“Okay,” Ross said. “We haven’t got his prints and we haven’t got a photograph and we don’t know where he is. Where do we start?”
“Stop clutching that file as if there was something in it that might help—that’s the first thing.”
“It’s the only record we’ve got on him, isn’t it?”
“Except what’s in our heads. But records won’t do this job. You’re one of those eager beavers, aren’t you—the new breed that’s weaned on the theory that if our computer keeps better records than the other side’s then we’re bound to win out. You’re going to have to forget that shit for a while. Nobody’s ever taped Kendig. For one thing when Kendig got into this busines you still had to be a bit of an adolescent to want to do it in the first place—immature enough to be attracted by the risks. You understand? He was always the fastest driver I ever rode with. Sometimes he’d put himself in a position where he had to fall off. It was just to prove he could land on his feet.”
Ross watched him bite the words off with his even white teeth and it occurred to him that Cutter might just as well have been talking about himself.
“Kendig was my Control for seven years,” Cutter said. “He ran me in Laos and Indonesia and out in the Balkans.”
“Then you were friends—that’s why Myerson gave this one to you.”
“No, we weren’t friends. He was the teacher and I was the student. He knew I had the makings of a professional. But I don’t think he liked me.”
“Did you like him?”
“Not very often,” Cutter said. “But I suppose I was jealous of him.”
“I still don’t really understand this. If you’ve figured it right it looks to me like a hell of a complicated way to commit suicide.”
“It’s the way he is. He could have been a grand master at chess.”
“That’s part and parcel of all this messing with the files, is it? I mean phonying up his own file. And stealing all that top secret material he’s using in his book.”
“He didn’t steal the documents,” Cutter said, “He memorized them. You’d better remember that.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Cutter gave him a glance. “The hell it is.”
“So what do we do?”
“Cast a fly.”
“How?”
Cutter looked at his watch. “It’s still business hours in Paris. Let’s put through a phone call to Desrosiers. I have a feeling Kendig’s waiting to hear from us.”
– 4 –
IT WAS A small postal exchange outside Lyons. There was a drizzle that gave the street a fogged pointilliste atmosphere. Kendig went inside unbuttoning his raincoat; he bought jetons and stood in the call box waiting for the interminable connections to be made. It took fourteen minutes and then all he had was Bois Blanc’s switchboard; it used up two more jetons before they pulled Desrosiers out of a conference and Kendig had his voice on the line.
“It’s rather insubstantial, isn’t it?” Desrosiers said cautiously. “Not to say libelous.”
“I shouldn’t worry about libel if I were you,” Kendig said, belaboring the obvious. “In the United States it’s impossible for a public figure to sue for libel. And the Russian’s can’t take you to court, can they.”
“That’s all very well, Miles, but what you’ve given me is unsupported sensationalism.”
“What do you think it is that sells books?”
“I have a reputation for integrity,” Desrosiers said stuffily. The connection, as always in France, was poor; his voice crackled thinly on the line.
“Are they tracing your incoming calls yet?”
“I really don’t know.” And by implication he didn’t care to. Desrosiers was very old-world.
Kendig said, “I’ve got chapter two finished. I’ll have it in the mail to you today.”
“I hope it’s a bit more specific.”
“It’s got nothing in it but nuts and bolts. But it’s the last material you’ll see until I’ve got a contract for it. I’m not giving this stuff away—you can understand that, can’t you?”
“I have spent a lifetime dealing with greedy artists, Miles.”
“Then perhaps you’d like to start mentioning numbers?”
“Not until I’ve seen this new material. You must realize I’ve been handed what you Americans call a pig in a poke more than once. Clearly I cannot commit myself to publishing your work if the whole of it is as tenuously inferential as the sample you submitted last week.”
“You know me better than that.”
“I don’t know you as a writer at all. Do I.”
Kendig was neither angry nor impatient; he was going through the motions, that was all. “I’ll be in touch next week perhaps.”
“Please do. Oh Miles, there’s one thing. I’ve had a transatlantic call from someone called Cutter. He urgently desires that you make contact with him.”
“I’ll just bet he does.” Kendig smiled broadly in the privacy of the booth.
Marseilles was a city of criminal ferment and Kendig went right down into its rancid crotch. Streetwalkers drifted from doorway to doorway, bedraggled, wrung out, degraded, battered and hostile; inquiring out of the sides of their mouths whether he was out for a little sport; loftily ignored by the strolling gendarmes who were the best police that money could buy. The city was as full of vendettas as a Sicilian mountain village and the sharp-featured Corsicans who hurried by were deadly and chronically frightened. It was a capital of international affairs—for smugglers, for businessmen who dealt in cocaine and heroin, for the Union Corse. For Kendig it was familiar turf.
He threaded the passages, moving alertly on the damp cobblestones. A windowless masonry wall was decorated with the tatters of old circus posters and Johnny Hallyday concerts. Rusty fire escapes zigzagged down the alley walls. Spherical black oil lanterns around an excavation looked like sputtering anarchists’ bombs.
He made his way into a flyspecked building. The hall was painted in a dingy yellow that covered a multitude of years in which the turnover in tenants probably exceeded the turnover in wall calendars: the kind of office building whose occupants could be expected to be on the way up, down or out.
The occupant of B, deuxieme étage was unique: he had been there at least eleven years.
A. Saint-Breheret. The paint had faded. Kendig knocked on the panel and after a moment a beam of yellow light appeared at the Judas-hole, dimmed as an eye blocked it, brightened again and then went black; and a key rattled.
Saint-Breheret beamed. “My old friend—it has been such a long time!” He pumped Kendig’s hand and they went inside.
Saint-Breheret was a twinkling little man, fat and half bald, baggy worsteds and a gold chain across his waistcoat; his cheerful smile concealed the chronic indiscriminate terror of a quivering Chihuahua dog.
Kendig said, “I’m only in town a short while.”
“Yes?”
“I heard you’d got your hands on a mint ’seventy-nine peso.”
The teeth flashed brilliantly—on and off, like a timed neon sign. “The news has traveled fast. I bought that estate only last week.”
“I’d like to see it. I’ve still got that hole in my collection.”
“I keep such valuable coins in the bank vault, of course. Would you prefer to wait here or come along to the bank with me?”
“I’ll walk along,” Kendig said drily and waited for Saint-Breheret to get his raincoat down off the rack. The office was as nondescript as its owner: a desk, chair, file cabinet, Oriental rug separated from the rest of the small room by a wooden railing with a gate in it; and a six-foot Mosler safe against one wall.