The Venetian Affair (11 page)

“I suppose they couldn’t be arrested, or questioned by the police?”

“On what grounds? For having luncheon together? For having political connections? They’ve hidden themselves well, Mr. Fenner. My friends and I have had to dig deeply to find out what I have just told you. Even I, until a few days ago, was merely puzzled, interested, worried. It was only when the man Jacques was identified as the source of anti-American propaganda last April that the warning bell sounded for me. I knew then that the threat was real. And I knew the purpose of the threat. But until I know its actual shape, all I can do is to gather facts about these men, analyse, suggest.” He passed a hand over his eyes. He added wearily, “And hope that my warning is taken seriously.”

“Well, they’re not lunching together to finance a new movie, that’s certain,” Fenner said bitterly. There was a real threat in their meetings. But what? Their objectives must be far apart. What could have brought them together? A fascist and an
extreme nationalist sitting down with a hard-shell Stalinist and a hidden Communist propagandist. An unholy alliance. But it had happened before. They’d use each other. Their ends justified any means.

Vaugiroud was looking at him, a little startled. “You know, that is exactly the reason they give for lunching together. Whenever Henri or one of his waiters is near their table, the talk is all about the costs of film making.”

Could that be the reason, after all? No, Fenner decided slowly. “A very smooth act,” he said. Too damned smooth.

“Like the meeting between Jacques and his old comrade,” Vaugiroud said. “They pretended they were strangers. It was the retired industrialist who introduced them, invited Jacques to have lunch with them.” That amused Vaugiroud briefly. “Very smooth, as you say, Mr. Fenner. As smooth as the lie that Jacques is now preparing against your country.”

“We are again their target?”

“Again and again, until America is eliminated from Europe. I have shown you what could have happened if that last lie had succeeded. America would have been isolated, pilloried. Properly fanned, that fire could have burned out NATO. Or do I exaggerate?”

Fenner shook his head. Distrust, dissensions, denunciations. Bitterness, anger, complete disillusionment with all those who had taken so much help from America, and yet, when we needed friends, had been so willing and eager to believe the worst about us. “We would have been pushed back into isolationism,” he said. “NATO would have had its back broken.”

“And without NATO, who protects Western Europe? Without a peaceful Western Europe, what protects the growth
of the Common Market? And without the Common Market, how could a United States of Free Europe ever develop? And that, Mr. Fenner, is their ultimate target. The Communists think far ahead. The dream of a United States of Europe is the nightmare of the Communist world. They have preached that Western capitalism is doomed, ready for burial; a system breeding wars and economic cannibalism. A collection of prosperous and peaceful nations in Western Europe would be the complete rebuttal to all Communist theories. Who would believe them then?”

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.”

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.