Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

Once a Spy

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by TriStar Pictures, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Jacket design and photo of figure and street scene: www.henrysteadman.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomson, Keith
Twice a spy / by Keith Thomson. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Fathers and sonsFiction. I. Title.
PS3620.H745T95 2011
813.6dc22
2010049447

eISBN: 978-0-385-53404-8

v3.1

For Richard and Winyss

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

Do you see a ghost? Alice asked.

Youd know if I did because Id mention it. Charlie fixated on someone or something behind her, rather than meet her eyes as he usually did. Or faint.

Ghost is trade lingo for someone you take for a surveillant, but, really, hes just an ordinary Joe. When you have to look over your shoulder as much as we have the past couple of weeks, its only natural that everybody starts seeming suspicious. You imagine youve seen one of them before. Its hard to find anybody who doesnt look like he works for Interpol.

Interpol would be an upgrade. Charlie laughed a stream of vapor into the thin Alpine air. After the past couple of weeks, its hard to find anybody who doesnt look like a veteran hit man.

Charlie Clark owned no Hawaiian shirts. He didnt chomp on a cigar. In no way did he match anyones conception of a horseplayer: He was a youthful thirty with a pleasant demeanor and strong features in spite of Alices efforts to alter thema brown wig hid his sandy blond hair, fake sideburns and a silicone nose bridge blunted the sharp contours of his face, and oversized sunglasses veiled his intelligent blue eyes. Buttragically, Alice thoughtuntil being thrust on the lam two weeks ago, Charlie had spent 364 days a year at racetracks. And that number would have been 365 if tracks didnt close on Christmas Day. He lived for the thrill not merely of winning but of being right. As hed often said: Where else besides the track can you get that?

So why, Alice wondered, had his attention veered from the race?

Especially this race, a white turf mile with thoroughbreds blazing around a course dug from sparkling snow atop the frozen Lac de Morat in Avenches, Switzerland, framed by hills that looked like they had been dispensed by a soft-serve ice cream machine, sprinkled with chalets, and surrounded by blindingly white peaks. Probably it was on an afternoon just like this in 1868 that the British adventurer Edward Whymper said of Switzerland, However magnificent the imagination may be, it always remains inferior to reality.

And Edward Whymper didnt have a horse poised to take the lead.

Flying past four of the nine entries, Charlies choice, Poser Le Lapin, spotted a gap between the remaining two.

Knowing almost nothing about the horses besides their names, Charlie had taken a glance at the auburn filly during the post parade and muttered that her turndownsiron plates bent toward the ground at a forty-five-degree angle on the open end of the horseshoeswould provide better traction than the other entrants shoes today.

Alice followed his sight line now, up from the snowy track apron where they stood and into the packed grandstand. Ten thousand heads pivoted at once as the horses thundered around the oval.

It was odd that Charlie wasnt watching the race. More than odd. Like an eight-year-old walking past a candy store without a glance.

The horses charged into the final turn. Alice saw only a cloud of kicked-up snowflakes and ice. As the cloud neared the grandstand, the jockeys came into view, their face masks bobbing above the haze. A moment later, the entire pack of thoroughbreds was visible. Cheers from the crowd drowned out the announcers rat-a-tat call.

Poser Le Lapin crossed the wire with a lead of four lengths.

Alice looked to Charlie expecting elation. He remained focused on the grandstand behind him, via the strips of mirrored film shed glued inside each of his lensesan old spook trick.

Your horse won, John! she said, using his alias.

He shrugged. Every once in a while, Im right.

Dont tell me the thrill is gone.

At the moment, Im hoping to be wrong.

A chill crept up her spine. Who is it?

Guy in a red ski hat, top of the grandstand, just under the Mercedes banner, drinking champagne.

She shifted her stance, as if to watch the trophy presentation like everyone else. Really she looked into the rearview mirrors inside her own sunglasses.

The red ski hat was like a beacon.

I see him. What, you think its weird that hes drinking champagne?

Well, yeah, because its, like, two degrees out.

Alice usually put great stock in Charlies observational skill. During their escape from Manhattan, in residential Morningside Heights, hed pegged two men out of a crowd of hundreds as government agents when they slowed at a curb for a sign changing to DONT WALK ; real New Yorkers sped up. But after two harrowing weeks of being hunted by spies and misguided lawmen who shot first and asked questions later, anyone would see ghosts, even an operator with as much experience as she had.

Sweetheart, half the people here are drinking champagne.

Yeah, I knowthe Swiss Miss commercials sure got Switzerland wrong. The thing is the red hat.

Is there something unusual about it?

No. But he was wearing a green hat at lunch.

The man in the blood-red knitted ski cap looked as if he were in his late twenties. Gaunt and pallid, he was Central Castings idea of a doctoral candidate. Which hardly ruled him out as an assassin. Since he had been dragged into this mess two weeks ago, the killers Charlie had eluded had been disguised as a jocular middle-aged insurance salesman, a pair of wet-behind-the-ears lawyers, and a fresh fruit vendor on the Lower East Side.

Youre sure you saw him at the caf? Alice asked.

When I doubled back to our table to leave the tip, I noticed him in the corner, flagging the waitress all of a sudden. Whats that spook saying about coincidences?

There are none?

Exactly.

I never say that. The summer I was eleven, I got a Siamese cat. I named him Rockford. A few weeks later, I started a new school, and there was another girl who had a Siamese cat named Rockford. Coincidence or what?