where crazy Jim Angleton used to have his three-martini lunches, sometimes with Kim Philby. They were buddies, you know.”
“Whoa, now.” I took a big swallow of ale to hide my unease. The one topic I didn’t want to raise, and he’d raised it. “Where’d you learn all that?” Not from a sealed envelope slipped beneath his door, I hoped.
“I’m taking an intro to European history since World War II. For the Cold War he had us read The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Awesome book. It made me want to look up all the spy stuff that happened around here. I kept thinking of all those novels of yours, so I’ve been checking out some of them from the library.”
Like father, like son, like grandson.
“Don’t bother with the library. Just ask. Or come and take them, you’ve got a key.”
It then hit me with devastating suddenness that David would have made the perfect accomplice for whoever was orchestrating my adventures, and for a millisecond I was perched on the edge of hurt and disappointment, thinking he would now reveal all with a belly laugh at my expense. A spy book caper, cooked up to spoof me. Just as quickly the moment passed. There were too many details he wouldn’t have known, and he certainly didn’t have the means to have broken into the house at the dead drop. And this was David, not some client at Ealing Wharton.
“Holy shit,” he said quietly. He was looking over my shoulder.
“What is it?”
“She looks just like Elizabeth Bentley. But it can’t be.”
“The Red Spy Queen?”
“Bentley wore a red carnation and carried a copy of Life magazine. And that woman over there…”
I turned and saw a slender woman alone at the table by the door. Attractive, late twenties. A red carnation was pinned to her navy business suit, and she was flipping through a magazine. I caught Salazar’s eye, figuring I’d ask if he knew her. About then a noisy party of six burst through the door, blocking his way and obscuring our view.
“Yes, Mr. Cage?” Salazar had finally made it through the maelstrom.
I kept my voice low, although the new arrivals were making quite a commotion.
“That woman by the door, the one with the flower on her lapel.”
He glanced over his shoulder, then frowned.
“By the door?”
The arrivals eased toward the back, clearing the view. The table was now empty.
“Wow,” David said. “That was awesome.”
“Never mind,” I said. The puzzled Salazar left to attend to the rowdy newcomers. If David hadn’t been there I might have wondered if I’d seen her at all, but now I was wondering if she was the woman with the Alsatian.
“Something I should probably tell you about this trip,” I said. “I may be doing some work over there that’s a little, well, unorthodox.”
“For Ealing Wharton?”
“God, no. I’d never stick my neck out for them. Freelance stuff. For Vanity Fair. ”
“Wow. You’re writing again?”
I was pleased by his excitement.
“Maybe. In fact, I’m looking into some old stuff from the Cold War.” I realized I’d said too much when he connected the dots right away.
“So do you think that woman with the carnation-”
“No. I don’t. But keep an eye on the house while I’m gone, if you don’t mind. Take all the books you want. If you get a strange text from me now and then, take it in stride, but don’t tell anyone else. And, for God’s sake, whatever you do-”
“Don’t tell Mom?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Then, as if something had suddenly occurred to him. “It’s that what you think I’ve been doing all these years? Reporting back to Mom?”
“No, not at all. It’s just that-”
“Is that why you never confide in me about, like, anything?”
“That’s not true.”
Or no more true than it had been for my own father. It then struck me that the children of divorce were the original double agents-faithful to two masters at once, yet almost certainly favoring one over the other in secret.
“David, I hope you realize how much I’ve always regretted that you grew up with only one parent in the house. I know it was never easy. For you or your mother.”
“You grew up that way. You seem to have turned out okay.”
“True. But death didn’t give my mother much choice.” I’d never told him that she ran out on us. “My exile was voluntary, and stupid.”
“You wish you’d stayed together?”
“I wish I’d been mature enough at the time to at least give it a try.”
“That’s pretty much what Mom says.”
Which didn’t make me feel any better. Even after sixteen years the judgment stung, mostly because it was true.
David forked in a mouthful of steak and followed it with potatoes. At least one of us still had an appetite. He was right. I’d never offered him much in the way of personal revelation, but maybe tonight was a start.
I glanced again toward the table by the door. A busboy was clearing the dishes. She’d left behind her magazine, and when the busboy picked it up I looked at David and he looked at me.
It was an old copy of Life, with Joseph Stalin on the cover.
6
This was not the Vienna I’d known as a boy. Riding the S-Bahn into the city I sat among Turks and Arabs, their chatter clouding the air like gnats. When the Turks got off, Bosnians got on. Orange commuter straps swayed overhead like hangman’s nooses, and as usual after a transatlantic flight I felt like the walking dead.
Out in the streets, police cameras stared from every corner. A tram line I’d once used no longer existed. When I went in search of coffee to help me recalibrate- the signature drink of Viennese living-the first place I saw was a damn Starbucks. Still, it was caffeine, and after a few swallows my outlook improved.
Some things hadn’t changed. Pedestrians at crosswalks still waited dutifully for the light, and old women still glared when I crossed anyway, the embassy boy back to his old tricks. In the clipped green expanses of the Stadtpark, grown men still peed behind the sparsest of cover, a habit that now seems reasonable with public toilets charging a euro. This being a Sunday, practically everything was geschlossen, just as it would have been thirty-five years ago.
Most reassuring of all was Vienna’s enduring beauty-block after block, stacked and frosted like a wedding cake. Yet, to my more experienced (jaded?) eye, the imperial magnificence looked brittle-as if the city’s aging face had received an injection of Botox and could no longer crack a smile.
My dad was a late riser on Sundays, so I’d told him my flight was getting in hours later than it really was, meaning I had a few hours to kill before arriving on his doorstep. He’d been oddly thrown by the idea of a visit on such short notice.
“Day after tomorrow? Goodness. Well, I’ll have to do some juggling, but yes, of course, Sunday would be perfect! I’ll reserve a table at Figlmuller, and to hell with the tourists. A schnitzel and a Gosser will have you feeling right at home.”
Juggling? Was I that hard to prepare for?
I set out on a long walk, part of my usual plan for beating jet lag by avoiding naps at all costs. It was cloudy and cool, and I kept an eye out for tails, especially slender women with red flowers or leashed Alsatians. So far, only the cameras were watching.
