the betrayal genuine, or had Lemaster been passing a clever bit of disinformation?
Lothar left unresolved the question of whether Lemaster’s first CIA handler, Breece Preston, had been in on the scheme or merely a dupe. Not that Preston would have appreciated either interpretation. Either way, he didn’t look reliable enough to entrust with millions of dollars to spy for your soldiers.
While Lothar’s verdict on Lemaster was clear, to me the jury was still out. And this was hardly the sort of “proof” I could publish in a magazine story, especially since I wouldn’t even be leaving the store with Lothar’s book. But at the very least, especially if Valerie Humphries’s account was accurate, Lothar’s findings showed Lemaster had been far cozier with the Soviets than his Washington handlers had ever realized or sanctioned. If he wasn’t a double, then he had run one hell of a rogue operation.
But the book’s most diabolical section, as far as the CIA would have been concerned, was the acknowledgments page in the back. Each and every Agency operative portrayed in the book was thanked by name. All you had to do then was match their initials to those of the characters in the book to fill out the entire covert cast. No wonder the Agency had intervened to stop publication.
My handler would no doubt be pleased by these findings, which made me all the more satisfied with the idea of withholding them from the manipulative son of a bitch. And now I would finally learn his name.
I checked my watch. It was 7:43 p.m., dark by now, and I was hungry, thirsty, and needed to pee. I picked up Ziegler’s phone and punched in Lothar’s number. He answered right away.
“Heinz?”
“You’re finished?”
“It’s impressive.”
“The prose, or the contents?”
That’s when I realized that even after all this time, Lothar had retained his authorial vanity. The CIA had not only bottled up his secrets, it had deprived him of his literary moment-reviews, reaction, and, most important, readers. Lothar, who practically lived in bookstores, had never once seen his own work on a shelf or a display table, tucked in among his favorites. So now he was eager to hear at last from his one and only patron.
“Both. Best thing I’ve read in years.”
“Well… it has its problems, of course. But I’m gratified to hear you say it. Truly.”
“You seem pretty sure he’s guilty.”
“As sure as you can be in this business. Meaning not very.”
“But you were winging it on the book codes, weren’t you?”
“An educated guess. Our handler was always convinced that there must be something about the books themselves that held the key, but I never found it.”
“You promised me a name.”
“Try page one-nineteen. I believe you’ve already met him, however briefly. But don’t say it over the phone. By now I doubt we’re the only ones on Ziegler’s line.”
I thumbed quickly to the page, running my forefinger down the column of type until I saw the name Gil Cavanaugh, an assistant to the Angleton character. I was pretty sure I knew who that was, but checked the acknowledgments page, and there it was: Giles Cabot.
I thought back to the funeral on Block Island. Wils Nethercutt, the deceased, and his neighbor and onetime Agency rival, Giles Cabot, confined to a wheelchair even as he faced down a menacing Breece Preston. A perfectly logical choice, but nonetheless amazing. I’d been strung along across half of Europe by a frail invalid who must also be a bookworm. At least I knew where to find him.
“Do you have it?”
“I do. Thanks to your acknowledgments page.”
“A cheap shot at the Agency, but I couldn’t resist. The bastards owed me. Still do. Now for the hard part. Follow Ziegler’s instructions to the letter, but once you leave the store I doubt you’ll be going very far. I just hope that the right people get to you first.”
“Is that a guess, or do you know something?”
“A little of both.”
From out in the store I heard the sound of smashing glass.
“You’re right. Someone’s just broken in.”
“Get moving, Bill. Finish the job, then run like Zatopek. Now! ”
I slammed the receiver and moved quickly to the file cabinet and wrenched it away from the wall. Footsteps pounded through the store. The doorknob rattled. I knelt and reached behind the cabinet, pulling the handle of an old metal flap hinged at the bottom, which opened onto a coal chute. I tossed in the book, wincing in spite of myself as it banged and tumbled. As I peered into the darkness of the cellar I thought I heard the scrape of leather soles below. The flap thumped back into place. I stood and shoved the cabinet back against the wall, then had just enough time to move back behind the desk before the office door splintered open with a crunch of shattered wood. Two men rushed me. One pinned my arms behind my back while the other shouted in heavily accented English, “The book. Where is the book?”
I’m not quite sure where my answer came from, probably some old paragraph from a long-ago rainy Saturday, author unknown. But it made all the difference.
“It’s in a burn box in the corner.” I nodded toward a shelf where Ziegler piled his old newspapers. “It’s set to activate in two minutes.”
A burn box is a spy device. You throw your secrets inside and lock it up. If anyone comes to take them, you push a button or punch in a number to incinerate everything inside before the enemy can retrieve a single scrap. My assailants knew this as well as I did, and my words created such an alarming sense of urgency in both of them that for a single decisive moment they forgot all about me and rushed toward the corner.
I darted out the office door toward the broken glass at the front of the store. They were still shouting and thrashing around as I stepped into the cool Vienna night.
Free. But for how long?
Looking left, I saw a van twenty yards away, engine running, passenger door opening. I set off in the opposite direction, giving it everything I had, all of the old Emil Zatopek effort and drive. But even the great Zatopek was a distance runner, not a sprinter, and I was merely a deskbound flak with fifty-three years on the odometer. They caught me in half a block, a man on either side clamping onto an arm just as a second van squealed to the curb beside us.
Breathless, I expected them to toss me inside. Instead, my escorts nimbly turned me back toward the first van, which was gunning toward us in reverse, straight down the sidewalk, its panel doors open. Behind me I heard the second van back on the move, and voices shouting in Russian. Some sort of brutal competition was under way, and I was the dubious prize.
My shoulder slammed against the floor of the first van as my two escorts shoved me inside. Both tumbled in with me, and everything went dark as the doors slammed shut. I heard the grunting of bodies landing atop me, the grind of the revving engine, the muffled shouts of our pursuers, and the thump-thump of the tires as we roared back onto the street across the curb. Then a drumroll across cobbles, another shout, followed by the shriek of a siren and heavy breathing from above. A needle plunged into my buttocks.
“Ow!”
I was about to say more when the world disappeared.
37
“How many fingers?”
An older fellow with gin blossoms and yellow teeth asked me that question. His face was only a foot from mine. He wore a gray pin-striped suit, tie loosened at the neck.
“Three,” I answered. I was groggy, just coming around.
“How many now?”
“Where the hell am I?”
“He’s fine,” a second man said from somewhere behind me. I twisted in the chair to see him but couldn’t turn
