L'Assassin

by Peter Steiner

  “I can’t argue with you,” said Louis raising his hands. “I wish I could …”

  “You can’t,” said Michael.

  “I can’t,” said Louis. “Listen: I wish I could free you from this predicament. But I can’t. I might be able to soon. But right now I can’t. I’m trapped in hiding, and because I’m trapped, so are you.”

  “It isn’t fair,” said Jennifer.

  “It isn’t fair,” said Louis. “That’s true. Where would you go?”

  “What?” said Jennifer.

  “Where? Where will you go? I think you’re safest here, but I can’t force you to stay. I’ll help you as best I can.”

  “Quimper,” said Jennifer. “Maybe I’ll go to Quimper.” Her voice had softened and tears welled up in her eyes. She stepped to the table where Louis sat. He hoped she would reach out for his hand, but she didn’t. She jammed her hands in her pockets and stopped crying. “Quimper. Okay?”

  “I can help you find a place.” said Louis. “It would be—”

  “No,” said Jennifer. “I’ll find my own place.”

  Jennifer went back to Quimper the following morning. She searched the ads in the paper and found a small apartment in the center of town. It was available immediately, so she returned to Pen’noch for her clothes and left again at the end of the day. Encouraged by Jennifer’s success, Michael followed her a few days later and found his own place. “Call when you’re in Quimper,” he said as he was leaving, and gave Louis his number.

  Louis went to Quimper more frequently than he had before, and he and Michael met for lunch. Jennifer joined them occasionally, but not often. She did not want Louis to have her phone number. “If only I could betray you, I mean really betray you … I wish I could,” she said. “So you would know how it feels.”

  I know how it feels, thought Louis. I know betrayal from every angle. The next time Jennifer accused him, Louis said, “Can we talk about it?”

  Jennifer looked suspicious.

  “I don’t want to argue with you,” said Louis. “I just want to talk.”

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  “Okay. So. You said, I made betrayal my occupation, and that’s true. When I started, though, it was patriotism that drove me. Then it was ambition. Only later, when I thought about it, could I see the betrayal in it. But even then I saw it as something else, as a distortion of love maybe, as the shadow of love, its dark side, its mirror image. I thought, where there’s love, there’s always betrayal. They sweep back and forth like the tide. Betrayal always follows love.

  “A husband betrays a wife, or a wife betrays a husband out of love for someone else. A double agent betrays his country because he loves a woman or money or even, in some rare cases, another country. Love is part of us all; it is who we all are. But so is betrayal. I mean, don’t we all betray everything and everyone we love somehow, at some time or another?”

  Jennifer leaned forward toward her father. Michael slid back in his chair, waiting for the explosion. They were having lunch in a small tearoom whose walls were decorated, floor to ceiling, with Quimper pottery, and Michael could imagine Jennifer standing up and, with a huge, sweeping gesture, sending the entire collection shattering to the floor.

  Instead, Jennifer said, “Will he find us here?”

  “Who?” said Louis, taken unawares.

  “Will … Lou Coburn find us here?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on whether he comes looking.”

  “But if he comes looking.” Jennifer was insistent. “Will he find us, if he comes looking?”

  “If he comes looking,” said Louis, “then eventually he will find us. But I am hoping—”

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” Jennifer’s eyes were hard.

  “Maybe we should have,” said Michael, recalling his earlier horror at the thought.

  “Not you, Michael. Why didn’t you kill him?” said Jennifer, looking at Louis. “You, my father. Why didn’t you in particular kill him? He hurt me terribly and he almost killed me. Was it because you thought of his betrayal as love, as ‘the mirror image’ of love, as growing out of his love for me? Was that what you were thinking?”

  “Of course not. You know it isn’t—”

  “I know it isn’t,” she said. “But I want you to say it. I want to hear you dispute your own sophistry.”

  Louis looked sharply at Jennifer. He knew she was right immediately. Sophistry. How did she see that? And how did she have the courage to call it by name? He should have felt ashamed, but instead he felt proud of his daughter.

  “You are right,” he said. “And I am wrong. Love is complicated, and betrayal …” But he decided to forego the rest of his analysis. Instead, he reached across the table and took her hand in his.

  Jennifer did not withdraw her hand, but neither was she going to be distracted by Louis’s affection. “And what about Bowes?” she said. “Will Bowes find us?”

  “He will,” said Louis. “Sooner or later he will.” He thought about it for a moment, wondering how much he should say about what he had in mind.

  “Say everything that you are thinking,” said Jennifer, as though she could read his hesitation.

  “All right,” said Louis after a moment. “I owe you both that. Here is what I am thinking. The trick is to make certain that Bowes finds us when we want him to find us and not before.”

  “Do we want him to find us?” Michael said.

  “Of course we don’t,” said Louis. “But the fact remains that he can find us eventually. You can find almost anybody eventually. And Bowes has tremendous resources. But I’m thinking if we can arrange things so that he finds us … me, that is, when we have the initiative and he is off balance, then we will gain, if not an advantage, at least a fighting chance.”

  “A fighting chance?” said Michael.

  “A fighting chance to return to life as it should be,” said Louis. “To have our lives back. Yours, Michael; yours, Jenny; and mine. I had a life too.”

  Everyone else had left the tearoom and they were alone. Even so, Louis leaned forward and, speaking in a low voice, told Michael and Jennifer everything he had not told them before. He told them about the earlier murders, about his career with the State Department and the CIA, about being Louis Coburn, about Algeria and Samad al Nhouri and Pierre Lefort, and about Hugh Bowes’s apparently boundless enmity.

  They listened with astonishment while he spoke, not interrupting, hardly daring to breathe, almost as though they were children again, and he was their father telling them tales from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

  XVI

  The vacation season had been over for weeks. The seaside hotels at La Baule were nearly empty, and some had already closed for the winter. The broad beach was not quite deserted, but those few souls strolling there wore jackets and hats. A lone horse and rider galloped along at the edge of the surf, sending great showers of spray into the air. Louis and Renard sat inside a restaurant, la Maison des Huîtres, regarding the blustery scene. It was a little risky to have a regular meeting place, but La Baule was located more or less halfway between Pen’noch and Saint Leon. It was an added benefit that the mussels at la Maison des Huîtres were fat and tender, the pommes frites crisp and hot, and you could order an excellent Muscadet by the pitcher. A great mound of mussel shells lay in a large bowl between the two men. They were sipping the last broth with silver soup spoons.

  “Maybe,” said Louis, “this is the moment.”

  “The moment,” said Renard, looking bored. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air. He was tired of Louis’s guessing games, and he refused to play.

  “The moment to let Hugh Bowes find me.” Louis waited, but Renard did not respond. “My children are out of harm’s way but not permanently. There is an American election coming.”

  “I read the newspapers,” said Renard.

  “Bowes might see the election as offering him some cover for a nice anti-terrorism move. To finish the game.”

&n
bsp; “The game?” said Renard. “The game?”

  “I think it is a game for him,” said Louis.

  “Just tell me,” said Renard, still sounding annoyed, “what you have in mind.”

  “I have in mind turning myself in,” said Louis.

  Renard just looked at Louis and waited.

  “Surrendering,” said Louis. “But not just to anyone. I will only surrender to Hugh Bowes.”

  Back in his office in Saint Leon, Renard searched through his top desk drawer. It was where he kept everything he did not know where to file. He finally found the card that had been left weeks earlier by the visitor in the dark suit. “Pénichon,” he muttered as he punched numbers into the telephone. “Lieutenant Pénichon, please,” he said.

  “Monsieur Pénichon,” said Renard when the lieutenant answered, “this is Inspecteur Jean Renard, gendarme at Saint Leon sur Dême.”

  Pénichon needed reminding. “You were here some weeks back,” said Renard. “On the Louis Morgon case.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Pénichon, “the American terrorist.”

  “Yes,” said Renard. “The American terrorist. Lieutenant Pénichon, I promised I would call if I was contacted by Louis Morgon. I have been contacted, and I think you should come down here immediately—or I can come up there if you wish—in order to discuss the matter. I believe it is an important development.”

  A few hours later Renard watched from his office window as Pénichon eased his official black sedan into a parking space in front of the Hôtel de France. Pénichon stepped from the car and used the car window as a mirror to straighten his tie and smooth his lapels. He walked across the street and through Renard’s office door. He wore the same dark suit and the same bored expression as he had on his previous visit.

  Renard rose from his chair. The two men shook hands. Renard thought it wise to be more hospitable than he had been on the occasion of the lieutenant’s previous visit, so he suggested they go for coffee. The two men walked across the square to the Hôtel de France and took a table in the front corner of the bar.

  “Tell me everything,” said Pénichon. He emptied three envelopes of sugar into his coffee. “This made me hopeful,” said Renard later when he spoke to Louis by telephone. “Michel makes the best coffee in France. What kind of idiot puts three sugars in Michel’s coffee?”

  Renard explained to Pénichon that the telephone in his office had rung the previous afternoon at exactly four fifteen. He had picked up and had immediately recognized Louis Morgon’s voice. In his opinion, Morgon had sounded distraught.

  “Really?” said Pénichon. “Distraught?” He opened a small notebook and wrote the word on the first page. “This gave me further hope,” Renard said to Louis, “and it enlivened my imagination. I told Pénichon how, at one point in our conversation, you began crying. I told him you were not only distraught, but that you might be desperate. I have to confess I was disappointed that Pénichon did not write the word desperate in his notebook.”

  Pénichon stirred his coffee. “He cried?” he said. “Well, he has a great deal he might cry about.”

  Renard went on to explain to Pénichon that, while Louis thought he would be able to hide indefinitely, he found such a life all but unbearable. He was separated from his home, from his friends, from everything and everyone he loved. “He might be willing to surrender under certain circumstances.”

  “Under certain circumstances? He should not be trying to negotiate,” said Pénichon. He had been raising his coffee cup to his lips, but he set it back on its saucer. “He has little on his side to negotiate with.”

  “I agree with you entirely,” said Renard. “I told him so. I said that I thought the best thing for him would be to simply surrender. But he seems to believe otherwise.”

  “And so?” said Pénichon. He was growing impatient. He had just driven all the way from Paris, and, thanks to traffic, a trip that should have taken two hours had taken three.

  Renard reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew an envelope, which he laid on the table between them.

  “What is this?” Pénichon said, regarding the envelope suspiciously.

  “This morning when I arrived at my office, I found it on the floor. It had apparently been slid under the door during the night.”

  “Then,” said Pénichon, “he cannot be far away.” The lieutenant glanced out the window, as though he might actually expect to see Louis scurrying away.

  “He was here last night,” said Renard. “Or perhaps he had someone deliver the letter. In either case, he could be halfway around the world by now. After all, in three hours you came all the way from Paris.”

  “Yes, you are right, of course,” said Pénichon. He looked at the envelope in the middle of the table.

  Renard continued. “Wherever he is, this letter was delivered to me, and I was instructed to deliver it, or rather to arrange to have it delivered, to …” Renard pushed the letter toward Pénichon.

  Pénichon bent forward to look at the envelope. In blue fountain pen ink in a neat hand it had been addressed to The President of the United States of America. Pénichon sat bolt upright, almost knocking over his coffee cup. “He’s insane,” he snorted.

  “Undoubtedly,” said Renard. “Still, you probably know from your investigations that Morgon was in government service in the United States. That was many years ago, of course, before he came to France.”

  “I do not know much about that,” said Pénichon, as though such facts were above and beyond the scope of his investigation.

  “Well, it is true,” said Renard. “For a time he worked as a presidential adviser. I believe he was quite high up in the administration. It was an earlier administration, of course. And Morgon could be exaggerating about all this. But I have seen some indication that it is true: certificates, letters of gratitude, photos, and the like. I’m sure you can easily check for yourself. He has many former acquaintances and friends still in high government service. Hugh Bowes, the former secretary of state? …”

  Pénichon gave no indication that the name meant anything to him.

  “Hugh Bowes was once the American secretary of state—which is like our foreign minister—and was a close friend of Louis Morgon’s. Anyway, Morgon has valuable information about terrorist activities, and he believes that the president of the United States will find his … offer an interesting one. He asked me to deliver the letter to someone who could deliver it to the president.”

  “But I am a police lieutenant,” said Pénichon. “A small fry. I cannot deliver this letter to anyone who will be able to deliver it … into the proper hands.” Pénichon suddenly found himself in deep water, and the chill he felt rising from the depths frightened him.

  “You only have to read the letter to see that it will quickly find its way to the American president once you present it to your superior. Go ahead. Read it. It is not sealed.”

  Pénichon reached for the letter. He pulled it toward himself with one finger. He opened the envelope and withdrew the letter as though it were a precious and fragile manuscript. “It is in English,” he said.

  “Do you read English?” asked Renard.

  “Yes,” said Pénichon, and it sounded to Renard as though he wished he didn’t. Pénichon read the letter very slowly. When he had finished, he folded it and reinserted it carefully into its envelope. He let the envelope sit faceup on the table for a while. He studied the writing on the front, and then, finally, picked up the envelope and slid it into his inside jacket pocket.

  The two men finished their coffee while Pénichon continued to contemplate what he had just read. They were walking back to Renard’s office when Pénichon broke his silence. “By the way,” he said in an almost lighthearted tone, “what were you doing in Canada recently? Were you on vacation?”

  “Of course not,” said Renard, looking at the lieutenant sideways. “I was doing my own investigating into this case. I was not only in Canada. I was also in the United States—in New York and Washington,
D.C.”

  “Were you, really?” said Pénichon. He sounded pleased with himself at having forced Renard to admit to these facts. “And what were you doing in those places?”

  “I was trying to discover Louis Morgon’s whereabouts. I had met his daughter and his son before. I hoped they would know where their father was.”

  “And were they helpful?” Pénichon wondered.

  “They weren’t,” said Renard. “Michael and his father have been estranged, and Jennifer was missing.”

  “Missing?” said Pénichon. He smiled. “Perhaps she has just run off with a lover.”

  “Perhaps,” said Renard. He could not tell whether Pénichon was joking or whether he actually knew something about what had happened. With his next question, however, Pénichon put Renard’s mind at ease. He withdrew the notebook from his jacket pocket, opened it, and asked, “What is the daughter’s name?” He also wanted to know the names of the hotels where Renard had stayed.

  “Are you interrogating me?” Renard said.

  Pénichon’s friendly smile disappeared. He closed the notebook and put it away. It was time for him to reassert his authority. “Monsieur Renard,” he said. He took a step closer to Renard. “Inspecteur Renard, you have exceeded your authority in so many ways, I don’t even know where to begin. Louis Morgon may have been a friend of yours, but if that is so, then my best advice to you would be to choose your friends more wisely. But regardless of your friendship, his criminal activity has not occurred within your area of responsibility.”

  “Saint Leon is where the crimes were committed,” Renard protested.

  “But these are not crimes which come under your purview,” Pénichon continued. He was gaining momentum. “Nowhere near it, in fact. Do you still not realize that this is a matter of international concern and import? This is a case crucial to the war against terrorism. It involves murder and espionage and numerous acts of terrorism. It most certainly does not involve village policing and amateur sleuthing. We are not talking about missing cows or stolen chickens. You must cease all your efforts immediately if you do not wish to find yourself up to your neck in trouble. Is that completely understood?”