerie Humphries’s farmhouse, plus all these people who seemed to be following us.