Program for a Puppet

by Roland Perry

  Before terror could take a grip, he gritted his teeth and got out of the car. He locked it, and then marched off along the sidewalk, turning left into rue Robert Estienne. He felt a prickly sensation in his back and head. It gave him a tremendous urge to run as he briskly covered the forty yards to the end of the cul-de-sac, and the restaurant.

  The petite brunette manageress, Brigette, ushered him in with a welcome smile. A feeling of relief surged over him as the door was closed and the restaurant’s safety and warmth enveloped him.

  “Have my friends arrived?” he asked, looking at his watch.

  “No, monsieur. Would you like a drink?” Brigette asked, taking his coat, scarf and gloves.

  Graham shook his head. Settling at the bar, he looked around at his favorite French restaurant. It was an intimate and romantic setting under low lights and cross-beamed ceiling. Soft velvet couches and fine wooden tables were tucked away from each other to ensure privacy. A mastiff hound lay quietly in one corner.

  It was not the setting Graham would normally have liked with his company this night. But it was territory he knew. He felt it would give him a psychological advantage over the two Lasercomp executives.

  As soon as Huntsman and Cheznoir arrived at 9:35, Graham asked Brigette for a table.

  For most of the dinner, conversation was strained and trite. Cheznoir, with Huntsman’s occasional support, explained Lasercomp’s official policy in dealing with the Soviet Union. It was the same old corporate stuff, and it firmed the Australian’s conviction that it was a set-up. Just as coffee and cognac were served, he lost patience.

  “Look, gentlemen, I really don’t understand the point of this meeting. All you’ve said so far, I could have lifted from the old Lasercomp songbook.”

  Cheznoir forced a laugh. Huntsman, who until now had slobbered happily over the cuisine, was angry. “We tried to set you straight. Your information could get you into trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Well, uh,” Huntsman began squeamishly, “you’re touching nerves in the Soviet Union …”

  The Australian’s expression tightened. “You’d better explain what you mean.”

  “I think you should realize that there are, well …” Cheznoir said, pausing to gesture, “many in the Soviet Union who would not like their trade with the U.S. upset…

  Graham turned sharply to the chubby PR man. “You said nerves. Whose nerves?”

  Huntsman swallowed and just managed to keep down a belch. “I meant…”

  “The KGB, perhaps? They’re worried you might be stopped smuggling them computers. Is that it?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Cheznoir hissed.

  Graham decided to put the knife right in. “Like the murders of Jane Ryder, Donald Gordon and Ronald MacGregor!”

  Huntsman and Cheznoir looked edgily at people at other tables.

  The Australian twisted the knife. “I’ve got information that will screw you and your beloved Lasercomp.”

  “Such as?” Huntsman asked as he wiped his mouth. He was perspiring freely.

  Graham leaned back in his couch and lit a cigarette. “Such as your whole smuggling chain right into the Soviet Union’s network. Such as the KGB master plan. Such as a direct link from Lasercomp to the assassination of Ronald MacGregor.”

  “I’ve never heard so much rubbish!” Huntsman sneered. “You seem to have an obsession with attacking Lasercomp. Maybe you need psychiatric help.…”

  Graham laughed. “You’ve tried that tactic before with other people who have questioned your clinically clean and faultless corporation. Probing Lasercomp equals mental instability—right? You bastards have more in common with the KGB than just computers, haven’t you?”

  Huntsman was boiling over. “We could easily screw you in court!”

  “Go ahead and try. But remember, I spoke to Donald Gordon last week. He spilled everything. The PPP and every single detail of your power-crazy games!”

  A waiter approached the table. There was a long silence as he cleared it and left the bill.

  “How do you propose to use these lies?” Cheznoir asked, as he picked up the bill.

  “It’ll be published very shortly.”

  “Fiction!” Cheznoir said fiercely, as he pulled his wallet from an inside coat pocket.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Cheznoir, it’ll be fact, checked and checked again. What you might call an exposé.”

  The Australian stubbed his cigarette and stood up to leave as Cheznoir placed a credit card on the bill.

  “Thank you for the dinner,” Graham said coldly. “That, at least, was pleasant.” He moved away from the table and asked for his coat. He didn’t bother to look back as the manageress opened the door and wished him good night.

  Graham moved quickly to his car, got in and drove straight up rue Marbeuf, watched by twenty of Colonel Guichard’s disguised and armed men in cars, and strolling the street. The Peugeot was followed by two unmarked cars which had been sitting behind “road repair” signs in rue Françoise. The colonel, in a command vehicle, and a squad of six more cars followed soon afterward.

  Rodriguez took a call in a small restaurant-bar off the Champs Élysées thirty seconds after Graham had left. It was Huntsman at Les Innocents.

  “Now!” he said firmly and hung up.

  Rodriguez moved quickly to where Martinez was waiting in a black late model Maserati with the engine running. They watched Graham’s car swing into the Champs Élysées. As the Peugeot cruised past them, Rodriguez felt he could have done the job there and then with the submachine gun wrapped in brown paper resting on his knees. But he restrained himself. There were too many cars about. They waited until a few other cars passed, and then began to tail Graham.

  They followed him to the lights at Pont de la Concorde over the Seine. The Peugeot crossed the bridge and then headed south along floodlit Quai Branly with the Eiffel Tower on the left.

  The midnight traffic was heavy.

  “Get closer,” Rodriguez ordered as the Peugeot moved faster. It began to zigzag through the traffic at increased speed. Several motorists honked their horns in anger at the seemingly careless driving.

  Rodriguez’s first thought was that Huntsman had succeeded in getting Graham drunk. “Don’t lose him,” he said to Martinez. He began to thread his way through the traffic once more, to the chagrin of other drivers—all except for nine cars scattered in the four lines of traffic heading one way. In them were eighteen heavily armed members of Guichard’s Intelligence squad.

  Graham’s erratic driving was under orders that squeaked over the radio-telephone resting on the Peugeot’s front seat.

  The idea was to cause any tail to show itself. And it did.

  I think we may have something,” Guichard said calmly as he noticed the Maserati. “Keep up speed.”

  Graham checked his rear vision. He could see nothing but a blaze of headlights through the thin frost on his back windows. Guichard, now on a direct line of traffic fifty yards behind Graham, gave a flurry of orders. “Two and three move in. Four and six ease ahead. Straight ahead. Five and seven stay wide in position. Eight and nine steady. Everyone steady.”

  Graham reached the lights at Port d’Issay where the traffic had thinned.

  At exactly that moment, thirty-year-old Sergeant Hubert de Roqueforte turned his police car into Quai André, the very place at which Graham, the assassins, and their pursuers had just arrived. He was returning across to home base in the sixteenth arrondissement, to repair his radio which was out. The young sergeant spotted the sleek black Maserati slipping through the traffic making a nuisance of itself. Like every policeman in the city that night, he had been alerted to a plan to apprehend some important terrorists. He was also aware the plan was under way somewhere near where he was now. But at that precise second, he had no idea what was going on around him. De Roqueforte made hot pursuit after the Maserati, light flashing and siren on.

  Guichard saw the maverick police car and tried desperately to make ra
dio contact.

  “Get out of there …! Leave the Maserati… repeat… leave that Maserati! Get out of there! Merde! Who is that idiot!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Graham yelled at the telephone. He could see the police flasher.

  “Mr. Graham, keep going as planned. Just drive,” Guichard said.

  There was no chance to draw the Maserati to the outskirts of the city now. The colonel rattled off orders to the other cars. They closed on the Maserati, which sat at the lights to Pont d’Issay, thirty yards behind the Peugeot.

  Rodriguez could see the police car pushing toward him.

  “Go right!” he ordered and pointed across the bridge. Martinez skidded the Maserati away fast. Once over Pont d’Issay, Martinez made two illegal right turns which took them down a slip road to Quai Louis Blériot, running north beside the river. He then accelerated with Guichard’s fleet and the maverick police car in pursuit a hundred yards behind and slipping away. Rodriguez kept looking back as the Maserati hit a hundred miles an hour at Avenue de President Kennedy. He knew they would have to get off the main one-way road, or risk being trapped.

  “Take the next slip road,” he said as they hit Avenue New York.

  The Maserati slowed as they approached the stretch of the avenue which ran under Pond d’Ienna. Martinez adroitly swung left off the avenue, up the slip road, and straight into trouble. A police car following Guichard’s orders to block off the avenue ahead of the Maserati, was coming the wrong way down the same slip road. Both drivers did well to avoid a head-on crash as the police car smacked the rear side of the Maserati. It hit a railing on the side of the road and spun side-on. Martinez frantically turned the ignition. It coughed to a start at the third try. He spun the wheel to turn the car. But a back fender had been wedged against a tire. Another police car appeared at the top of the slip road and blocked the Maserati’s path. Rodriguez, armed with his machine gun, was out of the car first.

  Guichard’s fleet had reached the bottom of the slip road. Martinez fell out, holding a machine gun that had been on the back seat. Rodriguez ran toward the car at the top of the slip road and opened fire. He brought down two policemen.

  Martinez ran down the slip road toward Avenue New York. Two distinct orders told him to surrender. He ignored them and wielded his gun in a wide arc, firing at everything that moved. It was the signal for fifteen weapons to open up on him. The bullet that stopped him slithered through his neck. Within five seconds, a tremendous onslaught of lead lifted his feet off the ground and dumped him in the middle of the slip road.

  At the top, Rodriguez made a bid to escape on foot. But his way was blocked by police cars on the approach to Pont d’lenna. He ran straight across the approach and down another slip road leading back onto Avenue New York. Orders were being shouted from every direction. Several people had spotted him. When Guichard’s car screeched to a half at the foot of the road, Rodriguez opened fire wildly and ran back up the road to the bridge. He blasted his way past several of Guichard’s men, who scattered behind cars. He ran for the other side of the bridge. Lights from a line of four cars were turned on high beam in front of him. Seconds later, the whole bridge was floodlit. Rodriguez was caught in the spotlight.

  “Surrender. You cannot escape!” Guichard called, using a bullhorn. The terrorist fired blindly in both directions along the bridge. Guichard signaled for him to be brought down.

  Marksmen at each end aimed. There was a sharp crack. One bullet shattered Rodriguez’s forearm. A second hit him in the left side and spun him to the ground. A third bullet cannoned into his chest, and the chase was over.

  Twenty minutes later, Graham, who had driven straight on toward the original destination, answered Colonel Guichard’s radio call to Avenue New York. He arrived in time to see the bullet-ridden bodies of the two terrorists. An ambulance team was attending four of Guichard’s men hit in the shoot-out, three of them seriously. Guichard thanked Graham sincerely for his help and apologized profusely for the bungle.

  “Today we start a big manhunt for the Director,” Guichard said wearily. “If your theory that he has worked with Rodriguez is correct, and he is in Paris, he will be in hiding. But you can have round-the-clock protection while you are—”

  “Thank you. But it won’t be necessary any more.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “I’ll fly back to London soon. There are a few things I still have to do here.”

  “Bon. If I could ask you to come to HQ before you go so that we can complete our official report?”

  “Of course.”

  “Please, have the car until you leave, and use the radio phone if you want to contact me.”

  “Thank you.”

  They shook hands and Graham drove up the slip road past police hoisting the battered Maserati onto a breakdown truck.

  Back at his hotel, Graham decided to ring Revel.

  “Are you sure it was Rodriguez?” the lawyer asked.

  “Guichard is pretty certain. They’re going to run fingerprint, dental and other tests on him to check.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Get some shut-eye.”

  “Ed, I know you’ve had a rough night, but could you check something out? It could be important. You know we’ve been monitoring Philpott’s movements. Well, we’ve found out that he will try to make a secret rendezvous with Haussermann. Apparently Lasercomp is going to fly him in and out of Paris tomorrow.”

  “When and where?”

  “The plane’s expected to arrive at Orly around noon at the private flights section, runway five.”

  “You want me to tail him?”

  “If you could. It would be interesting to know if he makes contact with Haussermann. But don’t take any risks.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks. It could just lead to the tape.”

  “How did Rickard’s speech go?”

  “Very well. Though, Christ, he looked fragile!”

  “What do the polls say?”

  “He’s about half a percent ahead of Mineva.”

  In his Pigalle hideout, the Director listened grim-faced to the Paris 8:00 P.M. radio news as it told him the reason his assassination crew had not been in contact….

  “Though police would not confirm that one of the men killed in the shoot-out was the notorious assassin-terrorist known as Rodriguez, they did not deny it. He was responsible for the deaths of three French Intelligence men five years ago.”

  He switched it off and immediately phoned Znorel in Stuttgart.

  “This is the Director.”

  “I told you never to call unless there was an emergency!”

  “This is an emergency. The others had an accident early this morning on the way to see Mr. Graham. You’ll hear it on the news.”

  “This should not alter the main assignment. Get Haussermann to meet Philpott and give him the tape this afternoon. Clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You have no need to call this number again—under any circumstances. Understood?”

  “Yes.” The Director hung up. He went into the living room of the apartment where Haussermann was already up reading the Sunday papers. The shoot-out had occurred too late for them to run the story.

  The Director sat down on a couch and, without looking at Haussermann, began to wipe his glasses.

  “There has been a change of plans,” he said.

  “Wh-why?”

  “You don’t ask why,” the Director said curtly. “Just listen to instructions! You will call Philpott at the Intercontinental Hotel at one P.M. You will make a rendezvous with him for two P.M. I shall tell you where later this morning. At this meeting you will hand over the tape. After that, you will not return here until eleven P.M. on Monday night. I shall work out a route for you to return by, and which hotel you should stay at tonight.” He finished polishing his glasses, tried them on, and looked at Haussermann. “Just in case you have any ideas about disobeying ord
ers and trying to run away,” he added icily, “I shall keep your passport and plane ticket here.”

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2

  Light rain was falling in the afternoon as Graham watched the private Lasercomp jet arrive at Orly.

  He waited in the Peugeot and spotted Philpott and a film crew moving out of the airport lounge half an hour later. They piled into a waiting station wagon with their equipment. Graham followed it to 40 Avenue Mahon off the Arc de Triomphe in the center of Paris.

  The Australian pulled his Peugeot into the curb about thirty yards from where Philpott and the crew disappeared into a doorway.

  Despite the bad weather, the avenue was alive with Parisians buying from stall merchants selling their flowers, food and wine. Graham decided to get out of the car to make sure he saw whoever came and went from number forty. As he swung the door open on the pavement side, he grazed a man scurrying past.

  “Excusez moi,” Graham said.

  The man looked at him with frightened, darting eyes, and moved on. It was Haussermann. He moved past number forty and stopped to look back.

  Graham crossed the road to a flower stall and immediately started up a conversation with a bristly-chinned little man.

  “Some flowers for a special lady, monsieur,” Graham said in French.

  The flower-seller chuckled. “You are in love, monsieur?”

  “Oui.”

  “Then of course it must be roses.” He reached for a bunch. Graham pretended to be watching the curves of an attractive woman across the road. He nudged the flower-seller, who croaked a laugh and nodded his approval. The woman had moved close to the direct line with number forty and Graham caught a glimpse of Haussermann. He had walked past the door and close to Graham’s car again.

  “How much?” Graham asked.

  “Twenty francs.”

  Haussermann moved past number forty again.

  “You are generous, monsieur,” Graham said, doffing his brown velvet beret to the Frenchman with a sweeping gesture. The flower-seller eyed the beret and complimented the Australian on it.