Read Online The Double Game by Dan Fesperman - Free Book Online Page A

tell him everything.
    “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling you.”
    “Well, thank God for that, at least. I was beginning to think you were utterly hopeless. All I will tell you—all that I can tell you, Mr. Cage—is that I haven’t engaged in this sort of business for thirty-seven years, and frankly I never thought I would again. But when I did do it before, the name was always the same as now. Dewey. No surname, no address, just Dewey. The parcel, wrapped just like yours, would always arrive through the door slot over the weekend. I would be notified at home by telephone on Sunday morning, whereupon I would call your father promptly and exactly at two o’clock to tell him to come and pick it up.”
    That at least explained my father’s startled reaction.
    “Is that what happened this time?” Then I remembered the other question Dad wanted me to ask: “Who else has been in touch with you about this?”
    “This time there was no phone call, only a note to my home, and then the parcel, delivered to the store. No one else was in touch.”
    “Who sent the note?”
    “There was no name. Please, Mr. Cage.” He was wringing his hands now.
    “So, was my father the only one who ever came for these books?”
    “I am not saying that. I am not even saying they were books, since I never opened the wrapping to check. It is even the same price as before, except in those days of course it was in schillings.”
    I picked up the parcel and fiddled with the string, causing Christoph to practically spring from his chair.
    “Please, Mr. Cage, not here! I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want to know.”
    Where was all of this fear coming from? I put down the parcel, which seemed to calm him. Then he gave me a long look, which led to a question.
    “Tell me one other thing, Mr. Cage.”
    “If I can.”
    “Are you in league with any Russian friends in this affair? Older ones in particular?”
    “No. Why do you ask?”
    He shook his head.
    “It’s probably not important.”
    “Then why did you ask?”
    “As I said. Not important. I’m sure I’ve been imagining things. This entire Dewey resurrection has been very disconcerting.” He stood abruptly. “Good-bye, Mr. Cage. I am gratified your family still feels it can trust its business to me. I have always been a man of discretion, and will remain so despite your behavior. But you must go now.”
    He briskly chivvied me out of the office, but didn’t follow me downstairs. When I reached the ground floor the store was empty, but there was a pile of euro notes on the counter by the register next to a handwritten list of titles.
    Christoph had unsettled me enough that I decided to seek shelter before making another move. Stuffing the parcel in a coat pocket, I walked into the street, looked around quickly for surveillance, then ducked into the first Konditorei I could find, just down the block. I sat in a rear corner, facing the door, and as soon as the waitress took my order I put the parcel in my lap.
    My handler had just upped the ante. Obviously he’d meant to rattle both Christoph and my father, and he had succeeded. Christoph, in turn, had rattled me. It was also obvious that my handler had intended me to learn that, long ago, my dad had been part of an established network for relaying information, with Dewey as a code name. But who were the other links in the chain? What did any of this have to do with Lemaster, other than the code name in his novel? And why had Christoph asked me that odd question about Russians? He’d claimed that he hadn’t handled a transaction like this in thirty-seven years, so I counted back to 1973—the year my father and I left Vienna for Berlin. It was also the year that Lemaster, basking in the glow of his first bestseller, had quit the CIA.
    I fingered the string. The temptation to open it now was too great, so I looked around furtively before untying the knot and folding back the paper. The contents were