The Double Game (15 page)

She slit the top edge with a fingernail and withdrew a page of my stationery, folded neatly. He’d been using my Royal again. A page from a book was pasted on the paper, with a short message typed above it:

Deliver V’ss proofs ASAP

The page was another one from
Knee Knockers,
probably Dad’s copy. I winced, feeling like someone who kept receiving severed fingers and toes from a kidnapper. We read the passage.

Boris arrived late to the Burggarten, but that was his style. So was sloppiness in general. With each step, the vodka bottle clanked against the key ring in his overcoat pocket. Eventually he grew annoyed enough by the sound to stop and move his keys to the opposite pocket, an occasion which of course called for another shot of vodka. He wiped his mouth on a sleeve and continued. Only when he came within a block of the dead drop did he actually begin taking proper precautions, an oversight which would be logged into Hartley’s report as the Russian’s “fatal error.” The mailbox, at least, looked secure enough. It was a stone just to the right of a statue of Emperor Franz Josef I at the south end of the park, marked with a small slash of yellow chalk. Glancing around carelessly for onlookers, Boris slipped a small plastic bag from his trousers, lifted the stone, placed the bag underneath, then dropped the stone back into place. He took out a stub of chalk from his pocket and made a cross through the slash.

“So you’re supposed to deliver these negatives?” Litzi asked.

“To a dead drop in the Burggarten. Where presumably someone will pick them up.”

“Good thing we made prints. Sounds like he wants them right away. So what happened to Boris?”

“What?”

“In the book. It mentioned his ‘fatal error.’”

“Oh.” I swallowed. “Someone followed him. They waited until he was back at his apartment, then shot him in the face.”

“Is everyone in these books shot in the face?”

“It was a common KGB tactic.”

“Does you handler know you’d be aware of that?”

“Probably.”

“I don’t enjoy his sense of humor.”

“Maybe he isn’t joking. Where’s that card for the cultural center?”

She searched her purse again and dug it out from the bottom.

“The New Moscow Cultural Center,” she read. “Founded 1994. Art. Literature. Translations. Here’s their number.”

“Call them, then. Before I lose my nerve.”

“Before we both do.”

Now she looked as worried as I was. She punched in the number anyway.

14

The New Moscow Cultural Center looked like a shoestring operation. Its ground-floor offices were tucked behind a pharmacy and a kitschy souvenir shop with a window full of chocolate Mozart statuettes.

They’d been preparing to lock up when Litzi phoned, but the young man who answered grudgingly agreed to wait after she explained it was urgent. We decided to use fake names and pay in cash.

A buzzer opened the door. A few paintings, none to my liking, were propped on easels in the foyer. A man in his early twenties waited impatiently at a cluttered reception desk.

“You must be Feliks,” Litzi said. “I am Mrs. Brünner. This is my friend from America, Mr. Norris. Thank you for waiting.”

Feliks nodded gloomily.

“You have payment?”

“Certainly. How much?”

“Twenty euros per page.”

Steep. Feliks had probably built in a gratuity for himself. I handed him the prints, but he refused to even glance at them until Litzi put four tens on the desk. He slipped the bills into his trousers and picked up the prints.

His eyes widened immediately, and he dropped the photos.

“Is this joke?”

“No,” I answered. “No joke.”

“Then you are crazy. Or maybe you are police.”

“Neither.”

He retrieved the bills from his pocket and handed them to Litzi along with the prints. She tried to give everything back, but he let the bills fall on the desk and shoved away the photos. As they oscillated to the floor he stood abruptly and disappeared down a hallway.

We looked at each other, wondering what to do next, and we were on the verge of giving up when a benevolent old face crowned with a snowy shock of hair poked from the end of the hall. The little man who emerged looked like a forest gnome who had just crawled out from under a toadstool. As he drew closer he even smelled a little woodsy, like wet leaves on a trail.

“Please,” he said, gesturing down the hallway. “Why don’t we step into my office where there is greater privacy. Bring the documents with you.”

He turned before we could answer, so we followed. His office was small but pleasant, with flowers in terra-cotta pots. A window overlooked an alley through the iron steps of a fire escape.

“I am Director Gelev. You seem to have upset young Feliks. May I get you some tea? I am afraid the coffeepot has already been cleaned for the day.”

“No, thank you.” Litzi said.

“None for me, either.”

“May I see those papers, if you would be so kind?”

I handed them over.

“Mm-hmm.” He flipped to the second one. “Yes, I see.”

He had the bearing of a doctor confirming a dire diagnosis.

“If it is not too much trouble, may I also see your identity papers?”

Litzi and I exchanged glances, then she reached for her ID card. I did the same with my passport. So much for fake names. He looked them over, then handed them back with a slight smile.

“You must excuse my precautions. Even with photographs of very old papers like these, the name of the KGB still carries a great deal of power, as you saw with young Feliks.”

“These are from the KGB?” I asked.

“Did you truly not know this?”

“No. Although maybe I should’ve guessed from Feliks’s reaction.”

“May I ask how you acquired these documents?”

“I, uh …”

Litzi deftly cut in.

“I am an archivist at the National Library.” She presented her business card. “People bring me all sorts of strange old items, thinking that I might have a use for them. Mr. Cage is an old friend who happens to be here on vacation. He brought them from the States.”

Better than what I would’ve come up with, but Gelev immediately shot it full of holes.

“I know the National Library has budget strains, Miss Strauss, but does it no longer employ translators of Cyrillic?”

“I didn’t want to use official resources on a friend’s behalf. This seemed like a more … informal way to handle it.”

“Of course. KGB documents. Very informal.”

He turned to me.

“And you brought these from the States?”

“Yes.”

“Did some émigré give them to you?”

“A friend of one, yes.”

He raised an eyebrow and studied me further. Sweat prickled in my palms as if I’d been hooked up to a polygraph. He almost certainly knew I was lying.

“Very well. I will have them translated and return them tomorrow. I don’t know what sort of price Feliks quoted you, but our standard rate is ten euros per page.”

“I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable leaving them overnight. They’re so old and everything.”

He raised his eyebrows again. The photos, of course, were brand-new. My inclination was to snatch up the prints and leave. Maybe Gelev sensed that, judging from what he said next.

“Well, they do appear to be fairly brief. Perhaps I could go through them with you myself right now and tell you roughly what they say.”

“Yes. That would work.”

He motioned for us to pull up our chairs beside the desk. Then he took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, cleared his throat, and went to work.

“This first one is some sort of field report, from a man named Leo to another named Oleg. No last names are mentioned.”

“Code names, probably,” I said.

He eyed me over the tops of his specs.

“You are familiar with the working tactics of the KGB?”

“Well, no. But …”

“It is probably a safe assumption, all the same. The subject of Leo’s memo is Source Dewey.”

“Dewey? You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

So the KGB knew about Dewey. Were they using him, or stalking him?

“Go ahead.”

“Apparently Oleg was in Moscow. Leo was not.” He paused, running a finger along the lines of text. “‘Dewey’s movements proceed as expected. Mailbox delivery on nineteen seven.’ He means the date, the nineteenth of July.”

“Is there a year?”

Gelev scanned the page.

“Not in the report, but there is a filing stamp. Fourth of September, 1971.”

“Thanks. Go ahead.”

“‘Mailbox delivery,’ which you already heard. ‘Pickup completed. Box empty on twentieth. As requested, contacts made at the following addresses on the following dates.’ He lists them, there are several.”

“How many?”

Gelev counted down the page with his forefinger, muttering in Russian beneath his breath.

“Three. Three names and three addresses. And they are not Vienna addresses, nor are they Moscow. Knowing both cities, I can say that with reasonable certainty. Would you like me to read them?”

We nodded. The contacts were first names only, meaning they, too, were probably code names. Karloff, Woodman, Fishwife. None was familiar. He then read the names of the streets, which I recognized right away, and I suspected Litzi did as well.

“The addresses are followed by more of the same. A reference to a mailbox delivery on the twentieth of August. Then someone checked to see that it was empty on the twenty-first. Then another delivery in early September, the first. Details such as that.”

He paused, scanning toward the bottom.

“Ah, here is something different in the final paragraph. I will quote it as precisely as I can: ‘Dewey has employed a new courier. I suggest we approach. On twenty-second of August I also detected possible surveillance of Dewey’s network. Tactics are not those of our usual adversaries. Await your instructions on both matters.’ And that is the end of the document.”

“He doesn’t mention a name for the new courier?”

Gelev checked again, then shook his head.

“No.”

“Could I write down those translated names and addresses?”

“Certainly. Here.”

He handed me a pen, then grabbed a sheet of paper from the feed tray of a printer. I wrote down the addresses as he read them back. One in particular stood out, and my reaction must have been noticeable.

“Have I said something to upset you?” Gelev asked.

Gelev would have made a great cop.

“No. I’m just a little keyed up.”

“The KGB has been known to have that effect. Are you ready for the second document?”

“Please.”

“It was also filed in September 1971, on the sixth of the month. This one is from Oleg to Leo. There is no subject label, but it seems to address several points. I will take them in order.”

“Sure.”

“His expense report for August is approved with one amendment. Payment to Source Nina not authorized.”

“Nina?”

“There is no other explanation. Knowing what I do of Russians abroad, I suspect Leo was trying to get his boss to pay for some woman that he was …” Gelev glanced toward Litzi. “That he was seeing.”

“Don’t mince words on my account,” she said.

“It is not my way to be coarse around ladies. I will continue.”

He slid his forefinger to the next paragraph.

“There is discussion of what sort of car he should drive to the border the following week. Oleg suggests a Skoda that does not come from the embassy motor pool. Ah, here we go. ‘Surveillance of Dewey to which you refer is possibly on behalf of source Glinka, separate from your activities. Do not approach. Integrity of source Dewey could be compromised.”

“Glinka?”

“Yes.”

“Any mention of Dewey’s new courier?”

“That is the next and final item. ‘Proceed with identification of Dewey courier. Full vetting, but Dewey must not know. Report results immediately upon completion.’ “

“So Oleg was concerned.”

“It sounds that way. But, of course, this was forty-one years ago. Perhaps not enough concern for it to still matter.”

“You’re probably right.”

Gelev put the paper down and took a deep breath. He seemed relieved, as if he had expected tales of torture, murder, or some other terrible secret.

I, on the other hand, was disconcerted. In the second memo, Oleg’s reference to Dewey sounded downright cozy, as if they were allies, not adversaries. Although it was still ambiguous. And who were all these other parties spying on Dewey?

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been a great help. Ten euros a page, you said?”

Gelev waved away the proffered bills and took a bottle of vodka from a desk drawer. He stood and fetched three tumblers from a shelf.

“There is no need for payment. It is just as well if there is no record of this transaction. But we must all have a drink, to wash away the memories of those old and bad times.”

Litzi waved away the glass but he poured her a shot anyway. The two of us sipped. Gelev knocked his back with a single swallow, then poured himself a second, which he finished before we were done. He set down his empty glass with a great sigh.

“You may count on my complete discretion, Mr. Cage. But as someone whose father spent seven years in the Gulag, I hope I may count on yours as well.”

“Of course.”

“Young Feliks, however, is another matter. When he becomes excited he tends to peep like a hungry nestling. So if you will pardon my rudeness, I must find out which café he has fled to before he tells half of Vienna about your visit. May I escort you out?”

Gelev frowned as he led us to the door, as if still working something over in his head. He paused after taking out his keys, then spoke again.

“I moved here many years ago, Mr. Cage, long before the difficulties of the Cold War were settled business. If indeed such things are ever settled. When I was younger I used to make a game out of spotting the KGB men who came and went from this city. For Russians this was not difficult, partly because so many of them stayed at the same hotel, Gasthaus Brinkmann. As it happens, I was walking by it only yesterday, and recognized a man coming out the door whose face I had not seen in years.”