The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  The paperwork made for a big pile after the dishes were cleared -- everything signed in three places, one copy for the customer, one for the files, one for the regulators. Except some of the transactions were entirely secret and unregulated, which meant a second copy in a second set of files. I once asked why. The answer I received was so unsatisfactory that I never asked again, instead just whistling quietly whenever I saw the quarterly line item for paper supplies that the bank purchased.

  Manon came in at about 8, got a drink and chatted with Liesl, who was showing now. She came down to the cafe for a glass of milk most nights now, and maybe for a beer once a week. This was a beer night. Manon had ignored me after a quick kiss when she arrived, dropping her coat at the booth. That was fine. I didn't want our confrontation to happen here.

  At about 8:30, I gathered up my file folders and shoveled them back into my briefcase. I put on my coat and carried Manon's over to her, managing a minute or two of banter with Liesl about how nervous Henry was about impending fatherhood.

  "We were over at one of my co-worker's house on Sunday, and they have a newborn, and Henry was afraid to hold her," Liesl said. "He was afraid he would drop her. He wouldn't take her until he was sitting on the floor so the distance wouldn't be so great if he went oops."

  "Wood floor?"

  "Yeah," she said. "At least we have carpet upstairs."

  "Maybe you can leave pillows out everywhere."

  Manon and I decided to go to her place. We didn't exactly alternate -- it was based more on who had the earliest appointment the next day -- and she had a breakfast meeting. I had gone over in my head how I wanted to do this, but couldn't settle on a particularly artful approach. Unless something hit me at the last second, I was just going to blurt it out.

  It was only about a five-minute walk from the cafe, and we were able to pass the time in a comfortable silence. We got inside and took off our coats, and she walked toward the kitchen, asking over her shoulder, "Do you want a whiskey?" I would normally say yes, and she would carry the two drinks into the bedroom, where I would usually be undressing. Normally. Usually.

  "No, I want to talk to you for a second," I said.

  She must have sensed my tone. I don't know if it was hurt, or mad, or severe, or just different. She stopped and walked back toward me.

  "Something wrong?" she said.

  Nothing had come to me, so I just blurted.

  "Bellevue Plaza, lobby bar," I said.

  I was watching her intently for a reaction. There was just the hint of one, just a millisecond of something, but then it was gone.

  "Is it nice? I bet it's nice. We should go sometime," she said.

  She was playing the only card she had. She undoubtedly was hoping it was just a coincidence that I had brought it up. The smile on her face betrayed nothing other than the excitement for a little potential trip, maybe for a dirty weekend in Bern.

  "You were just there. Wednesday night," I said.

  "You saw?"

  I nodded. And with that, I finally received an honest reaction, the look of being caught. Or at least I thought it was honest until she opened her mouth.

  "I don't know what to say," she said. "I am so ashamed. I could insult your intelligence, but I won't. I wasn't in Geneva with the rug manufacturers. I was in Bern with a friend. Another man."

  I said nothing. Into the silence, Manon kept talking.

  "I know this must hurt you," she said. "We have become close, and I do love you. But in my defense, we never said our relationship was exclusive. And this was an old friend, someone I knew before you."

  So that was her play -- to pretend it was an affair, and maybe to ask for my forgiveness. I will give her this, that she was very good. I might even have believed it, had I not known. Part of me wanted to wait her out, to listen more, to hear how she might embroider the story, to see just how well this devious mind could operate under pressure. But I couldn't. I blurted, again.

  "That's all a lie," I said. I was almost whispering, looking down at my hands. "You're a spy."

  Now Manon was speechless. She knew that I knew, and that was that. There was no more fiction for her to spout. There was no worthy denial. But I was the one who ended the silence this time, asking the question that had been foremost in my mind since I saw her in the bar.

  "Thank you for not denying it," I said, as a kind of preamble. Her eyes were welling up. It was the only card she had left, but it completely set me off. The tears in her eyes, manufactured female bullshit, turned my hurt into rage.

  "Fuck you with the tears," I said. "Is that in the manual, learning how to cry on command? Is that what they teach you when your job is to target a man and lead him around by the dick?"

  "It's not that simple," Manon said. Now she was the one who was almost whispering, even as I got louder.

  "But that was it, right?" I said. "I was your target. You wanted to find out what the banker from Bohemia Suisse was really up to. So you lifted your skirt and reported back to Paris what I was doing, who I was meeting, like that. Did you go through my briefcase after I fell asleep? Of course, you did."

  "It only started out that way," she said.

  "Fucking bitch," I said. It almost under my breath, except we were only about three feet apart. Her anger flashed.

  "Well, it's not like you haven't kept any secrets from me," Manon said. "I mean, you're a goddamn spy, too."

  "And that had nothing to do with you. That had nothing to do with our relationship. My feelings for you were real. By not telling you, I was protecting you. My love."

  I spat those last two words. She just looked at me.

  "Yeah, well what about Jan Tanner's secretary?" she said.

  It surprised me that Manon knew about Tanner. Then again, I don't know why it should have.

  "What about Jan Tanner's secretary?" I said. "It was just business."

  "Fucking her was just business? You had to fuck her? There was no other way? Come on."

  I thought about denying it. Then I thought, the hell with it.

  "Yes, fucking her was just business, just a way to get information. How can you even ask me such a question? You were fucking me for business. You were fucking me to get information. For all I know, you're fucking half of the association of bankers for business."

  Things degenerated from there if that was possible. I called her some really vile names. The worst thing she said about me was that I was "naive." A couple of times, she attempted to say that her current feelings for me were real, however they started, but I cut her off every time.

  "I don't believe anything you say. How could I?"

  She reached out to touch my hand. I jumped up and away from her as if it were radioactive. I grabbed my coat.

  "Fuck this, I'm done," I said. When I slammed the door of her flat, it didn't feel as good as I had hoped.

  27

  Cold, wet, snow, Zurich. Only this year seemed worse. People didn't need what I had just gone through to be depressed in Zurich in January. All they needed to do was open their front doors and begin the morning trudge to the office.

  I drank through the weekend of my confrontation with Manon. The phone rang a few times in my flat, but I didn't pick it up. I didn't know if it was her and I didn't care. As far as I was concerned, the slam of that door was the final punctuation on our relationship. There was nothing more to be said, no need for any kind of follow-up. If she started showing up at Fessler's, I would find somewhere else to eat and drink. It's not as if the town wasn't full of half-empty restaurants selling mediocre food.

  By Monday, I was in reasonable emotional shape, better than I had been since the night in Bern. The bank was a decent distraction, especially given that January was our informal audit month when Marta and I tore apart every record from the previous year and checked them against our ledgers. We set up at our big conference table, which was about the only time we used it all year, and ordered in lunch for two or three days, however long it took to go through everything. By
the end, we had fixed any discrepancies and could know with some certainty that our books were in order.

  It felt good to dive into the minutiae of the business. After the audit, it was back to my never-ending series of bullshit sales calls and lunches and drinks and whatnot, with less time spent in the office and a couple of nights of paperwork at Fessler's. It was there, one night, when Gregory sat down. I had just walked in and sat at my booth, and he brought me my Manhattan without asking. He had one, too.

  "I didn't think you drank those," I said.

  "I don't."

  "But..."

  "I don't but, I have to be honest, I've been drinking more since we started," and then, with a flick of his eyes, indicated the stairs up to his flat, and the radio. "But I don't get drunk, not on beer or wine, not anymore. So I'm trying these. I'm so excited, just thinking about it, that I need to take the edge off."

  We each gulped a mouthful, me trying to warm up a bit from my walk over to the cafe, Gregory trying to settle himself.

  "Are you sure you're OK with this?" I said. "I can work out the radio a different way if--"

  "Don't even think it," he said. "I told you how alive I felt with this, and it's all true. I'm just not used to feeling this alive if that makes any sense. Just the edge -- I just need to take the edge off."

  He gulped again.

  "You should be careful." I pointed at the mostly empty glass. "You never know when you're going to have to use that magic finger. Can't have you slurring in Morse code."

  "Don't worry -- but I have something to tell you. London messaged last night. First time, right at midnight. I wrote down the message, but then I didn't want to leave it laying around, so I burned it. But it said, and this is exact because I memorized it, 'Source says G plans postponed indefinitely by weather. Await further updates.' That was it."

  "Why didn't you tell me immediately?"

  "We never worked out a procedure."

  "You could have called last night. You could have come by the bank this morning."

  "Are you sure that's safe?" Gregory said. He was right. I had no idea. For all I knew, Manon was somehow still watching me. Or somebody else. Or that my phone had been tapped. And the last thing we needed was for someone to think Gregory was something more than my old friend from Vienna.

  "You're right, you're right," I said. "You did the right thing. We need a system."

  As it turned out, I walked by the cafe every morning on the way to the bank. This would be easy, a variation on the yellow-chalk-on-the-fountain scheme I had with Brodsky.

  "Take some chalk," I said, pointing at the menu slate that they changed every day with the specials. "Make a mark near the bottom of the black pole that holds the cafe sign out front if you have a message that I should know about. Unless you just want to grab me walking by in the morning."

  Gregory thought for a second. "No," he said. "Henry would wonder what I'm doing up and in the cafe so early. He really doesn't like having me underfoot in the morning. And the truth is, I spend enough time down here as it is."

  "Okay, now we need a place for you to leave the message."

  "How about this?" he said. "The last thing I do every night is check the trash out back. The bins are in a wooden enclosure -- you've seen it, right?"

  I nodded.

  "Okay," he said. "Where the fence post on the left joins the two sides of the enclosure -- I'll just jam a folded piece of paper with the message into the space between the post and the side. I'm sure it'll fit, and nobody will ever see it. And Henry won't suspect me being down there -- I check the trash every night. And you would have to be pretty unlucky to get caught back there by Henry. He's never out there early, never before the deliveries start. That's about 10 o'clock."

  This would work. It was actually kind of exciting, just working out the details. There also was a feeling of relaxation, just a little bit, because the German invasion plans had been put on hold by the shitty winter. Maybe there was still time to head it off, although I had no idea how that might be accomplished.

  Between thinking about that, and my paperwork, and my Manhattans, I was actually having a pretty good night, until Liesl came down to the cafe with a look on her face that was part concern and part disappointment. She obviously knew that Manon and I had split up and didn't even need to say it. I had no idea what Manon had told her. My only certainty was that it wasn't the truth.

  "What happened?" she said.

  "Ask her," I said.

  That was the entire conversation. I picked up my stuff and left.

  28

  The trip to Liechtenstein, which had been like a stone in my shoe for weeks, suddenly seemed a relief. The weather was still crap, snow piled everywhere, but the sun fortuitously appeared as I got behind the wheel and, as it turned out, I made pretty good time. There are a couple of ways into Liechtenstein from the Swiss side, and I chose the route that took me over the Alte Rheinbrucke, a narrow, covered wooden bridge that was rickety enough that I was second-guessing my decision about halfway over.

  That was technically the border, halfway over the bridge in the middle of the Rhine. But the way the customs niceties worked out, you received a passport stamp and a hearty wave from a guard on the Swiss side, drove through the wooden cavern, and received another stamp and wave from a guard on the Liechtenstein side. It all seemed a farce. Both guards were probably in their 60s, and the last time either of them actually left their semi-warm shelters and opened a car trunk or a piece of luggage was likely the previous October.

  As it turned out, there were three small hotels in the center of what passed for a town. Their actual names were irrelevant. If they had been called by their level of luxury, they would be called The Kind of Shitty, The Shitty, and The Unalterably Shitty. At least Marta got me into The Kind of Shitty, and I was early enough to be able to grab a late lunch.

  Two things about the dining room were notable, neither of those things being the food, which was standard, overcooked, and vaguely institutional. In other words, the mutton I ordered was cooked extra-long, as if they were attempting to make absolutely sure that the poor animal was dead. The two notable things were the thin film of grease on the water glass -- who needs water, anyway? -- and the three German officers who were eating at three separate tables, equidistant in the large dining room, so far apart from each other that it didn't seem possible that it was an accident. There was never a nod between them, never a sign of recognition, not a wave, not a look, not a salute, nothing -- not even when the one sitting in the back was forced to walk within about five feet of another one as he headed for the exit.

  Liechtenstein was about 15 miles long and, in many places, only two or three miles wide. On one side of the two or three miles was Switzerland, and on the other side was Austria, which was now part of the German Reich. It would not be unusual at all for Wehrmacht officers to be stationed in Austria, near the border -- and the truth is, they probably didn't have a lot to do if they were posted to this hinterland, and they did need to eat lunch.

  But a general and two colonels, in the same hotel dining room, where the food really was like the entire establishment, kind of shitty, didn't make a lot of sense to me. The fact that they were alone, without any subordinates for companionship, and that they didn't acknowledge each other in any way, just made it weirder.

  Most waiters would object to a question about the whole scene because waiters were trained to be unhelpful assholes above all else. But the guy who was working in the dining room that afternoon, fitting in perfectly with the surroundings, was a little light on the customary protocol. In other words, he couldn't seem to muster the energy to be an asshole. So I took a shot.

  "Can I ask you something?" I said. He did not reply, but he did not turn away. I figured was in.

  "Those officers, eating all alone, not seeming to know each other or even look at each other -- what's that all about?"

  "Same every day," the waiter said. Again, he did not turn away, so a follow-up question seeme
d, if not welcome, at least a possibility.

  "But why? It's not like the food here is--"

  "It's not the food," he said.

  "Then what?"

  The waiter did not answer, other than to gesture to the right, toward the front windows of the dining room, with a flick of his head. As he walked away, I looked out the window. The colonel who had just left was walking across the square and then into one of the two banks that stared each other down, dominating the space.

  Of course. You pop over for lunch and then, before heading back, you take a piece of your latest pay packet and deposit it into a bank in Liechtenstein -- you know, just in case the whole Thousand Year Reich thing doesn't work out as it's painted in the brochures. It's a little insurance, and nobody's the wiser -- and you're just over the border if you need to get the money in a hurry, and two miles from Switzerland after that. No wonder they couldn't look each other in the eye.

  My meeting with Count Novak was for lunch the next day, at his home. It wasn't gigantic, but it was just fine, thanks, a baby castle with a turret and a drawbridge over a stream, all gray fieldstone and surrounded by a couple of acres that ran into a vineyard. He gave me the quick tour until the sky started spitting.

  "It's a pity about the weather because the views are unique," he said, pointing, "Liechtenstein that way and Austria that way."

  The truth was, the property abutted the Austrian border, which frankly scared the hell out of me. Before driving over, I made the hotel concierge draw me a map of the route with the Austrian border highlighted in red ink. The last thing I needed was to wander into the Reich by accident and find my name on some list. Like, you know, the list of Czech spies who were put on trial in 1938 after attempting to kill a Gestapo officer.

  Lunch with the count went well. He was, indeed, fucking loaded. The deposit he would be making at Bohemia Suisse was larger than I had hoped. By the time we were done, it was nearly 3 p.m., and the weather had deteriorated. Part of me wanted to drive home anyway, but between the snow/sleet and the fading daylight, I decided to act like a grownup for once and spend another night in The Kind of Shitty.