The Venetian Affair (18 page)

Rosie was human, apparently. He allowed Fenner the recovery space of two excellent
croissants
and two cups of strong coffee, chatting affably about the recent governmental reprimand to the Comédie-Française for spending elaborate production on nitwit plays—a situation that the advocates of state-supported theatre had never imagined could develop. It had been that anomaly which had first amused Fenner, interested him in writing about national theatres. His own views were objective: he would find out the facts, the good and the bad, and set them down without any covert attack or special pleading.

“You’ll be damned by both sides,” Rosie predicted.

“There’s always a middle ground, where reasonable men can argue.”

“Must be nice,” Rosie said quietly, watching Fenner light his cigarette, “to have reasonable men as your opponents.”

At last we’re getting down to business, Fenner thought. But Rosie was approaching it gently (and when it comes, Fenner thought again, it will be like a bucket of ice water). He lit his own cigarette thoughtfully. “It’s a world pretty far removed from what you dipped into yesterday.”

Fenner agreed on that. “I prefer my own world,” he admitted. He smiled and added, “I’ll stay with it.”

Rosie shot him a quick, hard glance. “Can you? Can anyone? Sometimes, there is a matter of priority. In a time of crisis, we may find precious little left of the world of art if we don’t pay attention to the world of power politics.”

Fenner could agree on that, too. “Civilisation is a perishable commodity. But still—”

“Still what?”

“Life is short; art is long. That’s one way of looking at it.”

Rosie exploded. “Long? If an implacable enemy, proud, hard, can force his ideology on art, how long will it live—as we know it? He has got to change it, pull it down to his level. How else can he maintain his authority? He won’t allow himself to be shown inferior. If he can’t usurp and change a civilisation over which he has managed to seize domination, he will be forced to destroy it. What would happen to the freedom in our world of art if we lost this war of power politics?”

I’ve really stirred up old Rosie, Fenner thought. Surely he doesn’t think that I don’t know what is at stake. Or has he met so many who ignore it that he has got to assume I may be one of them? And why doesn’t he want me to be one of them? What does he want me to do? But I’m not ready to hear it yet; not until I know still more about Rosie. Yesterday he was a quick-witted guy with a droll tongue. Today, even if he is trying to reach me by talking about things that interest me, he is really concerned. About what? Does he really believe what he is saying—he is not just a man who likes the mystery and hidden power of his job? “It would be the first freedom to go,” Fenner agreed. “Yet your implacable men, proud and hard,
don’t win in the long run. How many political systems have come and gone since Sophocles wrote his plays? You can still read them, sometimes even see them produced. But where are the fanatic power groups that thought they had a grip on the world by its throat?”

“How many plays did Sophocles write?”

“About a hundred.”

“How many exist today?”

“Seven.”

“And the others lost, destroyed?”

“Most thoroughly.”

“Like most of the plays by Euripides and Aeschylus, or the poems of Pindar.”

Fenner looked at Rosie with interest. He smiled. “You win,” he said. “Art is long, provided the barbarians don’t get their hands on it.”

“And it’s the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy. A bunch of illiterate vandals come blundering in. They’ll destroy anything in sight, but what is hidden may escape them. But the educated barbarian knows what to search for. He knows. That’s my point, Bill. He is selective in his destruction. He knows what must be destroyed if he is to hold power. He—” Rosie’s intensity slackened as he looked at Fenner. He frowned. “When did you stop disagreeing with me?” he asked. “Or don’t you disagree?”

“I tried hard.”

“You’re a son of a.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve wasted three whole minutes by my watch.”

“Not wasted, I assure you.”

Rosie took a deep and audible breath. He shook his head slowly, a smile growing on his lips. “All right,” he said, “we can get down to business. I saw Neill Carlson after he left you, this early morning. He sent your message to Walt Penneyman, all right. By telephone, actually. Cable will follow as verification.”

“Whatever did he have to say to Penneyman that made him telephone?” Fenner was alert.

Rosie concentrated on lighting another cigarette. “I did the talking with Penneyman. I’ve met him. Last April, to be exact, but that little story will have to wait. At the moment, let’s concentrate on you. I have been thinking about your situation.”

“And it isn’t good?”

“From my point of view, it’s perfect.”

Fenner’s amusement ended. “Carlson didn’t like it.”

“Oh, Neill and I don’t always agree on methods. Besides, he feels sort of responsible for you.”

“Why? If I hadn’t handed over the money to him yesterday, there would have been someone else.” But not someone, perhaps, whose judgment I trusted enough to put him in touch with Vaugiroud. Strange in a way, Fenner thought, how Carlson and I got on so well, and so quickly: a rare thing, too, the older one got, and all the more pleasant for that.

“That’s how I see it. You did get involved. Of your own free will. Didn’t you?”

That was going rather too far. “The money in Goldsmith’s raincoat hadn’t much to do with my free will.”

“But after that?”

Yes. It was true enough. “One thing led to another.”

“It always does. That’s why I’m here. You’ve guessed that, of course.”

“What are you trying to do? Recruit me?”

Rosie was shocked. “Good heavens, no. There’s just a small assignment which you could handle.”

“Why me?”

“First, you’ve learned quite a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Carlson put you in the picture, more or less. I don’t have to spend valuable time on arguing about Communist conspiracy. Right? Second, you’re a newspaperman—”

“Once upon a time, only.”

Rosie shook his head. “Once upon a time and always. You know that. So does Walt Penneyman. You’ll find a cable from him waiting for you at the
Chronicle
’s office suggesting that you interview two of the prize neutralists returning from the Belgrade Conference on their reactions to the Russian bomb test. That will take care of André Spitzer’s curiosity about your change of plans and hasty departure.”

“And where do I interview the returning neutralists?”

“Oh, they are making quite a jaunt of their visit to Europe. Some will recover from their labours in Rome, Athens. And two—so a rumour says—have decided to relax in Venice. I heard you didn’t dislike the place.”

Venice...

“Yes,” Rosie said, “that’s where you’ll find your story. It’s big. It’s so big, in fact, that Penneyman would certainly not object if you hadn’t time for any interviews.”

“You’d let me write that story?” Fenner was disbelieving.

“It will be written about. That’s for sure. You might as well have first crack at it.”

“So it isn’t something that’s top secret.” Or even minimum secret, Fenner thought; Rosie wasn’t exactly the type to let
anything out of his private files unless it had descended to the common-knowledge level.

“At present, it is highly top secret. It will be for the next week. After that—it’s anyone’s story. I’m giving you the chance to be able to write it first.” He rose, stretched his shoulders, walked over to the window.

Fenner waited, but Rosie was keeping his silence. “Go on,” Fenner said.

“Not until I know if you are interested.”

“How can I be interested until I know what you are talking about?”

“Were those three minutes wasted after all?” Rosie asked slowly.

Fenner shook his head. “Far from it. If you ask me to do anything for you, I know that you aren’t using me for some quick little advantage of your own. I am not a labour-saving device. I’m not just a lucky opportunity, either, to help someone get a promotion. And here is something for
you
to know: I may do this job, but not for you or your department; not even for your whole organisation. I may do it because I just like Americans to be able to go on living their own kind of life. That’s why I’m listening to you.”

Rosie had walked slowly back to face him, his eyes never leaving Fenner.

“Also,” Fenner said, “if I go to Venice, it won’t be for the sake of any news story. So you don’t have to use that as bait. Just tell me what’s at stake: if I can help, I’ll do it. If I can’t, I’ll say no. Will you risk that?”

Rosie said slowly, “Yes, I believe I will.” He sat down again. “I’ll lay it on the line, Bill. You may not like part of this story,
but hear me out, will you? The stakes are high. The highest, in fact. An assassination of the head of a Western state. It’s planned for next week.”

“An assassination? Who is to be removed—De Gaulle?”

“Quick to guess, aren’t you?”

“He’s an obvious target, at this moment.” And now the meeting of Secret Army backers with Communists at a quiet luncheon table in a respectable restaurant began to show its threat.

“Only at this moment?” Rosie asked wryly. Grimly serious, he added, “This moment is enough for us, anyhow. It’s our problem. Definitely.”

“But if you know of any attempted assassination—”

“Oh, that? I alerted the French as soon as I heard about it. The assassination will fail, this time.”

“Well, what’s worrying you?”

“We’ve been implicated. The United States and Britain will be blamed.” Rosie looked like a man whose doctor had just told him he wouldn’t last a week.

“Implicated?” Fenner took a deep breath. “So Vaugiroud was right. They’ve manufactured evidence?”

Rosie came out of his black thoughts. “You saw part of it yesterday morning,” he said grimly.

“The money?”

“In most traceable bills. Anyone in the States who asks for a ten-thousand-dollar bill at his bank must register—it’s a safeguard against any attempt at income-tax evasion.”

“So ten people registered—”

“All of them Americans.”

“What are they? Not Communists—they don’t register so easily.”

“Not Communists. Just ten gullible Americans. Rich sympathisers, perhaps, who could be easily persuaded to back a cause. Or people who were paying blackmail; or contributing to some quick-money scheme; or following the instructions of a confidence man. They wouldn’t know that any of these approaches were being directed, remotely but definitely, by a Communist—a foreigner sent into the States specially for this mission. It must have taken his organisation some months to gather the cash.”

“Well, they haven’t got it now.”

“No. They’ll have to substitute something else—a hundred thousand dollars deposited in the bank account of the man who hired the killers.”

“Couldn’t that deposit be proved a fake?”

“It is less conclusive than an envelope of ten-thousand-dollar bills being found in the man’s own home,” Rosie conceded, “but difficult to disprove unless we had time and a reasonable climate of opinion. Which we won’t have. Lenoir has attended to that.”

“How?”

“He will publish two letters to prove that the Americans subsidised the Secret Army to assassinate De Gaulle, with the British acting as go-between.”

“The letters could be proved a fake, too.” If we had time, Fenner thought worriedly, if we had no screaming headlines.

“One is real.”

“
What?
”

“It dealt with quite another subject altogether. It will be taken out of context. And it will lend itself, very neatly, to misinterpretation.”

“To aiding and abetting an assassination?” Fenner was incredulous.

“It will be used that way.”

“And what damn fool handed the Communists that triumph on a golden platter?”

“He isn’t a damn fool. And the triumph wasn’t handed to them. They planned it that way.”

“Who wrote the letter? Was he American, or British?”

“He’s a good Intelligence officer, no fool, far less a damn fool. It could have happened to any of us. In fact, from now on, I’ll never write a discreet letter again with any pleasure.”

“But this one must have been written to one of the conspirators,” Fenner objected. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be much use to Lenoir’s plan.”

“They thought of that, too.”

Fenner could only shake his head. “Then we’ve had it,” he said softly.

“We’ll see about that.” Rosie’s lips tightened. “We’ll make a damned good try—”

“What man in any Intelligence service would write to a Secret Army sympathiser, and confidentially at that? Surely—”

“He wrote in reply to a wine merchant called Trouin, an authentic business-man with right-wing politics, whose Algerian imports were folding. So Trouin had been closing down two of his European outlets—one in London, one in Warsaw. For that reason, late in July, he visited Poland briefly. And in Warsaw, he picked up some highly secret information. When he came back to Paris, he wrote a letter to the British Embassy. He gave them the information, and he also made a request for the Pole who had told him that information. The Pole wanted to defect on his
next secret mission into the British Sector of Berlin. Would the Brits keep his defection secret until his wife and child could join him? They would have to leave all possessions behind them, of course, so would the Americans help him and his family to start a new life in the United States, where he wanted to settle? If the answers were in the affirmative, Trouin would be willing to act as the intermediary. Considering that this Pole was a high-ranking officer in the Polish Secret Service working with the GRU—the Red Army Secret Service, that is—the British and Americans were interested.”

“I take it that the piece of information was accurate?”

“Both accurate and valuable. The British Embassy passed the letter along to their Intelligence, who checked everything. The piece of information was real. There is such a Polish officer in Warsaw, who has been sent, twice, on spying missions into West Berlin. Trouin’s business visit to Warsaw was authentic. The notepaper came from Trouin’s office, the typewriter used was Trouin’s own portable, the signature seemed genuine. Now, of course, we know it was probably a very clever forgery.”