By candlelight you almost didn’t notice the modest roll of flab around Clark Baucom’s waist. You couldn’t very well call it baby fat, not at his age. But at tender moments like this, Helen Abell found such flaws endearing. Nakedness made Clark seem vulnerable, and she thought of his paunch as a mark of experience, the inevitable toll of all those sedentary hours spent at checkpoints and observation posts. Far too much lying in wait in this business of theirs. Not to mention the diet he’d endured in long stretches behind the Iron Curtain. Whether ferrying royalists out of Budapest or relaying vital messages to dissidents in Warsaw, he had often subsisted on potatoes and goulash, pierogies and spaetzle, boiled cabbage and white sausage—a pale, gelatinous cuisine, all of it flavored by cigarette smoke and washed down with Czech beer. Once, right here in Berlin, she’d watched him wolf down the entirety of a fatty old Eisbein, a boiled ham hock as big as a severed head.
For all that, he still cut a dashing figure, with lively brown eyes and a face built on classic lines. If he were an actor, she would have guessed that he was still doing his own stunts.
Helen curled up against him and kissed his chest, the hairs tickling her lips. He smiled and reached across her for his pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. Gitanes, an affectation from his schoolboy days in Paris. Some Americans became expats as part of a phase, or for a few years at a time. Clark Baucom had made a career out of it. Since the age of fourteen he hadn’t lived in his home country for longer than a year at a time.
“Light one for me while you’re at it,” she said.
He obliged her, and she inhaled slowly. Strong and unfiltered, but the extra kick of nicotine helped marshal her thoughts. A moment later the words finally fell into place for the conversation she’d been waiting to have all evening.
“Do you know of any spook with a cryptonym of Lewis?”
“One of ours?”
“Presumably.”
He furrowed his brow and stared at the ceiling.
“Vienna, maybe? No, I think it’s Bulgaria. But only as a fly-in. He comes and goes. Why do you ask?”
“Something I overheard today, out on the job.”
In the three hours that had passed before she met Clark Baucom at a café in Charlottenburg, Helen had wrestled with the question of what to do with her knowledge of that afternoon’s events. She couldn’t very well take the matter to Herrington. Hey, boss. Just happened to be making an unauthorized visit at Number Three and ran across two fellows I’ve never heard of, saying all kinds of weird shit. And guess what? They didn’t know I was listening, and I taped it!
Besides, if Herrington already knew about the rendezvous, he’d be angrier at her for nearly disrupting it—or for knowing about it at all—than at any breach of protocol by the participants. For all she knew, the station chief had loaned them his own key, or had authorized the making of a new and secret copy. That would be just his style. Yet another means of knocking her down a peg.
On the other hand, what if something funny was up? Something so far off the books that even Herrington didn’t know? Shouldn’t someone in authority be notified?
That’s why she’d wanted to see Baucom. Yes, for the sex—their affair had been going on since June—but more for the lingering aftermath, when he was always more talkative about tricks of the trade, the lay of the land in Eastern Europe, or his strategies for negotiating the Agency’s byzantine interoffice politics. He was part lover, part tutor, and secure enough to not mind that she seemed to value his company as much for the latter as for the former.
They were in the back bedroom of a small house on a grassy suburban tract in Zehlendorf, a safe house in the old American zone of occupation that she’d de-commissioned two months earlier. Agency janitors hadn’t yet removed the sound equipment, which was terribly outdated, and the lease didn’t expire for another two months. By her reasoning—and with Baucom’s concurrence, which would count for more if they were ever caught—she had decided that someone ought to use it from time to time, if only to convince the neighbors that it wasn’t vacant.
Baucom had been a field man since before she was born. He was fifty-five. Robbing the cradle, her mother would’ve said. People would say what they wanted to say, but the reality was that this relationship had been her idea. It was not built to last, and that was how they liked it. He was charming in an Old Boy sort of way, and he was an attentive and experienced lover. Best of all, he was a raconteur of the first order. If Baucom had one professional weakness, it was his fondness for telling stories between the sheets.
Presumably he wouldn’t have been nearly so free with his words if Helen hadn’t also worked for the Agency. She nonetheless sensed a certain reckless indiscretion whenever he started talking about his past, and that was fine with her. She savored this vicarious taste of the life she hoped to lead someday, if only people like Herrington could be convinced. After three decades in the field, Baucom’s memories were lined up like freighters waiting to be unloaded, and Helen was always eager to coax ashore the payload, with its wonderful color and detail.
“Did I ever tell you about that time with Dixon at that botched dead drop in Prague?” he would typically begin. In this way she came to be a sort of keeper of his flame, or of the flame for that whole core of people who had worked at the heart of things during the Agency’s formative years.
“What was it you overheard?” he asked, his voice languid, a little drowsy.
“Well, this Lewis, whoever he was, he and some older hand came into a house while I was making an inspection.”
“That must have been embarrassing for you.”
“I was upstairs. They didn’t know anyone was there.”
“And you blithely decided to let them go about their business?”
“Yes.”
The bed shook with his quiet laughter. It felt like less of a sin now.
“And now you’re wondering if you need to report this to someone?”
“Sort of.”
“Don’t bother. It will only make a lot of extra paperwork for a lot of people who won’t like doing it. Plus, you’ll be giving Herrington exactly what he’s been looking for.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“Something they said? Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Yes. Or no. Not so much what they said, but the way they said it. Almost like they were speaking their own language. Especially the older one. Not a code, exactly, but something like it.”
“How do you mean?”
“All kinds of double-talk about lakes, ponds, and bays. Bodies of water. And effies, that was another one. The effies, whose boss used to be named Jack.”
Baucom was silent for a while before turning to face her, propping his head on his elbow. For a few unnerving seconds all he did was smoke and stare.
“This older fellow. Did you see him?”
“On the porch, yes. When he was coming and going.”
His gaze was steady, attentive. He was fully awake now. It scared her a little.
“Describe him.”
She did so. He shook his head, seeming to draw a blank. Then she remembered another detail.
“He sounded wheezy.”
“Wheezy?” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. Like he was out of breath, even though they were sitting down. And he was drinking. Knocking them back pretty good, too.”
“Drinking what? Do you know?”
“An eighteen-year-old Macallan. Brand-new bottle, and he broke the seal. Right out of the special supply, and he knew exactly where to find it.”
Baucom lay back on the bed and forcefully exhaled a gray plume. They both stared at the smoke, watching it flatten and curl as it reached the ceiling. She waited for him to speak. Instead, he got out of bed and walked naked to the window, where he louvered open the blinds and carefully looked up and down the street.
“What are you doing?”
“Are you sure they didn’t know you were there?”
“Why? What do you see?”
“Answer me.”
He said it harshly, a tone he’d never used with her before. She checked his face for any sign of irony, or that he might be joking, but he was serious. It was kind of freaking her out, so she tried thinking back to everything she’d heard that afternoon, rechecking for any possibility they had detected her presence.
“I’m almost positive they thought they were alone.”
“Almost?”
“You know what they teach you at the Farm. Never feel a hundred percent about anything.”
“Fair enough. But you’re reasonably certain?”
“More than reasonably.”
“Good. With those people you’d better be.”
“Those people? You know who they are?”
“I might know who they used to be. But now?” He frowned and shook his head. “Even if I’m right, it’s nothing I could ever talk about, so don’t ask again. It’s not your business. Hell, it’s not mine, either.” A slight pause, and then: “You didn’t, perchance, do something foolish like tape them, did you?”
She looked away. He sighed loudly.
“I was going to erase it.”
“But you haven’t yet?”
“No.”
“I’d do so promptly if I were you. Better still, destroy it. Burn the damn thing if you have to.”
“Okay.”
“Right away.”
“Scout’s honor. First thing in the morning.”
“No. Now.”
“At this hour?”
“Now. If you’d like, I’ll follow you over there. Cover your tracks and watch the shadows.”
“Do you really think that’s necessary?”
He thought about it for a second.
“No. I don’t. And everything is clear out front. I’d know if it wasn’t. But it’s nearly eleven, so you should leave before it gets any later. Take a taxi. Have the driver let you out around the corner, but tell him to wait.”
“Thanks for the advice, but I do know some tradecraft.”
“Work quickly. If you’re not back by midnight, I’ll ring the duty officer.”
“Jesus. That’s the worst thing you’ve said all night. Then Herrington would find out for sure.”
“Chain of command. Sorry, but that’s how it works in these situations.”
“And what kind of situation is this, exactly?”
“Probably something small and forgettable, as long as you deal with it now, and never mention it to anyone else.”
“Okay, then.” She tossed back the sheets. “I’ll go. Get it over with.”
“Good girl.”
“Don’t call me that.” She said it sharply, and he grinned so widely that she wanted to cross the room and slap him. But at least he was no longer looking so deadly earnest, and it helped her relax.
She dressed while he phoned for a cab. A few minutes later it pulled up out front. He walked her downstairs and accompanied her onto the porch.
“Be smart and move fast. Use your skills.”
“You act like I’m on a mission.”
“You are. Call if you need help. And remember.” He tapped his watch. “Midnight, or I phone it in.”
“You’re never going to tell me what this was all about, are you?”
He looked in both directions, swiveling his head like a bird of prey.
“You’re clear. Go.”
She climbed into the back of the taxi and gave the driver an address on Alt-Moabit. In Berlin, cabdrivers were accustomed to their fares walking around the corner from where they let them off.
Looking out the back window of the taxi as it pulled away, she saw the glow of Baucom’s cigarette on the porch. He stayed there, watching, until the taxi drove out of sight.