The Venetian Affair (7 page)

“Eyes blue; features blunt and blob-shaped; complexion very sallow.”

“Are you sure?” Rosenfeld was dubious of the quick answer.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘Well there’s a chap who not only matched his shirt to his eyes, but his face to his tie.’ Then I didn’t give him another thought.”

Rosenfeld was amused. “Just one more question: what is blob-shaped?”

“Sort of—well, a pin-cushion effect. The opposite of taut, tightly drawn. Sponge under the skin instead of bone.”

“Thanks. I get the picture. Where did you learn to use your eyes?”

“It’s my trade. When I sit in a theatre, I have to look as well as listen. But tell me—this character in the yellow tie, why does he interest you? Was he the friend who helped Goldsmith into a taxi? That’s not in the tradition, is it?”

“Tradition?” Rosenfeld’s eyes opened in bland astonishment.

“If he was waiting to contact Goldsmith, they should never have seemed to meet at all. At least, that’s the way I thought those things were worked.”

“You go to a lot of movies, too, I see.”

“How to be successful in espionage without really trying—just break the accepted patterns?”

“Not funny, my friend. And who said this had anything to do with espionage?”

“Are there other forms of international understanding?” Fenner asked with mock innocence.

Rosenfeld smiled amiably.

Surely the two minutes are almost up, Fenner thought. If he left now, he could have a decent lunch before he saw Vaugiroud. He looked at his watch, and rose. Rosenfeld made no move. Fenner tried some sympathetic talk to ease old Rosie toward the street. “I don’t think you should feel too upset about losing Goldsmith. The mistake was in New York.”

“Oh?”

“Why did they let him leave? Easier for everyone if they had stopped him at Idlewild.”

“On what grounds?”

“They don’t know what his business is?”

“No.”

“But surely they must know who he is, what he is?”

“Not even that.”

“In that case, why alert you to keep an eye on him?”

“Well,” said Rosie, with his sharp brown eyes gleaming, “you know how stupid we all are.”

Fenner smiled. “That must be the explanation.”

Rosenfeld offered him another cigarette. “Since I’ve answered your questions—well, some of them at least, didn’t I?”

Fenner nodded and took the cigarette.

“I’d like you to answer a few of mine,” Rosenfeld ended. “Fair enough?”

“If I can answer them.”

“Sit down. This will only take a couple of minutes. Did you ever hear of a man called Bruno?”

“Bruno what?”

“Just Bruno.”

Fenner shook his head.

“Or of a man called Geoffrey Wills?”

“No.”

“Who sometimes used the name of George Williston?”

Fenner’s eyes went cold.

“He was a very close friend of your wife’s ten years ago.” Rosenfeld was lighting his cigarette carefully. “In fact, they both belonged to the same group.”

“I was in Korea,” Fenner said. “She had many friends I knew nothing about.”

“But you did meet Williston?”

“For five minutes, one night. I had the pleasure of throwing
him out of my apartment. Him and three others.”

Rosenfeld raised an eyebrow.

“Not physically. I just told them pretty forcibly to get out, and stay out.”

“Why?”

“Not my type,” Fenner said briefly. “A man has the right to decide who is to be invited into his home and who is not. Hasn’t he? That’s one freedom of choice that hasn’t been taken away from us yet.”

“A Constitutional right,” Rosenfeld agreed. He rose and paced around the small bleak room, as if he were marshalling his thoughts with each even step. “The next question—I hope you’ll answer it—did you come to Paris to see Sandra Fane?”

“I didn’t even know she was here until Ballard told me this morning.”

“Sorry—I just thought—well, after all, there isn’t much going on in the theatre here at present.”

“People connected with the theatre are still going on,” Fenner reminded him angrily. He mastered his irritation. “I haven’t seen Sandra since the night I told Williston to leave.”

“Were they having a meeting of some kind in your apartment?”

So Rosenfeld knew about Sandra; more, probably, than I do, Fenner thought. “You might call it that.”

“With
you
around?” Rosenfeld was amazed.

“I was supposed to be covering one of those late-night emergency sessions at the UN—I had just got back, the week before, from Korea—but I went home at ten o’clock. I felt I was coming down with an attack of grippe. And the emergency session was getting nowhere—” He halted. He was
remembering the long dark hall of the apartment, the sound of subdued voices from the living-room at its far end. He was standing there pulling off his coat, cursing the idea of a party and people to face, feeling the ache in his bones and his tight throat, wondering if he could slip unnoticed into the bedroom and fall asleep. He needed Scotch and aspirin. He went to get them quietly, just outside the living-room door. There was one voice speaking, clear, authoritative. My God, he thought, ready to laugh, someone’s giving an imitation as his parlour trick; Sandra has developed a strange taste in entertainment since I’ve been away. But the parlour trick went on and on. My God, he thought, no longer ready to laugh, and what’s this about germ warfare, what’s this about arranging protests and demonstrations? The voice ended its instructions, and it was Sandra who was talking the same vicious nonsense, with a seriousness, an intensity he had never heard before. He came out of his trance. He could see, even now, the startled faces staring at him in the doorway; and Sandra, reverting automatically from the agitprop activist into the fluttering hostess. “Darling, but how wonderful! You’re just in time to hear us read Act Three of George’s new play. George Williston—my husband. And this is Jenny— Why, Bill, Bill! Bill, these are my friends, will you shut up?” The sweet hostess words had ended in a shout of anger, but he finished what he had to say. And so began the Grand Exit. Followed by the Great Quarrel. That lasted until three in the morning. It was more than a quarrel: it was, in the unguarded heat of Sandra’s anger, a revelation.

And then he had left, his body shivering with fever, head throbbing, heart sick. He spent one day in a hotel, four days in a hospital. When he returned to the apartment to pick up his
clothes, it was empty. Sandra had gone. On orders, he thought bitterly, like everything else in her well-controlled career. He had been a useful name to cover her real life; he had become a positive handicap, perhaps even a possible danger.

“Well,” Fenner said, “I suppose we have all been fooled one way or another at one time.” He mustered a smile. “Yes, I’ve met George Williston.”

“He was in Paris last April for a very brief visit,” Rosenfeld said smoothly. “He met Mrs. Fane—that’s what she calls herself, these days—at a café over on the Left Bank. It could have been an innocent meeting, from Mrs. Fane’s point of view. Perhaps he was trying to pull her back into her old life again; perhaps she was refusing, and chose to meet him far away from the Avenue d’Iéna to save herself embarrassment. The truth is, she’s a question mark. She’s been living a perfectly normal life since her escape from Czechoslovakia.” If, Rosenfeld added to himself, being the mistress of a French government official with private means and a wide circle of friends could be called a normal way to live.

Fenner said nothing. Not even the use of the word “escape” had aroused his interest. He looked at his watch.

“But Williston is no question mark. He hasn’t changed his aim in life. So that is what makes the meeting with Mrs. Fane important. Was it real business or was it only an attempt at business that failed? The answer is essential, because of her—of her influence over a certain Monsieur Fernand Lenoir. He’s an important guy.”

“Another blind idiot?”

Rosenfeld looked nonplussed. But he wasn’t defeated. “Won’t you even think of accepting her invitation?”

“What?”

“She sent you one last night, by way of Ballard. Didn’t he pass it on?”

“He never got the chance. I cut him off when he started talking about Sandra.” There was complete disbelief in Fenner’s eyes. “She’d never invite me—”

“But she did. Stanfield Dade was there at the time. She was talking to Ballard and him. About you.”

“Then she’s just using me again.” The words had slipped out. He cursed himself under his breath.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. There’s one way we could find out. That would answer the question about her meeting with Williston, too.”

Fenner stared at him. “I hope you are not meaning—”

“I’m meaning this. People who reform have anguish and remorse. Right? They feel better if they can give an honest apology to those they have hurt the most. Right? She would talk to you, more than she would talk to anyone else. She would feel she owes you that. Why don’t you see her?”

“No.”

“But you could be doing her a good turn.”

“I’m doing her no kind of turn, either good or bad.”

“Look, she proposed seeing you. Why don’t you—?”

“No,” said Fenner quietly. “And no, and no.” If Sandra had wanted to see him, it was more likely for quite another reason: she could very well want to gauge how safe she was with him in Paris. She was a much more devious and intricate character than Rosenfeld imagined.

Rosenfeld was saying, “Oh, well, it was worth a try. But I’m still curious why she talked about you to Ballard. Either she
wants to say she’s sorry—she was the reason you ended your career as a news correspondent, wasn’t she?”

Fenner studied the leaves in the garden outside. Some were beginning to shrivel at the edges into the first hint of autumn.

“Or,” Rosenfeld went on, “she wants to know where you stand. You could do her a lot of damage. Not many people know her history; and you know her better than they do.” He noticed the look in Fenner’s eyes. “Yes?”

“Oh, just making a mental apology. You’re a smart boy.”

“Sometimes not smart enough.” Rosenfeld wished he had never brought up the subject of Sandra Fane. “Well, let’s go. Thanks for the two minutes. They stretched a little. I’m sorry.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “How’s your memory, by the way?”

“At times, it can be very bad. I just can’t remember a thing you were talking about. How’s that?”

“That’s fine.” Rosenfeld opened the door. “I’ll escort you across the frontier. When you reach France, turn right. You’ll be back at the Crillon Bar in no time.”

At the side gate, Fenner looked at his watch and decided he would have to settle for a short lunch, after all. He had lost his appetite, anyway. He said goodbye to Rosenfeld. They went separate ways.

Fenner crossed a busy narrow street to a small café with a red-striped awning. He was thinking gloomily that the past was never over. As long as you lived, you carried it with you. It shaped your life: what you were, today, depended on all you had seen and felt and heard yesterday; and what you now accepted or rejected would mould your tomorrow. We are, because of what we were... Shall we be, because of what we are?

Let’s try some will power, he told himself, and blot out the ghosts that came rising up this morning. It had worked before, giving long stretches of blessed anaesthesia. No good in remembering the hurt and the misery and the damage that was done you: that only nurses your bitterness, and you inflict hurt and misery and damage on yourself. Just remember enough never to be vulnerable again: total forgetting could be as self-destructive as complete remembering.

He settled at a small zinc table outside the café. He disregarded the traffic, the heat, the arms brushing past, the unsuccessful sandwich and the bitter coffee. Will power, he reminded himself wryly, was sometimes necessary for the present as well as for the past. But a small cluster of typists from the Embassy turned his mood. They were young and pretty, trying to be chic and worldly. Their chatter held pleasant no-meaning, more amusing, actually, than most first acts he had sat through this last season. Their laughter won. The traffic became friendly bustle, the heat was tempered by a small breeze, the passing faces were varied and intelligent, the second cup of coffee tasted better. Patient coming out of shock, he told himself almost cheerfully, and could smile. He would sit here and enjoy the Paris sun until it was time to move toward the Left Bank and Professor Vaugiroud.

Only a few streets away from Fenner, in a small restaurant without any outside tables, Neill Carlson was having his third cup of coffee. The place was almost empty: the customers, mostly Frenchmen, had been leaving steadily for the last half-hour. He finished reading
Figaro,
slung it back on its hook
on the brown panelled wall, took down
Combat.
As he was returning to his isolated table, Frank Rosenfeld joined him.

“About time,” Carlson said. “Another five minutes, and I’d have to leave.”

“Went back to the office,” Rosenfeld explained. “I got a face-to-face description of yellow-tie that was worth sending out.”

“So?” Carlson was curious.

“But that was about all I got from Fenner.” Rosenfeld broke into a description of his mother-in-law’s visit to Paris in July as the waiter approached for his order. An omelette and coffee, Rosenfeld decided.

“You didn’t do so well?” Carlson asked when they were left alone again.

“I don’t know.”

Carlson looked puzzled. “He didn’t strike me as an evasive type.”

“He wasn’t. He answered my questions. And he had a few of his own.” Rosenfeld grinned. “Wanted to know if yellow-tie was the friend who had helped Goldsmith into a cab.”

“Reasonable deduction, seeing you were asking questions about yellow-tie.”

“Then he suggested their meeting wasn’t in the tradition, was it?”

“Well, he’s a critic. They like to cast doubts.”

“He’s a bit of a comedian, too. Suggested how to be successful in espionage without really trying.”

“How?”

“Just break the accepted patterns.”

Carlson laughed. “He might have something there.”

“Yes,” Rosenfeld admitted. “That open contact and departure was a bit startling. I was beginning to wonder, this early morning, if Goldsmith wasn’t just a harmless soul being met by a patient friend. Kind of comic, when you think of it.”