The Venetian Affair E-Book

Helen MacInnes

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A vacation in Venice that was grim business. A girl constantly beside him who wasn't his. How the hell had he walked into this upside-down world? New York drama critic Bill Fenner arrives in Paris, only to discover that his coat has accidentally been switched with another - and that he is now $100,000 richer. But when the US Embassy refers him to NATO and the CIA, what began as a seemingly simple case of mistaken identity becomes something far more lethal. Following the trail to Venice, Fenner must learn to play a deadly game with the highest stakes, against communist opponents plotting an assassination that threatens to undermine the balance of Europe. Accompanied by a woman he cannot have, he soon discovers that the key to stopping his enemies lies in his own past...

Leseprobe

ALSO BY HELEN MacINNES

AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Pray for a Brave Heart

Above Suspicion

Assignment in Brittany

North From Rome

Decision at Delphi

The Salzburg Connection

The Venetian Affair

Print edition ISBN: 9781781163306

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781164440

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: October 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

© 1963, 2012 by the Estate of Helen MacInnes. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group Ltd.

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To Eliot and Keith with love

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

About the Author

1

Two men sat in a darkened room. Outside was the blare of traffic grinding its way through the brilliant heat of the last day of August. But here in this room, the closed window, the drawn Venetian blinds kept noise and glare to the street. Here in this room, guarded by two locked doors, New York was forgotten.

The two men ignored the spasmodic screech of the dentist’s drill from his adjoining room: it was only a jagged part of the blurred background of sound; an annoyance, like the still, stifling air within these four safe walls. One man was talking, the other listening, both concentrating on every spoken word. They had exactly fifteen minutes to conclude their business.

Then the one who was talking would leave by the door that would take him to the service stairs: although he was the one in command, he was dressed in grey shirt and trousers appropriately soiled and wrinkled from a day’s work, his electrician’s toolbox lying beside a silent electric fan on the bogus mahogany of the dentist’s cheap desk. The other looked like a business-man, not affluent but eminently respectable; he had removed his grey jacket, hung it carefully over the back of his chair, slackened his dark-blue tie, loosened his white collar. When he left, tightened and buttoned up once more, he would unlock the door into the next room, pass the empty dentist’s chair, not even glancing at the white-coated man who would be staring blankly out of his window, enter the waiting-room, with its huddle of patients concentrating on their own problems. As he closed the front door behind him, he would leave the white-clad receptionist saying “Next please!” with the same crisp boredom she had dealt him only twenty minutes before.

The man who was dressed as an electrician was middle-aged, thin-faced, and angular. He had a voice as smooth as the palms of his hands. It was an educated voice, cool, deliberate, held low, but stressed by urgency. “This evening, you will leave from Idlewild. Your destination is Paris, as you learned from the plane reservation that Thelma delivered to you at noon. There was no difficulty when you met Thelma? No one interested in your movements; in hers?”

The other shook his head. He spoke for the first time. He was a man in his late fifties, thickset, short, with muscles running to fat. Either he found it cooler to sit on the edge of his chair or he was exceedingly deferential. His voice, too, was low, a little hoarsened by the tension of this meeting. “I followed instructions. I walked in to the Zoo from Central Park South. I reached the seal pond fifteen minutes before noon. No one followed me. I went into the cafeteria, quickly got a cup of coffee and a sandwich, paid for them with the exact money I had ready. I carried my tray out to the terrace. Thelma was sitting at a table, finishing her lunch. She left, and I took her table. I pushed aside her tray to make way for my own. Under the tray was the envelope with the reservation. I spent half an hour on the terrace. No one was interested in me. No one followed Thelma.”

“And no one followed you?”

“I saw no one.”

The cool voice sharpened. “Not even the man we call Bruno? He was watching you.”

The thickset man moistened his lips.

The other relented. “He kept at a distance. He reports that no one followed you.”

The thickset man smiled weakly, dabbed his brow gently with a folded handkerchief, felt his stomach muscles relax again. If they had kept an eye on him when he picked up his flight reservation today, they must also have had someone guarding him when he was collecting his passport yesterday from Bruno in the Museum of Modern Art. So he was in the clear, ready to leave as soon as he got back to his hotel and changed his clothes. He looked at his watch. Half-past three. No time to waste.

“This is what you take to Paris,” the grey-uniformed man said. He had opened his toolbox and drawn out an envelope. It was a medium-sized opaque envelope, unaddressed, sealed, not much bulkier than if it contained a three-page airmail letter. He threw it across the desk.

The thickset man picked it up, weighing it automatically in his hand, and frowned.

“Unfortunately,” the cool quiet voice continued, “its contents cannot be made into a film or a micro-dot.” There was a thin smile on the thin face. “And so we must use you.”

The thickset man lifted his jacket and inserted the envelope carefully into a zippered inside pocket. He made no remark.

“You are wondering why we did not use diplomatic channels?” The cool voice had sharpened. It was on the defensive. It disliked even unspoken criticism.

“It would have been simpler.”

“On the contrary. This whole operation must not be connected in any way with our embassies in Washington and Paris. Or with any of the consulates. Or with the Mission to the United Nations. No connection whatsoever. That is of highest importance, only second to the importance of the envelope itself. It has taken us four months to prepare that envelope. Only three people besides myself know what it contains.”

The thickset man used his folded handkerchief again. Patches of sweat were spreading over his white shirt.

“Actually,” the cool voice went on, “we could have sent this envelope by mail. It contains nothing illegal. But we could not risk having the envelope opened by mistake, or being delayed. Its value, incalculable, lies in its surprise. So we send it by safe hand.”

“I will take care, great care.”

“That is why I chose you,” the electrician said sharply. “Because—although there should be no difficulties at Orly; they pay little attention to anyone’s baggage—it must be hidden. No risk of discovery, I repeat. You understand?”

The man nodded. He eased his collar open still more. “And after Customs?”

“You will hand the envelope over at once to an intermediary. He will be waiting for you just outside the arrival hall at Orly.”

“Identification?”

“We have made that as simple as possible for you. And certain. He met you three years ago, when you arrived in Zurich. Remember him?”

There was a nod. “The meeting will be easy. There won’t be any—any delay.”

“There won’t be any mistake.” The thin man uttered the word the other had hesitated over and left unused. “You know each other. You know the method to follow.”

“As at Zurich?”

“Why not? It was successful.”

Again there was a feeling of hesitation.

“Yes?” The quiet voice was impatient. It didn’t even wait for the answer. “It is perfectly safe to let you work together once more. He has been kept out of sight, inactive, for almost two years. Just as you have been kept inactive for the last fourteen months. Both of you have changed your names, your occupations, your countries, your lives. Two different men; except you know each other by sight. To help your eye find him quickly, he will wear a blue shirt and a yellow tie. His hair has become white, and slightly longer. We have told him that your suit will be brown, your tie green, and that you have begun to wear glasses. Is that adequate enough?”

The thickset man ignored the hint of sarcasm. He nodded, rose, put on his jacket. “Thelma—and Bruno—you are sure of them?” He was looking at his watch again. The room was suffocating him.

“Quite sure. They know nothing except that they were asked to help you escape to Europe. Tell an American comrade that he is saving a hero of the revolution, and he will come to the rescue at full gallop on his white horse.”

And now they both smiled. On Americans, they agreed completely. They were professionals, with only contempt for the amateurs.

“You leave first,” the electrician said. “I have this fan to fix.” He pushed its socket into an outlet. Its slow whirr began, and mounted into an overwhelming whine. “I make a good electrician,” he added, but there was no one left to enjoy his heavy humour. The door into the dentist’s workroom had closed noiselessly: nothing less than a crash or a shout could be heard over the high falsetto of that damnable contraption. Still, he was grateful for the current of air even if it was stale, even if the sudden coolness was only an illusion made by motion. He waited for five minutes, thinking of the man who had left him. A reliable man, instincts excellent, senses alive, quick wits. Today he had seemed less at ease, overcautious. It could have been the heat: he had felt it badly.

The five minutes were over. The electrician lit a cigarette, caught up the toolbox under his arm, and opened the door into the back corridor. By the time he sauntered into the street, his friend was already in a cab heading south to Pennsylvania Station. There he would take another taxi, then another, and drive to his hotel, the third hotel he had used in the three nights he had spent in New York.

The electrician stopped, almost at the corner of street and avenue, to look at the window of a small delicatessen. Parked cars, moving trucks, bareheaded women with groceries in their arms, screaming children gathered around a fire hydrant hopefully, a bulldozer ending its day’s work on the site of some old brownstone houses, workmen in sleeveless singlets and helmets, a pneumatic drill, glare, heat, noise, total confusion. But he was almost sure that no one was following him. He lit another cigarette, timing the traffic lights at the corner. At the last possible second, he turned away from the overcrowded window with its red neon sign, loped swiftly across the avenue just before a four-lane stream of traffic came rushing down on him. No one could follow him now.

He hurried along the crowded sidewalk to the subway entrance. A good operation, he thought with some satisfaction, and it would succeed for one simple reason: the enemy did not know it even existed. Success always lay in surprise.

And failure, too. Although at that moment, surrounded and protected by a sweltering mass of the enemy, he gave it little thought.

2

Bill Fenner settled himself comfortably in the plane. There was plenty of space on this flight. It was almost the end of summer, the last day in August, when most people’s vacations were over. But it was also the end of summer in a year, 1961, that had produced its crop of alarms. The Wall in Berlin was nearly three weeks old, voices from Eastern Europe were alternating from cold to hot, memories of shoe-thumping and outshouting at the United Nations were still alive. So the average tourist must have decided that life was simpler at home, this year, where he didn’t have to depend on strangers or cope with a foreign language if a real emergency blew up in his face. There had been a lot of quiet cancellations. And the plane, ready to take off from Idlewild, was less than half filled.

The other passengers on the flight to Paris were either young enough to be unencumbered with wives and children or determined enough on pleasure—the kind of tourists who would be found climbing Vesuvius on the day that smoke was already forming over the crater; or they were business-men, soberly optimistic; or they were lone travellers, like Fenner himself, with a job of work to do. At least, he thought, as they waited for take-off, there will be no crying children on this flight, no nervous old ladies fretting about the weight of their luggage, no neighbour crowding my elbow.

Not that Fenner was an antisocial type. He had spent the afternoon over a long luncheon at the club with three of his old friends, who, like himself, had begun as journalists some thirteen years ago, but had since diverged into book publishing, magazine editing, politics. Bill Fenner had stayed with the New York Chronicle, and for the last six years he had been its drama critic. Which was exactly what he had wanted to be in the first place: it was the job that would keep him alive, mentally and physically, pay the rent and stimulate his mind and—in the great moments of theatre—stir his soul. And in a few years, he would reach his second objective: the play he intended to write.

It hadn’t altogether worked out that way though. Perhaps the critical mind was too analytical, too pragmatic, for the creative to be bold enough to assert itself. Here he was, on his way to France for a four-week vacation combined with a job of writing. A play? Not on your life. Two articles for the Chronicle’s Sunday edition on the French national theatre, a starter for a book on the European theatre, which might be ready by the year 1967. God help me, he thought, perhaps I’d better never begin those articles.

What’s delaying us, anyway?

It was hot on the waiting plane. The air conditioning wouldn’t start until they were two thousand feet up or more. He glanced at his watch. The man across the aisle was doing the same thing, only more intently. Like Fenner, he was travelling alone; a sturdy individual, with a solid chest expanding into fat under his heavy brown suit, and a red round face looking redder by the minute above his tightly knotted green tie. He was middle-aged. (Fenner, fully thirty-seven, was kinder about other people’s advancing years than he once had been.) And in no mood for any talk, thank heavens. For he had glanced across at Fenner, eyes sharp behind his horn-rimmed glasses, and looked quickly away. His fingers tapped on his arm. Nervous about flying? But who wasn’t?

Fenner glanced through the window. Two latecomers were joining the flight, looking as cool in their crisp white shirts and neat blue suits as if the hot sunset outside were only an evening mirage. Fenner concealed a smile: he knew the type well from his cub-reporting days, when he had been sent to haunt the law courts. They could give evidence as expertly as they had trailed a suspect. What was taking them to Paris—an extradition case, some federal offender who might now start wishing he had not jumped bail? Serious business, certainly, or the plane wouldn’t have waited. The delay had been only six minutes, but to those who were impatient to leave, each minute had seemed endless.

The smiling hostess was performing the usual ritual of take-off with a gentle prompting here, a helping hand there. The man across the aisle seemed adept at air travel, after all. He was already secure in his safety belt, and was setting his watch forward. He certainly wasn’t going to be caught unawares by a sunrise only a few hours away. He will eat a large dinner, Fenner surmised, go soundly to sleep, wake up looking efficient, while the rest of us, having had a nightcap or two, and read, and talked, will be just about thinking of bed by the time we arrive. With that he dismissed the man in the brown suit, a pretty dull and harmless fellow, and began to look through a copy of Réalités to get some French phrases rolling on his tongue again.

Across the aisle, the man in the brown suit (who considered no one harmless) studied Fenner quietly until dinner arrived. Despite the heat of the day and the tensions of waiting at Idlewild, he had recovered something of his normal appetite. He ate quickly, greedily. In his youth, he had starved often enough in Odessa to make him appreciate any free meal. (He was, his nicely faked passport said, Mr. Albert Goldsmith, naturalised citizen originally from Frankfurt, resident of Newark, New Jersey, and an importer of ladies’ handbags.) Just as he had finished his steak and was eyeing the blueberry pie appreciatively, one of the efficient-looking men whose late arrival had delayed the flight six long agonising minutes chose to walk through the cabin, glancing (an automatic habit) at his travelling companions as he passed. He only wanted to chat with someone he knew in the forward section of the plane. But he stopped Mr. Goldsmith’s appetite cold.

Mr. Goldsmith did not panic. He was too experienced for that. His mind stayed alert, his thoughts were quick-darting but intensely rational, his face remained as placid as ever. Only his digestion betrayed him: the food he had eaten coagulated into a heavy, solid lump in his chest. Even the return of the brisk stranger with the photographic eye to his own seat didn’t help Mr. Goldsmith. A false alarm? Yet no alarm in Mr. Goldsmith’s profession could be treated as false. He sat quite still, planning emergency countermoves, elaborating his new identity so that his Mr. Albert Goldsmith was more than a fake name. If there had been any suspicion about him, surely he would have been stopped as he entered this plane. No one knew of the contents of the envelope except the man who had given it to him that afternoon, and three others. And none of them, if they had been arrested, would talk. If they could have been interrogated by the Gestapo or the old NKVD, he might have good reason to fear. Logically, he was not afraid. Illogically, he was worried. His instincts would not be quietened. He felt threatened. By what?

He did not sleep, even with his raincoat safe under his hand. He felt cold—the air conditioning was as great a curse as the heat had been—yet beads of sweat kept gathering on his brow. A tight band seemed laid across his chest. Indigestion, he thought, it was just indigestion. He sat still, his hand gripping his coat, while his mind held firmly to one comforting thought: at Orly, it should not be too difficult. There was a long walk, yet, but no delays, few formalities. And in the entrance hall his contact would be waiting.

At Orly, the two brisk men in their neat blue suits were the first to leave the plane. They were joking, laughing, bright as two polished buttons. Bill Fenner left more slowly, admiring their resilience. He watched the narrow stream of passengers trail after the stewardess, the pretty one who swung her hips a little, toward the right entrance in the huge building of shining glass. Stiff legs in crumpled clothing began to pick up pace as the fresh morning air washed night-tired faces. Fresh, but tinged with the kerosene smell of jet planes. There was a long line of them, drawn up neatly, beautifully angled, exactly spaced. A nicely welcoming honour guard, thought Fenner. Good morning to you, too, gentlemen!

He let the others pass him. Each was determined to be the first out of the giant airport and on the road to Paris. But he could enjoy stretching his legs, this feeling of release from a tightly sealed bullet. There was no hurry; no one meeting him, no urgent conferences, no brief stay into which Chartres and Versailles and Montparnasse had to be jammed, no plane connections to make, no wife to add to the worries of transport and wrong accommodations. This was one time, at least, when the solitary bachelor had an advantage. He was the casual observer, the disengaged, free to wander, free to do as he liked when he liked. Except, of course, for that little errand Walt Penneyman had assigned him. He might as well clean that off his plate this afternoon, oblige Penneyman by sending the facts he wanted, and retire into a long lazy week-end before he even started his own work. An odd kind of errand that Penneyman had assigned him. Yes, “assigned” was the word; Walter Penneyman was part owner, part editor, and total energist of the Chronicle; he had given Fenner his first chance at journalism, nursed him through that bad patch of his life just after Korea, when—

His thoughts were knocked aside as someone, passing him quickly, lurched against his arm. It was the man who had sat across the aisle from him. Extraordinary thing, Fenner thought, that some people can have the whole width of an enormous airfield to walk over and still manage to collide. The man’s white face looked at him without a smile. Did he think Fenner had blocked his path purposely? “Excuse me,” Fenner said. The man walked on rapidly, almost too much in a straight line to be natural. Was he drunk? Had he spent the night nipping from a flask? He had been slow at coming out of the plane, but he was putting on speed. He stopped to put down the small case he was carrying, shifted his coat to his left arm, picked up the case with his right hand, and was off again. And don’t look around at me, Fenner told the departing back, I’m not following you: I’m just going where we’re all going. Well, where was I—oh yes, Walt Penneyman...

An odd assignment—an interview with a professor named Vaugiroud, whose interests were entirely political and had nothing to do with the theatre. It would be simple enough, something that Fenner would have treated as routine six years ago, when he was a foreign correspondent, but now—unusual. As odd, in fact, as Penneyman’s urgency yesterday morning when he had asked Fenner to look in at his office. “You’re leaving for Paris tonight, Bill? You’re just the man I need.” It was always flattering to be needed. Besides, this Vaugiroud character sounded like an interesting type.

He stepped into the glass palace and smiled for the little hostess, who waited worriedly for the last one of her flock. “That way,” she showed him, pointing to the cluster of people ahead. He had his passport and landing card all ready, so she forgave him. “The luggage will be examined when it reaches the arrival hall,” she told him. Now he saw that her worry was not about him.

“Baggage will be opened?” he asked her in surprise. That wasn’t usual at all.

“It won’t take long,” she said soothingly. “A formality.”

The well-trained nurse, he thought. If she knows, she is not telling. Nor was the welcoming committee, waiting patiently in the vast stretch of light-coloured wood and glass with the slightly jaundiced eye that French officials keep for those who have time and money to waste on travel.

Fenner’s luck was in. He saw his suitcase and week-end bag travelling smoothly along a moving belt, and signalled to a blue-smocked porter. They were quickly placed on the counter. “Vous n’avez rien à déclarer, monsieur?”

Fenner shook his head, produced his keys. “Excuse me,” he said to the passenger standing beside him, and moved a couple of feet for elbow room. It was the man in the brown suit, who had been in such a hurry and now was waiting for his luggage. He didn’t look well, Fenner noted: he was no longer energetic and business-like; he was almost listless, withdrawn into some overwhelming worry—he hadn’t even noticed he was standing in Fenner’s way.

The French officials were serious-faced, silent. The innocent tourist was probably the least of their problems this bright and pleasant morning. Algiers and generals in open revolt had put the peaceable traveller into proper perspective: someone not necessarily likeable, but not inimical either. Yet, Fenner noted, the quick fingers examining his luggage were extremely thorough; the eyes glancing over him were equally searching. What interested them?

Nothing, so far. The Customs official saw just another American in a dark-grey suit, blue shirt, dark-blue tie; neatly cut brown hair, grey eyes, well-marked eyebrows, bone structure of his face noticeable and pleasant, an easy smile. He was fairly tall, thin, relaxed. He had a raincoat over one arm, a bundle of newspapers and magazines under the other, a hat which he preferred not to wear, and nothing to declare. Nothing? the sardonic French eyes seemed to ask; no failures, fears, frustrations? “And what is that? In the pocket of your raincoat, monsieur? Thank you. Ah—”An eyebrow was raised in pleased surprise. “You are an admirer of our Comédie-Française?”

Fenner nodded. As it once was, he thought, and as it may be again. But he didn’t risk saying it. This, he felt, was not the year for plays upon words or double meanings. Beside him, he heard a hiss of breath—or was it a slow sigh of impatience?—from the man in brown. His suitcase had arrived. He leaned on it heavily. His face was set. “Are you all right?” Fenner asked him. He got no answer. Just a look that told him to mind his own business and get on with it.

“In French,” the Customs official observed. He smiled. “You are preparing yourself?”

“That’s my homework,” Fenner agreed, and jammed the small, thin edition of Le Misanthrope back into its hiding place. He dropped his coat on the low counter and began locking his cases. He glanced at the impatient stranger beside him as if to say, “There now, I’m hurrying, can’t you see?” He looked more closely. This man is ill, he thought worriedly; he won’t admit it, but he is ill. Fenner caught the eye of the Customs official, and nodded toward Mr. Goldsmith’s white face. “Where can I find a glass of water?” he asked.

The Frenchman pointed to a gendarme who was patrolling the background in quiet boredom. “He will show you.” And then, to Mr. Goldsmith, “Would you like to rest? Please sit down over there.” He turned to a woman whose bracelets jangled as she searched for her keys half-heartedly, hoping her sweet smile would save her trouble. “Open everything, madame.”

“No,” Mr. Goldsmith said angrily. “No, I am first.” And indeed, he had his suitcase unlocked.

At that moment, three short and violent explosions burst savagely into the quiet room. Everyone jumped. Two of the officials ducked automatically. The woman with the bracelets screamed. Fenner spilled the water he was carrying. Mr. Goldsmith, after a violent start, stood rigid. The gendarme, the least perturbed—either he had been the first to realise the explosions were outside on the street or he had become accustomed to such disturbances—noticed Fenner’s accident. Quietly, he himself brought another cup of water for the man who stood at the counter. “Le voici!” he said crisply, tapping the man’s shoulder to draw his attention.

Mr. Goldsmith’s head made a slow half-turn. Suddenly, the ridges of agony on his face were no longer controlled. He moaned and slipped to the ground, his eyes staring with incredulity at the ceiling.

“We shall take care of him. Please continue!” the gendarme told Fenner and the woman, and signalled to the nearest porter to help him lift Mr. Goldsmith away from the counter. Fenner obeyed: the order made good sense; those who had been cleared were to move out; those still to be examined were to stay where they were, under the official eye. A little commotion like this one would be made to order for any smuggling. So he looked around for another porter.

The Customs official was repeating “Everything to be opened, madame!” The woman recovered herself sufficiently, bracelets jangling with haste, but first, as her gesture of sympathy to the poor man who had collapsed almost at her feet, she lifted his raincoat from the floor and placed it neatly on the counter beside some luggage.

Mr. Goldsmith’s eyes watched her. He tried to speak. He shivered. He managed the word “coat”.

“His coat!” the gendarme said to one of his helpers. “He wants his coat over him.” The porter moved quickly to the counter—the woman was anxiously explaining the contents of several plastic jars; the Customs official was opening them carefully—and seized a coat lying near the sick man’s suitcase, bringing it quickly back to throw over the inert legs. Mr. Goldsmith was quite helpless now, his eyes closed, one hand feebly clutching the edge of his raincoat as if it comforted him.

Fenner had found a young and agile porter. “Over there,” he said, pointing. “A brown suitcase, a brown bag, and a raincoat. That’s all.” The porter darted ahead of him, toward the counter. There, the Customs official was looking dubiously at the contents of a jar, trying to reason out why one woman could need so much face cream for a two weeks’ stay in a city that had practically invented cosmetics. The woman was saying anxiously, “It’s only night cream, the kind I like. I didn’t know if I could get the same brand—” She paused helplessly, watching a penknife gingerly testing the opaque, heavy mess. She paid no attention to the porter, who collected two pieces of luggage and a raincoat with great efficiency and speed.

Mr. Goldsmith was being placed on a stretcher. A doctor, a nurse, an attendant surrounded him. The gendarme, back on normal duty, saw Fenner hesitate and look in the direction of the little group. “Please proceed,” he told Fenner, pointing toward the exit. The porter was already there, glancing around impatiently, hurrying on as Fenner started after him into the giant entrance hall, glass and more glass, people and people, arriving, leaving, waiting, searching, talking, looking.

“Want a lift?” a voice asked at his elbow, and laughed.

Fenner swung around. Mike Ballard? Yes, Mike Ballard. Fenner recovered slowly from his several surprises. First, he hadn’t expected anyone to meet him, and most certainly not Ballard, whom he had known only slightly in New York before Ballard had come over to work under Keir in the Chronicle’s Paris Bureau. That was four, if not five, years ago. Secondly, Ballard had changed. He had added a bulge to his waistline, a jowl to his square-shaped face, and removed a couple of inches from his thatch of dense-black hair. His dark eyes were satisfied, his mouth was soft-lipped and relaxed, he smiled readily. An easy-going type was Mike Ballard, who—judging from his clothes, and they were the third surprise—had come to appreciate the finer arts of dressing as well as the food and wines of France. The fourth surprise was simply that Ballard was not the type to drive all the way out to an airport to meet an early-morning arrival unless something pretty special was involved. For Ballard, since Keir’s heart attack last spring, was now acting head of the Chronicle’s Paris Bureau. Also, Ballard liked his comforts. “Expecting someone important?” Fenner asked with a grin.

“You,” Ballard said, administering the fifth surprise. “What kept you so long in there? Come on, this way. Where’s your porter?”

“He guessed the wrong direction, I think. He’s over there, just beyond that character in the yellow tie.”

Ballard waved his arms, but the porter didn’t notice. Fenner started briskly after the man, gave a whistle that stopped the porter in his tracks. It also made several other people look around sharply. Only the man with the yellow tie paid no attention; he didn’t even halt his steady pacing. The porter, quick to cover his miscalculation, headed back towards Ballard, whose arm was still signalling. “There’s a hired cab waiting in the parking lot across the road,” Ballard told him. To Fenner, as he returned, he added, “Seemed easier than bringing my car. I don’t drive so well at this time of the morning—not after last night’s party.”

“You’re taking too much trouble,” Fenner said. It was the usual polite formula, but he meant it. For the last hour he had been looking forward to arriving in Paris. By himself. He didn’t need a conducted tour. All he wanted was to drive, alone to his favourite hotel on the Left Bank, with a guaranteed view of the Seine from the balcony of his old room. And there he had planned to bathe leisurely (unless a shower had been added since his last visit), shave, and enjoy a second breakfast with the morning sunlight on the trees outside for company. Now he would have to invite Ballard for breakfast, and listen, and talk. He would be lucky if he didn’t find his whole day arranged for him.

“No trouble,” Ballard lied gallantly. “Besides, someone had to steer you to the right hotel.”

“I’ve got a hotel.”

“Not any more. It was bombed yesterday.”

“What?”

“Secret Army stuff. Oh, it was bound to spread to Paris. We have had bombs and machine-gunning in the provinces all summer. It was bound to spread. I got you a room at the Crillon.”

“Thanks. But isn’t that a bit rich for a drama critic’s blood?” Certainly too steep for his pocketbook.

“Not after I got a ’phone call from the old man yesterday, telling me you were coming over.”

“From Penneyman?” Fenner gave up counting surprises, this morning.

“Well—he was on the ’phone about something else. But he mentioned you. Told us to let you have free run of our files if you needed them.” There was a look of speculation in Ballard’s side glance. “So I figured your expense account was good. Also, I hadn’t the time to go shopping around for hotels last night.”

Fenner felt churlish. “Sorry I gave you so much trouble.” He still couldn’t find a reason for it though. “Thanks a lot.”

“My pleasure.” They had crossed the broad, handsome road. “There’s my driver, willing and waiting.” And the porter was already stacking Fenner’s possessions in the front seat, eager for his tip, impatient for another job. (Ballard had the money out, brushing aside Fenner’s arm reaching into his pocket.) “Besides,” Ballard said as they settled themselves in the small taxi and were off, “someone had to come out here and identify the pieces.”

“What pieces?” Fenner asked absent-mindedly. He was marvelling at the speed with which they were negotiating the clover-leaf that led them on to the expressway.

“Yours. There was a bomb threat against Orly this morning. Didn’t they tell you? No, I don’t suppose they would. I bet they searched the baggage pretty thoroughly though. They always do that when they’re jumpy.”

“There was a moment when we all jumped,” Fenner said with a smile.

“The three explosions? Just a truck expressing its opinion. A plastic bomb has a real bang to it.” He shook his head, and his grin faded. “It was bound to spread,” he said. “The damn fools.”

3

Once they entered the new expressway to Paris, the journey promised to be quick and direct until the immediate approaches to the city were reached. But Ballard’s conversation, even if it was headed in one direction as determinedly as this autoroute, had as many crossways and detours as any old-fashioned road. It was loaded with questions, asked and unasked. Fenner resigned himself to the inevitable and roused himself from his pleasant after-arrival lethargy. Ballard, after several hours of sleep in a comfortable bed, was expansive. He always had been a compulsive talker: silence worried him.

“How long are you staying?” he asked suddenly.

“In Paris? Probably only a few days, at first. I’ll return by mid-September for a couple of weeks.”

“That’s wise. Not much theatre to see in Paris right now. What are your plans?”

Fenner answered as briefly as possible. He had had to explain all this so often in the last few weeks—vacation plus research, plus articles, plus future visits to other countries, plus other articles—that it had become a standard routine. It now embarrassed him to listen to himself.

Ballard was smiling, but not so easily as he usually did. “Come off it, Bill. You don’t have to tell old Mike all that theatre stuff.”

“Theatre stuff,” Fenner said, “is my business.”

“You were a newspaperman long before you were a critic.”

“Meaning?”

“What story are you after? This Secret Army Organisation? Doesn’t old Penneyman trust me to handle it?” Ballard was smiling broadly.

Fenner’s astonishment gave way to perception. Was this the reason why he had been met at Orly? “I’m after no story. All I’m interested in is a book. Eventually.”

“Wish I had time to write a book.”

“Yes, that’s all it takes.”

Ballard glanced at him quickly.

Fenner was studying the invasion of suburban houses, glimpsed briefly before the expressway burrowed more deeply between its high banks. “Am I wrong, or didn’t there use to be a lot of woods around here?” That would turn the conversation nicely, he thought.

“There are still plenty of forests around Paris,” Ballard said defensively. “We’ve rented a place out on the Bois. You must come and visit us when Eva and the kids get back from Brittany.”

“How many do you have?”

“Three. Four in December.”

“Busy man.”

“Too busy to take a vacation this year—there’s a lot to handle at the office, with Keir sick.”

“How is he?”

Ballard shook his head, pursed his lips. “Old Penneyman had better stop hoping.” He hesitated. Then, “Keir has been off the job since April. When is Penneyman going to admit that Keir is never going to get back on it?”

“When Keir admits it, probably. Heart attacks aren’t always the end of a man’s career. Relax, Mike. You’re in line for the job when it’s declared vacant. By the way, there was a case of heart attack, or something pretty close to it, at Orly this morning. Fellow just folded up—”

“In line for the job—” Ballard laughed briefly, bitterly.

Fenner kept his eyes on the cars they were passing.

“Or perhaps he just likes to keep me dangling,” Ballard added, but genial again, as if to sweeten his criticism of Walter Penneyman.

Fenner moved a cramped leg. “He likes Keir a lot,” he said uncomfortably. “Keir isn’t old. If he makes a good recovery, he could go on for another fifteen years at least. If he were ditched now, he’d probably be dead in six months.”

“Sure, sure,” Ballard said. He lapsed into unusual silence. When they reached the Porte d’Italie and the beginning of the city proper, he came to life. “Cut left as soon as you can,” he told the driver, “and get on to the Boulevard Raspail.” But the driver had his own ideas of a quick route. Ballard didn’t argue. He laughed and shook his head. “We’ll take almost as long to reach the Place de la Concorde as we took to get here,” he predicted. “By the way, did you see Walt Penneyman before you left?”

“Yes.”

Ballard’s gloom returned.

Fenner said, “But he didn’t talk about Keir. Or the Paris office. He is making a speech next week in Washington, and that’s filling his mind.” But as he spoke he began to wonder why Mike Ballard had not been given the job of visiting Professor Vaugiroud. Or perhaps it wasn’t an important-enough assignment. “I have a professor to visit—”

“I’ve told my secretary to give you all help with the addresses of people you have to see. I’ll be out of Paris for the week-end.”

“Belgrade?”

Ballard shook his head. “I’ve got a man there covering that neutralists’ conference. Nothing important is going to happen anyway. It will be a nice long week-end with not one screaming headline in sight.” The prospect pleased him. He slapped Fenner’s knee. “Even the acting head of the Paris Bureau has to get off the chain now and again. Right?”

Perhaps... and perhaps not. It depended on how much the acting head wanted to be head.

“So old Penneyman is giving another speech in Washington. What’s his subject this time? Don’t tell me—I can guess.” Ballard struck a pose of upward and onward. “The freedom of the Press depends on its integrity!”

“Something like that.”

“He never gives up, does he? He was harping on that back in April, when he flew over here for two days. Two days—imagine that—for Paris! I thought he was going to give all of us heart attacks. I’m just getting the office back into shape now.”

“I’m not following you.”

“He didn’t tell you?” There was a look of relief in Ballard’s eyes. “Oh, you know—the Great Rumour of April. CIA urging French generals to revolt in Algiers. Remember?”

“Oh yes. That was the rumour an Australian journalist flattened out for us.”

“Not quite. He just forced the French into admitting that they had no evidence at all.”

But the rumour had been allowed to run wild, gathering momentum, a nasty piece of international suspicion that could have been disastrous. “So Walt Penneyman came over himself to see what it was all about?”

“Found out nothing, of course. None of us could. If he had paid attention to my reports, he could have saved himself a journey.”

If Ballard imagined that Penneyman had lost interest in finding out, he couldn’t be very much in Penneyman’s confidence. It was just as well, Fenner decided, that Mike Ballard’s garrulity had interrupted his remark on Professor Vaugiroud. “Well,” he said, “Walt Penneyman has always been a great Francophile. You can’t blame him for being upset when his favourite foreigners seemed to be spitting right in America’s eye.”

“Oh,” Ballard said with a laugh, “it would have all ironed out anyway.” And he really believed that. It made crises easier to bear, perhaps. Certainly it made life simpler. “Walt Penneyman fusses too much. Well—here’s the hotel. I’ll see you in and if you ask me to stay for a cup of coffee, I won’t refuse. Can’t wait long, though. I’ve got to clear some things up at the office and catch a plane by noon. No, this is mine!” He had his black crocodile wallet out with a flourish. Changed days, Fenner thought as Ballard paid their driver, changed days from New York and Ballard’s dogged news coverage over at the United Nations when he had always looked as if he needed a good square meal, a haircut, and still more information. “Don’t worry about your luggage,” Ballard was telling him. “This place really takes care of its guests.”

Fenner repressed his amusement. Was he just the New York country boy come to town? He gave a last look at the Place de la Concorde, with its sea of cars flowing in a steady surge, their chrome and glass flickering like the ripple of small dancing waves in the early sunlight. The man-made sea with its man-made roar, he thought: I’ll probably end up as a true country boy on a Vermont farm.

“There’s no place like it,” Ballard said at his elbow as they crossed the broad sidewalk, newly watered and swept. He looked around at his adopted city with proprietary pleasure. “Ever think of coming to work here?”

“No.”

But Ballard didn’t quite believe him. He is coming up for that cup of coffee, Fenner thought, just to make sure where I stand with Penneyman. How do I make it clear that I’ve no interest in his job without showing him I know the real reason why he met me at the airport? This called for more tact than he felt capable of mustering after a night journey. Besides, he was handicapped by a qualm of memory: Walt’s words, yesterday, at the end of their meeting. “You used to be good at finding the threads of a story, Bill. Never feel the itch to get back to international politics again? No? Well, enjoy your trip. Call me as soon as you’ve talked with Vaugiroud.” He had thought nothing of that casual question at the time. Now, it had taken on more meaning. So had the Vaugiroud assignment. Was Walt Penneyman trying to make him feel that itch again?

“There’s no place like it,” Ballard was repeating.

“It has its points,” Fenner agreed, his eyes following two pretty girls for a brief but adequate moment. Two very pretty girls, neatly cinched at the waist, dark hair piled high, slender legs under floating skirts.

Ballard said, “I’m old-fashioned in one thing: I still prefer blondes. By the way, did you know your wife was living in Paris?”

Fenner’s step hesitated. Then he went in through the giant doorway, past the elegant waiting-rooms and the colonnades and the elevators. Behind him, Ballard greeted someone in the lobby, stopped to speak. Fenner had finished all the usual routine at the reception desk before Ballard rejoined him.

“Sorry about that,” Ballard said awkwardly.

“I had no trouble. You laid it on well.”

“About Sandra, I meant.” There was no malice, only curiosity glancing out of his dark eyes. “I thought I’d better tip you off, in case you ran into her.”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did. And,” Fenner added pointedly, “it is eight years since she was my wife.” He moved toward the elevators. “I may go bankrupt, but I’ll do it in comfort,” he said as he looked around him. Soft rugs underfoot, soft air, soft voices. Deceptive. “Everyone looks so damned important. Are they?”

Ballard wasn’t to be sidetracked. “You know, I’ve often wondered why Sandra left America. I know it’s none of my business, but—”

“That’s right,” Fenner said with a quiet smile. “It was no one’s business. What about that coffee? And I need a shower and a shave.” But both elevator doors were now closed.

“Look”—Ballard was glancing at his watch—“do you mind if I take a rain check? I’ve just met a man who has some good contacts with the Quai d’Orsay. He’s waiting for me.” He nodded toward a room near the entrance. “You know how it is, Bill.”

“That’s all right. Thanks for delivering me intact.”

“Use the office whenever you need it. I’ll be back on Monday. And the Embassy is across the street”—the old smile was back again—“just in case you need to take refuge.”

“From a bomb, or Sandra?”

Ballard looked at him. “You don’t have to worry about Sandra. She has no hard feelings about you.”

Wasn’t that generous of her? “That’s kind of her.”

“No, believe me. I was at a party last night at her place—she has a big apartment out on the Avenue d’Iéna, been living there for the last three years—”

“That’s nice.” Glutinous word, “nice”, applicable all the way from rice pudding to sun tans.

“She entertains a lot, you know. Not theatre stuff—she’s given up the stage—only politicians, diplomats, a few journalists, that kind of thing—”

“Policy-making level,” Fenner suggested. That sounded like Sandra, all right. Poor Ballard, didn’t he know what he was getting into?

“Not quite,” Ballard said modestly. “But an interesting bunch.” He dropped his voice. “She’s the very good friend of Fernand Lenoir.”

“Is she?” And who was Monsieur Lenoir, who rated a dropped voice? Fenner looked at the returning elevator. “I’d better take this one,” he said. “We can’t keep the Quai d’Orsay waiting, can we?”

Ballard held his arm, his voice hurrying. “Sandra and I had a little talk last night. She had some pretty nice things to say about you. In fact, she—“

“Now,” Fenner remarked and freed his arm, “that really is worrying news.” Sandra at her sweetest was Sandra at her most dangerous. “I’ll call you,” he told Ballard as he stepped into the car. From the background, one of the assistant room clerks, with Fenner’s room key in his hand, moved forward to join him.

“Any time,” Ballard said, “any time at all, Bill.” He looked disappointed, as if he still had one more question to ask. Or perhaps he was disappointed in Fenner, the man who had never appreciated such a sweet and generous woman as Sandra Fane. The name, Fenner reflected as he came out of the elevator and followed his guide through half a mile of carpeted corridors, had been as bogus as her life, and as carefully planned. He wondered how long Sandra had stayed in Czechoslovakia? All of the five years between her quiet exit from America and her descent on Paris? Perhaps she had changed. People did. But Sandra?

The clerk hurried ahead of him with the key held ready, an elderly maid with folded towels over her arm moved out of a pantry to appraise the new arrival discreetly, a door opened and a waiter pushed a breakfast cart into the corridor. A young woman followed it, calling back to someone in the room, “All right, I’ll have the sketches ready for you by noon.”

“No later, honey,” a querulous female voice reminded her.

“No later,” the girl said calmly. “Thanks for the breakfast.” She closed the door, shaking her pretty blonde head, almost blocked Fenner’s path as she adjusted a large black portfolio to fit more comfortably under her arm, said “Excuse me” in her charming voice, glanced at him with large grey eyes, and walked quickly away toward the elevators. It seemed unfair, Fenner thought, that anyone as young and decorative as that should have to be so crisp and business-like at half-past nine in the morning. A waste of natural resources.

His room was comfortable and handsome. There was not much view—a side street, with some small cafés and shops topped by two or three stories of nineteenth-century façade now converted from private homes into offices and dressmaking work-rooms—but there was a shower, in a bathroom as large as his bedroom in New York. His suitcase and week-end bag were placed on luggage racks; his raincoat was already in one of the huge wardrobes. He tipped the elderly porter, thanked the room clerk, locked the door, and began throwing off his clothes. He ordered breakfast to be sent up in half an hour, and felt pleasantly efficient. The shaving lights were excellent. The shower worked. He even burst into a brief aria from Tosca.

He breakfasted in the bathrobe the hotel had so obligingly provided, the warm air floating in from open French windows along with the grind and shriek of buses and cars. If it hadn’t been for them, he might have fallen into a pleasant sleep: the beds were as soft as everything else in this hotel. He opened his suitcase and began dressing. Fresh clothes made a new man. He even decided he would call Professor Vaugiroud and arrange an appointment for—well, not for this morning; that was being too damned efficient. This afternoon would give him time to collect Vaugiroud’s remarks, simplify them into basic points, and cable them to Walt Penneyman. It was only the beginning of the day in New York right now. He had at least twelve hours before he needed to call Penneyman and tell him the information was on its way.

He lit a cigarette (the last one in this pack, he noted with a touch of annoyance), found the telephone number that Penneyman had given him, and got through to Vaugiroud with only reasonable delay. Professor Vaugiroud spoke good English, if a little impatiently. “Yes, yes,” he said as soon as Fenner had identified himself. “I had a cable last night to tell me to expect you. Is Mr. Penneyman ill?”

“No. He just could not get away himself.”

“I am sorry,” Vaugiroud said with marked disappointment.

“He was, too. Could I see you this afternoon?”

“Where?”

“Anywhere you like. And whenever it suits you.”

Vaugiroud thawed a little. “Come to my apartment at four o’clock. You have my address.”

“Yes.”

“At four, then.”

So that was that. Fenner looked thoughtfully at some of the other addresses in his note-book: most of them he would have to see toward the middle of September, when they were back at work in Paris. There were only three—one a director, another a playwright, one an assistant to the Minister of Cultural Affairs—whom he knew well enough to be able to visit even while they were on vacation. He had their invitations in that folder in his suitcase. He could reach them easily by telephone. No, he decided, today I relax and walk around Paris. I’ve got to find another hotel anyway, or else I’ll have to cut my vacation to a week. For like most Americans abroad, well-dressed, educated, seemingly carefree millionaires from the land of give-away, Fenner had to keep an eye on his traveller’s checks.

He got out a map of Paris and tracked down Vaugiroud’s address. It was across the Seine, not far from the Sorbonne, where Vaugiroud had once taught Philosophy. It would make a long, but pleasant, walk among some of his favourite streets. He might even revisit the bullet hole, unless they had plastered it over, although he had still seen it—and the other bullet holes from a Nazi sniper—on his last visit here, in ’58. It wasn’t every tourist who could look at a wall in Paris and say, “And that was the bullet that nearly got me.” My first visit to Paris, he thought, just ten days before the Germans left. He looked around his elegant and peaceful room; and he shook his head slowly.

He rose to find another cigarette. There should be a couple, at least, left in the pack in his raincoat pocket. As his hand touched the coat, he had his first suspicion. He pulled the coat off its hanger, and the suspicion was a fact. It wasn’t his.

There was no identification mark, not even the usual label at the back of the collar. He dug his hand into the deep pockets to find some scrap of information, but there were only two folded sheets of blank airmail paper, as if someone had meant to write a letter and never got around to it. And that was all.

He looked at the coat again—same colour and same shape, but many raincoats were. Only the texture of the fabric was different. Hell and damnation, he thought, this takes care of my morning. I’ll have to start telephoning around. Where do I begin? He stared angrily at the coat, at his shattered plans. One of those efficient prize packages who shuttled luggage in and out of this hotel must have mixed up—no, possibly not. It could have happened back at the airport, with that other efficient prize package of a porter. And Fenner’s attention had been wandering; first with the man who had collapsed; second, with Ballard’s unexpected appearance; third, with Ballard’s constant stream of questions; fourth, with talk of Sandra.

He cursed himself for an idiot, sighed wearily and telephoned the baggage porter downstairs.

Had any guest returned a wrongly delivered raincoat this morning? No one had.

Would the porter check and find out? The raincoat would have to belong to someone who had arrived or departed around half-past nine.

The porter could tell him that right away. There had been several early departures this morning before eight o’clock, and some arrivals around ten o’clock. Only four people had had their luggage moved between nine-fifteen and nine-forty-five. One was Monsieur Fenner, the other three were ladies. He would investigate further if necessary.

“No need, thank you,” Fenner said. He was sure in his own mind, now, that the coat had been picked up by mistake at the airport. He had put it down, after jamming the book back into its pocket—yes, that was the last time he had touched it.

The scene at the airport came back to him. The man next to him had had a raincoat, hadn’t he? Yes, coming back from that abortive expedition for water, he had seen the man collapse and the coat fall with him... There had been a coat thrown over his legs when they tucked him on the stretcher. So that’s how it happened...

He had better start calling Orly. He would probably have to use French, so he must get his story brief and clear. It would be better still to be able to use the man’s name: that simplified all explanations. There must be some identification on the raincoat; people did not travel around without identification. Fenner searched the edge of the sleeves and the pockets. No label, no inked name on any part of their lining. But this time, as he thrust the blank folds of airmail paper back into its pocket, roughly, annoyance growing at every defeat, his knuckles felt something. There was a slight thickness between the pocket’s loose lining and the heavier lining of the coat itself. A very slight thickness, of cloth possibly, from some hidden felt or seam. He pulled his hand out quickly, with exasperation at his own time-wasting. His impatience had added to the delay: a thread, loose in the pocket’s lining, was snagged around the stem of his wrist watch. He tried to free his watch, but it was well caught. He tried to snap the thread, but it was strong, of nylon possibly: he would end by pulling off the stem of his watch. Cut it loose? Easier, in his annoyance, to try to break the thread at its other end in the pocket. It didn’t belong to any seam, this thread; it had been drawn out of the lining material itself. So he tugged at it with a quick, firm snap. The thread ran along the lining for a good three inches, and the material parted in a neat line.

There you’ve done it, he told himself angrily. Then he looked in amazement at the two gaping lips of cloth. He hadn’t pulled at a thread; he had opened a secret kind of zipper. His watch was still firmly trapped by the end of the thread. With the coat over his arm, he went into the bathroom, found his small folding scissors in his shaving kit, and cut his watch free. After all that trouble, he felt he was owed a look at the secret pocket. Inside, lightly held in place with Scotch tape, was an envelope. It was unaddressed, opaque. There was something inside, not heavy, not bulky; smooth and firm.

Fenner walked back into the bedroom, threw the coat on the nearer bed, and ripped the envelope open. He was angry and he was troubled. The incredible secrecy of the pocket was much too professional a job for a normal person to have planned. The man in the brown suit had been either a very clever criminal or a canny lunatic.