In the morning I headed to the post office, carrying the documents in a couple of plastic laundry bags from my hotel room. I bought a pair of large flat-rate boxes and stuffed everything inside. I consulted the slip of paper with the CIA address in Herndon, Virginia, considered it one last time as a possible destination, then decided against it.
Where should I send the boxes, then? Not to my town house. And not to David, I thought, remembering how I’d been used without my knowledge in so many spy games. My ex-wife, April, probably would have helped if I’d asked nicely, but it was unfair to expect her to take on that kind of responsibility. Enough innocent people had already been harmed in this venture.
Then I remembered that this was the time of year when Marty Ealing went on his annual two-week romp to Las Vegas. Ostensibly it was to touch base with a few clients, but everyone in the office knew it was mostly an excuse for Marty to fool around on his wife. I mailed the box to myself in care of Marty at the office address for Ealing Wharton. I knew I could count on his secretary, Anne, in a way that I could never count on him. Then, once I’d had time to make my own copies, and only then, I’d forward all the originals to that P.O. box in Herndon.
“Will these go out today?” I asked the clerk. He looked at the wall clock.
“Noon ferry. Soon enough?”
“Perfect.”
Just before noon, with plenty of time to kill, I went to a short-order place by the dock to watch the cars load onto the ferry. I ordered a beer and a basket of fried clams just as the postal truck rolled aboard. The clams arrived as the horn sounded. I watched the crew cast off the lines, then toasted myself with the beer as the ferry eased away in a blast of diesel fumes and churning seawater. I bit into a clam. Crunchy-hot on the outside, cool and juicy in the middle, the taste of the sea. Life was sweet. I ordered a second beer and went back to the hotel to pack. Then I snoozed for an hour.
But by the time five o’clock rolled around I was anxious. One more job to do, and it was the riskiest. I got back on the bike, which by now had twigs in the spokes and dried mud on the frame, and pedaled to the nature preserve to take up my usual post. At six p.m. I watched Anderson leave for his coffee break. Then I pedaled toward the house, reaching the paved road just as the Jeep’s taillights disappeared toward town. I rolled up the driveway, stowed the bike out of sight, and knocked loudly at the front door. I checked my watch. I figured I had thirty-five minutes to finish my business and get the hell out of there.
Before long I heard the electric whine of Cabot’s wheelchair, then the bump of the tires against the door. A curtain stirred on the window atop the door. The old man’s eyes flashed in surprise. He backed up the chair and shouted, the voice raspy but stronger than I expected.
“Come in.”
When I opened up, he was grinning crookedly, as if he’d been expecting me all along.
“My assistant is away at the moment, but I suppose you already knew that.” He frowned at my rucksack, and waved me back toward the porch. “Leave that outside, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. I’ve brought you something special. One last contribution to the cause before I officially resign from your employment.”
He grinned again, but more uneasily this time. I followed him down a hallway toward the back of the house while he spoke over his shoulder.
“The microdot was much appreciated. You practically beat it back across the water. I’m just sorry you never found Lothar’s book.”
“Oh, but I did. An excellent read, too.”
He looked back at me as we reached the end of the hall, and gazed with new appreciation at the rucksack.
“Patience,” I said. “First you have to answer a few questions.”
“Of course.” Now that he thought he was about to get what he wanted, he had decided to be accommodating. We entered a study that was wall-to-wall books. At a glance I recognized many familiar titles, all from the genre that my father, Ed Lemaster, and I had once read and collected so passionately. Cabot watched me taking it in.
“More complete than even your father’s library,” he said. “Probably as good a place as any for us to wrap things up, don’t you think?”
I took a seat in what must have once been his favorite place to read, a big wing chair with crinkled brown leather and a floor lamp to its right. He pivoted the wheelchair to face me.
“You said you had questions?”
“Why me? And why Litzi and my father? Was I really a better choice than some ex–field man, or was pulling our strings half the thrill?”
“You make it sound unsavory.”
“Did you have some sort of score to settle with my dad?”
“Certainly not! Your dad’s a wonderful fellow. A little stuffy and overly deliberative, but that’s the way of diplomats. I meant no harm. The experience was good for you, was it not? You finally got to discover why the wheels of fate rolled over you so mercilessly back in Belgrade. And you learned a valuable lesson in human nature—that no one is trustworthy, no one is what he appears to be. Could I have simply hired some old hand to work in your stead? Perhaps. But I don’t command the resources I once did, especially considering the hefty transfer that was necessary to ensure Trefimov’s cooperation, the fellow you called Vladimir. Although I’m pleased to note that all the money earmarked for that purpose has been safely returned.”
“After you had him killed, you mean.”
“Not at all. I only made his whereabouts available to a known creditor, who, acting in the way that such people always act, carried out the deed quite on his own.”
“After leaving behind my copy of Petrovka 38.”
“That was a favor they did for me. To keep you interested. I knew Litzi could take care of any complications.”
“What about poor old Bruzek in Prague?”
“Not my doing. You’ll have to ask the clumsy Russians, or that thug Curtin, what went wrong there. Although, for the prices Bruzek charged, I would have happily pushed those shelves myself.”
“Nice.”
“You met him. You saw what he was like. In fact, you’d already met him, when you were a boy. One of many reasons you were the perfect fit—the old girlfriend with the intelligence connection, the whole flap in Belgrade, both of them. But most important, of course, was your susceptibility to the power of all those books.” With great effort he raised his arms to encompass the walls. “I was sure you’d be attracted by the possibility of being able to walk across those pages one last time, not just as a reader but as a participant, a companion, even, to all those characters you grew up with.”
“How could you be sure?”
“Because at one time I would have been just as susceptible. I have only been in this wheelchair since retirement, yet with the Agency I was forever deskbound. I could only read the reports from those far-flung places, just as I could only read those novels.
“I also knew something else about you. Any careful reader of those books always suspects that at heart they’re not really fiction. It’s what made me first suspect Ed Lemaster. From the moment I finished The Double Game, I saw so much of Don Tolleson in him that I began to worry. Me and Angleton both. Dick Helms wouldn’t even read it, and you’d be shocked at how much Dick loathed le Carré. ‘Too cynical,’ he said. ‘We’d never use our people that way.’ Poor naïve Dick. And Ed got away with it, too. Until now. Thanks to us, the truth will finally come out. You’ll be the one to publish, of course. I’m happy to let you take the glory.”
“I’m afraid I have to tell you that I’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement.”
“With whom? You can’t possibly mean—?”
“The Agency had a little chat with me in Vienna just before I flew back to the States.”
Cabot’s expression went stony. Already winded from his speech, he now sagged with disappointment. I almost felt sorry for him. I checked my watch. Twenty more minutes at the most.
“But don’t let that stop you,” I said. “And don’t worry, I didn’t come empty-handed.”
Cabot rallied, leaning forward in the wheelchair as I reached into the rucksack. I pulled out the yellow dry bag with the GC initials, then turned it upside down and shook it loudly to show him there was nothing inside.
“What have you done?” The gleam faded from his eyes. His breath began to rattle in his chest. “Where have you put everything?”
“Don’t worry. It’s all in a safer place now.”
“You don’t know the meaning of safe! I’ve seen what you’re like, blundering halfway across Europe.”
It felt like a fitting exit line, so I stood, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop me. I felt a stab of shame, taking advantage of him this way. The letdown of the hollow victory, exactly as Lemaster always described it. But he deserved it, if only on behalf of Litzi and Dad.
Yet I could also see now that he was a dying man. Even a twisted dream is still a dream, and a traitor is still a traitor. He continued his breathless rant as I picked up the rucksack to go.
“The only good you did was by default! You never even delivered the one item I wanted most!”
Then, oddly, disconcertingly, his face lit in triumph, which puzzled me until I turned and saw Kyle Anderson in the doorway. The big man had arrived without a sound, at least fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. His left hand was on his hip. In his right hand was a menacing-looking sidearm, pointed at my chest.
“What’s the rush?” Anderson said. “We get so few visitors that we always like them to stay awhile.”
He frisked me quickly with one hand, then gestured toward the chair. I obliged him by sitting back down.
“Hands on your head before I blow it off.”
He moved up behind me and put the barrel behind my ear lobe, chilly to the touch. Then he pressed it uncomfortably against the base of my skull.
“The funniest thing happened down at the market,” he said. “I bumped into old Ben and Abigail, and they told me they’d seen a bird-watcher up at the preserve just the other day. Damn strange for this time of year, they thought. So did I. So I hurried on back, just in case. Lucky for all of us, huh?”
He spoke to Cabot.
“If you want I can shoot him now, then take his body out in the skiff. There are enough weights in the shed to have him submerged and forgotten by morning. There will be some serious cleanup, but nothing I can’t handle.”
The hopeful, rational side of me expected Cabot to immediately veto the idea. Instead he sat there drawing shallow breaths, pondering every possibility.
“It’s not that easy,” he finally said. “If the Agency arranged for his visit, then he’s part of something larger. I won’t live long enough to pay any consequences, but you will.”
Cabot shook his head.
“The whole point of this was to end up on the right side of history, to crack the case of the Great Mole Hunt, our very own Philby. I won’t get there by rubbing out the son of a diplomat.”
“This can’t be a real op,” Anderson said. “For one thing, there’s no backup.”
“You checked?”
“No. But we’d know by now. He’d be miked and somebody would have dropped me. But he’s clean. No mike, no weapons, no GPS beacons. Clean as a virgin and just as stupid. And if he’s the one they sent, then you know it’s off the books, meaning they won’t even bother to come ’round for the cleanup.”
There was a long and disconcerting silence as Cabot reconsidered.
“But we no longer have the material,” Cabot said. “The location might die with him, and it’s too late for that kind of setback. And you’re wrong. There will be follow-up. Someone upstairs will want to know what happened.”
“You said it yourself, this guy’s not good enough. If he’s stashed our things, we’ll find them. But no one will find him. I can finish it outside if you want, take him somewhere even safer than the pond.”
There was a sudden glimmer in Cabot’s eyes, and you could tell he was giving the idea one last hearing. Then the light dimmed, and he sighed deeply, another long rattle more forlorn than the others.
“It’s over, Kyle. Go into town. Have a beer.”
Anderson kept the barrel pressed against my head for another few seconds, then withdrew it and backed away. I exhaled, but didn’t move. Behind me, Anderson sighed wearily.
“I’ll wait out on the porch in case you—”
“No, Kyle. Take the Jeep into town, that’s an order. I’ll be the one to finish it, and I’ll do it on my own terms.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want to hear the engine start, and I want you to call from the phone at the Mohegan Cafe. Stay put until I phone you back. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. His glumness was infuriating. He would have enjoyed killing me, and he left the room with the disappointed air of a hunter who’d failed to bag his limit.
He’d parked the Jeep farther up the drive than normal to keep me from hearing his arrival, but we heard the departure just fine—the roar of the engine, then the cracking of the shells beneath the tires as he reversed at full throttle. We saw the swing of his headlight beams through the lacy European curtains, then he was gone.
“Roll me over by the window,” Cabot said.
I did.
The sky was brilliant, a starry night.
“Fresh air, that’s what I need right now.”
Cabot didn’t have the strength to push up the sash, so I did it for him. He pulled his blanket tighter as the night air rushed in, but he seemed to relish the autumn scent of burning leaves, a hint of brine. The moon shone through a scudding cloud.
“Move closer,” he said. “Look off to the right.”
I did as he asked, and for a shaky moment I wondered if he’d given some coded order to Anderson to lie in wait across the lawn with a sniper rifle. But the only sound from outside was the sigh of the wind in the brush.
“Do you see that small rooftop maybe two hundred yards off, to the right?”
“Yes.” It was lit by a neighbor’s floodlight.
“That’s Nethercutt’s outbuilding. It’s where we found his papers. After Wils died, I went over to comfort Dorothy. Then I told her I needed to go through his old belongings for the Agency.”
“She believed you?”
“She never knew how bad things really were between us, or what all the fighting was about. She gave me the keys. It was alarmed seven ways to Sunday, but she told me the code for the keypad. Even then it took quite a while to find it.”
“The floorboards?”
He frowned.
“Wils was better than that. It was in his refrigerator, behind a false wall. Cold storage.”
The pun made him wheeze with laughter, which returned the disturbing rattle to his breathing. It tired him enough that he had to pause before continuing.
The phone rang, and he sighed with impatience.
“You’ll have to fetch it. On the end table. The cord will reach.”
I handed him the phone. The volume was turned up high, and even I could hear the clink of glasses and the general roar of the tavern crowd at the Mohegan. It brought back memories of my dinner there with Dad the night of the funeral, and the way we’d first discussed this strange set of neighbors, Nethercutt and Cabot, as we carved our prime rib.
Cabot hung up. I shut the window and took the phone back to the table.
“By now I suppose you’ve seen what I found there,” Cabot said. “I was quite excited. Finally I had the leads I’d always needed to try and nail the bastard. Trefimov, if I could find him, plus a few other odds and ends. But the existence of Lothar’s book, that was the real revelation. Years ago Wils had put out the word that every copy had been destroyed, and I’d believed him. Now I knew there was still one out there. There were other leads, too, of course. But I needed an operative, a traveler. Kyle was eager to go, but none of his talent is between the ears. He never could’ve passed muster in Europe. Then I saw you and your father at the funeral, and I knew right away. And when that bastard Preston—he was Ed’s first handler, you know, the very fellow who let this happen right under his nose—when he got up in my face about letting sleeping dogs lie, well, hell, how could I do anything but go back on the hunt?
“I sat up late for six nights running, assembling the pieces. The more I went over it, the more everything came together, just like a plot line in one of Ed’s damn books. I had characters, twists, scenarios. It only took a few phone calls to set it up. I sent Kyle down to Georgetown to put some of his old tricks to work. I hired a few cameos here and there …”
“Like the girl in Georgetown.”
“With a red carnation. Your son is a sharp one. She knew he’d made her.”
“What if we hadn’t seen her?”
“No matter. It was window dressing. Like the story Litzi told you about the man in the seersucker.”
“You reeled me in perfectly, I’ll give you that.”
“But you really found Lothar’s book, didn’t you? That must be why they grabbed you.”
“Read it cover to cover. He had all the code names. He had pretty much everything.”
Cabot’s eyes were aglow, partly in envy, partly in fascination. But the glow was tenuous, flickering. I sensed he was down to his last reserves.
“Tell me,” he asked, voice fading. “He was guilty, wasn’t he? Our man Edwin? He was one of theirs, correct? You can tell me, now that you have everything else.”
I could hear the rattle of his breath up close now, and when I’d rolled his chair to the window I’d sensed the frailty in his birdlike lightness. I knew then with the certainty that only arises at moments like this that the real reason he’d spared my life was because he was dying. It softened something in me, or maybe I just decided that there had already been too many casualties. So, even for all his ruthlessness, why not part on a note of gentleness, a note of grace? No more hollow victories.
“Yes,” I said. “He was. I’ll never be able to write it, of course, but he was.”
For that moment, at least, I think I even believed it. It was sobering to think that I had helped uncover a traitor, one whom I had greatly admired for most of my life.
“Surely you can find some way to get around that agreement, can’t you?” Cabot said, his voice querulous again. “You could work with a coauthor. Handle his ‘research,’ that sort of thing. They wouldn’t dare sue you and risk having everything else come out.”
“Maybe I will,” I said, humoring him. “But it could take a while.”
“Of course.”
He probably knew I was lying, but he played along for both of us.
“So there’s your bonus then, in lieu of payment and expenses,” he said. “Thanks to me, you’ll be a writer again. You’ll have your career back.”
Not that he really gave a damn about that, the crabbed old bastard. But he deserved a few points for bothering to pretend.
Cabot ran out of steam then. His head sagged to his chest, and a long, tired breath sputtered out of him. If he’d been able, I think he might have died on the spot. Instead, after a brief pause, I saw his chest rise as he finally inhaled. He didn’t look up again. He just flapped his right hand in a weak farewell. Without a further word from either of us, I left the house.
I was on full alert the entire bike ride back to the hotel, expecting the Jeep at every turn. But I made it back without incident, and sighed deeply in relief upon entering the well-lit lobby.
I’d made it. I’d succeeded. I was done.
It was time to go home.