It was becoming perfectly natural for them to be doing any number of things together, Delaney thought as they made their way in a taxi through the snarled traffic on the périphérique to the hotel. Natalia had not seemed terribly surprised when he said he thought they should go to Paris to visit this Polish comrade-in-arms of her uncle’s and see what he might know, or not know, or not wish to know. Especially since she had already phoned old Zbigniew Tomaszewski and given him more information than perhaps she should have. Delaney had become convinced that the way to the answer to the question of Stanislaw’s death would be through those who knew him best. The old man’s priestly friend was dead. That left the comrade in Paris.
Natalia had simply thought quietly about the idea for a few moments, and then agreed to go without much further discussion. She could see the logic, she said, and anything that might shed some light on the death of her uncle was attractive to her at this stage.
So they had set about tying up the few, the surprisingly few, loose ends in each of their lives before leaving. Natalia had prevailed on colleagues at work to indulge her grieving process a little longer and take over her cases. She had seen to some of her most distressed clients for a day or two, cancelled some evenings with her victims of torture and some other evenings of good psychological works, and then she was free to go. Gustavo, apparently, was not a factor in any of this. If there were other lovers in her life, she didn’t appear broken-hearted to leave them for a while, at least as far as Delaney could see.
Delaney had likewise prevailed upon his editors at the magazine, but with much less difficulty for anyone concerned. Technically he was on leave anyway, technically hard at work on another book and chasing a few wisps of investigative possibilities. But he did check in with the desk, as a courtesy in an increasingly discourteous media business. And then he, too, was free. For all of his smart talk to Natalia a few days earlier about connections with people, he recognized that he had very few.
Delaney made a point of buying his airline ticket with CSIS money, for reasons, Natalia would probably say if she had known about it, deep in his unconscious. To Delaney it seemed somehow appropriate and amusing to be counting out his spy cash at the Air Canada office. Natalia, however, would not hear of his paying for her ticket, even when he explained that the money would not be from his pocket, that it was “expense account money,” that his magazine was accustomed to him spending money to go off here and there on short notice. She insisted that Stanislaw had left her some money and his house in his will. She said she did not want to be a burden on this journey for tickets, hotels, or anything else.
Or, Delaney suspected, to be under any obligation to anyone. She would have been looking after herself for too long to want that.
Late February and early March in Paris are often grey and damp, the price paid for the April that follows. The streets in front of the Hotel Méridien were slick with late-winter rain as the cab pulled up. It was still very early, 7:30 a.m., and the traffic had thinned after they passed the Porte Maillot.
Delaney reached over the taxi driver’s small sleeping dog on the passenger side to pay and to have the usual debate about the impossibility of being issued a proper receipt. The driver made no move to help with their bags, although they had both brought only small ones, and the hotel doorman was hurrying to help the arriving occupants of a gleaming Jaguar with Swiss licence plates, so they went into the lobby unassisted and unheralded.
It was busy, as always, but with the subdued sound of all large first-class hotels. Delaney knew many other smaller hotels in Paris far more charming than this highrise establishment on the edge of the city and far closer to the parts of Paris he liked better than this. But he knew from experience that hotels of this size and quality were places where you could be anonymous to a certain extent, where people could be met in lobbies, where staff asked few questions, and where taxis congregated outside.
The desk clerk was supercilious, naturally — a caricature. He pretended, as all Parisian desk clerks are apparently trained to do, to have trouble with Delaney’s Anglo-Quebecois accent. In years past this had angered Delaney, but now he simply continued such conversations in his own brand of French without apology or any change in accent. Clerks, drivers, and waiters all eventually abandoned their little post-colonial charade.
As a punishment, however, this particular clerk then attempted to make it seem an impossibility that there would be any adjoining rooms. He argued that they would have to stay on separate floors, that it was all too impossibly complicated a matter to arrange for this bearded Canadian in a disreputable hooded parka. Natalia stood quietly as this transpired, neither amused nor embarrassed — in the sort of dreamlike state Delaney had by now observed as her usual response to any number of situations. She looked tired from the flight and tired from the events of the past few weeks.
“Il va falloir que vous prenez ou un chambre double, avec deux lits, ou deux chambres sur deux étages,” the clerk said, daring Delaney to declare publicly the nature of his relationship with Natalia and the importance of the request for separate but adjoining rooms.
Delaney had been to hundreds of hotels, with hundreds of unhelpful desk clerks, and had learned that in such situations the best strategy was to simply stand his ground. A small line of impatient people began to form behind them and, suddenly, a solution was found. The clerk produced two keys for rooms on the fifteenth floor. Near the elevator, malheureusement, and rather small, but nothing else could possibly, monsieur, be arranged.The desk clerk, too, failed to ask them if they needed help with their bags.
“The City of Paris bids you welcome,” Delaney said to Natalia as they moved across the lobby. “Not a very happy young man,” she said. Delaney had stopped to peer again at the number on the keys when Hilferty came up to them with a very natty young man at his side. Quite clearly French secret service, Delaney thought, or at the very least Quai d’Orsay.
“Welcome to Paris, Monsieur Delaney,” Hilferty said, pleased to have startled Delaney in this way. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Delaney could not say that he was terribly surprised that Hilferty would now be in Paris. The surprise was only that he had found their hotel so quickly and had been there, apparently, even before they arrived.
“Hilferty,” Delaney said. “Quel grand plaisir.” They eyed each other for a moment, each waiting for the other to provide a clue about how to play this scene. Hilferty was in one of his mischievous moods and offered no help. Delaney was tired and in the somewhat nihilistic state of those who have just gotten off a long overnight plane flight, so he let the silence build until Hilferty’s White Anglo-Saxon Protestant embarrassment forced him to fill it.
“Let me introduce my colleague, Jean Stoufflet, from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Hilferty said eventually. “Jean, this is Francis Joseph Delaney, one of Canada’s foremost scribes. A righter of wrongs, defender of the weak, teller of tall media tales.”
Hilferty had adopted his CSIS-operative-onforeign-soil look: dark suit, no yellow cashmere sweater this time, Gucci loafers, olive-green Aquascutum trench coat.
Stoufflet was wearing a quite splendid dark green suit, very European in cut, and he had a magnificent camel-hair topcoat slung over his thin shoulders. He carried one of the regulation, tiny, purse-cum-briefcases that an upwardly mobile young Quai d’Orsay–type must always have on his person.
Delaney figured him to be about thirty-five, from one of the old, monied Parisian families. Ecole Nationale d’Administration, a couple of years volunteer service in Chad or Côte d’Ivoire or some former French colony as a coopérant to avoid his compulsory military service, and then into the Quai and moving up through French Intelligence. Delaney had seen his type many times. Sometimes, perhaps those a little less advanced on the career path than this one or with slightly less promising family connections, to be seen paying their dues in one of the many Irish pubs of Paris, trying to
look relaxed as they forced down pints of Guinness and listened for evidence of IRA plottings.
“Enchanté,” Stoufflet said. He seemed reluctant to offer Delaney his hand. “I’m afraid I do not know your work.”
Stoufflet looked immediately to Natalia. For her, a hand was extended.
“Et vous, madame? You are a journalist, as well?”
“No, I’m not,” Natalia said.
Delaney was pleased to see she did not bother offering Stoufflet any other information, at least for the moment.
“You should introduce us to your lovely lady friend,” Hilferty said.
“This is Natalia Janovski, from Montreal,” Delaney said. “Natalia, this is John Hilferty, someone I know from my Ottawa days.” Delaney could see Hilferty waiting to hear how much Delaney would not say in front of Natalia. “He’s with External Affairs.”
“A bureaucrat,” Hilferty said modestly. “A humble civil servant.”
Natalia had already made it clear with her body language that she did not wish to make small talk in hotel lobbies today and said she would go upstairs. The three of them watched as she got into the brass-doored elevator. Delaney saw Hilferty looking at the number lights go on and off over the door, out of habit only, as he would almost certainly soon know what rooms they were in without any of this rather old-fashioned detective work being required.
“Our lovely young Polish friend is not aware, I take it, that you keep the company of spies,” Hilferty said, with an elaborate sideways glance at Stoufflet to see how this stylish gambit would be received by the French. “And you, old buddy, you don’t seem at all surprised to see us.”
“I don’t know what you could be talking about, John,” Delaney said. He had no wish to talk over with Hilferty how much or how little he had told Natalia about anything at this stage.
“Ah, a natural. Just as we suspected,” Hilferty said.
“A natural.”
“Yeah. Our newest little Maple Leaf spook. Keep up the good work.”
“I’m a freelance journalist.”
“Exactly.”
“I wouldn’t presume too much, if I were you Hilferty,” Delaney said, suddenly impatient with the game.
“Well, I’ve presumed five thousand dollars of Canadian government funds on you Delaney. A first instalment only, of course. But handy for those little extra expenses. Business class is always such a treat, isn’t it.”
“What five thousand dollars are you talking about?”
“Very good.”
“I hope you haven’t mislaid any of our government’s precious money,” Delaney said. “That would be a very bad career move these days. They’ll take it out of your pension.”
Stoufflet gave a little snort, and opened up a pack of Disque Bleu. He threw the cellophane wrapper on the floor and stared malevolently at the bellboy who had noticed.
“Well, do let us know if you need anything further, Francis,” Hilferty said. “We’ll be around and about.”
“Le gouvernement de la République Française is at your service, Monsieur Delaney,” Stoufflet said as he lit his cigarette. The match, too, went onto the marble floor.
“Je vous en prie,” Delaney said.
“Why don’t we meet tonight for a quiet drink somewhere?” Hilferty asked. “Do some plotting and scheming. Cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
Natalia took a long while to answer when Delaney knocked later on the panelled door that separated their rooms. Her room was the mirror image of his. It was dim with the drapes half closed. She had been resting on the bed. Le Monde was in sections on the bedspread and a bottle of Badoit water was open on the night table. She was still in her travelling clothes, waiting, probably, for Delaney to appear before she showered and changed or went to bed or whatever was her pattern after a long flight. She looked even more tired than before, but also somehow troubled now. It was a look he had seen before, a faraway look that came over her when she was worried or suspicious or, more likely these days, grieving.
“You all right?” Delaney asked.
“Yes. A bit tired.” Natalia stood awkwardly at the door.
“I’ll let you be, then,” Delaney said. “No rush to do anything. We can see this Zbigniew tomorrow.”
“This is feeling a bit strange all of a sudden, Francis,” she said. “What, exactly?”
“Being in Paris. Why we’re here. This hotel. Being here with you.”
“Just relax for a bit,” he said lamely.
“You’re very used to this, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Plane flights, assignments, hotels, getting information, meeting strangers.”
“I guess I am.”
She looked at him even more directly than usual. “Who were those men downstairs?” she asked. Delaney had to decide in the space of a moment whether to explain about Hilferty, to add this variable to the equation just then. He decided against it. He was not sure why.
“I think they might be agents,” he said.
“What do you mean, agents?”
“Agents. Spies. Security Intelligence Service, the Canadian guy, and French Intelligence, probably, the other one.”
“You know them?”
“Hilferty I know. I worked in the Press Gallery in Ottawa for a long time. I knew a lot of External Affairs guys and CSIS guys in those days.”
“Is he here because of us?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Delaney knew that these lies could create a problem for him eventually but it was already too late, even if he had had second thoughts about the tack he was taking and that he had been taking for some time with her on this. She’s getting more frightened now, Delaney thought. She is afraid of her fear.
“What would they have to do with Stanislaw, Francis?”
“Maybe nothing. Most likely nothing,” he said quietly. “But that’s sort of what we’re here to find out, don’t you think?”
“How would they know we were here?”
“That’s not really that hard these days, Natalia.”
“Would they know what we’re doing?”
“They don’t. I can’t see how they would. I think they might just like to know.”
“Should we tell them?”
“I don’t think so, Natalia.”
“Why not?”
“Because it can get very complicated when people like that get pulled into something like this,” Delaney said. “Let’s just have a look around ourselves and see what we can dig up. We’ll just have to play it a little close, that’s all. For a while anyway.”
Natalia looked neither more troubled, nor satisfied.
“Things are already very complicated, Francis,” she said.
This, he knew, was all too true. He knew that it would get even more complicated the more he allowed himself to become involved. And the more Natalia allowed herself to become obsessed with finding out the truth about her uncle’s murder.
They decided they would rest for a while and then shower and meet for a late lunch in the lobby restaurant. After they had eaten, Delaney said they should get word to Zbigniew that they were in Paris and that they wanted to see him the next day. He felt that the phones were no longer wise, particularly if Hilferty and Company were staying at the Méridien too. So he had a quiet word with the concierge, asking, as he passed him a hundred-franc note, if he could recommend a courier service très fiable, très discret. This was arranged, while Natalia wrote Zbigniew a note on hotel letterhead at a table in the lobby.
The courier, a Parisian motorcycle cowboy dressed head to toe in black leather, also became unusually cooperative with an extra hundred-franc note and a word from Delaney in the lobby. The address on the envelope was for the 20th arrondissement, far from the tourist track, where North African Jews and Arabs and a dwindling community of vintage
Parisians lived in somewhat rundown apartments in the northeast of the city.
Oui, the courier said, he would be quick and, non, it did not bother him in the slightest if the address on the bill of lading was not exactly the same as on the envelope. Ca fait absolument rien, monsieur. Zbigniew was to send a note back by courier, collect. Pas de problème.
Delaney watched as the young man roared off into the afternoon Paris traffic faster than anyone could possibly have imagined a motorcycle could go in such streets. He saw no sign of anyone watching and no one appeared to have taken on the dangerous job of chasing the courier’s bike. Hilferty, it appeared, had gone to ground. Or to a large expense account lunch with Stoufflet. But Delaney was not altogether reassured.
The evening was, again, just as dozens of evenings after long flights had been for Delaney over the years. He and Natalia took the requisite long stroll of the jet-lagged and the unhurried.They made small talk about Paris as they walked and they remarked on how little it ever changed.Teams of tall black Africans in lime-green overalls swept and sprayed gutters as they passed. Then a return to rooms, with no energy or desire or necessity to do anything at all until the next day. Each in their separate spaces to read newspapers, magazines, watch newscasts, eat light room service suppers, and sleep.
Delaney had been wrong about Hilferty going to ground. He called on the house phone at about eight o’clock.
“So, what about that drink?”
“Tied up tonight, John,” Delaney decided to say. “Sorry.”
“Seriously. We should talk. And I’ve got a petit paquet for you.”
Hilferty was in the bar when Delaney came down. Sports-jacketed this time and no Quai d’Orsay escort. He was drinking what looked like a double Scotch and eating pistachio nuts from a silver bowl on the bar. A small pile of shells was accumulating in the ashtray. Delaney ordered a beer and sat waiting for Hilferty to play spy.
“So, what’s the plan?” Hilferty asked eventually.
The Mazovia Legacy Page 13