The tourists were in Copenhagen. It was summer and the air was filled with their English chatter. They all seemed to speak English.
They came by the trainloads into the quaint dark station in the center of Copenhagen, across from the Tivoli Gardens. They filled the streets and shops. They came in surging gaggles, they filled the sidewalks, they bought everything, and the Danes smiled with good humor at them.
The English language sounded good to the man at the table in the café on Vesterbrogade, west of the train station. The café was not a usual tourist place, but now and then a couple wandered in and spoke loud English and it felt good to hear it. The Carlsberg was very cold and he drank quite a bit of it every afternoon, reading the papers in the way of an exile with a lot of time on his hands. He had been waiting all winter and spring for the time to be spent, to watch the trail, to see who might still be on it.
He spoke Danish fairly well. They knew he was a foreigner of course but they appreciated him all the more for taking the trouble to learn that difficult language.
He read the Herald-Tribune and the Wall Street Journal’s European edition. He read the Journal de Genève, the French-language paper from Switzerland.
He was interested in Switzerland very much.
He was not an unattractive man. He had the scar, of course, across his cheek, from ear to the edge of his mouth. And he had the limp, inflicted on him one night by a gray-haired man whose name was Devereaux. He had taken a long time to overcome the perpetual pain in his ankle. Devereaux had cut his Achilles tendon. At least the pain reminded the red-haired man every day of whom he hated more than his own life.
He thought about Alexa sometimes. She had killed poor Nils on the Finlandia. Poor Nils.
Nils was a find. Nils had been attracted to him in one of those cellar clubs in Copenhagen where the smoke is very thick and the beer is cold and everyone talks too loud. They had sat at a booth together and shared secrets. Or Nils had shared secrets.
They were so much alike. They had reddish hair, both of them. Nils wore a beard and Ready was clean-shaven. He could not have grown a beard because of the scar.
They had shared their bodies with each other. Nils was fascinated by Ready. Ready always had that power—over men and women. He used Nils and Nils understood he was being used and accepted the position. It was a position of deference and some might have thought it was degrading. Nils attended to Ready’s words and whims.
And then, as Ready listened at the trail for the sounds of those who followed him, he thought of the idea. Of using Nils to end the trail for once and all. To involve Nils in the job of being a spy. Ready’s spy. Ready’s goat. It would work because everyone would believe in it so thoroughly. It was too absurd not to work. Nils became Ready because he would do the things Ready wanted him to do; he would meet the agent on the Finlandia; he would seduce the agent and tell Ready about the seduction.
Except, of course, he would never live to tell a soul. The Soviets must have thought Ready very stupid to believe they would give him a second chance.
The trail was cold now. Ready slept and no one knew he was alive at all.
So, mostly, in the long lingering summer afternoons of Copenhagen where there is a smell of fish on the sea breezes and the chatter of tourists in the narrow streets and wide plazas, Ready thought about new things. About Devereaux and his girl. About the time to come when Ready would be awake again. And what he would have to do to Devereaux and to his woman to make up for all he had suffered.