*
Reports reaching the Embassy via the Paris police indicated that the hippies were now massing. The movement had started with the dawn and by now, mid-morning, was proving a severe embarrassment to security, who were tending to be overwhelmed with dirty bodies and music. The theme was peace, but Shard doubted if it was simply a demo against American missiles, NATO and so on. There had to be a Tex connexion, perhaps an attempt to occupy the police, to divert attention. The hippies couldn’t be disregarded. The massing was taking place around the Eiffel Tower, between there and the Ecole Militaire, and along both banks of the river. The police had managed to keep the bridges clear, but the hippies had taken over the rest. Hopefully they could be cleared before the Russians embarked in their pleasure boat. Urgent contact was made with the Soviet Embassy; Ambassador spoke to Ambassador. The British suggestion, made unofficially behind Mrs Heffer’s back, was that the Soviet should cancel. Niet, the Soviet Ambassador said. The hippies were peaceful and were by no means enemies of the Soviet Union. There was nothing to fear from that direction. The British Ambassador made the point that that might be so but there was still everything to fear from the assassination angle. But he failed to shake his Soviet counterpart. He saw that the thing had gone far beyond a simple pleasure trip. It was a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down, a matter of national pride. Of intransigence, really. East against West, with France in the middle. Nobody was going to be the first to back down.
*
Shard and Eve circulated amongst the hippies. Once again, they were dressed for the part, just two in the mob, which certainly seemed peaceful enough. There was a carnival atmosphere and the pop groups were in full cry, ignoring the police who were hopelessly outnumbered. Paris, Shard thought, had probably never seen anything quite like it. Fornication, like in the commune down south, was taking place openly and a large number of other couples were stark naked, parading about, swaying, dancing, singing. There were banners about peace and love, banners against war and the arms race, banners for or against almost everything. Against blood sports, Mrs Heffer, unemployment, race prejudice; for free love and the GLC — these were the British, and there were many more in French, German, Spanish, Italian and even what looked like Arabic.
Here and there in the side streets police vehicles stood ready with grim-faced uniformed crews. Fire appliances were dotted about. Water-cannon were in evidence, but it would take all the water out of the Seine to damp down this mob, as Shard remarked to Eve as they pushed their way through along the Left Bank.
“If they go into action,” he said, “they’ll be torn apart.”
Eve gave a breathless nod; however peaceful at the moment, the hippies held brooding menace, a potentially unstoppable force. It was claustrophobic. The air was heavy with the acridity of human sweat. The sun blazed down to make it worse. They pushed on from the Pont d’Arcole towards the Pont d’Austerlitz, coming into the commercial port of Paris, the part where the barges could be expected, barges — the legitimate ones — loaded with Flanders coal and steel, building stone, timber from the Vosges, all manner of cargoes brought to Paris by a great network of rivers and canals. But since the day before all movement on the river had been halted; between them Mrs Heffer and the Russian Foreign Minister were being a hindrance to trade.
They moved, slowly, along the Quai de la Tournelle. They were approaching the Pont de Sully leading from Ile St Louis when Shard caught sight of something familiar. Something that could be familiar: a very thin hippie, male, with a pronounced limp. The one, he believed, who had shared food with them at the commune near Bourg St Andéol.
*
There had been another telephone call to the British Embassy: the Prime Minister for the Ambassador, personal, urgent. Mrs Heffer had reached another decision, an alarming one.
“Oh, Stephen. I’m going to join this afternoon’s river trip. With the Russian Foreign Minister … yes. No, I’m adamant. Of course I realise the difficulties I’m making, and of course I appreciate there’s some risk but I really do think not much. Not if I’m there, you see. Oh yes, yes, I know all that, Stephen, but don’t forget it’s the Russians who are under threat, not me. I feel it’s up to me. No, Stephen, I’m not asking for your approval, I’m simply informing you.” There was some more rather splenetic talk about it being up to her to wet her own toes as well as the Russians since it was she who had insisted on the restoration of the agreed schedule and then she rang off. It was only after she had done so that it came to the Ambassador that what the Prime Minister was about to do was in a sense a change from the original programme and that it might rebound onto Hedge. At once he called her back but was told she was unavailable. He tried twice more at intervals with similar results and was then forced to accept the inevitable. With no expectation that it would get him anywhere, he left a message with the PPS.
He sat back, his face deeply troubled. He had to admire courage but refused to admire obstinacy.
*
Shard and Eve Brett had approached the lame hippie, coming up through the mass of people. The hippie had sat himself down with his back against a wall. Shard squatted beside him on the dusty, sandy ground.
“We meet again,” he said.
“Again?” The face was blank.
“You shared your breakfast with us. Not many days ago.”
“Yes, man, I remember now.”
“You were a friend in need. Maybe you can be that again.” Shard was well aware of the risk he was taking; the hippie would remember something else: the fracas with Tex, the fact that it had been to do with Shard, and then the arrival of the police from Bourg St Andéol and the break-up of the commune. But time was running down: three hours, a little over. It was a time for desperate measures and the lame hippie was his only link with Tex. The same principle held: find Tex and you had the best chance you’d ever get of finding Mikhail, finding him in time. He said, “All these people. What’s the idea?”
The hippie said, “The word spread, man. The word spread.”
“From Tex?”
“Yes, from Tex.”
“That he wanted you all here in Paris?”
“Yes, man, that’s right, in Paris.”
“And he’s in Paris?”
“Yes, man.”
“Where, right now? Do you know?”
“No, man, I don’t know.”
“Do you know what you’re all here for?”
“To witness a big event, man.”
“What event?”
“I don’t know, man. No-one knows. We answered the call.”
Shard glanced up at Eve, then back at the hippie. He asked, “How did the call come? By magic — or UFO?”
“Not magic, man, or UFO.” The hippie was speaking as if he were in a dream, or maybe some sort of drug-inspired haze. They all seemed to be the same, had largely been the same back in the commune. The hippie went on, “By messenger, man. We were to be here, that’s all.”
Shard blew out his breath. He was getting nowhere. He did some rapid thinking. Guesses were all he had. Tex would possibly, probably, have made plans long ago against a police raid happening sometime in the commune … he would in that case have made his dispositions ahead, indicating some other gathering places where the hippies — legions more of them now than had been in the commune during Shard’s visit — could be reached with messages after he’d scarpered, though no reports, to Shard’s knowledge, had been made of such gatherings. No doubt there were remote spots in the south of France, deep valleys and such where few other people went and hippies could lie up. But to order his battalions to come here, to the river bank itself … that had to indicate one thing positive: Tex had known all along what Mikhail’s plans were, time, place, the lot.
Not impossible. He would have his contacts. He wouldn’t have gone into this thing unprepared, that was for sure.
Shard believed he wasn’t far now from the heart of it all. But what, really, was Tex’s reason for the gathering? To impress his followers
with the ‘big event’, just that? A kind of heralding, an earnest, of the day the UFOs would come?
Crazy!
No, it had to be the diversionary aspect. The big crowd, the police helpless, everyone getting in the way of everyone else, and Tex could carry out his murder mission against Mikhail and the Avengers of St Petersburg and then get clear away in the mob.
Jerk the hippie to his feet, march him off for questioning? He’d never get clear of the crowds, like the police if they tried to make arrests he’d be torn to pieces. In any case, he didn’t believe the hippie knew any more than he’d already said. He was no big shot, not close to Tex like Frigger and Tom Tit still uselessly in police custody. He was cannon fodder.
Irresolution set in. So near and yet so far. Under three hours now, so many lives in the balance, to say nothing of what would be the spreading tidal wave of trouble in diplomatic relations afterwards.
Suddenly the hippie got to his feet, lurching on the lame leg. Emotion shone from his face, a kind of reverence. He was staring over Shard’s shoulder. Shard felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
He turned.
In the centre of a group of hippies, Tex. Tex in hippie gear but no stetson. Tex who could merge inextricably with his followers but was immediately recognisable to Shard.
Their eyes met.
Tex grinned. He came forward, hands on hips, lounging across the dust. He stared into Shard’s face, into Eve’s. He said, “I reckoned we might meet again. Come. With me. No tricks. You wouldn’t get away with it. I guess you know that for yourself, though. Right?”
16
“Something,” the Ambassador said, “must be done, M’sieur.”
A spread of hands. “But what, M’sieur?” The Prefect of Police felt battered from many sides at once. The Embassy, the Elysée Palace, the Ministry of State for the Interior, the British Prime Minister and the Russian Foreign Minister, not to mention the GIGN. Some were for one thing, others for another. It was a madhouse, was Paris …
The Ambassador said, “Clear the hippies away. Oh, I know it’s easier said than done, but —”
“It is impossible, we have not the men, M’sieur. We have not! I have said many times. And the hippies — they are peaceful —”
“Yes, at the moment —”
“They will remain so, M’sieur! I am positive, I am convinced. Banners of love and peace … no, M’sieur, I beg of you, do not teach me my job. I know all about façades, false faces, the evil of mankind is not a closed book to me, the Prefect of Paris Police.”
“No, of course —”
“I believe it is only a demonstration. A demonstration against war, made for the benefit of the Russian Foreign Minister, M’sieur. That is all. And now, though this they will not know, the British Prime Minister as well, a fine opportunity — I do not condone it, naturally, but the presence of the hippies is a fact and must now be accepted.”
The Ambassador sighed, got up from behind his desk and walked over to the window. It was a very hot day; Paris lay brown and dusty. The roar of traffic came up; the streets were thronged, but there were no hippies to be seen in the vicinity of the Embassy. The river was the magnet: and what in God’s name was going to happen that afternoon? The French seemed almost to be unserious, at least that was the impression given by the Prefect of Police. Leaving the window, the Ambassador spoke of the diversionary aspect referred to by Shard: no avail. That was unimportant, was met with shrugged shoulders. Why make a diversion at the very scene of the crime — if it was to be the river, surely the diversion would be elsewhere? There was no satisfactory answer to that. When the Ambassador made the point that a press of hippies would impede the security men, the Prefect, with yet another shrug, simply returned to his point about the absolute impossibility of clearing the banks by force. They did not want police-inspired bloodshed with the Russians in Paris. The real trouble, he said snappishly, was the foolishness of the politicians, east and west.
There was no satisfactory answer to that either.
*
Force majeure, the simple proximity of so many bodies: Shard had gone along with Tex, no option. Tex had removed his police-issued automatic and his pocket transceiver. With his protective group around him still, Tex sat down on the quayside, right above the river, the deserted river apart from a handful of small boys and girls sunning themselves and playing with model boats controlled by long sticks from the quay on the other bank, not a commercial quay but one that seemed to be a sunbathing spot beneath a high wall. The hippies hadn’t penetrated there, and Shard guessed the area would be cleared of children before much longer.
Tex asked, “Going to watch the fun?”
“What fun?”
Tex laughed. “Guess you know that.”
“Mikhail?”
“Right. Doing everybody a favour, that’s me.”
“By killing Mikhail?”
“Yeah. Any objections?”
“Not really,” Shard said. “Except that I’m a policeman. Are you sure you can get him before he goes into action?”
“Yeah. Dead sure.”
“How?”
“You’ll see. I’m not saying anything yet. Just in case.” Tex picked up a stone, flung it into the river. There was a plop, and ripples spread. Symbolic? Shard could hardly believe that it was going to happen, any of it. The day was too bright for death and destruction. He asked if Tex knew what Mikhail’s plan was. Tex said he knew all right. Little fat Annie had got the word through. When? The precise detail, the final workout — had that been a recent revelation? Yes, Tex said, it had. Very.
Like a disco?
Tex gave a brief laugh. “Sure, like a disco.”
“Was little fat Annie a plant?”
“Well, not exactly a plant. More a go-between, I’d call her. Not too bright … but she sure has a big place in her heart for me, right?” Tex laughed again. “Annie, she’d rat on anyone to keep in cahoots.”
“With you?”
“Sure, with me. All that was needed was a phone call.”
Shard watched the sunlit river scene, wondered what, if Mikhail’s plan should go ahead despite Tex, it would all erupt into. He asked, curiously, why Tex was so intent on killing Mikhail. Just to save the Russians? There could have been other ways of doing that; all Tex had had to do was pass the positive word to the Russian Embassy and that, presumably, would have been that — so long as they believed him.
Tex said, “Sure. And yes, it’s personal. Two birds with one stone.”
“You’re running it a shade close.”
Tex yawned. “Come again?”
“I mean, you could have killed him any time before now, before the end. And made sure.”
“If you say so. I like this way.”
Shard thought, it’s all of a piece: the God-aspect in the commune, the elaborate hoax of the UFOs, the exhibitionism that was part and parcel of Tex, the drama of saved Russians coinciding with the death of an enemy. Why an enemy? What was that personal angle?
Tex said, “Remember Asipov? Stanislav Asipov, back in London?”
“I do.”
“Mikhail’s dad. An undercover dissident, never known as such to the Soviet authorities, right? Not till he tried to do a bunk out.” Tex threw another stone into the Seine, watched until the ripples had died.
“So what?”
“He’d been in the States, right? Maybe you didn’t know that. Doing some dirty work … very dirty. To make it brief, he killed my old man. Never got it pinned on him, of course. Not as murder, which is what it was. He got my old man in the shit with the FBI — informed on him, right? Denounced him … this was a long while after McCarthy, but they still don’t like Reds back in the States.” One more stone went in. “The FBI moved in and there was a gun fight. My dad got it … took a long while to die, and they didn’t give him any help, no drugs … they just wanted him to talk. He didn’t. He just died. But Asipov got protection because he’d informed. No-one ever knew who’d done t
he informing.”
“Except you.”
Tex nodded. “Right. Except me. And the FBI. I got to hear — from an FBI agent. I’m good with a gun.”
“I get the picture. Why did Asipov inform on your father?”
Tex said, “Because Asipov wasn’t a com. Just the same, he wanted to go back to Russia at that time and he wanted to go back with a nice, clean record to show the Kremlin. Still a good com, see? So his name was kept out of it. But he was still a dissident, an anti-com.”
Shard asked, “Why do you want to take it out on the son? It was hardly his fault.”
Tex grinned. “Mikhail’s a dissident too, right? And that’s the way I’m made. A guy has to have his revenge somewhere, right?”
Shard didn’t answer; the question had been rhetorical. Agree or disagree, it wouldn’t make any difference to Tex. Shard asked, belatedly, about Hedge.
“Hedge is okay,” Tex said. He pointed across the river. “He’s over there, not far back from the quay. He’s safe.”
The Executioners Page 18