“No.”
“I am not grateful at all. We have enough violence here.”
“Jules, I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”
Laforet was quiet. “We are always truly sorry. Afterward.”
Tarp sighed. “Yes.” He was looking at his right leg. The trouser was torn from the knee to the ankle, and the calf was dark with caked blood.
“I may hold you for a while, Tarp.”
“Why?”
“Come, you know why.”
“Not too long, Jules.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“You know ‘on what.’”
On my telling him what I am doing, yes.
“All right.”
“I’ll send an interrogator to you. It’s routine, you know. Be honest, please, and be consistent. Nobody expects you to be entirely truthful, of course. I shall have to file a report. I want to talk to you myself, too. Tonight?”
He thought of Repin. “Sooner?”
“All right. Wait.” Laforet left the telephone, probably to talk to an appointments secretary. When he came back he said, “I can spend half an hour before lunch. Will you be frank with me?”
“Yes. Jules, it’s important that I get back to London.”
A pause. “We shall see.” Another pause. “Who is the woman? Come, come, my friend; if I can start things now, you will leave that much sooner. Well?”
“Her name if Juana Marino. She’s Cuban. Born in Moscow.”
“Ah. Would I have a file on her?”
“You might.”
“Ah. Well, we shall have things to talk about. Until lunch, then.”
“Thank you, Jules.”
He handed the telephone to the other man. He turned and stared out at the Seine, thinking of Juana and the old man dying on the restaurant floor. Unthinkingly, he put his hand up to touch the shiny button the girl had pinned on him, but it was gone.
Chapter 22
Jules Laforet was nearing sixty, but he was still austerely handsome. Once, he had been romantically handsome, like the men on the covers of cheap editions of Malraux — a weapon in one hand, the face turned to look at some ideal that was just out of view — but age had refined and tempered him. He had begun as a Socialist but he had become an aristocrat, proving, perhaps, that it is easier to keep one’s looks than one’s ideals. Thin, silver-haired, beautifully dressed in the slightly flamboyant style of French tailoring, he looked like a very rich poet. He shook Tarp’s hand, holding it a little longer than was necessary because they were old friends, and then he sat in a fragile chair with his back to a view of the river.
“I have the interrogation report. They were very cursory, as I instructed.”
“Very.”
“And your leg?”
“Not bad.”
“Nine stitches is not bad, no. You look a little as if you may be still in shock. The woman, on the other hand …”
“Yes, they told me.”
“She is more serious.”
“Yes.”
Laforet took out a thin silver cigarette case and opened it one-handed. The action seemed dated, of the thirties, though he was not so old as that. “A very evil business,” Laforet said. “Six dead, seven injured. Two of them children.” He selected a cigarette and then lit it with Tarp’s lighter-derringer, which he produced from his own pocket. Tarp had been searched earlier. “One of the attackers was killed,” Laforet said. “A Palestinian. A stray bullet or a piece of one, the police think just now.” He held up the lighter. “You?”
“Yes.”
Laforet pulled up the end so that the .22 chambers showed. “Not at any distance, I should think.”
“About an inch.”
“That would seem about right.” Laforet exhaled. He crossed his long legs, down which the trouser crease ran like a wire. He moved a finger and thumb along it as if to make it even sharper. “What is going on?”
“Dzerzhinsky Square. Repin asked me to look into a problem there.”
“Why you?”
“‘We love the enemies of our enemies.’”
“I thought Repin was out of favor.”
“That’s why they picked him.”
Laforet drew lightly on the cigarette. “I suppose, to a modern Russian, an old Stalinist seems rather quaint.” He tapped ash with a practiced movement. “How bad is this business?”
“Bad.” He told about the attacks in Cuba and Argentina, the crash of the Soviet aircraft. “And now this. It’s a bloodbath.”
“Buenos Aires,” Laforet said musingly. “Why Buenos Aires?”
“I can’t say yet.”
“Yes you can.”
“Jules —”
“My friend, you are in no position to bargain. You are in France on an illegal passport; you have an illegal weapon; you were meeting a Cuban agent at the time of a terrorist attack! If we chose to put you on trial, we could send you to prison for life.”
“That would be embarrassing for you.” Tarp knew a lot about French intelligence.
“Of course it would. But your position is a weak one.”
“Let’s make a deal.”
“What?”
“Information for a protected base.”
“What information?” Laforet put the cigarette out carefully in a brass ashtray.
“A full report when it’s over. An outline now.”
“What sort of protected base did you have in mind?”
“A safe house where the woman can recuperate and where I can come and go. Some basic communications.”
“Sanctuary?”
“Yes.”
“That would implicate my government.”
“Not if you keep your distance.”
“Now, would you tell me, could a sub-minister of my experience and reliability ‘keep his distance,’ might I ask?”
“A cover story.” They held each other’s eyes for some seconds. “You are like a stone,” Laforet said. “Unmovable.” He laughed softly, like a man who has spent his life in places where loud laughter was improper. “And outrageous, as well. What is France getting in return?”
Tarp rubbed his eyes. He was worried about Juana now, and his thoughts kept snapping back to her. He had to focus to talk to Laforet, shutting her out. “I think that Soviet plutonium is getting to Argentina,” he said. “I don’t think your government will want it to show up as the atomic warhead on a French-made missile.”
Laforet grew even quieter. “Are you sure?”
“No.”
“This is part of the Dzerzhinsky Square business?”
“Yes.”
Laforet smoothed his trouser leg some more. “What would be the cover story if we give you a base and protection?”
“I’m working on something in England.”
“Aha.” Laforet raised one slender finger in the gesture of a medieval saint. “We pretend that the Moscow business is the cover!” He shook his head. “It is so outrageous I am tempted to do it simply for the amusement.”
“It’s workable.”
Laforet looked out the window. A barge was coming up the river, and, behind it, one of the glass-topped tourist boats was overtaking it. The sun was breaking through, making the water dance with light. “Anything is workable if it is made to work,” Laforet said. “What is it you would be doing in England?”
“Plugging a leak.”
“Do they have one?”
“Don’t they always?”
Laforet looked at his wrist watch and then stood. The watch was gold and matched his gold cuff links; Tarp remembered that Laforet had married the daughter of a millionaire. “I have to leave in four minutes,” Laforet said. “What you have told me about the plutonium is very disturbing. Very disturbing. I think … I believe we will want to support you. For now, you are free to go, and we will keep the woman under guard. What sort of safe house did you want?”
“Something handy to the Channel ports. Normandy, Brittany. With a car. I’d expect
you to keep trackers and watchers; I’d want a trustworthy caretaker. Plus whatever medical help the woman will need.”
“I shall have some paperwork drawn up.”
There were footsteps in the corridor as somebody approached to tell Laforet he was due for his next appointment. Tarp stood up and touched Laforet’s arm. “This is a bad business, Jules. I can’t seem to catch up with it. Whoever it is who’s on the other side — he doesn’t care about blood. He doesn’t care about anything.”
There was a knock at the door. “One minute!” Laforet called. He tried to make a joke of it. “From what you have told me, it sounds like not one man but a dozen. A dozen very bloody men.” He adjusted his cuffs with long fingers. “I must go.” He put out his hand. “Where will you be?”
“London.”
“Ever the fast mover.”
“I’m on the run. The trouble is, I don’t where my hiding place is.”
“My assistant will give you a communications route. I should like to talk again within forty-eight hours. In the meantime, we shall do everything we can for the woman.”
“Of course.”
Laforet went out. The sun broke through again to sparkle on the polished floor and on Tarp’s steel lighter, which Laforet had left for him.
*
He rented a car at Heathrow and drove slowly toward London. Something that Laforet had said had stuck with him. It sounds not like one man but a dozen. The idea was mixed up with the dream of the night before, that anger and that sense of helplessness. Not one man but a dozen. Not a dozen men in Moscow, but perhaps several men in several places. Even, perhaps, several unconnected men. Except that that made no sense, for they were connected at least by their bloodiness and their desire to stop what he and Repin were doing.
A few minutes later he remembered that Juana had never delivered her message to him. He found that he was angry with her.
*
It was almost time for him to meet with Johnnie Carrington at his club, but he pulled the car over in Kensington and found a telephone. First he called the number that Jenny Barnwell had given him and said, “Tell Jenny to call the Chinaman at seven,” meaning that Barnwell was to call the phone booth near Russell Square at ten. Then he readied another coin and dialed Mrs. Bentham’s number, which he had by this time memorized.
“Yes?” her imperious, high-pitched voice shouted.
“Mrs. Bentham, it’s Mr. Rider.”
“Yes?”
“I asked you to do some research for me.”
“Oh, yes?”
He did not seem to be getting anywhere. “I wondered if you’d had any success as yet.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Ah, I wonder if you could tell me something about it.”
“I shall put my report in the mail, Mr. Rider. Actually, you gave me no address. I must say, I thought it a little odd, your not giving me an address. I don’t work on speculation, you know, Mr. Rider.”
“Of course not.”
“And I don’t undertake anything of a questionable nature.”
“This isn’t of a questionable nature, Mrs. Bentham.”
“You have no address.”
“Of course I have. I simply didn’t give it to you.”
She sniffed. “The effect is the same.”
Tarp was trying to think it through. She lived in Croyden, he remembered. “Mrs. Bentham, would it be better for you if I paid you personally and picked up what you’ve done so far?”
“Visit my home?” she said icily.
“Ah, no, I can see that that wouldn’t do. What if you were to bring your materials up to town, and of course I’d pay for your getting here and back. And your time, of course.”
“Tomorrow?” She seemed a little softened.
“Tonight, actually.”
“I never go out at night.” She sniffed. “Except when I am fortunate enough to go the theater, which is pitifully seldom these days. It has become so very expensive!”
Tarp smiled into the mouthpiece. “Mrs. Bentham, it would be my pleasure to let you be my guest at any theater you care to name. Then, let’s say, I could meet you in the interval. In the bar, how would that be?” A theater bar would be good for both of them, crowded, public, utterly without intimacy. “I couldn’t stay, of course, but we’d have time to talk briefly and you could show me what you’ve got so far.”
“You’re a very impatient man,” she said, but the words were not spoken harshly.
“I’d want to pay for a taxi to take you home, naturally. Because of the hour.”
She named a play that she had been longing to see. “May I make a reservation for you?” he said.
“Well …”
“The stalls?”
Her voice became little-girl small. “The stalls would be quite acceptable,” she said.
“Then I’ll meet you in the stalls bar between the first and second acts. If there’s a problem with the ticket, I’ll call back; if you don’t hear from me, we’ll meet there. All right?”
“It seems all right,” she said. Some of her grander manner had been recovered.
Tarp called the theater and reserved her ticket on his Canadian credit card, and then he drove toward Carrington’s club.
Prong’s had occupied the same building for a hundred and thirty years. It had survived’a German bomb and had stood from 1942 to 1946 with two wooden props holding up its eastern wall, a situation that had led to a newspaper cartoon that showed England, as Prong’s, supported by Humour and Determination. Prong’s was an upper-civil-servants’ club, and it had had its share of prime ministers.
“Sir?” the fat porter said when he opened the door.
“I’m meeting Mr. Carrington.” Noise, smell, and heat met him in the open doorway.
“Is it Mr. Tarp, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Go right on up, sir. Third floor. Mind the stairs, they’re ever so steep.”
He had a glimpse of a former kitchen on his left, where a government figure whom he recognized was howling with laughter as he leaned against an old wall oven. Tarp could see part of a bench and the leg of a chair and several pairs of feet. The place was packed, hot, and noisy. Glasses of whiskey were much in evidence; the cigar smoke was thick.
He went up a flight of dangerous stairs and ducked his head under a black beam at the top. Prong’s was, in fact, little more than an eighteenth-century cottage. Elegance was not its attraction — the floors sloped; the ceilings were too low.
There were three doors on the third-floor landing, one to a lavatory from which a red-faced man was just stepping; one to a tiny library that was packed with grinning, shouting men; and one that was closed. He knocked lightly, then opened the door far enough to peer in.
“Aha!”
It was a billiards room hardly big enough for the billiard table. Two lights hung on cords above the green felt. Just at the edge of their brightness, a man was standing, his body in the light up to his chin and his face obscured.
“Come in, Mr. Tarp, come in.”
Tarp stepped in and closed the door. “I was looking for John Carrington.”
“We’ve met before. You don’t remember, I’m sure.”
“Of course I remember. It’s Matthiessen, isn’t it?” And the last words I said to you were, You go to hell. Tarp shook the man’s hand.
He was several inches shorter than Tarp and just slightly plump; he had slicked-back black hair that was growing thin. He was over fifty now, and since Tarp had seen him two years before the blotchy purple places under his eyes had gotten darker and the skin on this cheeks had gone from pink to maroon. Still drinking too much.
“Ramsey Matthiessen,” the man said.
“Number three at MI-Five.”
“Ah, you do remember! I consider myself highly flattered! Whatever do I do to earn such attention?” Matthiessen grinned. He considered himself a wit, one who made his subordinates laugh spontaneously and his superiors admiringly. “Been well, Mr. Tarp?”
>
“Pretty well.”
“You look very fit — very healthy, very brown. Is that from the sun of Florida, I wonder, or of Cuba?” He seemed to wait for an answer. He produced two cigars. “Cigar?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Ah, yes, that American passion for good health. You don’t mind if I smoke, I hope.”
“I do mind.”
Matthiessen bared his teeth; it could hardly have been called a smile. “You say what you think, yes, I remember.” His cheeks turned to red apples as he made it a wide, false grin. “Very refreshing. I often say to the sad creatures who are forced by circumstance to work for me, Pray, don’t deceive yourselves and me with false modesty; say what you think!” He laughed. “Then if they do, of course, I have them removed. Honesty in a civil servant is the first sign of lunacy. ‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go,’ hmm?”
“What do you want?”
“More matter, less art?”
“I have to meet Carrington.” Tarp turned to go.
“The substance of your meeting is here with me, Mr. Tarp. Not that young Carrington won’t appear. I wouldn’t deny two old friends the pleasure of each other’s company.” He smiled a perfunctory, professional smile that vanished at once. “This room is secure. The sweepers check it every day. We can talk.”
“Yes?”
Matthiessen pulled himself up straight and put a hand in the small of his back, pushing the pelvis forward as if he might be suffering from some sort of backache. “We understand you’ve gone on the Moscow rolls,” he said, lavishing a care on the vowels and the l sounds of rolls that made the words acutely sarcastic. “We understand you have sold your — shall I say, your services, and not use a more theological term — to Mr. Andropov.”
“Yes?”
Matthiessen made a clicking sound with his tongue. “How very reticent you are! Dear, dear, it’s rather like having discourse with a stone. And a rather tongue-tied stone, at that. People have pet stones in America, I understand. Come, come, do exercise the gift of speech, if only to prove that you are a sentient being, Mr. Tarp. I am only a minor figure in the great scheme of things, I realize, but Her Majesty’s government do entrust me with a certain, shall I say, responsibility, and here I am! I have come here to talk with you. Expressly for the purpose. This is not idle chat.”
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