The Venetian Affair

  “You ought to know her better than most.” Claire was shaken, though. “You’re saying that a conversion out of necessity is not real, not honest?” And when he nodded, she asked, “Did you tell this to Rosie?”

  “No. You’re the only one I’ve ever—” He broke off, forced a good imitation of a smile, and went back to Rosie. “He knows a lot about people, that guy. And Communists are people—a pretty mean type of people at that, unless one admires liars and traitors, or the kind of man who keeps silent when his neighbours or family are carted off to torture or execution. As has happened. By the millions.”

  “I still think Rosie would be interested.”

  “Anything I tell him would sound like someone in high school analysing Spinoza. Very worthy, but not exactly contributive to the cause of advanced scholarship. How did Rosie come to know you, by the way?”

  “By the way?” She almost smiled at his careful casualness.

  And then all hint of amusement vanished. “By way of a bombing—a terrorist bombing of a café in Saigon where Jim was killed.” She frowned down at the checked tablecloth. “We had been married just five months.”

  “This was a political bombing?”

  “Yes. But those who were killed or mutilated were just ordinary people—all Vietnamese, except for Jim who was waiting for me to meet him at the café.” She raised her eyes. “I had chosen the meeting place. We were going furniture-hunting. There was an inlaid table I wanted him to see—it cost more than we had planned—before I bought it.” Even at this distance of eight years, there was self-reproach in the simple words.

  Fenner said, “Claire, please—”

  “I have to tell you. Briefly. Because it is the main reason that brought me into all this business. That bombing killed Jim and four men. It crippled three children and two women. It wounded nine others. I saw them—I saw them all.” She paused, hurried on. “So that was what one bomb meant, thrown from a passing truck. No one seemed to know who was responsible. I kept asking who and why, and got no real answers. People were very kind and gentle. But their sympathy was driving me numb with despair. Because everyone seemed so helpless and ignorant; and the bombings went on. So did the anti-American propaganda. No one knew how the rumours spread, but for a time they were believed by people who ought to have had a little more faith in us. They whispered that the Americans were responsible, that we were trying to undermine the French, intimidate the Vietnamese, blame the Communists because we always blamed the poor Communists. Jim’s death, you’d think, might have ended the rumours, but it was whispered around that there had been a small slip-up in American planning: they hadn’t warned Jim to keep away from that café on that day at that hour. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Yet at the time, the results of that propaganda weren’t ridiculous at all. They were deadly.

  “So Rosie appeared in Saigon. And he came to see me along with some friends—he was called Frank Rennie then. It was just a sympathy visit. Poor old Jim, poor little widow. It wasn’t much of a success. I think Rosie knew why. He seemed to understand that kindly platitudes were no answer at all to my questions. Look, Bill, when a man dies, we try to learn what caused his death, don’t we? That’s the law in civilised countries, isn’t it? And here were civilised people who were shocked and sorry but didn’t even know why bombs were being thrown or who had paid and organised the terrorists. Most of them didn’t even link the bombs to the anti-American propaganda: they thought the propaganda was only silly talk and no one who really knew Americans would believe it; they thought the bombings were the foolish work of dissidents or madmen on the loose, or a matter of local gangsters trying to shake down the café owners. Except Rosie. When the others left that afternoon, he stayed for an hour. He explained the propaganda campaign and the bombings, all part of the same story being built up around us. Americans were aggressive and ruthless and stupid, who’d turn any crisis into a war. In Korea—but, you remember all that—”

  “I remember.” A lot of us remember, he thought. We don’t all push history into limbo.

  “So Rosie made sense. And that was what I needed. Sense, not sympathy. Because that’s the only way to stop men like Kalganov. You’ll never stop them if you don’t know, or won’t admit, that they exist. It’s knowledge and action, not sympathy and kind words, that will save us from Kalganov’s world.”

  “Rosie actually told you about Kalganov?”

  “Not directly. I didn’t even know Rosie’s job—I thought he was just another business-man visiting Saigon.” She smiled and added, “But one who used his brains.”

  “So he didn’t recruit you there?”

  “Heavens, no. He just helped me when I needed help. I got a grip on myself and went back to New York and art school. And later, much later, when all the facts had been discovered, he sent me a newspaper clipping about the bombing. The men who threw the bomb from a passing truck were irregulars—bandits calling themselves soldiers. Their war lord, no politics, had been paid for the job. The men who had paid him were Chinese, no politics, who themselves had been paid by other Chinese, who were Communists, plenty of politics. They did it because they were instructed. And who gave them orders, planned everything? A man called Kalganov. He was the only one who wasn’t caught.”

  “He had protected himself pretty well, I must say.”

  “That’s his way. Usually, his name doesn’t appear in print. In fact, that’s the only time I ever saw it. So Rosie and his friends came very close to him.”

  “And when did Rosie get in touch with you again?”

  She laughed, “He isn’t a sinister old spider, Bill. We met in Paris, as Americans do. When he asked my help, I gave him it. I have seen the enemy, and what he’s willing to do to get what he wants. And that’s why I’m here. Not because of my own memories, but because of what I learned. That bomb was a threat to all of us—not just a personal tragedy for me. Do you see?”

  He nodded.

  “If I could help in the smallest way, to upset any Communist conspiracy—” She stopped, laughing off her tightening emotion. “Let’s say I declared war on Kalganov a long time ago. It’s my way of fighting for peace. Peace through active discouragement of all peace-breakers.”

  “Kalganov may need more than active discouragement to end his career.”

  “His record is black enough. That will take care of him.”

  “So all we have to do is catch him.” Fenner was smiling.

  “Not us! That’s a job for the professionals. Neill or Chris or some of Rosie’s agents. Or perhaps the Sûreté—”

  “You think he’s in Venice?”

  “You saw Jan Aarvan.”

  “And that means Kalganov is here?”

  “He won’t be far behind.”

  “Protecting himself as usual,” Fenner suggested. Very casually, he added, “Was Robert Wahl in Saigon around the time of the bombing?”

  She stared at him. “Yes,” she said slowly. “He was going to make a film out there. But it came to nothing. Bill—”

  But he hid his rising worry by glancing at his watch and saying briskly, “There’s just time to put on some lipstick and pay the check.”

  “Heavens!” said Claire, noticing her own small watch and the emptied restaurant. There were only three customers left, far distant. Even their blue ghost had vanished. “Whatever happened—oh, I know, I was explaining myself. Briefly.” She smiled at herself and searched hurriedly for a powder puff and lipstick in her bag. Carefully, she outlined her lips in soft pink. “My nose is going to peel,” she told him.

  “It wouldn’t do anything so indelicate.” He watched her, and all her neat feminine motions. She was even remembering to gather their swimsuits from a nearby chair, shaking her head over their dampness, deciding to carry them.

  “You’re the strangest mixture,” he told her. She was ten, twenty different women. Enough to keep a man chasing them all his life. Infinite variety. Poor old Carlson. Poor old Mark Antony, too. “Come on, Cleopatra.” She looked u
p, charming and wide-eyed. “Let’s go, my little front-line fighter for peace,” he said, and draped her soft ridiculous cardigan around her suntanned shoulders. “And give me those blasted swimsuits.”

  They walked up a sheltered path, a tangle of vines and rough pergola, toward the main road, passing the restaurant’s bad-weather dining-room, which now lay neglected. They were alone except for three barefooted, bronzed children, who chased long-legged pullets in and out of a kitchen door.

  They were almost at the street. “Drop something,” he told her. The cardigan slipped off her shoulders. He halted, took a step back to where it lay, shaking it as he picked it up to free it of dust and a withered leaf. She hadn’t looked around. “Our friend in the brown suit has joined us again. He must have been in the dining-room.” They had fallen into step, arm in arm, the cardigan slung through the strap of her red handbag. “Are they trying to scare us into a false move?” Either these people were damned well organised or he was crediting them with too many brains. “Jan Aarvan, for instance—” (how had he managed to be floating around on their part of the swimming beach?) “—was he also on the water-bus we took? I didn’t see him. I was too busy watching the woman.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Claire said as they came out into the street. “As long as Aarvan didn’t feel either of us recognised him, it doesn’t matter.”

  Fenner noticed two taxis waiting near the lane’s exit. “How convenient,” he said, and looked at the street, a long straight line stretching for miles, edged with gardens and bathhouses and hotels. It seemed uninhabited, except—a little distance away—for a small group of ex-bathers and sun-worshippers waiting for a trolley-bus to start back into town. Claire looked at him with brief alarm, and relaxed. They weren’t going to take any too-convenient taxi. I can let Bill take charge, she thought thankfully; and the feeling of reassurance, of safety, which had fallen over her like a soft and silken cloak in that dusty, vine-shaded lane, was wrapped around her again.

  One of the taxis moved forward. Its door was open, as inviting as its driver’s wide grin. “Taxi, taxi! Very quick, very quick!”

  “He’d make a successful playwright, that one,” Fenner observed as they walked on, the taxi cruising gently behind them, “emphasising the obvious, repeating everything twice.” The man’s face had been remarkably untanned for someone who lived on this wind-scoured, sun-baked sand bar. No doubt he had quick ears, a good memory, too. And he knew English. I may be oversuspicious, Fenner thought, but— He looked at Claire, who was letting him handle this completely. “No thanks,” he called to the taxi, which had drawn alongside again.

  The bus ahead of them would leave any minute, and among the swarm of passengers climbing on board by the rear door, he saw a woman dressed in dull blue, her sombre face not at all amused by the good-natured jostling around her. Better avoid the bus, he thought. But the taxi was creeping along, cajoling. Its driver would certainly keep following, if only to wear down their resistance. The Excelsior was only a few minutes away. Fenner could see it, even from here, along that stretch of empty road. The woman in the bus would notice them get off, but she could hardly follow them as blatantly as that. At the moment, she was the lesser of two dangers. “Run, Claire!” he said, catching her hand. They sprinted wildly, and reached the bus as it moved slowly away from the curb. He swung her on to its step, and scrambled after her as the bus went into high speed. “And you can run,” he told her, regaining his breath.

  “You can pull,” she said, breathless herself. She looked back at their line of flight. The insistent taxi had given up. Or perhaps it was waiting for further instructions from the other cab, which the man in brown was entering. “You can guess right, too,” she told Fenner as he found some small change for their short ride. There was no need to search for a seat. They’d leave at the next stop.

  Which made the blue lady’s reactions all the funnier. First she had been startled: was she being followed? Then she had become suspicious: they must be meeting someone on this bus. So she moved to a side seat near the front, uncomfortable as it was, from which she could watch everyone with that blank, stolid gaze. And just as she was settling, dutifully, at her vantage post, the bus swerved toward the sidewalk for its next halt.

  Claire and Fenner slipped off quietly by the rear door, their exit blurred by the rush of oncoming passengers crowding into the aisle. They crossed the street toward the lagoon, walking smartly. “We’ve got one minute left,” Fenner said. He glanced along the road. The two taxis were still standing together, some five hundred yards away. Quickly, they started forward. “Not a chance,” Fenner told them under his breath, as Claire, much amused, and he, feeling pretty good, came into the anchorage.

  It was a sheltered place—a large and glorified swimming pool, Fenner thought—with a few highly polished motorboats drawn close to one edge. Their owners were not grouped together, talking and scouring, as the gondoliers had been. They wore natty tweed jackets, correct collars and ties, nautical caps at a jaunty angle on good haircuts, and a proud look. “The jet pilots of the lagoon,” Fenner said with a grin. “And which is ours?” He didn’t wait for Claire’s guess, but started toward a boat, lying a little apart, whose owner seemed only interested in lighting a cigarette. “Hotel Vittoria?” Fenner called to him.

  “Right here,” the man said, and waved them casually on board. He was a young, dark-haired Italian, with interested brown eyes even if the manner was cool and nonchalant. Amidships there was the usual glass-enclosed cabin with pleated curtains, sashed and befringed, giving privacy. A good deal of privacy, Fenner realised as he handed Claire through the small front door and ducked inside after her. There was a man sitting in one of the neat red leather armchairs. From the jetty, the cabin had seemed empty.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” the stranger said as the engine roared, the boat curved sharply toward a narrow tree-lined canal, and they were jolted wildly together. “Hello, Claire. You’ve had a pleasant day in the sun, I see.”

  “Hello, Chris. Where’s Neill?”

  “I like boat rides, so I am here. And is this Mr. Fenner? How do you do?” The English voice was cold. “I’m Holland.”

  18

  There was tension in the small cabin. Claire glanced anxiously at Chris Holland, as much as to say, “Come on, make one of your funny remarks. I’ve talked you up. Don’t let me down!” But the Englishman was making no further remarks at all. He shook hands briefly, lit another cigarette. He was, in spite of his concentration with his lighter, studying Fenner critically.

  Of course, Fenner remembered, I was Rosie’s choice for this little expedition. Neill Carlson had been against it. No doubt Holland was, too. In his phrase, but in my New England accent, I am the bloody amateur who clutters up the landscape. So I’ll keep quiet, he decided, let Holland talk; and if I have to talk, I’ll do it in short questions and not flat statements. The opinion of an amateur was not worth much around here.

  Fenner settled himself comfortably in the chair opposite Claire. He lit a cigarette, too, and studied the Englishman in turn. An amateur could do that, at least. Christopher Holland was of medium height, weight, and age; his features, even, pleasant, but unremarkable; his hair, neatly cut, well brushed, greying brown; eyes, an indeterminate mixture of grey and brown, but certainly observant; lightly tanned, unlined skin; his clothes of brownish-grey mixed tweed, worn most casually. A medium kind of man in every way, Fenner thought, one you’d scarcely notice in an empty street, and quickly forget. A man without worries or troubles, you would guess, even meeting him as closely as this, until you noticed the ashtray beside him, filled with half-smoked cigarettes.

  Claire was reporting. “They are definitely interested in us, Chris. We have been watched and monitored ever since we left Paris.”

  “One minute—” Holland said in his quiet, even voice. They were zooming into the lagoon, two scimitar-shaped waves curving up and out from the boat’s sharp prow. He slid open the rear door’s panel. “Dammit,” he b
ellowed, “what’s the rush, Pietro?”

  Pietro grinned cheerfully. He had had his flying start. He eased the speed of the boat and shouted back something that blew away in the wind. Holland shook his head, closed the door again.

  “First,” Holland said, “let’s talk about the message you sent me. Your rooms are no good. No good at all. Change them.” He was looking at Claire. Claire looked at Fenner.

  “So Rosie did not book those two rooms on the terrace?” Fenner asked.

  “No. He arranged for two rooms on the second floor, no connecting balcony with any other rooms. Also, two of his men have rooms on that floor, close by. We’ve been outmanoeuvred”—he smiled, thinly—“by film producer Wahl, who could very safely use the name of Mr. Stephen York.”

  “Are they friends?”

  “Not at all. But it was safe to use York’s name. He is making a picture in deepest Africa. We checked.” Again there was a touch of acid amusement. “Wahl was never known for his lack of impudence.”

  “Wahl,” Fenner said reflectively. “Not Kalganov?”

  Holland was startled, certainly less diffident in manner. He looked at Fenner thoughtfully. “We don’t know that Wahl is Kalganov, do we?”

  “Where is Wahl?”

  “Switzerland, they tell me.”

  “Not Venice?”

  Holland’s quiet stare asked for an explanation.

  “Claire thinks Kalganov is in Venice. We saw Jan Aarvan today.”

  “Where?”

  “On a raft.” Fenner relented and grinned. “About a couple of hours ago, or more.”

  “You are sure?” Holland looked at Claire for confirmation.

  “Bill recognised him. I didn’t. Really, Chris, that’s an awful photograph in Inspector Bernard’s files. Aarvan has thinned down, for one thing. And he must be fifteen years older.”

  “Also,” Fenner said, “he is dyeing his hair. It was brown yesterday on the train. It’s almost black today. Miracles of modern science. When I first saw him, from Vaugiroud’s window, he was blond. How is Vaugiroud, by the way? His arm was broken, I heard.”