The Double Game

9

Had you asked me to predict how Litzi would look after all this time, I would have erred on the side of frumpy. As a girl she had her mother’s fair complexion and blond hair, but her mother was also a standard-issue hausfrau, stout and sturdy, with a face as puffy as bread dough. Her father, from Bohemia, was thinner, with hollow eyes and prominent cheekbones, the face of a refugee. It was clear now that Litzi had borrowed the best from both sides. Fair complexion, but with features winnowed to their essentials. A few worry lines, but not enough to shake her air of earnest calm, although there did seem to be a hint of past disappointment in the depths of her eyes. Her blond hair was touched by gray, but she still had the posture of a dancer, lithe and graceful. It made me wonder how I was measuring up, then I told myself to stop, that we were far beyond that now.

We bought sandwiches at a bakery and walked to a park on the far side of the National Library, where ravens stalked the green and cawed for handouts. We sat at the base of a fountain and talked for a while about our lives and our jobs and what had become of the years while the water gurgled behind us. Then she nodded toward the sealed envelope, which lay at my feet in the grass.

“Well, are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

In all those spy novels, of course, the oldest and best advice was to trust no one. The same was true when I’d been a journalist, and more so at Ealing Wharton, where your level of mistrust was roughly proportionate to your annual bonus. But I had long ago noticed something about people who followed this advice. All of them seemed to wind up alone. I knew because I was one of them.

Today, I decided, I would act sixteen again, if only for the afternoon, if only for Litzi, and if only because for the moment I no longer wanted to be alone. Besides, she and I had lived through a lot together, some of it anything but child’s play. If anyone had been battle-tested to protect my secrets, it was Litzi Strauss.

“How much time do you have?”

“As much as we need. While you were buying lunch I texted my office. They believe I’m at an urgent appointment that will keep me away for most of the afternoon.”

“Do you remember all those Edwin Lemaster books my father had?”

She rolled her eyes and smiled, a wary but willing audience. I continued talking, and told her everything. She didn’t interrupt once, and was silent for a while when I finished.

“Amazing,” she finally said. “In my work I sometimes spend hours going through old letters, or some diary from centuries ago, and I’m always struck by how much those people come to life for me. But these are made-up characters you’re talking about, yet it’s like they’ve stepped right off the page. It makes me wish I’d been there to meet the fellow who delivered the envelope to me. He looked so strange.”

“You saw him?”

“I wasn’t supposed to. Karl, my friend in Salzburg, told me someone would drop it at the library’s reception desk with my name on it.”

I turned over the envelope. “Litzi Strauss” was written in the same blocky handwriting that had been on the parcel from Kurzmann’s.

“I figured it would probably be delivered by a courier service, but the other arrangements were so strange that I wanted to check, just in case, so I asked our man at the reception desk to note the exact time when the envelope was delivered. Later I checked the day’s footage from the security cameras, and there he was.”

“You’re a natural, Litzi.”

She smiled shyly. “Maybe I am. And it was no courier service, let me tell you! You should have seen him. A chilly morning on the first of October and he’s wearing an undersized summer-weight suit of that crinkly blue and white material you only seem to see in America.”

“Seersucker?”

“Yes! Seersucker.”

Something tugged at a hook deep in the pond of memory, but Litzi was off and running.

“The front pocket of his jacket was stuffed with pens, a whole row. At first I even thought he was wearing some kind of ID badge, but no, it was all pens.”

Whatever had been nibbling at my subconscious now struck with full force. I began reeling it to the surface.

“A seersucker, you said.”

“Yes.”

“With a pocketful of pens?”

“Yes.”

“Was he wearing glasses?”

“Sort of an old-fashioned pair.”

“And he was fat?”

“Maybe not fat, but a little overweight. Soft-looking. Do you know him?”

“Was he carrying anything else?”

She thought about it.

“A briefcase. A thin one, with a big tag.”

“Unbelievable.”

“You do know him.”

“Where’s the nearest bookstore?”

“Only a few blocks, you know Vienna. Why? Who was he?”

“I have to show you something.”

She impatiently led the way to a Buchladen that was far neater than Kurzmann’s. All the while she pressed me for answers, but I didn’t want to spoil the surprise, and was hoping my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me.

I made a beeline for the novels and checked the A’s, for Ambler, Eric. Fortunately his books have made a comeback in recent years. You can now find paperback reprints both in the U.S. and abroad. A German version would be fine, as long as they had a copy.

“What are you doing?” Litzi asked for what must have been the third time.

“Looking for your courier.”

And there he was, right next to a copy of A Coffin for Dimitrios. Or, rather, there was the book, Judgment on Deltchev, a fine little novel from early in the Cold War that Ambler had published in 1951. I’d read it cover to cover on the train from Prague to Vienna a week before turning fifteen.

I took it down and flipped through the pages. If I was correct, the reference came fairly early. Yes, there it was on the first page of the second chapter. I handed it to Litzi.

“Last paragraph. Read it.”

The passage describes the novel’s hero, Foster, as he arrives in an unnamed Eastern European capital, where he is met by Georghi Pashik, a shifty man of mixed loyalties. Pashik played a pivotal role in the plot, and his mysterious presence had stuck with me long after I finished the book. Here is the English version of what Litzi read:

I saw him standing on the platform as the train drew in: a short, dark, flabby man in rimless glasses and a tight seersucker suit with an array of fountain pens in his handkerchief pocket. Under his arm he carried a thin, black dispatch case with a silver medallion hanging from the zipper tag. He stood by a pillar gazing about him with the imperious anxiety of a wealthy traveler who sees no porter and knows that he cannot carry his own baggage. I think it was the fountain pens that identified him for me. He wore them like a badge.

Litzi’s eyes widened. Then she put a hand to her mouth and laughed.

“Oh, my God! So now I’m living in a novel, too?”

“As a librarian, you should be honored.”

“Archivist. Dealing with facts. When I was a girl I read Emil and the Detectives, just like everyone else. Then I grew up. But this is quite a coincidence.”

“It’s intentional. It’s my handler’s way of telling me how well he knows me. He’s been yanking my chain, and now he’s yanking yours.”

“But what if I’d never checked the video?”

“You did, though. That’s what matters, and he was ready for it. He had his man dress for the occasion, just like he was playing a role.” I took the book from her hands, hefting it like Exhibit A for the prosecution, although I wasn’t yet sure of the charges, much less of the suspect. “Obviously someone is taking this very seriously.”

“May I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you doing this? If it’s serious, like you say, then why take the risk just to go chasing after your past? Isn’t the present enough for you?”

“Do you think that’s all this is?”

“Certainly it’s part of it. Your interview with Lemaster. Your father’s little missions to the bookstore. Me. It’s almost like an analyst was taking you back through a series of repressed memories.”

“I never repressed any memories about you.”

“Didn’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve always hidden things from both of us. So have I.”

“We have?”

She shook her head, like she couldn’t quite believe I didn’t agree. Or maybe she was just being Litzi, provocative for its own sake, the way she’d always been.

“You Austrians. A nation of Freuds.”

“You Americans. So innocent about the world, except when you’re trying to run it.”

That sort of broke the mood. We left the bookstore and wandered aimlessly up the block. She briefly took my hand, squeezing it as if to make peace, but neither of us said much for a minute or two. I think we realized we’d reached a crossing point. It was time to either say good-bye or find some pretext to keep the day going.

I knew which option I preferred, although the sealed envelope tucked beneath my left arm was making demands of its own. Litzi checked her watch.

“My office must be wondering if my appointment is ever going to end.”

“You could always text them again.”

“Saying what?”

“That you’re meeting an old friend for a drink.”

She stopped in the middle of the block. Pedestrians eased around us. I watched her face as she considered what to say next.

“And after we have this drink, what then? Dinner? Probably with another drink, or a bottle of wine? Then we go back to my apartment to talk about how wonderful things used to be. And maybe then, because we are both lonely and unattached, we decide to make love for old times’ sake, or for new times’ sake, or for however we decide to justify it. Is that what you have in mind?”

I knew better than to answer. This was the Litzi I remembered, frank and analytical, offering the good with the bad in equal doses, whether you were ready or not. She picked up the thread on her own, as I’d known she would.

“No matter what may have brought us together, Bill, we are not living in one of your old books, and I am not some sort of second chance. I have loved many times since we knew each other, and some of those men meant far more to me than you ever did. My husband’s name was Klaus, and if my womb had not fallen to pieces then we would have raised sons and daughters, more than you could count. So I suppose what I am saying is that, while this is very nice, I don’t wish for either of us to be burdened by expectations.”

I smiled, which seemed to surprise her.

“I’m glad you still get straight to the point, Litzi. Although you’ve thought things through a little further along than I have. Not that I object to where you ended up, with the two of us in bed. But in the life I’ve been leading, sometimes a drink is just a drink. So would you like to have one, or should we call it a day and leave the rest to our memories, repressed or not?”

She smiled back.

“I’d forgotten how easily you could always disarm me. Me and my Austrian earnestness.” She took my arm. We resumed walking. “Let’s have that drink, and then dinner. Then you can take me home, but I won’t invite you upstairs. If you’re still around tomorrow? Well, maybe. But for tonight, how about Restaurant Sperl?”

“God, no. My dad stuffed me full of schnitzel last night at Figlmuller. And if we go to Sperl we really will talk about old times. I’d rather hear about all these men who were so much better than me. Pick someplace new.”

We still talked plenty about the past, of course. All the while the envelope remained with us, unopened, like an unstamped passport for entry to the rest of the week. Neither of us mentioned it until around nine o’clock, after our waiter had poured the last of the wine she’d so accurately predicted we would drink.

“I think it’s time,” she said, nodding toward it. I’d placed it on the table. The waiter had put the bill on top of it, but I knew she wasn’t referring to paying.

“I think so, too. Drum roll, please.”

“No drum roll. It would sound too much like a firing squad.”

“Oh, I doubt it will be that grim.”

But when I slipped the paper free I saw right away that the tone of this message was more somber and urgent than that of the ones before it. My handler was raising the stakes.

“TAKE HEED!” was handwritten in block letters atop a book page that had been sliced neatly from a copy of Le Carre’s Smiley’s People. Not another first edition, I hoped. There were two pages from the book, and a third from another novel. On the Smiley pages, three brief passages were marked in black ink. Taken as one item, they read like this:

“Moscow rules. I insist Moscow Rules.”

“And what were the contact procedures exactly?” Smiley asked.

“The safety signal was one new drawing-pin shoved high in the first wood support on the left as you entered.”

“And the counter-signal?” Smiley asked.

But he knew the answer already.

“A yellow chalk line,” said Mostyn.

Handwritten afterward, again in block letters, was a street name, “Kollnerhofgasse,” but no number, and no date or time.

“Does this mean you’re supposed to meet someone?” Litzi asked.

“Looks like it. And by Moscow Rules. I guess they want me to make sure I’m not being followed.”

The third page came from a copy of the novel Spy Wednesday, by William Hood, an ex-spy who began his CIA career in Vienna, where he helped run a Soviet double agent in the 1950s. He had ended it as one of James Angleton’s top deputies-so there was Angleton’s ghost yet again. After retiring, Hood had helped former CIA director Richard Helms write his memoirs. When he wrote about spy tradecraft, you could bank on its authenticity, and a tidy example of that was staring up at me from the excised page, in two marked passages:

Earlier that week, Roger Kyle had seen the numerals 3-4-7 jotted boldly across the top of page 222 of volume two of the phone books arranged alongside the bank of pay telephones in the Vienna Central Post Office.

Kyle fished a pen from his pocket and drew a line through the numerals. The emergency meeting would be on the third day of the week, Wednesday. At four, the next digit, in the afternoon. The safe house was at Frankgasse 7, the third number.

“So now you’re supposed to go look at some phone book at the Post Office?” Litzi asked.

“Does the Central Post Office even have pay phones anymore?”

“I don’t know. But the doors are unlocked till ten. If we leave now we’ll just make it.”

I’d once known the old post office well, and remembered it fondly. Christmas packages had arrived there every December from my grandparents. Dad always took me on the twenty-third to pick everything up, then we’d stop for a wurst and fries on the way home, dripping grease and sweet mustard onto the packages.

Litzi and I got there eight minutes before closing time. Only three other people were inside-a woman mailing a letter, a sweeper half in the bag, and a security man preparing to lock up. Lo and behold, there were still pay phones, with a handy supply of Vienna directories. When I flipped to page 222 of the second volume, three numbers were scrawled across the top in the same block handwriting that had been used in the message.

2-4-11

“Well, there you go,” I said, feeling the same satisfaction I did whenever I completed the New York Times Saturday crossword. “Two, the second day of the week, means Tuesday, tomorrow. The four means four p.m., at number eleven, presumably on Kollnerhofgasse. Once I get there, all I have to do is look for the safety signal to make sure the coast is clear.”

“That’s the same time as the rendezvous in Spy Wednesday, ” Litzi pointed out. “How did that one go?”

“The agent never showed. He’d been kidnapped to Moscow to be executed.”

“Well, that’s promising. What about the contact in Smiley’s People?”

“An Estonian named Vladimir. The KGB shot him in the face.”

Litzi shook her head but couldn’t help laughing.

“Moscow Rules don’t sound very reliable.”

“I’m sure the third time’s the charm.”

“Maybe someone should come with you.”

She said it with a smile, but also an unmistakable note of caution. That, plus Lothar’s earlier warning, reminded me that to some people this sort of information never lost its potency.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Vladimir was old and arthritic and walked with a cane.” Fleetingly, unavoidably, I thought again of Lothar, who also walked with a cane. “I can still outrun most people as long as they’re over forty.”

“Don’t joke about it.” Her smile was gone. “Those other messages sounded kind of fun. Not this one.”

True enough. Yet I found myself almost enjoying the aura of incipient danger, especially if it provided a handy pretext for seeing Litzi again.

“You’re as curious about this as I am, aren’t you?”

A shrug, an enigmatic smile.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind getting to the bottom of things.”

I suppressed a laugh.

“What?” she asked.

“‘Getting to the bottom of things.’ Those are the words Holly Martins said to Major Callaway in The Third Man. Do you remember what Major Callaway said?”

I quoted it to her in English, trying for my best impersonation of Trevor Howard in the role of Callaway.

“Death’s at the bottom of this, Martins. Leave death to the professionals.”

This time she didn’t smile. With good reason, as it turned out. Major Callaway was right.