He closed his eyes and thought back to their first night together, at that dismal motel along the highway north of St. Louis. He remembered how beautiful she had looked, her blonde hair, her teeth so incredibly white, the sweetness of her smile. She was still dressed in her Lafayette High School cheerleading squad uniform when he picked her up. She looked like a breath of fresh of air. He, a discharged soldier, had just completed six years as an army intelligence NCO, mostly in Darmstadt, West Germany. He was to report in four weeks’ time to the CIA in Washington for an additional series of tests, after having already undergone an interview and initial screening at the agency’s offices in Frankfurt. Many years had passed since then, he thought to himself, inadvertently fiddling with the knot in his tie and then brushing back his graying hair. His secret, his terrible private secret, warmed his heart and made him feel that here, in his small realm of sin, he was the master of his own fate—far away from his wife, whose teeth were indeed still white but whose smile hadn’t been sweet for ages; far away from his demanding children; and far away from his arrogant bosses. He’d been in the service of the CIA for exactly twenty-six years; and for quite some time now, he’d been working under people practically half his age, stuck with the duties of an aide to a department head and watching others take the credit for his modest achievements. He thought for a moment about his father, who had worked all his life at a steel plant in Pittsburgh, and said to himself: For fuck’s sake, he helped build America no less so than all the others, and perhaps even more. His father had served in the Pacific for two and a half years during World War II—a Marine, a rank-and-file combat soldier, but trustworthy and spirited. Yes, he, too, deserved credit, no less so than all the others; but what did he get in return?
Duke suppressed those thoughts, which washed through his mind from time to time. He was often haunted by the image of his dying father, riddled with lung disease. During the final months of his life, his father was no longer the broad and solidly built high-spirited man he used to be. Lying there in his bed in their home at 515 Jefferson Street, he cut a pale and thin figure, and appeared to be withering and fading further from one minute to the next. The hospital was too expensive, and the health insurance had disappeared along with the bankrupt steel plant. His father, choking and gasping for breath, was occupying less and less space in the world. He remembered his rage from back then. Hadn’t his father done his fair share? Yet it seemed as if the world saw him as a weightless speck of dust. He was thirty-six when his father died. His father was sixty-one, just ten years or so older than he was now. He was buried in the Catholic cemetery, among tall and tightly packed tombstones, green with moss and prematurely blackened with age. He hated visiting the grave, shivering with cold in the shadow of the dilapidated plant, which blocked the sun’s pale light and painted the cemetery in dark patches of blue and purple.
As always, his heart skipped a beat when Gunther entered the bar. Night had fallen over the city, and the palely floodlit white dome of St. Peter’s Basilica looked like a clear and weightless celestial body hovering in the dark sky. Gunther walked over just as he rose from his chair.
A broad smile lit up Gunther’s face as he shook Duke’s hand and then, in one continuous motion, tugged him closer and warmly embraced him, his free hand slapping down firmly on Duke’s shoulder. “Good to see you, good to see you,” Gunther joyfully exclaimed; and Duke, who feared the entire bar—and not just the bar, but the whole world—was looking at them now, remembered what Gunther had told him a thousand times already: Act natural, act like a regular guy. Only if you whisper will everyone listen. Are you happy to see me? Yes? So be happy! Hug me! Greet me loudly. We’re two friends who don’t get to see enough of each other, and we’ve finally made time to get together. I love you, he’d say, lowering his voice a little. You know that, right? Our “business” connection aside, I really do feel like we’re family—kindred spirits, he’d say, so as not to sound too dramatic or embarrass him too much. And Duke truly did feel that Gunther wasn’t simply another handler blindly chosen for him by fate. He had worked with other handlers before Gunther, and he knew that there’d come a day when Gunther, too, would come to see him—in a somewhat celebratory mood, tinged with just the right amount of sadness—to tell him that the time had come for him to move on, that he, Gunther, was being transferred to a different arena or had been appointed to a senior position at headquarters, and that he, Duke, had no choice but to get to know a new handler. But, he would continue to monitor his progress and take pride from afar in his significant contribution, he’d say—because what do we have in this fucking life if not a handful of people we care about and with whom we have a real and heartfelt connection that doesn’t fade even if we see less of one another, even if life takes us in opposite directions? He knew all that, but still felt a sense of intimacy and true friendship, and he hoped that the time to say farewell to Gunther lay as far in the future as possible.
Gunther sat down in the armchair across from Duke and let out a sigh of relaxed contentment. “I’ve had a long and hard day,” he said, as if to let Duke in on a secret. “I need a drink,” he continued, signaling with his hand to the elderly waiter, ordering a shot of Lagavulin whisky and a glass of soda water on the side, and asking Duke if he’d like something else. Roberts asked for a Lagavulin, too, and an espresso as well; he liked the bitter brew they served at the bar of the Hassler, and he especially liked the plate of small sweets they served on the side. It has to be the most expensive espresso in the world, he thought to himself, but the price included the view, and the ambience was quiet and dignified, and Gunther was paying anyway. That was the cost required to oil the wheels of the revolution, wasn’t it, he thought, aware of the wry irony that sometimes trickled into his thoughts uncontrollably, poisoning them.
“So what do you have to tell me, my dear sir?” Gunther asked after relaxing a little and settling comfortably into the leather armchair. “What’s happened that couldn’t wait for our regular meeting?” he added with a sharpness unfamiliar to his conversation partner. “Just so we’re clear on this, when you call me to a special meeting, I have to assume you have good reason to do so. Don’t think I’m complaining or anything like that, okay? I’m always at your disposal; I’ll come whenever you need me to.”
“Look,” Duke said, “it may very well be nothing, but something happened that triggered—how can I put it—triggered an instinct of sorts, a sense, I’m sorry to say, that had been pretty dulled thanks to all the crap that those idiots give me to do.”