“How do we do that?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Come help me figure it out.”
Andreas had left a message for Morrison in Washington the night before, and the agency man had called him back at the hotel the next morning.
“What brings you to the States, my friend?”
“My son is ill.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
No doubt he was, but the tone of voice made it clear that he had more pressing business than chatting with a retired Greek operative. Andreas could picture the man, trim, regulation hair and that shifting, nervous gaze, determined to miss nothing while missing everything. Impatience. That was the reason, despite all its resources, that American intelligence was always getting things wrong. They were good at reading satellite photos, but not at reading faces. They could not gauge the mood of a people, or even a single man.
“I have a request,” Andreas continued. “It is a rather delicate matter.”
“I’m sure this line is secure.”
“I would prefer to meet. I believe you are here in New York?”
“Why do you say that?’
“A guess.” One had to become good at guessing when one had no resources. “You often come here. Besides, there are no secure lines in Washington.”
Morrison laughed. “Probably true. OK, but it has to be brief, and it has to be soon. Like right now, this morning.”
“That suits me well.”
Morrison chose a generic coffee shop near Herald Square, the kind of place he always preferred. The man had an encyclopedic knowledge of every faceless, tasteless eatery in every northeastern American city. Morrison’s predecessor, Bill Barber, had taken Andreas to wonderful restaurants where they ate, drank, told stories, and traded information almost incidentally, as if none of it were about business. But Barber hadn’t been much for protocol, and Andreas had been useful then.
He arrived early and chose a booth in back, too near the hot, musty stink of the deep-fryer. Morrison arrived a few minutes later in his trademark blue suit and gray raincoat, the uniform, though today it was appropriate to the weather-windy, and threatening rain.
“You look well.”
“I look terrible, and so do you,” Andreas shot back, as much to unsettle the man as to state the truth. It had been years since they had last met, and the years had not been kind to Morrison. He had gotten heavy; gone gray at the temples; and his gaze no longer darted so much but had a set, glazed cast about it. Perhaps there had been some unpleasant fieldwork. Perhaps family. Andreas could empathize, but the other man was certain not to speak of whatever it was.
“I’m OK, not enough sleep is all. I am sorry about your boy. Alex, right?”
“You went to the trouble of checking my file. I am honored.”
“Jesus, Andy, I happened to remember. You always insult people you need favors from?”
“Yes, it’s a Greek custom. We hate to be in anyone’s debt, so we offend them right at the start to let them know they do not own us.”
Morrison shook his head, appeased or amused.
“Is that true?”
“No. I am an uncivilized old man, my apologies. Yes, Alex.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“A blood disorder. You would know the name if I could remember it. Such illnesses are rare in my family, but for one so young…I do not understand.”
“There’s no understanding these things. God works in mysterious ways, the shit.”
Andreas decided that he liked this older, crankier version of Morrison better than the insolently confident fellow he’d known before. A weary, bleached-blond waitress took silent but visible offense at their order of coffee, and the agency man felt compelled to add eggs and toast.
“Haven’t had breakfast.”
“You should always eat breakfast, Robert.”
“I know, my wife tells me every day.”
“Personally, I would not eat breakfast here, but I am very careful about food.”
“I wasn’t actually planning on it.”
“She intimidated you. She is Peloponnesian, that one, fierce. The cook also, not a very clean-looking fellow. And the Mexican dishwasher has a cold. No, I would not eat here.”
“I’ll have an orange juice to kill the germs.”
“Orange juice. Have garlic.”
“In my eggs?”
“Better than in your coffee. I’m looking for a man.”
“Official business?”
“I have no official business any longer. This is, as you say, a favor. I want to know if this man entered the country in the last two weeks. Probably somewhere in the New York region, though possibly farther away. I can give you all of his known aliases.”
“That’s too wide a net. Point of origin?”
“ South America. Argentina, but it’s likely he would pass through another country first.”
“So he knows what he’s doing.”
“Yes, but I believe he may have lowered his guard in this instance. He will not expect to be tracked, and he will be in a hurry.”
“Physical description?”
“Medium height, blue eyes. Older, in his eighties.”
“This guy wouldn’t be German by any chance? Dead for about thirty years?”
Andreas leaned back against the creaking imitation leather, disappointed by this development. He had counted on Morrison’s relative youth to keep him in the dark.
“We never spoke of this before.”
“Come on, Andy,” laughed the government man, “it was your obsession. It’s all in your file. But the guy is supposed to be dead.”
“They showed me a grave. A wooden cross and some turned earth behind the last house he owned. I never saw a body.”
“This was Argentinean intelligence?”
“The grave was fresh. No more than a day or two old. They could have dug it an hour before I came up the hill.”
“People do just die, my friend. A lot of those old Nazis managed to die a natural death.”
“It was too convenient. They were protecting him. They still are, I’m sure. Maybe you are, too.”
“Me?” Morrison smiled innocently.
“The fine organization you work for. It’s interesting that my hunt for Müller is so detailed in my file, when I could get no help from you people at the time.”
“Resources were thin. He was small-time, a major or a colonel, I think. Not even a general, let alone some architect of the Reich. You needed the Israelis.”
“He was small-time for them, also. They did give me a few leads in the end. That was how I found the house.”
“But the Argentineans intercepted you.”
“As soon as I stepped off the bus in a nearby village. They knew exactly who I was. They were polite, said that there had been a development which would please me. Took me up the hill to the house. Showed me the grave.”
“It does sound awfully tidy.”
“Will you help me, Robert?”
Morrison stuck a fork into the hefty pile of eggs just placed before him. Then paused, looking perplexed, or perhaps nauseated.
“It’s sticky.”
“Send it back.”
“The situation is sticky. If there was some reason we didn’t help you back then, I don’t know what it was, and I don’t feel like blundering into it now.”
“All these years later, what can it matter? Indulge an old man.”
“There’s no upside to this. If he’s dead, I’ve wasted my time. If he’s alive, and I put you on to him, things could get ugly. I can’t have you terminating this guy on American soil.”
“Who said anything about that?”
“Isn’t that what you were aiming for back then? Why else do you want to find him?”
“I have questions. More important, I must keep an eye on him to protect others.”
“You think he means to try something? I’ve got to know about that if you do.”