The Venetian Affair (22 page)

So he had made the train and hotel reservations, too, growing cheerier by the minute.

Spitzer was making some work for himself with a blue pencil when he received the biggest shock of the day. Even Fenner, in the middle of his call to Venice, faltered for an amazed moment when Mike Ballard walked in. Ballard was haphazardly dressed, a green cotton-mesh shirt with white stripes, no tie, a natural-coloured linen jacket (crumpled at the back), faded red trousers, loafers on his feet. His temper was foul. He scowled at Fenner by way of greeting as he marched to Spitzer’s desk. “Why the hell didn’t you call me? The Russians start exploding bombs and you don’t even pick up a telephone,” he began, and went on with increasing vividness.

Fenner completed his call and drifted over to the two men. “Nice beach?” he asked with a grin, looking at Ballard’s clothes.

Ballard was studying a copy of Spitzer’s report to New York on the Soviet bomb tests. He snapped, “That’s where I’ve come from. Heard the news at eleven. Caught the plane with ten seconds to spare. Now I feel like a refugee from a circus. What are you doing here?” He was eyeing the cable, with Penneyman’s name clearly visible, that still lay casually on Spitzer’s desk.

“Picking up a cable.” Fenner reached over and lifted it.

“Venice!”

“That’s right.”

“Why there?”

“I don’t think it’s any of your damned business,” Fenner said gently.

“Isn’t it?” Ballard asked, after a startled pause. He went back to reading Spitzer’s report. “No good, no good. Scrap it!” he told Spitzer angrily.

“It went out, this morning. I did my best. I thought—”

“You sent this garbage under my name?” Ballard demanded.

“Goodbye, chaps,” Fenner said, and made for the door.

“Hold on, Bill.” Ballard followed him quickly. “What is all this about Venice?”

“Do you want to read it again?” Fenner handed him the cable.

Ballard waved it away. “It is my business, you know,” he said, no longer aggressive but openly worried. “And why send you to see this Vaugiroud when I’m here?”

“But you weren’t, Mike. Don’t worry. I covered up for you.”

“And took the Vaugiroud assignment,” Ballard said bitterly. “When did Penneyman telephone about it? Yesterday morning?”

Fenner dodged a lie. “You had already gone. So I told him you had grippe, wouldn’t be on your feet until Monday.” He glanced definitely at Spitzer. “It’s a good out for you. Every way. Use it.”

The idea had begun to glimmer in Ballard’s eyes. He said, mollified, “Who is this Vaugiroud?”

“A retired professor of Moral Philosophy.”

“How did Penneyman hear about him?”

“He’s an old World War II buddy.”

“Oh, one of those.” Ballard relaxed visibly.

“Have a nice week-end with your typewriter,” Fenner said, leaving. Ballard grunted, stripped off his jacket as he headed for his private cubicle, and threw the two women into a frenzy of work as he yelled for the boy to get coffee. Spitzer, bent over the copy he was checking, looked like a man who had miscalculated and didn’t know how.

* * *

So all that was over, the first steps taken, no retreat possible. Fenner studied the last hour’s performance from every angle as he walked briskly down the broad and spruce Avenue de l’Opéra. On the whole, good. His credentials had been established. Strange how a little evasion here, a little play-acting there, had changed the accounting of his thirty-odd hours in Paris. He hadn’t actually liked that skirting of the truth, so why should he be enjoying this feeling of petty triumph? He could almost hear Rosie’s probable comment: “Petty? What’s petty about Robert Wahl’s plans? What’s petty about the smallest success against them? And another thing—drop that word ‘triumph’, even if you use it ironically. Especially when you use it ironically. Cut out the comic heroics and concentrate on survival. And it’s not only
your
survival I’m talking about, either. You know what’s at stake.”

Yes, I know what’s at stake, Fenner thought grimly. Even Vaugiroud, ethics and all, must have put philosophical questions of right and wrong aside in his resistance to the Nazis. How had he equated argument and action? Strength in one could mean weakness in the other. Carlson had guessed something of this conflict in Fenner: that explained, perhaps, why he had wanted Fenner out of this whole business. Yet Rosie, who was in several ways a less sympathetic character, had disagreed with Carlson: did he see Fenner less clearly? Or more deeply? Let’s hope it’s the latter, Fenner thought: I like feeling flattered as much as any man. And if I laugh at cloaks and daggers, I don’t laugh very much at treason, stratagems, and spoils.

He suddenly realised that he was striding down the avenue
looking like a man with a fixed destination ahead of him. Not good, that, he warned himself with mock seriousness. He eased off his pace, stopped now and again at the shop windows, some smart, some cheap, glanced casually at the more interesting faces that passed him, as if he were enjoying a normal walk through Paris. The streets became more crowded as he reached the Louvre. He thought of dropping in—he had the theory that the only way to see a museum was in brief visits, no longer than an hour each, when you could choose what you felt like seeing and spare your mind wild indigestion: whoever ate his way through a menu from top to bottom, missing no dish? But he recalled Carlson’s hint, much in line with the shenanigans in all the espionage movies he had attended: museums were excellent meeting places for agents. So—with another touch of levity—he kept himself clear of suspicion (if he were being followed) by skirting the old palace and sauntering across the Seine. He could imagine Carlson’s shake of the head, telling him he was doing the right thing but with the wrong attitude. Fenner’s jocularity turned into quick and complete depression.

He was not too far from the Ile Saint-Louis, but there were almost two hours to kill before he met Mrs. James Langley. Had that voice on the telephone really been hers? Perhaps that was why he felt so damn depressed. With that voice at his elbow, even Venice would be ruined. If he had to share Venice with a woman, he’d like her soft-spoken, laughing, interested; and, at very least, agreeable to look at. I’ve become too much of the successful bachelor, he thought, wanting everything just my way. Master of my fate, captain of my soul? Like hell I am!

He stopped at a couple of the bookstalls on the quay to find out if he was being followed. (See, Carlson, I’m learning.) He
reasoned that he could expect that from now on: his movements would be checked just to make sure that they’d tally with the story that had been built up around him. But after fifteen minutes of looking at battered books, old prints, and bargain seekers, he felt sure that no one was interested in him at all. He walked farther into the Left Bank area, still more convinced that he wasn’t being followed, beginning to wonder if Carlson’s caution had not been excessive, a sort of occupational disease. He came to the Boulevard Saint-Germain. There was no breach in security in walking along it, in the direction of the Boul’ Miche, where he could have a beer and relax before he headed for the Ile Saint-Louis. There was no breach of security, either, in glancing down the street where the Café Racine retired so modestly from the busy traffic of Saint-Germain. Today it was a crowded corner, jammed. And quiet. Fenner halted abruptly, became one of a group pressed together, staring across at the Café Racine.

The restaurant’s front had a jagged gape. There had been a fire, too. Blackened stone, dark water deep in the gutter, smashed glass on the sidewalk, the acrid smell of disaster still hanging over the quietened little street. Policemen were on duty; some firemen were walking in and out of the ruined restaurant. All action was over.

“Terrible, terrible,” the woman beside Fenner kept repeating. “The filthy pigs. Assassins! Two children dead. They lived on the floor upstairs.” She saw she had caught a listener. She was normally a fat, jolly woman, but anger and excitement had turned her into a hoarse phonograph. She had seen it all. Been walking along this street. Poor little innocents. Their mother had just left them to buy some olive oil at the shop around
the corner. Some women didn’t even know how to keep house, nowadays, running out of olive oil—

“What happened?” Fenner asked abruptly.

“A fire. And the two little—”

“How did it start?”

“A bomb. Then the fire. Spreading. I saw it as I walked along the street. I could have been struck by flying glass. It was terrible. They lived on the floor upstairs—”

Fenner turned away quickly from the grim evidence of smoke-stained walls, of smashed and blackened windows, leaving the woman in search of a new listener. The bewildered face of an old man caught his attention. It was the waiter who had served him yesterday in the Café Racine. “Auguste?” Fenner asked, catching the thin, frail arm.

Auguste looked slowly around, with no recognition. “Terrible,” he said, “terrible...”

“What happened?”

The old man shook his head slowly, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “Both dead,” he said at last. His white hair was soot-streaked; his threadbare alpaca jacket was smeared and stained. One sleeve was charred.

“I know,” Fenner said. Did terrorists never think of two children when they packed their ideals into a bomb? All and everything for the cause, including two children. “Did anyone get hurt in the restaurant?”

“Both dead,” Auguste repeated dully. “Monsieur Henri. Madame Angélique. Both. They were at his table. The bomb was there. I had just left.” The red-rimmed, watering eyes looked at Fenner. They still could not understand his escape. The others were dead; he was alive.

“Was there no one else at the table?” Fenner asked quickly.

“The professor had left, too. To talk on the telephone. He was at the desk. Madame Angélique’s desk. And she was at the table. Monsieur Henri was talking to her.” Auguste sighed. “And so they are both dead.”

“Was the professor hurt?”

“An arm broken. A little burned. He tried to reach Monsieur Henri. They took him to the hospital. Three waiters, too. No guests were there. It was early, you see. Twelve o’clock. I had just left to fetch a bottle of wine—” Again the white head was shaking, slowly, wonderingly.

“No good standing here,” Fenner said. “Come away. Where do you live?” I’ll get Auguste into a taxi, he thought, and deliver him home: he has lost the will to move.

But Auguste would have none of it. He drew his thin shoulders, almost angrily, back from Fenner and resumed his staring at the Café Racine, his eyes dull again, not seeing, only remembering that he, counting the months to his own death, had stayed alive today. All right, Fenner thought, I shan’t cheat you of your miracle. He left the old man, then.

So Wahl and Lenoir had silenced Henri Roussin. And if Rosie hadn’t telephoned, they would have silenced Vaugiroud, too. And Angélique—she had been expendable. So were the two children who had nothing to do with anything... Fenner’s shock gave way to anger. It deepened with his sense of personal failure. Somehow, he ought to have warned Roussin in time. Even Rosie came in for a touch of blame: why hadn’t he got hold of Vaugiroud before he had left his apartment? But Fenner’s recrimination collapsed: it certainly wasn’t Rosie’s fault; he hadn’t known Vaugiroud’s daily routine; he hadn’t known
about any bomb. He had only followed an instinct, a suspicion, when he had telephoned Vaugiroud. “It’s a fixed date?” Rosie had asked unexpectedly. Now, Fenner knew just how worried he must have been. And there I was, Fenner thought bitterly, not realising what danger could really mean, just thinking of it as a big vague threat, even making light reference to Roussin’s invitation to lunch—Good God,
I
could have been there when the bomb went off!

He reached the Ile Saint-Louis almost twenty minutes early. He hadn’t stopped for any beer—he had forgotten about it, in fact. He unlocked the door, and stepped into the small recess that formed the entrance hall. The white-and-green living-room was softly bright in the afternoon’s sunshine. There was a grouping of suitcase, overnight case, red handbag, near an armchair where a dark-blue cashmere coat had been thrown along with a pair of white gloves. So Mrs. Langley was already here, and ready to go. She was in the bedroom, for he heard a door close sharply, and then, “Who’s that?”

“Bill Fenner,” he called back. “Sorry if I frightened you.” Stupid oaf, he thought, I ought to have rung the bell.

“That’s all right,” she said, coming into the room, high heels tapping lightly. He knew the voice, even knew the footsteps, before he saw the hair falling over her brow and the large grey eyes looking at him hesitantly from under long black lashes. The smile on the rose-pink lips was uncertain. “My name really
is
Claire Connor Langley. I hope that answers your question.”

He recovered himself. “One of them.” He tried to smile. “When are you which?” She was wearing a light-grey suit with
one of those stand-away necklines that emphasised a slender neck.

“Professionally, I use Claire Connor.” She noticed the slight lift of his eyebrow. “By profession, I mean an illustrator and designer,” she added severely.

He looked at the small automatic she had carried into the room. “A new type of pencil? Splatter effect, perhaps, in the Pollock manner.”

“Oh, this?” She laughed, embarrassed. “I was just getting it out of a closet. I keep it in a hatbox.” She crossed over to the armchair and picked up her large red handbag and slipped the automatic inside. “You think it’s pretty silly, don’t you? Perhaps it is. But it’s a comfort, too. Especially when a door was unlocked twenty minutes before I expected anyone—no voice, just a man’s footsteps.”

“I don’t think it is silly at all.” And he meant that.

She shook her head in mock wonder. “Neill Carlson will never believe it.” She noticed his face more closely. “Is something wrong? Did anything happen to you?”

“Just an initiation. My first terrorist bomb.”

“Near you?”

“No, no. I only saw the results. But I could have been there. If Carlson and Rosie hadn’t told me to keep clear of the place, I—” He paused. “It was the Café Racine. Roussin and his sister-in-law—”