When I opened the door of the apartment, relieved to be back on safer ground, Dad was standing over the stove making breakfast for two.
“Figured you were due to roll in soon. Hope you’re hungry. Bacon’s coming right up.” He flinched from a spatter of grease, then laughed. “I always eat like an American when you’re here.”
“You don’t have to, you know. I usually get by on yogurt and granola these days.”
“I know. But something about having you back always brings it out in me. Maybe I’m homesick.”
“You still get homesick for the States?”
“Almost any American does when he’s been abroad long enough.”
“I never did.”
“Well, you never knew any other life. You’d feel it now, I bet, if you stayed away long enough.”
It was an interesting thought. If you were to ask me where home was, I’d say Georgetown, not because I’d been living in Washington for years, but because that’s where David was. Would it still feel like home if he moved away?
Seeing Dad at the stove took me back to so many mornings from our past. Throughout our gypsy tour of Europe, this was the one view that had never changed. Some families make it a point to always gather for dinner. Our time was breakfast. Toast, eggs, bacon, and coffee. The ritual reading of the daily papers, with Dad’s running commentary and my persistent questions. Before we set out there was always a checklist for school-books? homework? lunch? Then he would see me to the schoolhouse door, even after I was old enough to get there on my own. Whether we walked, rode a tram, or, on rare occasions, took an embassy car, it gave us a chance to talk awhile longer. Nannies and sitters didn’t enter the picture until the afternoon, and they were movable furniture, Dad the only constant.
So as I watched him now, spatula in motion-a far defter cook than Litzi, I thought with amusement-I experienced an overwhelming sense of landing at a safe harbor in a storm. Yet I couldn’t avoid a feeling of mild regret as I noted his pronounced stoop, the age spots on his hands, the wispy hair. At seventy-six, he is fragile, fading, and I know his few remaining years will fly by. I should spend more time here, and more time with David. The three of us should spend a week together sometime soon.
I carried the steaming platters of food to the table while he poured coffee. The paper was already folded next to the napkins. We tucked in.
“So I take it you’ve come from Litzi’s?”
“We spent the day together. Very pleasant. We’ve decided to go to Prague for a few days.”
“Prague. Interesting choice.” He paused. “Have you enlisted her in your… investigation, for lack of a better word?”
“My research? She thinks it’s fascinating. She has a few useful contacts.”
“I’d be careful of those.”
“Dad, she’s an archivist at the National Library.”
He shook his head but didn’t reply. Then he opened his newspaper, his customary way of signaling for silence. It wasn’t rudeness, it was our old routine.
“Goodness, the economy… Hmm… Looks like the U.S. midterms are going to be a disaster.”
“More business for Marty Ealing, no matter what.”
He peeped over the page.
“You sound like you’re getting tired of him.”
“I’ve been tired of him since day one. It’s my tolerance that’s running out.”
He nodded, seemingly pleased, and turned the page.
“ Well, now.” Something had caught his eye. The pages shuffled as he pulled the story closer. After a few seconds he lowered the paper and stared into space, concentrating. I bit into a slice of bacon.
“Tell me something. In this research of yours, has the name of a Boris Trefimov come up?”
“No.”
He glanced back at the paper.
“Living on… Kollnerhofgasse?”
I swallowed. The bacon went down like a shard of tree bark.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, there’s this funny coincidence. Not ha-ha funny, but strange. I was at the embassy yesterday for a few odds and ends. Nothing important.”
“No, of course not.”
He noted my skepticism but didn’t rise to the bait.
“Anyway, I was talking to Lewis Dean.”
“And what does Lewis Dean do?”
“Oh, he’s some sort of regional specialist.” Whatever that meant. I made a mental note to look up Lewis Dean later in Dad’s embassy directory. “While we were chatting, someone handed him a general information release that had just come in, a printout of an email alerting all hands to the presence in Vienna of this Boris Trefimov fellow, who apparently was wrapped up in some sort of smuggling ring that our people from Justice had an interest in. It gave his address and everything.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Lew seemed to think so.” Lew now, not Lewis. “Said it was almost like someone upstairs was letting it be known that Trefimov was there for the taking, because this sort of cable traffic-excuse me, this sort of email traffic, old habits die hard-always leaks like a sieve. He said it was as if someone had declared open season on the fellow. And sure enough…”
He showed me the story. Trefimov had been murdered at his apartment on Kollnerhofgasse. Beneath the headline was a mug shot of a younger, cleaner Vladimir.
“Someone killed him?” I asked, trying to inject a note of innocence. My mouth was dry, so I sipped coffee. Dad watched closely.
“You forgot to put milk in.”
“So I did.” I knew my cheeks were reddening as I reached for the milk.
“Not just killed him. Shot him in the face. The way the KGB used to do it.”
“In Smiley’s People, anyway.” I couldn’t resist.
“Yes. Poor old Vladimir Miller.”
“Who sent the email?”
“Lew’s people in Washington.”
I wondered what to say next. I was wondering a lot of things, such as who “Lew’s people” were, and which of them had released the information. Did Lew’s people also know what Litzi and I were up to? Or the Hammerhead? Had one of them made the pickup at the dead drop? And was Dad privy to more than he was saying? Was he in fact baiting me? He seemed to have zeroed in on the story pretty quickly. Maybe he’d seen it before I arrived, and had been planning to spring it on me from the moment the bacon hit the skillet.
God, but I was getting paranoid. Mistrusting Litzi, now my dad. Maybe David would be next. Except I’d already done that, however fleetingly, when I’d wondered at Martin’s if he had helped someone break into my townhouse.
“What else does the story say?”
“That Trefimov was believed to be a former KGB agent, stationed in Prague. Doesn’t say when.”
Early seventies, I could have told him. Code name Leo, most likely, reporting to someone named Oleg. Had to be. And I now wondered what the relationship had been between Oleg and the Hammerhead, or if they might even be one and the same, since “the Hammerhead” was just a nickname. I nodded but said nothing.
“Lately he’s been associated with organized crime. Human trafficking, drugs, and-now, this is interesting-peddling old KGB secrets, it says. Probably his own, don’t you think?”
“Probably.” My palms prickled with sweat.
“Here’s something else. ‘Police are seeking the whereabouts of a man and woman who may have visited the victim a few hours before the murder. A spokesman described their appearance as white, slender, middle-aged, modestly dressed, and of average height.’”
“That could be just about anybody.”
“Not really.”
My cell phone rang. I was so startled that I banged the table with a knee. I answered while Vladimir’s photo stared at me upside-down from across the table.
“Yes?”
“Dad?”
“David! Good to hear from you. Isn’t it kind of early over there?”
“Late, you mean? It’s almost two in the morning.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Actually, no. I’m at your place. And, well, I think someone’s broken in. But I’m not positive, so I’ve spent an hour looking for other stuff that might be missing, and wondering if I should call the cops.”
“Other stuff? What’s missing? What makes you think somebody’s been there?”
“Well, I know this’ll sound, like, weird, but…”
“Just say it, son.”
“Books. Three whole shelves, it looks like. Unless you took them with you, or boxed them up somewhere.”
“No. I didn’t. Which ones?”
“The ones I came looking for. Your spy novels. I was going to borrow Lemaster’s A Spy for All Seasons, but they’re all gone.”
“Were the doors locked?”
“Every single one. Windows, too. And I don’t think they took anything else. I’ve checked pretty carefully.”
“Is there… Is there any kind of message for me?”
“On the answering machine?”
“No. This would be written. On the floor with the mail, maybe.”
“Hang on.”
He put down the phone. I listened to his footsteps. Dad, following the gist of the conversation, looked concerned, brow creased. His spotty hands rested on the table as if he was poised to leap into action. David came back on the line.
“No. Nothing. There was one thing earlier, but I’m not even sure it’s worth mentioning.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“One of the books, a Lemaster, was open facedown on the couch. I assumed they missed it because you left it there.”
“Which one? Open to what page?”
There was a brief pause as he stepped to the couch.
“ A Lesson in Tradecraft. Page one-nineteen. Did you mark it up like this?”
“You know me. I don’t mark them, and I don’t bend the pages.”
“It says ‘Find his work’ at the top of the page. Below, they’ve drawn lines around a paragraph.”
“Black ink? Block letters?”
“How’d you know?”
“Read me the paragraph.”
“Now? It’s kind of long.”
“Yes. Slowly, please.”
“Okay. Here goes:
“Folly looked across the tearoom and recognized his old agent right away. Heinz Klarmann was a wiry man who, to judge from his bloodshot eyes, might have just emerged from some all-night competition-seven-card stud, boozing, computing prime numbers on an abacus; any and all of them seemed plausible. A tired brown hat slouched on his head like a deflated balloon, lending him the air of a failed artist. He looked more Bohemian than German, although the moment he opened his mouth it was plain to everyone that Klarmann was Berlin to the core. An elaborately carved cane which he tapped as frenetically as an SOS from a sinking ship helped disguise a slight limp of unknown provenance. Barroom scuffle? Childhood illness? Drunken fall? No one knew, and Klarmann wasn’t saying. All that Folly cared about was that once you gave him an assignment you could consider it done, no matter how many shots of Schnapps or doses of dubious pharmaceuticals Klarmann consumed along the way. The man was a mercenary at heart, and would always finish the job, a professional to the core. This is why Folly was forever worried that someday, somehow, some other service would steal him away.”
And that’s it.”
“You sure there’s nothing else? Flip the pages.”
I heard a shuffling sound.
“Doesn’t look like it. No, nothing. ‘Find his work.’ What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does this have anything to do with that assignment you’re on?”
“Possibly. Which is why I wouldn’t advise you to stick around there any longer than you have to.”
“Awesome. Should I call the police?”
“No. Just lock up when you go, not that it will do any good. Who else knew you were going there?”
“Nobody. Spur of the moment. I was up late studying for midterms and wanted something to read once I’m done. Unless…”
“What?”
“Maybe somebody overheard us at Martin’s. When you told me to come by anytime.”
“Doubtful. You should get some sleep if you’ve got a midterm. Don’t worry about the house. Probably somebody’s idea of a joke. It might even be somebody from my office. If they’d wanted to do real damage they would’ve done it.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Doing well, in fact.” I wondered how he’d react if he knew about Litzi, but this wasn’t the time for that. “Your granddad’s here. We’re having breakfast. Want to talk to him?”
“Sure.”
“But then get out of there and get back to your dorm, understand?”
“Yes.”
“I mean it.”
“I know!”
I handed over the phone, still a little worried for him, although it was a pleasure watching Dad light up as he asked about David’s lacrosse and all his courses. Even as I fretted the passing seconds, checking my watch and motioning to Dad to move things along, I was already wondering why Edwin Lemaster had created a character that, except for the limp, was a dead ringer for Lothar Heinemann. Obviously it had been too long since I’d read A Lesson in Tradecraft or I would have remembered the Klarmann character the moment I laid eyes on Lothar. But now that I had the message, what sort of “work” of Lothar’s was I supposed to go out and find?
Dad finally hung up and slid my phone back across the table. Then he watched me carefully.
“You going to tell me what that was all about?”
“I need a book first.”
“Not another destroyed one, I hope?”
I went to the living room and brought back his copy of A Lesson in Tradecraft. Then I told him about the break-in and the message, and finished by reading aloud the passage from page 119.
“Lothar,” he said. “He’s turning up everywhere, isn’t he?”
“I think he’s following me.”
“I wish I could say I was surprised. Surveillance is an old hobby of his. Although he used to reserve it for his competition. Whenever someone was getting items he wasn’t, he’d follow them for days at a time to find out how the they were pulling it off. Strange fellow.”
“You always said Lemaster never wrote about real characters, that they were just novels.”
“That’s because you were usually asking about someone at the embassy.”
I waited for more. Got nothing.
“This person who stole your books,” Dad said. “If he’s the one who ruined my copy of Knee Knockers then he’s been covering a lot of ground. He got you started on this mess, and now you’re letting him use you to get whatever he wants.”
“Maybe all he wants is the truth.”
“We’ve both been around long enough to know that’s bullshit.”
He was right, of course. In Washington, “I only want the truth” has become the biggest lie since “Your check’s in the mail.”
“Okay. So maybe he has an ax to grind with Lemaster.”
“Then it had better be a big one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at who Ed’s biggest fans and defenders are these days, or haven’t you noticed? Pentagon brass, defense contractors. All those people he makes look like patriotic geniuses. I doubt they’d be happy if someone started implying they were spilling their best stuff to a proven traitor in the name of novelistic research. And you could say the same about everybody he ever worked for at the Agency. What else do you know about this fellow who’s leading you on like this?”
“Pretty much nothing.”
“What other passages has he marked up for you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have all morning.”
“First you can tell me what you were really doing yesterday at the embassy.”
“No, first we can go back to what we were talking about before the phone rang. The Vienna police, and their description of that slender couple, modestly dressed.”
“Like I said, could be anybody.”
“Look, son. I don’t need to know everything you’re up to. Maybe you think it’s for my own good as much as yours. If anyone can understand that rationale, I certainly can. But from what I’m hearing, people are rather stirred up in certain quarters, and I’m concerned that you’re the one who’s stirring them up.”
“Which quarters?”
“You can probably guess.”
I sighed, feeling cornered. Then I decided to take the plunge. I would tell him everything, from the very beginning. At the rate he was going he’d know half of it by tomorrow night anyway. Maybe he would even be able to help.
I swallowed some coffee, collected myself, and began.