Hopscotch (26 page)

The walls were thick but there was the thin stink of kerosene fuel pervasively in the room and dimly Ross could hear the jets whining outside. The chartered Lear was fueling up for them and there wasn't much time.

Ross had been talking; now he went on:

“According to the introductory material it's probably the chapter on how the Agency first installed Magsaysay as President of the Philippines and then
decided he wasn't playing ball and had him assassinated. Incidentally is that true?”

“I wouldn't know,” Myerson murmured. “It wouldn't have been our department.”

Cutter said, “Everything else has been true so far. He'd have had no reason to make it up.”

Ross said, “It was mailed two days ago in the post office two blocks from the hotel. One of the desk clerks did it. Kendig gave him a big tip. It'll probably start showing up in today's mail deliveries.”

There was no damming the flood of Myerson's anger. “What the hell difference does it make what the chapter's about? The man walked out right under our noses. He's on the Continent right now and we're sitting here with hundreds of people holding empty bags.” His face congested with blood. “He walks right into a public building and kidnaps one of our own agents in full view of fifty people. He uses our own man's identification to get himself out of the country. He's carrying the rest of the Goddamned manuscript around in a little brown case as if it was a bag of groceries. He's one stinking man, unarmed and fifty-three years old and none of you high-paid geniuses can lay a finger on the son of a bitch. It's
my
head that's going to roll but I'm going to make good and Goddamn sure it's not the only one. You
comprenez
that, Joe?”

Cutter spoke; he sounded as hoarse as if he'd spent weeks in a cell without talking. “There's one thing I can still try.”

“Then you'd by God better try it because it's your neck that needs saving right now. What is it?”

“We've played him by the book right along. We've used cold logic and detective work and saturation
manpower. We've made all the right moves. But he's anticipated every one of them—precisely because they
were
the right moves. Like the FBI trap, the post offices.”

Follett said, “Don't tell me, let me guess. You want to make a wrong move on purpose.”

Cutter ignored it. “I want to forget forensics and go after him on sheer instinct.”

Myerson snorted. “Toss a coin? Throw darts at a map? That's easy to say—what's it mean?”

“I'm not getting anywhere trying to manage this stinking huge field army. I want to dump the command structure and the impedimenta and get out there on the pavement. I think you ought to turn my job over to Glenn here—turn me loose on my own. I'll take Ross and we'll see what we can smell out.”

“That's clutching at straws for God's sake.”

“Can you think of anything better to clutch at right now?”

Glenn Follett said, “I can. I already have.”

Myerson glared at him. “Well? Do you need to be prompted?”

“I called Laurier this morning, SDECE Paris. I've asked him to put a crowd into every bank in the city.”

“Why?” Myerson snapped.

“Before he started this caper he withdrew a lot of money from his bank in Zurich. He was living in Paris at the time. He laid out his plans there. It's his most logical base of operations, and so far it's the only place he's returned to since he started playing hopscotch.” Follett held out his hand and jiggled the fingers as if he were bouncing a ball on his palm. “He gave your man Liddell a lot of cash
to pay him for taking that ocean voyage for him. There's a limit to how much cash a man can carry around. Stands to reason he must have been pretty broke by the time he went from Georgia to Spain. But someplace between Madrid and London he replenished his finances—remember the money belt? Well when he flew from Madrid to Copenhagen he picked a flight that gave him several hours' stop-over in Paris. It's a pretty good bet he's got a bank in Paris—a cash account or a safe-deposit box. And right now he's flat broke except for whatever small change he's boosted to keep himself going. If he told Oakley the truth about going to ground then he'll want to clean out his stash—but even if he was lying he's still got to have money. I'm betting the money's in a bank in Paris. I've had SDECE saturation on every bank in town since they opened their doors this morning.”

“That's shrewd enough,” Cutter said, “but he'll walk right past them the same way he walked past our people last night.”

Myerson slapped the arm of his chair. “Even if he does I agree we've got to assume he's in Paris. I think we've got to bottle up the damn city the way it's never been bottled before.”

Follett waved his big arms wildly. “There's a thousand roads out of Paris. It can't be done.”

Myerson glared at him and then shifted the glare to Cutter. “And you want to go out on your own and sniff like a bloodhound. That's your last and best shot, is it?”

“If I get close to him I'll feel it. I can't get more exact than that.”

Ross said, “Is he really going under, do you think?”

“Maybe,” Cutter said. “He's changed his tactics—it means he's changed his mind. He doesn't want to die any more, if he ever really did. What he's got left is knowing he won't give up and lie down and die. But he may have been telling the truth about going into hiding. I think he's tired of the hectoring game.”

“That doesn't change anything for us,” Myerson said.

“I realize that.”

Myerson gave him a cold look and sank the knife, twisting it: “Give it your best, Joe. Because I'm going to phone Mikhail Yaskov and give him every scrap we've got.”

Ross said, “What?”

“Yaskov was right all along,” Myerson said, not without bitterness. “The important thing was to stop Kendig—not
who
stopped him. I'm going to bring Yaskov right up to date and wish him luck. And if he gets in there ahead of you, Joe, you can kiss everything good-bye.”

They sent the overnight bags on with Follett and took a taxi in from Le Bourget; Cutter told the driver to let them off at the Place de l'Opéra and Ross followed him into the American Express and Cutter sat down on a bench on the mezzanine.

“Okay,” Ross said, “what now?”

“Put yourself in his shoes. You're here in Paris and the whole world's gunning for you. You want to disappear. You pick up whatever money you've got left in your stash. Then what do you do?”

“I don't know. What do you do?”

“I don't know either,” Cutter said. “Let's just think a while.”

“Why'd you pick this place? Because he used to have a checking account here?”

“He still has it,” Cutter said. “But there's only a few hundred francs in it. He won't come here.”

“Then we shouldn't be here either.”

“All right Ross, where should we be?”

“Put it this way. He knows we're looking for him. He'd go where he didn't expect us to go.”

“Where's that?”

“The Folies? The bar at the Ritz?”

“Kendig? No.”

“It won't be any kind of public transportation. He might steal a car—it wouldn't be the first time.”

“I think he really wants to get away clean this time. He won't steal a car—it could be traced, somebody might remember he bought gas or stopped for lunch. He'd have to abandon the car somewhere and that would give us a place to start looking if we ever connected the car with him.”

“Climb into the back of a truck full of lettuce.”

“And go where?”

“Some country village where we'd never look for him in a hundred years.”

Cutter said, “He's a chameleon but he's a deep-rooted American. He won't settle down in a place where English isn't the native tongue. It's not the language, it's the way the language makes you function. He speaks good Spanish but he's never had any empathy with the way the Latin mind works. It's the same with the others. If he's going to ground for the rest of his life it'll be in English-speaking surroundings. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States.”

“He tried that before.…”

“We knew he was there. If we didn't think he
was there would we have any chance of finding him there?”

“Is this getting us anywhere, Joe?”

“Maybe it is. I think we're psyching him about right. He'll want to get far away from this corner of the world without anyone ever knowing he's done it.”

“I don't see how that tells us where to start looking for him.”

Cutter didn't answer right away. Tourists and expatriates drifted through the building. Ross saw a lot of furs and long suede coats; it was a cold autumn. Downstairs there was a queue at the postal delivery window but it was nothing like as long as the one in the summer.

“Come on,” Cutter said; he uncoiled as if he had hinges and walked away.

Ross caught up and followed him outside. Traffic clotted the square. He had to hurry to keep up. Cutter had his hands thrust deep in his pockets; he was walking with long strides—down the Madeleine and the rue Royale, around the corner of the Place de la Concorde, past the palace gardens and up the Champs-Elysées. He crossed over with the light and cut off the Champs and Ross said, “Where are we going?”

“Follett's office.”

“What for?”

“I want to be there when Kendig says good-bye.”

– 26 –

T
HERE WAS A
malignant cloud cover and a raiding wind howled along the Seine. Kendig went up the moss-slick steps with his suitcase and across the quai into the rue Seguier.

Strauss seemed to have gained more weight; he led Kendig downstairs to the vault and Kendig took the black box into the private cubicle. Mainly what he needed was the Alexandre Vaneau passport. But he took all the money out of the box, put it in the suitcase and returned the black box empty to the vault. Strauss escorted him past the two armed guards up the stairs; Kendig went back along the quai to where he'd parked the 2CV van, tossed the suitcase inside and drove down through the sinuous boulevards of the left bank.

He had a room in a
pension
in the fifteenth arrondissement; he opened the suitcase and dumped the money out on the bed. He filled one of the two money belts he'd bought in the morning when he'd bought the comfortable pair of shoes and the overcoat with the velvet collar; he was still wearing Oakley's suit under it.

He transferred the remaining chapters of the manuscript from the school-book case into the suitcase and on top of the pages he put something over a hundred thousand dollars and all Oakley's papers.
Then he went out again to finish his daylight errands.

He bought a
bâtard
loaf, a chunk of cheese, a bottle of Vittel water that had a screw-on cap, and a box of wooden matches. Then he walked on to a workman's clothiery where he outfitted himself with dungarees, flannel shirt, a beret, rubber-soled waterproof boots and a drab leather jacket with elastic waist and cuffs. He carried his parcels along the avenue Felix Faure until he found a florist's where houseplants were a specialty; he bought a tin of powdered fertilizer which had a high concentration of sulfuric acid.

He returned to the
pension
, left his purchases on the bed and had to go out once more; this time to the Caltex filling station near the quai. He told the attendant he'd run dry six blocks away. The attendant sold him a four-liter can at an exorbitant price and filled it from the pump. Kendig left it on the floor of his stolen 2CV van before he went upstairs.

He broke open the loaf and made a meal of that and the cheese, washing it down with the Vittel water. He poured the rest of the water into a tumbler and then carefully tipped a good share of the chemical fertilizer powder into the empty bottle. He filled it the rest of the way from the sink tap. Then he broke off a piece of his shoelace and dipped it in the solution. The acid was not too concentrated but it ate the leather away after a while; it would do. He capped the bottle carefully and placed it upright on the bureau.

He made a fuse from one of the wall candles, stripping the candle away until all that remained was the wick thinly coated with wax.

He stripped down to his underwear and changed
into the workingman's outfit he'd just bought. After he'd laced up the boots he folded Oakley's suit carefully and laid it in the suitcase along with Oakley's topcoat. He tossed his toilet gear in and then gathered the remaining money on the bed; this went into the second money belt and he laid that on the topcoat and closed the suitcase over it.

There was nothing left to do but wait; he couldn't make the next move until after midnight. He pushed the suitcase aside to make room for himself and lay back with his hands laced behind his head. After a while he drowsed.

In the middle of each night the
gendarmerie
's meat wagon made its rounds slowly, its crew stopping by the hunched
clochard
figures who sprawled in rags on the streets and gutters and doorways of Paris. If the
clochard
was drunk, asleep or merely deathly ill the
flic
passed him by because there wasn't manpower, facility, time or inclination to render assistance. But if the
clochard
happened to be dead the meat wagon would collect him and he would be taken to the morgue where medical students could learn something from his cadaver before his dissected remains were disposed of by the city. On a normal night there would be about twenty dead ones in the streets.

Tonight a high-pressure weather system had dropped down the globe from the northwest and the cold was more than autumnal; it was intense, several degrees below frost point, and it had caught the
clochards
of Paris unprepared. There would be an uncommon number of deaths.