The Venetian Affair

  Well, thought Fenner, here is a definite disciple of Monnet. Here’s another Frenchman who thinks in terms of people instead of nationalities. “The Communists would find their ideas outmoded. They might have to renounce Lenin as well as Stalin,” he observed with a smile. Even if Vaugiroud was a Common Market enthusiast, his basic argument was valid. If the Communists feared the prosperity of West Berlin so much that they built a Wall, how much more would they fear a prosperous and peaceful Europe?

  “They may be forced to do that,” Vaugiroud said soberly. “But before that, they will fight us every step of the way, with every psychological weapon they can find. They didn’t intend to lose.”

  Fenner rose, glancing at his watch. “I may just catch my friend at the Embassy. May I use your telephone?”

  “You trust him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Actually, I only met him today.”

  “Today?” Vaugiroud stared incredulously.

  “Yes. He is with NATO. Some kind of security branch, possibly Intelligence.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. Just my guess. He is attached to the Embassy, meanwhile. I saw him there.”

  “Alone?”

  “No, no,” Fenner said patiently. He restrained a smile. “There were other Embassy people around who knew him. He wasn’t an impostor. Shall I telephone?”

  Vaugiroud did not answer. He rose, painfully, placed the memorandum on his desk, and walked over to the window. “If there were any careless talk, any casual handling of that memorandum, then our enemy might learn we were interested in their activities. I do not believe in warning our enemy, Mr. Fenner. Much wiser to make him feel secure, secure enough to be bold, to make one mistake. One, Mr. Fenner, is all that is ever needed.” He looked along the street. The furrow on his brow deepened. “Is your friend a careful man?”

  “Surely he wouldn’t hold down his job if—”

  “Wouldn’t he? You really trust him a great deal on one day’s meeting.”

  “I trust you. Is that foolish?” And you trusted me; a little certainly.

  “I hope not.” Vaugiroud smiled. Then the smile vanished. He drew back slightly from the window. “I think you were right about that man in the blue shirt,” he said very quietly.

  “He’s still there?”

  “He is restless. Bored, perhaps.” Vaugiroud watched the man strolling along the street again. The stranger’s face came into focus.

  “Perhaps you haven’t had enough visitors today to please him.” Fenner started toward the window.

  Vaugiroud’s upraised hand stopped him.

  “Is he coming to check on me again?” Fenner asked jokingly. “He probably thinks I’ve made an exit through a back basement.”

  “He checked on you? How?” Vaugiroud asked sharply.

  “With Mathilde at your front entrance. I thought he might be finding out my name.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well—it seemed a silly idea at the time: sort of jumping to conclusions.”

  Vaugiroud turned away from the window, his face set in worry. “Would you telephone your friend at the Embassy and ask him to come here?”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  Fenner made no comment. He moved back to the desk, glanced at his watch again, registered the fact that they had lost four minutes by all that hesitation, hoped that Carlson would still be in his office at half-past five, and began the intricate job of telephoning. There were, of course, various stages of waiting. He used them to continue talking to Vaugiroud, holding his hand over the ’phone. There were several questions that puzzled him. “Is it possible that Jacques did recognise you in the Café Racine?”

  “I am sure he did not. Otherwise, I would have been watched before now. This flat would have been entered and my papers searched, to let them know how much or how little I know.”

  “And then what?” This man, Fenner thought, may be in greater danger than he admits. He takes it all so calmly. “Would they kill you?” he asked sharply. “Would they go as far as that?”

  “I should certainly be very careful in crossing any streets,” Vaugiroud admitted and smiled. Then the smile became bitter. “Monsieur Fernand Lenoir, secure in his career, could hardly tolerate anyone who could identify him as Jacques.”

  Fenner stared at Vaugiroud. “Yes,” he said into the telephone. “I want Carlson. No, I don’t know his first name. Carlson. That’s right. Tell him it’s Fenner. And it’s important.” He looked back at Vaugiroud. Fernand Lenoir and Sandra Fane and the pleasant parties on the Avenue d’Iéna... That had been a calculated indiscretion on Vaugiroud’s part, slipped in as skilfully as a hypodermic. Why? Because Vaugiroud knew that he had once been married to Sandra Fane? Or because Vaugiroud wanted to establish Lenoir as a name to be remembered if, some day, he wasn’t too careful in crossing a street? At last, Carlson’s voice came over the telephone, and Fenner was speaking with a new sense of urgency.

  “This is becoming a habit,” Carlson told him. He sounded far from enthusiastic.

  “It’s urgent.”

  “Again?” Carlson asked, and groaned.

  “Did I disappoint you this morning? This may be still bigger news.”

  “You do get around, don’t you?”

  “I’ve got a new angle on those people Rosie was asking about.” And Fenner had Carlson noting down Vaugiroud’s address without any more protests.

  Vaugiroud said, as Fenner put down the receiver, “That was very expeditious. And remarkably cryptic.” The unasked question hung in the air.

  But I can be discreet, too, Fenner thought. He said, “Carlson will be here at six-forty-five. I’ll wait until he comes.” He grinned and added, “I know how you like proper introductions.”

  “I find them reassuring,” Vaugiroud said dryly. He pursed his lips, frowned. “Perhaps you should be waiting downstairs at a quarter to seven, and let your friend enter?”

  “Of course. Anything to keep Mathilde from finding out his name. I don’t think Carlson would like that.”

  “Not Mathilde. Her husband is the one who should perhaps be kept ignorant. Was he in the courtyard when you arrived?”

  “Someone was there. Out of sight. I thought it was a child.”

  “No children. Her husband is problem enough. Nothing he does is ever successful. You saw the bicycles? He lost his little repair shop, asked me to let him work in the courtyard until the other tenants come back.” Vaugiroud sighed. “It is always the small request that turns out to be the greatest nuisance. Constant visitors, all explained as clients. If he had as many clients as that, I don’t think he would ever have had to give up his shop. One thing, Mr. Fenner. When you do leave, you may see him. Mathilde won’t be there; she goes out in the late afternoon for her daily shopping. Pay no attention to him at all. And if that man in the blue shirt is still out in the street—do not even look his way. Let him think you have never seen him. Will you do that?”

  Fenner nodded. He didn’t quite follow Vaugiroud’s reasoning, but that was something he could puzzle out later. The quiet voice again amazed him. He said, “You take all this pretty calmly.”

  “How else?”

  How else indeed? “If I could borrow a corner of your writing desk and some paper, I might start working over the material for Walt Penneyman.” He might even have his notes complete to hand over to Carlson for dispatch by the next diplomatic pouch.

  My first evening in Paris, he thought, as he settled at the desk and tested his pen.

  It was with some amazement that he heard Vaugiroud’s voice from across the room saying, “Mr. Fenner, it is twenty minutes to seven.”

  7

  Bill Fenner left the Rue Jean-Calas with mixed, but pleasant, emotions. There was relief for a job that was over—his report for Walt Penneyman was in Carlson’s hands; satisfaction in the way he had conveyed Carlson upstairs, briefing him abruptly on Vaugiroud’s
past, leaving Vaugiroud’s present to be discovered from Vaugiroud himself; and some plain, unabashed glee over his own nicely timed departure. He had waited beside the window for a few minutes after his introduction of Carlson, just long enough to see the curious stranger, sitting once more at the café table in its cool evening shadows, begin to rise and stroll towards the Rue Jean-Calas. Fenner’s hasty goodbye might have startled Vaugiroud and Carlson if they hadn’t been too busy sizing each other up like a pair of circling judo experts, but it got him down the stairs in a quick run to make sure he would be gone before the stranger could reach the house. In the courtyard, darkening rapidly, he had glimpsed a hefty, sausage-eating type in a tight grey suit which had never seen work more arduous than opening a beer bottle. And paid no attention. He had stepped out into the street well ahead of the man sauntering toward the doorway. And paid no attention.

  So here he was, no one following, duty done, free. Carlson could handle all the worries from here on out. The fading light of September’s first day was broken by the bright splashes of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, just ahead of him. The book-stores and shops were closing, but there were plenty of cafés in all shapes and sizes. This was the time to be meeting a girl; beautiful, of course, and intelligent, naturally; with taste and a sense of humour. Too much to hope for? These things rarely came together in one pleasing package. The intelligent ones were usually too old, the beauties’ conversation lasted about fifteen minutes, the ones with taste tried too hard, the ones with humour knew it, alas. My God, he realised, I left out the one ingredient that matters most: honesty, just some decent, reliable, plain old-fashioned honesty. Didn’t you have enough of the pretty little finagler, all open innocence, all hidden purpose? And then he wondered wryly, who was he to demand so much anyway? How much would a woman see in him? How much did he deserve? Not so much, he decided, not so much at all.

  His speculations about a girl, the girl who always waited just around the corner or in the next room, had begun with a smile and ended in bitter memories. He needed a drink to get the sour taste out of his mouth. Besides, coping with Vaugiroud’s French for the concise translation he had sent Penneyman had been an arduous hour. He stood at the edge of the broad boulevard, nineteenth century driving its straight way through the maze of ancient streets, debating where he would have that drink. For here the cafés had their own hard core of constant patrons drinking and talking in chosen groups, while the visitors wandered in to look at the captive poets and would-be philosophers, and went away after an inadequate dinner but at least with another coup notched on their tourist tomahawks. Fenner wondered, as he hesitated, if his eyes had not really been searching for a café called Racine. (“Not far from here,” Vaugiroud had said.) It wasn’t in sight from where he stood, so he gave up, crossed the boulevard, turned left, deciding to play the complete tourist and head for the Deux Magots, where the existentialists had established their original beachhead. But before he reached the heavy grey stones of the medieval Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the only relic of its green meadows in its name, he saw—just off the boulevard, at the corner of a side street—the sign Café Racine above a quiet little restaurant. Again he hesitated. His job with Vaugiroud was over, but his interest was still alive. One minute he was telling himself it was no longer any of his business, the next minute he was crossing the side street to reach the two long window boxes of prim marigolds that flanked the Racine’s open doorway. The narrow sidewalk held no room for outside tables, but, as he realised when he stepped over the threshold, this was a place that took food seriously.

  There was a pleasant panelled room in front of him, with a large central display of remarkable cold dishes, cheeses, fruit, over which a large fan revolved slowly. Around the walls were well-spaced tables, covered with white linen, only half-filled at this hour. The lights were bright in unshaded globes. Plenty of polished brass, but not an inch of chromium, he noted. Only two women were in sight, and they were both middle-aged, carefully coiffured and dressed, listening with small, correct smiles while their husbands discoursed airily. This was a man’s restaurant, most definitely.

  No one paid any attention to him except Madame, who sat on a high chair at an old-fashioned desk to one side of the doorway. “Good evening,” he said, aware of her careful scrutiny.

  “You wish a table, monsieur?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Ah, you are waiting for someone?” She was the quick, clever type who always knew what you wanted before you did.

  “Yes.” For a glimpse, at least, of Henri Roussin. It was a safe answer, true enough, not committing him to anything.

  She gestured to the other side of the door, where the corner opposite her held a group of marble-topped tables against a background of newspapers, each hanging from its wooden spine hooked onto the wall like a medley of medieval banners. Yes, this was the waiting-place, Fenner decided, where strangers warmed cold feet with a tepid apéritif until courage was recovered and they could ask if one of those empty dining tables might not possibly be granted to a mere foreigner? He selected a chair that faced the room. Madame’s powers of remote control had summoned an ancient waiter, but that was the extent of her interest. She was back to business, checking accounts, concentrating. She was a thin, small-boned woman, about thirty-five, dressed in subdued grey, with intense black hair, pale lips, thick white skin, deep shadows under her sharply observant eyes.

  The waiter took his order, showed no visible signs of shock when he was asked to bring a Scotch and soda. He even suggested ice. So some Americans must wander in here occasionally. Fenner felt less of a stray Martian, lit a cigarette, studied the room, with its small islands of complete self-absorption. There was a preponderance of grey and white heads, of double-breasted suits, of lapel decorations. Solid citizens, all of them. There was a mild clatter of heavy silver as some threw themselves into the serious business of eating, a hum of talk from those who waited for food to be cooked. Voices were low, although clear-pitched, brilliant; faces were quiet, clever; gestures were controlled but expressive. Intelligent citizens, too, but preoccupied with themselves: not one knew, or cared, what was going on around him. Just the place, thought Fenner, for a clandestine meeting. All you needed was a double-breasted suit, a long haircut, and drooping eyelids.

  Where’s my drink? Fenner wondered, reaching overhead for a newspaper. And where is Henri Roussin? Madame was watching him again, and then—as he had looked over at the desk—not watching. He began to read, but could give the paper little attention. The puzzle that had drawn him to the Café Racine was unexplained: if Vaugiroud was being observed, Roussin would also be under suspicion. Yet there was no one here who seemed to be interested in anyone else, except Madame, and that was possibly an occupational disease. I am not going to snitch any newspapers, he told her under his breath, as he looked up and saw the curious eyes glance away from him; in fact, I’m just about to leave. But now, from the back of the restaurant was Monsieur le propriétaire himself, emanating.

  He was a large man, Henri Roussin, an impressive testimonial to his chef. He moved slowly along the row of tables, a small bow here, a few words there, his head always turning to one side as he paused to speak. Quite naturally it seemed he came toward Fenner. “You have not been served, monsieur?” His voice was half-muted, hoarse, as if it were strangled in his throat.

  Fenner nodded towards the arriving waiter. He forced himself to keep looking at Roussin politely, tried to banish the shock from his eyes. Roussin’s face carried the traces of his war. Once, they must have been hideous. Surgeons’ clever fingers had worked hard, but there was still a disfigured look to the right side of the face in spite of its carefully disguised scars: an over-neatness of the ear, its lobe gone, a drawn smallness of the eye; the side of the jaw oddly fallen. His thin grey hair had its long strands brushed carefully over a bald welt, the continuation of a puckered furrow of white flesh that ran from the misshapen ear up over the brow onto the scalp. “Here’s my drink,” Fenne
r said awkwardly, glad of an excuse to drop his eyes. He studied the one small cube of ice that had been allowed him.

  “Monsieur would like a table?”

  “Eventually.” Fenner was pleased with that word: his French accent sounded better this time.

  “You are waiting for someone? I shall arrange a table for two?”

  Fenner said, “Well—I’m not sure—”

  Roussin watched him with amusement. “Or perhaps you came to see me, Mr. Fenner?” he asked in English. As Fenner stared up at him, he added, “I’m sorry I was not here when you arrived. I was in my office, speaking on my telephone.”

  Fenner grinned. “With Professor Vaugiroud? So he called you to expect me. But how did he know?”

  “To be exact, he did not telephone. I called him. When we were talking, he mentioned you.”

  “And described me pretty accurately.”

  “The professor is always accurate. He notices the essential details. That signet ring on your left hand, for instance; the blue shantung tie; the small lapels of your dark flannel suit. It wasn’t difficult to identify you.”

  “But how did he know I was going to drop in here?”

  “He did not know. He only thought what he would do himself if he were you. It was a brilliant guess, don’t you think?”

  “Are all his guesses as good?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “Sometimes wrong?” Fenner asked jokingly.

  “Not in recent years.”

  “Not since August 11, 1944?”

  It was Henri Roussin’s turn to stare. The quick dark eyes in the half-dead face widened for a shocked moment. He recovered. With a smile, he said, “You had an interesting talk with the professor, I see. Excuse me—” He turned away to greet two men who had entered the restaurant, delivered them into the care of a waiter, stopped at the desk to speak to Madame, and returned to Fenner. “Will you have dinner with me, Mr. Fenner? My table is just over there.”