you ever manage to pin him down, he might even be able to help.”
“All he’s done so far is give me the creeps. Why was he on the train?”
“It’s your handler that gives me the creeps. He certainly doesn’t mind putting you in harm’s way.”
“True. But maybe he was also our guardian angel.”
“It certainly seems that way. All the embassy knew was that someone had intervened on your behalf. They didn’t know who or why.”
“But why would he have someone plant the Semyonov book next to the body?”
Then I told them about the marked passage. Litzi seemed to shiver.
“I’m sorry if all of this is stirring up unpleasant memories,” Dad said.
She nodded, smiling appreciatively. Maybe this was my opening to finally clear the air, with Dad along as a sort of mediator.
“Litzi, this morning Dad mentioned something about what happened after you and I came home from Berlin, right before I moved away.”
Dad shot me daggers but I couldn’t stop now. He lowered his head in apparent embarrassment as I plowed forward.
“He said it was no big deal, but how come you never told me that you’d spied on us?”
Litzi looked at me, then at Dad, who shook his head slowly.
“My fault entirely,” he said. “I tried telling him it was harmless and understandable, but obviously that wasn’t good enough for him.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I should have said something. I’ve always been ashamed of it. But I also have to say that if I had to do it over again I would not change a thing. You weren’t in that room to hear what they said. Your father hadn’t spent half his life telling you about those kinds of people and what they were willing to do.”
“Really, Litzi,” Dad said, “you don’t need to explain. Bill was too young, too sheltered. He had his nose in too many books.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said, a little irritated with both of them.
Dad stood.
“I need to use the men’s room,” he said. “You two hash it out however you like, but you don’t owe me any explanations, Litzi.”
She seemed grateful for the gesture, and, counter to expectations, his departure helped dissipate the tension between us.
“Well?” I said. “What really happened back then?”
“You know the worst of it. They threatened my family. They talked about holding me in East Germany until my father agreed to repatriate. I never really believed they would do it, but the uncertainty is what finally gets you. That and the number of times they repeat it, over and over, in that awful little room in Bad Schandau. That terrible man and his stupid Russian sidekick.”
“Sidekick? The German in the brown coat was the only one I spoke to.”
“They swore me to secrecy about the Russian. I was never to mention him to you or your father. Not that he ever told me a name.”
“They brought up my father with you?”
“He’s mostly what they wanted to talk about, once they finished scaring me with threats and browbeating. And by then the Russian was doing all the talking.”
“What did they want to know?”
“What he was like. Who he knew. They asked if I’d been in your house, what I’d seen there, what his habits were like.”
“His habits?”
“How often he came and went. Especially at night. If he ever left through the back of his building. I told them I didn’t know. ‘Well, then, find out!’ he said.” She paused, picking up her glass, then realizing it was empty. “They asked me to go through his things.”
“Jesus, Litzi.”
“I told them I was too scared. I made up things about how mean your father was, and what a terrible temper he had. So they said to wait until I was alone in the house with you. I said my parents wouldn’t let me be there alone. They laughed at that. The Russian said my parents also wouldn’t want me to disappear one day from the streets of Vienna. So I said I would try.”
“Was I ever that lucky, to get you all alone in my house?”
“Twice, remember?”
Now I did, especially the second time, when my dad had stayed out very late. I vaguely recalled that the evening had ended on a melancholy note, which I’d attributed at the time to my imminent departure. Now I knew better.
“When you went downstairs to steal us a drink from your father’s liquor cabinet, I went out in the hallway to his door, and opened it. I went to the bedside table and poked around some books and papers, then I froze when I heard you coming back up the stairs. I couldn’t go through with it. I hurried back and told you I’d been in the bathroom.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I made up things, mostly. Mostly I talked about his books.”
“What did they say?”
“I thought for sure they’d know I was lying, but they seemed very interested. They wanted to know which titles he had taken down from his shelves, and if any of the pages were marked. And then, a few days ago, you come along with all of these stories about the same kind of thing, books with marked passages and secret meanings. So of course I had to try and find out what was happening, and I can’t help but wonder if this is why I was chosen.”
“To help me, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Maybe it’s even the same people,” she said.
“The Russians? That doesn’t make sense. My handler wants to find out if Lemaster was a double agent. The Russians would already know.”
“Unless they were trying to find out if he was a faithful double agent, a real double agent.”
Excellent point, and the possibility that it might be true cast everything I’d been doing in a new light. Even the Hammerhead might be my handler. Then, just as suddenly, the idea seemed ludicrous.
“I don’t know, Litzi, using all of these old spy titles to lead me around just feels so, well, American, don’t you think?”
“You don’t think Russians read all those novels? You don’t think they weren’t going through every page looking for kernels of truth, just like you were?”
Another good point, which made my head hurt.
“I’m scared of all this, Bill. Especially after what happened to Vladimir. I love seeing you, love being with you again. But now it seems like too much, too far. Yet every time I think of quitting, or of not getting on that train to Prague, my curiosity becomes bigger than my fear, because this has become personal for me as well. And now you know why.”
“So you still want to go?”
“From what your father says, it sounds like we’d better.”
“Probably.”
“But Prague won’t be enough, will it?”
“Budapest, too, most likely. After that, who knows?”
“Then I had better phone my office to clear enough time. I’ll have to come up with something good, I suppose.”
Dad returned to the table, so she took her phone off to a corner where we wouldn’t have to hear her lying to her bosses. He looked me over carefully, as if inspecting for damage.
“Everything all right between you?”
“Yes.”
“Glad to hear it. You’re a lucky man.”
