by Gil Brewer
He refused to try to remember.
“More coffee?” Jeanne said.
“Please.”
He turned and smiled at her. He was feeling some better now. Chevard’s wife was petite and plump, a small-boned redhead with one of the neatest figures Baron had ever seen. He knew she loved Chevard with a devotion seldom found. She looked lovely and fresh this morning, her eyes bright, her lips touched with laughter.
He drank his coffee.
“I’ve been looking all over Marseilles for you,” Chevard said.
Baron glanced at the man over the rim of his cup. He knew he should say something, but he said nothing. Chevard wore a dark business suit. He looked tired and harried, worn out, his red-rimmed eyes sunken in a frowning face. The face frowned even when Chevard laughed and joked. His lips were tight and he was a man obviously under pressure. His shirt collar was too loose and Baron knew the man had lost a good deal of weight. Chevard moved nervously in his chair, ignoring his breakfast plate, drinking great quantities of coffee. His hand trembled slightly whenever he raised the cup.
Baron was surprised that his own hand was steady.
“Spent most of the day yesterday inquiring,” Chevard said. “I read the story in the newspaper, about—” He paused. “You have seen the papers?”
“Yes.”
“About Bette.” Chevard frowned. “You know?”
“Yes.”
“This is truly awful,” Jeanne said. She came around and sat in a chair beside Baron and laid one hand on his arm, her fingers tightening. “What will you do?”
“There’s nothing to do. I cabled,” he lied. “It’s all true. There’s nothing I can do. Patricia is in Bermuda.”
“Did you hear from her?” Jeanne said.
“No.”
Chevard motioned to his wife. She turned and looked at him, gnawed her lip. “I’ll get some more rolls,” she said.
“Never mind,” Baron said. He took het hand, grinned at her. “Sit down. I know how you feel, but there’s nothing can be done.”
“Is that why you came here?” Chevard said.
“Partly.” He released Jeanne’s hand, reached for his cup, then did not pick it up. He could not trust that hand now. He was lying now. He was in it now and he had to go through with it. The perspiration began, he felt it popping out on his forehead.
“What is it, Frank?” Chevard said.
“I’ve been trying to get up nerve to look you up for days,” he said. “But I thought you were in Paris. I was checking a number in the telephone directory. I saw your name.” He sat there, waiting that one out. It was a weak one and he wondered if it would get by. It did get by.
He saw the look Jeanne shot her husband then. Jeanne rose abruptly from the table, moved away into the kitchen. Sunlight streamed through the windows over Chevard’s shoulders. It glanced off the brilliantly white tablecloth into Baron’s eyes. He wished Chevard would suggest they move to another room. He felt ill. His tooth was beginning to throb again through the throbbing of his head and his stomach felt rather evil.
“What did you want?” Chevard said.
“I wanted to see you.”
“Oh?”
“You’ll be late, Paul,” Jeanne called from the other room. “You’re late now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Chevard said. He began nervously picking at crumbs on the tablecloth beside his plate. He saw what he was doing and stopped quickly. He let his hand lie quietly beside his plate. Baron recognized the effort in the movement and pitied Chevard.
He pitied the man for what he had to do.
“Are you going to return to the States?” Chevard asked.
Baron looked at the man. This would be the harsh beginning of the true lying and he did not want to begin. He wanted to walk out of this house and leave these good people. Unknown to them, they were embarking on a sure train to hell, and he was the conductor. He not only would punch their tickets, he would manacle them to their seats so they would be certain to arrive. Baron knew that when he began to speak now, it would mean the first mark toward destruction of all Paul Chevard lived for.
“Because of Bette? That what you mean?”
“Yes.”
“No, I’m not returning to the states. Not now. There’s nothing I could do.”
“Don’t you think you should contact Patricia?”
Baron glanced at his coffee cup. He shook his head. “We’ve managed this far without consulting each other.”
“Is there no hope for finding Bette?”
Again Baron shook his head. “According to the authorities, no hope at all. She has drowned and they haven’t found her body.” And saying this, watching Chevard’s face, he caught his breath and his mind stopped. Because he saw what it would mean. If he went through with Gorssmann’s proposal, and if he eventually came through alive, with Bette, Bette would have lost her identity. It was a thought that even obliterated the throbbing pain from his tooth and the muddled, headaching fog of the hangover. What a fine life was in store for her! A young girl, starting out in life, having to take a new name, perhaps a new country, even. Any dream she had would be lost, turned to mud.
“I know something’s on your mind, Frank.”
“Something is. This business about Bette has thrown me, I guess.”
Chevard said nothing.
“I thought she was perfectly all right with her mother. I find she hasn’t been with her mother at all.”
Still Chevard said nothing.
“But I’ll have to forget that.” He hoped he sounded convincing. He did not think he showed enough emotion regarding Bette. Lord knew, he felt the emotion, though not for the same cause Chevard suspected. Perhaps Chevard wouldn’t notice. Baron knew his friend was tied up in a snarl of his own business.
Sitting there, Baron suspected that if it had not been for the deep drinking of the night before and the brandy this morning, he wouldn’t be able to talk it through now.
“It’s just this, Paul,” he said. “I’ve come to ask a favor.”
“Anything. You know that.”
“Yes. I want to start over again. I’ve wasted time; pitied myself long enough. I’ve got somehow to begin, and make a way again. I’m going right back into the air industry. But I’ve got to have a way of beginning.”
Chevard watched him closely, listening. Baron began really talking then. He went through it all, covering every angle, hating himself as he preyed on the man’s sympathies. He found himself using every slight advantage he could think of. He talked it all out, in detail, and he watched Chevard’s face closely. “When I’m back in the game, one way or another, and can see a way to some money, then I’ll return to America and set up shop. In their faces. Somehow they’ll know I was not at fault. They’ve got to know this. I’m—I’m flat broke, you know. I have nothing—nothing at all.”
It was done. He had said all he had to say. If none of this worked, he would return to Gorssmann. He could do nothing else than this to begin.
He could not look Chevard in the eye right away then.
“You want me to help you?” Chevard said.
“There is nobody else. Nobody else I can turn to. They wouldn’t understand.”
“But your own country….”
“I couldn’t ask for help there,” Baron said. He tried to keep the tone of his voice level, fighting against the desire to spill it all, the whole story. “It would be placing whoever I asked in the same fire with me. Here it’s different. All I need is some kind of start.”
“It seems to me,” Chevard said, “that people in the United States would have cooled down about you by now. The war is over and they forget easily. You know that.”
Baron waited now. He said nothing. He knew that if he spoke at all, he might give himself away. Too much hung in the balance.
Chevard shoved his chair away from the table. He was a tall man, and Baron noted the extreme nervousness. Chevard stepped away from the table over to the windows, with his back to Ba
ron.
Baron sat there listening to the movements of Jeanne out in the kitchen.
“You know why I am in Marseilles?” Chevard said.
Baron waited a moment, then said, “No. I thought you liked Paris fine.”
“I do.”
“I see.”
“No,” Chevard said. “You don’t see.”
Jeanne’s voice reached them from out in the kitchen.
“Paul, you’d better get going!”
Chevard did not turn from the windows, and he did not answer his wife. Baron sat there and suddenly saw how impossible it all was. How could Gorssmann expect him to work his way under Chevard’s guard? Yet Baron knew that he could; that their friendship would cover that. He thought that it was only a matter of time before Chevard told him and told him everything.
Again he began to talk. He told Chevard of his reason for being during the past two and a half years, of how he had trailed the man who had sabotaged his factories.
“I thought as much,” Chevard said. He turned from the windows, lit a cigarette, and stood there smoking quietly. The cigarette trembled between his fingers and his eyes looked haunted with worry and anxiousness. “And now?”
Baron shrugged. “I have not given up, if that’s what you mean.” And it was there in his voice, as it had been all this time, the defiance, the need to find this man. It was one thing he could never wipe out of his mind. Until he stood face to face with that man, his life would remain worthless. This he knew. “I’m going to go about it differently now. I’ve got to get back on my feet.”
“I expected the newspapers were wrong,” Chevard said. “I wish you had got in touch with me earlier.” He came to the table and dropped the cigarette into his half-empty coffee cup. It hissed out and he glanced over at Baron. “This isn’t easy,” he said.
Baron waited. He watched Chevard straighten, walk back to the windows, and stand there looking outside into the bright, sunny morning. And as he watched Chevard and thought about what he was doing, Lili kept creeping into his mind, and a sensation of warmth and confidence came along with thoughts of her. He must remember to tell Follet about Lili and what she had said—if he ever again saw Follet. Perhaps Follet would view him on the same slab where two days ago he had looked down on Elene, with her throat cut.
Suddenly Chevard turned and looked at him. “Come,” he said. “You come with me. Get your coat on.” He walked swiftly out into the kitchen and Baron heard him talking with Jeanne. He took his coat off the back of the chair and slipped it on, his heart thudding stolidly against his ribs and into his throat. He knew very well this was it, and he hated to see Chevard doing it. He wanted to tell him it was all lies, but he could not. He knew Chevard would act the same. Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he? For the first time, now, doubt began to register in his mind. But he had to do it because of Bette. Yet, still in the back of his mind, he heard the question: Which was more to the point—a single person, or a whole nation?
Well, he thought, turning quickly away from the chair and the sunlight out there beyond the window, for me it’s this way. For me it’s got to be this way.
Chevard came from the kitchen. He carried a brief case now, and wore a stiff-brimmed felt hat. The hat made him look still more harried, the red-rimmed eyes peering at Baron quizzically, patiently, almost. Jeanne followed him and stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at Baron.
“Good luck to you, Frank,” she said. “Please come and see us. Why don’t you stay here while you’re in Marseilles?”
Baron made as if to answer, but Chevard cut him short with a laugh. “We’ll see,” Chevard said. “Won’t we, friend?”
Baron nodded to Jeanne and followed Chevard on through the house, out the side door. They got into a sleek, gray Italian Fiat 8V and Baron felt as if they were speeding even before Chevard started the engine.
“This is my baby,” Chevard said. He sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. “Wait till I take you over the mountain roads.” He hesitated, glanced at Baron.
“Where are we going?”
For answer, Chevard started the engine. The fine roar from twin exhausts sent leaves whirling in the driveway. “I have something to tell you,” Chevard said. “I’m sure you will be interested.”
He put the car in gear and they swooped abruptly from the drive, down into the street. Again Chevard shifted and Baron felt his shoulders come brutally back against the seat in a smooth, powerful drag. Trees flashed by, and the powerful engine whispered its challenge into the morning.
Baron’s left hand lay half across the smooth, cool leather of Chevard’s brief case there on the seat. He experienced a chill, knowing what might be inside that brief case. He was suddenly torn with a desire to look inside the case, and it was only with effort that he managed to keep from holding it in his lap and trying to look. This worried him. He began to wonder if he was losing control.
Soon they came out of Marseilles, to the south, and started up the mountain road on the way to Cassis.
“I don’t much like Marseilles at all,” Chevard said. They approached a curve, headed upward on the winding road, yet Chevard only increased the speed of the Fiat. Down over the side of the mounting road, Baron made out Marseilles, spread like a relief map below them. The golden Virgin atop Nôtre Dame de la Garde shone brilliantly in the morning sunlight, and beyond the sun-bright and shadowed city the Mediterranean glistened and gleamed. Somewhere down there Bette waited, with Lili. Gorssmann paced and held his breath, betting on Baron, betting against the standards of humanity, betting against the world.
“I’ve had to leave Paris,” Chevard said. “And I’m going to tell you why, Frank. I shouldn’t, but for many years we have been friends. I think you should know. And when you do know, perhaps I then can be of some help to you.”
Baron waited. He sat tightly in the seat, remembering now that Chevard had always driven much too fast, and on these roads it was frightening. Yet the car held tightly, even on the curves.
“I will tell you,” Chevard said.
And he did.
CHAPTER 13
The late morning turned hot as they drove through the thickly forested hills, after turning off the main road to Cassis. In the speeding Fiat, Baron wished there were something else to say. But Chevard was quite silent now, smiling behind the wheel, impatient to show Baron the things he had told him about. Baron knew he should not overquestion Chevard, yet he had to register just the right amount of enthusiasm and amazement. The only trouble was that Chevard had not once mentioned the cosmic breather. Perhaps it was too much to expect. Baron had waited, but Chevard talked only of the newly developed plane itself and of how they were reaching a peak of construction in the secret plant.
“And this is what you’re doing in Marseilles?” Baron said. He kept trying to get Chevard to talk more. Nothing seemed to work.
“That’s right. I’m in charge of the entire business,” Chevard told him. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to bring you here, Frank.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t. Is it against the rules?”
Chevard glanced over at him, wheeled the car sharply around a banked curve on the dirt road.
“Not even governmental officials come here,” Chevard said.
“No use getting the people you work with down on you.”
Chevard laughed. “Suppose I put you on salary. What then?”
Baron grinned and said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. Chevard was trusting him altogether too much. In one way, that is. On the other hand, Chevard hadn’t told him enough. Baron did not like it. As it was now, if Chevard didn’t tell him about the breather, Baron knew he would have to worm it out of his friend. It would be difficult. It would take time. During that time, he knew he would feel more and more sorry for Chevard.
Only a single thought held him solidly. Somewhere at the end of all this, he might meet the man who had originally begun the whole mess by sabotaging his plants in the States. So long as this desire burned in the ba
ck of his mind, he knew he was safe. Nothing would stop him.
But he was sick with it. Sick with all of it.
“I’m going to have to ask you to promise me one thing,” Chevard said. He looked soberly across at Baron.
“Yes?”
“You must promise to say nothing of any of this to anyone. I don’t like to ask it—I’m sure you wouldn’t. But I have to ask it, Frank.”
Baron forced a laugh. “You don’t have to worry,” he said, feeling the lie like a sharp-cornered rock in his mouth.
“That’s good enough for me,” Chevard said. “The future of France may well hang on this little enterprise.”
Baron swallowed.
“I’d rather you would not mention to Jeanne that I have told you anything. All right that I’ve brought you out here. She knew you were coming. But about what we are doing, no. She worries. There have been certain troubles.”
Baron waited for him to continue, but he stopped talking. What did Chevard mean?
The plant was not what Baron had expected. He had envisioned a vast, sprawling valley area, flat and sun-baked, with metal-roofed hangars and workshops and administration buildings of gleaming brick, their lawns and parking areas set out with grass and flower beds, sidewalks, and “For Official Cars Only.”
It was not like that, nothing like back in the States.
They came upon the entrance to the plant suddenly, without warning. The road was abruptly blocked from a sharp hillside curve in the thick woods by a tall wire-mesh gate. Separated in the middle by the gate was a single-storied, one-room building, with doorways on both sides of the fence. Three guards stood by the gate, two on the outside, one on the inside, and they all carried rifles and wore holstered guns on their uniformed hips. They did not come to attention as Baron and Chevard approached and stopped in the Fiat, but Baron sensed a stiffening of tension, of control. None of the guards smiled and there was something immensely foreboding about the whole thing.