The Double Game (7 page)

“Never saw it.”

But I had, of course, and one particular paragraph had lodged in my mind:

Ever since his “confession,” Lemaster has lost his edge, seemingly more interested in proving his loyalty than in honing his craft. His latest book, a techno-thriller in which Uncle Sam’s minions are portrayed only in the brightest hues of red, white and blue, completes his descent into mediocrity.

“The funny thing,” Dad said, “is that Agency people didn’t even raise an eyebrow about the whole confessional part.”

“Really?”

“It was his other slip that pissed them off.”

“There was another slip?”

“Think about it. Think of everything he told you.”

I did. I drew a blank until my father filled it in.

“‘I was looking for the Don Tollesons of the world.’ He was a mole hunter.”

“Well, yeah. That was pretty obvious.”

“And what does that tell you about who he worked for?”

“The Soviet desk?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Jim Angleton?” My father smiled but said nothing. “I didn’t think Counterintelligence had its own field men. Not overseas, anyway.”

“Nobody else thought so, either, including most of the CIA.”

“So it was off the books?”

“Everyone’s except Angleton’s, which he kept in a safe.”

Angleton yet again. Dead for more than twenty years, yet still coming up in my memories, and in my conversations with both David and Dad. And why not? Everything I’d ever read about him made him sound like the bizarre creation of some novelist, which of course made him seem real, eternal. He was the original Cold Warrior, one of the first to play the postwar game again the Soviets and play it well. In his hobbies, as in his work, he was a detail man, a miniaturist—tying flies, breeding orchids, combing files, hunting moles, deconstructing poems. Deeply suspicious, yet blinded by Anglophilia and his friendship with Kim Philby, whose betrayal drove him over the edge. And now I’d learned that Ed Lemaster had secretly worked for him.

“Turns out,” Dad continued, “that Angleton had three operatives, all of them ostensibly employed by the Soviet desk but in reality reporting to him. Which meant they were paid twice, of course.”

“So even within the Agency they were double agents, sort of.”

“That’s certainly how the Soviet desk saw it. Angleton called them his ‘flying squad.’ Apparently only a few of his assistants knew about it.”

“Where’d you hear all this, the funeral?” He smiled cagily. “No wonder I couldn’t get anything out of you at dinner.”

“Of course, by the time Lemaster let the cat out of the bag in that interview, Angleton had been in retirement eleven years. But there was still hell to pay. You saw what those people were like. They still argue about crap that happened in 1948, so you can imagine what kind of a row they’d have over—”

He was interrupted by a ringing telephone, a land line jangling down the hall in his bedroom. It startled us both, but him even more. He looked over at the clock on an end table, then back at me, then again at the clock, which seemed strange, but I said nothing. It was exactly two o’clock.

The phone continued to ring.

“Excuse me,” he said, sounding shaken. He headed off toward his bedroom. I took up a position at the end of the hall to listen.

“Cage,” he said, answering in the Austrian style. There was a pause. Then, sternly and in German: “No. This is Warfield, but William is here. Are you sure that’s who you wish to speak to? Very well.”

Then, louder and in English: “Bill, it’s for you.”

His brow was creased as he handed me the receiver. He hovered in the doorway as I answered, rude by his standards.

“This is William Cage.”

I turned my back for privacy, but sensed his lingering presence. I’d been back for half an hour and we were already spying on each other. The answering voice was neither tense nor urgent. It was an older man, Viennese accent. The line was clear, so the call was probably local.

“This is Christoph, at Kurzmann Buchladen.” A bookstore. “I have your special order, delivered today in the name of Dewey.”

There it was, the promised message, although I hadn’t expected it so soon.

“A delivery? Now?”

“We are closed Sunday. We open tomorrow at eight o’clock. On Johannesgasse.”

“Where did you—?”

He’d hung up. When I turned around my father was staring from the doorway.

“Was that Kurzmann’s?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’m an old customer, although not for years. Did you special-order something?”

“No.”

I toyed with trying the name “Dewey” on him, but if I told him that, then I would have to explain more than I was ready to. His reaction to the phone call had already aroused my suspicion, and, judging from what he said next, my reaction had aroused his.

“Do they have something for you?”

“So he said.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t order anything? You’re
positive
that that call came from completely out of the blue?”

“Yes.”

He eyed me dubiously, probably because of the guilty look on my face. But he was hiding something, too. We moved back to the living room and, like boxers returning to the ring, took up our previous positions. Then, for whatever reason—the strange call, the jet lag, or even the sight of all those spy novels, these words spilled from my mouth:

“This is almost like something out of a Lemaster novel, don’t you think?”

He reacted as if I’d slapped him.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because it is? Do you remember any scenes like this? Or could I be thinking of another author?”

“All right, Bill. Enough.” His tone was stern, as if I was in high school again and he’d just found a roach clip in the bathroom. “Who told you to ask me these questions?”

“Nobody.”

“Likely story, but I suppose after that wacky funeral nothing should surprise me. I did wonder what sort of repercussions would come out of that unholy mix of people, but I never imagined you’d be part of them. So, who did you speak to before flying over here? Someone at State? Or maybe even the Agency?”

“The CIA?” I didn’t have to fake sounding incredulous because I really was.

“So the Agency, then. Is that the real reason you’re here?”

“Dad, no one told me to ask you anything.” He gave me a long look, unconvinced. I stared right back. “Have I ever been able to lie to your face and get away with it?”

“No.” He seemed to relax. “But
something
made you ask.”

“My imagination, probably. Why’d you assume I’d been talking to the Agency?”

“Ask Christoph.”

“The bookseller?”

“When you pick up the delivery. Ask him why I’d think this was some sort of job for the Agency. Ask him as well who else has been in touch with him on this matter, and for God’s sake do it discreetly. Then tell me what he says.”

“You’re serious?”

“Absolutely. And, son?”

“Yes?”

“If you’re thinking this is some sort of lark, or intellectual exercise, then I urge you to disabuse yourself of that notion straightaway.”

“Based on what?”

“That’s all I’m going to say until you’ve talked to Christoph.”

At first I thought he was bluffing, but as the silence lengthened, Dad stared out the window into the gray afternoon. I coughed and picked up my coffee cup, but it was empty, so I set it back down, uncertain what to do next. We still had five hours to kill before dinner, eighteen before the bookstore opened. It was going to be a long and awkward afternoon.

7

I arrived five minutes early, only to find that Kurzmann Buchladen was already open for business. There was even a customer ahead of me, a dissipated-looking fellow in a long wool coat and a floppy brown hat that slouched on his head like a dumpling. I took him at first for a wino, then noticed how assiduously he was working the shelves, like an ingenious piece of farm machinery that can simultaneously harrow, weed, and cultivate. Three volumes were tucked beneath his left arm and a fourth bulged from a coat pocket. He looked up as the door shut behind me, jingling a bell. Then he wrote me off as inconsequential and resumed his harvesting.

I looked around. Sellers of rare and antiquarian books are often messy housekeepers, but even by those standards the conditions at Kurzmann’s were unforgivable. The framed prints and maps hanging from the walls were dusty and crooked. Several had cracked glass. The watermarked ceiling was beaded with moisture—a death sentence for all that cloth and pulp below—and the musty air smelled faintly of cat urine. Mounted on the wall behind the register was an ancient color engraving of Prince Metternich, Europe’s original celebrity power broker, the Kissinger of his day. He glared out at the merchandise in apparent disdain.

Creaking floorboards drew my attention toward the back, where a short balding man in an unbuttoned vest emerged from the gloom. A tape measure was draped around his neck, as if he were a tailor who’d been called away from his sewing.

“Yes?” he asked in English, pegging my nationality. He ignored the other customer, and looked surprised by my presence, which was odd given yesterday’s phone call.

“Are you Christoph?” I asked in German. He answered in the same language.

“Do I know you?”

“You telephoned yesterday about a special order. I’m Bill Cage.”

A book slapped to the floor in the aisle where the other man was browsing. He snatched up the dropped copy and glanced my way with a gleam in his eye, or maybe I imagined it. The only noise was the muffled sound of rush hour traffic from the Ring, half a block away.

“Ah, yes.” Christoph said. He shuffled toward the register. “Your book has arrived.”

“For someone named Dewey, you said.”

He shot me a sidelong glance but said nothing.

“Well, is it or not?”

Stopping behind the counter, he glanced toward the harvester, who was working at a more deliberate pace than before. Then he glared at me and hissed beneath his breath: “Do you always conduct your business so sloppily?”

He quickly turned away and, with some effort, climbed a stepladder to a long shelf stuffed with books. Yellow labels scribbled with names poked from every copy, although the amount of dust suggested that most of the customers had either died or forgotten their orders. But my parcel looked clean as a whistle when he pulled it free. It was wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with a crisscross of white string. Something about this presentation stirred a distant memory which I couldn’t quite place. The name “Dewey” was written on the butcher paper in black ink. Christoph handed it over, still glaring.

“Fifty euros, Mr.…?”

“Cage.”

“Yes. Mr. Cage.”

“Fifty? That’s practically seventy dollars.”

“The price is marked. You can take it or leave it.”

I got out my wallet.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“No. I have a question.” He winced and glanced behind me. There was no sound at all from the harvester. Feeling his eyes on my back, and remembering my father’s warning to be discreet, I lowered my voice to a whisper.

“My father told me to ask you why he might suspect this was some sort of job for the Agency.” I felt like an idiot. “You know, the CIA?”

“Please, Mr. Cage.”

He, too, was whispering, and if his tone had been icy before, it was now tremulous with anger. Then he switched to English and spoke loudly.

“If there are other
special orders
you wish to discuss, perhaps it would be easier to do so in my office, where I have full access to the records of my inventory.”

“Okay. Fine.”

He led the way, footsteps loud and choppy. The harvester returned to his labors, but Christoph still hadn’t shown the slightest interest in him, even though the fellow could have walked out with his books at any moment without paying. He certainly looked the type.

We negotiated a switchback hallway, then climbed a winding staircase to an even gloomier corridor lined with more books. Many were leather-bound and ancient, others relatively new, the titles flashing by like signs on the Autobahn.
Portnoy’s Complaint
in German, an old
Atlas of the New World
in Spanish, an anthology of Charles Addams cartoons. When we reached the end of the passage he withdrew a set of keys, fiddled with one or two, then unlocked the door to an office as clean and modern as you’d find in any bank, although it, too, was filled with books—his choicest copies, to judge from the bindings and titles.

The decor was Formica and chrome, with everything in perfect order—papers in stacks, pencils in cups. An iMac with a 21-inch screen held pride of place. Christoph sagged into a massive chair upholstered in black leather. He didn’t motion for me to sit down, but I did anyway, in a smaller seat of matching leather. There was an electric kettle on a window ledge next to packets of tea and filter coffee, but he made no offer of hospitality. From the rigid set of his jaw it was obvious he was still furious.

“I only brought you up here out of respect for your father,” he began, switching back to German. “Otherwise, I would have kicked you out of the store.”

I repeated my question.

“All I want to know—and my father told me to ask, so it’s not like this was my idea—is what made him think this might be a job for the Agency?”

“
He
told you to ask me this? Warfield Cage?”

I nodded. Christoph shook his head in disbelief.

“How do I even know you’re his son? Do you have any identification?”

I felt foolish justifying myself to this old gnome, but I dug out my passport and showed him. He again shook his head.

“Your father was once such a careful man. If this is his idea of a joke, tell him I didn’t laugh. Have you perhaps done something to anger him?”

“Not unless we count your phone call. He thought that was
my
idea of a joke.”

“Please believe me when I say that I don’t normally ask about these transactions, but how did you happen to become the new representative for Dewey?”

“Who is Dewey, anyway?”