"If you like, I can go for a doctor."
He shook his head. "I'll be all right in a minute… But a handkerchief… if you happen to have one…"
I gave him a Kleenex. It was sodden; as he scraped it over his face, bits of it stuck in the blood. Then he said, "Excuse me," and pushed it up his nose, which was still bleeding, and leaned his head back. "I'm very sorry… I don't know what to say, how to explain… I was attacked by some men…"
His voice petered away. He was bewildered. He seemed very young and frightened, his adolescence more evident now than his sexual style. He could have been a kid out joyriding — he'd had too many beers, rolled the car. Now he was injured and his best friend was dead. But he didn't know that yet.
I said, "You don't have to explain. I know Hamilton… I know who those men are. They must have followed you from his apartment… I did as well, but I didn't see them."
His head came upright again, his left hand still holding the Kleenex up to his nose. But before he could speak, I added, It's all right. I'm not with them — I'm on your side. Tell me, at the restaurant, did you touch my car?"
"No… I had no idea… You followed me? I don't understand. Who are you? Who are those men?"
"My name is Robert Thome. I'm an American. You can ask Paul about me. He knows who I am. But you must tell me… when you went to his apartment, what did you get?"
He took the Kleenex away from his nose. A little blood trickled from his left nostril; reaching the line of his lip, it flowed around it, like a pencil mustache or a trace of chocolate ice cream around the mouth of a kid.
"You know Paul?"
"Yes. I'm a friend of his from America."
"He said he was in trouble. He wanted me to do something for him. I asked him what the trouble was but he said it was too complicated to explain. People were watching his apartment, that was the point — he couldn't go there, but I could because they wouldn't know who I was."
"Except they did."
"But that can't be possible. Paul said so… It was safe, because they wouldn't know me."
"Maybe that's what he thought, but he didn't think hard enough. Does he have any pictures of you? There, I mean… in the apartment."
There was a flicker behind his eyes. Then he looked away. "Yes… perhaps. I'm not sure."
But of course Hamilton had pictures of him — lovingly posed, beautifully taken; and when Subotin had broken in, and seen them, he'd known a way of getting to Hamilton anytime he cared to. "It doesn't make any difference," I said. "Somehow they recognized you. They followed you from the apartment to the Cite and then here… They wanted to know what you were doing for Paul."
"Yes."
"And what were you doing?"
"I'm not sure that I should tell you."
"You must… It's very important — not for you now, but for Paul."
He looked straight at me, absolutely directly, like a child searching for trust. "You swear? You are Paul's friend?"
"I swear."
He believed me. He wanted to: because this was one secret he wanted to tell. The words tumbled out. "Paul had a locker in the Cite, in the library I had to get the key from the apartment to open it. There were three envelopes inside. I was to mail one of them — I did that right there, in the Cite — and bring him the others."
I looked around us, at the bills scattered among the leaves. "This money was in one of them?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"And the others… you mailed one, but you had the second with you?"
"Yes. Paul said not to mail it; he wanted to look at it first. But they took it away from me. It had an address in Canada — I don't think it was important because they opened it and then crumpled it up."
"This Canadian address — did it include a name?"
"Yes. It was supposed to go to a man named Cadogan, in Toronto."
"All right. Think of the one you did mail — who was that to?"
He looked at me and swallowed. "That's what they wanted to know. They said they'd choke it out of me…" But now his voice faltered and his face twisted with anguish; anguish, God knows, that he was under no obligation to feel, not for a man like Hamilton.
"Don't blame yourself," I said, "not for anything. Because that's exactly what they would have done — they'd have choked you to death."
"Yes… I know. But I tried not to tell them anyway. And I didn't tell them everything."
"All right. Again, I promise you… it won't harm Paul to tell me."
He brought his head back, tossing the bit of Kleenex away, into the leaves. His voice was very soft, almost a mutter. "It was to Russia… and it was in an envelope from the Russian Embassy in Paris — it had a big label in the corner, printed with their address. Of course, I was surprised and I looked at it carefully. The address it was being sent to was written in French and also in Russian — the names were harder to read, but I'm quite sure it said Yuri Shastov in a place called Povo-nets. But I didn't tell them that, you see… only that it was going to Russia."
He looked at me, as though for approval, and I nodded. "Did you have any idea from the envelopes what might have been inside them?"
He shook his head. "Not really. The one they took, the one to Canada, was in an ordinary envelope, like a letter. The other was bigger, padded. But not heavy. Even to Russia, it was just a few francs." As he finished speaking, he reached back, bracing himself against the trunk of the tree, and tried to stand up. He made it, but his face went pale as the blood rushed out of his head. He bent over, resting his hands on his knees.
"Take it easy," I said. With his head down, more blood began to drip from his nose, patting dark red splashes on the dead leaves. I was silent a moment, trying to understand what he'd said. At best, I thought I could understand half of it. I'd been right about one thing: Brightman had been holding something over Hamilton's head. But Hamilton had done a deal; in a funny way, you could even say that he'd honored it. Hamilton's payoff, for hanging on to Brightman's envelope, had presumably been the return of the incriminating material, whatever it had been. And he'd even made sure that he'd get it if Brightman disappeared — the letter to Cadogan, probably written by Brightman, would have contained instructions about this; or at least that's what Hamilton assumed it contained. But there was more — and it was even more interesting. Brightman must also have left Hamilton with orders about what to do with the other envelope, the one to Russia, and Hamilton had obeyed them. He was probably too afraid not to — afraid, if he didn't, that his own reward would be withheld. But what sense did it make from Brightman's point of view? If the second envelope contained the key to all this — if it was the buried treasure Subotin was looking for — why in hell would Brightman have instructed Hamilton to send it to the Soviet Union?
No answer.
I looked up at the boy. "I don't know your name."
He tried to sniff back the blood and coughed, spitting some out. "Alain," he said.
"Alain… it's important that all this is true… what you've told me…"
"I understand."
"That's all you remember about the envelopes?"
He looked straight at me, but I could tell nothing from his eyes. "It's all I remember. I swear it."
"And it's true?"
"Yes."
"All right. What else did these men ask you about?"
Carefully, he straightened up, taking a breath. "They wanted to know where Paul was."
"He's coming here, isn't he? On the barge?" Now I got to my feet as well. Without noticing, I'd been feeling through the leaves, picking up the money. It amounted to several thousand dollars: Hamilton's emergency hoard.
Alain drew his hand back across his nose. "You knew he was leaving?"