Shape of Fear (8 page)

“Valmont had one obsessive fear. It was that someone high up in the government, someone he had every reason to trust, might actually be connected with the terrorists and the drug boys. There was no particular person he suspected, but there had been too many leaks in the past, too many traps set into which no one walked. Someone was always a step ahead. I think the only person to whom he gave a completely clean bill of health was me. I wasn’t interested in French politics; I didn’t need money; and I was in love with Juliet.

“One day—
the
day—I got a phone call at my hotel. It was Valmont in a highly agitated state. He had, he told me, discovered the identity of this high-up traitor. He wouldn’t tell me who it was on the phone. He was afraid his phone might be tapped. And he was afraid they were ready to move in on him fast. Would I come at once and get Juliet away to some safe place. There was no time for disguise or roundabout approaches. I was to come now—now!

“So I went, openly racing through traffic in my car. I pulled up across the street from the apartment and hurried toward it. It was a walkup—three flights. I’d just reached the first landing when the shooting began.

“I ran up the last two flights and smashed my way into the apartment. The front door was locked but flimsy. I found Valmont on the floor, torn to pieces by gunshots. The windows onto the fire escape were open and I saw a man just reaching the street level at the rear. A car was waiting for him—a small black Peugeot. Instinctively I knew there wasn’t anything I could do for the colonel. But there was just a chance I might be able to cut off that little black car before the killer got completely away. Thank God Juliet wasn’t there, I told myself.

“I ran down the stairs, crossed the street to my car, and took off—not having the slightest idea that Juliet, hurrying back from the corner market, had seen me.

“I knew the streets around that area like the back of my hand. I’d come and gone so many different ways. I had to make a guess as to which way the Peugeot would go, and I guessed wrong. I must have cruised around for half or three quarters of an hour before I gave up. I was about to head back for the apartment when I realized I was directly across the street from Paul Bernardel’s office. I thought it was important to get the word to him, and I left my car and went in.

“Bernardel, white as a ghost, had already got word from the Sûreté. Not only that, he had the word that Juliet had identified me leaving the apartment and that there was a general alarm out for me.

“It didn’t seem complicated to me. I should go straight to the apartment. Juliet would know I was telling the truth. When the facts of the case were put before the police, they’d know, too. Bernardel put another light on the whole matter.

“The terrorists and their drug-peddling friends would want to pin this killing on someone else if they could. They had an unimpeachable witness in Juliet. Whatever she might believe, she had seen me running away from the building. Valmont had been after a drug ring. It was a certainty that someone would come forward with the story of my acquiring a fix from Langlois for Al Jenkins. The higher-up, whoever he was, would nail me to the barn door but good. The one way to get me out of this was to provide me with an alibi.” Digger drew a deep breath. “He talked me into it. I tried to get Juliet on the phone—my one condition—but she wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to me. Well, tomorrow I’d be able to make it all clear to her.

“We drove to Bernardel’s country place in his car. It was really just a little hide-out where he went to get away from people. No servants, no near neighbors. The next morning we went back to Paris, and I gave myself up to the police.” Digger stood up. “I need a drink,” he said. He walked over to the sideboard and poured himself about four fingers of bourbon. He drank it like water.

“I know you two have read the newspaper accounts of the hearing,” he said. “They’re far from complete. The first few hours of it were strictly under a blanket. Juliet was there, a stranger, in shock. When I tried to approach her, she started to scream. My enemy that day was Charles Girard. I’d met him once or twice. I knew he resented me. He always looked at Juliet like a hungry man outside the window of a rotisserie. Maybe he was after a murderer that morning, but I had a feeling he was more concerned with polishing off a rival for Juliet.

“Girard listened to our carefully prepared alibi, and I could see he didn’t choose to believe any part of it. Whether he didn’t believe it or whether he didn’t want to believe it, I can’t say. He had a pretty good case. As Bernardel had predicted, he knew about my connection with Langlois and Al Jenkins. He didn’t choose to believe I’d just been doing a favor for a friend. He accused me of being in on the drug racket. He suggested I’d made a patsy out of Bernardel; gone to him with my innocent story and persuaded him to get me in with Colonel Valmont, the most dangerous enemy of the drug peddlers. He documented the fact that after I’d gotten in with Valmont, a half a dozen traps set by the colonel had failed to be sprung. Someone close to the colonel was tipping his hand. Who but me, he asked? He accused me of using Juliet to stay close to the colonel, to win his trust. Valmont had told Juliet the morning of his murder that he had guessed the identity of someone high up in the government who was working the drug racket. He had told her he wouldn’t let her share the secret. It was too dangerous. But he was, he told her, going to tell me. Girard made the shrewd guess that the colonel
had
gotten in touch with me and that I’d had to move fast to silence him. He said I’d then made a patsy out of Bernardel again, persuading him to supply me with an alibi. He understood, he told the authorities, why Bernardel would help me, believing I was a fighter on his side.”

Digger’s short laugh was mirthless. “It was touch and go for a few minutes there. I could see Bernardel was shaken. It could all be the way Girard suggested. I could have lied to him from the start; I could have been in on the drug racket from the beginning; I could have used him to get in with Valmont; I could have used Juliet to pull the wool over the colonel’s eyes; I could have killed the colonel when I found out he was on to someone higher up in my racket. Bernardel knew I knew the colonel was on to something; that I had been at the apartment. So help me, if I’d been in his shoes, I think I’d have thrown me to the wolves. When the magistrate asked
h
im if he still stood by his story of the alibi, I was certain Bernardel would admit it was a fake. Well—he didn’t. ‘It’s not a story, Monsieur,’ he told the magistrate. ‘It’s a fact.’ ”

Digger put his empty whisky glass down on the sideboard. “I don’t think the magistrate or Girard or any of the police officials in that room believed him. I know Juliet didn’t. Bernardel’s position was evidently such that his word had to be accepted by the officials. I don’t know what may have gone on behind closed doors. Perhaps Bernardel told the truth but convinced them of my innocence. I’ve even thought he may have told them the truth, admitted doubts of his own, and persuaded them to let me go free so that I might lead them to the big shots. At the time, the thing that mattered most was that Juliet had no doubts. She believed everything between us had been false; that I had simply used her to place myself in a position to spy on her father and had then killed him in cold blood. I was never able to get to her, to talk to her, to tell her my story. Girard was now her protector, never giving her a chance to think any way but his way. And in the end he—he got her.”

Digger didn’t go on, and after a moment or two Chambrun asked him a question.

“Surely when you were alone with Bernardel, he must have made it clear to you how he felt?”

“Oh, he told me over and over that he never doubted my story for an instant. But he advised me to leave France for a while. He couldn’t guarantee me protection, either from legal or illegal troubles. Hell, they couldn’t even guarantee the safety of their own President. I didn’t want to go.”

“Why?”

“My dear fellow,” Digger said in a weary voice, “my one chance with Juliet was to find her father’s real murderer—the man I’d seen leaving by the fire escape and driving away in that Peugeot.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“No. Big man—big as I am. I only saw him from behind. But I didn’t have a chance, working by myself. I couldn’t hope for help from the authorities. They were pretty well convinced about me. Through a friend of mine I got to a high official of Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization. Their headquarters is located in a dignified old town house on the Rue Paul Valéry in the heart of Paris. I don’t know how much you know about Interpol, but it isn’t a police force in the normal sense of the word. It’s a super-communications center for sixty-odd nations around the world. It has its own radio transmitter, its own identification files. In those files are the names of about a hundred and twenty thousand international criminals with about two hundred and eighty thousand aliases, photographs, fingerprints, and an elite file of about six thousand top criminals. The member countries of Interpol constantly keep the central office posted on where known criminals may be. So, if a cop in New York wants to locate a known smuggler, he gets in touch with Rue Valéry and the chances are they can tell him promptly where his man can be located.

“I wanted a list of the known and suspected drug traffickers then in France. I got a moderately long list—and some discouragement. Almost none of these men were killers. They were slick operators, artists at distribution, smuggling techniques—that sort of thing. If they got caught they did their time and then filtered back into the business again. Penalties for dealing in drugs in France aren’t too severe. The man at Interpol made it pretty clear my killer was probably a member of the Algerian terrorists and not listed in any files of theirs. French Army Intelligence would be my best source for such men. French Army Intelligence smiled at me blandly, said it was a nice day, and told me nothing.

“It was then I learned that the single greatest force against the international dope trade is the United States Treasury’s Narcotics Bureau. It’s typical that an American finds this out about his own country somewhere else. The Narcotics Bureau has crack agents abroad assisting the police of other countries to cut off the drug flow at its sources. The Bureau’s Rome department helps engineer sixty or seventy arrests a year of the wiliest and deadliest of all international criminals. So I managed to get into contact with one of our top foreign agents. It was some time before this guy came to trust me, but eventually he did. Then I saw some strictly unofficial guesses of his that curled my hair. This agent, name of Sam Loring, had been close to Colonel Valmont. He knew that Valmont suspected someone high up in government was actually involved in the drug business on behalf of the Secret Army terrorists. Valmont had made some guesses which he’d shared with Loring. There was a list of seven names. Four of them were familiar to me.”

“ ‘And, lo, Ben Adam’s name led all the rest,’ ” Chambrun murmured.

Digger nodded, “Paul Bernardel—my friend, my alibi-maker, my chum. The guy I had gone to and spilled out my little heart about Langlois, and who may damn well have arranged to have Langlois knocked off before we could question him. My chum, who’d got me in with Valmont, knowing I’d come pitty-pattying back to him with any news I gathered from the colonel. But there were three other names. There was Monsieur Jacques Delacroix, then with the Ministry of Justice, now an ambassador. There was Charles Girard. There was a man named Max Kroll, a business associate of Bernardel’s in Germany whom I’d met at various races.”

“Kroll is here in the hotel,” I said.

“I know. And that’s only the beginning,” Digger said. “Because, unless I’m very much mistaken, this International Trade Commission meeting here is being used as a cover-up for the top figures in this conspiracy to topple de Gaulle. I pointed out to my friend Loring how absurd such an idea as that must be. These are men of acknowledged integrity, of sworn allegiance to de Gaulle. His answer was that the stakes are incredibly high. Not just money—though there are millions involved. The big chip is the possible political control of France itself. Money might not tempt any one of these men. But power?”

“But this was all more than two years ago,” Chambrun said.

“Less than a month ago a fresh attempt was made to assassinate de Gaulle,” Digger said. “And I ask myself these questions. Four of the names on Loring’s list gather under your roof, Mr. Chambrun. At the reception there may be more. Another Apalachin meeting of top international criminals here at the Beaumont? Is one of them the kingpin in this conspiracy? Are one or more of them directly responsible for Colonel Valmont’s murder?” He brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. “The answer to that is really all I care about. I want to take his head on a platter to Juliet.”

“Even if it should be her own husband’s head?” Chambrun asked.

“She spoke to me last night,” Digger said, ignoring the question. “She spoke to me after all this time. She asked for help. Mark heard her.”

“Help from what?” Chambrun asked.

“God knows,” Digger said, and covered his face with his hands.

Chambrun lit a cigarette, squinting through smoke at Digger. “What were you looking for in Girard’s suite?”

“I told you—land mines!” Digger said, his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Girard, Bernardel, Kroll, Delacroix. One or more of them is almost certainly running this show. I think the meeting of this International Trade Commission is a cover-up for another kind of meeting. A get-together between the big wheels in the French conspiracy and the top dealers and distributors of drugs in this country. I think big money is intended to change hands—money to finance a political coup in France. Somewhere there must be names, records, appointments schedules. Girard was the first of the big four to show here in the hotel. I was looking for that kind of explosive material in his rooms.”

“And your next move?”

Digger laughed. “I am Paul Bernardel’s dear friend,” he said. “I am to be his guest at the reception on Saturday. I will be at his elbow for the next few days. And I’ll be listening, by God, for the softest whisper!”