of Czech women wearing high boots and miniskirts-he heartily approved-to the proliferation of Franz Kafka kitsch in the local souvenir shops, which he scorned as hucksterism trying to look intellectual.
He stayed constantly alert, however-head swiveling, eyes in motion. He even refrained from tapping his cane, as if to maintain radio silence. A circuitous route led us a beer joint where we descended to the cellar and took a table by a rear doorway onto a basement-level alley.
No sooner had we sat down and ordered-sausages, sharp mustard, and a pitcher of pils-than Lothar pulled out a small round silver case, unscrewed the lid, and dabbed a pinkie inside. It emerged with a frosting of white powder, which he snorted into each nostril. He briefly shut his eyes as his cheeks flushed. Then he smiled and put away the case. My astonishment must have been obvious.
“You disapprove?”
“Dad told me you’d cleaned up your act.”
“Oh, I have. Smack was my downfall, and I’m off it forever. This is strictly for mood maintenance. Controlled doses, twice a day. No worse than a daily arthritis drug, or the little blue pill. Speaking of addictions, how’d you let her get away so easily?”
His mention of Litzi made me drain off half a glass of beer.
“Well?” he prompted. “Was it something you said?”
“More like something I didn’t say. When I came out of the shower, she was gone.”
“Just as well. She was on to you before I was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Remember when we met? That bakery around the corner from Kurzmann’s?”
“Yes.” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this.
“I told you then that a fine-looking woman was on your tail.”
So he had. I’d assumed he meant the woman from Georgetown, whom I’d since forgotten all about.
“It was Litzi?”
He nodded, then frowned sympathetically. The beer sloshed coldly in my stomach as I considered the implications. But why should I believe Lothar? Maybe he was trying to mislead me.
“Bullshit.”
“Call and find out for yourself.”
“I’ve tried. She’s not answering.”
“I don’t mean her mobile. Phone her office. Ask where she is, and how long it’s been in the works. I did, just the other day. The answer was illuminating.”
I wasn’t ready for more bad news, but a creeping sense of dread told me it was unavoidable, so I retrieved her business card from my wallet and punched in the number for the Austrian National Library. Lothar polished off his first pint as he watched, then licked the foam from his upper lip.
A man answered on the fourth ring.
“Litzi Strauss, please.”
“She is away on annual leave.”
That didn’t sound very much like the last-minute getaway she’d described to me.
“When will she return?”
“Two weeks more from Monday.”
“Oh. Well, this is an old friend from the States. I’d, uh, heard she’d been called away on short notice, and I was concerned for her.”
“No, no. Her vacation has been scheduled for quite some time. Would you care to leave a message?”
“No, thank you.”
I set down the phone. Scheduled for quite some time. My handler must have arranged for her employment well in advance. If he had security connections, I suppose she would’ve been easy enough to find, and, as Dad had mentioned, she was probably still listed in some embassy file. For anyone who knew my background, she would have been the perfect choice for keeping tabs on my movements. No wonder I’d only had to deliver information once, by dropping off the photo negatives at a dead drop. Litzi had kept him abreast of everything else. The moment I started shutting her out, she quit. I should’ve heeded my earlier doubts. Instead, I’d kept on making a fool of myself. Maybe fifty-three was the age when, despite all your best efforts at maintenance and perseverance, everything began to crumble. Your knees, your waistline, your judgment. And now my optimism. If I’d hoped this enterprise would offer some payback for my previous mistakes, then the check had just bounced.
“Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself. We’ve got a pitcher to finish. While you’re at it, take the battery out of your cell phone, and next time you’re out and about, buy a disposable one with a virgin SIM card. Your handler’s tools are obsolete, and so are yours, including that silly webcam. That means every other interested party in this affair has the jump on you. And, believe me, they’re out there, with encryption software, signal tracing, data mining, and satellite imagery. All you’ve got is a lot of quaint tricks from every novel you ever read as a boy. If you’re going to keep doing this, then you’d better start playing by newer rules than your handler’s.”
“I just hope my handler’s working for the right side. Sometimes I think he might even be working for Moscow.”
“Now that’s a laugh. Don’t worry, he’s American to the core.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
“Because he was my handler, too, once upon a time.”
I almost choked in midswallow. Lothar watched me wipe the beer from my chin while the news sank in.
“The Agency hired you?”
“It was a contract job. To track down this courier network Ed had supposedly engineered. A renegade transaction from start to finish. That’s why your movements intrigued me from the start, and why I’ve been following you ever since. I want to know why history is repeating itself. The same deliveries. The same contacts. The same old people doing the same old things they used to do, except now there’s no one left at the end of the line to receive all those messages that were once handled with such exquisite care.”
“No Dewey, you mean?”
“No Dewey, and no super-paranoid Jim Angleton hovering over everything like a malign cloud, although I’d wager his ghost is watching us with great perturbation.”
“Who is he, then?”
“Our handler?”
I nodded. He laughed.
“That’s the sort of information that must be earned. And you’re a long way from earning it.”
“You said you were here to straighten me out.”
“To a point. I want to help you, but not the jackass who’s running you. So for the moment I’m taking baby steps and watching your back. When I’m able to, of course. I still have my own affairs to attend to.”
“I guess this is how you know I’ll be heading to Budapest next.”
“Antikvarium Szondi. Except it’s no longer on Corvin Square. Try the row of bookshops along Museum Boulevard. I tracked you there once, when you were just a boy.”
“Me?”
It was an odd sensation, imagining a much younger Lothar shadowing a much younger me along mysterious streets that had gone fuzzy in my memory. It stirred an odd lightness in the hollow of my chest. Then skepticism took over.
“My father said he never used me for Dewey deliveries.”
“Never knowingly. In that sense he’s telling you the truth.”
“How would he not know?”
“The name Dewey wouldn’t even come up, although I think it’s the only code name the Agency ever got wind of, and Lemaster wouldn’t have made the request. Your dad probably thought he was doing a favor for the bookseller, or for some other friend. By the time this network was operating at its peak, people were doing things on Ed Lemaster’s behalf without the slightest clue of who they were assisting. That was the beauty of it. Even your friend Karel’s father made a delivery once.”
“Source Fishwife. Is that why you spoke to him?”
“Posing as a security policeman, of course. I think he was convinced I was with the Russians. Even with my German accent, in those days all you had to say to a Czech was ‘secret police’ and they would tell you anything. At
