Folly’s rule of thumb for safe traveling on the shadow side of the Iron Curtain was simple but maddening. Beware the Friendlies. This was especially true once you disappeared into the tumbledown gloom of the cities, where you were so easily observed, stalked, followed, every step measured and recorded for the daily tick-tock of the all-knowing watchlists and logbooks.
Your enemies, Folly reasoned, were far more reliable, predictably steadfast in their opposition. You knew where they stood, and planned accordingly. But Friendlies, especially the eager and daring ones who nonetheless managed to survive, well, how could you ever say for sure what accounted for their staying power? Was it their zeal to serve or their zeal to deceive? And, if you suspected the latter, how should you behave in their presence? How much weight should you give to their local rules of engagement? Folly took extra care never to turn his back on them, literally or figuratively, a caution he had lived by since his earliest days as a field man.
Yet, as with all such rules, there were painful exceptions, moments when his well-cultivated mistrust had nonetheless led to miscalculation, even heartbreak. He remembered in particular a Czech named Kohut, personally recruited, admirably rewarded. One fine October evening in Prague, Kohut lay dead at Folly’s feet, his face obliterated by a Russian soft-nosed bullet. This unshakable proof of Kohut’s loyalty had arrived just as Folly had become convinced of the man’s duplicity. Such were the wages of vigilant mistrust.
How, then, was Folly ever supposed to make progress on enemy territory while operating under such careful constraints? Answer: He didn’t. Not really. He only pretended to pick his way forward while in reality he was fighting a lifelong holding action against uncertainty and doubt.
As a field man, the pressures of this daily stalemate had finally driven him to a desk job. As a desk man, they were driving him to bedlam. So here he was, heading back into the field once again, bound for the deepest and oldest of the shadows from his past. And, like it or not, the old rules of caution were still in force.
Folly put down his newspaper and stared out the smudged window of the grumbling bus. The crossword lay unfinished in his lap, yet another set of enigmas beyond his capabilities. He saw that it was still raining, but the bus was at last approaching the outskirts of Prague, the very place where his formula had gone so utterly wrong.
Those lines of Lemaster’s click-clacked through my head to the rhythm of the train as we rolled across Bohemia. The haunting words now seemed as relevant as if my controller had circled them in black ink beneath another message in his now familiar handwriting.
Litzi, my friendliest of Friendlies, had nodded off an hour ago as we glided past huddled villages and autumn pastures. As I watched her sleep, the train lurched and her eyes fluttered open. Her expression was blank, open to almost any interpretation, but I had already given up on the idea of operating under Folly’s rules. Bedlam, indeed. Even with what I’d learned about her past, trust was the only option if we were to continue traveling together, so I squeezed her hand and watched her smile.
“Will it be as beautiful as it was before?” she asked.
“The better question is if we’ll have time to notice.”
Although it wasn’t as if our Prague agenda was crowded. So far we had only two contacts—an aging bookseller and a boyhood friend. I was excited about seeing Karel Vitova. We’d tracked him down on Facebook, messaging him from Litzi’s smartphone just before we crossed the border into the Czech Republic. He answered almost immediately, with a happy-face emoticon and a string of exclamation points, plus an address for an apartment just around the corner from where he’d grown up.
I’d met Karel around the time my dad began weaning me from the crowd of embassy kids at the American school. We’d done our part for assimilation by moving into an apartment clear across the river from where the other diplomats lived. Prague was the city where, at age twelve, I first began to run, inspired by the local propaganda for national hero Emil Zátopek, who had won three gold medals at the ’52 Olympics, beating all comers in a grueling combination of the 5K, the 10K, and the marathon. An entire fitness culture sprang up around his legend, and I met Karel at a “Zátopek Movement” cross-country race for boys, where we finished one-two in a hilly romp through Petrin Park.
Karel’s English was far better than my Czech, and he taught me the ways of the city. In return, I instructed him in American slang and pop music, which I might have had trouble mastering myself if not for my classmates at the American school, who’d spent far more time in the States.
It never occurred to me then that our friendship posed any risk for Karel’s family—not until we visited the machine shop where his dad worked to deliver a lunch pail. Just inside the door, next to a counter where the manager sat, there was a clock and a wooden box, where the workers punched their time cards. Posted above it was a sign with underlined words and an exclamation mark.
“What’s it say?” I asked.
Karel laughed.
“It’s about you.” He translated: “Timely arrival to work strikes a decisive blow against the American aggressors!”
I didn’t think it was funny.
“Well, this aggressor’s hungry. Let’s get a sausage.”
The manager, hearing our English, scowled and muttered a curse. We burst out laughing and ran into the street. Probably not the sort of thing that showed up well in his father’s personnel file.
Litzi and I arrived at dusk with an hour to kill before meeting Karel for dinner, so we checked in to our hotel and walked through the Old Town. I kept an eye out for both Lothar and the Hammerhead, but as usual, Prague was mobbed.
The city’s refurbished beauty bowled me over even as it dismayed me. When I was a boy the buildings were sooty and tarnished, grandeur in decline. Now every surface looked scrubbed, every brick repointed. But city boosters had overlaid it with neon, corporate logos, and all these tourists, so many of them that the locals looked like infiltrators, as beleaguered as when the Soviets were in charge. To make matters worse, there was a soccer match that night between the Czech Republic and Scotland, so the streets were filled with the blue plaid soldiers of the Tartan Army, Scotland’s die-hard, drink-harder legion of fans.
We tried to take refuge in a pivnice, or beer pub, but all of them were thronged with Scots. Then Litzi spotted a promising oasis, a trim bar with red walls and enough bookshelves to furnish a small library.
“How wonderful,” she said. “And it’s called Bar and Books.”
We settled happily onto a leather bench, but a single overpriced drink was all it took for us to see that it was more of a cigar parlor for the trendy than a haven for literary types.
“This is the future for people like us,” she said. “Books as décor, something to put on the wall where you sip your whisky.”
A man over her shoulder caught my eye. He stood by the door, attempting to project a casual air. Was it my imagination, or was he the same fellow I’d spotted reading a Russian newspaper outside the train station?
“Don’t turn around,” I said, “but tell me if you recognize that man by the door.” I looked away to keep from making him suspicious. Litzi leaned back against the bench and idly scanned the room.
“Which one?” she whispered.
I turned. He was gone. An operative for the Hammerhead, or a product of my overactive imagination?
“Never mind. Let’s go. We’re due at Karel’s in another fifteen minutes anyway.”
The Old Town Square was pandemonium, an invasion not of tanks but of kilted drunks, peeing against the walls of sixteenth-century chapels and kicking soccer balls high in the air to land on the heads of the hordes below, like cannonballs from siege guns.
“Poor Prague,” Litzi said.
We threaded our way toward Karel’s.
“How many years has it been?” Litzi asked as I pressed the button for his apartment.
“Forty. We moved a couple of years after the Russians rolled in. Haven’t seen him since.”
The buzzer sounded. No sooner had we pushed through the entrance than a door rattled open two stories above. A shaggy head loomed above the railing, and a big voice boomed down the stairwell.
“My friend Bill! You are most welcome!”
I laughed appreciatively. Litzi and I hustled up the steps to find him grinning hugely with his arms spread wide. Karel had grown into a woolly bear of a man. His brown-gray hair was clean but uncombed, in contrast to the Trotskyite beard that he’d trimmed to a point. He wore a folksy sweater of thick wool and a threadbare corduroy jacket that draped him like a horse blanket. His eyes were the same sparkling blue they’d been at age fourteen, with a gleam that said he was still up for anything.
I introduced Litzi and he ushered us inside. Books and magazines were everywhere. Dust coated the screen of a small rabbit-ear television that barely postdated our friendship. Abstract paintings covered every wall.
“First things first,” he said. He poured three amber shots of Becherovka, the local herbal liqueur, and passed them around.
“To Bill,” he said, raising his glass, “who taught me to sing like John Lennon, party like Keith Richards, and sneak around like James Bond.”
Litzi, who had never seen much of the Keith Richards side, seemed greatly amused. I grimaced at the medicinal bite of the Becherovka, but it released a flood of memory—two teen boys plotting their stratagems in alleyways and on riverbanks, with one eye out for parents and another for any available girl.
“To Karel,” I said, “who taught me to run like the great Zátopek. For a lap or two, anyway. And who helped engineer my first real kiss.”
He burst into laughter.
“She is married again, you know. Three times now!”
“And who was this lucky girl?” Litzi was enjoying our nostalgia.
“Karel’s sister. She was sixteen.”
“You were punching above your weight, old man. But she was willing, very willing.”
“It was in that little courtyard near Maltese Square, the one with the funny statue of Saint George.”
“The one you used to call Saint Lecher.”
“Because of the creepy look on his face, like he was about to molest the dragon.”
His sister wanted nothing more to do with me afterward. It turned out she’d only wanted to satisfy her curiosity about what it felt like to kiss a boy from the land of Elvis, Hemingway, and Radio Free Europe. The answer: Nothing special. I swallowed the last of the Becherovka, and couldn’t help but shudder.
“Remember our first night of drinking this stuff?” Karel held up the green bottle, offering more as I held up my hand in refusal.
“What I remember better is the hangover.”
From the street below, a chorus of singing Scotsmen carried up through an open window. Karel stepped over for a look, smiling down toward the cobbles.
“They’re everywhere,” I said. “Grown men with hairy legs.”
“By dawn there won’t be a drop of single malt to be found in the city.”
“In the square they were all drinking pils.”
“That’s just to get their courage up. After the final whistle they’ll need the real stuff.”
“The square is a shambles,” Litzi said. “Cans and bottles everywhere.”
“Better than shell casings,” Karel said. “Although not nearly as much fun to dodge.”
Another glimmer of his old self. He gestured toward the door.
“Let us go and eat sausages and pig’s knuckles! Unless you’d rather have pizza like the Tartans?”
“Pig’s knuckles it is.”
As we walked to dinner we caught up on each other’s lives. Karel was teaching mathematics at a second-tier university and still listening to any new music from the West, now on an iPod. There was a Mrs. Vitova, but she had left the premises four years ago, when the last of their three children moved out on his own.
He took us to a cozy restaurant where most of the diners spoke Czech. But when Litzi insisted on a nonsmoking table, they ushered us to an empty room in the back, where the hostess had to switch on a light. They must have concluded we were tourists, even with Karel along, because the waiter brought us sweet red wine in shot glasses nestled on beds of dry ice in goblets. He poured water over the ice to make the goblets steam like cauldrons, then grandly announced in English, “Our special cocktail, on the house!”
We waited until he left, then burst out laughing.
“And to think when I was fourteen I could pass for local,” I said.
“Because your Czech was perfect! By the time you left you didn’t even have an accent.”
“All gone now, I’m afraid.”
“My parents were always very impressed by the way you tried to fit in.”
“Tried? Locals used to ask me for directions. Same in Budapest, Vienna, and Berlin. Now, of course, even the cabdrivers can spot me a mile away. I’m thoroughly Americanized.”
“Like half of Prague,” he said, clinking his glass to mine.
Up to then I’d given little thought to how I might broach the subject of finding Karel’s old address in a KGB report. I suppose I was counting on some sort of natural opening to occur. I was right, as it turned out, although I never would’ve guessed the nature of the opening.
“How are your parents?” I asked.
“My mother is very fine. She lives in the country with her dog and a vegetable garden, bad knees and all.”
“And your father?”
“Dead. Eleven years. No, twelve. His lungs. Probably from all that dust in his factory. And the smoking, of course.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. He was always very kind to me.”
Karel smiled like a wolf.
“Your visits made him very happy. You were like an extra income for him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He informed on you! To someone in the Interior Ministry. He would always do it the very next day, and tell them whatever you said.”
I set down my drink, incredulous.
“Jesus. Did everybody inform on me when I was a boy? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I never knew. He told me after you moved away. Being the son of a diplomat made you very interesting to them.”
I shook my head. So much for all those fond memories.
“He did ask me lots of questions.”
“Especially about your father. That was his assignment.”
“Great.”
“Each time he reported they gave him an American twenty-dollar bill. He would exchange it for a hundred and sixty Tuzex crowns, equal to eight hundred regular crowns, except you could spend them at those special shops for party officials. Remember when we saw him coming out of there once, with that bag full of soap and chocolate bars? You were so impressed.”
“Yes. I do remember.”
“It was as much money as a shop clerk would make in a month. He told me later that whenever you came through our door it was like a visit from Father Christmas.”
Karel laughed heartily, although I found it a bit hard to swallow. Litzi smiled sympathetically, the other family spy from my past. Well, I had my secrets, too, and now was the time to unveil them.
“Did your dad ever mention any code names?”
“Code names?” Karel laughed. “Hey, I don’t think it was that official. He was just a metalworker with a big mouth.”
“So you never heard him mention the name ‘Fishwife’?”
Karel began to grow uncomfortable.
“Bill, why do you ask me this? What do you know?”
Litzi looked down at her drink.
“Well, I found your address in an old KGB report a few days ago. Along with the code name Fishwife, which they must have assigned to your dad. As a regular visitor to the Interior Ministry, it was probably routine.”
Now it was Karel’s turn to look shocked and deflated, and I felt a twinge of guilt for striking back so heedlessly.
“Relax, it was ages ago, the seventies.” The words seemed to bounce right off.
“A KGB report? You’re sure?”
Karel’s tone was grave. I suppose that even now, the idea of showing up on some ancient Soviet watchlist could pack a punch. He drained the last of the novelty cocktail, then peered into the empty glass as if deeply troubled.
“I’m going to need something stronger than this. Is that why you got in touch with me, just to ask me this?”
“No. Not the only reason. But that was part of it, yes. I saw the address on an old list of contacts, and it made me curious. It’s part of some research I’ve been doing, following up on old stuff from my dad’s life.”
“Ah. I see. You are revisiting all of your old haunts, then?”
“Yes. Like Antikvariát Drebitko. Remember all those bookstores my father went to?”
“How could I not? Bookstores were dangerous places for Czechs, especially if they were known to sell Western newspapers on the sly. My father always told me to stay away unless I wanted to get a bad name with the police. Of course now all the old secret policemen run security firms for bankers and businessmen. But I remember nothing of any KGB people at our house. My father would have been too scared. These were small things he was doing, to help us get by.”
“I’m in no position to judge him. That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
He nodded, but it was clear he wanted to move on to a more comfortable topic.
So we did, stiffly at first, and with the aid of a bottle of Frankovka—“a true Czech red,” as Karel said. The mood eased, but we carefully avoided any further mention of our fathers.
Later, when we were all a little tipsy, he walked us to our hotel. As we prepared to say good-bye, I was convinced we’d weathered the storm. But my news must have still been preying on his mind. Just outside the entrance he stopped and raised a finger in the air.
“There is something I remember now.” His eyes widened as he recalled the moment. “A visitor to our house. It really shook up my father.”
“A Russian?”
He shook his head.
“And not a policeman, either. A foreigner. His Czech was terrible. I remember hearing him. My father sent me to my room, but I listened. No one else was home. He was a man who sold books. Or bought them, maybe. It wasn’t altogether clear, but I know he had a big bag of them. Old ones, like your father used to buy. He was young, dressed like a hippie. To me he looked stoned, which I remember really astonished me. He carried a cane, although he seemed to walk just fine.”
Litzi glanced at me. A coldness bloomed at the base of my stomach, turning all that wine into chilly slush.
“You never heard his name?”
“No.”
“What did they talk about?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t make out enough of the words. But the next day, when I wanted to go to your apartment, my father told me to stay away for a while. In a few more days, of course, things were normal, and I never saw this man again.”
“His accent. Was it German?”
“Did you know him?” Karel looked surprised, even hurt, as if I’d been hoarding this secret from the beginning.
“I’m pretty sure his name is Lothar Heinemann. And if I had to guess, I’d say he’s in Prague right now. He might even be watching us.”
Karel wheeled around like a cornered bull, almost stumbling from all the wine. Litzi gave me a look that said I’d again been needlessly cruel, but our surroundings gave no cause for alarm. Drunken Scotsmen were still in abundance, along with an approaching phalanx of tourists lurching to and fro on Segways.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s me he’s interested in.”
Our farewell was subdued, and I felt bad for Karel. He invited us back anytime, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I should’ve kept my mouth shut about Lothar. I knew Litzi thought so, too, and she kept her distance as we crossed the lobby.
“Why Lothar?” she finally asked, as we wearily climbed the stairs. “He must have been more than just a book scout.”
“My dad thinks he used to hunt down rare titles for people in the Agency. Maybe their arrangement was for more than just books. Otherwise the idea that he talked to Karel’s dad makes no sense at all.”
“Unless he was KGB.”
“That’s a sobering thought.”
“Even if he was, you shouldn’t have unloaded on your friend Karel like that. Czechs of a certain age are still haunted in a way you’ll never understand.”
Like her father, she meant. No wonder she was feeling protective.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
We were exhausted, and probably would have been asleep within seconds of entering our room, if not for the message that greeted us when I flipped on the light.
“Not again,” Litzi groaned. “How did he find us?”
Another one of my Gohrsmühle envelopes was perched on the pillows like a complimentary mint.
“Who knows? More marching orders, I guess. Wonder which book he’s torn apart this time?”
But this time there was only a folded sheet of stationery with a single typed line.
7 p.m., 22 Divadelni
“He must mean tomorrow,” Litzi said. “Do you know the address?”
“Quite well.” So well that I was stunned to see it again in black and white. “It’s our old apartment building, where Dad and I lived. Down by the river, third-floor balcony on the left. I guess my handler is trying to make me feel at home.”
I forced a smile, but Litzi didn’t join me.
“I thought you weren’t going to follow any more bread crumbs until you knew who was dropping them.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And now?”
“Maybe I should go back on the offensive.”
“How?”
“If the next crumb is waiting at my old apartment, I ought to be able to think of something. I did live there for three years.”
I lay awake for at least an hour, hectored by questions. Why did my handler want me to visit my old apartment? How had he tracked us down so quickly? And what could I possibly do to gain some—any—sort of advantage over his manipulation as this strange journey tunneled ever deeper into my past?
But my last waking thought was of the Lemaster passage that had hounded me throughout the train ride from Vienna.
Beware the Friendlies.
Easy for you to say, Richard Folly.
I fell asleep with Litzi in my arms.