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‘It all began with the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests,’ he began. ‘The Atomic Energy Commission were taking a lot of criticism about the dangers of fall-out, the biological result upon wildlife and plants. The AEC needed those tests and did a lot of follow-through testing on the sites, trying to prove that the dangers were not anything like as great as many alarmists were saying. I have to tell you that those alarmists were damn nearly right. A dirty bomb of about twenty-five megatons would put down about 15,000 square miles of lethal radio-activity. To survive that, you would have to stay underground for months, some say even a year or more.
‘Now if we were involved in a war with Red China, and I dread the thought of such a thing, then we would have to use the nuclear fall-out as a weapon, because only ten per cent of the Chinese population live in large – quarter-million size – towns. In the USA more than half the population live in the large towns. China with its dispersed population can only be knocked out by fall-out …’ He paused. ‘But knocked out it can be. Our experts say that about half a billion people live on one-fifth of China’s land area. The prevailing wind is westerly. Four hundred bombs would kill fifty million by direct heat-blast effect, one hundred million would be seriously injured though they wouldn’t need hospitalization, but three hundred and fifty million would die by windborne fall-out.
‘The AEC minimized the fall-out effects in their follow-through reports on the tests (Bikini, etc.). Now the more militant of the Chinese soldier-scientists are using the US reports to prove that China can survive a nuclear war. We couldn’t withdraw those reports, or say that they were untrue – not even slightly untrue – so I’m here to leak the correct information to the Chinese scientists. The whole operation began nearly eight months ago. It took a long time getting this girl Annie Couzins into position.’
‘In the clinic near to Datt.’
‘Exactly. The original plan was that she should introduce me to this man Datt and say I was an American scientist with a conscience.’
‘That’s a piece of CIA thinking if ever I heard one?’
‘You think it’s an extinct species?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think, but it’s not a line that Datt will buy easily.’
‘If you are going to start changing the plan now …’
‘The plan changed when the girl was killed. It’s a mess; the only way I can handle it is my way.’
‘Very well,’ said Hudson. He sat silent for a moment.
Behind me a man with a rucksack said, ‘Florence. We hated Florence.’
‘We hated Trieste,’ said a girl.
‘Yes,’ said the man with the rucksack, ‘my friend hated Trieste last year.’
‘My contact here doesn’t know why you are in Paris,’ I said suddenly. I tried to throw Hudson, but he took it calmly.
‘I hope he doesn’t,’ said Hudson. ‘It’s all supposed to be top secret. I hated to come to you about it but I’ve no other contact here.’
‘You’re at the Lotti Hotel.’
‘How did you know?’
‘It’s stamped across your Tribune in big blue letters.’
He nodded. I said, ‘You’ll go to the Hotel Ministère right away. Don’t get your baggage from the Lotti. Buy a toothbrush or whatever you want on the way back now.’ I expected to encounter opposition to this idea but Hudson welcomed the game.
‘I get you,’ he said. ‘What name shall I use?’
‘Let’s make it Potter,’ I said. He nodded. ‘Be ready to move out at a moment’s notice. And Hudson, don’t telephone or write any letters; you know what I mean. Because I could become awfully suspicious of you.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I’ll put you in a cab,’ I said, getting up to leave.
‘Do that, their Métro drives me crazy.’
I walked up the street with him towards the cab-rank. Suddenly he dived into an optician’s. I followed.
‘Ask him if I can look at some spectacles,’ he said.
‘Show him some spectacles,’ I told the optician. He put a case full of tortoiseshell frames on the counter.
‘He’ll need a test,’ said the optician. ‘Unless he has his prescription he’ll need a test.’
‘You’ll need a test or a prescription,’ I told Hudson.
He had sorted out a frame he liked. ‘Plain glass,’ he demanded.
‘What would I keep plain glass around for?’ said the optician.
‘What would he keep plain glass for?’ I said to Hudson.
‘The weakest possible, then,’ said Hudson.
‘The weakest possible,’ I said to the optician. He fixed the lenses in in a moment or so. Hudson put the glasses on and we resumed our walk towards the taxi. He peered around him myopically and was a little unsteady.
‘Disguise,’ said Hudson.
‘I thought perhaps it was,’ I said.
‘I would have made a good spy,’ said Hudson. ‘I’ve often thought that.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, there’s your cab. I’ll be in touch. Check out of the Lotti into the Ministère. I’ve written the name down on my card, they know me there. Try not to attract attention. Stay inside.’
‘Where’s the cab?’ said Hudson.
‘If you’ll take off those bloody glasses,’ I said, ‘you might be able to see.’
26
I went round to Maria’s in a hurry. When she opened the door she was wearing riding breeches and a roll-neck pullover. ‘I was about to go out,’ she said.
‘I need to see Datt,’ I said.
‘Why do you tell me that?’
I pushed past her and closed the door behind us. ‘Where is he?’
She gave me a twitchy little ironical smile while she thought of something crushing to say. I grabbed her arm and let my fingertips bite. ‘Don’t fool with me, Maria. I’m not in the mood. Believe me I would hit you.’
‘I’ve no doubt about it.’
‘You told Datt about Loiseau’s raid on the place in the Avenue Foch. You have no loyalties, no allegiance, none to the Sûreté, none to Loiseau. You just give away information as though it was toys out of a bran tub.’
‘I thought you were going to say I gave it away as I did my sexual favours,’ she smiled again.
‘Perhaps I was.’
‘Did you remember that I kept your secret without giving it away? No one knows what you truly said when Datt gave you the injection.’
‘No one knows yet. I suspect that you are saving it up for something special.’
She swung her hand at me but I moved out of range. She stood for a moment, her face twitching with fury.
‘You ungrateful bastard,’ she said. ‘You’re the first real bastard I’ve ever met.’
I nodded. ‘There’s not many of us around. Ungrateful for what?’ I asked her. ‘Ungrateful for your loyalty? Was that what your motive was: loyalty?’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I have no loyalty to anyone. A woman on her own becomes awfully hard. Datt is the only one who understands that. Somehow I didn’t want Loiseau to arrest him.’ She looked up. For that and many reasons.’
‘Tell me one of the other reasons.’
‘Datt is a senior man in the SDECE, and that’s one reason. If Loiseau clashed with him, Loiseau could only lose.’
‘Why do you think Datt is an SDECE man?’
‘Many people know. Loiseau won’t believe it but it’s true.’
‘Loiseau won’t believe it because he has got too much sense. I’ve checked up on Datt. He’s never had anything to do with any French intelligence unit. But he knew how useful it was to let people think so.’
She shrugged. ‘I know it’s true,’ she said. ‘Datt works for the SDECE.’
I took her shoulders. ‘Look, Maria. Can’t you get it through your head that he’s a phoney? He has no psychiatry diploma, has never been anything to do with the French Government except that he pulls strings among his friends and persuades even people like you who work for the Sûreté that he’s a highly placed agent of SDEGE.’
‘And what do you want?’ she asked.
‘I want you to help me find Datt.’
‘Help,’ she said. ‘That’s a new attitude. You come bursting in here making your demands. If you’d come in here asking for help I might have been more sympathetic. What is it you want with Datt?’
‘I want Kuang; he killed the girl at the clinic that day. I want to find him.’
‘It’s not your job to find him.’
‘You are right. It’s Loiseau’s job, but he is holding Byrd for it and he’ll keep on holding him.’
‘Loiseau wouldn’t hold an innocent man. Poof, you don’t know what a fuss he makes about the sanctity of the law and that sort of thing.’
‘I am a British agent,’ I said. ‘You know that already so I’m not telling you anything new. Byrd is too.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, I’m not. I’d be the last person to be told anyway. He’s not someone whom I would contact officially. It’s just my guess. I think Loiseau has been instructed to hold Byrd for the murder – with or without evidence – so Byrd is doomed unless I push Kuang right into Loiseau’s arms.’
Maria nodded.
‘Your mother lives in Flanders. Datt will be at his house near by, right?’ Maria nodded. ‘I want you to take an American out to your mother’s house and wait there till I phone.’
‘She hasn’t got a phone.’
‘Now, now, Maria,’ I said. ‘I checked up on your mother: she has a phone. Also I phoned my people here in Paris. They will be bringing some papers to your mother’s house. They’ll be needed for crossing the border. No matter what I say don’t come over to Datt’s without them.’
Maria nodded. ‘I’ll help. I’ll help you pin that awful Kuang. I hate him.’
‘And Datt, do you hate him too?’
She looked at me searchingly. ‘Sometimes, but in a different way,’ she said. ‘You see, I’m his illegitimate daughter. Perhaps you checked up on that too?’
27
The road was straight. It cared nothing for geography, geology or history. The oil-slicked highway dared children and divided neighbours. It speared small villages through their hearts and laid them open. It was logical that it should be so straight, and yet it was obsessive too. Carefully lettered signs – the names of villages and the times of Holy Mass – and then the dusty clutter of houses flicked past with seldom any sign of life. At Le Chateau I turned off the main road and picked my way through the small country roads. I saw the sign Plaisir ahead and slowed. This was the place I wanted.
The main street of the village was like something out of Zane Grey, heavy with the dust of passing vehicles. None of them stopped. The street was wide enough for four lanes of cars, but there was very little traffic. Plaisir was on the main road to nowhere. Perhaps a traveller who had taken the wrong road at St Quentin might pass through Plaisir trying to get back on the Paris-Brussels road. Some years back when they were building the autoroute, heavy lorries had passed through, but none of them had stopped at Plaisir.
Today it was hot; scorching hot. Four mangy dogs had scavenged enough food and now were asleep in the centre of the roadway. Every house was shuttered tight, grey and dusty in the cruel biting midday light that gave them only a narrow rim of shadow.
I stopped the car near to a petrol pump, an ancient, handle-operated instrument bolted uncertainly on to a concrete pillar. I got out and thumped upon the garage doors, but there was no response. The only other vehicle in sight was an old tractor parked a few yards ahead. On the other side of the street a horse stood, tethered to a piece of rusty farm machinery, flicking its tail against the flies. I touched the engine of the tractor: it was still warm. I hammered the garage doors again, but the only movement was the horse’s tail. I walked down the silent street, the stones hot against my shoes. One of the dogs, its left ear missing, scratched itself awake and crawled into the shade of the tractor. It growled dutifully at me as I passed, then subsided into sleep. A cat’s eyes peered through a window full of aspidistra plants. Above the window, faintly discernible in the weathered woodwork, I read the word ‘café’. The door was stiff and opened noisily. I went in.
There were half a dozen people standing at the bar. They weren’t talking and I had the feeling that they had been watching me since I left the car. They stared at me.
‘A red wine,’ I said. The old woman behind the bar looked at me without blinking. She didn’t move.
‘And a cheese sandwich,’ I added. She gave it another minute before slowly reaching for a wine bottle, rinsing a glass and pouring me a drink, all without moving her feet. I turned around to face the room. The men were mostly farm workers, their boots heavy with soil and their faces engraved with ancient dirt. In the corner a table was occupied by three men in suits and white shirts. Although it was long past lunchtime they had napkins tucked into their collars and were putting forkfuls of cheese into their mouths, honing their knives across the bread chunks and pouring draughts of red wine into their throats after it. They continued to eat. They were the only people in the room not looking at me except for a muscular man seated at the back of the room, his feet propped upon a chair, placing the cards of his patience game with quiet confidence. I watched him peel each card loose from the pack, stare at it with the superior impartiality of a computer and place it face up on the marble table-top. I watched him play for a minute or so, but he didn’t look up.
It was a dark room; the only light entering it filtered through the jungle of plants in the window. On the marble-topped tables there were drip-mats advertising aperitifs; the mats had been used many times. The bar was brown with varnish and above the rows of bottles was an old clock that had ticked its last at 3.37 on some long-forgotten day. There were old calendars on the walls, a broken chair had been piled neatly under the window and the floor-boards squealed with each change of weight. In spite of the heat of the day three men had drawn their chairs close to a dead stove in the centre of the room. The body of the stove had cracked, and from it cold ash had spilled on to the floor. One of the men tapped his pipe against the stove. More ash poured out like the sands of time.
‘I’m looking for Monsieur Datt,’ I said to the whole room. ‘Which is his house?’
There was not even a change of expression. Outside I heard the sudden yelp of a frightened dog. From the corner came the regular click of playing cards striking the marble. There was no other sound.
I said, ‘I have important news for him. I know he lives somewhere in the village.’ I moved my eyes from face to face searching for a flicker of comprehension; there was none. Outside the dogs began to fight. It was a ragged, vicious sound: low growls and sudden shrieks of pain.
‘This is Plaisir?’ I asked. There was no answer. I turned to the woman behind the bar. ‘Is this the village of Plaisir?’ She half smiled.
‘Another carafe of red,’ called one of the men in white shirts.
The woman behind the bar reached for a litre bottle of wine, poured a carafe of it and pushed it down the counter. The man who had asked for it walked across to the counter, his napkin stuck in his collar, a fork still in his hand. He seized the carafe by the neck and returned to his seat. He poured a glass of wine for himself and took a large gulp. With the wine still in his mouth he leaned back in his chair, raised his eyes to mine and let the wine trickle into his throat. The dogs began fighting again.
‘They are getting vicious,’ said the man. ‘Perhaps we should do away with one of them.’
‘Do away with them all,’ I said. He nodded.
I finished my drink. ‘Three francs,’ said the woman.
‘What about a cheese sandwich?’
