“And the nature of this lost property?”
“Just some papers in a tin,” Aveling said. “They’ll mean nothing to Blanchard, but everything to us. You persuade Blanchard to give you the tin. You make sure the papers are inside. Then you return to us—with the papers—and we put you on the first transport home.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is.”
“Then why do I have the nagging suspicion that there must be a catch?”
“Because there is,” Skellsgard said. “We don’t know for sure what happened to Susan, but we do know that she felt threatened, and that she gave those papers to Blanchard for safekeeping. There’s a chance she was murdered.”
Aveling withdrew his attention from the oozing lines of the navigational display and sent Skellsgard an irritated look. “She didn’t need to know it was murder,” he said. “If it was murder.”
“I felt she did,” Skellsgard replied, shrugging.
“Well,” Auger said, “was it murder or not?”
“She fell,” Aveling said. “That’s all we know.”
“Or was pushed,” Skellsgard said darkly.
“I’d really like to know which it was,” Auger insisted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Aveling said. “All you need to know is that E2 is hostile territory—which is something White forgot. She was careful to begin with: they always are. Then she exceeded the remit of her mission, took risks and ended up dead.”
“What kind of risks?”
Before Aveling could get a word in edgeways, Skellsgard said, “Susan felt she was on to something—something big, something significant. Because she wouldn’t return to the portal, all we got from her were cryptic messages, things scribbled on postcards. If she’d at least taken the time to build a radio sender, or return to the base station, she could have told us something more concrete. But she was too busy chasing leads, and in the end it got her killed.”
“Supposition,” Aveling said.
“If we don’t think she was on to something,” Skellsgard said, “why are we in such a hurry to get those papers back? It’s because we think there might be something in them, isn’t it?”
“It’s because we can’t risk cultural contamination,” Aveling corrected. “Analysed with the right mindset, the papers might reveal White’s origin. We don’t know how indiscreet she was. Until we get the papers, we’re in the dark.”
Skellsgard looked at Auger. “I guess all I’m saying is… take care out there, OK? Just get in and do the job. We want you back in one piece.”
“Really?” Auger asked.
“Oh, sure. Can you imagine what the return trip would be like if I only had Aveling for company?”
NINE
It was the middle of the morning by the time Floyd returned Custine to Susan White’s apartment, heavy toolkit in one hand. Custine’s practicality never ceased to amaze him: the man could turn his hand to almost anything, whether it was repairing the Mathis, fixing the plumbing in their apartment or attempting to repair the jury-rigged receiving equipment of a dead spy. Floyd knew a little about fixing boats, but that was about his limit. He had questioned Custine once about where this practicality came from, but the only explanation Custine had offered was that a certain skill with electricity and metal was very useful for an interrogator in the Crime Squad.
That was as much as Floyd wanted to know.
He waited in the car while Custine was let in, then drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for another five minutes until Custine’s form loomed in the fifth-floor window. Custine did not expect to get any results before the middle of the afternoon, but they had arranged to speak by telephone at two regardless.
Floyd pulled away from Blanchard’s street and drove to Montparnasse, negotiating the smaller side streets until he found the house where he had left Greta the night before. In daylight the house seemed a little more cheerful—but only a little. Greta opened the door and escorted him up to the sparsely stocked kitchen that the tenant Sophie had shown him around the night before.
“I called the telephone company,” Floyd said. “It should be working now.”
“So it is,” Greta said, surprised. “Someone rang through on it only an hour ago, but I was so distracted that I didn’t really think about it. How did you persuade the company to reconnect her? She still can’t afford to pay them.”
“I told them to put the charges on my bill.”
“You did?” She cocked her head. “That’s awfully decent of you. You’re not exactly rolling in money either.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not as if…” Hisvoice trailed off.
“Not as if it’ll be for ever?” she finished for him. “No. You’re right. It won’t be.”
“I didn’t mean to sound callous.”
“It’s all right.” Now she sounded cross with herself. “I’m taking it out on whoever’s within firing range. You don’t deserve this.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re doing a pretty swell job from where I’m standing. How is Marguerite today?”
Greta spread honey on to a slice of buttered toast. “About the same as yesterday, according to Sophie. The doctor’s already given her a shot of morphine for the day. I don’t know why they can’t give it to her later, so that she could at least get a good night’s sleep.”
“Maybe they’re worried that she’d get too good a night’s sleep,” Floyd said.
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Greta said quietly. She was dressed all in white today, her black hair tied back in a white bow. The bow shone luminously, like something in a washing-powder commercial. Greta passed him the toast, then licked her fingers clean with girlish little pops of her lips. “Thanks for staying with me last night, Wendell,” she said. “It was kind.”
“You needed the company.” He bit into the toast, tilting it to avoid spilling honey on his shirt. “About Marguerite. Would it be all right if I said hello to her? I know what you said last night, but I really would like her to know that I care.”
“She may not even remember you.”
“I’m ready for that.”
“Well, all right,” Greta said heavily. “I suppose she’s as sharp now as she’ll ever be. But don’t stay too long, will you? She gets tired very easily.”
“I’ll keep it brief.”
She led him upstairs, Floyd finishing off the toast as he went. The floorboards creaked as he made his way across the landing. Greta eased open the bedroom door, slipped inside and spoke very softly to Marguerite. Floyd heard the old woman answer in French. She spoke nothing else, not even German. She had been born in the Alsace region, Greta had told him once, and had married a German cabinet-maker who had died in the mid-thirties. At home they had spoken only French.
When things became difficult for Greta’s family in Germany—Greta was Jewish on her mother’s side—they had dispatched her to live with Marguerite. She had arrived in Paris in the summer of 1939, when she was nine years old, and had lived in the city for most of the last twenty years. There had been a great deal of anti-German sentiment after the failed invasion of 1940, but Greta had weathered most of it, speaking French with a pronounced Parisian accent that revealed nothing of her true origins. On first meeting her, Floyd had never guessed that she was German. The disclosure of that secret to him had been the first of many intimacies, each of which had brought a small, stabbing thrill of mutual trust.
She called to him from inside the room. “You can come in now, Floyd.”