for Berlin. It was also the year that Lemaster, basking in the glow of his first bestseller, had quit the CIA.
I fingered the string. The temptation to open it now was too great, so I looked around furtively before untying the knot and folding back the paper. The contents were anticlimactic. It was a German softbound edition of Lemaster’s London’s Own, a special book in that it was the volume in which the beleaguered Folly, seemingly past his prime, had finally turned the tables on his Soviet nemesis, Strelnikov. But there was nothing special about this edition, a dog-eared paperback from a fifth printing of a translation. I was about to open it when a man’s raspy voice made me jump half out of my skin.
“Fifty? For that?”
It was the harvester from Kurzmann’s, pulling up a chair as if we were old friends.
“Personally, I wouldn’t give you a fiver for it. Two if you were lucky.” His right hand darted across the table and snatched the book away. He tutted as he turned to the title page. “No. Not even signed.” To my relief, he handed it back.
His fingernails, which I would have expected to be chewed or dirty, were clean and manicured, and his hands looked soft. His face was unshaven, but he smelled freshly showered, and his eyes were a clear, sober blue, if a bit careworn. He spoke German with a lowbrow Berlin accent. The general impression he made was of someone who’d begun cleaning up his act but hadn’t quite finished. He carried an elegant cane of varnished oak topped by a wolf’s head of carved ivory, which he propped against the table.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m glad you spoke up so clearly back there at Christoph’s. I’m not sure I’d have recognized you otherwise.”
“You know me?”
“From many years and many places.” He rose nimbly to his feet. Books bulged from both pockets of his overcoat. “I trust that your father is well. A wonderful man. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not the only one who followed you here, although I’d have thought you’d at least notice the other one. She’s far more attractive.”
I looked around quickly, half expecting to see the slender young woman from Georgetown. The only other customer was an old man nibbling strudel at a far table.
“Oh, she’s long gone. Took off the second you untied the knot. For now I’d say you’re quite safe.” Then he crouched at my side and whispered in my ear. “Of course, that’s subject to change if you keep announcing yourself as ‘Dewey’ everywhere you go.”
He stood and checked his watch. “I should be going. Work to do.” He headed for the exit, thumping the cane against the floor with every step.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
He turned to face me as he opened the door.
“Tell your father that Lothar sends his regards. Farewell.”
Then, with a tip of his hat and a flap of his coattails, Lothar was gone, although for a few seconds more I heard his cane, tapping as urgently as an SOS.
Now, who the hell was Lothar? A bit player for hire, or a chance interloper? A goad or a threat? And who was following me? Or was that something Lothar had made up to rattle me, another part of his act?
I returned my attention to the paperback and noticed a bookmark peeping from midway through the text. It had a logo at the top from an antiquarian bookstore in Prague, with an address right around the corner from the apartment where my dad and I had lived when I was fourteen. The store’s name, Antikvariat Drebitko, immediately triggered a memory that, in the context of this morning’s events, was mildly disturbing. My father had twice sent me there to pick up exactly this kind of parcel-a book wrapped in butcher paper, tied with string. That memory, in turn, unlocked another: I had carried out similar errands in Budapest when I must have been only ten or eleven.
Had my father employed me as some sort of clandestine courier? At one level it was exciting, but now I could also see it from a father’s point of view, and I was appalled. Anything might have happened to me.
I opened the book to the marked page. At the top was a single handwritten word in block letters, next to a time:
“BRAUNERHOF. 10:30.”
Below, a passage of the novel was marked off:
Folly unfolded his reading glasses, which were smudged and scratched, an old pair that had been bent, dropped, sat upon, and left for dead in a dozen different cafes. He wondered why he didn’t just buy a new pair. Something to do with loyalty, he supposed, the comfort of the familiar. They maintained their wobbly perch on the bridge of his nose as he studied the map, the streets of Berlin coming alive to him like old friends after a long absence. Just by tracing his finger along the routes he could see the rendezvous point as clearly as if it were right there in front of him-a yellow phone booth in Zehlendorf, next to the bakery on Teltowerdamm. He knew the routine, too. Arrive on time, shut yourself inside, dial a number-any number-and then wait for the contact to appear at the door, checking his watch, acting like some impatient asshole that needed the phone right away. Hang up, open the door, and receive a parcel in passing as the stranger slid past you into the booth. Then keep on walking as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. Anyone could do it. Even a spy past his prime with an old pair of specs and an outdated map.
Well, that seemed clear enough. A brush pass, as they said in the trade, and it was to occur in less than an hour. Obviously my handler was picking up the pace, an urgency that made me wary. But the location made me smile. The Cafe Braunerhof was a place of importance in my life, a wellspring of pleasant memories, and unless it had turned into some sort of chic WiFi hotspot, I was quite happy to make it my next stop.
8
A Vienna cafe is a perfect place for a secret rendezvous, because it doesn’t matter if either side shows up on time. The beauty of these establishments, from the grandest to the plainest, is that you can spend hours doing absolutely nothing without arousing the slightest suspicion. Even in our age of twittering impatience, a Vienna cafe is all about the art of refined indolence, reasonably priced. You go there to unplug, not to connect, and the entire staff is trained to assist you.
The transaction is blessedly simple: Purchase one cup of coffee-pricey, but only if you intend to gulp it down and leave-and in exchange you may linger as long as you like. Your waiter, dressed in a dinner jacket, won’t even give you a dirty look, but he will attend to your every need without complaint. Tip him generously and he probably won’t even remember you were there to begin with, in case the authorities ask later.
So there I was at the Braunerhof on a fine Monday morning with thirty-six minutes to spare, surveying the scenery from my former favorite table, along the side wall farthest from the entrance. To my amazement, everything looked exactly as it had in 1973, the last time I’d been there. The big windows up front spilled pale sunlight onto a row of wooden booths beneath twelve-foot ceilings. Beige walls, stained by nicotine, were hung with mirrors shaped like lozenges. There were coat racks between the tables up front, and I remembered that on rainy days they always reeked of wet wool. Plush benches ran down either side of the cafe to accommodate customers at smaller tables for two. In the middle of the room a pastry cart was backed against a cabinet table piled with newspapers on bamboo rods. Stationed in the back was the key location for my upcoming appointment-a phone booth built of varnished wood, with a small window in the door. In the old days it would have been a risky choice for a rendezvous. Customers occupied it at all hours. Now it was a charming anachronism, seldom used.
My nostalgia for the Braunerhof was easy to explain. At the age of sixteen I’d been sitting at this very table, playing hooky from school, when Litzi Strauss walked into my life. I’d come here to hide out, and to eat one of the cafe’s sublime omelets along with a warm strudel. To wash it down I ordered coffee Obers — with cream-my dad having taught me at an early age to caffeinate in order to cope with those European mornings when the sun didn’t rise until nine.
I remember the moment perfectly. My bill was paid, and I was contemplating where to go next, when Litzi strolled in with a toss of blond hair and a flicker of the most expressive brown eyes I’d ever wanted to dive into. She was a little tall for my taste, but judging by her furtive movements, she was a fellow renegade, also gone AWOL. I caught her eye as she paused by the newspaper table. She smiled fleetingly, then chose a copy of the same paper I
