He wasn’t in his office.
He was sitting on my doorstep in his Pierce-Arrow when I arrived.
His man opened the door to the vestibule.
Trask moved a stack of newspapers from the seat to the floor in front of him.
I sat down in their place.
“I called,” I said.
“I had to read the dailies anyway,” he said. “For you to give up the front has captured my interest.”
I told him the story of Cyrus Parsons.
Through it all he did not ask a question, did not say a word. I was used to the man, used to his opaquely black eyes never wavering when I spoke, used to his persona of command, which involved seeming always rational. But when I quoted to him, with a reporter’s precision, Cyrus’s tribute to carnage, his own spy instincts would not be suppressed. His eyes moved sharply away from mine, pulling his face with them. He listened to the rest of my story while staring out the side window.
The vision he pondered in his distant stare became clear as soon as I was done. He turned back to me, his eyes fixing me once more, and he said, “We can’t let this be an American.”
For diplomatic appearances, his basic thought was rational. What I’d expected. His eyes were rational again. But his phrasing was still emotional.
He nodded slightly downward, at the stack of newspapers, without moving his eyes from mine, and said, “Especially with the Brits and the French about to put their heads together.”
I looked.
The paper on top of the stack was the Excelsior. It gave me a deep thump of regret over getting caught up in the spy stuff to the detriment of my war correspondence. I was tempted to jump out of Trask’s car and beat it back to the front and write the real news. The photo-infatuated Excelsior was published daily for the Parisians who’d happily given up reading books to go to the movies. Virtually its entire front page was a photograph. A front page that had never shown a dead French soldier. Instead it gave us the image of a very recently built luxury hotel, the first on the Left Bank, the massive Hôtel Lutetia, with a ripple of balconies across its massive facade, each wreathed in Art Nouveau stone vinery. This was war news straight from the French government’s rah-rah storybook, the Lutetia being the location of the big meeting, day after tomorrow, between General Joffre and General Murray, chief of the British general staff. The French and Brits would work out a winning strategy for the Great War in a timbered suite in a luxury hotel over a glass of Château-Lafite or a pot of tea.
For one odd moment, from the very same prompt, I simultaneously understood and sympathized with both Cyrus Parsons and James Polk Trask.
The Parsons half of this, which had lent some power to the thump of regret, faded quickly. His desire to make the truth of the trenches known and his sympathy with the working masses of humanity were just features on a mask to disguise an all-too-human face. Lying and killing was the father of all of us and it showed. And Cyrus was eager to embrace it for his own ends.
My basic quarrel with Woodrow Wilson was his hesitation to go to war. To my surprise I even understood and sympathized with Woody as well. It was a grisly nuance to tell one bullet from another, even if the nuance was true and right and the whole goddamn point. Woody needed a backbone to come in and help end this thing as quickly as possible. But he needed moral authority to effectively do that. I knew what Trask was getting at. These boys over here, fighting to protect or enlarge their empires, would just go on and on if they stayed in charge. America needed to run the show. If Wilson’s best play for America was for us to stand on the moral high ground, we couldn’t have weeds growing at our feet up there.
Trask said, “Have you been to Neuilly?”
“I came straight here. Neuilly’s next.”
“He won’t be there.”
“I’ll look for leads,” I said.
“How?”
“As his friend, with the people who worked with him. My assumption will be theirs. He cracked. He’s in emotional trouble. I can help him.”
Trask paused for a few moments.
Only with his words. His gaze intensified in a physical way I could not identify. Nothing to do with his eyes. But it was somehow clear. He was powering up his focus on this problem and I felt it just as I’d felt Cyrus’s guilt.
Then he said, “You have to work this alone.”
“I understand.”
“Keep Fortier out of it.”
That kept America out of it. I understood. But finding Cyrus wasn’t going to be easy. And it could quickly get harder. I didn’t like the chances of his having left any discernible clues to his on-the-lam plan with the do-gooders at the hospital.
I said, “I understand about Fortier. There are important nation-to-nation issues involved. But those same issues are at play if I fail to catch this American, and catch him quick, because the police, or even Fortier’s boys themselves, might get lucky at some point and collar him themselves. Especially if Cyrus steps up his game.”
“So what are you saying?”
I knew I had to say it firm and fast and without pause and not give Trask time to pick at me without the whole argument in his head. I said, “We could use some eyes and ears. Looking for the ambulance, for instance. Cyrus will likely abandon it pretty quickly, but we’d like to get to it and the area it’s in as soon as possible. Fortier owes us. Owes me after the Staub affair. Tell him I’m back building my cover story. Being a reporter. Covering the ambulance boys. He can at least alert his people to the missing ambulance and let us know if they spot it. Hell, you’re at the embassy. He owes you too. Tell him the ambassador himself is worried about our saintly American volunteer. Can he help us out? There is no way he’d guess that the missing driver is connected to the terror. He’s still thinking the Huns are behind the bombs.”
I rested my case.
Trask hadn’t tried to interrupt, though his eyes never left me. He even allowed the following silence to have its own brief, distinct moment.
Then he gave me a thoughtful humph.
He said, “I’m ready to buy part of what you’re saying. But what if, for now, the ambulance was stolen by a party unknown. A German saboteur potentially. An American ambulance can get into places a man with a satchel of dynamite over his shoulder couldn’t. If that’s the threat they think they’re helping with, you’ll get the same lead from its discovery without our having to show our hand. And with a keener motivation for them.”
Trask laid all this out as if he was conferring with me. I knew he’d already made his decision. But he was right.
“You’re right,” I said.
He nodded once, with a slight of-course-I-am head twist to it. “I’ll talk to him. You should keep in periodic touch with me by telephone. At the embassy. Or my room at the Hôtel Montaigne. Be careful, of course. These instruments are technically not secure. But the risk of a German spy infiltrating a French telephone exchange is very low. The odds of being overheard are even lower. The vast amount of irrelevance and the randomness of things for a given operator make it unfeasible for them. Let’s just be mindful of what we say.”
The beat that followed made that sound like the end of it. But before I could reply, Trask surprised the hell out of me. He added, “I trust you, Kit. You know what’s involved. Not just telephones. In all of it.”
If pushed on the matter, I’d have assumed as much. But this sentimentality wasn’t like him. I almost asked him if he was feeling okay. Alternatively, I almost thanked him. I did neither.
I gave him a tiny, Traskian nod.
He shifted in his seat as if to slough off whatever it was that had come upon him. He said, “In some ways it’s peculiar. If Parsons was going to break cover, why did he bother to drive you to the front?”
Not so peculiar. An answer to that had been gnawing at me off and on through the train ride back to Paris. One that I’d assiduously not examined. I accepted it now. Too bad it would undercut the recent bona fide compliment from this man. I said, “That was me
. My questions got too close.”
“You the reporter.” His tone was matter-of-fact. Almost exculpatory.
“Me the reporter.”
“That you is even better working for his country,” he said, though this too was free from rebuke. It sounded almost like an addendum to his compliment.
“I left that guy in Compiègne,” I said, firmly. “Except as disguise.”
“Good. But it’s also true if Parsons had picked up on the real Cobb, if he’d thought you identified him as the bomber, you’d have been found dead in your bunk this morning.”
True enough.
It was my turn to look out the side window to examine my own thoughts.
“So who is this Cyrus Parsons guy?” He didn’t ask this rhetorically. It sounded like a sincere, shared puzzlement. “What flushed him?”
I found answers out in the cobbled street. Several of them. They all worked together, I figured.
“His father. His uncle. The Africans,” I said, bringing my face back to Trask to enjoy the flicker of puzzlement in his eyes.
I said, “From the start I got him talking about things that were working in him. It finally all added up. The father he criticizes was an anarchist who ran from the game. The uncle he reveres was an anarchist who played out his beliefs in public and went to the gallows for them. And on our last day, Cyrus and I watched ten thousand African volunteers march by to fight an unholy war for the country that had conquered and subjugated them. Cyrus was already executing a plan to upset a world like that. He decided to do it full-time.”
Trask puffed a soundless little laugh. “Hell. What’s a parade for?”
I said, “There was that moment when I heard him for what he was. You heard it too, when I told you. I bet he heard it about himself. Yeah, he’s an American. A regular entrepreneur. He’s got a better brand of carnage. He’s out on the road to promote his product.”
“Well then,” Trask said. “Go find him and quietly kill him.”
20
I entered the hospital at the Lycée Pasteur an hour later. It had now been nine hours since they knew in Compiègne that Cyrus was gone. I struck off down the hallway of the administrative wing, heading for the superintendent’s office, and the ease with which I’d approached the building and entered it dropped a satchel of dynamite into the center of my thoughts. If Cyrus had come back to Paris to resume his bombing with singular commitment, what would he see as the most effective settings for his tableaux of carnage? I feared I was walking in one. The officers’ ward no doubt. And anyone in its vicinity. This thought came to me even as I entered the dim blur of afternoon sunlight from the window before which Louise had asked about the scar on my cheek. Are there more of these? No there aren’t. And she chose me so as to forget the carnage.
I forced all this from my mind.
Not that I could kid myself. Louise was in danger.
Which presented me with a serious dilemma when, shortly thereafter, Pichon burst from his office at the sound of my voice to his aide. He grabbed my hand and shook it and let it go and with a bowing, urgent sweep of his arms ushered me into his office and into the chair in front of his desk.
Clearly word had arrived that one of his drivers had vanished.
He sat down.
But my dilemma was a moral one whose only resolution concerned how to suffer the biting of my own tongue without letting on. With this man, my course of action was already decided. He and his hospital and everyone in it had to come to this place without knowing the danger.
But so would thousands of other people in a hundred other settings in Paris.
I said to myself: For my mission, for my country and, potentially, for its eventual role in this war I had no choice. There was only one way for me to protect these people. Including Louise.
“I come to you as Cyrus’s friend,” I said to Pichon, speaking careful French.
“He has not returned with you?” Pichon said.
“No.”
“We have had only a brief telegram from the authorities,” he said. “Only that our driver and his ambulance were missing. We were to tell them if Monsieur Parsons were to appear. No mention was made of you. Our hope was that you were somehow called back to Paris and he consented to bring you.”
“No. Of course not.”
“Ah yes,” Pichon said. Mais oui. “Of course not. It was simply our hope. But when the authorities suggested you might appear here, that hope seemed justified. Our fear, however, was that he took you onward to the trenches as you wished and you were both lost to the German guns. I am very happy to see you. We all will be.”
I heard in that a reference to Louise. She was worried. That brought an upswell in me. A tender thing. And a fearful thing, as well.
Pichon went on. “Of course there is one other reason we might expect him at our door. We have had other men leave their duties abruptly. The work can become too much.”
It was time to play a new part. “That’s my fear,” I said. “Please understand that I have returned to Paris and come to you not as a reporter but as a friend to Cyrus.”
“I appreciate that, Monsieur Cobb.”
“He is my countryman. On the road to Compiègne he found in me a person ready to listen to his feelings. He suffered greatly with the wounded. You are right. It became too much for him. But I am in good position to help him. I criticize myself for failing to make that clear. You and I both care about him, Monsieur Pichon. May we share information as we find it?”
“Of course. We will do everything we can for him. He is a true friend of the people of France.”
“It’s urgent to find him,” I said.
“I agree.”
“Do you have any idea where he might go if he has returned to Paris?”
Pichon knitted his brow, angled his face downward. “I am trying to think if he ever said … The drivers frequent an American bar. Somewhere near the Place Vendôme, I believe. But I did not socialize with Monsieur Parsons. I could not say for certain.”
Cyrus was not assembling his bombs at the Lycée Pasteur. I approached the crucial question. “He lived at the hospital facility?”
“Ah yes. We provide a place to live.”
“But he would live with another driver?”
“They live in twos or fours. All the Americans are in Lycée recitation rooms, so yes, he would have one roommate.”
“Do your volunteers ever take a separate room somewhere in the city? Perhaps for occasional privacy?”
“It is permitted. They are not strictly bound by military rule. At least not in their free time. Some days they must be available here. Most days. But not all.”
“Do you know if he took a room away from the hospital?”
“I do not. Some of them tell us so. But there is no requirement. No way for us to check. Monsieur Parsons never spoke of such a thing.”
I thanked Pichon and we rose and shook hands. “I think you may be right,” he said. “It is urgent. It is sometimes difficult to predict just how fragile someone might be.”
“I will do my best to help,” I said. “Can you tell me how to find two people at this hour? Supervising Nurse Pickering for one.”
“Ah yes. She will be glad to see that you are safe. She is likely with the wounded officers.”
I worked hard not to show the special concern this stirred. “And John Lacey.”
“Monsieur Lacey? Ah yes. Now that you say his name … This of course is why you ask.”
“Yes. His roommate.”
“I am not sure of the drivers. But when they are working in Paris, they often take care of their ambulances.”
I had one other destination in mind. I was happy to have a way to ask for it without risking any scruples Pichon might have about me going through Cyrus’s things. I said, “If Monsieur Lacey isn’t working on his vehicle, perhaps I could catch him in his room. Can you direct me there as well?”
“Yes,” he said. “Realize that none of the drivers yet know about Monsieur
Parsons. It is time to amend that. But you may find Monsieur Lacey first.”
A few minutes later I was at a closed door in a presently deserted wing. I listened. There were no sounds inside. I knocked lightly and spoke Lacey’s name. No answer. I tried the handle. It was unlocked.
I went in.
The place was comfortable for two people. Flanking the set of mullioned windows were single bunks. At the foot of each was a canvas trunk. Against the opposite wall sat an oversized wardrobe.
Both beds were made neatly.
Both trunks held nothing but the foldable components of the standard-issue driver’s uniforms and generic men’s underthings and casual civilian clothes. One had more of these items and also a leather bag for toiletries. This was Lacey’s trunk, I presumed, Cyrus’s equivalents being in the valise he had with him on the trip to Compiègne.
Beside the wardrobe sat Lacey’s leather Gladstone bag, which was empty. Within the wardrobe, one side held the hangable components of the standard-issue driver’s uniforms and an assortment of civilian clothes. The other side, clearly Cyrus’s, held only a couple of short-sleeved shirts. On the floor, a pair of shoes and a pair of boots, each of which I shook, finding nothing inside.
The double drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe distinguished the two men. One had letter-writing materials but no saved correspondence; its three books were Joseph C. Lincoln Cape Cod novels. Lacey, a Harvard man with plebian tastes in literature.
In the other drawer was a layer of everyday items. Woolen socks. Pocket handkerchiefs. A union suit. But beneath these, Cyrus began to show himself. An Abercrombie sheath knife with a six-inch blade and an ebony handle, which I pulled from its leather holder. Knowing it was his, I held it up before me and considered its fine steel blade. Had he ever killed a man in a personal way? Face to face? With this? I doubted it.
I returned the knife to its sheath.
The last item, lying facedown in the bottom of the drawer, was a book. Its boards were red cloth. I picked it up, turned it over. In fancy letters on a fancy gilt banner, the title was simple: Anarchism. Beneath it: By Albert R. Parsons. Uncle Albert. Four parallel black lines partitioned the upper couple of inches of the cover and provided the horizon for a rising gilt sun, beside which were the golden words:
Paris in the Dark Page 14