“Why are you smiling?”
“It was a good book. I enjoyed reading it.”
“Why didn’t you take notes?”
“Lothar asked me not to.”
West shook his head, seemingly unable to comprehend the idea that I’d actually done as I was told.
“Tell us about the contents.”
The questions continued in this vein for the next hour or so. I kept my answers as vague as possible, which wasn’t all that difficult considering that I truly couldn’t remember the material down to the finer details in the way that West wanted. I knew the names of the bookstores, of course, because they were ones I’d visited myself, and I easily remembered all the code names. But the dates and times, the sequences of the various couriers, and the finer points on who learned what, and when, and from whom, had already faded, so much so that after a while West finally threw in the towel.
“Shit, this is worthless.”
“You think Lothar still has the book, don’t you,” I said. “Him or one of his people.”
West shrugged.
“As long as it’s not the other guys.”
“Why do you even want it, after all this time? To expose it or bury it?”
“You’re not cleared for that answer. Let’s just say that maybe it’s not so bad that you don’t remember too much. But obviously you formed some sort of conclusion after reading it, or you wouldn’t have said what you did to Lothar on the phone.”
“About Lemaster being guilty? That was Lothar’s conclusion. I didn’t say it was mine.”
“But your handler still wants to know, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. I take it you know his name.”
“Giles Cabot has made himself pretty obvious lately. Especially by Agency standards.”
“Pretty neat trick for a guy in a wheelchair.”
“You were up there for the Nethercutt funeral, weren’t you? That’s probably when you came to his attention.”
“Probably.”
“How did he first make contact? Was it that weekend?”
“No. Later.”
I led them through the process, from that first anonymous message in Georgetown, typed on my own stationery, right up to the messages he’d sent me in Prague. I said nothing of what I’d learned about my father’s past, or Litzi’s, which meant I said very little about the events in Budapest. Neither of them seemed troubled by my apparent omissions. In fact, West seemed downright charmed and intrigued by my account.
“Christ,” he said. “It’s like something you’d read in a novel.”
“I think that was the point.”
“Well, we’d like you to finish it for us,” Harrison said. “Write one last chapter, then close the cover for good. If you’re up for it.”
Now they had me. Almost.
“Why not use one of your own people?”
Harrison cast a nervous glance at the technician.
“Let’s talk generally for a moment, shall we?”
He pulled up a chair and motioned to the technician to clear away his tools. The man in the white coat stripped me of the various monitors and sensors, then packed up his briefcase and left. No one said good-bye as he shut the door.
“You ask a very good question,” Harrison said. “Let’s just say that the work that needs to be done is likely to occur on territory outside our authorized area of operations. Places where a private citizen is certainly free to do as he chooses, even a particularly nosy and intrusive one, but not an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“So you want me to go to Block Island, to where Cabot lives?”
“We want you to bring this matter to a conclusion. If it involves activities on U.S. soil, then we’re not permitted to have a role in it. So you would be free to determine the latitude of the work within your own discretion as a private, law-abiding citizen.”
I almost laughed. Lawyers, I thought. Spies were powerless once you let lawyers into the equation. Maybe this explained why legal thrillers had overtaken espionage novels on best-seller lists in the wake of the Cold War.
“Okay, then. What is it that you don’t want me to do?”
“Find Cabot’s stash, then dispose of it.”
“His stash?”
West picked up the thread.
“All the Angleton people had one after they retired. So did the Dark Lord himself, as it turned out. Things that were never supposed to leave the building, but somehow did anyway, most of it having to do with all the stuff that no one knew they were up to.”
“Like the running of Headlight, Taillight, and Blinker.”
“Precisely,” Harrison said.
“And even poor old Mary Meyer’s diary?”
“Actually, that turned up in one of Angleton’s safes at Langley. Apparently it was just a curiosity for him.”
“Strange man. I had a run-in with him once, when I was a kid.”
“We know,” Harrison said. “That was in his safe, too, in an old daybook.”
I was amazed, even charmed in an eerie sort of way.
“But what we didn’t find were things like his appointment logs, all those accounts of every lunch and every Agency visit he ever got from goddamn Kim Philby.”
“I can see why he’d have stashed those.”
“You and every two-bit historian who ever came up with a cheap conspiracy theory,” West said.
“Maybe he sent them to Area 51. Have you checked Roswell?”
West laughed. Harrison wasn’t amused.
“We think Nethercutt had a stash as well, and that after he died his old rival Cabot came over from next door and found it. That’s probably what set off this whole thing.”
It made sense. It also explained some of the contacts and documents Cabot had come up with. New information would have made him feel empowered enough to reopen his old investigation.
“So it stands to reason,” West said, “that Cabot must also have a stash. He’s probably had one all along, but now it will have Nethercutt’s stuff, too, plus whatever you’ve sent him.”
“How am I supposed to find it?”
“Bait,” Harrison said. “One last item that you’ll send his way, juicy enough that he’ll want to put it away immediately for safekeeping.”
“Which is another reason you wanted Lothar’s book.”
“We’ll come up with something else. Any ideas?”
I shook my head.
“How were you communicating?” Harrison asked.
“It was pretty much a one-way street. He’d send messages, and I’d do as he asked. Litzi was reporting my movements for a while, but after that I have no idea how he was keeping tabs. The only other channel from my end was a dead drop, next to the Franz Josef statue in the Burggarten.”
Harrison shot a questioning glance at West.
“Worth a try,” West said. “He’s probably still got somebody checking it. Whatever we come up with, you can put it there the day you fly back. On your way to the airport, even. By the time it’s delivered you’ll be in place.”
“On Block Island?”
“I never said that. Never even mentioned it.”
“So where’s this bait, then?”
“We’ll come up with something. Then we’ll shoot it over to your father’s place before you leave. In the meantime, book a flight to Boston and a rental car. If you have any trouble getting a spot on the ferry, let us know and we’ll see to the arrangements.”
“You’re trusting me to handle the tradecraft once I’m there?”
“Once you’re on U.S. soil, we’re not trusting you to do anything. I hope that’s understood.”
“Perfectly.”
“But you’ve read all the books. Obviously you have some idea of how these things work. If he was expecting you, that would be one thing. But he won’t be.”
“What do I do with this stuff if I find it?”
West handed me a slip of paper.
“Here’s an address. By certified mail, if you
please.”
It was a post office box in Herndon, Virginia, in care of someone named Elliott Wallace. Fake name, no doubt. An all-purpose conduit for all sorts of Agency detritus.
“You’re trusting this to the U.S. Postal Service?” I asked. “Whatever happened to dead drops?”
Harrison took over.
“This is an address that automatically receives special handling. Besides, setting up a dead drop in certain locales would imply operational activity.”
“So this is to keep the lawyers happy.”
“It’s for your own protection.”
“Maybe I should just destroy the material.”
“It’s U.S. government property. Anything that needs to be destroyed, we’ll manage.”
“With Breece Preston’s approval?”
Harrison looked over at West, who cleared his throat.
“Just use the address, Mr. Cage.”
“One final piece of business,” Harrison said. He handed me a pen and an official-looking sheet of paper. “Date and signature at the bottom, with your full name printed underneath.”
It was a document the Agency called a nondisclosure agreement. I’d seen Marty Ealing persuade people to sign them on behalf of some of our shadier clients. Basically it was a pledge not to disseminate or publish any information I obtained as a result of any employment for the Central Intelligence Agency.
“I thought I wasn’t working for you?”
“Not in any official capacity, no.”
“Then I’m not really employed, so this doesn’t apply to me.”
West looked uncomfortable. Harrison attempted to head me off at the pass.
“We’ve made these things stick before on far more tenuous associations. But if you don’t wish to sign it, fine. We’ll cease all association with you here and now, including any sort of security guarantees for your remaining time in Vienna.”
Nice people, aren’t they?
“What about on Block Island? Who guarantees my security there?”
Harrison sighed, exasperated. I refused to pick up the pen.
“How ’bout if we go off the record a minute, Bill?” It was West, easing into the role of good cop.
“I thought we already were.”
“Well, yes. But I mean way off the record.”
“Okay.”
“Ron Curtin is in custody. He was sitting in the back of that Russian van.”
“So they were working together, him and the Hammerhead.”
“Yes. After competing for a while they eventually joined forces. Let’s just say they both stood to be embarrassed by dredging up too much of the past. Frankly, they’re probably just as happy to let us take custody. That way they don’t have to fight over it now. Anybody but Giles Cabot or Vanity Fair, as far as they’re concerned. But if it makes you feel better, we’ll gladly make sure that both Curtin and the Russian remain in custody until you’re done. Deal?”
“What about afterward?”
“Then they’ll be worried about us. You’ll be off the hook.”
So I signed it. And in doing so presumably signed away any hopes for publishing a story. Just as well, perhaps, especially if a magazine piece would have meant exposing my father’s involvement, or Litzi’s. After all their painstaking effort to maintain their privacy, why blow their cover in an act of journalistic vanity, even if it meant I still had to work for Marty Ealing. Maybe I’d grown up. Just because the CIA’s motto said that the truth would set you free didn’t mean everyone had to know it.
“Tell me,” I asked, “was any of this meeting taped or recorded?”
“Do you seriously think we’d want this conversation appearing in any kind of official record?” Harrison said.
“Then why be so careful every time I mention what I might be doing on—”
“No need to say it.”
“See what I mean?”
He shrugged. “We’re careful because, well, you just never know, do you?”
“That would make a nice Agency motto if you ever get tired of the old one.”
Harrison opened the door. “I’m told that your father has been contacted and is waiting downstairs. We’ll maintain a security presence on your behalf for as long as you remain in Vienna, right up until the time you board a plane back to the States. Go anywhere else and you’re on your own.”
I then asked the question that had already started to nag at me.
“What will you do with this information? Use it, destroy it, or just bury it?”
He smiled.
“Good luck, Mr. Cage.”
38
Dad was less than thrilled with my treatment at the hands of our government. The polygraph angered him even more than the abduction, the injection, or the way they lashed me to a chair. But I think he was secretly envious that they’d assigned me to close the case.
“They’ll probably give it a name,” he said. “You’ll end up in their archives, with your own operation.”
“Doubtful. It’s unofficial. Less than unofficial, if you get right down to it.”
“Doesn’t matter. Those people can’t take a dump without assigning a code name. They can’t help themselves.”
We were seated with Litzi around his dinner table. It was noon. After getting in the night before at nearly one a.m., the long hours had finally caught up with me, and I’d slept until eleven, troubled throughout by bizarre dreams. We were now working our way through a pot of coffee, chocolate croissants, and the last of the cold cuts.
“I never would’ve believed Giles Cabot was capable of engineering all this,” Dad said. “Ten years ago maybe. I’d always heard he was a vindictive son of a bitch. But the way he looked at the funeral I wouldn’t have given him another month. I don’t know whether to tell you to be careful for your own sake or for his.”
“I do seem to remember a pretty capable fellow pushing his wheelchair.”
“Kyle Anderson. Someone said he was a former Agency knuckle-dragger. Dirty deeds galore in Latin America. He’s been Cabot’s personal assistant for years. Probably the one who typed those messages on your Royal. Probably also the guy sending those K-Fresh emails to your fake Russian in Prague. The best part now is, you get to find out for yourself.”
Litzi, having experienced firsthand how such assignments could go wrong even with the best of intentions, was more circumspect.
“Do the bare minimum, then get out,” she said. “Even that will probably be too much.”
“At the very least maybe I’ll get my books back.”
“Of all the things he did, that was the strangest,” Dad said. “What was the point?”
“Lothar said Cabot always believed there was something about the books themselves that made them valuable to the courier system. Not that he ever found out what it was. Maybe Cabot thought that as a courier I might have ended up with one of the books. So he stole them to check for himself.”
“Typical Agency overkill.”
“Even after how he’s used me, I’m not looking forward to breaking an old man’s heart. I hope there’s a way to do this gently.”
“There never is,” Litzi said. “You’d be better off spending the weekend with your son.”
Someone from the Agency was supposed to drop off a parcel in the afternoon, containing whatever bait they’d rigged for Cabot. I was then supposed to place it at the dead drop the next morning, on my way to catch a 9:40 flight to Boston. It connected through Paris and was scheduled to arrive at 2:05 p.m. I had a car reservation on the 6 p.m. ferry from Point Judith, which would put me on Block Island by seven. Then I was on my own.
In the afternoon Litzi and I went shopping for supplies. I noticed Agency men fore and aft. They were constantly chatting into cell phones, and they didn’t seem to mind if anyone saw them. Maybe that was the point.
I’d decided that the best approach to snooping around Cabot’s farm would be to pose as a bird-watcher, so I bought a hat, a rucksack, outdoor clothes, and a pricey pair of binocula
rs. I would pick up a guidebook and map on the island. Bicycling was a popular way for getting around there, so I planned to rent a mountain bike suitable for trails and open fields.
The Agency had given me a diagram showing the lay of the land around Cabot’s ten-acre property, plus a photo of his gray clapboard farmhouse, which sat on a grassy rise with an eastward view of the Atlantic. On the diagram someone had not so subtly marked an X on a small nature preserve that abutted his land. Presumably it offered the best vantage point.
Litzi and I ate an early dinner, but kept our wine consumption to a minimum. We said good-bye afterward, parting with plans for her to visit Georgetown later that fall. A real vacation this time, with no more secrets between us. I was already wondering what David would make of her.
When I got back to the apartment, Dad was in one of his most familiar poses, seated in the easy chair across from his great wall of books. He was flipping through the old courier copy of Oppenheim’s The Great Impersonation that I’d brought back from Szondi in Budapest.
“You should turn in early,” he said, which was what he’d always told me the night before a big race.
“I will. Although the jet lag’s never half as bad on the way back.”
He nodded toward a sealed, unmarked envelope on an end table.
“They dropped that by around four.”
Neither of us was curious enough to open it, probably because we knew it was fake. If Cabot also figured that out, my assignment would become that much tougher.
“I’d forgotten how silly Oppenheim’s dialogue comes across these days,” Dad said. “It’s like Gilbert and Sullivan without the music.” He shut the book. “So you said Lothar’s a pretty good writer?”
“Especially for a first-timer.”
“Who would you compare him to?”
“Hard to say, since his book’s in German. Adam Hall, maybe?”
The Double Game Page 33
