77 Rue Paradis (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

“This is Joseph,” Gorssmann said.

Baron turned to face a kindly-looking man of about six feet, with heavy shoulders. The man wore a gray knitted crew-necked sweater and dark trousers. He was somewhere in his late twenties.

“No use trying to talk with him,” Gorssmann said. “He is a deaf-mute. A good enough fellow. There is nothing else wrong with him. Only that he makes his money in a rather violent way.” He gestured broadly with his arm.

Baron felt his own arm gripped brutally and he was sent spinning across the room into darkness. He came up against a wall, looked back. The man Joseph was coming toward him slowly with the light from the desk gleaming over his shoulders, putting his figure in silhouette.

Baron knew already that he could do nothing with this man. It seemed futile to him. Everything seemed futile, yet he heard the sound of his voice yet again; he heard its meagerness and there was the sound of futility here, too. “There’s no need of this,” he said.

“Perhaps not,” Gorssmann said.

Arnold came across the room and opened another door leading into darkness. He reached around the jamb and snapped on a light. The room was bare and Baron went spinning into it—into a field of bright white light. The door slammed and Joseph stood with his back against it, watching him.

Baron saw only the brilliant white of the walls, the cement floor. The walls were like silver, like mirrors that reflected only light, not images. The glare was achingly intense. High on the walls, all around the room, were racked the bright white floodlights that shone downward, and he could feel their heat.

He turned again to Joseph. The man started walking toward him. Baron opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, remembering what Gorssmann had said.

Joseph reached for him.

Baron dived. He wanted to get inside those hands, grapple, fight. Rage took him, rebellion, and he struck out, not against the man before him, but against an utter and complete helplessness that overwhelmed him.

He picked himself up off the floor. He did not even recall being struck. Then his head began to pain as if it were being slowly crushed. He looked for windows. There were no windows. The door was closed.

Joseph walked across the room and leaned against the wall, watching him. The man looked ordinary. Bigger than average, but there was nothing in his face to explain this. He did not smile. At the same time he did not grimace. He was breathing normally.

Baron rose to his feet. He looked at the man, wondering.

Joseph stepped quickly up to him.

There was confusion in Baron’s mind, and fear. Not being able to reach this man, knowing he could not hear, could not speak, was somehow agonizing.

Joseph sighed shortly and his lips tightened very slightly. He closed in rapidly. Baron tried to outguess him, tried to reach him, fighting. It was useless. The man was trained completely and flawlessly.

He was rocked with a terrible blow to the head, another from the opposite side. Then he was kicked in the stomach. He sprawled backward on the floor. His head struck the cement and he lay there looking up at the man.

Joseph stepped in close to him and kicked him in the side of the face. He slammed his foot against his head, kicked him in the side, stepped upon him with his full weight, went across the room and leaned against the wall. He stared at the floor, not at Baron.

It was mad.

An agony of pain swept over him, then gradually diminished in falling waves of color through his mind. He lay there in this dying, breathing pain on the cold cement.

Then he came quickly to his feet, made for the door, tried the knob. It was locked. He turned and Joseph was still leaning against the wall, watching.

His life had weakened him. He had not eaten properly in weeks, months. He realized for the first time in a year, and cared, what a physical wreck he was. All of this was senseless. What was it Gorssmann wanted him to do? What had he said about Bette? It could not be true!

He had to get away from here. The man he sought was alive. Gorssmann knew who he was. That was the single thought. He must reach the police—somebody.

Joseph walked toward him.

Now he fought.

He fought as never before in his life. Half laughing with the pain of memory, he saw in a flash that he had never been forced to fight anything before. His battle had all been inside, all this while, all these months. Physically, he was a mess. He felt old, useless, overwhelmed. It took him less than a minute to see how futile it was to fight back. He could not even touch the man. Joseph was beating him with a steady, calm completeness that was terrifying. Hardly a part of his body was left unbruised.

Finally he could not rise from the floor. He tried hard, but nothing moved. Then he lost consciousness.

* * * *

He was seated in the chair by Gorssmann’s desk. The big man himself held a glass of brandy to his lips. Arnold helped hold him in the chair and he came to that way.

He wrenched, choked on the brandy. Gorssmann stepped back, looked at him, put the glass on the desk. He went around the desk, walking smoothly, effortlessly, and sat down.

“Arnold. Let him go.”

Baron heard the voice through the ringing in his ears. He knew the hands that were supporting him went away. He knew he was falling, but he could not prevent it. He sprawled from the chair and landed on the green rug with his head under the huge desk. He was bleeding. His mouth was filled with blood.

He lay there for some time. Finally he worked himself back to the chair, pulled himself up, and sat down. His head was loose on his shoulders and he had difficulty in keeping his eyes focused. There was a peculiar buzzing in his head.

Joseph was gone.

“Unpleasant,” Gorssmann said. “More brandy?”

He shook his head. He said nothing. It was a kind of wild blathering of sound. He tried again. The same thing happened. He nearly wept and fought and tried still again.

“No more brandy. No, thanks.”

He laughed. The laughter changed to a fit of coughing and he coughed blood in a vicious spray, bending down with his head between his knees, laughing and choking and coughing.

He sat up again, looked at Gorssmann. Gorssmann was sitting cockeyed in his chair. The desk was cockeyed, on a slant. Then it straightened and at the same moment something cracked inside his head and all was perfectly clear and normal again, though painful.

“Odd,” Gorssmann said. “I’ll bet you don’t know how close to death you came, Baron. Really, now. The human mind can’t believe that, because it suspects a great deal more pain and agony to come before death. Actually that’s not the case at all. You can go along like that and die, never even realizing. Here nor there. Enough. Now, what do you think?”

“Is Bette all right?”

“She is all right. She is alive. You will even see her, probably.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“Tell you some now, some later. Please, here—Arnold! Take Monsieur Baron to the washroom. Help him clean up.”

“You’re a Red—a Communist.”

“No,” Gorssmann said. “Naturally you would think that. I hate them as much as you. Or do you?” Gorssmann chuckled. “You were prepared not to hate them, eh? No, we are not Communists. I am not.”

“Come, monsieur,” Arnold said.

Baron staggered to his feet. When he walked it felt as if he were wading.

The washroom was at the back of the big room in which they had been seated. When he looked in the mirror, he did not seem nearly so battered as he had imagined. At least, this was so once he washed the blood away.

Arnold proved to be no help whatever. Arnold had discovered that his fingernails were dirty.

* * * *

“Yes,” Gorssmann said. “On the road to Cassis. You know Cassis?”

Baron nodded. “I’ve been there—swimming.”

“Well, this is on the road. It is secret, of course. We know it is an airplane factory, that much we know. France is working hard, Baron, very hard, behind those walls.”

“Walls?”

“Fences, really.”

“But what do you want me to—”

“You will know soon enough. For the time being you will go home, gather yourself together. I will give you some money.” Gorssmann paused, watching him. “Did that bother you much? My telling you I will give you some money? Does it trouble you deeply?”

He shook his head. He knew enough now to admit nothing.

“It does not matter,” he told Gorssmann.

“A spoken truth, though still a lie, is sometimes as good as the real thing,” Gorssmann said. He chuckled. “We all have to go through this time. It is—difficult. For some it is very difficult. You will have this money. Buy clothes, eat some steak, plenty. Do not drink so much. But I need not tell you these things because you are thinking about Elene—and Bette—and yourself. You are concerned now, Baron. You are concerned with the same things we are, even though obliquely. N’est-ce pas?”

Baron said nothing.

“Certainly. We must think of our loved ones and of ourselves.” Gorssmann grinned. “You see how it works?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I do.”

“For example, you hate me, but”—he raised his eyebrows—”it doesn’t hurt me and we accomplish great things together. Eh?”

“If you say so.”

“That is better. You are regaining your humor. You had too much humor a while ago. But, then, humor is a precious thing. Without it a man is doomed from the Start.”

“Yes. What is it you want me to do?” His voice was solemn and, hearing it, he felt the faint faraway toll of doom. He was startled that his mind worked this way. He knew he was beat down. He knew he must not let Gorssmann see too much of how he felt.

“You are a good friend of Paul Chevard’s. French aeronautics. The Air Ministry. He is a big part of this. It is a plane, Baron—a jet-powered plane. I know little of this, only what is necessary for my part of the enterprise. It is enough to say that no other country has achieved what they have at the plant near Cassis. You know something of this thing called ‘thrust’?”

Baron nodded.

“What seems to be the most accepted high standard of pound thrust in the very best of jet-engined airplanes?”

Baron sighed, thinking back, then covering the three empty years since he had been in the industry. “Possibly ten thousand pounds,” he said.

“You know how necessary this is to the capacity performance of advanced jet engines?”

Baron nodded.

“Then imagine performance at double that. Twenty thousand pounds thrust, perhaps more—surely more, from the rumors. No country has approached it.”

Baron watched tensely as Gorssmann leaned forward. The big man’s face went slightly red again.

“Do you know what this will mean to whatever country has it? The country that can develop this thing? I will tell you. The air industry has to combat a single terrible enemy. During wartime, because of intensified production, this enemy is doubly bad. The enemy is time, Baron. A powerful new plane is built. Millions of dollars are spent on design and models. Yet, in a matter of months, sometimes weeks, the machine is obsolete because of ceaseless innovation.” He paused, watching, waiting.

Baron was far ahead of him now, his mind catapulting through this story.

“The country that has this thing is a good ten years beyond every other country. See? You can answer the rest for yourself. I do not lie about this.”

“And Chevard?”

“We must work by different means. All countries use various means. This time you are the means, Baron. We have known of you, waited patiently for the proper time, and—here it is.” He hesitated, coughed lightly. “When you began your foolish questioning, after the collapse of your business, one of us came up with the idea. Things were not yet ready. So we let you work yourself to the bottom, both physically and mentally. Now you are ready, and we are ready.” Gorssmann shrugged.

It was like standing in the middle of a treacherous swamp, having tried for untold time to find solid ground. Then someone explains quietly that there is no solid ground. There is only swamp, forever and ever.