I said it brightly, but she tilted her head to scrutinize me for a moment, then leaned over to kiss me.
“It’s all right if you change your mind, you know.”
“No. Start packing. I’ll check the train schedule and call from my dad’s. We’ll do it right this time. No men in brown coats.”
And with that her face fleetingly darkened, a cloud that passed and was gone.
Out in the streets it was a gorgeous morning, leaves fluttering from the maples against a brilliant blue. Paperboys filled their news racks, and bakeries perfumed the air with the smell of warm bread and brewing coffee. Street sweepers tidied the last corners for the crowds yet to come, and the more ambitious cafe proprietors were already rolling down their awnings. My suspicions felt foolish. Maybe all of that “trust no one” gospel was getting to me, along with the residue of cynicism from my years at Ealing Wharton.
The thunderhead on this sunny horizon, of course, was Vladimir. The thought of his bleeding body on the gurney made me check again over my shoulder before I entered the hotel across from Gasthaus Brinkmann.
Seventeen video clips awaited me on the laptop. I was a little surprised there weren’t more, given how many people were already out in the streets. In the first sixteen, men and women of all shapes and sizes flashed by, none matching Gelev’s description of the Hammerhead.
As soon as the last one began with a large man emerging from the gasthaus doorway, I knew it was him. The iron jaw, the large head, the meat-red slab of a face, the windswept pompadour of thick gray hair. Gelev hadn’t prepared me for his eyes. Brown, yes, but with an almost alarming intensity, probing and alert. When his gaze locked onto the webcam I involuntarily flinched. He stopped and stared, tilting his head. Then he smiled sloppily, mouth agape, and he nodded slightly as if saying hello. He stepped forward, filling the screen, and reached toward me with a massive hand, its image distorted by its closeness to the lens just before the screen went dark. It was easy enough to imagine the rest, right up to the point when the camera’s fragile orb must have collapsed in his powerful fist like an eyeball beneath a sledgehammer.
I checked the time signature on the video. Fifty minutes ago. If he’d been on his way to breakfast or a rendezvous, then he might be on his way back even now. I closed the laptop, a fluttery feeling in my chest like the one I used to get before big races against tough opponents.
Then I shook myself into action, briskly walking downstairs to drop the key at the front desk. I turned the knob on the front door before thinking better of it and heading for the back. I exited into an alley that took me to the end of the block, where I turned in the opposite direction from the Gasthaus Brinkmann, glancing over my shoulder every few feet all the way to Dad’s.
Gelev was right. The Hammerhead didn’t look like the sort of fellow you’d want to cross, and I told myself several times that he was almost certainly here on some other business than me.
Try as I might, I remained unconvinced.
17
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
