The Holcroft Covenant (21 page)

The realization gave painful birth to an unclear strategy. Painful because it was so alien to him, unclear because he was not sure of the procedures. He only knew that he had to go from point
A
to point
B
and back again to
A
, losing his pursuers somewhere in the vicinity of
B
.

Up ahead in the crowded terminal he saw the sign:
LIGNES AÉRIENNES INTÉRIEURES
.

France’s domestic airline shuttled about the country with splendid irregularity. The cities were listed in three columns:
ROUEN, LB HAVRE, CAEN … ORLÉANS, LE MANS, TOURS … DIJON, LYON, MARSEILLES
.

Noel walked rapidly past the two men, as if oblivious of all but his own concerns. He hurried to the Intérieures counter. There were four people ahead of him.

His turn came. He inquired about flights south. To the Mediterranean. To Marseilles. He wanted a choice of several departure times.

There was a flight that landed at five cities in a southwest arc from Orly to the Mediterranean, the clerk told him. The stops were Le Mans, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Marseilles.

Le Mans
. The flight time to Le Mans was forty minutes. Estimated driving time, three, three and a half hours. It was now twenty minutes to four.

“I’ll take that one,” Noel said. “It gets me to Marseilles at just the right time.”

“Pardon, monsieur, but there are more direct flights.”

“I’m being met at the airport. No point in being early.”

“As you wish, monsieur. I will see what is available. The flight leaves in twelve minutes.”

Five minutes later, Holcroft stood by the departure gate, the
Herald Tribune
opened in front of him. He looked over the top of the page. One of the two somber-faced Britishers was talking with the young lady who had sold him his ticket.

Fifteen minutes later the plane was airborne. Twice
Noel wandered up the aisle to the lavatory, looking at the passengers in the cabin. Neither of the two men was on the aircraft; no one else seemed remotely interested in him.

At Le Mans he waited until the departing passengers got off the plane. He counted; there were seven of them. Their replacements began coming on board.

He grabbed his suitcase from the luggage rack, walked quickly to the exit door and down the metal steps to the ground. He went inside the terminal and stood by the window.

No one came out of the plane; no one was following him.

His watch read seventeen minutes to five. He wondered if there was still time to reach Helden von Tiebolt. Again he had the essence of what he needed—a name and a place of work. He walked to the nearest telephone, thankful for Willie’s jar of franc notes and coins.

In his elementary French, he spoke to the operator. “
S’il vous plaît, le numéro de Gallimard à Paris
 …”

She was there. Mademoiselle Tennyson did not have a telephone at her desk, but if the caller would hold on, someone would get her on the line. The woman at the Gallimard switchboard spoke better English than most Texans.

Helden von Tiebolt’s voice had that same odd mixture of Portuguese and German as her sister’s but it was not nearly so pronounced. Too, there was a trace of the echo Noel remembered so vividly in Gretchen’s speech, but not the halting, once-removed quality. Helden von Tiebolt—Mademoiselle Tennyson—knew what she wanted to say and said it.

“Why should I meet with you? I don’t know you, Mr. Holcroft.”

“It’s urgent. Please, believe me.”

“There’s been an excess of urgencies in my life. I’m rather tired of them.”

“There’s been nothing like this.”

“How did you find me?”

“People … people you don’t know, in England, told me where you worked. But they said you didn’t live at the address listed with your employer, so I had to call you here.”

“They were so interested they inquired where I lived?”

“Yes. It’s part of what I have to tell you.”

“Why were they interested in me?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. I
have
to tell you.”

“Tell me now.”

“Not on the phone.”

There was a pause. When the girl spoke, her words were clipped, precise … afraid. “Why exactly do you wish to see me? What can there be that’s so urgent between us?”

“It concerns your family.
Both
our families. I’ve seen your sister. I’ve tried to locate your brother—”

“I’ve spoken to neither in over a year,” interrupted Helden Tennyson. “I can’t help you.”

“What we have to talk about goes back over
thirty
years.”

“No!”

“There’s money involved. A great deal of money.”

“I live adequately. My needs are—”

“Not only for
you,
” pressed Noel, cutting her off. “For thousands. Everywhere.”

Again there was the pause. When she spoke, she spoke softly. “Does this concern events … people going back to the war?”

“Yes.” Was he getting through to her at last?

“We’ll meet,” said Helden.

“Can we arrange it so we … we—” He was not sure how to phrase it without frightening her.

“So we won’t be seen by those watching for us? Yes.”

“How?”

“I’ve had experience. Do exactly as I say. Where are you?”

“At the Le Mans airport. I’ll rent a car and drive up to Paris. It’ll take me two or three hours.”

“Leave the car in a garage and take a taxi to Montmartre. To the Sacré-Coeur cathedral. Go inside to the far end of the church, to the chapel of Louis the Ninth. Light a candle and place it first in one holder, then change your mind and place it in another. You’ll be met by a man who will take you outside, up to the square, to a table at one of the street cafés. You’ll be given instructions.”

“We don’t have to be
that
elaborate. Can’t we just meet at a bar? Or a restaurant?”

“It’s not for your protection, Mr. Holcroft, but mine. If you’re not who you imply you are, if you’re not
alone
, I won’t see you. I’ll leave Paris tonight and you’ll never find me.”

The granite, medieval splendor of Sacré-Coeur rose in the night sky like a haunting song of stone. Beyond the enormous bronze doors, an infinite cavern was shrouded in semidarkness, flickering candles playing a symphony of shadows on the walls.

From near the altar, he could hear the strains of a
Te Deum Laudamus
. A visiting choir of monks stood in isolated solemnity, singing quietly.

Noel entered the dimly lit circle beyond the apse that housed the chapels of the kings. He adjusted his eyes to the dancing shadows and walked along the balustrades that flanked the entrances to the small enclosures. The rows of scattered candles provided just enough light for him to read the inscription:
LOUIS IX.
Louis the Pious, Louis the Just, Son of Aquitaine, Ruler of France, Arbiter of Christendom.

Pious.… Just.… Arbiter
.

Was Helden von Tiebolt trying to tell him something?

He inserted a coin in the prayer box, removed a thin tapered candle from its receptacle, and held it to the flame of another nearby. Following instructions, he placed it in a holder, then seconds later removed it and inserted it in another several rows away.

A hand touched his arm, fingers gripped his elbow, and a voice whispered into his ear from the shadows behind him.

“Turn around slowly, monsieur. Keep your hands at your side.”

Holcroft did as he was told. The man stood not much over five feet six or seven, with a high forehead and thinning dark hair. He was in his early thirties, Noel guessed, and pleasant-looking, the face pale, even soft. If there was anything particularly noticeable about him, it was his
clothes; the dim light could not conceal the fact that they were expensive.

An aura of elegance emanated from the man, heightened by the mild fragrance of cologne. But he acted neither elegantly nor softly. Before Noel knew what was happening, the man’s hands were jabbed into both sides of his chest, and strong fingers spanned the cloth in rapid movements, descending to his belt and the pockets of his trousers.

Holcroft jerked backwards.

“I said, be still!” the man whispered.

In the candlelight, by the chapel of Louis IX, in the cathedral of Sacré-Coeur, on the top of Montmartre, Noel was checked for a weapon.

“Follow me,” said the man. “I will walk up the street to the square; stay quite far behind. I will join two friends at an outside table at one of the street cafés, probably Bohème. Walk around the square; take your time; look at the artists’ work; do not hurry. Then come to the table and sit with us. Greet us as if we are familiar
faces
, not necessarily
friends
. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

If this was the way to reach Helden von Tiebolt, so be it. Noel stayed a discreet distance behind the man, the fashionably cut overcoat not hard to follow among the less elegant clothes of the tourists.

They reached the crowded square. The man stood for a moment, lighting a cigarette, then proceeded across the street to a table beyond the sidewalk, behind a planter filled with shrubbery. As he had said, there were two people at the table. One was a man dressed in a ragged field jacket, the other a woman in a black raincoat, a white scarf around her neck. The scarf contrasted with her very dark, straight hair, as dark as the black raincoat. She wore tortoise-shell glasses, framed intrusions on a pale face with no discernible makeup. Noel wondered if the plain-looking woman was Helden von Tiebolt. If she was, there was little resemblance to her sister.

He started his stroll around the square, pretending interest in the artworks on display everywhere. There were canvases with bold dashes of color and heavy, un-thought-out lines, and bulging wide eyes of charcoal-rendered children … cuteness and swiftness and artificiality. There was
little of merit; nor was there meant to be. This was the tourist marketplace, the bazaar where the bizarre was for sale.

Nothing had changed in the Montmartre, thought Holcroft, as he threaded his way around the last turn toward the café.

He walked by the planter and nodded at the two men and the woman seated at the table beyond. They nodded back; he proceeded to the entrance, walked in, and returned to the “familiar faces, not necessarily friends.” He sat down in the empty chair; it was beside the dark-haired woman with the tortoise-shell glasses.

“I’m Noel Holcroft,” he said to no one in particular.

“We know,” answered the man in the field jacket, his eyes on the crowds in the square.

Noel turned to the woman. “Are you Helden von—? Excuse me, Helen Tennyson?”

“No, I’ve never met her,” replied the dark-haired woman, looking intently at the man in the field jacket. “But I will take you to her.”

The man in the expensive overcoat turned to Holcroft. “You alone?”

“Of course. Can we get started? Helden … Tennyson … said I’d be given instructions. I’d like to see her, talk for a while, and then find a hotel. I haven’t had much sleep during the past few days.” He started to get up from the table.

“Sit down!” The woman spoke sharply.

He sat, more out of curiosity than in response to command. And then he had the sudden feeling that these three people were not testing him; they were frightened. The elegantly dressed man was biting the knuckle of his index finger, staring at something in the middle of the square. His companion in the field jacket had his hand on his friend’s arm, his gaze leveled in the identical direction. They were looking at someone, someone who disturbed them profoundly.

Holcroft tried to follow their line of sight, tried to peer between the crisscrossing figures that filled the street in front of the café. He stopped breathing. Across the street were the two men he thought he had eluded at Le Mans. It didn’t make sense! No one had followed him off the plane.

“It’s
them,
” he said.

The elegantly dressed man turned his head swiftly; the man in the field jacket was slower, his expression disbelieving; the dark-haired woman studied him closely.

“Who?” she asked.

“Those two men over there, near the entrance to the restaurant. One’s in a light topcoat, the other’s carrying a raincoat over his arm.”

“Who are they?”

“They were at Orly this afternoon; they were waiting for me. I flew to Le Mans to get away from them. I’m almost sure they’re British agents. But how did they know I was
here?
They weren’t on the plane. No one followed me; I’d
swear
to it!”

The three exchanged glances; they believed him, and Holcroft knew why. He had picked out the two Englishmen himself, volunteered the information before being confronted with it.

“If they’re British, what do they want with you?” asked the man in the field jacket.

“That’s between Helden von Tiebolt and myself.”

“But you think they
are
British?” pressed the man in the jacket.

“Yes.”

“I hope you’re right.”

The man in the overcoat leaned forward. “What do you mean you flew to Le Mans? What happened?”

“I thought I could throw them off. I was convinced I
had
. I bought a ticket to Marseilles. I made it clear to the girl at the counter that I had to get to Marseilles, and then picked a flight that had stops. The first was Le Mans, and I got off. I saw them
questioning
her. I never said anything
about
Le Mans!”

“Don’t excite yourself,” said the man in the field jacket. “It only draws attention.”

“If you think they haven’t spotted me, you’re crazy! But how did they
do
it?”

“It’s not difficult,” said the woman.

“You rented a car?” asked the elegantly dressed man.

“Of course. I had to drive back to Paris.”

“At the airport?”

“Naturally.”

“And naturally, you asked for a map. Or at least directions,
no doubt mentioning Paris. I mean, you were not driving to Marseilles.”

“Certainly, but lots of people do that.”

“Not so many, not at an airport that has flights to Paris. And none with your name. I can’t believe you have false papers.”