“What are the woman and child in danger from?”
“The woman knows too much about the organization. The child knows who Louis le Buc’s murderer is. He was in the room when Louis was killed.”
The gaunt man opened the folder, riffled through it and drew out a sheet of paper. He skimmed through the paper almost at a glance.
“There were only two people in the room at the time of the murder, you and a Léon Schaefer, now known as Becque. His deposition—”
“He’s a member of the organization. His job was to pin the murder on me.”
“I don’t think so, Monsieur Reno Davis. You see, we know all about Schaefer. He’s been investigated very carefully. He was a member of the outlawed OAS and did serve a prison sentence for that. But he was freed under the general amnesty, and his record since then is altogether respectable. Yours, I’m afraid, does not match it.”
“If the child is at the embassy, you can speak to him yourself.”
“If.”
“What do you have to lose by trying it?” I pleaded.
He considered that expressionlessly. Then, with an abrupt gesture, he crushed out his cigarette in the coffee cup and stood up.
“We’ll see,” he said.
I couldn’t gauge how long he was gone from the room. It seemed like hours. It might have been twenty or thirty minutes. While he was gone my guard kept me standing at rigid attention by a casual kick in the ankle whenever I started to shift position.
When the gaunt man re-entered the room my heart sank at the expression on his face. It was all self-satisfaction. The luxurious relish of a cat who has pinned down the canary and is now preparing to devour it.
“Madame de Villemont,” I croaked. “The child. They didn’t reach the embassy.”
“They are at the embassy. I spoke to both of them. They are quite safe now,” and when I stood staring at him dumbly, the blood draining out of me with the shock of it, he said sharply to the guard, “Get those cuffs off him and put him into a chair before he passes out on us. And see if you can find something to drink around here. Some cognac.”
There was no cognac, but there was wine, and I took down two full glasses of it like water before I could find my voice again.
“This isn’t a trick?” I said. “Both of them are all right?”
“Both. But they had a narrow squeak. A man followed them from the Colosseum by car and made an attempt on their lives with a pistol almost at the embassy gates. The police have him now. A Bernard Bourdon. Do you know him?”
“He’s one of the organization.”
“I thought so. As for the murder of Louis Metchnikoff”—the gaunt man daintily fitted a fresh cigarette into his holder, savoring the moment—“there were not two people in the room during the event as the police believe, but four. Besides you and Schaefer, there was the child himself and a certain gentleman hidden behind the door, gun in hand. Monsieur Charles Leschenhaut, in fact. The boy says it was he who fired that bullet.”
“Leschenhaut?”
“Charles Leschenhaut. Someone my service has been trying to pin the goods on for a long time. It seems he’s finally made a fatal mistake.”
“What service? If you’re not the police—”
“So you’ve guessed that much, have you, Monsieur Davis? But have you ever heard of the S.D.E.C. in France. Le Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionage?”
“No.”
“That’s to its credit, I’d say. It is, more or less, a counterpart to your country’s CIA. And now that you have heard of it, I’d suggest you forget about it. Let’s turn to business instead.”
“What business?”
The man laid a pale, skeletal hand on the wrapping papers spread over the table. “This, for one thing. What information does it contain?”
“The organization’s membership list. If you use a book called La Mystère du Tarot by Sophie de Laennac, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble decoding it.”
His eyes lit up. “In that case, we’ll be able to smoke the rats out of the cellar once and for all. I trust we’ll get your co-operation in this.”
“You will. But right now—”
“Bight now, Madame is waiting for you at the embassy, and there will be a doctor on hand to treat your wound without asking troublesome questions. Also some agents of your government and the Italian government who will have questions to ask. One of them has already been picked to act as liaison between us. I’m afraid you and Madame and the child face a difficult time. You’ll have to serve as witnesses at Leschenhaut’s trial and some others to follow, and that will be a nuisance for all of you until the premises are thoroughly disinfected. Of course, police protection will be provided until then.”
“What about Schaefer? He’s a dangerous character, and there are some friends of mine he’s close to. For their sake—”
“Mademoiselles Eliane Tissou and Véionique Blanchard?”
“You know them?” I said with surprise.
The gaunt man smiled bleakly.
“I know them. They’re already under police protection, even if for the wrong reason. It was the killing of Monsieur Adrian Driot-Steiner of the Ministry of Commerce by a speeding car which started the ball rolling. In his files was found an inexplicable requisition to the police for a report on the death of one Sidney Scott. We went to Mademoiselle Blanchard for an explanation of the document, she unwillingly led us to you, and so to the family de Villemont who were already in bad odor from Algeria. Finally, we were led as far as the family Montecastellani here in Rome.”
“Was that why your men were trailing me? Because they figured I would lead them to the Montecastellani hideout?”
“Yes. With the kind consent of the Italian police who had to close their eyes to what was going on. And now that I’ve been so frank, I’d like you to return the favor and explain your involvement with the organization. Everything.”
I told him everything. When I was finished he shook his head with a sort of humorous despair. “You mean that concern for the child was the only reason for your taking such an incredibly reckless course?”
“Yes.”
“But how could you possibly believe that even a man as ruthless as Leschenhaut—?”
I said, “There was an Algerian—he was the editor of one of those FLN sheets—who lived a few doors away from me on the Faubourg Saint-Denis. I was standing across the street when a car drove by and someone threw a plastique at him. It blew his daughter’s face off. She was four years old.”
The gaunt man sat silent for a while.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I see what you mean.”
5
I was led out of the room the way I had been led into it, with the opaque goggles over my eyes and a strong hand under my elbow to guide me along my blindly stumbling course to the car.
The car moved off, entered traffic, slowly traveled a bewildering series of twists and turns. It stopped.
“La correspondance, monsieur.” The man in the Hawaiian shirt pulled off my goggles, opened the door, and nudged me through it. “Change trains here.”
The car sped away as I stood blinking in the glare of sunlight, trying to get my bearings. The sign advertising Stock liqueurs. The Fountain of the Tritone. I was in the Piazza Barberini at the foot of the Via Veneto.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Davis.” A tall, ruddy, crop-haired young man stood before me. There could be no question about it this time. He was as American as Mom’s apple pie, as American as a hand-picked agent of the FBI or CIA. “My name’s Reardon. Care for a lift to the embassy?”
His car was a black Fiat Millecento, identical to the one Anne and I had been living in the past few days. Evidently, I wasn’t alone in my belief that it was the least conspicuous car on the road. As we drew up to the embassy Reardon gestured at the gathering of men on the sidewalk who were carrying large, professional-looking cameras.
“Newspapermen and paparazzi,” he said. “We had a little excitem
ent here today. Some nut shooting off a gun. Of course,” he added, straight-faced, “you don’t know a thing about it.”
“Not a thing,” I assured him.
He led the way, unchallenged, through the busy corridors of the building, a magnificent palazzo with a strong smell of officialdom emanating from it. As I followed him, I wondered with a growing apprehension what the reunion with Anne would be like. She had loved me while we were walking the tightrope together. But emotions were heightened up there, the view of everything around us distorted. How would it be, now that we were safe on the ground?
“That’s it,” said Reardon, pointing to an open door.
I walked through it and stood there. The room was sunlit and spacious, and at its far end Anne and Paul sat together on a couch talking to some men who all somehow resembled Reardon.
Then I didn’t have to wonder any more.
It was Paul who saw me standing there and started eagerly toward me, shouting, “Reno! Reno!”
It was Anne who reached me first.
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