Past Perfect (33 page)

“Yes,” I said patiently. “She didn’t answer. I left a message.”

“All right, if I were you, this is the extent of what you should do. If she calls back, maybe pussyfoot around a little, see if she’ll open up about how come she and the other two were the lucky ones who got a new life here instead of prison there. But going down to meet her? No.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Do you think she’s dangerous?” I tried to speak clearly, but the phone kept slipping. The twenty-seventh screenwriting program I’d bought in my life was on my desk and I was trying to get the plastic wrap off the jewel case without the use of teeth.

“Dangerous?” repeated Jacques. “I actually wasn’t thinking about her being dangerous. I’m figuring that if Gottesman didn’t die of natural causes and what’s-his-name was stabbed to death, that would increase the likelihood that Maria herself is in danger. It’s bad policy to stand next to a target. Don’t they teach you that in New York?” I was tempted to scream Yes! to really throw his headache into high gear. But I needed him to be able to think. I gnawed an opening in the plastic and peeled it off. Jacques, meanwhile, did some throat-clearing business, along with a couple of coughs—fortunately without anything in the audible expectoration department.

“Girlfriend talk on the phone is fine if you’ve known somebody forever,” I explained to him, “but I can’t imagine someone I’ve never met opening up about her deal with the Agency —or her dealings with Ben and the U.S.A. —to a stranger.”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

“Probably?” I set the CD aside because slicing or peeling off the killer adhesive strip from the top without breaking the plastic case required my full attention.

“If you know so much, you don’t need any suggestions from me.”

“Relax, I was just joshing you a little. You North Carolina guys know from joshing, don’t you? Anyway, I would appreciate any suggestions you have.”

“Meet her in a public place where there are a lot of people. I’m not talking about something that’s so crowded you can’t move. Restaurant, coffeehouse. A busy store is okay, but not a supermarket or store where there are aisles.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Can you take a little crudeness?”

“You just pointed out I’m from New York.”

“Right. Watch your ass. And don’t get into any cars with anybody, especially her. For a pro, a moving target is easy pickings.”

Jacques’s warning came so close to the dialogue I wrote for Spy Guys that it was too comfortably familiar to frighten me. His “a moving target is easy pickings” was a little bit country for either of my characters, but His Highness and Jamie were always admonishing each other to be careful: Keep your eyes open for bolo machetes, or cyanide in the marzipan tart.

Only two things held me back from wanting to go see Maria. I knew that, unlike my trip to Washington, I couldn’t sneak this one by Adam, though it would have to be a fast trip because we were going up to visit Nicky at camp. Another thing: July in Tallahassee wouldn’t be April in Paris, and New York was oppressive enough for my taste. Still, when Maria called back at the end of the afternoon, I made sure not to give away too much. I still hadn’t heard from Lisa, I reported, but now I had a bigger worry. I really couldn’t discuss it over the phone, but two of her colleagues from the class of ’90 were dead—and I had certain concerns about her own welfare because of that.

“Do you mean—” she began.

“I don’t think we should use names.”

Naturally, if anyone was tapping her phone and had an IQ higher than mayonnaise, he would know I was talking about Hans-Bernard and Manfred-Dick. However, having a minor familiarity with listening in because I’d researched it for a couple of scripts, I knew that the chances of 24/7 monitoring on a tap were unlikely. I also recalled from some of the reports I’d written at the Agency that, on occasion, the designated listener indeed does not have a higher IQ than mayonnaise.

“If you could just give me a little more information,” Maria said. I heard concern, but no panic. Still, I wanted an invitation to Tallahassee, though I realized there was a chance that she had been brought over separately from the other two. Ben may have run all three of them as separate operations, possibly because he’d negotiated different deals for each of them. They might not have even known each other in East Germany, though with Manfred-Dick in the Stasi and Hans-Bernard as the party’s point man on the criminal justice system and the courts, I felt the two of them probably had been acquainted. Maria was a different case, because her job description as secretary to the head of the Presidium was so unclear.

“I really can’t talk about this on the phone,” I said. “I’d like to meet you. You can pick any public, reasonably busy place and I’ll be there. I want you to feel comfortable.”

I solved the Adam problem by being direct, if not completely honest. The details of my talk with Jacques could come later. I told him there was a former East German official the CIA had brought over in 1989. She was now a real estate agent in Tallahassee and I needed to speak to her face-to-face for a couple of hours. That was it, my last attempt to clarify what had happened to me. If nothing came of it, I gave him my word of honor I’d drop my search. I also invited him to come along. And blessedly, he said he couldn’t get away. I’d been counting on that.

A park right near the Florida state capitol sounded like a good idea. I pictured lots of guys in white shirts and a few southern gents in seersucker suits and Panama hats that they would tip when a lady passed by. As usual, reality had little to do with my fantasy life. While the air was not hot enough to scorch the lungs, I seemed to be the only person nuts enough to be sitting on any of the benches along the curved path.

Well, there might have been a sniper hidden behind the giant privet hedges twenty feet back, but if that was the case, he/she and his/her Uzi submachine gun were out of sight. However, the privets looked extremely inviting. Even in the noonday sun, they offered a strip of shade. Nevertheless, Maria had said, “I’ll meet you at the benches,” and I had to play by her rules. Since I couldn’t imagine her belonging to the kill-her-in-broad-daylight school of preemption, I assumed she had chosen the spot not only because she wanted to see me in bright light, but to make certain I was alone.

And vice versa. Jacques had warned me Maria might be a target and to be cautious. But he’d said it on the phone. I’d called him from my office desk, where I did most of my work on Spy Guys, so his words had a make-believe ring to them, as if they were dialogue. A thing spies say to each other. Thrilling, menacing, great entertainment. Now, under the feverish Florida sun, I tried not to think that I was a sitting duck.

Then I spotted a person who had to be her—no one else was around —strolling down the path with a brisk, long-legged stride as if it were an autumn day in New England. Dove gray cotton pants, a white, crocheted-looking cap-sleeve shirt, heels, and, unlike me, a sensible straw hat on her head. She carried a pink straw tote. From her walk alone, I decided she couldn’t be much more than fifty. “Katie?” I stood and smiled, hoping it was in an ingratiating manner. “Of course! Who else would it be?” she asked. “Sorry to have picked this spot. Mad dogs and Englishmen, or whatever that saying is. I’m not one or the other, but I’m outside every chance I can get.”

“Happy to meet you anywhere,” I said, trying not to gasp from the heat. We shook hands. A firm but not bone-crushing grip, a shake perfect for a real estate agent: it said Neither overbearing nor lacking in confidence.

“Do you mind sitting here?” In person, she had even less of an accent than on the phone. She was pleasant-looking, with light skin and light brown hair that hung straight down from under her hat. Her brows kept her from blandness. They were dark and unplucked, and reminded me of Hillary Clinton’s college picture.

“No. This is fine,” I lied. I’d probably find out what I wanted to know. Then, as I got up to leave, I’d die of heatstroke.

We sat. She reached into her tote bag and pulled out a small plastic shopping bag that said DELI DIVINE. “I bought sandwiches so we could picnic. Turkey or cheese. So many people are vegetarians these days.”

“I’m not, but I’ll take the cheese if that’s okay.”

“No problem.” She handed me an overlarge sandwich wrapped in white paper. “It’s on seven-grain bread.”

“This is so nice of you.”

“Please, it’s the least I could do,” Maria said. “You flying down here.”

“I’m glad to do it. Let me give you a little background.” While I told her about having been at the Agency—though not about how I’d left it—she brought out two bottles of Evian and a few packets of mustard, yellow and Dijon. As she took out a wad of luxurious, thick paper napkins, I gave her two sentences about writing the Spy Guys show. There was a distant quality about her that made me want to work to get on her good side, so much so that I had to squelch the temptation to lie and promote myself to writer-producer. While I unwrapped the sandwich, I decided hers was a cool that came from self-confidence. She didn’t have to sell herself and she knew it. I didn’t get even a whiff of arrogance. “Lisa helped you get settled here and you remained friends, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes we didn’t see each other for a few years, but if not, we would visit on the phone.”

“It struck me as surprising that Lisa kept up a friendship with you —it being against Agency rules. She must have valued your company.”

“We value each other’s company,” Maria said. “And I think we both had a sixth sense right from the first, that we could trust each other. In the world I was in then, that was worth more than gold.” A drop of sweat made a slow slide from behind her ear down her neck, but she didn’t appear to notice. “I don’t know you, but I feel that about you. You have a nice openness about you. So completely American.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Did you know the other two men who were brought over when you were? One was in the Stasi, the other was a big shot in the party.”

“Yes, of course.” She sneezed. After I blessed her, she said, “A summer cold, but the sun is the great healer. Hans and Manfred.”

“Did you know them well?”

“From what you said when you phoned … They’re both dead?” On both, her voice broke slightly. “I knew Hans only slightly. Manfred and I had been … close. This is so much ancient history.” It became so silent I could hear her breathing.

“WE HAD BEEN LOVERS. He was married, you know. In Germany.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yes. Manfred told the Americans his wife didn’t want to leave Germany. I always wondered if that was true.” Her voice sounded sad, but she was looking down at the sandwich on her lap and the brim of her hat shaded her eyes, so I couldn’t be sure. “He made the deal. He and I, together, a package deal. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I’d stayed there. My position was not…” She searched for a word. “… exalted. A secretary. But there were letters that had been dictated to me, papers I typed. I attended so many meetings. My job was to make my boss’s job easier. He gave me some of his responsibilities.” She looked up. Her eyes were dry, her glance direct. “I must be crazy, saying all this. You could be … I don’t know. A reporter. Journalists cultivate trust. Overnight they become people’s best friend.”

“I’m not a journalist.”

“An avenging angel.” She laughed, but it sounded tight, caught in the back of her throat.

“I am who I say I am,” I told her. “What we talk about here will never be public, much less in print. And I don’t want vengeance.” Well, at least not against Maria Schneider. “You and Manfred split up? When?”

“We didn’t split up. We were split. They said it was too difficult and dangerous to keep us together. Our situation, relationship, was not much of a secret among those who know. Knew, I guess is what I mean. If a person wanted to find us in the U.S., they would look for a man and woman together. We had one night before they separated us. We were in an apartment—I think it was near Baltimore. Naturally we were under guard, but they let us stay alone in a bedroom. At six in the morning, they came and took me someplace else for more debriefing. I don’t know where. A couple of hours from Baltimore. After that, I was taken to Tallahassee by a woman named Jessica. Or she called herself Jessica. I had asked to be in a warm climate, a place with palm trees.”

I took a few sips of water. I would have settled for one palm tree at that moment. Just put my back against its trunk, gaze up at the shadowing fronds, and wait for a breeze. Despite the water, my mouth was so dry the insides of my cheeks felt glued to my teeth. “Did you ever find out what happened to Manfred Gottesman?” I asked.

“That’s why I will be grateful to Lisa forever. When she came a couple of weeks later, to do what she did, educate me, she told me he had been taken to a city in the Midwest and seemed to be making a good adjustment. She said she could lose her job and go to jail just for telling me that. She couldn’t tell me the name of the city or his new name. Of course not. I didn’t expect her to.” She gave what is described in chick lit as a tinkly laugh. Bright, carefree, knowing. But it had a quality that would make a sound editor drop it from a laugh track for being just a little weird. “But several years later, she told me he had become quite the entrepreneur. I laughed so hard! How strange life can be! By that time, I was nicely settled here.” I pictured her smiling, leading clients into the living room of one of those nine-million-square-foot town houses and pointing out the remote-controlled shades. “When did Manfred die?” she asked.

“About two weeks ago.”

“A long illness?”

“No, but an unusual one. He died from an infection caused by a rare fungus.”

She blinked twice, very hard, so that her eyes shut tight and her cheeks rose. “Where did he catch it? Or get it? I don’t know the terminology for a fungus.”

“It can be found in riverbank soil near his area, but it’s quite rare.”

For a moment, it seemed as if she was trying to speak—leaning forward, mouth open slightly. But language seemed to have deserted her. At last she pushed out some words.