Johanna Harwood was sitting outside the Hotel Adlon on the corner of Pariser Platz, in the center of what was once known as the City of Spies. Snow fell softly on the cloth canopy above. The pop-up champagne bar was doing good business, drawing people who’d come to see the Christmas tree as the great columns of the Brandenburg Gate turned gold with the last of sunset. She was using a hotel pen to write a postcard to her mother she knew she would never send, asking her mother if she remembered their trip to Berlin for a conference when Harwood was fifteen. They had one free afternoon together, and her mama brought her to this spot for one scoop of five-star ice cream. It was all they could afford but it felt like magic, becoming real magic when the waitress brought their tap water in flutes, and the one scoop of ice cream adorned with strawberries, two spoons, and a chocolate button stamped with edible gold leaf, reading: hotel adlon. They’d been charged just three euros.
Harwood had spent today pretending to be a tourist. She’d asked for directions at the airport in enjoyably risible German, where she felt eyes on the back of her neck, turning to see a cab driver with a sign bearing a stranger’s name. She meandered up Unter den Linden, catching the world rushing by in the windows of car showrooms and department stores, before moving into the window frame herself, settling into a booth in Café Einstein with a perfect view of tourists hunching over their phones to find themselves. Neither Rattenfänger nor Felix Leiter lingered under the trees nor angled their cameras her way. She idled in Ampelmann, a souvenir shop dedicated to the smart men of Berlin’s traffic lights, where she bought the postcard of the green man with his hat tipped back and his arm and leg extended, striding forward. She stopped at a Christmas market, examining hand-painted baubles. The seller asked her if she was in Berlin for business or pleasure, and she told him she hoped both. Once she’d paid for a red star, she saw the seller send a text message, and his eyes followed her as she wolfed down a bratwurst, steam coiling from her mouth.
A waiter subtly stamped life into his cold feet next to her. “What can I get for you, please, madame?”
Harwood turned the postcard over. “One scoop of chocolate ice cream, bitte.”
“It is too cold, madame, surely!”
“Just one scoop, please.”
“But to drink, please, madame?”
“A glass of water, danke.”
“But that is all you want, madame?”
“That’s all.”
A short and somewhat concerned bow, and the man retreated. Harwood’s attention roamed over the banks and embassies crowding Pariser Platz, landing on the American flag. The US embassy was the last building to complete the remodeling of Pariser Platz from days when the sky was always the color of asphalt, and the Prussian wind, sharp as a knife, blew the rubble dust into one’s eyes and mouth—Sir Emery’s glory days as a Double O. Pariser Platz had fallen onto the Eastern side, Hotel Adlon reduced to three surviving bullet-marked stories and a restaurant done up in beige wallpaper and dusty potted cacti, where Sir Emery had arranged border crossings over thick-grained coffee. The honor of the last hand in the transformation of the center of Berlin had gone to the American government, which had bought a drafty palace on this plot in the thirties. Now, the pale and cautious embassy in monolithic white was separated from the public by a line of waist-high pillars, a buffer zone against car bombs.
Harwood glanced at her enamel Hermès watch by Anita Porchet; the red glow of the halogen heaters sparked against the geometric horses picked out in gold wire and fired in a kiln. Coming up on five p.m. She fixed her sights on the doors beneath the flag, and settled in to wait for Felix Leiter, the CIA’s man in Berlin.
She was mildly disappointed. Bond had told her of Leiter’s habit, one night in bed when the outside world seemed to no longer exist and Bond was looking both back and forward to what he called a life after this. He said Leiter seemed to know when Bond was going to appear, and would tail him, always wanting to get the jump. In New York, when Bond was undercover as a diamond smuggler, James had got that slight tingling in the scalp and an extra awareness of the people around him, enough to make him duck into a shop doorway on Sixth Avenue, only to find someone gripping his pistol arm from behind, and a voice laughing in his ear: “No good, James. The angels have got you.” Felix had been front tailing. Another time, Bond checked into his hotel room to find Leiter arranging the flowers by his bed—“Part of the famous CIA ‘Service with a Smile.’” So either Leiter had been undaunted by Moneypenny’s request for information, and had not anticipated a Double O would be sent to Berlin to work him over when he denied her request, or it was a game he played only with Bond—a game Harwood had hoped to enter, just as she hoped Leiter would transfer his trust of Bond to her, because Bond had trusted her. Oh well. She’d have to try a front tail of her own.
The embassy staff were filing out now, pausing to admire the tree, or organize drinks after work. Harwood looked for Leiter’s tall, lean frame, his mop of straw-colored hair streaked with gray. Nothing, though Moneypenny’s intelligence had placed him firmly at Pariser Platz.
From the corner of her eye, Harwood saw the waiter approach with a tray in his left hand, though he’d been right-handed just minutes ago. She clicked the pen so the nib was exposed and curled her fingers around it as she would a knife.
“Now help me out here,” a voice said, lugubrious and relaxed. “Who’s tailing who?”
Harwood twisted and looked up into a hawklike face, the chin and cheekbones sharp, the mouth wry, the ash eyes buried in laughter lines. A trace of scars below the hairline above his right eye. A tan woolen coat hung loosely from his shoulders. His right hand was in his pocket, hiding the prosthetic. Felix Leiter set the tray down: tap water in two flutes, two spoons, a crystal bowl, one scoop of ice cream, strawberries, a chocolate button stamped in gold.
Harwood fingered the heavy ball bearings of her necklace, examining the tray. “You tell me, Mr. Leiter.”
“Mind if I take a seat?” he said, his Texas accent surprisingly strong after years of postings abroad.
“I don’t know who else is going to use the other spoon.”
He pulled out the chair and sat down. She noticed the stiff fold of his left leg.
“Nice afternoon?” he asked.
“A little lonely, now you mention it.”
A shrug. “You don’t mind me saying, picking that red star from a whole bazaar of angels and Santa Clauses was plain cruel. Don’t know how I resisted sending in the marines.”
“Didn’t you hear—the Cold War’s over?”
“Must’ve missed the memo.” He picked up the spoon and played it between his fingers like an expert card shark. “So you’re the girl James couldn’t stop praising, last time we spoke.”
“Could be.”
“Apparently you’re the real deal.”
Harwood picked the leaves from a strawberry. “Could be.”
Leiter relaxed into his chair. “Boss sent you, huh?”
“Moneypenny found it hard to believe you’d refuse an old friend.”
“Ouch. All right, real deal. What’ve you got for me?”
It couldn’t be that easy. Harwood kept her thoughts from him, focusing on the bowl. “You could tell me something. Did James tell you about the ice cream, or is this the hotel’s standard issue?”
“That’s what you want to know?”
“That’s it.”
“Maybe I read the contents of your postcard.”
Harwood looked from the card to the flower arrangement at the center of the table, calculating the odds of Leiter reading her handwriting back to front in the reflection of a vase in the dark without her noticing. “No good, Felix.”
He laughed. “So maybe James was a lovesick pup and regaled me with tales of your sad youth. Or maybe the hotel staff have a thing for pretty ladies sitting alone.”
Harwood pointed her spoon toward the embassy. “Don’t suppose you’re keeping Dr. Zofia Nowak or Robert Bull in there, are you? We seem to have a missing persons case on our hands.”
Leiter made a show of squinting over his shoulder, as if he’d never seen the embassy before in his life. “In there? No.”
“But you are stashing one or both of them somewhere?”
“I don’t make a habit of stashing the women I date.”
“Please, the chief Cousin in Berlin just happens to be dating a senior scientist working on privileged climate technology?”
“What, ain’t I got the charm?”
“Did she?”
Another laugh. “Suppose we happened to get a whiff of something that downright stinks from Paradise Incorporated, and suppose when he opened up Factory Berlin, I was invited, and suppose that stank even more. Suppose I don’t like being a mark. Suppose I saw a way of making the girl a mark without any harm done.”
“No harm done? Depends what happened on these dates of yours.”
“Hey, I’m no James Bond.”
“No,” said Harwood. “He wouldn’t be sitting here with me eating ice cream when Zofia Nowak is in danger somewhere alone.”
“More fool him.” Leiter hunched. “Say, our boy eating ice cream anywhere these days, in your books?”
Harwood stroked her watch face. She said softly, “I haven’t given up.”
Leiter rallied, shaking himself straight. “Tell you what, real deal. How about you watch my tail and I watch yours back to my house. You can grill me some more and I can play dumb. I’m good at that.”
Harwood pushed the bowl toward him. All that remained was the chocolate button. “Me too,” she said.
“All right then,” he said. “Let’s go pretend to know nothing together.”