Dan Fesperman: The Double Game

Yesterday, at about nine in the morning, a hunched old man knocked at my door and told me in a heavy Russian accent that his name was Alexei. He was the most harmless-looking fellow I’d seen since Lothar Heinemann, so I was immediately on my guard. I invited him inside. He bowed rather formally and asked if I could brew him a cup of black tea with sugar and milk. I obliged him and we sat down on the couch.

“My apologies for appearing at your place of residence uninvited,” he said, “but I find that the reception is often warmer in these matters if I do not telephone in advance.” He lifted the teacup from the saucer as if to display the proof of his good judgment.

“What exactly do you mean by ‘these matters’?”

He set down the cup.

“Things from the past. I have come a long way, and I have many questions.”

“ You have questions?”

“About Edwin Lemaster. He was kind to me, just as you are being, but he would not speak with me. He suggested instead that I see you. He stated without reservation that you are the top authority, not only about his life in books, but his life as a spy. And that is my interest. Because once it was my job to be the person who knew all about Edwin Lemaster.”

“For Soviet intelligence?”

“Yes. I was known then as source Glinka.”

“I think I’d better get you another cup of tea, Alexei.”

“That would be most kind. But do you have vodka as well?”

“Even better. But first I have a question of my own. This job of yours-you must have been doing it, what, at least thirty years ago?”

“Almost forty.”

“Why, then? Why do you still want to know?”

He shrugged.

“My wife asks me this also. She tells me we are fortunate to be living in this country. She believes that if some people knew what my job once was, that we would not be allowed to stay. So I must ask you to be…” He searched for the word.

“Discreet?”

“Yes.”

“I will be.”

“As for why, it is not so easy to explain. An American I know describes my feeling as ‘professional curiosity.’ I spent two years of my life searching for a single answer, and never found it. That kind of failure stays with you, like an old pain that cannot be relieved. Do you not agree?”

“Oh, I agree completely. What was the question you could never answer?”

“It came in the form of an assignment from someone very high within the intelligence apparatus, a man known as Oleg.”

“I’ve heard of Oleg.”

Alexei nodded gravely.

“He was an important man. He wanted me to establish without doubt the fidelity of a double agent of ours known as Pericles. In your intelligence apparatus he was known as Headlight.”

So there it was at last, the final bit of evidence, the solid link between Lemaster, or Headlight, and the stray name of Pericles that Valerie Humphries had come across only one time.

“Lemaster, you mean.”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“I spent months going through his reports, and those of others. I followed in his tracks, and in the tracks of his contacts. He never once detected my presence, I am proud to say. But the months became a year, and one year became two. And even then all that I had was a hunch that I can best describe by telling you my nickname for him, which in those days I did not dare to repeat.”

“A nickname?”

“A Russian word which means ‘Cube.’”

“Why ‘Cube’?”

“Have you studied mathematics?”

“It was never my best subject.”

“Surely you know what it is to cube a number?”

“Ah. Multiplying it by itself twice. Like two times two times two.”

“Exactly the example I had in mind.” He waited for me to figure it out.

“A double that’s doubled? That’s what you suspected?”

“Yes.”

“Is this what you reported to Oleg?”

“Do you think I was suicidal? My assignment was to verify his fidelity. If he was a double of a double, then Oleg would be ruined, and others above me along with him. Meaning that I, being at the bottom, would suffer most.”

“But you’re sure? You’re sure you were right?”

He shook his head, looking woeful.

“I have never been less certain of anything. That is why I have come here. It is the one question I never answered.”

“So you thought you’d just ask Ed himself, and he sent you to me.”

Alexei nodded hopefully, as if we’d finally reached the moment of truth.

“Mr. Lemaster said you have done much recent work on this question. Groundbreaking work, he called it.”

I smiled. Say what you would about Edwin Lemaster, he still had his contacts, and he still had a sense of mischief.

“Why don’t I tell you what I know-or what I think I know-and then we’ll compare notes?”

“That is very fair. It is generous. Please, begin.”

So I told him what I’d learned, and where I thought it fit, and I told him Lothar’s conclusions as well. We collated and cross-referenced my findings, checking and double-checking the chronology, the logic and the possible gaps. And when we had reached the end of our chat and nearly the end of the vodka, we both realized something quite curious.

“I still haven’t answered your question, have I?”

He nodded solemnly.

“But is that not, in itself, a kind of answer?” he said. “Because if you are a double, and then a cube, and then perhaps even two to the fourth power, would you not at some point transcend all questions of loyalty or betrayal? At some point, does not everything become artifice?”

“Sounds like perfect training for a novelist. No wonder Angleton went crazy. Cabot, too, in a way.”

Alexei smiled.

“The same happened with Oleg. A secret hospital in the Urals. The American is the only one I know who remained sane.”

“Ed, you mean?”

“No, no. His recruiter. His original handler. The man who first brought him to our attention as a possibly valuable asset.”

“Do you mean Thresher?”

“Yes. He, at least, was trustworthy. I have often wondered what became of him.”

“I take it you never met him, then, or knew his real name?”

Alexei shook his head.

“It was Oleg’s most closely guarded secret. And with the state he is now in, I suspect no one will ever know.”

“You may well be right.”

Alexei’s glass was empty. I moved to refill it, but he waved me away and stood, no more wobbly than when he’d arrived.

“I must catch a train,” he said. “But I thank you.”

“No, I thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

We shook hands. Then he departed. I watched him shuffle down the sidewalk toward Wisconsin Avenue, and almost as soon as he was out of sight I realized that I didn’t know his full name or where he lived. He must have been very good at his job.

Was he a plant, a subterfuge? Some last trick from Lemaster to try to convince me that he had never betrayed his country? Or, better still, to place Breece Preston in an even more unfavorable light?

I have no idea. And frankly, that’s fine, because recently I took up a new profession in which ambiguity, uncertainty, and even unresolved questions are strengths, not weaknesses.

I am writing a spy novel.

It is about a popular and respected American writer who was once a popular and respected spy. His life is an interplay between fact and fiction, light and darkness, image and illusion. I am trying to use my imagination to its limit, but I must confess that many particulars will be loosely based on a huge cache of copied documents and confidential reports, a trove that remains easily accessible to me even though, at the moment, it resides at an undisclosed secure location. The only thing further I will say on that subject is that access does not involve the removal of any floorboards. As Giles Cabot would say, I’m better than that.