DAVID LEHMAN
The
Double Agent:
A
Screenplay for Michael Caine
1.
It was going to snow
and then it didn't snow.
He loved her like a
dying man's last cigarette.
2.
The dog was planning
his next betrayal.
It was, he reasoned,
in the nature of dogs
to betray their
bitches. The man at the bar
was wearing a dark
suit and tie as thin
as the excuses given
by an unfaithful mate
to her homicidal
husband on the phone.
3.
“You want results, you
have to pay for them.”
“All right, but are
you sure this is the guy?”
“This is the guy.” And
in he walked, wearing
eyeglasses and
speaking with a Cockney accent.
He had made his bones
when he killed his wife
with a lightbulb in
the cellar, made it look like
an accident, got away
with it, and celebrated
by pushing a man in
front of a speeding train.
4.
The assignment was to
convey a private message
by public means, as in
the headline of a news story
of seeming
insignificance whose secret meaning
only his London
controller would understand.
5.
The dog was dead. That
was the message.
6.
Lights out. His name
on a list. And beside
his name, a sum: fifty
thousand dollars.
They had lied to him,
put his life in danger,
only to test him. Yet
he delivered, though
it meant he had to
cross from West to East
Berlin and back in the
back of a hearse
in a dark tunnel, a
live body inside.
7.
In that second, he had
to make up his mind:
was he bluffing, or
would he pull the trigger?
“Three men have been
killed for those papers,”
the chief barked,
indignant at the cost
of this little
operation. “Sorry, boss.”
The agent held up four
fingers.
The chief crushed his
cigar. “Four!”
8.
“Enlighten me, Mr.
Lane, if that is indeed your name.
Why didn't you leave
at once when you could?”
“Loyalty,” he replied
with sarcasm so thick
you could be sure he
was carrying a false passport.
9.
The man reading the
paper in the hotel lobby
heard every word.
There was a short silence.
Suddenly he put the
paper down.
“I am the stranger of
whom you speak,” he said
in the formal English
of a Spaniard
in a Hemingway novel.
That was the tip-off.
10.
Even the girl was a
ruse.
Only the money was
real.
11.
He could see it from
the balcony:
freedom; there it was,
across the river,
in the brown haze of
dusk:
a row of dead birches
like the bars of a gate
with blue water and
green hills behind it.
12.
Was it worth it? You
didn't ask yourself.
You just grabbed your
case and went.
You didn't even know
the date, the month
and year, until you
got there. Afterwards,
if you were lucky,
there would be time
to remember. Well, he
would have to do
the remembering for
the whole unit. And once
a year, in a hotel
room in Switzerland,
he would take out the
girl’s photograph
and shake his head.
Born and raised in New York City, American poet David Lehman
is Series Editor of The Best American Poetry anthology. He
is the author of The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the
Spirit of Noir. In 2019, he and Suzanne Lummis engaged in a season of
exchanges on noir for The Best American Poetry blog, for example: https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2019/08/the-images-of-noir-by-david-lehman-and-suzanne-lummis.html
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