Dan Fesperman: The Double Game

Then someone knocked at the door.

We flinched. Preston put a finger to his lips and slowly shook his head, then whispered, “You don’t want to get some poor maid killed, do you?”

“Police!” a man’s voice shouted gruffly. “You reported a robbery, sir?”

The smugness drained from Preston’s face, and he slowly lowered the gun. In one motion I threw the bourbon at his head, glass and all, and bolted up from the bed, bumping past him as he spluttered and spat at the toxic liquid. Then I opened the door onto a local cop, knees bent, gun pointed.

The cop jumped back, almost as startled as me. It was a miracle he didn’t shoot me. I raised my hands, showing they were empty, then sidled past him into the hallway as I blurted, “The other guy has a gun! He’s the one who’s robbing me.”

Preston apparently had no stomach for such an even matchup, or perhaps he was too smart to involve himself in the shooting of a policeman. He dropped his gun to the floor, held up his hands, and began pleading his case.

“Officer, this is a ridiculous misunderstanding.”

The policeman look relieved, but didn’t lower his guard.

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to explain,” he said.

Just as I was becoming convinced that this would end well, I heard a door open down the hallway behind me. Of course. The second man. I braced for yet another twist that would turn the situation back in Preston’s favor, but when I turned I saw David step from the room.

Impossible.

In fact, it was so disorienting that for a fleeting moment I wondered if I hadn’t actually been shot and was dreaming up the entire scene from some last moment of consciousness while I lay flat on my back across the hotel bed.

“Hi, Dad.”

Then David smiled, and the thought disappeared. He was real. I was alive. And Breece Preston was in handcuffs, still dripping poisoned bourbon from his eyebrows.

To hear David tell it, everything had worked exactly according to my plan. He’d been there for the past two days, he said, watching my back just like I’d asked him to.

“ Asked you to? Where’d you get that idea?”

“From your signal, Dad.”

“My signal?”

“You know. ‘Caution is the enemy of discovery.’ It’s what Folly says to Snelling in A Spy for All Seasons. You knew that’s what I was reading, so I figured you were sending a message, especially since you were calling from an unsecure line and couldn’t just come out and say it. Then when you asked if I was traveling anywhere for fall break I put two and two together and came on up.”

I shook my head, not sure whether to laugh or get angry. Because I remembered the scene he was talking about, and had to admit there was a certain bizarre logic to the conclusion that he’d drawn from my words.

Folly utters the key phrase just before departing for a risky meeting with a dangerous contact at a safe house in Leipzig. In response, his operative Sam Snelling takes the initiative to act as a backup, and by doing so saves the day.

Had my knowledge of that scene somehow triggered, at some subliminal level, my own wording in my conversation with David? As much as my rational side argued “no,” another part of me wondered. Who’s to say what sort of miracles the powers of fiction can conjure up, especially when they’re shared between father and son at a time of imminent danger?

In any event, with his imagination on overdrive, David had grabbed a flight up to Boston on the first day of his break, and then caught a bus and a cab to the ferry, arriving on Block Island without a car during my third full day on the island. He caught up with me the next morning, but hadn’t made contact-exactly the right tradecraft. Within a few hours he’d detected Preston watching me at the post office. From then on he’d made it his business to keep more of an eye on my pursuer than on me.

That’s how he ended up seeing Preston break into my room not long before I returned from Cabot’s. He then phoned the local police, who, despite a painfully slow response, nonetheless showed up in time to set things right.

“We’re going to have some explaining to do to your mother,” I said.

David smiled.

“You should’ve seen the way she rolled her eyes when I told her what I was reading.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

The police kept us occupied for nearly two hours as we gave statements and filled out forms. At that point a couple of state policeman arrived by helicopter to take Preston back to the mainland, along with a sample of the spilled bourbon. By then the day’s last ferry had departed, so we grabbed a bite to eat at the Mohegan Cafe and called it a night.

With my room now smelling of booze, and temporarily off-limits as a crime scene, I bunked in one of the twin beds in David’s room, still not quite believing that he had managed to avoid my detection for the previous day and a half. Obviously he was better at this business than I was.

Even with a few beers in my belly I stayed awake for the better part of the night, jumping at every sound until I finally nodded off well past midnight. I awakened with a start at the cry of a seagull to see that it was nearly dawn.

We dressed, grabbed a quick breakfast, then rolled aboard the early ferry just as the sun was coming up. When we reached Judith’s Landing I followed the stream of departing vehicles to the first main junction, then deliberately turned in a direction that practically no one ever took.

I pulled over to the shoulder, where David and I sat and watched as the rest of the cars and trucks disappeared in the other direction, streaming toward the tidewater horizon of sawgrass and marshes glowing amber in the morning sunlight.

No one followed us.

Giles Cabot died the following month. The burial was private, with no invited guests, although it was easy enough to imagine Anderson and a few neighbors-Ben and Abigail, perhaps-gathered around a sandy grave site against the backdrop of an angry sea. The obituary in the Post was effusive in its praise of Cabot’s national service, but made only glancing mention of his role in Jim Angleton’s Great Mole Hunt, and none at all of his suspicions concerning Edwin Lemaster. As usual, the first draft of history had come up short, and I suspect later installments will fare no better.

The better news in the paper that day appeared on the jump page of a lengthy story about the military drawdown in Afghanistan-a throwaway mention that, as part of the cutbacks, the Pentagon had canceled its contract with Baron Consulting. Baron’s chief executive, Breece Preston, was not available for comment. But it was speculated that his business was now on the verge on bankruptcy following similar cancellations in Iraq and Colombia, and the recent financial collapse of a partner firm in Moscow.

A few days later, just when I was getting used to the idea that strange, unsigned messages containing excerpts from spy novels were no longer going to be coming my way, a sealed envelope postmarked in Maine dropped through my front door mail slot. It had no return address. Its only contents were twenty pages of typescript from the first chapter of an untitled novel featuring Richard Folly, his first appearance in nearly twenty years. On the back of the last page there was a brief unsigned handwritten note:

“Thought you’d enjoy a sneak preview. Nice work in Europe. If Alexei visits, please give him my regards.”

The handwriting confirmed what the authorial style had already told me-this was the work of Edwin Lemaster.

News of Folly’s resurrection made me happy. The prospect of a surprise visit by someone named Alexei, presumably a Russian with spook connections, did not. For several days I debated whether to install new locks, get a dog, or even leave town for a while. Having just quit my job at Ealing Wharton, I was free to do as I pleased. I also considered calling my pals in Vienna with the CIA. But something about the friendliness of Lemaster’s gesture-was he finally calling a truce, even after my recent foray to all his old haunts? — stayed my hand. So, with Litzi due to visit in only a week, and David professing to actually be looking forward to meeting her, I decided to sit tight.