The Double Game (20 page)

“But why?”

“Her father was Czech. Strauss wasn’t his real name, you know.”

“That much she told me.”

“I gather they must have threatened her in some way. It wasn’t like they could have done much, but she wouldn’t have known that, poor girl. The repatriations and kidnappings had ended by then, but that brand of insecurity dies hard, especially if you’ve ever been hauled in for interrogation. And they had other ways of getting back at émigrés. Planting embarrassing stories in the press, making it hard for them to travel. They must have ordered her to do them a favor before you and I moved away.”

“How do you know?”

“She wasn’t exactly a pro, and there were clear signs she’d been poking around. I’ve sometimes wondered if she
wanted
me to find out. So I reported it. Had to, I’m afraid. The fellow at the embassy who followed it up told me the rest. His people never took it seriously.”

I didn’t need to ask who “his people” were.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dad placed his hands on the table, fingers interlocked—the “wise counselor” pose that he had always employed when I’d done something foolish like blowing off an algebra exam, or failing to stand up for a friend.

“You were young and in love, and we were moving soon. And you never liked it when I intruded on that side of your life, which I quite understood. Everyone needs his privacy.”

With the uttering of those words, the spirit of my mother was conjured into the space between us. I was sure Dad sensed it as well. But we let the moment pass, as always.

“Does this mean her name is still in some embassy file, or even at the Agency?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He was uncomfortable now. “Maybe as a footnote.”

It made me sorry for Litzi, but also for myself, unflattering as that sounds. This was the woman I had entrusted with everything, yet she hadn’t leveled with me. And if she was willing to withhold that secret—well, you get the idea.

I stood to pack, although in some ways the trip was already ruined. Right or wrong, I could no longer trust Litzi.

“Don’t take it so hard, son. Those were very different times, especially for families like hers.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

19

Litzi stood at the far end of the train platform, striking a cinematic pose in an overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat, a suitcase at her feet. Her face lit up when she saw me coming, a lover’s glow. Mine had flickered out at breakfast.

I greeted her with a dry peck on the cheek. Nothing felt right or comfortable, and she sensed it immediately.

“What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“Just a hectic morning. Took longer to pack than I thought, a few other things.”

The words rang false and she eyed my small suitcase. Thankfully she didn’t press the point. Our seats were reserved, and we had a compartment to ourselves. The first thing I wanted was a drink, but the cart wouldn’t be coming by until we were under way. I’d been wondering for the past hour how to bring up the subject of her duplicity, and I was still pondering the question when I realized she was chattering away about something from the past. I only caught the end of it.

“… that old wine bar just off the square, what do you think?”

“I’m sorry. I zoned out for a minute.”

“I was just wondering if that old wine bar was still there that we went to before, the one right off the Old Town square.”

I remembered it, a cozy little wine restaurant in a cellar with vaulted stone ceilings. At the time I’d been convinced it was the very spot where Sarah Gainham had set a key scene in her 1959 Prague novel,
The Stone Roses.
In the book, one of the waiters turned out to be not only a murderous Soviet spy, but also a woman.

“You spent the whole meal looking for cross-dressing waiters, as I recall,”

I couldn’t help but smile, which unfortunately made Litzi conclude I was back to my old self. The sooner I confronted her, the better. Maybe there would even be enough time for one or both of us to leave the train before it departed, if necessary.

“Look, Litzi, there’s something—”

“What’s happening?” she said.

She was gazing out the window, back toward the terminal. I turned and saw a column of policemen at a trot along the platform, six in all. Whistles blew. A porter hustled by our compartment, keys jangling. Litzi gripped my hand. It was an eerie replay of Bad Schandau, and once again the authorities seemed to be heading straight for us.

Footsteps thundered in the corridor. A policeman stopped at our compartment.

“Litzi Strauss and William Cage?”

“Yes?” I answered.

“Your passports, please.”

A second policeman joined him, resting a hand on a holstered gun.

“It’s them,” the first one said. “You will both come with me, please.”

This time I didn’t have to ask what it was all about, but I did anyway for the sake of appearances. The answer was almost the same as it had been thirty-seven years earlier.

“No questions. Just come.”

The big difference this time was the reaction of the passengers. In East Germany almost everyone had averted their faces, lest they be summoned next. Today’s audience was raptly attentive. A small boy waved from a window until his mother yanked back his hand. An older man squinted at us above his reading glasses, then shook his head in disapproval. And in the last passenger car, at the second window from the rear, Lothar Heinemann sat watching me, eyes alight. As I was moving out of sight he nodded slightly, as if to say, “See you in Prague—if you ever make it.”

Then the train hissed and groaned and, with a massive lurch, began sliding away toward Prague without us. Litzi reached toward me, but a policeman slapped away her hand.

“Two cars,” one said. “They are to be interrogated separately.”

Just like old times.

They sent a tag team to question me, two cops in civilian clothes in a room with all the expected trimmings—hard chair, bare table, harsh lighting, and a two-way mirror.

One cop was blond and short, a little pudgy, with the ruddiness of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. He would have fit right in as a wurst vendor at the Hoher Markt. Heightening the effect was a mustard stain near the bottom of his tie.

The other one, who seemed to be in charge, was taller with brown hair and a downturned mouth, a sleepy cast to his eyes. He took his time getting started, sifting through a file folder as if it contained the world’s most interesting material, while the shorter cop slouched in a chair with his hands behind his head. Other than the sound of pages turning, there was only the hum of the tube lighting. Two other plainclothesmen, one of them female, had taken Litzi to a room down the hall.

Finally the taller cop stood.

“Tell us what you were doing yesterday at number 11 Köllnerhofgasse at approximately four p.m.”

“Visiting someone for an interview. I’m a freelance journalist doing a story for
Vanity Fair.
”

I referred them to the letter of introduction, which they’d already found while searching my pockets. They weren’t impressed.

“Who were you visiting? Name and apartment number, please.”

“I don’t remember the number, but it was the fourth floor. The door was to the right as you came up the landing. The name was Vladimir Miller.”

“Miller? No one by that name resides in that building.”

“It was the name on the mailbox.”

He looked at his partner. I couldn’t tell what passed between them, but then the shorter one stood and produced a photo. It was the same one that had run in the newspaper.

“Is this the man you knew as Vladimir Miller?”

“Yes.”

“So you did see him?”

“Yes.”

He seemed surprised I’d admitted it so easily. The taller one spoke again.

“What was the purpose of your visit?”

“I told you. It was for a magazine story.”

“Yes, but let’s talk about the real reason. What kind of information were you there to collect?”

Now I had a problem. My answer had to be generic enough to match whatever Litzi said, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell them everything and make this a bigger deal than it already was. For all I knew they might even charge me with espionage. But I didn’t know how much Litzi would say. She would be living in Vienna long after I’d moved on (provided I was allowed to), and spilling my secrets might be the easiest way out for her. My only hope was to keep my answers as vague as possible for as long as possible.

“I had no idea what he was going to tell me. He invited us. Or invited me, anyway. Litzi was just along for the ride.”

“He was a friend of yours?”

“I’d never even heard of him before yesterday.”

“Of course. I’m sure you make a practice of dropping in on strangers.”

“I told you, I’m a journalist, and he contacted me. I responded.”

“Why did he contact you?”

“He didn’t say why. He just indicated he had information for me, so he invited me over.”

“For this so-called story of yours.”

“Yes.”

The pudgy cop spoke up.

“Invited you how? Personally? By telephone. By email? Be specific.”

“He sent a message. A note. He said his name was Vladimir and that he wanted to speak with me.”

“So this man who you don’t know and have never seen before sends you a written invitation to come and see him, and just like that you oblige him?”

“That’s how it works when you’re a reporter.”

They looked at each other. I got the idea they hadn’t counted on these kinds of answers, and they were recalibrating on the fly.

“In addition to your duties as a reporter, and also as a Washington PR man for various wealthy interests—and we’ll get to some of those in a moment—are you also in the same line of business as this man Vladimir, as you call him?”

“That’s what he called himself to me. I didn’t come up with the name.”

“But you trade in the same commodities?”

“I don’t know what he trades in.”

“What was the topic of your discussion? Running arms to Afghanistan, or prostitutes to the Balkans?”

“Neither. We didn’t discuss his business.”

The shorter one snorted.

“This Vladimir, as you call him, was expecting a large wire transfer to arrive in his account very soon from the United States. I suppose you didn’t discuss this with him, either?”

Now I had to lie.

“No.”

For whatever reason—my gestures? tone of voice?—they seemed to sense they’d discovered a weak spot, so the pudgy one kept at it, leaning into my face and raising his voice.

“He said nothing of this pending transaction? You’re willing to repeat that as fact to both of us?”

I had to brazen it out. What was it they said about interrogation techniques? That people look up and to the right when they’re lying? Or was it down and to the left? I looked at the table, then thought better of it and looked straight into the detective’s face.

“No. He said nothing about anything like that.”

He smirked. The taller one shook his head, then slapped his hands on his knees and stood.

“This is useless,” the short one said. “He’s lying.”

It seemed obvious what the next question would be. One of them would ask me what Vladimir
did
say. And how would I answer that?

“Have you ever heard of a book called
Petrovka 38
?” the taller one asked.

It caught me by surprise.

“Yes. It’s by Yulian Semyonov.”

“So you know this book?”

“I read it. Years ago.”

“Tell me what you know of it.”

I shrugged, still wary, but relieved that they seemed to have eased the pressure just when they’d backed me into a corner.

“Semyonov was a Russian who wrote Soviet spy novels during the Cold War, although
Petrovka 38
was more of a cop novel, a murder mystery.”

The word “murder” nearly lodged in my throat, which I’m sure they didn’t miss. The taller detective reached into his file folder.

“Do you recognize this copy of
Petrovka 38
?”

I blanched in disbelief, not just from seeing the black silhouette of a stabbed body on the cover, with blood spilling onto the white background, but also because the upper right corner of the jacket was torn. It was my own copy, stolen from my townhouse in Georgetown, presumably along with the rest of my spy books.

“No.”

“You don’t sound very convincing. You don’t look it, either. Your face betrays you, Mr. Cage. Are you quite sure of your answer?”

I looked down at the table and drew a deep breath.

“It resembles a copy I’m familiar with. But it can’t be the same one, because that book is supposed to be at my house in Washington.”

“Can’t be? You mean the airlines no longer allow their passengers to carry books with them on transatlantic flights? And by the way, Mr. Cage, let us please dispense with this ‘Vladimir’ silliness, shall we? I am sure you are quite aware that the man’s real name was Boris Trefimov, just as I am quite sure you were surprised to see this book only because you were expecting someone other than the police to find it at the scene.”

“The scene?”

“It was at Trefimov’s apartment, as you well know.” He moved closer, thrusting the book under my chin. “It was found with his body, as you also well know, since you were the one who must have placed it there in his lap. And it was open to this very page!”

He flipped to page 13, and I saw the black ink right away, marked boldly around a paragraph near the top.

“I didn’t take this book to his apartment, and I didn’t see it while I was there.”

Another snort from the sidekick. The taller detective put the book on the table and drummed the passage with a forefinger.

“Boris Trefimov could not read English very well, Mr. Cage, and this is an English translation, meaning this book would only have been left in his apartment as some sort of message for his superiors to find. But unfortunately for you, Mr. Cage, the police found the body first.”

“I told you, I didn’t—”

“Read the passage aloud for me, Mr. Cage.”

“What?”