"The secretary of State signed on to what the DCI told me."
"What was Kuhl doing for the CIA?"
"You want a thumbnail or the whole scenario?"
"I think I had better hear everything."
"Okay. Kuhl was a Hungarian Jew. His family had been in the pastry shop business for a long time, way back before World War One. They saw what was happening and got out of Hungary to the States in 1939. Kurt was then ten years old, the youngest of their children.
"There was already a Kuhlhaus store in New York City and another in Chicago. The family went back to work in that business. When war came, his older brother, Gustav, went into the Army, was promptly recruited by the OSS, and was one of the original Jedburghs."
"The original what?"
"Agents for the Office of Strategic Services trained at Jedburgh, Scotland, to jump into German-occupied Europe. Bill Colby, who, I'm sure you remember, went on to become DCI in '73, was one of them. Gustav was captured in France, sent to Sachsenhausen, and executed there just before the Russians arrived.
"In 1946, just as soon as he turned seventeen, Kurt, by then an American citizen, enlisted in the Army. Getting to Europe to see what family assets he could salvage was one reason. Avenging his brother was another.
"He spoke German and Hungarian and Slovak, etcetera. He was assigned here as an interpreter at the Kommandatura--the Allied Control Commission. 'Four men in a jeep.' Remember that?"
Spearson shook his head.
"Toward the end of his tour, they found out that Corporal Kuhl had been sneaking in and out of what was then Czechoslovakia and Hungary and East Germany. That was in 1949. He should have been court-martialed, but somebody in the CIA was smart enough to offer him a deal.
"If he was willing to be of service, unspecified, if called upon, he not only would not be court-martialed but would be allowed to remain in Vienna to salvage what he could of the family business, and he would be helped to do that.
"He took the deal. I don't know what he did between '49 and '56, but he was so helpful during the Hungarian uprising that the agency put him on the payroll, as field officer, clandestine service. He's been on it ever since."
"He's been a spy all this time?"
"Not in the James Bond sense. What he has been doing--and if you think about it a moment, you'll see how valuable this has been--is identify people the company could turn. He didn't turn them. He just identified those people he thought could be turned. He became their friend, learned their strengths and weaknesses, and passed it to the company.
"The diplomatic and intelligence services of the old Soviet Union, and its satellites, as well as the Western countries, do--as we do--tend to move their people between assignments in an area. In this case, Eastern Europe. Their dips would be in Warsaw on one assignment, Vienna the next, maybe Rome, and later Budapest, then back to Vienna . . ."
"And we wouldn't recruit them here, but when they were somewhere else?"
"Precisely. An Austrian passport was arranged for him. That happened to many ex-Hungarians who couldn't get a Hungarian passport. He became a Viennese, the heir to the Kuhlhaus pastry shops. It was a perfect cover. When the wall came down, no one raised an eyebrow when Kuhlhauses were opened or reopened--in Prague, Budapest, all over--and no one thought it was in any way suspicious that Kurt Kuhl moved around Eastern Europe supervising his business."
"Well, apparently someone did," Spearson said. "If he was murdered."
"Nobody ever accused the SVR of stupidity. I suppose we should have expected he would get burned. . . . My God, he was doing his job for fifty years. He didn't think so. I tried to warn him it was just about inevitable."
"You've been in touch with him?"
She nodded.
"About once a week. At the Kuhlhaus store on the Graben. He often took me in the back room for a little cafe mit schlagobers. And I will go to his funeral. I think it will probably be held in Saint Stephen's. Over the years, he made a lot of important friends. I will go as an old customer, not as the counselor for consular affairs."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"I hope nothing. But I thought you should know who he really was, and what he was doing, rather than be surprised when you read it on the front page of the Wiener Tages Zeitung."
[FIVE]
Restaurant Oca
Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
1855 24 December 2005