Dan Fesperman - The Double Game

“Well, if you really want to improve my job performance, just brief me on what you found out.”

“Why? So you can give him everything, free of charge? Besides”-and here he smiled coyly-“all that information is readily available in painstaking detail. You need only read it.”

He let me consider that for a second. After another swallow of beer, I had it.

“Your novel. You put everything into your novel.”

“It seemed like the best way to bring it to life. If he wouldn’t pay me, then I’d give it to the world, which could reimburse me copy by copy. I found a small press in Frankfurt that was very eager to publish. A shitty advance, but hopes were high.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think? Some asshole in Langley got wind of it before the ink was dry on the galleys. Even in the early seventies it wasn’t all that hard for the Occupation Powers to quash something like that if they deemed it sufficiently dangerous. They even broke into my apartment. Took every copy of my manuscript, and of course back then there were no CD-ROMs or memory sticks.”

“But you said there were galleys.”

“Very good. You do pay attention.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-five. As I said, it was a small press. They only printed enough for a select cadre of German dailies and magazines, but the copies had all been mailed out the day before the order came down, so my publisher sent out a recall notice.”

“Were they all returned?”

“Twenty-four were. But in Heidelberg some enterprising subeditor with a habit worse than mine had already sold it to a secondhand dealer, along with a boxful of other publisher freebies. He was so pharmaceutically addled that he couldn’t remember who’d paid him. And by then, of course, the Agency’s single best source on how to track down obscure book titles- the one person who might have found it-was persona non grata.”

“You.”

“Of course.”

“So you still have it?”

“Absolutely not. I knew my apartment would be the first place they’d look, and the one place they’d keep looking, year after year, or until they got tired of rifling through my shelves and pulling up floorboards. I decided it would be far safer in its original location. Or, rather, the location where it ended up, a few harmless transactions later.”

“You bought it back, then resold it to some more obscure vendor.”

“I made special arrangements, let’s put it that way. Sometimes it’s safest to hide in plain sight.”

“Well, that’s a big help.”

He shrugged, unmoved.

“It’s not somewhere you’ve never been, I will say that.”

“Seeing as how my dad must have dragged me into a zillion bookstores all over Europe, I’m not sure that’s a big help.”

“Then you’ll have to think like a book scout, that is, like a spy. Or, at least, like the only kind of spy that seems to appeal to you and me-the old-fashioned kind. Low-tech and low to the ground, surviving on his wits. And I promise you this. If you do find it, come to me first, and I’ll tell you his name.”

“My handler’s?”

“ Our handler’s. Then you’ll know why you should never hand him the information.”

“So, two people are dead, and you’re making a game out of it, too?”

“You’ve read the books. When has it not been a game? And when have the stakes ever been anything other than life or death?”

“Tell that to Bruzek’s nephew, Anton.”

“Poor old Bruzek. A greedy bastard, but he didn’t deserve that. Got a little careless in his old age, I suppose.”

“Then why haven’t they killed me? God knows I’ve been careless at times.”

“At times? Don’t flatter yourself. They don’t want to kill you. Not yet. Because they want you to succeed. They’re after the same thing you are, and they’re hoping you’ll lead them to it. Finding it is what will put you in mortal danger. Unless of course you lead them to something in the meantime that will allow them to figure it out for themselves. Then you’ll be equally disposable.”

“How will I know what that is?”

“You won’t. Which reminds me, you still haven’t removed the battery from your phone.”

I pulled the phone from my pocket and grudgingly popped out the battery.

“Here’s something else I don’t understand,” I said. “Why does this all have to be so damn complicated? The clues, the step-by-step instructions. Why can’t my handler-our handler-just tell me what he knows and what he wants me to find out?”

“Oh, c’mon. That’s the nature of the business. To hoard information and only dole it out on a need-to-know basis. To keep your operatives in the dark for as long as possible, if only to limit your own vulnerability. I always used to laugh whenever some stupid book critic complained about how byzantine Ed’s plots are, or whined that they had to peel away the meaning layer by layer, like an onion. If they only knew. The real thing is twice as complicated. And the layers? More like those fragile ones on a Greek pastry. The instant you try peeling one away, it crumbles in your fingers, until eventually you’re left with nothing.”

“That’s the way I feel about Lemaster sometimes, like he’s crumbling away to nothing. The more I find out about what he did, the less I learn about him.”

“You and everyone who knew him. For Ed, the best part of every relationship was the courtship. He enjoyed luring people into his orbit, and he had all the necessary tools-intelligence, wit, charm. Warmth, to a point. But his real knack was for knowing which piece of himself to put forth for your initial inspection. With your father it was his fascination with books. With me, our brand of Continental politics, the way we saw the world. But it was like he had a built-in thermostat, set to switch off whenever a friendship warmed to a certain level. You’d realize all of a sudden that he’d gone cold on you, even though he was still taking everything you had to offer.”

“Sounds like part of his tradecraft.”

“Possibly. But I think it came naturally. Maybe it’s the only way he knows how to be.”

“What piece did he give you? You said politics.”

“I was going through my ‘Don’t trust America’ phase, and Ed played right along, even though he knew I was aware of what he did for a living. He wasn’t too thrilled with what his country was becoming. The longer he stayed overseas, the more he became a European.”

“That sounds more like my dad than somebody who’d write those flag-wavers he’s been churning out lately.”

“Nobody was more surprised than me when Ed moved back across the water. And those recent novels?” Lothar shook his head.

“You think he does it to steal their secrets?”

“Possibly. Or maybe it’s just how he entertains himself now. Gain their trust, find out how they live, work, and play, then write them as caricatures while making a bundle into the bargain.”

The remark reminded me of what Lemaster had told me about the appeal of being a double agent-”to just walk through the looking glass and find out how they really lived on the other side, well, isn’t that the secret dream of every spy?”

Had that been more than just a motivation for spying-his blueprint for life, perhaps? I was silent for a moment. So was Lothar. Then he downed the last of his beer, licked his lips, and leaned across the table.

“Down to business. Now that you’re no longer carrying a homing beacon in your pocket, here’s how I would like you to proceed to the train station. After the way you’ve been blundering about, maybe a sudden burst of old-style tradecraft will actually catch them by surprise. If so, it might buy you a day or two without pursuit. With luck, that’s all you’ll need.”