The man who answered when I rang the number I received in the form of a text later that afternoon also refused to speak on the phone. We met in Sutro Park in the Outer Richmond. Even though I was early, he arrived before me and was sitting on a bench, stroking the head of a big yellow dog, as he’d said he would be. The dog was an improvement on a red carnation or an Eton Ramblers tie, anyway. He stood and offered his hand when I approached—I was holding an empty Starbucks cup, as instructed—and the dog wandered off.
With a mild shock, I realized he was another one of the people who’d been following me. I recognized his coat, of all things. “Call me Jacob,” he said, and I wondered if that was really his name. He was tall, dark haired and rosy-cheeked, wearing an overcoat and gloves, with a scarf neatly tucked around his neck. His faded blue/green eyes were almost hidden in pouches and folds, his face mapped with deep wrinkles. I sat next to him on the bench and wondered what on earth to say. After a couple of silent minutes, I decided the only way forward was to take the first step.
“Your colleagues seemed to think I should talk to you, but they didn’t explain why.”
He shrugged. “I am the president of our small club; there’s probably no other reason.” We were on a small stone-and-grass viewing platform, facing a long, sloping lawn in one direction and some steep, rocky stairs leading to a lower pathway in the other. A harsh, wet, and salty wind was blowing rags of fog past us and gradually filling the park.
“Great little park, this,” he said, peering over the low balustrade into the murk. He assured me that if the day were sunny, we could see a panoramic view of the wide sands of Ocean Beach. He pointed into the completely opaque curtain of fog. “You can see the windmill at the edge of Golden Gate Park, too. I don’t know why more people don’t come here.”
“It’s a puzzle.” I hugged myself with both arms and wished I’d worn my new leather jacket. Pretending my hoodie was a fur-lined anorak wasn’t helping.
He snapped his fingers to call his goofy dog, who’d wandered away and was already invisible. The dog galumphed back, with a squeaking animal about the size of a young rabbit between his jaws. Jacob pried it from between his teeth, to the dog’s obvious annoyance, then efficiently twisted its neck and dropped the little corpse over the balustrade. “Gophers,” he said with a shrug. “They’re a scourge.” The dog, tongue lolling, sat down and leaned up against his leg.
It took me a minute or two to refocus. “My specialty back in the day was teenagers,” he was saying. “Of course it’s been a while since I could make that believable.” He chuckled and I tried to smile. “For years, most of the work has been electronic surveillance and the analysis of the data. Now the post-Soviet Russians are poisoning their own agents in their new homes in the West. It is so—so 1973,” he said, with a small, wrinkly frown, from which I inferred that he wasn’t joking.
“Was Sergei Wolf a member of your organization?”
“He occasionally attended meetings in”—he hesitated—“somewhere in South America. Our chapters have reciprocity. Your grandfather is a member of the London group, of course.” He chuckled. “Some of our members find rubbing shoulders with an earl a new experience. But it’s true what they say: everybody loves a lord.”
“He’s not actually—”
“But I owe your grandfather a great debt. We will put out feelers and see what we can find out. Is there anyone who you feel might be the guilty party?”
“I just know Grandfather didn’t do it. They’ve also got a young friend of mine in custody—his name is Davie Rillera.”
“And he didn’t do it, either?”
“Definitely not,” I said firmly. “I’ve met several of your members now, and they’re all—mature. Do you have any younger members—I mean, people who would be capable of chasing someone through the city streets and shooting them?”
“The retirement age in our profession varies.” He smirked, as if at a familiar, oft-told joke.
“So yes, then?”
He waggled his hand in a “maybe yes, maybe no” gesture.
“Very helpful,” I said crossly. “How many members does this group have?”
“Eleven now. We have some rather exclusive membership criteria.” He rearranged his rubbery face into another clown-like grin.
“How does someone join?”
“By personal invitation from another member, who provides us with the details of his or her career. Then we all meet with the candidate individually, and then we vote.”
Thinking of Valentina, I asked, “How many women members do you have?”
“Two lady members, at the moment.”
I had a feeling their “lady” members were, as one of my noir movie characters might put it, no ladies.
He went on. “We lost one of our ladies a few months ago. Of course she was in her nineties, so not entirely unexpected. She was our chapter’s last World War II agent. Brave girl. Parachuted behind enemy lines and slit the throats of some highly placed SS officers.” He stroked his dog’s head, and I thought of the casual dispatching of the dead gopher and wondered if Jacob had slit some throats, too. Or perhaps cut off some fingers.
“Do you know anything about Sergei’s personal life?”
“He has a son who lives in Northern California, I believe. Mendocino, perhaps.”
“And there was a mistress?”
He shrugged and didn’t answer me.
“Tell me about this village where he’s supposed to have killed everyone.”
“Ah, you’ve been speaking to V.” He stroked his dog’s head again. “Her losses prevent her from seeing that the deaths she still mourns were caused by nothing more or less than a tragic accident. The nineties were a terrible time in that part of the world. The entire decade was filled with war, revolution, and vicious ethnic cleansing.” He shook his head. “Such a bloodless phrase to describe the bloodiest of war crimes. Even today, we feel the repercussions. There is a straight line from the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in ’99 to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The new Cold War, they’re calling it, with Russia and America mistrustful and antagonistic.” He sighed, and I tried to look as if I knew what he was talking about.
“And the village?”
“Sergei learned that a rural area near the Polish border with Ukraine was camouflaging a Serb training camp—intelligence we realized later was faulty and perhaps even deliberately misleading. Sergei called an airstrike against an area that turned out to include a small hospital, a school, and some homes. I don’t know who provided the information about the Serbian camp, but it was a catastrophic miscalculation. It broke Sergei. I have always felt his priestly vocation was some kind of expiation of his guilt.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “Have you ever considered what a former intelligence agent does in retirement?”
I shook my head; it wasn’t an issue I realized had any bearing on my life until recently.
“With a few exceptions, we don’t have families, and the only people who understand what our life has been like are others like ourselves. We have skills we can no longer practice, and in any event can’t disclose, but we like to keep them honed.”
I thought of all the anxiety I’d suffered, and tamped down a rush of anger. “Are you saying—are you saying you all followed me for the practice?”
“As I said, I owe your grandfather a great debt.” He smiled again and showed some yellow teeth. All things considered, I preferred his frowns to his smiles. And I was almost sure he was lying.