Agent in Place

by Helen Macinnes

“I see. He has got his confidence back, has he?”

  “Well, it’s true enough: if a fish doesn’t want to be noticeable, it had better learn to swim with the school.”

  Seems to me, thought Tony, that I’ve heard that dictum before. “His phrase, or yours?”

  “His. And a good one. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” Now, where did I hear it? Tony wondered. He glanced at his watch. It was one thirty-five. “See you tomorrow, dock-side. You can throw away your crutch. Use a cane and limp slightly.”

  “I’m going for a sail, too?”

  “You know how to handle a boat. It looks better—chauffeur goes along to help you board. Right?”

  “And you?”

  “Vaguely in the background. If you need to contact me before then, leave a message with Georges. He has rigged up an answering device on his ’phone. You have his number? And you won’t see him this afternoon. He’s needed elsewhere.” Tony rang off.

  He took a taxi to his hotel, one of the new ones on the Quai Laurenti that stretched east along the waterfront from the Old Town and its port. He had registered there that morning, left his bag. He’d change into something more in keeping with a visit to Shandon Villa—tweed jacket and flannels. He could risk bumping into Chuck Kelso; the important thing was to keep out of Rick Nealey’s way. Meanwhile.

  And his ostensible reason for the visit?

  He had found a good one before he had left the hotel and was strolling towards Georges and the waiting Renault. Certainly, over the ’phone, it had impressed Maclehose enough to let him extend a welcome for a brief tour of Shandon Villa. He couldn’t very well snub a visitor who brought direct greetings from the Director of the Shandon Institute in New Jersey: Paul Krantz’s name packed a punch even at this distance. Hadn’t Krantz given his own guided tour to Tony, on that unpleasant morning back in November when the memorandum crisis was in full flap? “Of course,” Maclehose had said, “I remember you. Drop out here any time. This afternoon? If you could make it early—I’ll be here to show you around. And how is Paul?”

  “Couldn’t be better. I’ll be with you before three.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Oh, just one thing—what’s the quickest road to take through Cap Martin to reach Shandon?”

  Maclehose gave him the directions—much needed, he told Tony with a laugh—and the call ended amicably.

  Now, as Tony stepped into the Renault, he could say, “All set. We’ll head for Cap Martin. And stop at the Casino on the way. I’ve a brief visit to make there.”

  And Georges, tall, thin, dark-haired, a thirty-year-old Frenchman, carefully selected for this assignment in Menton—he knew this area well from family vacations as a boy—said in his usual offhand way, “Don’t expect much action there until the evening. At this time of year, you’ll probably find the Casino closed for the afternoon.”

  “All the better to let me see the layout clearly.”

  “Planning a night on the town?” Georges’s sharp brown eyes looked both interested and amused. “You won’t find it pulsing like Monte Carlo’s Casino.”

  “Where the busloads start arriving in the morning?” Tony’s smile was wide, his spirits rising. All arrangements made, nothing forgotten.

  Georges smiled too. “And I thought this trip was going to be all dull work.” He approved of the change. His manner was deceptively mild, cloaking his natural exuberance. Like Tony and Emil and Bill and Nicole, he wasn’t in this profession for money. He had brains, a contempt for danger, and deep convictions. He had lively curiosity, too. It surfaced now. “Any excitement this morning?” he couldn’t resist asking.

  And Tony, sketching in the details, put him neatly into the recent picture. Enough of it, anyway, to let him know what was on the agenda, and why. (Later, Georges would fill in Emil, who was now superintending the repairs to the boat’s engine.) There were moments, Tony believed, when a need-to-know was the best safeguard for concerted action. He enjoyed team-work (strange as that would seem to some people who thought of him as a loner) and based it on his old quid pro quo maxim. You got good co-operation if you gave it. To those you could trust, of course. And Georges, with whom he had worked for the last seven years, was a man who was dependable. Even to the way he now drew up the car a short distance from the Casino’s entrance—not too far to walk, not too near to be noticeable.

  The entrance steps faced a square, complete with flowers, palm-trees, and a small taxi-rank. (Tony noted it for future use. There weren’t many taxi-stands around this town.) Inside, a small vestibule and more steps and no one to stop him. He found himself in a totally deserted hall, spacious, light—the wall directly opposite the vestibule’s steps was of glass—giving a view of terrace and large pool, and beyond that, a glimpse of the front street where Nicole and he had walked along the promenade. There were two wings to the hall; the left one consisted of the Salle Privée—well marked, well screened from curious eyes—but a thin young man, dark-suited, pale-faced, appeared out of nowhere at the sound of Tony’s footsteps, and politely barred him from pushing open its curtained door. Near by was a large and empty dining-room, handily adjoining that side of the pool’s terrace; and across from it, close to the vestibule steps, was a pleasant (and equally empty) bar. The main hall itself had two large green-covered tables, where play would be less private and certainly easier on the budget. Beyond them, occupying the right wing of the building, there actually was a movie theatre.

  That was all he needed to see. He headed back for the vestibule, nodding his thanks to the dark-suited young man still guarding the other end of the hall, and came out on to the busy street. He was thinking automatically that there must be other ways in and out of the building. The movie theatre must have at least one emergency exit: even two? The pool, with its garden and colonnades along the waterfront view, had possibly an entrance of its own. The dining-room? After all, it was a public place, this municipal Casino—except for those who enjoyed high stakes in a salle kept très privée.

  “Quiet as the tomb,” he told Georges. And about as cold. Some summer sun was needed to heat that high-ceilinged hall. “Only one character bobbed up, near the Salle Privée door. What did he think I was going to do, anyway? Jiggle the wheel? Place marked cards in the shoe?”

  “You don’t gamble, do you?”

  “What do you think we are doing right now?” And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

  * * *

  As Georges drove past the wooded gardens, past glimpses of large houses surrounded by flowering trees beyond impressive gates, he said, “I think this address you’ve given me lies on one of the private roads. In that case, we’ll be stopped. Only residents’ cars and their friends’ cars and taxis can get through. Everyone else—well, drive around some other road if you must, but keep out of this one.”

  “Taxis allowed?”

  “It’s a local rule. There’s logic to it, I suppose. People in taxis are usually going to a definite address.”

  “We are too.”

  “I hope your Mr. Maclehose told the guards you were expected.”

  “Guards? We aren’t visiting the Elysée Palace.”

  “Not really guards. More like—well, guardians.”

  They turned out to be a fresh-faced woman in a cotton dress and cardigan, and her elderly husband with a cloth cap almost as old as he was. They looked like small stall-holders, down in the market-place, ready to sell Tony a dozen oranges. But they took their job seriously, checked the name of Lawton on their list (Maclehose had remembered) and—with a nod from the man and a smile from the woman—let the car proceed.

  Georges took it easily, for the road was narrow and twisting. “I know what you’re thinking,” he told Tony. “They couldn’t fight off more than their shadows. They might not stop a jewel thief, but they could certainly identify him to the police.”

  “The strangest Keep Out notice I’ve ever seen.” But Georges was right: no stranger could come wandering round here unescorted. Jean
Parracini, if he were tempted to seek payment for the damage done to him and his friends by Shandon (justice, he would call it), would find a direct approach impossible. “Wonder if Shandon Villa has a beach, a landing-place for small craft?”

  Georges stared at him, and then went back to keeping count of the houses. “That’s the second on the left. And Shandon’s the fifth?”

  Tony nodded. The villas were generously spaced, securely separated from one another by walls and hedges, scarcely visible behind the screens of shrubs and trees that decorated smooth lawns. “And here we are, gates wide open. Shandon Villa doesn’t subscribe to the closed-door theory, I see.”

  “But they have two muscular gardeners working close to the driveway,” Georges pointed out with amusement.

  They studied the villa before them. It was a massive assertion of an architect’s dream of Italy with Spanish memories creeping in. The gardens, even from a view mostly blocked by pink stucco, were lush and extensive. “A touch of Eden. All right, Georges. Let’s find the snake.”

  * * *

  The door to the villa was impressive: two tall bronze panels, one of them ajar, both of them encrusted with decorative scenes depicting myths and men. “A slight echo of Florence?” murmured the irreverent Tony, not quite sure whether to let the massive doorknocker clatter down on Aphrodite’s backside as she received the apple from Paris, or to heave the door fully open and enter. “If the Duchess of Shandon couldn’t have Ghiberti, she hired his great-great-great-great-grandson.” He compromised by both knocking and pushing. “A fake,” he added sadly as the panel swung back easily: wood covered with copper. “Now what?” A broad hall stretched before them, running through the villa until it ended in a wall of glass. Sunlight and a terrace lay out there, making an inviting vista from this dark threshold.

  Beside them a door opened, and Maclehose came bouncing out from his office, his hands outstretched in a slightly effusive, if belated, welcome. “Come in, come in—just finishing off some dictation.” His face was tanned and healthy, his large and cumbersome body several pounds heavier, his smile beaming, his eyes wary but clearing, as Tony conveyed warm greetings from Paul Krantz. Delighted to see Tony again, delighted to meet his friend.

  “Georges Despinard,” Tony explained, “a journalist from Paris. He is writing a series of articles for La Vie Nouvelle about social changes in the Côte d’Azur. Naturally he is very much interested in Shandon Villa. We were lunching together, and when he heard I was coming here—”

  “Of course, of course. Delighted,” Maclehose said for the third time. “Yes, we are changing things,” he told Georges. “But for the better—I hope.”

  He’s nervous, Tony thought: under all that exuberance is uncertainty. He’s wondering if I’ll mention that unpleasant morning back at Shandon Institute, when heavy flak was flying around and unhappy Maclehose was dodging the fallout. I’ll do him a real favour: I won’t even breathe a reference to the NATO Memorandum.

  “Let me show you around,” Maclehose was saying, leading the way past the open door of his office—really an anteroom tucked near the front entrance—where his secretary was pretending to be unaware of the two visitors. A handsome redhead, Tony noted: tight sweater, slender legs, face pretty but expressionless. Maclehose waved a hand to her. “Find that guest-list for the first seminar, Anne-Marie. Bring it to me.” He went on his way, hurrying along the hall, gesturing to right and left as he identified the rooms. “That’s the library—I’m afraid I must leave in twenty minutes—the dining-room is over there—but as I explained to you on the ’phone, I have engagements for this afternoon—and here’s the main sitting-room, must have some place where our guests can relax between serious business—this place is a madhouse today, last-minute checks on electrical work—” he nodded to two men who were carrying their toolboxes down a broad staircase. “Bedroom up there, of course—ten of them, not counting the quarters for my Executive Assistant, he has his office and bedroom in the corner suite, he’s constantly on the job, I tell him he even sleeps with his problems—and next door to him, two very sizeable rooms which we’ve turned into group-discussion areas. Now, down here, we have the main seminar room—it was a large drawing-room at one time, and across the way—the terrace room just beside this door of course.” He swept them through the large glass panels that slid apart at their approach, and brought them out on to a terrace over-looking a series of descending gardens that stretched to the sea.

  “Remarkable,” said Tony, thinking of the Executive Assistant’s suite. “And your quarters, where are they?”

  “Oh, we thought it better to keep the family at some distance from our distinguished visitors. So Mattie and I have set up house in the cottage over there; you can’t see it because of the acacias. Very comfortable—seven rooms—Simon Shandon used to live in it when his wife had her friends to stay here.” Maclehose looked around. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Remarkable,” Tony said again. So the Director has only a small office in the main building, and placed right at the front door as if he were the concierge. Doesn’t he realise he is giving up his power-base? Distinguished visitors were going to see much more of his Executive Assistant than of the Director. Cosy chats and late-night conversations would not be shared with Maclehose. And at dinner, who would be the host? Seldom Maclehose, I’m willing to bet: he can’t leave Mattie and the children night after night, can he? Not his style. A nice good-hearted family man, as virtuous and well-meaning as they come. “An ideal place. Don’t you think so, Georges?”

  Georges reacted out of shock: what wealth could build, when it set its mind upon it, always stunned him for a few initial moments. “Extraordinary!” Georges lapsed into French and let off a run of sentences.

  Maclehose looked embarrassed, covered his perplexity with a wide grin.

  “My friend is saying that you have done an outstanding job of transforming this place,” Tony obliged. “He is deeply impressed. And so am I.” Tony’s eyes were now on the gardens, green terraces with bright beds, edged by shrubs and groupings of trees. “Georges would also like to stroll among your flowers. He is interested in gardens too. In fact, he was a landscape-architect before becoming a writer.”

  “By all means. Tell Monsieur—” Maclehose was uncertain of the name—“tell your friend to go down to the pool—it’s just above the beach—we’ve had some workmen fixing the lights there—underwater illumination.” He glanced markedly at his watch. “I’d like to spend the next five minutes showing you the guest-list for our first seminar.” He looked around for Anne-Marie, but she wasn’t in sight.

  “See you back here in five minutes,” Tony called after Georges. And don’t forget a visit to the beach.

  “I envy you your French,” Maclehose admitted. “They speak so quickly—that’s my trouble. A pity my Executive Assistant can’t be here to meet you. He’s an expert linguist. But he had some final arrangements to make for our guests next week—up at Eze—they’d enjoy lunch up there—a very fine restaurant.”

  “That’s a pleasant idea: relaxation for tired minds.”

  Maclehose laughed. “All part of public relations. That’s my Executive Assistant’s main job, but he really can turn his hand to anything, don’t know what I would have done without him. He took charge of the alterations, found a reliable contractor with a team of first-rate men—carpenters, painters, electricians—and the work was completed yesterday—except for a few corrections. And all in less than eight weeks, imagine!”

  “And who’s that? The contractor himself?” Tony asked as a quietly-dressed man came climbing up from one of the lower terraces along with an obvious workman.

  “No. I think that’s the inspector, who is checking our wiring system. We had a certain amount of trouble with it.”

  “He looks satisfied now,” said Tony. “All must be well. Your Executive Assistant will be relieved.”

  “Nealey? Yes, indeed. He had to call in two other electricians to get the final adjustments made.�
��

  “And the contractor himself didn’t blow a fuse?” And what about his team of first-rate workmen?

  “Oh, Nealey added a bonus—the work was finished in time, except for a few modifications we wanted to make. The contractor has nothing to complain about.”

  We wanted to make? Tony let that go, although it was tempting to hint that a bonus might be construed as bribery. But he resisted putting at least one warning fly into Maclehose’s too trustful ear, his full attention now on the man who called himself an inspector.

  The man drew near, the workman a step behind him. And suddenly Tony was on the alert, memory stirring, another scene floating up to the surface of his mind. Washington. The Statler Hotel. A group of Soviet agricultural specialists. An interpreter, who left, and was followed...and Rick Nealey slipping into the car where the man waited. A man in his early forties; five feet ten or eleven; broad-shouldered, strong build. The dark hair was no longer streaked with grey; the placid face was now tanned. The eyes were the same, blue, cold, and confident. Boris Gorsky.

  He passed close enough to make Tony (now admiring the profusion of the nearby flower-beds) feel a touch of cold sweat at the nape of his neck. Boris Gorsky, good God... Yes, Gorsky himself, as cool as when he had walked into Lenox Hospital, and couldn’t identify his old comrade Vladimir Konov. “These huge pink and purple patches, what are they?” Tony asked.

  “Cyclamen,” Maclehose told him. “Certainly,” he was replying to the inspector’s query, “go right upstairs. I’m sure you’ll find it’s all in order now.”

  The two men reached the house as the redhead at last stepped on to the terrace.

  “Cyclamen? Massed close like that?” Tony shook his head in wonder, and managed a glimpse of the redhead’s brief hesitation, a momentary question on her pretty face and a small smile on her lips, as she glanced at Gorsky. Then she came forward to Maclehose, a sheet of paper in her hand, her face once more expressionless. She isn’t as dumb as she looks, thought Tony; she knows Gorsky. He looked at Maclehose, standing proudly on his beautiful terrace, in front of his beautiful house, above his beautiful gardens, and he fell silent.