The Double Game

by Dan Fesperman

  “What is it?”

  “Kentucky bourbon, your favorite.”

  “I prefer it neat.”

  “Well, this will have to do. Have a seat. I insist.”

  I sat on the bed, eyeing the bourbon. He walked around to face me, still standing, and now blocking my path to the door.

  “Drink up.”

  “You’re not joining me?”

  “Maybe in a moment or two.”

  I picked up the glass and sniffed. It smelled only like bourbon.

  “What else is in here?”

  He smiled, which told me all I needed to know. I put down the glass.

  “I guess you want it to look like a heart attack or something.”

  “You can never know for sure what a coroner will say in a backwater like this. But if you’d prefer I can always shoot you. Now that I have these”—he held up the mail receipts—“it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

  “How long have you been following me?”

  “Didn’t pick up your trail until I saw you heading into the post office, or I’d have moved sooner. It’s a little tough getting out of the Pakistani tribal areas on short notice. But with Ron out of commission …” He shrugged. “Fortunately you started using your cell phone again or I might never have found you. Once I saw you were calling from Point Judith, it wasn’t too tough figuring out the rest. What’ll it be, then? Your choice, but I haven’t got all night.”

  So this was to be my bad ending, then, no better than what had become of Folly in his final chapter, or poor old Alec Leamas in his, writhing at the base of the Berlin Wall. One went out gracefully, the other in a despairing surge of anger. The only emotions I seemed to have at my disposal were fear, rage, and frustration. I thought of David, of my dad, of Litzi. Even of April, standing in morning sunlight in her kitchen as someone telephoned with the news.

  “Well?” He leveled the gun at my chest. There was a big ugly silencer on the end of the barrel. What I really wanted to do was jump to my feet and lunge at the gun, if only to make this as difficult and messy for him as possible. But nothing I’d learned in the survival class had taught me how to cover that much ground without getting blown away first. So I grasped for more time instead.

  “What are you so worried about in all this? Humiliation, because Ed went bad on your watch? Or were you the one who turned him?”

  “You haven’t earned those answers, you sloppy fuck.”

  He extended his arm and tensed to fire. I grabbed frantically for the glass. Just in time, apparently, because he relaxed and lowered the gun. I responded by lowering the glass, wondering how long I could keep him going back and forth.

  “Goddammit!” he said, raising the gun once again.

  Then someone knocked at the door.

  We flinched. Preston put a finger to his lips and slowly shook his head, then whispered to me, “You don’t want to get some poor maid killed, do you?”

  “Police!” a man’s voice shouted gruffly. “You reported a robbery, sir?”

  The smugness drained from Preston’s face, and he slowly lowered the gun. In one motion I threw the bourbon at his head, glass and all, and bolted up from the bed, bumping past him as he spluttered and spat at the toxic liquid. Then I opened the door onto a local cop, knees bent, gun pointed.

  The cop jumped back, almost as startled as me. It was a miracle he didn’t shoot me. I raised my hands, showing they were empty, then sidled past him into the hallway as I blurted, “The other guy has a gun! He’s the one who’s robbing me.”

  Preston apparently had no stomach for such an even matchup, or perhaps he was too smart to involve himself in the shooting of a policeman. He dropped his gun to the floor, held up his hands, and began pleading his case.

  “Officer, this is a ridiculous misunderstanding.”

  The policeman look relieved, but didn’t lower his guard.

  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to explain,” he said.

  Just as I was becoming convinced that this would end well, I heard a door open down the hallway behind me. Of course. The second man. I braced for yet another twist that would turn the situation back in Preston’s favor, but when I turned I saw David step from the room.

  Impossible.

  In fact, it was so disorienting that for a fleeting moment I wondered if I hadn’t actually been shot and was dreaming up the entire scene from some last moment of consciousness while I lay flat on my back across the hotel bed.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  Then David smiled, and the thought disappeared. He was real. I was alive. And Breece Preston was in handcuffs, still dripping poisoned bourbon from his eyebrows.

  To hear David tell it, everything had worked exactly according to my plan. He’d been there for the past two days, he said, watching my back just like I’d asked him to.

  “Asked you to? Where’d you get that idea?”

  “From your signal, Dad.”

  “My signal?”

  “You know. ‘Caution is the enemy of discovery.’ It’s what Folly says to Snelling in A Spy for All Seasons. You knew that’s what I was reading, so I figured you were sending a message, especially since you were calling from an unsecure line and couldn’t just come out and say it. Then when you asked if I was traveling anywhere for fall break, I put two and two together and came on up.”

  I shook my head, not sure whether to laugh or get angry. Because I remembered the scene he was talking about, and had to admit there was a certain bizarre logic to the conclusion that he’d drawn from my words.

  Folly utters the key phrase just before departing for a risky meeting with a dangerous contact at a safe house in Leipzig. In response, his operative Sam Snelling takes the initiative to act as a backup, and by doing so saves the day.

  Had my knowledge of that scene somehow triggered, at some subliminal level, my own wording in my conversation with David? As much as my rational side argued “no,” another part of me wondered. Who’s to say what sort of miracles the powers of fiction can conjure up, especially when they’re shared between father and son at a time of imminent danger?

  In any event, with his imagination on overdrive, David had grabbed a flight up to Boston on the first day of his break, and then caught a bus and a cab to the ferry, arriving on Block Island without a car during my third full day on the island. He caught up with me the next morning, but hadn’t made contact—exactly the right tradecraft. Within a few hours he’d detected Preston watching me at the post office. From then on he’d made it his business to keep more of an eye on my pursuer than on me.

  That’s how he ended up seeing Preston break into my room not long before I returned from Cabot’s. He then phoned the local police, who, despite a painfully slow response, nonetheless showed up in time to set things right.

  “We’re going to have some explaining to do to your mother,” I said.

  David smiled.

  “You should’ve seen the way she rolled her eyes when I told her what I was reading.”

  I knew exactly what he meant.

  The police kept us occupied for nearly two hours as we gave statements and filled out forms. At that point a couple of state policemen arrived by helicopter to take Preston back to the mainland, along with a sample of the spilled bourbon. By then the day’s last ferry had departed, so we grabbed a bite to eat at the Mohegan Cafe and called it a night.

  With my room now smelling of booze, and temporarily off-limits as a crime scene, I bunked in one of the twin beds in David’s room, still not quite believing that he had managed to avoid my detection for the previous day and a half. Obviously he was better at this business than I was.

  Even with a few beers in my belly I stayed awake for the better part of the night, jumping at every sound until I finally nodded off well past midnight. I awakened with a start at the cry of a seagull to see that it was nearly dawn.

  We dressed, grabbed a quick breakfast, then rolled aboard the early ferry just as the sun was coming up. When we reached Po
int Judith I followed the stream of departing vehicles to the first main junction, then deliberately turned in a direction that practically no one ever took.

  I pulled over to the shoulder, where David and I sat and watched as the rest of the cars and trucks disappeared in the other direction, streaming toward the tidewater horizon of sawgrass and marshes glowing amber in the morning sunlight.

  No one followed us.

  43

  Giles Cabot died the following month. The burial was private, with no invited guests, although it was easy enough to imagine Anderson and a few neighbors—Ben and Abigail, perhaps—gathered around a sandy grave site against the backdrop of an angry sea. The obituary in the Post was effusive in its praise of Cabot’s national service, but made only glancing mention of his role in Jim Angleton’s Great Mole Hunt, and none at all of his suspicions concerning Edwin Lemaster. As usual, the first draft of history had come up short, and I suspect later installments will fare no better.

  The better news in the paper that day appeared on the jump page of a lengthy story about the military drawdown in Afghanistan—a throwaway mention that, as part of the cutbacks, the Pentagon had canceled its contract with Baron Associates. Baron’s chief executive, Breece Preston, was not available for comment. But it was speculated that his business was now on the verge of bankruptcy following similar cancellations in Iraq and Colombia, and the recent financial collapse of a partner firm in Moscow.

  A few days later, just when I was getting used to the idea that strange, unsigned messages containing excerpts from spy novels were no longer going to be coming my way, a sealed envelope postmarked in Maine dropped through my front door mail slot. It had no return address. Its only contents were twenty pages of typescript from the first chapter of an untitled novel featuring Richard Folly, his first appearance in nearly twenty years. On the back of the last page there was a brief unsigned handwritten note:

  “Thought you’d enjoy a sneak preview. Nice work in Europe. If Alexei visits, please give him my regards.”

  The handwriting confirmed what the authorial style had already told me—this was the work of Edwin Lemaster.

  News of Folly’s resurrection made me happy. The prospect of a surprise visit by someone named Alexei, presumably a Russian with spook connections, did not. For several days I debated whether to install new locks, get a dog, or even leave town for a while. Having just quit my job at Ealing Wharton, I was free to do as I pleased. I also considered calling my pals in Vienna with the CIA. But something about the friendliness of Lemaster’s gesture—was he finally calling a truce, even after my recent foray to all his old haunts?—stayed my hand. So, with Litzi due to visit in only a week, and David professing to actually be looking forward to meeting her, I decided to sit tight.

  Yesterday, at about nine in the morning, a hunched old man knocked at my door and told me in a heavy Russian accent that his name was Alexei. He was the most harmless-looking fellow I’d seen since Lothar Heinemann, so I was immediately on my guard. I invited him inside. He bowed rather formally and asked if I could brew him a cup of black tea with sugar and milk. I obliged him and we sat down on the couch.

  “My apologies for appearing at your place of residence uninvited,” he said, “but I find that the reception is often warmer in these matters if I do not telephone in advance.” He lifted the teacup from the saucer as if to display the proof of his good judgment.

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘these matters’?”

  He set down the cup.

  “Things from the past. I have come a long way, and I have many questions.”

  “You have questions?”

  “About Edwin Lemaster. He was kind to me, just as you are being, but he would not speak with me. He suggested instead that I see you. He stated without reservation that you are the top authority, not only about his life in books, but his life as a spy. And that is my interest. Because once it was my job to be the person who knew all about Edwin Lemaster.”

  “For Soviet intelligence?”

  “Yes. I was known then as source Glinka.”

  “I think I’d better get you another cup of tea, Alexei.”

  “That would be most kind. But do you have vodka as well?”

  “Even better. But first I have a question of my own. This job of yours—you must have been doing it, what, at least thirty years ago?”

  “Almost forty.”

  “Why, then? Why do you still want to know?”

  He shrugged.

  “My wife asks me this also. She tells me we are fortunate to be living in this country. She believes that if some people knew what my job once was, that we would not be allowed to stay. So I must ask you to be …” He searched for the word.

  “Discreet?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will be.”

  “As for why, it is not so easy to explain. An American I know describes it as ‘professional curiosity.’ I spent two years of my life searching for a single answer, and never found it. That kind of failure stays with you, like an old pain that cannot be relieved. Do you not agree?”

  “Oh, I agree completely. What was the question you could never answer?”

  “It came in the form of an assignment from someone very high within the intelligence apparatus, a man known as Oleg.”

  “I’ve heard of Oleg.”

  Alexei nodded gravely.

  “He was an important man. He wanted me to establish without doubt the fidelity of a double agent of ours known as Pericles. In your intelligence apparatus he was known as Headlight.”

  So there it was at last, the final bit of evidence, the solid link between Lemaster, or Headlight, and the stray name of Pericles that Valerie Humphries had come across only one time.

  “Lemaster, you mean.”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “I spent months going through his reports, and those of others. I followed in his tracks, and in the tracks of his contacts. He never once detected my presence, I am proud to say. But the months became a year, and one year became two. And even then all that I had was a hunch that I can best describe by telling you my nickname for him, which in those days I did not dare to repeat.”

  “A nickname?”

  “A Russian word which means ‘Cube.’ ”

  “Why ‘Cube’?”

  “Have you studied mathematics?”

  “It was never my best subject.”

  “Surely you know what it is to cube a number?”

  “Ah. Multiplying it by itself twice. Like two times two times two.”

  “Exactly the example I had in mind.” He waited for me to figure it out.

  “A double that’s doubled? That’s what you suspected?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this what you reported to Oleg?”

  “Do you think I was suicidal? My assignment was to verify his fidelity. If he was a double of a double, then Oleg would be ruined, and others above me along with him. Meaning that I, being at the bottom, would suffer most.”

  “But you’re sure? You’re sure you were right?”

  He shook his head, looking woeful.

  “I have never been less certain of anything. That is why I have come here. It is the one question I never answered.”

  “So you thought you’d just ask Ed himself, and he sent you to me.”

  Alexei nodded hopefully, as if we’d finally reached the moment of truth.

  “Mr. Lemaster said you have done much recent work on this question. Groundbreaking work, he called it.”

  I smiled. Say what you would about Edwin Lemaster, he still had his contacts, and he still had a sense of mischief.

  “Why don’t I tell you what I know—or what I think I know—and then we’ll compare notes?”

  “That is very fair. It is generous. Please, begin.”

  So I told him what I’d learned, and where I thought it fit, and I told him Lothar’s conclusions as well. We collated and cross-referenced my findings, checking and double-c
hecking the chronology, the logic and the possible gaps. And when we had reached the end of our chat and nearly the end of the vodka, we both realized something quite curious.

  “I still haven’t answered your question, have I?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  “But is that not, in itself, a kind of answer?” he said. “Because if you are a double, and then a cube, and then perhaps even two to the fourth power, would you not at some point transcend all questions of loyalty or betrayal? At some point, does not everything become artifice?”

  “Sounds like perfect training for a novelist. No wonder Angleton went crazy. Cabot, too, in a way.”

  Alexei smiled.

  “The same happened with Oleg. A secret hospital in the Urals. The American is the only one I know who remained sane.”

  “Ed, you mean?”

  “No, no. His recruiter. His original handler. The man who first brought him to our attention as a possibly valuable asset.”

  “Do you mean Thresher?”

  “Yes. He, at least, was trustworthy. I have often wondered what became of him.”

  “I take it you never met him, then, or knew his real name?”

  Alexei shook his head.

  “It was Oleg’s most closely guarded secret. And with the state he is now in, I suspect no one will ever know.”

  “You may well be right.”

  Alexei’s glass was empty. I moved to refill it, but he waved me away and stood, no more wobbly than when he’d arrived.

  “I must catch a train,” he said. “But I thank you.”

  “No, I thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

  We shook hands. Then he departed. I watched him shuffle down the sidewalk toward Wisconsin Avenue, and almost as soon as he was out of sight I realized that I didn’t know his full name or where he lived. He must have been very good at his job.

  Was he a plant, a subterfuge? Some last trick from Lemaster to try to convince me that he had never betrayed his country? Or, better still, to place Breece Preston in an even more unfavorable light?

  I have no idea. And frankly, that’s fine, because recently I took up a new profession in which ambiguity, uncertainty, and even unresolved questions are strengths, not weaknesses.