House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

  We were. The walls of the compartment groaned. The tempo of the wheels increased. Suddenly a hollow din washed over us. We had entered the tunnel.

  I put my lips close to Anne’s ear. “We’re still not out of this. That was my picture they showed you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. It was the same one they had in the France-Soir.”

  “Then if the police are on the lookout when we hit Milan, they’ll be able to identify me. The best thing is for me to get away when we slow down going through the yards and meet you in Venice.”

  “No,” Anne said.

  “I’ll be there sometime during the day. All you have to do is wait in the station for me.”

  “No.”

  Her tone allowed for no argument about it.

  “Fine,” I said. “Then what happens when we reach Milan?”

  “You’ll think of something. You always do.”

  “Not always, lady. Only when I know what I’m up against.” My sense of outrage boiled over. “Jesus, if you’d only told me everything from the start. You trusted me enough to bring me into the house, but from then on—”

  “I told Sidney everything. You know what happened to him. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to you.”

  “That was a mistake.”

  “Caring what happened to you?”

  “Oh, why don’t you try being honest for a change! What you cared about was having me get you and Paul to the States. All right, that makes sense. But the romance you cooked up between us, that touching love story you were acting out for my benefit—that wasn’t the way to do it. There never really was a love story at all, was there?”

  Anne took a long time to answer.

  “No,” she said at last. “There couldn’t be.”

  I had finally forced the truth out of her. From the way it made me feel, it would have been better if I hadn’t.

  “It’s Morillon, isn’t it?” I said with cold contempt. “You know what he is, you hate him for it, but you can’t get him out of your system, can you?”

  “Must we talk about it?”

  “Yes. I’ve always wondered how a woman could let a liar, a murderer—”

  “You know he’s become that only because he believed in what his organization is doing. He’s sacrificed everything for it.”

  “Why? To make the world what Hitler and Stalin tried to make it? Only this time it would be Charles Leschenhaut who cracks the whip. Remember him? He’s the man who made your own son a hostage. He’s the man Morillon lies and murders for. But you’re willing to forgive Morillon despite that.”

  “There’s no use talking about it! All I want is to get Paul out of danger. I don’t care what happens after that!”

  “Then you’d better start caring. Do you think you’ll be safe anywhere with what you know about the organization? Do you know the first assignment Leschenhaut would give that bastard Colonel Hardee and his Yankee storm troopers if you ever got to the States?”

  “I’ll find some place—”

  “Not until the whole lot of them are finished off for good, and that includes Hubert Morillon. Now answer one question. If the time comes that you can get up in court and testify against him, would you do it?”

  She didn’t speak, but when she abruptly turned her head away from me I knew the answer. I took hold of her chin and forced her to look at me. Her eyes were glistening with tears.

  “You damn fool,” I said, almost pitying her, “do you really believe you can keep running the rest of your life? Just because you once thought you were in love with him—”

  “More than that.”

  “More than that?”

  “I married him,” Anne said. “He’s Henri de Villemont, my husband.”

  3

  From the beginning he had been wily as the serpent which, dust-colored, lies in the dust and is not seen. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the creation of the OAS—l’Organisation de l’Armée Secrète in North Africa—but he was pleased to have others take the credit. When the colons turned against the government in 1960 it was Colonel Henri de Villemont who had directed their forces, although he chose to do it as an anonymity acting through his brothers-in-law. When the generals led the great revolt of 1961 it was this colonel who led the generals, fostered their Napoleonic dreams, soothed their distrust of each other, saw to it that they didn’t drag their feet in moments of crisis, but always as a man behind the scene, a power behind the throne.

  He was a fanatic but never a fool. He knew there might be setbacks along the way and wanted to be in a position to rally his forces again after them. A man couldn’t do this if he were seized as a traitor by the government and left to rot in jail.

  Of course, he had the means to function effectively while remaining anonymous. His brothers-in-law, Claude de Gonde and Edmond Vosiers, were leaders among the civilian colons. His wife was a childlike American heiress, as ignorant of politics as a kitten, and willing to provide him with whatever funds were asked for. His mother, his most rabid convert, had a ranking place in the influential social circles of the Continent. Above all, his father had been General Sebastien de Villemont, that great warrior, hero of the Republic, friend of de Gaulle and Leclerc, and one of the very first to openly attack Pétain for his betrayal of France to Hitler. The more the known leadership of the OAS came to revere the name of Pétain, the more Colonel Henri de Villemont publicly harked back to his father’s condemnation of the old Marshal. Who then could suspect that this young officer had ties to the OAS, or, even more incredible, that he was one of its leaders?

  Ironically, it was adoration for the father which had led the son along his treasonous course. There were a good many in the barracks of North Africa who wept openly that black day in 1954 when the shattering news of the defeat at Dienbienphu was announced, but Colonel Henri de Villemont did not weep. He sat alone in his quarters, sick with horror of an image he couldn’t rid himself of—the French colors dragged in the dust by a gang of half-naked, dirty little Orientals—and thought of how his father had spent his life fighting for the glory of France and what had now happened to that glory. Dienbienphu was more than a defeat for France, it was a desecration of General de Villemont’s memory. And the men really responsible for it—not the soldiers who had led the defeated army, but the politicians in Paris who had betrayed it—might as well have opened the general’s tomb and spat on his moldering remains.

  So where others wept and got drunk that day, Colonel Henri de Villemont sat dry-eyed and sober, examining the future. It would be the same in North Africa as in Indo-China, he saw. A war of the natives against the masters who had brought them civilization, an endless, dragging war which would finally break the nerve of the politicians and chop another member off the already mangled body of the Empire. There was only one way to avert this disaster. The army itself, the backbone of France, must be ready for the moment when the politicians would cry quits and must then settle with them once and for all.

  But even the wiliest serpent may sometimes be detected as it slides through the dust. In 1960 a commission led by that ultra-respectable lawyer, Max Marchat, was sent from Paris to investigate army operations in Algeria and especially the curious activities of the officers there. Marchat himself had quickly been charmed to blindness by the engaging Colonel de Villemont. The colonel’s wife possessed a vast fortune. Would Monsieur Marchat consent to act as Madame’s legal representative in Paris and keep an eye on her interests for a substantial retainer? Monsieur Marchat, one eye on the lovely Madame de Villemont and the other on the retainer, would. So in his report to Paris there was never a word about certain rumors concerning Colonel de Villemont. After all, would anyone really guilty of treason hire the head of an investigating commission as his lawyer?

  But one member of the commission, a trouble-making journalist, was not so easily persuaded. He saw the serpent, he went to work trying to pin its head to the ground, and when he had proven really dangerous he was disposed of in the American style. A
car slowly cruised by him as he sat in front of a café in Bougie, a tommygun opened fire, and the journalist, as well as the waiter serving him, was riddled with bullets before the eyes of a dozen witnesses who, under police questioning, turned out not to have seen anything at all.

  That was Colonel de Villemont’s mistake. The journalist was gone but his notes remained, and when they fell into the wrong hands the colonel was now officially suspect. In the army revolt of 1961 he was marked as one of the OAS leaders; with the defeat of the revolt he knew he was marked for a firing squad.

  What now? Suicide? Flight? Surrender?

  It was Charles Leschenhaut, ex-priest, ex-Communist, editor of La Foudre, inventor of la méthode, the beehive society of the future, who provided a happier solution than any of these. The colonel and Leschenhaut had come to know each other well over the past few years; they admired and trusted each other. It was Leschenhaut who had once pointed out that when the OAS had seized power in France it must be transformed into an Organisation d’Élite Internationale, make contact with sympathetic organizations in every country, establish la méthode as the social system throughout the world.

  Did the defeat of the OAS change the big picture, he now demanded of the colonel. Not at all. First, the hard-core leadership of the OAS must take measures to survive the blow. Then they must unit in the OEI and continue their work underground. Above all, this new organization must expand across borders, join with cells of disgruntled Stalinists the other side of the Iron Curtain and parties of gallant and stubborn neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists this side of it, to create an authority bigger than any one state. With Leschenhaut as chief executive of the organization and Henri de Villemont as chief administrator—!

  Of all this, of her husband’s role in the OAS, of his secret activities, Anne Devereux de Villemont knew nothing, and there was no one in the tight little circle of colons around her to enlighten her. No one back in the States to communicate with either. It may have been one reason why Colonel Henri de Villemont was so content with his marriage to this extraordinarily beautiful, but just as extraordinarily naive and uninformed bride.

  When she was five her parents, proper Bostonians, had died in an air crash and she had been taken in charge by an aunt and uncle who had room to spare in their Louisburg Square mansion. By the time she was twelve, the uncle, otherwise a chilly and taciturn man, was taking much more than a kindly interest in her, and so her outraged aunt had shipped her off to Mother of Mercy Academy in the suburbs where she spent the next six years safely out of her uncle’s reach. The academy was more cloister than school; life there was narrow and lonely; and young Anne Devereux, shy and withdrawn, answered the loneliness by religious devotion and romantic dreams. The dreams became a reality sooner than she expected. After graduation, she was invited by the parents of a friend to join them and their daughter on a cruise of the Mediterranean, she was introduced to the dashing Colonel de Villemont by an official of the American consulate in Algiers, and one month later was married to the colonel.

  The first year of marriage was strange and difficult for her. As a husband Henri was courteous and dutiful, but not much more. And the ingrown social life of the rich colons, the same people saying the same things over the same iced drinks day after sweltering day, bored her to distraction, sharpened her temper and her tongue, sent her into pitched battle against the members of her husband’s family who made it their business to supervise her every move.

  Then, with the birth of her son, life became golden. It didn’t matter any longer that Henri neglected her for his other activities; she had Paul to fill her days. And as it turned out, Henri was everything as a father that he had not been as a husband. He adored his son, devoted whatever little time he could spare from his duties to him, and talked about him to Anne with a joyous affection he had never revealed for anyone before.

  What he did not talk of, what Anne remained ignorant of until the last possible moment, was his secret life as conspirator. So when the moment came, she had to be told everything at once. This behind locked doors with Madame Cesira and Charles Leschenhaut in attendance as if to make sure the revelation was properly witnessed.

  The cool, dispassionate account of what her husband had been up to during the past five years was enough to leave her in a state of shock; what followed was still worse. Tomorrow morning, the dark-haired, dark-eyed, trimly mustached Colonel Henri de Villemont would be killed in the line of duty. Tomorrow afternoon, the blond, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, highly Nordic Dr. Hubert Morillon would arrive at Madrid airport for a conference with the eminent Dr. Felix Linder, who was in need of a personal assistant in his sanitarium at Issy. Leschenhaut already had the passport ready, right down to its retouched picture of the colonel. The hair dyes, contact lenses, and scholarly-looking spectacles which would complete the transformation of colonel to doctor were on hand. Most important, a cadaver resembling the colonel had already been obtained from the morgue and was only waiting to be put to use. Too bad that the dazed, horror-stricken Madame Anne de Villemont had to be given all these details, but her husband had no intention of renouncing wife and child forever, of seeing the wife innocently move toward a bigamous relationship perhaps, and so there was no way of keeping the secret from her. The colonel might be officially dead, but the doctor was certainly going to be part of her life once she and the family were installed in Paris.

  Did Madame understand all this? Did she understand that the one secret she must never breathe to another soul on earth was that her husband was still alive and very much kicking? That was Leschenhaut cruelly hammering at her. That was Leschenhaut cruelly saying, “And remember this. If Henri is betrayed through your carelessness or stupidity, it will be your son who answers for it. Wait!” he commanded, as even the imperturbable Madame Cesira started up at this. “Think it over, my friends. See if this doesn’t assure that there won’t be any betrayal of either Henri or our organization. I know what the child means to all of you. If I didn’t, I’d be making a meaningless noise with this warning. But the warning is sincere. If you don’t see it my way, just say so now and we’ll part company. You’ll have to go your own way then. My way lies with the organization.”

  He had left the room so that they could discuss it among themselves. De Villemont had paced the floor, gnawing his lip, his face drawn. Madame Cesira had sat like a statue of implacable justice.

  “This is no joke,” de Villemont had said at last. “Charles is a man of his word.”

  “Would you want him as your partner otherwise?” Madame Cesira had asked.

  “True, but—”

  There was many a Roman’s son who served as hostage for him,” said Madame Cesira. “The child of the great King Francis took his father’s place in a Spanish prison. Do you think I love Paul any less than you do? But, as your father always said, duty comes before love, honor before sentiment. This is so more than ever now, with a world at stake and with you the leader of the movement for its salvation. Besides, if your wife behaves herself properly”—Madame Cesira never referred to Anne by name but always as “your wife” or “my son’s wife”—“no harm can come to Paul. It’s up to her not to become the murderer of her husband and son.”

  And de Villemont had thought this over and finally nodded agreement. “Yes. It’s up to her.”

  Anne was still in a state of shock when, early the next morning, the corpse resembling her husband was carefully dressed in his uniform, carried to the garage behind the house, propped in the rear seat of the staff car parked there, and driven by Georges to the street before the house where the body, slumped in a dozing position, could be remarked by any bypassers. Behind the curtains of an upstairs window, the family gathered to watch, Anne among them like the spectator at some macabre ritual, dreading to see the spectacle, but unable to take her eyes from it.

  Georges left the car standing there and hastened up the steps of the house. The colonel, so the story would go, had forgotten his pistol on his dresser, had ordered Georges to brin
g it to him. Then down the street appeared a shabby little Citroën which drew up beside the staff car. A man leaped from it and in one quick motion flung a grenade through the rear window of the staff car. The planning had been perfect. It was not a fragmentation grenade that was used but a phosphorous grenade which exploded in a burst of white heat fierce enough to melt steel into boiling liquid. Then there had been a bad moment. A spatter of these boiling droplets struck the bomb-thrower in the face. He cried out and staggered back under the pain, but, half-blinded, managed to get behind the wheel of his own car and make good his escape. Meanwhile, the staff car went up in flames, the body in it incinerated to a charred lump of flesh and tattered uniform. The only clue to the man who had thrown the bomb was a handful of FLN leaflets he had tossed in the air as he sped away—the usual leaflets put out by the Algerian freedom movement demanding an end to French oppression.

  Perfect planning. So perfect that the first witness to arrive on the scene was the agent who had been staked out in the house opposite to keep an eye on Colonel de Villemont and make sure he didn’t slip the government net closing around him. He was to be arrested that day. The agent could hardly conceal his disappointment that some vengeful Moslem had taken matters into his own hands before the arrest could be made.

  So Colonel Henri de Villemont had officially died, and Dr. Hubert Morillon was born. Dressed unobtrusively in mufti, carrying an attaché case filled with medical papers and a correspondence with Dr. Felix Linder, he had briefly joined the mob gathering around the blazing staff car, made a sage remark about the horrors of war, and taken a cab to the airport. It was the last Anne had seen of him until the family was transported to Paris and settled in the house on the rue de Courcelles. By then, plastic surgery, which shortened the nose a trifle and tightened the skin at the corners of the eyes, had transformed him so completely and subtly that she didn’t even recognize this blond, blue-eyed stranger when he made his first appearance before her.