Grand Master (31 page)

Marcel Dumont grinned modestly. “Nearly
thirty years ago, and I did not make it past the
quarterfinals.”

“He lost to the one who went on to win the
gold medal.”

“As I say,” insisted the inspector, “thirty
years, and about fifty pounds, ago. But about last night,” he went
on, becoming serious. “You’re lucky you’re still alive, Mr.
Hart.”

Valette lifted his chin and tapped his
fingers together. His mouth was shut tight and his eyes half-closed
in the way of someone used to calculating probabilities. “I doubt
Mr. Hart feels very lucky, do you Mr. Hart? The whole world thinks
you’re a murderer. No, I don’t imagine Mr. Hart right now thinks
he’s been very lucky at all. But go on, Marcel - What do we know
about this? Austin Pearce and the head of the embassy’s political
section - he was a kind of spy, wasn’t he? - were murdered. One of
the gunmen was killed, and the other one wounded, but got away. You
did that, didn’t you, Mr. Hart? Go ahead, Marcel: What else do we
know? That woman - the landlady - she told the police that Mr. Hart
here was downstairs with her when the shooting began. It’s a good
thing she was there; otherwise everyone would think you killed both
of them. Although I’m not sure that would have made things any
worse for you than what’s happened instead. I’m sorry. I’m getting
ahead of myself. Go ahead, Marcel.”

The driver turned into an alleyway the other
side of the river and pulled up next to where the chief of
detectives had left his car. “Mr. Valette is correct. The landlady
gave us a very precise account of what happened. You came there
looking for Mr. Wolfe - Aaron Wolfe. You told her you were
expected. Is that true, Mr. Hart - did Mr. Wolfe expect you?” he
asked, exchanging a glance with Valette.

Hart noticed the glance. They knew something
he did not. He began to worry that he had stepped into a trap. “I
went there to see Wolfe. That’s true.”

“But did he expect you? We know that you were
about to be arrested at the embassy, and that you got away. Did Mr.
Wolfe warn you, did he tell you that was about to happen, or did
Mr. Pearce do that? You came over on a private plane, and Mr.
Pearce and the ambassador were old friends, were they not?”

Hart looked to Valette for an explanation,
but Valette lit another cigarette and said nothing. “What
difference does it make if I was expected? I went to see him; that
fact has been established. I went to see him, heard the shots, told
that woman - the landlady - to call the police, ran upstairs and
found Wolfe dead and Austin Pearce dying. Wolfe had shot the first
one, and I picked up the gun, and Austin warned me, and I looked
behind me and saw the second one and I fired and hit him in the
shoulder.”

“Did the man you shot say anything? Could you
tell where he was from? Was he an American?”

“No, he didn’t say anything. So, if you’re
asking whether he spoke French or English, I don’t know. But I was
chased in the streets after I left the embassy, and I can’t be
sure, but I think he was one of them.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows and nodded
as if that fit with what he knew. “The dead one, the first one
through the door, the one Wolfe managed to shoot, was an American;
but we couldn’t be absolutely sure about the other one.”

“He had identification; you found something
that told you who he was?”

“They were in a hurry; they probably started
chasing you as soon as they discovered you had left the embassy.
They didn’t have time to plan anything. So, yes, we found
identification on the body. He worked at the embassy, a ‘cultural
attaché,’ which means in his case someone with one of your
intelligence agencies. That’s why I’m asking whether Mr. Wolfe
expected you? How did they know to go there? They could not have
been following you: they were already there when you arrived.”

“Well, Wolfe wouldn’t have told them, would
he?”

“Then he did expect you? Before you left the
embassy, you had made some arrangement.” With a knowing look, the
inspector turned to Jean Valette. “Which means that Wolfe had some
reason to believe that the charges against Mr. Hart weren’t true,
and that Mr. Hart was somehow being used. Is that what happened,
Mr. Hart: you have some evidence that you weren’t involved in the
murder of the President, Robert Constable?”

Hart’s first reaction was to ignore the
question, but then he changed his mind. He was tired, confused, and
fast losing patience. “Maybe he just believed me. Maybe because I
had come all the way to find out who was behind the murder of the
President, and whether or not The Four Sisters might be involved,”
he added with a quick, questioning glance at Jean Valette that
stopped just short of being an accusation, “he realized that the
suggestion that I might have wanted the President dead did not make
any sense.”

Inspector Dumont did not show any surprise.
He turned to Jean Valette. “The Four Sisters?”

Valette stoked his chin as if he were
considering the possibility. “Everything you’ve learned leads back
to us, doesn’t it, Mr. Hart? The Four Sisters, I admit it, reaches
almost everywhere. There would be no reason not to think that we
might be involved in something like this. We wouldn’t be the first
financial institution to help get rid of someone or bring down a
government we didn’t like. But the question, Mr. Hart - the
immediate question - is what Marcel has just now asked: How did
anyone know that after you left the embassy you would be at that
apartment?”

“It’s what I said before,” said Dumont,
referring to an earlier, private, conversation.

“Yes, I think you must be right,” agreed
Valette.

“Right? About what?” asked Hart.

“They didn’t go there for you,” replied the
inspector. “You had gotten away, lost them in the streets of Paris.
That’s when they decided they had to clean up the loose ends. It
would not have been difficult to figure out that you had been
warned - told you were about to be arrested - when you were at the
embassy. That had to believe that Wolfe knew something, and that
Pearce, who was in the room, had to have known the same thing: the
name of the person you thought was really behind the murder of the
President. They could not afford to let them talk to anyone. That
was the reason they went to Mr. Wolfe’s apartment: to kill them
both. If they had gone there to kill you, they would have waited
for you; but they didn’t do that, did they? Not only did they not
expect to find you there, you ruined their plan when you showed
up.”

“Ruined their plan? They did what you said
they had gone there to do. Both Aaron Wolfe and Austin Pearce are
dead!”

“Yes, unfortunately, that fact is true. But,
you see, I’m almost certain that they planned to blame both murders
on you.”

“Me? But why would I kill Austin Pearce? Why
would I kill Aaron Wolfe?”

“You? - A fugitive from justice, someone who
arranged the murder of a president? What would stop a man like that
from killing two people who might have known where he was heading,
or who might have refused to help him get away. The question of a
motive would never have entered into it.”

Something had been bothering Hart since he
first found out that Marcel Dumont was the chief detective of the
Surete Generale. “Why were you here today? Why were you waiting
outside the door? Of all the different places I could have gone,
how did you know I would be coming here?”

The inspector exchanged a glance with Jean
Valette and then opened the door.

“Do you think anyone recognized him?” asked
Valette.

“He was sitting in the back, and we got him
out before anyone had a chance to really notice. So, no, I don’t
think so. Still, there is a risk….”

The inspector got out of the car. Valette
followed him and closed the door behind him. They stood together,
talking earnestly, and while Hart could not heard what they were
saying, he could tell from the way they were gesturing that it was
about him. After a few minutes, Valette got back in the car and
told the driver to start.

“You’ll come home with me,” he explained to
Hart. “You’ll be safe there.” He paused, and then added with a
serious expression, “At least for a while. Marcel wanted to arrest
you, take you into custody. He is an old friend, but he’s a
policeman, and you, I’m afraid, are the most wanted man in the
world. Every police organization in Europe has been told to look
for you.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing!” protested Hart,
letting all his pent-up frustrations burst forth.

Jean Valette had a way of tilting his head
back at an angle that made his gaze seem distant, remote, detached
from any feeling of common sympathy or understanding. It was the
look of someone completely analytical. “That of course is not,
strictly speaking, true.”

“You think I had something to do with -?”

Valette stopped him a quick movement of his
head, a look of disapproval for an obvious mistake. “What you did
was to let yourself be used. You came here to discover who, or
what, was behind the murder of Robert Constable. You, a single
individual - an important one, it is true - but not part of some
investigative unit of your government! And you did this before
there was any investigation, any official investigation; before
there was so much as a public announcement that the President had
not died, as first reported, of natural causes. That means, does it
not, that someone knew, or had reason to know, that the President
had been murdered and had some reason to ask you to look into it?”
A shrewd, knowing smile crossed his lips. “I can understand why
Madelaine Constable would want someone to do that; the more
interesting question is why she chose you. Do you think it was
because someone intended to blame you from the beginning?”

“I didn’t tell you that Madelaine Constable
asked me to look into it?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“And you still haven’t told me - your friend,
the chief inspector, didn’t tell me - why he was here.”

“He came because I asked him to come. I knew
you would come, Mr. Hart. You had to come: there was not anything
else for you to do. There isn’t anything mysterious about it.
Austin Pearce called me yesterday, just after you left the embassy,
just after you made your escape. He was very agitated. That is a
serious understatement: He was angry. He accused me of all sorts of
things. I had a very difficult time getting him to calm down. He
told me why you had come, what you thought I had done.”

In the failing light of late afternoon, the
limousine raced down a tree lined country road. Sunlit shadows cast
a dappled pale glow on Jean Valette’s finely formed auburn colored
face. He had to be over sixty, but he looked almost as young as
Hart, even though Hart, still in his forties, also looked younger
than his age. There were differences of course. Hart did not yet
have any of the gray hair that, in the right proportion, added a
certain distinction, and none of the web-like lines around the eyes
that made Jean Valette’s face, even in repose, look so serious.

“He told me why you had come,” he repeated in
a way that suggested not so much astonishment as a deep curiosity.
He seemed intrigued by what Austin Pearce had told him. “He
demanded - there is no other word for it - demanded that I tell him
if it was true; demanded to know if I had had anything to do with
this plot to murder Robert Constable.” Valette seemed almost to
enjoy it, the memory of that accusation. If Austin Pearce had not
been murdered, if he were still alive, it is quite possible that
Valette would have laughed out loud as he recounted their strange
conversation. Hart, on the other hand, did not see anything even
the slightest bit amusing in any of it.

“And did you? - Did you have anything to do
with this, the murder of the President, the murder of Frank Morris,
the murder of Quentin Burdick, the murder of -?”

“Mr. Hart! I promise you, I’m not what you
seem to think.” Valette’s eyes flashed with contempt. “What did I
care whether Robert Constable lived or died? What did I care about
any of this? I’m not interested in what happens to this person or
that person; I’m not interested in individuals. I’m not interested
in what happens today or tomorrow; I’m interested in what is going
to happen fifty years from now, a hundred years from now.”

The look in his eyes changed. Contempt
vanished; something more hidden, more enigmatic, took its place.
“Though I could have told you that what happened to Constable, and
what is happening now, was all but inevitable; perhaps not in that
form - murder - but in some other. We can discuss that later. Let
me finish what I was telling you about what Austin said to me, let
me -”

“You’re not concerned with individuals -
you’re only interested in what might happen a hundred years from
now!” exclaimed Hart as he leaned forward and jabbed his finger in
the air. “Austin Pearce was murdered! He died looking into my eyes,
and you don’t care what happened to him? I’m supposed to believe
you - Austin was supposed to believe you - when you insist you
weren’t involved in any of this?” His gaze sharpened and became
more intense. “Did Austin tell you where he was going? Did he tell
you he was going to be at Wolfe’s apartment?”

“You think I sent those people -? If I had
done that, why would you be riding in my car? Why wouldn’t I have
just let Marcel take you away, turn you over to the Americans and
let them dispose of you? By this time tomorrow, I can almost
guarantee that you would be dead.”

“Why didn’t you? - Let your friend, the chief
inspector, arrest me.”

“Austin Pearce, of course.”

“What did Austin do that made you -?”

“He asked me - after I gave him my word that
I didn’t know anything about what had happened, that I did not even
know Constable had been murdered until he accused me of being
involved - He asked me, or rather he insisted, that I do whatever I
could to help you get to the bottom of this.”