“Where were you? I thought they must have taken you.”
“I was finding out the truth about my father.”
That caught her short.
“It doesn’t seem to have made you happy.”
So I showed her the documents and told her the two Belgrade stories, beginning with my downfall in the early nineties, then working my way back toward the so-called “flap” involving the cover-up of a failed polygraph.
To my annoyance, Litzi was not particularly sympathetic. She listened with an air of growing impatience, and by the end she was rolling her eyes. Just as I was finishing, she could no longer contain herself.
“No, no, no! You see it, but you don’t see it. Or maybe you’ve known all along but refuse to see it. Or maybe I just think that because I know more than you.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head.
“I shouldn’t be the one to tell you. This is between you and your father.”
“I’ll manage that all right, the moment we’re back. With everything I’ve learned, he’ll have to come clean. At least now I know why he didn’t want me to pursue this.”
“You have it backwards. Yes, he was behind the letter. That’s clear enough. But the only person he was really betraying was himself. Don’t you see?”
“No. I don’t.” She watched me closely, as if deciding whether my bewilderment was genuine. Then she took my hand, more in the manner of mother to child than woman to lover, and she spoke very gently.
“That time that I spied on him, when you were seventeen. Remember that I told you I went into his bedroom, but didn’t find anything worth reporting?”
“Yes.”
Her tone was grave.
“Well, I did find something. I never reported it, because it had nothing to do with his work. But I am almost sure your father knew I’d seen it.”
“Go on.”
“It was an address book. A little black book, people call them, with names and numbers. It was sort of a diary, too, with notes about the people. It was very personal, very intimate. All of the names were men. It was his life, his secret life, but it had nothing to do with spies or spying or even your precious Ed Lemaster. Do you understand me now?”
I nodded, floored. Then I thought some more. Everything I’d been seeing was now standing on its head.
“The polygraph,” I said. “Bobić said they weren’t sure which one of them failed it. Do you think it was Dad?”
“Of course. It was the question they always asked in those days, whether you were going into intelligence or sensitive diplomacy. They even asked me when I was vetted for the Verfassungsschutz: ‘Have you ever had a homosexual experience?’ Heaven help you if you got it wrong.”
“Unless you had a young friend in the CIA who could help you clean it up.”
“I suspect he also coached your father on how to beat it on the second try.”
“That also fits with what Humphries told me.”
“She mentioned the polygraph?”
“Sorry. I didn’t want to tell you. I was too ashamed. I thought my father was protecting a mole.”
“He was protecting himself. And Lemaster helped him.”
For a fleeting moment I felt I’d been set adrift. A sigh welled up in my chest, and I exhaled slowly. My face felt hot, the heat of shame—not for Dad, but for me, and for everyone else who had never really known him. We were the reason he’d kept living a lie, year after year, in city after city.
The letter in ’92? Yes, it was an outrage, a dagger in my back. But by then the stakes must have seemed higher than ever. He was a ranking official, and Lemaster was an esteemed novelist. Why risk both their reputations, especially when he probably figured his son was strong enough, smart enough, talented enough to handle such a setback?
Other things began to fall into place.
“Those men we used to meet when I was younger. I always thought they were spies.”
“I think I’ve probably seen him with some of those men.”
“When you’ve seen him out on the town?”
“He always gives me a certain look, a look of understanding, and of thanks.”
“For keeping his secret.”
“Because he always kept mine. He never told you about my years with the Verfassungsschutz, and I’m sure he must have heard.”
No wonder he’d been reluctant to tell me about his friendship with Lemaster. I remembered the excuse he’d first used, right after the story came out in the Post: “There were security issues.” Yes, there certainly were. Some very sensitive and personal ones.
It also explained why he’d always preferred to live outside the embassy community.
“We should leave soon if we want to catch the early train,” Litzi said. She glanced out the window, and I saw that the first light of dawn was up, coating the rooftops in gold.
A new day was here. A new age entirely.
34
As we boarded the train, I thought of all the men before me who’d been dispatched on grim missions to confront double agents with evidence of their duplicity. There was Nicholas Elliott, sent all the way to Beirut to try and wring a confession out of old pal Kim Philby. Le Carré’s Smiley, hiding in a dreary London safe house, listening through the walls as colleague Bill Haydon implicated himself to a Russian. Deighton’s Bernie Samson, meeting up behind the Iron Curtain with his wife, of all people, as she confirmed her defection to the Soviets. And poor old Folly, seated stiffly in a Vienna café, watching from behind a newspaper as his lifelong friend Don Tolleson came a cropper.
Now there was Bill Cage, pseudo-spy and snooping son, the man who hadn’t known when to quit, on his way to at last seek the truth from his dad, who had fooled him for a lifetime. I realized then that each of us, in his own way, had been on a mission of love. Folly even emerged from behind his newspaper long enough to shake Tolleson’s hand, for God’s sake, a gesture I’d never understood until now. The words of Magnus Pym told me all I needed to know.
Love is whatever you can still betray, he thought. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
The biggest difference between those other fellows and me was that the rivalries of the Cold War had eventually amounted to nothing—a tired whimper of resignation beneath a fallen Wall and a few toppled statues. But how would the long stalemate of secrecy between Dad and me end? In anger and division? Hope and reconciliation? I wanted the latter, of course, but it would be a few more hours until I found out.
As always, he was standing in his open doorway as I stepped off the elevator. I’d phoned ahead from the bahnhof saying we needed to talk, and I could tell from his somber expression and folded arms that he knew this was important. I put down my bag as soon as he shut the door. Then I cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“I know about Belgrade. Both times, yours and mine. And I know why you felt you had to do it.”
He paused to absorb the news, but he didn’t look surprised.
“I suppose Litzi was able to fill in some of the blanks. She’s certainly seen me around with my friends enough.”
“She mentioned that.”
“And there was that black book, once upon a time. I’ve always been grateful for her discretion.”
“Is that why you returned the favor? You must have heard later when she was recruited.”
“How much did she tell you about that?”
“She said it ended badly, but she didn’t say how badly.”
He nodded, but offered no more. I wasn’t sure whether to be touched or infuriated by their continuing delicacy with each other’s secrets.
“So what about you?” he asked. “Where do I stand with you?”
His expression was stoic, but his posture suggested he was bracing for a blow. Maybe that’s why he seemed surprised when I gripped his shoulders and embraced him. I felt him sag in relief. Then he gave me a fatherly squeeze, the kind he’d always had in reserve whenever I’d needed one most. For all of the subjects
we had avoided over the years, he had never once ducked me in a time of need. I certainly couldn’t make that claim with regard to my own son. He sobbed only once, more a gasp than a cry, and when we broke apart his eyes were dry.
“I ruined things for you,” he said. “For your mother, too. As good as killed her.”
“That’s why she left?”
“How could she stay, once she knew who I really was? She was planning to come back and get you. We even discussed the possibility of some sort of marriage of convenience, which was pretty much what we already had. We eventually agreed that she would travel for a few weeks to think about it, to sort things out. Then she would take you off to Boston, where her parents lived. You’d go to school there, and spend summers with me. So off she went. She’d always wanted to see Greece. Then she got on that damn bus.”
He went to a desk, where he unlocked a narrow drawer and pulled out a yellowed clipping from an English-language newspaper in Athens. Seventy-nine people in all, including four other Americans. The driver had been drinking.
“I cost you your mother. I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”
“You weren’t driving.”
“Might as well have been.”
“And you didn’t ruin me in ninety-two. You just gave me a handy excuse for me to do it myself.”
“I think we could both use a drink.”
I smiled, because that had always been his generation’s answer for everything. Angleton’s martinis, Folly’s Manhattans, and Dad’s whisky, although for the moment alcohol seemed as good an elixir as any.
“Then we’ll have a long, long talk. Let’s sit in the living room.”
He poured two whiskys, neat, and we pulled up our chairs like a pair of old soldiers at a regimental reunion, knee to knee beneath his bookshelves. We covered all sorts of ground, awkwardly at first, then with a growing sense of ease.
Yes, he had failed a polygraph in Belgrade in ’59, derailed by the obvious question. Yes, a young Ed Lemaster had helped him smooth it over, first by calling on his Agency connections who administered the program, then by coaching Dad to handle the questioning better the second time around.
“Here’s how naïve I was then,” he said. “I didn’t even know he was CIA until this came up. Of course, afterward I was indebted for life. Maybe that’s what he was counting on. So when he came to me years later to ask for a few little favors, who was I to say no?”
Dad did seem surprised—alarmed, even—when I told him how extensive Lemaster’s courier network eventually became, with far more code names and far more couriers, me included.
“You?” he said. “Those errands I had you doing for those booksellers? My God, what a fool I was.”
His face darkened when I told him of the network’s apparent Moscow connections.
“Did you ever suspect he might be working for the other side?” I asked.
He thought about it for a second between swallows of whisky.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “Did you ever suspect me? Of being the way I am, I mean?”
“Maybe at some level. Especially when I was older, after college. I guess I did wonder why you always wanted a few days’ notice whenever I visited. I looked in your closets once, thinking I might find a whole row of dresses for some paramour.”
He smiled.
“Looking in closets. That alone should have told you something. It’s one reason all those books always appealed to me. Spying, duplicity, cover. Intelligent men leading two lives at once. It was everything I was doing, except in their versions it was more glamorous and exciting, even noble. Although not so much in the Folly and Smiley books. They were more like me. Nobility itself was the fiction.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“It was like any secret, I suppose. The longer you keep it, the bigger it grows. Before long, coming clean is no longer an option.”
“I would have understood.”
“Really? I’m not so sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, you’re quite enlightened about it now, of course. Anyone with half a brain is now. But you should’ve heard the things you used to say with your friends growing up. Fags, queers, and all that.”
I blushed. “I was awful.”
“Son, you were a boy, with all of a boy’s stupid biases and insecurities.”
“Still, you should’ve told me to shut the hell up.”
“I did give you the occasional lecture on tolerance. But I never wanted to get too specific—might’ve blown my cover. Besides, it wasn’t like you were in danger of becoming a skinhead.” He turned somber, looking off into space. “I should’ve told your mother from the beginning. Our marriage was a career move for me, a camouflage. Although then we would never have had you. And with no you, there’s no David.”
He seemed the most uncomfortable when talking about the letter he wrote in ’92.
“When I heard you were going abroad I was thrilled. You were perfect for the job. Then Marković sent me a letter. He said it would be a shame after everything that happened in fifty-nine if my son were to create further problems for him and his country. He wanted me to assure him that you would write favorable stories. He had no idea of how a free press functioned, of course. I believe he was convinced that I really could influence what you wrote, not just because I was your father, but because of my position at State. I knew that was insane, so I sent the letter. I told myself it was to protect your integrity, to protect you from embarrassment, but it was really just to protect me. Then, when things fell apart so badly in your life, well …”
His words trailed off.
“I was nearly thirty-six years old, Dad. Old enough to fend for myself.”
He shrugged, and for a while we were silent.
“What will you do now?” he finally asked. “Are you finished with this business?”
“I don’t know. I need to think about it. Unless Lothar’s willing to help, I’m not sure there’s much more I can find out anyway. But one thing’s still bothering me. Why is Breece Preston so interested? I didn’t want to scare you, but his man Curtin has been following me across Europe.”
Dad was ashen. He poured himself a refill and shook his head.
“Well,” he finally said. “He and Ed did work together in Belgrade.”
“I was wondering if you knew that. Bobić mentioned it as well.”
“One thing people say about Preston is that he’s always a pro about covering his ass whenever he fucks up. Maybe this is an example. A few hundred million in government contracts would certainly seem to make it worth his while to stop you, if he thinks you might find something damaging. Quit while you’re ahead, son. Better still, quit while you’re alive.”
“Like I said. I’ll think about it.”
Litzi joined us for dinner that night, a subdued affair of cold cuts and beer. The three of us seemed listless and spent. But after coffee the conversation gained momentum, and I detected an odd chemistry of collusion still at work between Litzi and Dad. Every time I looked up from my cup it seemed they had just shared a glance, a nod, a significant gesture of solidarity, even sympathy.
“What is it between you two?” I finally asked. “You’re like a pair of identical twins, passing thoughts back and forth right over my head. It’s rude and it’s pissing me off. And I hope I made that sound like a joke.”
“You didn’t,” Litzi said, “but I understand. Our conspiracy of silence was completely unfair to you, but it was never about fairness, or even about you. I was loyal to your father’s privacy because he was loyal to mine.”
“About your work for the Verfassungsschutz?”
“Not just the work. The consequences.” She turned toward Dad. “You’ve always known, haven’t you? There must have been some kind of report afterward.”
He nodded gravely.
“You don’t have to tell him,” Dad said. “It’s got nothing to do with him or me.”
“That�
��s why I want him to know. Because it concerns only me. I hid it from my husband for eleven years of our marriage, and it’s one of the reasons he left. He always knew something terrible was getting in our way, but he never figured out what it was, and then he stopped trying. If Bill and I are to continue as friends, he should know.” She turned to me. “Will we continue to be friends?”
The old Litzi Strauss bluntness was on full display, as endearing and unnerving as ever. I couldn’t possibly say no.
“Something more than friends, I hope.”
Then she told me her story, one last painful disclosure to cap a tumultuous day.
Making friends with the so-called radicals among her fellow university students had been easy enough. She liked them, even though she found their politics uncomfortably strident. They liked her, too, and quickly came to trust her. As time passed, her reports to the Verfassungsschutz grew shorter and less detailed. Her handler complained, and so did her handler’s bosses. She asked to be released from the arrangement. Not without results, they said. They threatened to expose her.
Then she came up with something big—urgent word that a young German woman on the run, an actual member of the Red Army Faction, would soon be passing through Vienna, and needed safe harbor for one night only. Litzi found out the date and location, and passed them along. The result: a botched raid in which the German fugitive opened fire on the police. She was captured, as were two young women living at the house. But a third woman, new to the group and a friend of Litzi’s, was killed in the cross fire.
The campus group scattered in the wake of the tragedy, which provided Litzi with the perfect out. The government found her a job, and for the most part left her alone. But the image of her bright young friend followed her wherever she went.
“When I couldn’t conceive a child, I knew it was part of my punishment,” she said. “We tried clinics, fertility drugs, in vitro. Nothing worked. We even discussed finding a surrogate, but I knew I’d never be able to use another young woman for my own benefit, not again. And when my husband sensed my heart was no longer in it, well …”
She shrugged, as if trying to slough off the intervening years in a single gesture of surrender.
The Double Game Page 30
