by Sarah Smith
It was Lucien Pétiot, up and fully dressed at four in the morning, bandbox-fresh in his blue dress uniform, the color of a perfect sky, ready for Bastille Day. Reisden felt grit down the back of his neck. He touched his unshaven jaw and shrugged apologetically.
“No, no, no, quite all right,” Pétiot said, sitting across from him. “I’ve seen André. He actually seems better. What’s more to the point, I’ve seen Maurice. Maurice is preparing to apologize. We both are.”
“I don’t know that I’ve done anything for André.”
Lucien Pétiot tented his clean, manicured fingers and smiled over them at Reisden. “I am apologizing for the trick I have played on you.”
“What?” The coffee was bringing his headache back. “I’m completely confused, I’m afraid.”
“Yes. I confused you.” Pétiot beamed at him. “I had better start from the beginning, hadn’t I? You see, I know what Gehazy’s looking for. At least what will content him. Come outside.”
They went out the kitchen door and sat on the chalk wall, looking west toward Arras. The moon was pale, low in the southwest, and in the east the sky was tinted with rose, blue, and a few white clouds: a beautiful Bastille Day morning.
“This secret of Montfort. You know, of course, that the Germans are trying to find an excuse to invade France, and that we are negotiating with them, supposedly about Morocco. Parties on both sides want the negotiations to fail.”
Reisden nodded.
“If they were to invade, one of their routes would be the Arras road.” Pétiot drew a finger delicately along the plain below. “They want to know how well we are fortified, whether the Beautiful Useless is the only fortification here.
“Of course we have no forts but the Citadel,” Pétiot said. “A terrible oversight. But suppose that we did have—” he smiled-- “some sort of fortification along the Arras road. Perhaps at Montfort. A secret of Montfort.
“Should we tell them about it?
“In the French government there are also factions. One believes that this hypothetical secret should be a complete surprise to the Germans if they invade. The other—” he bowed slightly— “suggests a fortress is no use unless it’s known about. Maurice is on that side and so am I.”
“Don’t tell me secrets.” A fortress at Montfort?
Pétiot took out his cigaret case and offered it to Reisden, who shook his head. Pétiot lighted his pipe and blew smoke. “I couldn’t simply send a love note to Berlin. I had to let them find it. Fortunately our new allies were curious too; Ambassador Izvolsky wanted assurance that we could stop the Germans. And he sent a spy.”
“Blantire?”
“Thomas Jefferson Blantire, the innocent American working for a German newspaper, riding across Russia on a lark. Thomas Jefferson Blantire, picked up several times by the Cheka on suspicion of being a spy against the Russians. Clever. Even if he were really working for the Russians, whatever he found would get to Berlin, which would satisfy me.”
Half the Russian Secret Service were double agents for the Germans.
“The trouble is, Blantire didn’t find it.”
Pétiot stood and began to pace up and down the terrace, looking toward Arras. “Blantire was overcome by carbon monoxide in the cellars, completely by accident as far as we can tell.”
“And what happened to Mademoiselle Françoise?”
“Oh, who knows? The point is,” he continued, “I had no spy. Until Gehazy appeared.”
“Is Gehazy also working for Izvolsky?”
“They don’t tell me these things. Gehazy approached Jules, who could be blackmailed. I was delighted. But Jules approached you, and by the time you had come to Maurice, you had advised Jules to give Gehazy a false secret. When I wanted him to give them mine! I was indignant.”
“I was helping Jules,” Reisden said. “To help André. Just as Cyron had bloody well asked. Did I know you wanted to give away French secrets?”
“Perhaps you wanted to be sure it was the real one. Maurice distrusts you. And you came to Montfort in May. To spy?”
“Why did Gehazy have Jules beaten up?”
Pétiot nodded reluctantly, as if Reisden had said something he had to agree with but didn’t want to. “We thought you arranged that. To get yourself here.”
“Did someone else arrange it to get me here? You thought I was a spy,” Reisden said. “You intended to let me find your secret and pass it on.”
“But you didn’t find it either!” Pétiot objected. “We let you have your head and run your course, and where did you lead us? Did you spy? Did you find our secret and send it to Sigismund von Loewenstein, or the Germans, or even the Russians? We would have known if you did. No. You told André and Jules and his sister and even the American that there was a secret. You looked for it, elaborately, with diagrams and maps. But you didn’t find it. I was most annoyed. Did you,” Pétiot said thoughtfully, “did you want to find it?”
“I’m not in that game.”
“Or you are immensely clever and want us to think you aren’t. Or you were simply trying to outlast us.”
Reisden stood up and turned to face Pétiot. “I’m not a spy, I’m not playing games, I only want to do my work and protect my family. You could threaten me and intrigue me and flatter me till I did it. Leo came as close as anyone has. But it wasn’t my game, it wasn’t my work, and I turned on him. Ask anyone who was around then. I told you. I am not a pet Austrian spy; I am a simple man.”
“No need to exaggerate, Reisden,” Pétiot said. “You’ve won.”
Reisden looked down at Pétiot, breathing hard.
“Someone else has told Gehazy the secret of Montfort.” Pétiot put his finger on the side of his nose. “Gehazy has a good new informant. Someone he doesn’t even have to blackmail! A Socialist clerk in the government who wants to pass him secrets. Tonight, in his hotel room when he comes back from the Bastille Day dancing, Gehazy will be arrested, he’ll be sent to the Belgian border, but it won’t matter to him because he has enough information to pay off everyone. I think he’ll take up his residence in Switzerland. He’ll spy on Russian dissidents.” Pétiot lit another cigaret. “He’ll be Ambassador Izvolsky’s best friend.”
“Gehazy has the secret already?”
“And not from you. Or Jules. I shall bribe you to forgive me.” Pétiot rummaged in his tunic, under his beard, and brought out two papers. “Here.”
Reisden unfolded them. He looked up to see Pétiot beaming interestedly at him. “These are copies, of course,” said Pétiot. “I’m sending the originals to Paris. There’ll be paperwork to get through, everyone’s leaving for vacation, I imagine these’ll sit on someone’s desk until September. No trouble with that? Glad to be working with Jouvet.”
Two letters on Pétiot’s Army stationery. A man of integrity, worthy to be a citizen . . . It was a letter recommending him for expedited citizenship. And the other, no further obstacle to Jouvet. I recommend Jouvet for the contract.
“I hope you still want the job?” Pétiot asked innocently.
“Yes.” He swallowed his pride. “If we both understand what the job is.”
“My only regret,” said Pétiot, “is that you won’t give me secrets either.”
“Oh? This is not simply step one of fourteen to look at our German files?”
“I’m a simple man too.” Pétiot spread his hands. “I merely like to know my suppliers.”
Well, thought Reisden, you know me. “Bribed to take a test,” he said. “Was Cyron in on this?”
“Maurice simply believes you’re not sufficiently French. D’you know what decided me?” said Pétiot. “Two things. First, you actually do care about André.”
“He is Jouvet’s patient,” Reisden said. “That is my job.”
“If you cure André, Maurice will be happier than he has ever been. And the second? The Americans trusted you.”
“Americans?” Reisden said, at a loss.
“D’you remember that story you t
old me? The American millionaire, the one with the missing boy? The one you look like. I saw the picture, but I didn’t know what you meant until I saw the man himself.”
“You saw him?”
“The most extraordinary thing. They must have trusted you, his people, to let you near him when you looked like his image.”
“You saw Gilbert Knight?” Reisden asked. “In Paris?”
“No, no,” Pétiot said. “Here. Yesterday.”
Reisden and Gilbert in Arras
REISDEN WOKE UP PERDITA. “Where is Gilbert?”
Gilbert was in Arras.
“He was here?” Reisden said.
Perdita sat up in bed, hair rumpled from the pillow, beautiful and defensive and as stubborn as a rock. “He did what you would have done if he were sick; he came. He went away when he knew you were all right—”
“Only staying long enough that Lucien Pétiot got a good look at him!” It had helped, not hurt, but that wasn’t the point at all.
“It doesn’t make any difference what he looks like,” she protested. She was not even able to see in the dim light; she was looking past him.
“You’ve no idea,” he said. “None.”
“Will you see him? Please?”
“I’ll send him back to America,” Reisden said. “Since you won’t.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I won’t, Alexander.”
They were perfecting the art of fighting in whispers, but they’d wakened Toby. Reisden picked him up. “There, darling,” he whispered, rocking him. “There, dearest Toby; dearest, dampest Toby Belch.” He laid Toby down on the bed, put a towel under him, and unpinned and wiped and pinned efficiently.
“We’ve won,” he said. “I’ve won. Jouvet has the contract.” How he’d won stung him. Clever enough to delay? Hiding until the bad men left, more like.
“I’m glad for you,” Perdita said. But she didn’t care. This was their security, and he’d fought hard for it, and nothing mattered to her quite so much as his going to Arras to see Gilbert.
“I’ll see him alone.”
He bathed, as much as he could with a washcloth wetted in drinking water, and shaved painfully. In Cyron’s coach, going to Arras, he fell asleep, too exhausted to dream.
Gilbert’s hotel was the one at which Reisden and Perdita had stayed, the commercial hotel in the Grand’Place. It was early; the sunrise had hardly made its way into the square. All along the arcades, the red in the tricolor bunting caught the pink light. The shops in the arcades were closed, but rows of booths had been set up in the square: toys, balloons, trinkets, and games. The cheesemaker at the corner of the square was hanging flags from his iron signs; his apprentice steadied the ladder and yawned.
And Gilbert was sitting in the open-air cafe by the hotel, at one of the front tables, with a cup of coffee—no, it was probably tea. Gilbert thought coffee was dangerous.
Reisden smiled at his uncle’s foibles, and thought he shouldn’t smile and shouldn’t call Gilbert uncle, and then just looked at him.
Gilbert looked old. Not unhealthy or fragile-boned; he was still what the Irish would have called a lovely old man, straight-backed and with thick white hair and grey eyes that, even at near seventy, needed glasses only for reading. His age showed only in that he was sitting up straight in the way a man will do who, if he doesn’t take care, will slump over in defeat.
He had brought his dog.
A year or so ago, when they had still been corresponding regularly, Gilbert had surprised them by writing he had acquired a dog, not too big a dog, nor one of those little nervous dogs, indeed he seems quite intelligent and affectionate and not at all cast down by his afflictions. Reisden and Perdita had laughed and looked forward to hearing more about Elphinstone, and then Toby had been born.
It was clearly Elphinstone sitting patiently by Gilbert’s cafe chair, with his muzzle on Gilbert’s knee and his eyes on Gilbert’s croissant. He was brown-and-black, with a smooth coat and alert ears and a hunting dog’s patience somewhere in his background. Gilbert’s hand patted his dog’s head absently, but Gilbert was looking apprehensively out into the square, and Gilbert’s book lay neglected by his plate. He knows I’m coming, Reisden thought. Of course Perdita had phoned him.
Elphinstone nuzzled Gilbert’s knee. Gilbert called to the cafe waiter and they consulted over Gilbert’s book, which must be a phrase book. French cafés do not often serve breakfast to dogs, but the waiter went away and came back with something magnificent on a plate and water in a coffee-bowl, and Elphinstone got to his feet and put his head down to it, wagging his tail.
The cheesemaker had finished hanging his flags; the cheesemaker’s two children came out to admire them and to wave their own flags. A passerby gave them coins. The Fourteenth of July is a day for families, for parades and picnics, for candy and toys bought at the street market and for fireworks in the evening: for children. Gilbert waved the children over to him. They came, shyly, dubious about foreigners. He held out his hand with coins on it, in the tentative way a man would hold out breadcrumbs for a sparrow. They came close, holding to each other’s smocks for security. They goggled at the coins and shrieked in alarm, running back to their papa’s shop.
Gilbert put the coins carefully down on the tablecloth, at the edge of the table, as if he hoped the children would be lured back.
“You gave them too much,” Reisden said, sitting down by him. “You frightened them.”
As if this were the most appropriate thing to say, after months of silence. He felt suddenly terribly shy and awkward. Why was he giving Gilbert advice about what to do in France, as if he approved of this visit?
He was demonstrating who the expert on French children was.
A deliveryman crossing the square looked at him and Gilbert, looked again. Elphinstone had cleaned his plate and bowl. “Come away from here,” Reisden said. He considered the saucers and the coins on the table, left two coins for the breakfast and two smaller ones for the children, and gave the rest back to Gilbert. “We’ll go for croissants where we’ll not be seen by everyone.”
Elphinstone limped along behind them. A long scar riffled the fur of his flank. Here we both are, Reisden thought, friends to the damaged.
At the bakery on the Place de la Vacquerie, the walls were covered with mirrors. The two of them chose their breakfast breads, and the mirrors reflected them back at each other. Gilbert was slightly shorter, a bit heavier, with the Roman face of all the Knights: a grey-haired man in a grey suit. Reisden was taller, thinner, black-haired, in a black suit, and not as cleanly shaven as he should have been. They moved alike. They both deliberated like chess players over the choice of croissant; not out of greed, but because they were deliberate over everything. They had the same expression on their face, as if they were about to be thrown to lions. In the mirror, each was looking at his mirrored other. The dog looked from one to the other of them. Something about them puzzled Elphinstone. Perhaps they even smelled alike.
Arras is a green city, full of little parks. They found one and sat down on a bench, Gilbert tentatively at one end, Reisden warily at the other. Elphinstone settled at Gilbert’s feet.
“You came to France,” Reisden said in a low voice. “You shouldn’t have. I want Toby to be free of all the Knights. I want him never to know what happened. Never to be affected by it. You couldn’t stop what happened then, but you can at least take care of him now; you can take care of the rest of your family and keep them from having to go through any more. And you’re not doing it.”
“Alexander—” Reisden heard the little hesitation before Alexander. “Harry has written me. He—he and his wife have decided to have a child.”
“Fine,” he said, denying its relevance to him.
“Yes. After Perdita’s visit,” his uncle said. “They decided.”
“Good. I’m glad.” He was not entirely. He was surprised; he felt the kind of emptiness one feels when an impossible situation has suddenly been solved by other pe
ople. He’d just felt it with Pétiot. “Yes. That’s good.”
“You are glad?” said Gilbert.
“Of course.”
Neither said anything for a moment. Reisden ate some of his croissant, which was dry. “You’ll have an heir,” he said.
“You don’t mind? That the money goes—”
“No.” It was more true to say that he didn’t mind now, with Pétiot’s contract in prospect.
“You’ll be free of all of it,” Gilbert said.
“Yes.”
He looked at the dog, who had laid his chin against Gilbert’s foot.
“You’ll have a child to love,” he said. He thought of Toby. “Children save the world, Gilbert. Another generation. Someone who won’t care about William or Richard; someone to give the money to quite innocently.”
Gilbert looked up at him stricken. “Do you want me to forget you?”
“Forget Richard? As if he had never lived.”
“Then I am keeping you from being forgot?” Gilbert said. “Is that what I am doing?”
The dog looked up at the tone in his master’s voice.
“Don’t,” said Reisden. “Please don’t. You know what I mean.”
“I do,” said Gilbert. “Richard, do you think that having another child, having Harry or Harry’s child, is the same as—as caring for you? Do you think Harry and you are just alike?”
“You have never been good enough to Harry,” Reisden said.
“I cannot make him you.”
“Richard is dead,” Reisden said.
“You are not, Alexander.”
“Think of Toby!” Reisden almost shouted.
Gilbert got up and headed blindly across the park, almost walking on the grass in his haste. Gilbert never walked on the grass. The dog looked after him worriedly and then got up and limped after him. Gilbert stopped at the other end of the park, near a stone tub of geraniums set next a wall. He was waiting for the dog, perhaps. Reisden stood up, suddenly feeling that he should be the dog, should go after him and catch up to him and say something; that it was inconceivable that this should be their last moment. Gilbert looked back and saw him standing, and they stood with the length of the park between them, seeing each other, hesitating.