Zofia Nowak’s biological grandmother lived in a nursing home—or an assisted living community, as the brochures stacked on the reception desk promised, Leiter translating from German. He flicked one with his fingernail, before giving the woman behind the desk a bright, I-mean-no-harm look. A long time since he was in the field, and the mission was an old folks’ home. He tried not to take it personally.
“You say you are a friend of Zofia, Mrs. Schulz’s granddaughter?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A doubtful glance back at the monitor. “You are not on the approved visitors list.”
“Can’t have every Tom, Dick, and Harry walking in off the street to try and swindle the old broads out of their pension funds, right?”
The receptionist was likely a college student trying to make a little extra money, and stuck on the front desk because she was young, white, and buxom, as his ma would have said, in contrast to the porter steering the burdened trolley around the corner toward the security doors, a black woman whose shoulders were wilting. The receptionist perked up briefly at Leiter’s portrait of a con artist, before deflating. Nothing so exciting as swindles around here, it would seem. Just give me half a minute, honey.
“Don’t suppose you’d give Zofia a ring for me, in that case, tell her I’m here?”
“We do not disturb our residents before breakfast.” The dawn chorus was only just beginning. “You do not have Zofia’s number yourself?”
“You know Zofia,” hazarded Leiter with a reckless grin, “hates technology.”
“Oh, that is true, Mrs. Schulz is always telling me how her laptop is broken and I have to arrange for IT support because Zofia who has three degrees cannot even fix it.”
Some resentment there. Maybe not a college student. Felix noted the bags under her eyes. Maybe working nights to support a young family, someone who could use a bit of extra dough, but still had her professional pride, not letting him in just like that. Leiter looked beyond the desk, where the security doors stopped passage into the main nest of the building. All the windows were wired, too. God, don’t let me end up in a place like this.
Would you prefer the alternative?
“You ever noticed any strange behavior from Zofia?”
“It is unusual, highly unusual, for a resident to have a relative move in here. And Mrs. Schulz says she didn’t even know she had a granddaughter.”
“Uh-huh.” The porter was running for a touchdown. Leiter bent an elbow on the counter, and fished a badge from his jacket. It wasn’t a German police badge, but also wasn’t quite not a German police badge. Gifts of the trade. “You got good instincts. I’m here on a fraud case. I’d like to do this quietly. There’ll be a reward for Miss Nowak’s capture.”
Wide eyes. A nod. “Room 103.” Leiter winked, then hurried after the porter, helping her navigate the trolley over a fold in the carpet before the doors closed. In his experience, it was always easier to persuade your way across a threshold when it was opening anyway. He wondered what 003 would make of that. She was a skilled interrogator, he’d give Harwood that, wryly admitting to himself that she’d been interrogating him the whole time they were together, and if he hadn’t given the farm away, he’d certainly conceded some of the cattle fields. Maybe a couple of barns. The porter gave him a grateful nod.
The building was arranged in a horseshoe around a frosty lawn. Leiter tracked to the right, counting doors down from fifty, listening to the pipes waking up. It had stung his own professional pride that the CIA—and himself particularly—hadn’t picked up that Zofia was adopted. He was mildly mollified when his search through official records came up blank, as did Q. So either Robert Bull had been lying to Harwood, or Zofia was adopted in some less official capacity. He’d agreed to a watertight seal with Harwood on Bull’s tip. Bashir had the place, gifting Leiter one word before losing consciousness, the word Mora had tried to pry from his tongue: Pankow. Harwood had the person, a grandmother. An effective team. Somehow, Robert Bull had worked out Zofia was adopted. Robert Bull was a stalker. What did a stalker see that others didn’t? Everything.
Leiter had followed the movement data on Robert Bull’s phone, matching it to the movement on Zofia’s phone, which had been uploaded to the cloud. At some point, she stopped taking it with her; presumably once she realized Bull was snooping. But he still had Bull’s shadow footsteps, and he followed them to Café Chagall, a smoky Russian place lit by candles and loud with conversation at three a.m., the walls half-paneled and half-plastered in music posters and flyers. It didn’t seem Bull’s style; it did seem Zofia’s. Bull’s phone told Leiter that the creep had lingered in the passage to the ladies’ room, where one poster advised women experiencing harassment or violence on a date to ask the bar staff: “Is Luisa here?” The staff would then call the woman a cab, or call the police, whatever seemed necessary.
It was a small place, and Felix felt Bull wouldn’t have gone unnoticed long. He had asked the tattooed woman at the bar if she remembered Zofia, explaining he was following up on a harassment case, his less than official badge once again in hand. She stared at him from beneath metallic blue eyelids—a look that said even if she did know he’d just neutralized multiple targets with a sniper rifle, she still wouldn’t give a damn. Then she told him Zofia sometimes came in with Anya, the T-shirt designer Bashir had spoken with—who’d since split town, wisely. Leiter asked the barwoman if she remembered Zofia reporting trouble with a guy, using the Luisa code word. The woman gave a heavy shrug, exchanged rapid debate with the needle-thin woman keeping the cocktail production line going by herself, and then nodded. Did they have any security cameras? Just one, and who knew if it worked. But if it would help stop the slime, OK. He seemed a real nasty piece of work. Felix had nodded. You’re not wrong.
The footage had revealed what Leiter had hoped for. That Zofia, feeling surveilled in her own home, had hoped a public space would gift the privacy she needed for an act of desperation—seeking refuge in the arms of strangers. Leiter had fired up the computer himself and zoomed in on the letter Zofia had written at a table by the window, before catching Bull in the mirror and hurrying away. Leiter guessed Bull had caught just enough of the letter in the mirror to decipher its first sentence.
The letter touched Leiter. I know this will sound strange, but I think you might be my grandmother. I’m an orphan. My parents died when I was young. I recently discovered, through a genetic test, that I am not 100% Jewish as I thought. My DNA is linked to your son, who I see died many years ago, as is the DNA of many other people in the same area. If your son was a sperm donor, as I imagine, I know he would have been promised anonymity long before DNA testing was viable, and you may never have known about his generous act. I am writing because I am alone in this world. I cannot in good conscience bring children into it, knowing what I do about its future. But I am lonely.
What struck Leiter most was the way Zofia paused, lifting her head like a deer hearing the crack of human footfall, before committing herself to the last lines: I have less and less faith in my work. It is being put to uses I never intended. I hope you will forgive this intrusion. I have run out of places to turn.
Leiter thought about how isolated she’d become, most likely bullied by Paradise, the world’s savior—who would believe her? Harassed by Bull, a creeping awareness of his presence in every inch of her life. Watching the clock count down on the planet’s chances. She simply didn’t want to be alone. Leiter wished he’d turned off the good ol’ boy charm and listened to her as a man, not an agent.
Now, he drew up in front of Zofia’s “grandmother’s” room. Snap out of it, Leiter. You’re nobody’s port in a storm, just the smiling face of the CIA.
He knocked softly. A loud creak of bed or sofa springs sounded from inside. Leiter waited. A clipboard hung next to the door. It read in the rushed hand of a nurse: berthe schulz, ☺ music, puzzles ☹ family, sports. Things to mention and not to mention. The word “family” had recently been rubbed out, but someone had used the wrong kind of pen for the whiteboard so it couldn’t disappear fully. Leiter liked the idea of an old dame to whom small talk about sports made you persona non grata. After all, time is short and getting shorter. Shuffling feet made their way to the door. Beneath the dos and don’ts was a note written in a small but inescapable hand. “Distressed by losing bladder control.” Leiter winced a little, hoping for Mrs. Schulz’s sake that she couldn’t read this PSA.
The door opened. Mrs. Schulz was five foot nothing in her slippers and faded housedress. She smelled of rose petal water. Her eyes gleamed like beads, assessing him just as quickly as he’d assessed her. Leiter wished he had a hat to remove.
He switched to German. “Ma’am, I’m here to talk with Zofia.”
The doorknob rattled in her hand. “Are you with the police?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I wish to see your identification.”
They should hire you for reception, Felix thought as she frowned at his ID.
“You are not with the federal authorities.”
No bullshit about Friday’s game, now. “I’m with the American embassy, ma’am. Zofia’s in a lot of danger. My name’s Felix Leiter. She may have mentioned me. I’d like to help her out, if I can.”
“You are American?”
“For my sins.”
“Zofia did not say you were American. Your name sounds German.”
“Once upon a time.” Felix lifted his gaze over her head. There were framed silver records on the wall. On the table what looked like a two-thousand-piece puzzle shaping up to be Van Gogh’s Starry Night lay incomplete. A pot of coffee with one mug waited on a console by the French windows. “Zofia’s not here, is she?”
Mrs. Schulz closed the door by an inch. She said in biting English: “Did you smooth-talk your way in here, Herr Leiter?”
He mirrored her switch with a simple “Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you talk smooth to my granddaughter?”
“Sure tried.”
“She thought well of you. She even considered asking for your help.”
“Wish she had, ma’am. I thought a lot of her.”
“She did not think a lot of your employer.”
Leiter gave his best who-me smile. “Smart girl. If she’d been a little smarter I’d have had her in a safe house.”
Mrs. Schulz stepped aside. Leiter eased the door shut behind him. “Were you surprised when Zofia got in touch with you?” The connecting doors were open, revealing a divan bed with sheets that shone like plastic, and a camping cot.
“I suppose you, too, are going to tell me she is a con artist.”
Leiter saw that her ankles were swollen. “Mind if we sit?”
She poured him a cup of black coffee and they sat admiring the bed of hellebores.
“The director of this institute,” she said primly, reverting to German, “was highly suspicious too, but I am in sound mind, and there are no rules against taking in one’s own granddaughter. I certainly pay enough.”
“Only, I can’t find any evidence of Zofia’s DNA test.”
“She erased it. She is good with computer technology.”
He smiled. “That she is.”
“My son did donate to such causes when he was a medical student.”
“He was in the sciences too?”
“He would have been proud of Zofia. We watched that man’s launch on the news. His big speech about his computer and his yacht. Those are my granddaughter’s inventions.”
“She has a lot to offer the world. I’d like to make sure she gets to do just that.”
Mrs. Schulz brushed her dress, though it was spotless. “How should I know you are Felix Leiter, not this man Robert Bull.” She pointed a shaking finger to his leg. “Zofia told me you are an amputee.”
Felix twitched his trouser leg up. “Hard to fake that one. She tell you what Bull did?”
Her face hardened. “Yes.”
“He’s dead now.”
“Good.”
He sipped his coffee. “I thought so.”
“Then Zofia does not need to be scared anymore.”
“Almost. But if someone else finds her before me, she’s going to need a friend. I’m a friend, Mrs. Schulz.”
“I cannot help you. After we watched the news program, she said she must act. Must tell the truth about that man. She phoned someone. Then she left.”
Leiter kept his voice languid. “Did she take her phone with her?”
“She smashed it and spread the remains on the flowers.”
Felix clapped his hand on his thigh. “Well, as my ma would say to keep from cursing—hellebores, hellebores, hellebores. What time did she place the call?”
“When that man’s rocket left the atmosphere.”
“Did you get a sense of who it was she was talking to?”
She tipped her hand this way and that. “Not a friend. Zofia sounded not so relaxed as that. Perhaps a journalist. She said she would take a plane, I remember that because she is very against planes. She was to arrive at this place at seven twenty a.m.”
“And she left immediately after that?”
“Yes.”
Leiter drained his coffee. “You’ve been a big help, Mrs. Schulz.” He stood up. “Mind if I go snooping in your flowers?”
“You have already snooped everywhere else.”
He laughed. “Occupational hazard.” He was stepping into the frosty soil when Mrs. Schulz called after him. “You will help her, Herr Leiter?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“She has my son’s eyes.”
He wavered. “Yes, ma’am.”
Leiter left the scene with his jacket pocket ruined by damp fragments of a burner phone. He’d get it to the lab, see if they could whistle him up a miracle. But before that, he’d call the only friend he could trust in this situation. He’d ask Moneypenny to consult that magic eight ball they called Q, and run departure times, radius of travel, arrivals, and cross-check with the locations of any known associates in the case, especially journalists. A bit of Pinkerton snooping. Leiter doffed his no-hat to the receptionist and cleared the grounds, pulling out the phone that wasn’t in pieces. The sun stroked his face. He sighed, remembering Zofia’s confession: I have less and less faith in my work. He was glad, in a corner of his heart, to have faith in his work today.