by Peter Watson
I smiled at Roland. “He needs to be taken outside for a moment. Will you do it while I work out these percentages?”
“Sure,” he said, grinning.
The figures didn’t take long. Overall, 65.5 per cent of agents had been killed, while 44 per cent of the women agents had been killed; and while 11.7 per cent of agents were unaccounted for overall, 10.7 per cent of the women were unaccounted for. So women had not, as we had feared, fared especially badly. Though the risks they had taken had equalled the risks taken by the men, their fates were broadly similar. That would stand up well in Parliament.
I was just laying out the figures neatly on a sheet of paper when Roland came back from taking Max for his stroll. I showed them to him. “This will form the basis of my interim report.”
He looked at them. “Respectable figures, I would say. The women performed well, without being exposed to disproportionate risk.”
“My thoughts entirely,” I replied. “Did Max behave himself?”
“Oh yes,” said Roland. “Nothing to complain of there. Oh, and this arrived for you, just as I was coming back into the building.”
He handed me a small brown envelope, the kind that contained telegrams, with TOP SECRET stencilled at the top right-hand corner.
I felt a weight settle on my shoulders, and for a change it had nothing to do with Madeleine. Who was sending me telegrams other than through our normal transmission office? Who knew I was here in Paris, in this very office?
There was only one answer: Rupert Hathaway.
It was good timing in a way. I was about to file my interim report and I was as certain as could be that Madeleine was dead.
“I’d better open this in my office,” I said to Roland.
He nodded.
I took Max with me, closed the door firmly, and ripped open the flap.
There was a thin, crisp sheet of paper inside.
Holding my breath, I rapidly scanned the contents.
+THE·WEDDING·GOES·AHEAD·AS·PLANNED+STOP+
—
I WENT TO BED EARLY THAT NIGHT. The weather had turned colder, the temperature had dropped faster than those bombs we were raining on Berlin, and I let Max clamber aboard. He lay against my legs, adding his warmth to what I generated myself.
Not that I slept. How could I, knowing that Madeleine at best was dead and at worst was a German spy? On top of that, I now had to kill a man. A man I didn’t know, a man who, to all intents and purposes, had never done anyone any harm, who in fact was a force for good, certainly in his scientific and Resistance life. Yes, I had killed people before, both at a distance with a gun, and close up, in hand-to-hand fighting. But that was at a different stage of the war, and the people I had killed were very definitely the enemy. This man was an ally.
That wasn’t quite true, of course, not if you accepted that, as Prime Minister Churchill himself had suggested to me, the post-war world was going to be so different from the world we all knew before.
But the world didn’t feel very different, not to me anyway. Not yet.
How was I going to steel myself to kill François Perrault? And, arguably more to the point, how was I going to do it in such a way that it would seem like an accident? How long did I have? If Hathaway’s telegram had reached me within a few hours of being sent, then Daniel Legros had just set sail to cross the Atlantic, and would be at sea for four or five days. I had to assume Hathaway’s people had reasons for not killing Legros while he was at sea. Add a day travelling from Le Havre to Paris—no more because he would want to contact Perrault at the earliest opportunity. All of which meant I had less than a week to carry out what I had to carry out.
The Communist Party meeting was the day after tomorrow. Then I would lay eyes on Perrault at last. That’s all I wanted to do. Justine would no doubt want to introduce me, but if at all possible I wanted to avoid that. I would find what I needed to do easier—or at least less disturbing—if I kept my distance beforehand.
I must have dropped off. For all of a sudden I awoke with a jolt as the bed mattress lurched and a body rolled in beside me.
“God, it’s cold,” said Justine hoarsely. “I suppose it often is at three o’clock in the morning. I need warming up.”
She put one arm round my chest and pulled me to her. Through my nightshirt I could feel her breasts. She was naked.
“You would be warmer if you had something on.”
She ignored that. “Sorry if I disturbed you,” she whispered. “But I really am freezing. I missed the last train from Nancy but I got a lift in a lorry bringing vegetables to Les Halles. I was grateful but the lorry had no heating and now I’m a block of ice.”
She put one of her legs over my torso, trying to get closer, to soak up the warmth of my body. Max was dislodged and didn’t like it. He growled briefly.
She ran a hand under the cloth of my nightshirt and pressed her cold palm to my warm stomach. Then she kissed the back of my neck.
Her skin was on mine in several places, cold but clean and, as it warmed, her body smell was released.
And suddenly I was turning, turning to face her, my mouth on hers and my stiffening penis scoring along her thigh. Her flesh was still cold but her mouth was warm and she rolled on to her back and opened her legs in one quick movement.
I cannot say that there was any tenderness between us that night. I didn’t know what had happened between Justine and Gilles and I didn’t ask. Her flesh was soon warm, and damp with the sweat of sexual exertion, her blood near the surface of her skin, the shadows playing in stripes over her legs and abdomen and neck, making of her a tiger of the night. She took little nips out of my skin, and dug her nails into my back. Her body shook and shuddered, and then collapsed.
Madeleine was in my thoughts. How could she not be? The ocean of grief is constantly shifting.
Justine and I didn’t talk, not then. We slept eventually and the next thing I knew it was daylight and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a black sweater, Max on her lap, and she was handing me a cup of coffee.
“I split up with Gilles. That’s why I was late—we had a terrible fight.”
I nodded. “What we did felt a bit like a fight.”
She smiled. “But we were both winners, yes?”
I laughed.
“I have never made love with an Englishman before.”
I looked at her levelly. “You French are the experts, right?”
“Not experts, no. But…making love is half of life, n’est-ce pas? Today, and from now on, you and I will be different with each other, yes? Matthew, Colonel Hammond, you know when to take charge, when to surrender.”
“You make our fight sound like a battle.”
“I am paying you a compliment.”
“Thank you.”
“And how was I?”
“All that I imagined.”
She sipped her coffee. “The second time we will be better, you will see. Now we know each other more. Maybe we should use some protection next time, no?”
This was moving a little fast for me. Last night had been what it was: sudden, un-thought-through, full-blooded, loud. I had some thinking to do.
And it was time to change the subject.
“No news on Pforzheim, yet. I am spending today writing up my interim report. We don’t need you in the office, if you have other things to do.”
She nodded. “I need to see François, to give him Gilles’s news, before the meeting tomorrow.”
I drank some coffee. “Is there broad agreement on what the communists will say to de Gaulle?”
She bit her lip. “Everyone is united in their loathing for de Gaulle, but we must work together, Gilles says. Our strength is in what we have achieved in the Resistance—no communists have had their heads shaved, not one. We were here, when de Gaulle was in London. This is what the main plank of our election strategy will be. We are the nationalists more than de Gaulle. That is Gilles’s message.”
She gave me a look. “Whi
ch raises the question of Antoine Picard and Monique Brèger. Are they linked? Is that why Picard came to see you?”
“Yes.”
“Was she a Gaullist spy in Avenue Foch?”
“Yes.”
I told Justine the whole story.
“And Picard came to see you after we visited Claudine Petit?”
“Yes, a gesture of cooperation.”
“So you are a Gaullist now?”
I laughed. “Are you worried you just made love with a Gaullist? Don’t be. I’m not taking sides, Justine. I have a job to do and will use whatever help is offered.”
I kissed her forehead. “Will it be a noisy meeting, do you think?”
She didn’t reply straightaway, simmering down. Eventually, she said, “There will be fireworks, yes—flames, I am sure. But then we will settle down to work together to take on de Gaulle. If you come to the meeting you must promise me that you will not reveal what goes on inside the hall. No one must know of our divisions; all others must think we are united. Do you agree?”
I nodded and smiled. “Of course. I’m not on anyone’s side, Justine. I promise.” I kissed her forehead again.
I lay back in bed and closed my eyes. I couldn’t be totally certain but I thought she had just given me an idea of how I might kill François Perrault and get away with it.
—
THE THÉTRE STENDHAL, ON THE CORNER of the rue Beaubourg and the rue Pierre au Larde, was—like a lot of Parisian theatres—a creation of the 1920s. It was ornate, with art deco twists and twirls around its entrance doors, which were themselves composed of languid, flowery stained glass and shiny metal that must have taken hours to polish. Lights shaped like upside-down flower buds hung from the ceiling of the foyer, which had a dead bar at one end, all its bottles and glasses tidied away. Today’s proceedings were not entertainment.
At the other end of the red-carpeted space—lined with framed posters of long-gone shows—Communist Party membership cards were being assiduously inspected, though Justine seemed to know all the guardians of the proceedings. I was allowed through, so long as I remained with her—that was made very plain.
Inside, the auditorium was small—there were no more than eight hundred seats, by my eye, and about half of those were occupied. The seats were like theatre seats everywhere—red velvet with gold trimmings, small ashtrays fixed to the backs of every other one.
For obvious reasons, I wanted to sit as far back as possible, while Justine, for reasons of her own, wanted to sit at the front. She won.
She had spent the previous day on party business, she said, which I assumed meant that she was helping to sort out today’s agenda; and I had at least completed my interim report and sent it encrypted to Hilary in London.
In the theatre, Justine was all business, waving hello to several colleagues, and kissing—or nearly kissing—others. As the moment drew near for the meeting to begin, she climbed on to the stage, took a sheaf of papers from one of the three men sitting at a table, and started handing round the sheets to people in the “audience.” That done, she came back and sat down next to me.
“Have you seen your man, Luc Lippens?”
I shook my head. “No, have you?”
“It’s possible he’s not coming—so from your point of view it’s all a waste. Do you want to leave? Won’t you be bored?”
“No, don’t worry, I won’t be bored. We’ve discussed this before. I’m interested to see how your meetings are run. Is Gilles here? Can I meet him?”
“No, he’s not.” She paused. “His mother’s ill.”
I nodded. “Who are the people on the stage?”
“On the left is Roger Clayard, general secretary of the party, in the middle is Daniel Wildmayer, head of the Paris Communist Party, and on the right, in the black sweater, is François Perrault, head of theory, intelligence, and communications.”
So that was my target.
“Head of theory? What does that mean?”
“We are Marxist-Leninists here. François is well-read in all the classic communist literature. Since the war has been on, we haven’t been able to keep up with our Russian colleagues, who normally lead communist thinking. So François does it instead. He will be the first into Russia as soon as it’s possible for anyone to go, to renew friendships and discuss policy initiatives.”
If François Perrault was that intent on going to Russia at the earliest opportunity, well, that made my task a little more…not easier, exactly, in a practical way, but somewhat easier morally. Not totally clean—the man was a Nobel Prize–winning scientist, after all. But her remarks had made it almost certain that if he did find out about the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, he would certainly tell the Russians about it, just as soon as he got the chance. And I accepted that he had to be stopped.
I was grateful for today’s meeting in another way, too. Having a specific meeting to attend didn’t make the solid mass in the pit of my stomach go away, but it did keep it from taking me over completely, as it did in bed in the early hours, or when I was in the office alone, or even just walking the streets of Paris. At one point I had searched the faces of passers-by, on the Paris pavements, looking for Madeleine. Now I couldn’t even do that.
One of the men on the stage stood up and moved to a microphone. He tapped it, heard his taps reverberate around the theatre, and called the meeting to order.
I didn’t follow the proceedings at all closely—a lot of people, including Justine, made a lot of speeches, many with references to Marx and Lenin. They were universally anti–de Gaulle.
After the speeches, there was a hiatus while people prepared the motions to be voted on, and I took the opportunity to tell Justine that I had seen and heard enough and would meet her later at the flat. I needed to escape before she did, of course, so that I could wait somewhere convenient and follow François Perrault when he came out.
She smiled and nodded, and I left.
Outside, it had started to rain.
The Café Beaubourg was about a hundred yards away, down the rue Beaubourg on the opposite side of the road. I bought a newspaper from a nearby tabac and sat inside the café, from where I could see the doors of the Théâtre Stendhal but couldn’t myself be seen.
There I waited.
Buying the paper had reminded me—I still had to get Justine to take me to the Bibliothèque Nationale to consult the article with the archaeological report. Then I caught myself. What was the point now?
I drank my coffee and opened the paper, trying to concentrate. I had to hope that all the people at the meeting would come out through the main doors. There was a stage door to the theatre, on the side street, but the people on the stage were hardly actors—they would leave with everyone else.
I had no idea how long I would have to wait but Paris cafés were not normally nosey places. So long as you kept buying coffee, or a beer, no one would interfere. Other people were in the café sheltering from the rain, so I didn’t stand out.
I did, however, pay straightaway. I didn’t want to be delayed by a tardy waiter.
In the paper I read again that the Germans in St. Nazaire were still holding out—apparently they had seventy-three heavy guns with which to defend themselves. I read that Paris women had a new hairstyle, piled high in emulation of the Eiffel Tower, to mark the liberation. I read an interview with the new British ambassador to France, who was liaising with the provisional government, exhorting the Parisians to rejoice in the fact that, despite the occupation, the fabric of the city had been well respected by the Germans.
And then, after about forty minutes, I noticed a crowd of people spilling on to the pavement outside the theatre. The show was over.
I finished the coffee I was drinking, but kept on reading the paper, with one eye on the theatre.
More people came out and overflowed into the road. Four hundred people are a lot of people, and I realised that, from where I was sitting, I might not be able to see everyone as they left. Also, I could se
e that a few of the party members were heading straight for the very café where I was sitting. I got up and quickly—but not too quickly—crossed the road so that no one from the theatre would see me close up.
Then I ambled back towards the Stendhal.
This was tricky. Should I bump into Justine, she would rightly want to know what I was doing. I could say I had lost something and was retracing my steps, but would that work? I couldn’t afford to look suspicious in any way.
I stood for a moment in the doorway of the tabac where I had bought the newspaper.
Then I saw Justine.
She was standing on the pavement outside the theatre, kissing people again—to say goodbye this time.
Then, behind her, François Perrault appeared. The black sweater he wore was very distinctive. He kissed Justine and she kissed him back. Then he walked off with another man.
And that was a problem.
To follow him, I would have to walk straight past where Justine was standing, still talking and kissing farewells. She showed no sign of moving on just yet.
What could I do? François Perrault was already a hundred and fifty yards away.
The only thing I could do, which was a risk, was to turn left into the small side street, the rue Pierre au Larde. I had seen that it curled round to the right and I had to hope it would lead back on to the rue Beaubourg further along.
I walked quickly into the side street, keeping my face averted so that Justine would hopefully not see me, should she look up at the wrong moment. I held my breath, but there was no shout of “Matt!,” no alert of any kind. Twenty yards into the street I broke into a run. After another twenty yards the street began to curve and I was relieved to see that fifty yards further on there was a T junction with another street, which would lead me back to the rue Beaubourg.
I ran all the way, reaching the main street in a sweat, but slowing to a walk at the last moment. I turned the corner and looked to my left.
No sign of François Perrault.
A hundred yards along, though, I could see the wavy lines of a Métro station. And there, just disappearing down the steps was…not Perrault himself but a figure I thought I recognized; it was the man with whom Perrault had left the theatre. Had he gone on ahead? I assumed that he had, and I was already running again, towards the station.