“And if you had slipped coming off the plane and broken your leg? What would have happened to your darned plans then?”
Fenner’s answer was to clap Carlson’s shoulder reassuringly. “Again, where do I leave that key?”
“Anywhere you like. The door’s self-locking.” Carlson held out his hand. “Good luck with your book.”
“Good luck to you. And thank your friend for putting me up for the week-end. I’d like to have met her.”
Carlson looked at him.
“Blue-edged writing paper in the desk drawer with blue-lined envelopes, flowered cap behind shower curtains, a scent of jasmine and roses in the closet that took several months to build up. Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“Elementary, hell. You are at least high-school level. I guess old Rosie was right about you.”
“And what did Rosie have to say?”
“You’ll find out if you don’t take my advice and clear out,” Carlson said blithely. “I tell you, Bill, there are times when the only way to deal with a threat is to run.”
The phrase had an echo of Claire Connor. Fenner’s thoughts were too easily pushed in her direction. He was both amused and disturbed by that admission. It seemed as if everything she had said, everything she had done—the simplest word, the smallest movement—had struck deep into his memory.
“What’s wrong?” Carlson asked.
“Relax, Neill, I was just thinking of the Café Racine.”
“I told you before, and I meant it: keep clear of that place. Keep clear of Proprietor Roussin.” Carlson guessed Fenner’s thought from the unexpected shock in his face. “No, no,” he said quickly. “Roussin isn’t the one who betrayed Vaugiroud’s past. It’s the woman, Angélique, who told her fascist friend, the industrialist, who told his new Communist friends about Roussin and Vaugiroud.”
“But how did she learn?”
“From her late husband, Roussin’s brother. Vaugiroud’s unit helped him to escape to North Africa in 1943.”
So Roussin had thought that the secret between him and his brother was buried in his brother’s grave. “You’d better warn Roussin,” Fenner said.
“Vaugiroud is going to do that tomorrow.”
That was best. Roussin was not an easy man to persuade.
Carlson was saying, “So you know why I’ve been losing my sleep over you. Angélique is watching every contact Roussin makes. What do you think she has reported about you, sitting alone, waiting for Roussin to talk to you? No more of that, Bill. Leave—”
“She has reported that I was waiting for a girl.”
“And when the girl didn’t turn up? Nice going, Bill, but not good enough for Angélique.”
“But the girl did turn up.”
“You were meeting someone?” Carlson’s eyes were wide. He had a smile of relief spreading over his face.
“Not exactly. But a pretty girl did join me. Most enthusiastically, I might say, although I’m still wondering why. It would look perfectly natural, even to old hawk-eyed Angélique.”
“You have the devil’s own luck.”
“The trouble with the devil’s luck is that it doesn’t last long. Instead of a pleasant evening with a beautiful blonde, I’ve been talking with you.”
“Well, well.” Carlson was at ease again, his hand reaching to open the door. “I’m glad to hear she was beautiful—while she lasted.”
“You saw her today. Outside the Crillon. Remember the girl I wanted to give a lift—”
“Yes,” Carlson said, looking at him, “I remember.”
“But I saw her first. Remember that, too.”
Carlson half-smiled.
“She’s a pretty high-powered little package in her sweet little way.”
“She is, is she?” Carlson shook his head. “I still think you’d be safer in Copenhagen. By the way—Rosie may drop in to see you.”
Fenner came out of his dream. “Why?”
“Heavens knows. He has, as they say at Harvard, his own thought processes. Just keep refusing all his bright ideas, and you’ll get that book written.” He opened the door abruptly to cut off any further questions. “See you, some day. But not too soon, I hope.” He looked out at the landing, nodded, gave Fenner a broad grin and another handshake. The door closed gently, surely, and locked automatically.
Bill Fenner went slowly to bed—ten minutes spent wandering restlessly through the apartment; five minutes at the window with its view; some scattered minutes opening his suitcase to free his clothes from creases, searching for toothpaste and hair-brush—not only because he was so exhausted that every movement had become the semiparalysis of a dream, but also because his mind, tired as it was, raced and jumped. He had plenty to think about. Carlson had told him far too much. Why? To impress him enough to lie low, clear out? Carlson wanted that, obviously. Or had Carlson been following orders to put him in the picture as much as was feasible, to give him some ideas to sleep on, to prepare him—for what?
At two o’clock he gave up, stripped off his clothes, fell into a bed that was nicely firm and yet yielding. Linen sheets, no less, ice-cool, smelling of sunlight and clover. Bliss, he thought, the kind of bliss that women think up when they put their minds to it. The owner of this apartment had the right ideas for living, certainly. For a few moments, he wondered what she looked like. Brunette and fastidious, as cool and smooth as this pillow... And then there was the beginning of a deep slide, steady and gentle, down into the dark caves of sleep.
11
Far away, a small bell rang. And kept ringing. Nearer, louder, nearer, until it echoed at his ear. Fenner came out of his deep sleep as smoothly as he had entered it. Time to wake anyhow. It must be noon. The narrow strips of sunlight stretched from the shuttered window across the floor, a golden ladder pointing to the chair with his tumbled clothes. God, I was tired last night, he thought, as he stretched his spine. The ’phone rang again on the table beside the bed. As he reached for the receiver, he was astounded to see that his watch said only ten o’clock. He had gained two hours on this day, after all. “Ici Fenner. Parlez!”
“You amaze me,” Frank Rosenfeld said. “Such geniality at this hour! Had breakfast?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’ll bring the croissants, and you put on the coffee. Fair division of labour.” In spite of the sociable phrases, Rosie sounded sharp-set. He hadn’t slept so well, obviously; or, he meant business. He must have telephoned from around the corner, for he arrived in less than five minutes, neatly dressed in a dark-grey suit and a crisp white shirt, croissants in a string-tied parcel dangling from one curved finger, an amused smile on his amiable lips, a quick all-over glance from his sharp brown eyes. First they took in Fenner, who had just had time after the brief telephone call to pull on pyjama trousers, start the coffee percolating, open shutters and curtains. “Had a good eight hours, I see,” Rosie said approvingly. His eyes travelled around the cool, shadowed living-room, which faced west toward the towering walls of Notre-Dame, and rested on the vase of white roses. “A House of York sympathiser?”
Fenner hoped he had hidden his flicker of astonishment. It never was very flattering to let a man see you had underestimated him. And why shouldn’t an Intelligence agent be interested in history? He helped its shaping, one way or another, just as the soldiers who won, or lost, a battle helped to decide the kind of future their country would face. “She has everything cosily arranged. There’s a small table for breakfast set up at the bedroom windows.”
But his remark led nowhere. Rosie did not even seem to hear his reference to a woman, far less explain her. He glanced in at the sunlit bedroom, discarded it, and returned to the cold living-room. He settled quite definitely in a green armchair by a coffee table, well away from the windows, and began opening the parcel of croissants. “These are the best in Paris,” he said. “But why the hell haven’t they got around to inventing paper bags?”
Fenner relinquished his hope for a pleasant breakfast in front of an open w
indow filled with September sunshine. (The owner of this apartment and he shared some tastes in common, it seemed.) He pulled on his pyjama jacket and dressing-gown, poured the coffee, found some sugar (she used several American brands, he noticed from his search among the cans on the pantry shelves), and hoped he would be at least granted a peaceful half-hour. He disliked any kind of serious politics before his third cup of coffee. Until then, back in his New York apartment, he looked over the theatre, book, and sports pages of the Chronicle, Times, and Tribune. And with food inside him, he felt fortified enough to face the news of the day with all its puzzles and frustrations, alarms and excursions.
Rosie was human, apparently. He allowed Fenner the recovery space of two excellent croissants and two cups of strong coffee, chatting affably about the recent governmental reprimand to the Comédie-Française for spending elaborate production on nitwit plays—a situation that the advocates of state-supported theatre had never imagined could develop. It had been that anomaly which had first amused Fenner, interested him in writing about national theatres. His own views were objective: he would find out the facts, the good and the bad, and set them down without any covert attack or special pleading.
“You’ll be damned by both sides,” Rosie predicted.
“There’s always a middle ground, where reasonable men can argue.”
“Must be nice,” Rosie said quietly, watching Fenner light his cigarette, “to have reasonable men as your opponents.”
At last we’re getting down to business, Fenner thought. But Rosie was approaching it gently (and when it comes, Fenner thought again, it will be like a bucket of ice water). He lit his own cigarette thoughtfully. “It’s a world pretty far removed from what you dipped into yesterday.”
Fenner agreed on that. “I prefer my own world,” he admitted. He smiled and added, “I’ll stay with it.”
Rosie shot him a quick, hard glance. “Can you? Can anyone? Sometimes, there is a matter of priority. In a time of crisis, we may find precious little left of the world of art if we don’t pay attention to the world of power politics.”
Fenner could agree on that, too. “Civilisation is a perishable commodity. But still—”
“Still what?”
“Life is short; art is long. That’s one way of looking at it.”
Rosie exploded. “Long? If an implacable enemy, proud, hard, can force his ideology on art, how long will it live—as we know it? He has got to change it, pull it down to his level. How else can he maintain his authority? He won’t allow himself to be shown inferior. If he can’t usurp and change a civilisation over which he has managed to seize domination, he will be forced to destroy it. What would happen to the freedom in our world of art if we lost this war of power politics?”
I’ve really stirred up old Rosie, Fenner thought. Surely he doesn’t think that I don’t know what is at stake. Or has he met so many who ignore it that he has got to assume I may be one of them? And why doesn’t he want me to be one of them? What does he want me to do? But I’m not ready to hear it yet; not until I know still more about Rosie. Yesterday he was a quick-witted guy with a droll tongue. Today, even if he is trying to reach me by talking about things that interest me, he is really concerned. About what? Does he really believe what he is saying—he is not just a man who likes the mystery and hidden power of his job? “It would be the first freedom to go,” Fenner agreed. “Yet your implacable men, proud and hard, don’t win in the long run. How many political systems have come and gone since Sophocles wrote his plays? You can still read them, sometimes even see them produced. But where are the fanatic power groups that thought they had a grip on the world by its throat?”
“How many plays did Sophocles write?”
“About a hundred.”
“How many exist today?”
“Seven.”
“And the others lost, destroyed?”
“Most thoroughly.”
“Like most of the plays by Euripides and Aeschylus, or the poems of Pindar.”
Fenner looked at Rosie with interest. He smiled. “You win,” he said. “Art is long, provided the barbarians don’t get their hands on it.”
“And it’s the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy. A bunch of illiterate vandals come blundering in. They’ll destroy anything in sight, but what is hidden may escape them. But the educated barbarian knows what to search for. He knows. That’s my point, Bill. He is selective in his destruction. He knows what must be destroyed if he is to hold power. He—” Rosie’s intensity slackened as he looked at Fenner. He frowned. “When did you stop disagreeing with me?” he asked. “Or don’t you disagree?”
“I tried hard.”
“You’re a son of a.”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve wasted three whole minutes by my watch.”
“Not wasted, I assure you.”
Rosie took a deep and audible breath. He shook his head slowly, a smile growing on his lips. “All right,” he said, “we can get down to business. I saw Neill Carlson after he left you, this early morning. He sent your message to Walt Penneyman, all right. By telephone, actually. Cable will follow as verification.”
“Whatever did he have to say to Penneyman that made him telephone?” Fenner was alert.
Rosie concentrated on lighting another cigarette. “I did the talking with Penneyman. I’ve met him. Last April, to be exact, but that little story will have to wait. At the moment, let’s concentrate on you. I have been thinking about your situation.”
“And it isn’t good?”
“From my point of view, it’s perfect.”
Fenner’s amusement ended. “Carlson didn’t like it.”
“Oh, Neill and I don’t always agree on methods. Besides, he feels sort of responsible for you.”
“Why? If I hadn’t handed over the money to him yesterday, there would have been someone else.” But not someone, perhaps, whose judgment I trusted enough to put him in touch with Vaugiroud. Strange in a way, Fenner thought, how Carlson and I got on so well, and so quickly: a rare thing, too, the older one got, and all the more pleasant for that.
“That’s how I see it. You did get involved. Of your own free will. Didn’t you?”
That was going rather too far. “The money in Goldsmith’s raincoat hadn’t much to do with my free will.”
“But after that?”
Yes. It was true enough. “One thing led to another.”
“It always does. That’s why I’m here. You’ve guessed that, of course.”
“What are you trying to do? Recruit me?”
Rosie was shocked. “Good heavens, no. There’s just a small assignment which you could handle.”
“Why me?”
“First, you’ve learned quite a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Carlson put you in the picture, more or less. I don’t have to spend valuable time on arguing about Communist conspiracy. Right? Second, you’re a newspaperman—”
“Once upon a time, only.”
Rosie shook his head. “Once upon a time and always. You know that. So does Walt Penneyman. You’ll find a cable from him waiting for you at the Chronicle’s office suggesting that you interview two of the prize neutralists returning from the Belgrade Conference on their reactions to the Russian bomb test. That will take care of André Spitzer’s curiosity about your change of plans and hasty departure.”
“And where do I interview the returning neutralists?”
“Oh, they are making quite a jaunt of their visit to Europe. Some will recover from their labours in Rome, Athens. And two—so a rumour says—have decided to relax in Venice. I heard you didn’t dislike the place.”
Venice...
“Yes,” Rosie said, “that’s where you’ll find your story. It’s big. It’s so big, in fact, that Penneyman would certainly not object if you hadn’t time for any interviews.”
“You’d let me write that story?” Fenner was disbelieving.
“It will be written about. That�
��s for sure. You might as well have first crack at it.”
“So it isn’t something that’s top secret.” Or even minimum secret, Fenner thought; Rosie wasn’t exactly the type to let anything out of his private files unless it had descended to the common-knowledge level.
“At present, it is highly top secret. It will be for the next week. After that—it’s anyone’s story. I’m giving you the chance to be able to write it first.” He rose, stretched his shoulders, walked over to the window.
Fenner waited, but Rosie was keeping his silence. “Go on,” Fenner said.
“Not until I know if you are interested.”
“How can I be interested until I know what you are talking about?”
“Were those three minutes wasted after all?” Rosie asked slowly.
Fenner shook his head. “Far from it. If you ask me to do anything for you, I know that you aren’t using me for some quick little advantage of your own. I am not a labour-saving device. I’m not just a lucky opportunity, either, to help someone get a promotion. And here is something for you to know: I may do this job, but not for you or your department; not even for your whole organisation. I may do it because I just like Americans to be able to go on living their own kind of life. That’s why I’m listening to you.”
Rosie had walked slowly back to face him, his eyes never leaving Fenner.
“Also,” Fenner said, “if I go to Venice, it won’t be for the sake of any news story. So you don’t have to use that as bait. Just tell me what’s at stake: if I can help, I’ll do it. If I can’t, I’ll say no. Will you risk that?”
Rosie said slowly, “Yes, I believe I will.” He sat down again. “I’ll lay it on the line, Bill. You may not like part of this story, but hear me out, will you? The stakes are high. The highest, in fact. An assassination of the head of a Western state. It’s planned for next week.”
“An assassination? Who is to be removed—De Gaulle?”
“Quick to guess, aren’t you?”
The Venetian Affair Page 14