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Summer was here again; the pavement was hot, the streets were dusty and the traffic cops were in white jackets and dark glasses. Already the tourists were everywhere, in two styles: beards, paper parcels and bleached jeans, or straw hats, cameras and cotton jackets. They were sitting on benches complaining loudly. ‘So he explained that it was one hundred new francs or it would be ten thousand old francs, and I said, “Gracious me I sure can understand why you people had that revolution.”’
Another tourist said, ‘But you don’t speak the language.’
A man replied, ‘I don’t have to speak the language to know what that waiter meant.’
As we walked I turned to watch them and caught sight of the courier strolling along about thirty yards behind us.
‘It will take me another five years to complete my work,’ said Datt. ‘The human mind and the human body; remarkable mechanisms but often ill-matched.’
‘Very interesting,’ I said. Datt was easily encouraged.
‘At present my researches are concerned with stimulating the registering of pain, or rather the excitement caused by someone pretending to have sudden physical pain. You perhaps remember that scream I had on the tape recorder. Such a sound can cause a remarkable mental change in a man if used in the right circumstances.’
‘The right circumstances being that film-set-style torture chamber where I was dumped after treatment.’
‘Exactly,’ said Datt. ‘You have hit it. Even if they can see that it’s a recording and even if we tell them that the girl was an actress, even then the excitement they get from it is not noticeably lessened. Curious, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ I said.
The house on the Avenue Foch quivered in the heat of the morning. The trees before it moved sensuously as though anxious to savour the hot sun. The door was opened by a butler; we stepped inside the entrance hall. The marble was cold and the curve of the staircase twinkled where sunbeams prodded the rich colours of the carpeting. High above us the chandeliers clinked with the draught from the open door.
The only sound was a girl’s scream. I recognized it as the tape-recording that Datt mentioned. The screams were momentarily louder as a door opened and closed again somewhere on the first floor beyond the top of the staircase.
‘Who is up there?’ said Datt as he handed his umbrella and hat to the butler.
‘Monsieur Kuang-t’ien,’ said the butler.
‘A charming fellow,’ said Datt. ‘Major-domo of the Chinese Embassy here in Paris.’
Somewhere in the house a piano played Liszt, or perhaps it was a recording.
I looked towards the first floor. The screams continued, muffled by the door that had now closed again. Suddenly, moving noiselessly like a figure in a fantasy, a young girl ran along the first-floor balcony and came down the stairs, stumbling and clinging to the banister rail. She half-fell and half-ran, her mouth open in that sort of soundless scream that only nightmares produce. The girl was naked but her body was speckled with patches of bright wet blood. She must have been stabbed twenty, perhaps thirty times, and the blood had produced an intricate pattern of rivulets like a tight bodice of fine red lace. I remembered M. Kuang-t’ien’s poem: ‘If she is not a rose all white, then she must be redder than the red of blood.’
No one moved until Datt made a half-hearted attempt to grab her, but he was so slow that she avoided him effortlessly and ran through the door. I recognized her face now; it was the model that Byrd had painted, Annie.
‘Get after her.’ Datt called his staff into action with the calm precision of a liner captain pulling into a pier. ‘Go upstairs, grab Kuang-t’ien, disarm him, clean the knife and hide it. Put him under guard, then phone the Press Officer at the Chinese Embassy. Don’t tell him anything, but he must stay in his office until I call him to arrange a meeting. Albert, get on my personal phone and call the Ministry of the Interior. Tell them we’ll need some CRS policemen here. I don’t want the Police Municipale poking around too long. Jules, get my case and the drug box and have the transfusion apparatus ready; I’ll take a look at the girl.’ Datt turned, but stopped and said softly, ‘And Byrd, get Byrd here immediately; send a car for him.’
He hurried after the footmen and butler who were running across the lawn after the bleeding girl. She glanced over her shoulder and gained fresh energy from the closeness of the pursuit. She grabbed at the gatepost and swung out on to the hot dusty pavement of the Avenue Foch, her heart pumping the blood patches into shiny bulbous swellings that burst and dribbled into vertical stripes.
‘Look!’ I heard the voices of passers-by calling.
Someone else called ‘Hello darling’, and there was a laugh and a lot of wolf-whistles. They must have been the last thing the girl heard as she collapsed and died on the hot, dusty Parisian pavement under the trees in the Avenue Foch. A bewhiskered old crone carrying two baguettes came shuffling in her threadbare carpet-slippers. She pushed through the onlookers and leaned down close to the girl’s head. ‘Don’t worry chérie, I’m a nurse,’ she croaked. ‘All your injuries are small and superficial.’ She pushed the loaves of bread tighter under her armpit and tugged at her corset bottom. ‘Just superficial,’ she said again, ‘so don’t make so much fuss.’ She turned very slowly and went shuffling off down the street muttering to herself.
There were ten or twelve people around her by the time I reached the body. The butler arrived and threw a car blanket over her. One of the bystanders said ‘Tant pis’, and another said that the jolie pépée was well barricaded. His friend laughed.
A policeman is never far away in Paris and they came quickly, the blue-and-white corrugated van disgorging cops like a gambler fanning a deck of cards. Even before the van came to a halt the police were sorting through the bystanders, asking for papers, detaining some, prodding others away. The footmen had wrapped the girl’s body in the blanket and began to heave the sagging bundle towards the gates of the house.
‘Put it in the van,’ said Datt. One of the policemen said, ‘Take the body to the house.’ The two men carrying the dead girl stood undecided.
‘In the van,’ said Datt.
‘I get my orders from the Commissaire de Police,’ said the cop. ‘We are on the radio now.’ He nodded towards the van.
Datt was furious. He struck the policeman a blow on the arm. His voice was sibilant and salivatory. ‘Can’t you see that you are attracting attention, you fool? This is a political matter. The Ministry of the Interior are concerned. Put the body in the van. The radio will confirm my ruling.’ The policeman was impressed by Datt’s anger. Datt pointed at me. ‘This is one of the officers working with Chief Inspector Loiseau of the Sûreté. Is that good enough for you?’
‘Very well,’ said the policeman. He nodded to the two men, who pushed the body on to the floor of the police van. They closed the door.
‘Journalists may arrive,’ said Datt to the policeman. ‘Leave two of your men on guard here and make sure they know about article ten.’
‘Yes,’ said the policeman docilely.
‘Which way are you going?’ I asked the driver.
‘The meat goes to the Medico-Legal,’ he said.
‘Ride me to the Avenue de Marigny,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to my office.’
By now the policeman in charge of the vehicle was browbeaten by Datt’s fierce orders. He agreed to my riding in the van without a word of argument. At the corner of the Avenue de Marigny I stopped the van and got out. I needed a large brandy.
15
I expected the courier from the Embassy to contact me again that same day but he didn’t return until the next morning. He put his document case on top of the wardrobe and sank into my best armchair.
He answered an unasked question. ‘It’s a whorehouse,’ he pronounced. ‘He calls it a clinic but it’s more like a whorehouse.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ I said.
‘Don’t get snotty – you wouldn’t want me telling you what to say in your reports.’
‘That’s true,’ I admitted.
‘Certainly it’s true. It’s a whorehouse that a lot of the Embassy people use. Not just our people – the Americans, etc., use it.’
I said, ‘Straighten me up. Is this just a case of one of our Embassy people getting some dirty pictures back from Datt? Or something like that?’
The courier stared at me. ‘I’m not allowed to talk about anything like that,’ he said.
‘Don’t give me that stuff,’ I said. ‘They killed that girl yesterday.’
‘In passion,’ explained the courier. ‘It was part of a kinky sex act.’
‘I don’t care if it was done as a publicity stunt,’ I said. ‘She’s dead and I want as much information as I can get to avoid trouble. It’s not just for my own skin; it’s in the interests of the department that I avoid trouble.’
The courier said nothing, but I could see he was weakening.
I said, ‘If I’m heading into that house again just to recover some pictures of a secretary on the job, I’ll come back and haunt you.’
‘Give me some coffee,’ said the courier, and I knew he had decided to tell me whatever he knew. I boiled the kettle and brewed up a pint of strong black coffee.
‘Kuang-t’ien,’ said the courier, ‘the man who knifed the girl: do you know who he is?’
‘Major-domo at the Chinese Embassy, Datt said.’
‘That’s his cover. His name is Kuang-t’ien, but he’s one of the top five men in the Chinese nuclear programme.’
‘He speaks damn good French.’
‘Of course he does. He was trained at the Laboratoire Curie, here in Paris. So was his boss, Chien San-chiang, who is head of the Atomic Energy Institute in Peking.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ I said.
‘I was evaluating it this time last year.’
‘Tell me more about this man who mixes his sex with switchblades.’
He pulled his coffee towards his and stirred it thoughtfully. Finally he began.
‘Four years ago the U2 flights picked up the fourteen-acre gaseous diffusion plant taking hydro-electric power from the Yellow River not far from Lanchow. The experts had predicted that the Chinese would make their bombs as the Russians and French did, and as we did too: by producing plutonium in atomic reactors. But the Chinese didn’t; our people have been close. I’ve seen the photos. Very close. That plant proves that they are betting all or nothing on hydrogen. They are going full steam ahead on their hydrogen research programme. By concentrating on the light elements generally and by pushing the megaton instead of the kiloton bomb they could be the leading nuclear power in eight or ten years if their hydrogen research pays off. This man Kuang-t’ien is their best authority on hydrogen. See what I mean?’
I poured more coffee and thought about it. The courier got his case down and rummaged through it. ‘When you left the clinic yesterday did you go in the police van?’
‘Yes.’
‘Um. I thought you might have. Good stunt that. Well, I hung around for a little while, then when I realized that you’d gone I came back here. I hoped you’d come back, too.’
‘I had a drink,’ I said. ‘I put my mind in neutral for an hour.’
‘That’s unfortunate,’ said the courier. ‘Because while you were away you had a visitor. He asked for you at the counter, then hung around for nearly an hour, but when you didn’t come back he took a cab to the Hotel Lotti.’
‘What was he like?’
The courier smiled his mirthless smile and produced some ten-by-eight glossy pictures of a man drinking coffee in the afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t a good-quality photograph. The man was about fifty, dressed in a light-weight suit with a narrow-brimmed felt hat. His tie had a small monogram that was unreadable and his cufflinks were large and ornate. He had large black sunglasses which in one photo he had removed to polish. When he drank coffee he raised his little finger high and pursed his lips.
‘Ten out of ten,’ I said. ‘Good stuff: waiting till he took the glasses off. But you could use a better D and P man.’
‘They are just rough prints,’ said the courier. ‘The negs are half-frame but they are quite good.’
‘You are a regular secret agent,’ I said admiringly. ‘What did you do – shoot him in the ankle with the toe-cap gun, send out a signal to HQ on your tooth and play the whole thing back on your wristwatch?’
He rummaged through his papers again, then slapped a copy of L’Express upon the table top. Inside there was a photo of the US Ambassador greeting a group of American businessmen at Orly Airport. The courier looked up at me briefly.
‘Fifty per cent of this group of Americans work – or did work – for the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of the remainder are experts on atomic energy or some allied subject. Bertram: nuclear physics at MIT. Bestbridge: radiation sickness of 1961. Waldo: fall-out experiments and work at the Hiroshima hospital. Hudson: hydrogen research – now he works for the US Army.’ He marked Hudson’s face with his nail. It was the man he’d photographed.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What are you trying to prove?’
‘Nothing. I’m just putting you in the picture. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m just juxtaposing a hydrogen expert from Peking with a hydrogen expert from the Pentagon. I’m wondering why they are both in the same city at the same time and especially why they both cross your path. It’s the sort of thing that makes me nervous.’ He gulped down the rest of his coffee.
‘You shouldn’t drink too much of that strong black coffee,’ I said. ‘It’ll be keeping you awake at night.’
The courier picked up his photos and copy of L’Express. ‘I’ve got a system for getting to sleep,’ he said. ‘I count reports I’ve filed.’
‘Watch resident agents jumping to conclusions,’ I said.
‘It’s not soporific.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ve left the most important thing until last,’ he said.
‘Have you?’ I said, and wondered what was more important than the Chinese People’s Republic preparing for nuclear warfare.
‘The girl was ours.’
‘What girl was whose?’
‘The murdered girl was working for us, for the department.’
‘A floater?’
‘No. Permanent; warranty contract, the lot.’
‘Poor kid,’ I said. ‘Was she pumping Kuang-t’ien?’
‘It’s nothing that’s gone through the Embassy. They know nothing about her there.’
‘But you knew?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are playing both ends.’
‘Just like you.’
‘Not at all. I’m just London. The jobs I do for the Embassy are just favours. I can decline if I want to. What do London want me to do about this girl?’
He said, ‘She has an apartment on the left bank. Just check through her personal papers, her possessions. You know the sort of thing. It’s a long shot but you might find something. These are her keys – the department held duplicates for emergencies – small one for mail box, large ones front door and apartment door.’
‘You’re crazy. The police were probably turning it over within thirty minutes of her death.’
‘Of course they were. I’ve had the place under observation. That’s why I waited a bit before telling you. London is pretty certain that no one – not Loiseau nor Datt nor anyone – knew that the girl worked for us. It’s probable that they just made a routine search.’
‘If the girl was a permanent she wouldn’t leave anything lying around,’ I said.
‘Of course she wouldn’t. But there may be one or two little things that could embarrass us all …’ He looked around the grimy wallpaper of my room and pushed my ancient bedstead. It creaked.
‘Even the most careful employee is tempted to have something close at hand.’
‘That would be against orders.’
