Dan Fesperman - The Double Game

“No, no. Her vacation has been scheduled for quite some time. Would you care to leave a message?”

“No, thank you.”

I set down the phone. Scheduled for quite some time. My handler must have arranged for her employment well in advance. If he had security connections, I suppose she would’ve been easy enough to find, and, as Dad had mentioned, she was probably still listed in some embassy file. For anyone who knew my background, she would have been the perfect choice for keeping tabs on my movements. No wonder I’d only had to deliver information once, by dropping off the photo negatives at a dead drop. Litzi had kept him abreast of everything else. The moment I started shutting her out, she quit. I should’ve heeded my earlier doubts. Instead, I’d kept on making a fool of myself. Maybe fifty-three was the age when, despite all your best efforts at maintenance and perseverance, everything began to crumble. Your knees, your waistline, your judgment. And now my optimism. If I’d hoped this enterprise would offer some payback for my previous mistakes, then the check had just bounced.

“Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself. We’ve got a pitcher to finish. While you’re at it, take the battery out of your cell phone, and next time you’re out and about, buy a disposable one with a virgin SIM card. Your handler’s tools are obsolete, and so are yours, including that silly webcam. That means every other interested party in this affair has the jump on you. And, believe me, they’re out there, with encryption software, signal tracing, data mining, and satellite imagery. All you’ve got is a lot of quaint tricks from every novel you ever read as a boy. If you’re going to keep doing this, then you’d better start playing by newer rules than your handler’s.”

“I just hope my handler’s working for the right side. Sometimes I think he might even be working for Moscow.”

“Now that’s a laugh. Don’t worry, he’s American to the core.”

“How do you know so much about him?”

“Because he was my handler, too, once upon a time.”

I almost choked in midswallow. Lothar watched me wipe the beer from my chin while the news sank in.

“The Agency hired you?”

“It was a contract job. To track down this courier network Ed had supposedly engineered. A renegade transaction from start to finish. That’s why your movements intrigued me from the start, and why I’ve been following you ever since. I want to know why history is repeating itself. The same deliveries. The same contacts. The same old people doing the same old things they used to do, except now there’s no one left at the end of the line to receive all those messages that were once handled with such exquisite care.”

“No Dewey, you mean?”

“No Dewey, and no super-paranoid Jim Angleton hovering over everything like a malign cloud, although I’d wager his ghost is watching us with great perturbation.”

“Who is he, then?”

“Our handler?”

I nodded. He laughed.

“That’s the sort of information that must be earned. And you’re a long way from earning it.”

“You said you were here to straighten me out.”

“To a point. I want to help you, but not the jackass who’s running you. So for the moment I’m taking baby steps and watching your back. When I’m able to, of course. I still have my own affairs to attend to.”

“I guess this is how you know I’ll be heading to Budapest next.”

“Antikvarium Szondi. Except it’s no longer on Corvin Square. Try the row of bookshops along Museum Boulevard. I tracked you there once, when you were just a boy.”

“Me?”

It was an odd sensation, imagining a much younger Lothar shadowing a much younger me along mysterious streets that had gone fuzzy in my memory. It stirred an odd lightness in the hollow of my chest. Then skepticism took over.

“My father said he never used me for Dewey deliveries.”

“Never knowingly. In that sense he’s telling you the truth.”

“How would he not know?”

“The name Dewey wouldn’t even come up, although I think it’s the only code name the Agency ever got wind of, and Lemaster wouldn’t have made the request. Your dad probably thought he was doing a favor for the bookseller, or for some other friend. By the time this network was operating at its peak, people were doing things on Ed Lemaster’s behalf without the slightest clue of who they were assisting. That was the beauty of it. Even your friend Karel’s father made a delivery once.”

“Source Fishwife. Is that why you spoke to him?”

“Posing as a security policeman, of course. I think he was convinced I was with the Russians. Even with my German accent, in those days all you had to say to a Czech was ‘secret police’ and they would tell you anything. At one point Ed’s network got so busy that I even asked poor old Bruzek to begin keeping a ledger of related transactions. Not directly, of course, that would’ve blown my cover. So I chose a cutout, who in turn paid a certain young boy whom I had selected in advance to make the phone call, repeating my message word for word.”

Lothar smiled as he watched that sink in.

“So you used me, too.”

“How could I resist? You were an absolute star of a courier. Reliable, punctual, rain or shine. And tireless on the cobbles, like Zatopek. Over in Buda once you scampered up that steep hill by the tramway so fast that it damn near killed me. But of course I had vices then. And I was smoking, a pack a day.”

“I’m so relieved you gave up your vices. What made the Agency desperate enough to hire a drugged-out book scout?”

“They were less desperate than you think. I’d trained for the game once, which I’m sure they knew. I just never made it through finishing school.”

“The Farm?”

Lothar shook his head.

“MI6. They needed Germans in those days, especially Berliners. So they took me up to Hamburg and taught me all kinds of tricks, plus a lot of hocus-pocus. As someone smarter than me once said, they crammed two weeks of intense training into three months of crashing boredom.

“And, let’s face it, landing a top-notch book scout was a plus for them. They were already pretty sure this courier network was being run through a string of antiquarian shops and sellers, which meant I was equipped with the perfect contacts and the perfect cover. On both sides of the Iron Curtain. And I was already acquainted with Ed and his literary shopping habits.”

“Then why does our handler have me retracing your steps?”

“Because I never filed my report. Not the final one, anyway, the one with the best stuff. I was deep into smack by then, and not the most reliable fellow about dead drops and deadlines. So, at some point after I’d been AWOL for a week or two, he’d had enough. Traveled clear across the Atlantic to fire me, then demanded to see all my work. I told him to fuck off and vowed he’d never get a single line out of me unless I was paid in full, plus a bonus-my habit was quite expensive by then-and, well, he answered in kind. He must have thought I was bluffing.”

“But you weren’t?”

“Not in the least. But by the time he realized that, his grand inquisitor, Jim Angleton, had been sacked and Lemaster was a bestselling author on his way out the door. So everything sort of faded into the background. Until now, for whatever reason, when our dear handler seems to be giving it one last go and has anointed you as the new Lothar. From what I’ve seen of your work, I can’t imagine why.”

“Join the club. Neither can I.”

“You’re cheap. That’s one thing. That fake Russian he had following you ought to tell you something about his limited resources. I suppose he also appreciates that you know the books inside out. Otherwise you’re completely unqualified, meaning he’s desperate.”