“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tom Tit pouted.
“You don’t? Then let me enlighten you.” Shard stared down at Tom Tit and proceeded to take his brief well beyond his present knowledge. “There’s a threat to the lives of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary after they arrive in Paris. I know it. You know it. So do yourself a favour. Tell me about Tex.”
He tried not to show his utter astonishment when Tom Tit burst into a peal of laughter. It was hysterical but even so it carried some sort of conviction. Tom Tit was genuinely amused at a total misconception. Shard knew he had thrown away what might have been a good hand. His basic ignorance of the facts was now all too clear to Tom Tit. An avenue had closed itself. Inwardly Shard cursed himself, but he kept a good front. He said, “All right, then. Have it your way. But when little fat Annie opens up I’ve a hunch she’s going to cook your goose for you.”
He backed to the door and knocked on it. It was opened up, locked again after he emerged. He told the officers he wanted to talk to the girl. He was taken to an interrogation room; there were currently no charges against little fat Annie, who in a painful sense was the victim. He found her sitting gingerly on the bandages applied in Bourg St Andéol, but otherwise placid and happy. She was so bovine … Shard said he hoped she was feeling better.
“Thank you, yes.”
“Good.” Shard sat down, facing the girl across a plain scrubbed table. “Now, you’ve spoken to my WDC — to Miss Brett. You’ll know who I am.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I know. A policeman from London.”
He nodded. “Do you know why I’m here — why I went to the commune?”
“No?” She sounded curious to know. Shard wasn’t going to tell her yet. He asked her about Tex, attaching no strings or suggestions to the question.
“He is God,” little fat Annie said with simplicity.
“Yes, so I understand. Can you tell me a little about his divinity, Annie?”
She said, “He exalts the soul. He lifts it up.”
“In a UFO?”
It was meant to be sardonic; but little fat Annie nodded vigorously and happily. She had no worries, no doubts, life had been ironed out for her. Death was not to be feared; when the time came the UFOs would lift all the believers to paradise.
“What’s paradise?” Shard asked, baffled by stupidity.
“So many things. It is individual.”
“How?”
She said with that candid simplicity that was obvious manna to Tex’s ambitions, “Each person — he or she makes his or her own paradise by his or her desires. If the soul strains after the desire, it is given in paradise.”
“That’s what Tex says?”
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh. And your desires, Annie?”
She said, “Sex.”
“Ah. So in paradise —”
“In my paradise all will be sex. Day and night, all the time, sex. It will be so wonderful.”
“And it’ll be the same for all the believers?”
She nodded. “Yes. According to the soul’s desires, yes. But I think mainly sex, which is the desire of most.”
“And all the hippies in that commune — they’re all believers in Tex?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“And you still are?”
“Of course, yes.”
“You’ve not asked yourself why he hopped the twig?”
She seemed puzzled. “Hopped the twig?”
“Did a disappearing act, Annie. Left you all to face the police. Had you thumped on the backside. Doesn’t it all sort of disturb your faith?”
“Oh, no,” she said with confidence. “He will have his reasons. He is the important one, the one who must be preserved. When your Jesus Christ came down to earth, he was persecuted —”
“There are differences,” Shard pointed out. “He never left anyone in the lurch. But are you saying that Tex came down to earth, like —”
“Yes, that is what I say. He has been there. That is why he knows, you see. He is another son of the same God. He has described it all to everyone.”
“To each a different story, according to the individual desires?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “In the house of the father —”
“Tex’s father?”
“Yes. In his house are the many mansions. But as I have said to you already, chiefly sex.”
Shard nodded. He said, “I’m sure you have a very happy life with all that to look forward to. I’ll accept your belief, Annie. Now let’s talk about something else, shall we? Mikhail, natural son of Stanislav Asipov. I gather you met him in Paris not long ago. I’d like to know all about that.”
Mikhail, too, was wonderful, Annie said. So beautiful, so strong, so sweet, with such good friends, also Russian. She loved Mikhail, she told Shard, sounding passionate. More, he asked, than she loved Tex? Oh, no. A different kind of love, an earthly one. Her love for Tex was on a different plane, basically the one the UFOs would one day fly to. There was no inconsistency at all, no more than there was in a wife loving her husband as well as loving God. Shard accepted that point with a wry face and pressed Annie about Mikhail and his friends.
A picture of a sort began to emerge.
*
Shard rang the Embassy from police HQ. He got Hedge, who sounded twittery and anxious. Yes, they would meet. Not in the Embassy, better if Shard didn’t show his face around there, and not, this time, in Notre Dame. In the gardens flanking the Champs Elysées and facing the US Embassy in the Rue Boissy-d’Anglas there was a public lavatory.
“Dangerous,” Shard said, tongue in cheek.
“I don’t mean in it,” Hedge snapped. “Near it there’s a bench. I’ll be reading Paris-Match —”
“Just in case I don’t recognise you?”
Hedge slammed the receiver down. Shard left police HQ and arrived at the bench before Hedge, who had had a shorter walk, but there was a reason for his delay as he explained when he puffed up clutching Paris-Match like a baton. “Might have been followed, don’t you know, so I took a very wide detour.” The bench was a back-to-back affair and that was how they talked, not without some difficulty.
Shard said, “We’re close to the American Embassy, Hedge.”
“So what?”
“The Americans may get the blame, you may be thought one of theirs.”
“I don’t give a damn about the Americans,” Hedge said crossly, “and I hope I’m not in the least likely to be mistaken for one in any case. What have you found out?”
“Firstly that little fat Annie’s a sex maniac —”
“Not important, Shard.”
“Just as you say, Hedge. What I found out was this: Mikhail’s not alone in Paris. There was some dangerous work somewhere along the Baltic coast, then a sea trip. Normandy beaches. Being a non-person is a powerful incentive to taking a big risk to get out of the Soviet Union, it seems. Mikhail has a number of his non-person mates with him … apparently it’s not uncommon in Russia for the paperwork to get ballsed up —”
“Not that expression, please!”
“All right. The point is, Mikhail didn’t want Tex to get to know he was in Paris. Little fat Annie was to be very careful about that.”
“Why?”
“That didn’t emerge.”
“Well, it should have.” Hedge was pettish. “Didn’t you press?”
“Of course. But she didn’t know. He hadn’t said. I believe her. For one thing, she’s too damned thick … for another, she’s honest. She’s a very nice girl, Hedge. I mean that. Her visit to Ernestine Kolnisenko was a genuine good deed. She wanted to help both Mikhail and his mother.”
“I don’t see how someone who’s sex mad can be considered very nice. Perhaps that point was germane after all.”
Shard grinned to himself. He said, “Well, I don’t know, Hedge. I had a word earlier with Roberts-White. That hole in the pavement — he had some theories about your —”
/> “Thank you, Shard, that’ll do.” Hedge’s tone was icy; behind Shard’s back his face grew red. “You don’t seem to have found out very much, do you? Dragging me out here at risk of being seen, you must be crazy.”
Shard said, “I’ve not found out much yet, I agree. But I aim to do so. I need your preliminary help. Your word, you know — it carries weight.”
“Yes.”
“More than mine, with the French authorities.”
“No doubt, no doubt, but —”
“They won’t release little fat Annie.”
“Good gracious, I should think not!”
“They’re not making charges, but they regard her as helping with their enquiries —”
“Quite right, Shard.”
“Perhaps. But not if you want to protect our VIPs. I assume you do.”
“I do dislike rudeness, Shard. You’re so uncouth at times, don’t imagine for one moment it’s lost upon me.”
“Quite. Get her set loose, Hedge. We have a lot to find out. Little fat Annie can give us a lead.”
Hedge blew out his breath. “Oh, dear! How?”
“Because once she’s free, she’ll be liable to be contacted by two persons: Mikhail, and Tex. When she is, I want to be around. And we haven’t much time left, have we, Hedge?”
7
Hedge had been persuaded; it had not been a difficult task. In his mind little fat Annie was expendable and if things went wrong for her it wouldn’t matter much. Back in the Embassy he made telephone contact with police HQ. When the police spoke rapid French at him and sounded unco-operative, he passed them over to Roberts-White. The First Secretary, a tactful man with high-ranking contacts inside the Préfecture, achieved the desired result. Little fat Annie would be released and a very discreet tail would be put on her. The local radio would help: an announcement would be made in the news broadcasts that the woman brought in from the hippie commune in the south had been freed by the police. When he had cut the call Roberts-White asked Hedge where the girl was expected to live.
“That’s her problem,” Hedge answered.
“But she hasn’t any money.”
“How do you know that?”
“The police said so. Also, she’s going to be told to remain in Paris —”
“With no address given?” Hedge clicked his tongue. “What a country. How fortunate one isn’t French! You’d better ring them back and tell them to provide her with cash, recoverable from the Embassy —”
“But she’s not British, Hedge. She’s Russian. I can’t authorise any disbursements for a Soviet citizen.” Roberts-White gave Hedge a sardonic look. “Of course, I could always ask the Russian Embassy for help, I suppose.”
Hedge snapped, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” He had no other suggestions to offer and the net result was homelessness for little fat Annie. Hedge was not worried; she was of loose morals and would cope. Roberts-White passed further information gleaned from the police: the girl would be told to report daily and her Soviet passport, in the name of Annie Glemko, had been impounded until further notice. Hedge ordered a check to be made on Annie Glemko with Whitehall; she had, after all, been in Britain recently and would have needed a visa. But when the reply came back it seemed that Whitehall knew nothing of interest concerning anyone named Glemko.
*
Shard knew he was being something of a bastard; playing with a girl’s safety, possibly for all he knew with her life, was not a thing to be lightly undertaken. But he had his job to do and the security of the PM and the Foreign Secretary had to be paramount. He was developing a theory as a result of his talk with little fat Annie: Mikhail Asipov/Kolnisenko could be the key. Mikhail was in Paris with a number of other young men and women, non-persons as he had told Hedge. Tom Tit had seemed to find it funny that Tex should have any designs on the safety of the British VIPs; Tex according to little fat Annie was not to know that Mikhail was in Paris — but earlier, back in the commune in the Ardèche, Tex had not appeared to know who Mikhail was. That could have been a mendacious act. Probably was. Anyway, Tex and Mikhail appeared to be on opposite courses. In simple terms, one might be the goodie, the other the baddie. But Shard could see no likely connexion between either of them and the VIPs due in so soon from London.
Everything was yet to be found out.
In the meantime Shard was still dressed as a hippie and that might have its advantages. Eve Brett was similarly disguised; and together they could fade into the background of the Paris streets until the police made contact. This they would do by means of a pocket transceiver. Shard, who had conceived the idea of freeing little fat Annie before he had left police HQ to meet Hedge, had made a generalised and successful plea for the means of personal radio contact; the transceiver was in the hippie-type bag slung from his shoulder. Hedge, who knew this, would have passed the word for Shard to be contacted the moment little fat Annie looked like becoming a helpful lead. Nothing was likely to happen yet. Shard drifted along towards the Champs Elysées, one of a crowd. He had arranged to contact WDC Brett by telephone after he had finished with Hedge; in the meantime she would be having further words with little fat Annie prior to the latter’s release. Woman to woman, things could emerge, little things that might prove important. Finding a telephone, Shard called HQ: WDC Brett would rendezvous outside the Metro at Champs Elysées Clemenceau in half an hour.
*
Little fat Annie was on top of the world. She hadn’t minded the police; the English policewoman had been nice and friendly and they had chatted amicably until release had come. It was nice to be free … Paris was so beautiful and the shops were wonderful. It was hot but little fat Annie didn’t mind that. She drifted along, smiling at all the world, placid, cowlike, thinking about Tex, but thinking without anxiety. Tex would be all right; Tex was immortal, untouched by what happened on earth. Soon they would all come together again in another happy hippie commune. She felt this in her bones. Her only worry was the divergence between Mikhail and Tex, the fact that she had a secret from Tex in regard to Mikhail. She felt an abounding love for them both and she wished they were friends; she would like Mikhail to join the commune, ideally. Then his mother could come over from England and they would both be happy, happy in Tex. That was, if it hadn’t been for this secrecy …
Little fat Annie was utterly unaware of the police tail behind her. A long, thin plain clothes man with a lugubrious face, dyspeptic looking, almost ulcerous. Five o’clock shadow in plenty and a disagreeable twist to his mouth due partly to his stomach and partly to his wife’s nagging: she didn’t like being married to a policeman and wanted him to resign and join his father-in-law in running a patisserie in Montmartre. This, Pierre Desbans resolutely refused to do, even though he was himself disenchanted with police life. Patisseries meant too much pastry by the very nature of their business, and Montmartre was a den of thieves and sin and his father-in-law was a very horrible man with a wife who nagged more than Marie. As a result of his refusal, Marie had begun to apply sanctions against him but at the same time was satisfying her natural desires with other men, men whom she flaunted at him brazenly, saying that it would stop only at the patisserie. If she was not careful, Marie would one day find her throat cut or strangled …
Preoccupation was bad for the concentration. After a while Pierre Desbans became aware that he had lost the girl. He gazed about in panic, put on speed, his stomach growing very bad with worry. It was no use; she had gone. He was a tail without a dog.
He halted, jostled by the crowd. He said, “Merde!” and then reached into his pocket for his transceiver.
*
The report, very apologetic, reached Shard via his transceiver and was also passed to Hedge in the British Embassy. Hedge was livid, all his deep feelings about foreign inefficiency proved right as he had known they would be.
“Can’t be trusted to boil an egg!” he raved.
Roberts-White was less moved. He said, “Well, it’s a pity, I suppose, but —”
&nb
sp; “Pity! Good God, man, don’t you realise … the PM —”
“We don’t know there’s any connexion, Hedge, it’s really no more than conjecture.”
“Conjecture? Asipov — Kolnisenko — this ridiculous Tex —”
“Yes, yes, Hedge, I do understand all that, I assure you. But really I fail to see how a lunatic who believes in UFOs can possibly be a threat —”
“That’s not the point! The point’s this fat girl and the man Mikhail.” By this time Hedge had convinced himself that he had put Shard on the right track, all his own idea. He was seeing all manner of nasty happenings in the Paris streets, or even at the airport notwithstanding that the police presence would be so immense — even in the Presidential palace, even in the National Assembly. Of course it was French responsibility primarily to guard their guests but if anything went wrong the heavens would descend upon himself as well. “What are the fools doing about it, Roberts-White?”
“There’s a full scale search, Hedge.”
“A fat lot of good that’ll be!” Hedge padded furiously about the room, this way and that, cheeks wobbling. “Shard ought to have done the job himself — the tailing. It’s very remiss of him.”
Roberts-White started to put Hedge’s earlier thought into words. “The French — it’s their —”
“Oh, damn and blast the French, Roberts-White, all this is far too dangerous to allow stupid protocol or national feelings to stand in the way of efficiency. For two pins, I’d tell them so!”
Roberts-White pointed. “There’s the telephone, Hedge.”
Hedge stopped and stared. “What? Oh, don’t take up everything I say, my dear fellow. Get Shard here.”
“I can’t.”
“No, but the French police can, they’re in contact with him. Ring them and get them to pass the word.”
*
Little fat Annie knew precisely where she was going. She had no money; something had to be done about that, and Mikhail was the obvious answer. She didn’t know Mikhail’s actual whereabouts but she had met him in Montmartre and he had seemed familiar with the district and appeared to be known to the proprietor of a café opposite the steps leading up to the Sacré Coeur. It was possible he might visit that café; it was her best hope in any case. It was a long walk but little fat Annie set out with a smile on her face. When she got there, with no money to buy coffee and thus entitle herself to a seat at one of the pavement tables, she sat on the ground opposite and waited expectantly. She waited a long time and there was no sign of Mikhail; she decided it would do no harm to ask the café proprietor if he had seen Mikhail lately. She got to her feet and crossed the road and in so doing bumped into a young Chinese. She gave him a happy smile and said she was sorry. The Chinese moved back with her to the pavement; they were pushed against each other by the crowd, and Annie smiled again, giggling a little.
The Executioners Page 8