They talked briefly of the old days, when Winterset was clothed in snow and, later, strewn with spring flowers.
Danforth knew that LaRoche had been told of Anna’s arrest and Bannion’s suicide, but whether he’d been told more than that, Danforth couldn’t say.
“I saw Anna only one time after Munich,” he said. “She was in Russia.”
He told LaRoche about the final encounter, how he’d tried to get some small kernel of information about a German agent the Soviets believed had betrayed them, how she’d suddenly transmogrified into the ardent Nazi she had no doubt always been, a narrative that still wounded him despite all the time that had passed.
LaRoche listened silently through it all and remained quiet for a time after Danforth finished, so they simply sat, speechless, staring straight ahead, looking curiously desolate, as if recognizing at last that all their riches had been spent.
Then LaRoche said, “And they let you go after this last meeting with Anna?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Danforth shrugged. “What would have been the point of keeping me? They must have realized that all I was ever looking for was Anna. And now I had found her. I suppose they simply had no more use for me.”
“Perhaps,” LaRoche said, his tone cautious, like one hazarding an unlikely guess, “perhaps, unless this last meeting had a hidden purpose.” He appeared quite pensive, as if turning over all Danforth had just told him.
“When you left her, what was your feeling?” he asked after a moment.
“That it was over,” Danforth said. “My quest.”
“Your quest for what?”
“I suppose you could call it my quest for Anna Klein.”
“Hmm,” LaRoche said with a slow nod.
Danforth looked at him closely. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you thinking?”
“That maybe she was acting,” LaRoche said.
“Acting? Why?”
LaRoche laughed. “It’s a little mind game I play with myself,” he said. “Coming up with other ways of looking at things, no matter what crazy direction it takes me.”
“What crazy direction is it taking you now?” Danforth asked.
“Well, I was just thinking that maybe Anna was forced to do what she did when she saw you,” LaRoche answered. “Maybe there was something she wanted to protect.”
“Rache is what she wanted to protect,” Danforth said bitterly.
“Unless the Bolshies were playing an old game with you,” LaRoche answered casually. “It’s one they know well and play very often.”
Danforth could see that LaRoche was playing a game of his own, offering a wild supposition for no other reason than to demonstrate the twisted world of intrigue he’d once known.
“What game?” Danforth asked, going along with him.
“It’s an old ploy,” LaRoche said. “They let you find one thing in order to keep something else hidden, something more valuable to them than what you were looking for.”
“I was never looking for anything but Anna,” Danforth told him.
“But was it her you really found?” LaRoche asked.
“What I found was a Nazi spy,” Danforth said bitterly.
“Unless they made her do what she did,” LaRoche cautioned.
“You said that before,” Danforth said, a little impatiently. “Why would they have done that?”
LaRoche’s gaze seemed threaded with a thousand complicated plots.
“You’d proven yourself very relentless in this whole business,” LaRoche said. “So suppose they were being pressured to release you. Or maybe they were simply tired of having you on the books, as they say. For whatever reason, they decided to release you. But they wanted to neutralize you first. The only way they could do that was by letting you see Anna. Once you saw she was this crazy Nazi, you could go home and live your life and they’d never have to bother with you again.”
“But why would they care whether or not I stopped looking for Anna?” Danforth said.
LaRoche looked like a man explaining evil to a child. “Because in looking for Anna, you might find whoever it was they were still protecting. Some old agent of theirs. Or maybe a mole, someone who still provided information for them. Or someone who helped them long ago.”
“Like who?” Danforth asked.
LaRoche shrugged, now quite obviously reaching for a wildcard. “Like Rache,” he said.
“But Rache was a German agent,” Danforth said. “The Soviets would only care about Rache if he were . . .” He stopped. “If he were . . .”
“One of their own,” LaRoche said, as if he’d played a trump card. “But that’s how this ploy works.” He smiled softly. “Suppose Rache posed as an anti-Nazi German, and in that way fooled Bannion, and in fooling Bannion fooled Anna, who ended up spending her life protecting the very one who had betrayed her.” He smiled at his own
