Agent in Place (24 page)

“Quiet as the tomb,” he told Georges. And about as cold. Some summer sun was needed to heat that high-ceilinged hall. “Only one character bobbed up, near the
Salle Privée
door. What did he think I was going to do, anyway? Jiggle the wheel? Place marked cards in the shoe?”

“You don’t gamble, do you?”

“What do you think we are doing right now?” And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

* * *

As Georges drove past the wooded gardens, past glimpses of large houses surrounded by flowering trees beyond impressive gates, he said, “I think this address you’ve given me lies on one of the private roads. In that case, we’ll be stopped. Only residents’ cars and their friends’ cars and taxis can get through. Everyone else—well, drive around some other road if you must, but keep out of this one.”

“Taxis allowed?”

“It’s a local rule. There’s logic to it, I suppose. People in taxis are usually going to a definite address.”

“We are too.”

“I hope your Mr. Maclehose told the guards you were expected.”

“Guards? We aren’t visiting the Elysée Palace.”

“Not really guards. More like—well, guardians.”

They turned out to be a fresh-faced woman in a cotton dress and cardigan, and her elderly husband with a cloth cap almost as old as he was. They looked like small stall-holders, down in the market-place, ready to sell Tony a dozen oranges. But they took their job seriously, checked the name of Lawton on their list (Maclehose had remembered) and—with a nod from the man and a smile from the woman—let the car proceed.

Georges took it easily, for the road was narrow and twisting. “I know what you’re thinking,” he told Tony. “They couldn’t fight off more than their shadows. They might not stop a jewel thief, but they could certainly identify him to the police.”

“The strangest Keep Out notice I’ve ever seen.” But Georges was right: no stranger could come wandering round here unescorted. Jean Parracini, if he were tempted to seek payment for the damage done to him and his friends by Shandon (justice, he would call it), would find a direct approach impossible. “Wonder if Shandon Villa has a beach, a landing-place for small craft?”

Georges stared at him, and then went back to keeping count of the houses. “That’s the second on the left. And Shandon’s the fifth?”

Tony nodded. The villas were generously spaced, securely separated from one another by walls and hedges, scarcely visible behind the screens of shrubs and trees that decorated smooth lawns. “And here we are, gates wide open. Shandon Villa doesn’t subscribe to the closed-door theory, I see.”

“But they have two muscular gardeners working close to the driveway,” Georges pointed out with amusement.

They studied the villa before them. It was a massive assertion of an architect’s dream of Italy with Spanish memories creeping in. The gardens, even from a view mostly blocked by pink stucco, were lush and extensive. “A touch of Eden. All right, Georges. Let’s find the snake.”

* * *

The door to the villa was impressive: two tall bronze panels, one of them ajar, both of them encrusted with decorative scenes depicting myths and men. “A slight echo of Florence?” murmured the irreverent Tony, not quite sure whether to let the massive doorknocker clatter down on Aphrodite’s backside as she received the apple from Paris, or to heave the door fully open and enter. “If the Duchess of Shandon couldn’t have Ghiberti, she hired his great-great-great-great-grandson.” He compromised by both knocking and pushing. “A fake,” he added sadly as the panel swung back easily: wood covered with copper. “Now what?” A broad hall stretched before them, running through the villa until it ended in a wall of glass. Sunlight and a terrace lay out there, making an inviting vista from this dark threshold.

Beside them a door opened, and Maclehose came bouncing out from his office, his hands outstretched in a slightly effusive, if belated, welcome. “Come in, come in—just finishing off some dictation.” His face was tanned and healthy, his large and cumbersome body several pounds heavier, his smile beaming, his eyes wary but clearing, as Tony conveyed warm greetings from Paul Krantz. Delighted to see Tony again, delighted to meet his friend.

“Georges Despinard,” Tony explained, “a journalist from Paris. He is writing a series of articles for
La Vie Nouvelle
about social changes in the Côte d’Azur. Naturally he is very much interested in Shandon Villa. We were lunching together, and when he heard I was coming here—”

“Of course, of course. Delighted,” Maclehose said for the third time. “Yes, we are changing things,” he told Georges. “But for the better—I hope.”

He’s nervous, Tony thought: under all that exuberance is uncertainty. He’s wondering if I’ll mention that unpleasant morning back at Shandon Institute, when heavy flak was flying around and unhappy Maclehose was dodging the fallout. I’ll do him a real favour: I won’t even breathe a reference to the NATO Memorandum.

“Let me show you around,” Maclehose was saying, leading the way past the open door of his office—really an anteroom tucked near the front entrance—where his secretary was pretending to be unaware of the two visitors. A handsome redhead, Tony noted: tight sweater, slender legs, face pretty but expressionless. Maclehose waved a hand to her. “Find that guest-list for the first seminar, Anne-Marie. Bring it to me.” He went on his way, hurrying along the hall, gesturing to right and left as he identified the rooms. “That’s the library—I’m afraid I must leave in twenty minutes—the dining-room is over there—but as I explained to you on the ’phone, I have engagements for this afternoon—and here’s the main sitting-room, must have some place where our guests can relax between serious business—this place is a madhouse today, last-minute checks on electrical work—” he nodded to two men who were carrying their toolboxes down a broad staircase. “Bedroom up there, of course—ten of them, not counting the quarters for my Executive Assistant, he has his office and bedroom in the corner suite, he’s constantly on the job, I tell him he even sleeps with his problems—and next door to him, two very sizeable rooms which we’ve turned into group-discussion areas. Now, down here, we have the main seminar room—it was a large drawing-room at one time, and across the way—the terrace room just beside this door of course.” He swept them through the large glass panels that slid apart at their approach, and brought them out on to a terrace over-looking a series of descending gardens that stretched to the sea.

“Remarkable,” said Tony, thinking of the Executive Assistant’s suite. “And your quarters, where are they?”

“Oh, we thought it better to keep the family at some distance from our distinguished visitors. So Mattie and I have set up house in the cottage over there; you can’t see it because of the acacias. Very comfortable—seven rooms—Simon Shandon used to live in it when his wife had her friends to stay here.” Maclehose looked around. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Remarkable,” Tony said again. So the Director has only a small office in the main building, and placed right at the front door as if he were the concierge. Doesn’t he realise he is giving up his power-base? Distinguished visitors were going to see much more of his Executive Assistant than of the Director. Cosy chats and late-night conversations would not be shared with Maclehose. And at dinner, who would be the host? Seldom Maclehose, I’m willing to bet: he can’t leave Mattie and the children night after night, can he? Not his style. A nice good-hearted family man, as virtuous and well-meaning as they come. “An ideal place. Don’t you think so, Georges?”

Georges reacted out of shock: what wealth could build, when it set its mind upon it, always stunned him for a few initial moments. “Extraordinary!” Georges lapsed into French and let off a run of sentences.

Maclehose looked embarrassed, covered his perplexity with a wide grin.

“My friend is saying that you have done an outstanding job of transforming this place,” Tony obliged. “He is deeply impressed. And so am I.” Tony’s eyes were now on the gardens, green terraces with bright beds, edged by shrubs and groupings of trees. “Georges would also like to stroll among your flowers. He is interested in gardens too. In fact, he was a landscape-architect before becoming a writer.”

“By all means. Tell Monsieur—” Maclehose was uncertain of the name—“tell your friend to go down to the pool—it’s just above the beach—we’ve had some workmen fixing the lights there—underwater illumination.” He glanced markedly at his watch. “I’d like to spend the next five minutes showing you the guest-list for our first seminar.” He looked around for Anne-Marie, but she wasn’t in sight.

“See you back here in five minutes,” Tony called after Georges. And don’t forget a visit to the beach.

“I envy you your French,” Maclehose admitted. “They speak so quickly—that’s my trouble. A pity my Executive Assistant can’t be here to meet you. He’s an expert linguist. But he had some final arrangements to make for our guests next week—up at Eze—they’d enjoy lunch up there—a very fine restaurant.”

“That’s a pleasant idea: relaxation for tired minds.”

Maclehose laughed. “All part of public relations. That’s my Executive Assistant’s main job, but he really can turn his hand to anything, don’t know what I would have done without him. He took charge of the alterations, found a reliable contractor with a team of first-rate men—carpenters, painters, electricians—and the work was completed yesterday—except for a few corrections. And all in less than eight weeks, imagine!”

“And who’s that? The contractor himself?” Tony asked as a quietly-dressed man came climbing up from one of the lower terraces along with an obvious workman.

“No. I think that’s the inspector, who is checking our wiring system. We had a certain amount of trouble with it.”

“He looks satisfied now,” said Tony. “All must be well. Your Executive Assistant will be relieved.”

“Nealey? Yes, indeed. He had to call in two other electricians to get the final adjustments made.”

“And the contractor himself didn’t blow a fuse?” And what about his team of first-rate workmen?

“Oh, Nealey added a bonus—the work was finished in time, except for a few modifications we wanted to make. The contractor has nothing to complain about.”

We
wanted to make? Tony let that go, although it was tempting to hint that a bonus might be construed as bribery. But he resisted putting at least one warning fly into Maclehose’s too trustful ear, his full attention now on the man who called himself an inspector.

The man drew near, the workman a step behind him. And suddenly Tony was on the alert, memory stirring, another scene floating up to the surface of his mind. Washington. The Statler Hotel. A group of Soviet agricultural specialists. An interpreter, who left, and was followed...and Rick Nealey slipping into the car where the man waited. A man in his early forties; five feet ten or eleven; broad-shouldered, strong build. The dark hair was no longer streaked with grey; the placid face was now tanned. The eyes were the same, blue, cold, and confident. Boris Gorsky.

He passed close enough to make Tony (now admiring the profusion of the nearby flower-beds) feel a touch of cold sweat at the nape of his neck. Boris Gorsky, good God... Yes, Gorsky himself, as cool as when he had walked into Lenox Hospital, and couldn’t identify his old comrade Vladimir Konov. “These huge pink and purple patches, what are they?” Tony asked.

“Cyclamen,” Maclehose told him. “Certainly,” he was replying to the inspector’s query, “go right upstairs. I’m sure you’ll find it’s all in order now.”

The two men reached the house as the redhead at last stepped on to the terrace.

“Cyclamen? Massed close like that?” Tony shook his head in wonder, and managed a glimpse of the redhead’s brief hesitation, a momentary question on her pretty face and a small smile on her lips, as she glanced at Gorsky. Then she came forward to Maclehose, a sheet of paper in her hand, her face once more expressionless. She isn’t as dumb as she looks, thought Tony; she knows Gorsky. He looked at Maclehose, standing proudly on his beautiful terrace, in front of his beautiful house, above his beautiful gardens, and he fell silent.

Maclehose took the list with a warm smile of dismissal for Anne-Marie, and began explaining the importance of the names it contained. The subject they would discuss was of paramount importance to the allies of the United States:
The Weakness of Super-Strength
. “A good title, don’t you think?”

“Applicable only to the United States?”

“For this seminar, yes. Later we’ll examine Russia’s response to challenge.”

“Responses,” Tony corrected gently. “And when will that be?”

“Oh—some time, I hope, this summer. It’s a matter of getting the right specialists together.”

“And there are more of them on America’s weaknesses than on Russia’s?” Tony asked blandly. Then, glancing at his watch, he exclaimed, “Our time is almost up. Disappointing. I did want to hear about the rest of your staff too. Surely you can’t run a place as important as this, only with Nealey.”

“Oh, he will have an assistant. Besides that, there are two seminar aides, three translators, four secretaries.”

“A neat progression.”

Maclehose laughed. His anxiety about this visit from Krantz’s friend had left him. The report back to New Jersey would be positive.

“Will they live on the premises, too?” Tony asked. “A bit crowded.”

“I agree. There’s no room—domestic staff and storage take our top floor. They’ll stay in town.”

“And go home early?” Tony was smiling. “Very nice work, if you can get it.”

“No, no. They’ll work a full day. They start on Monday—no need to have them around with all the hammering and sawing going on.” Maclehose looked at his watch and tried not to frown.

“We are detaining you, I’m afraid. Why don’t we say goodbye now, and I can find Georges—”

“Would you?” Maclehose’s hand was out.

“There he is at last,” said Tony, looking down over the garden. Georges had been running, and now—as he saw them standing on the high terrace—halted abruptly, signalled urgently. He called out something unintelligible, ending with a shout of “
Vite! Vite!
”