An Expensive Place to Die

it was tough enough to set up a secret meeting between a Chinese scientist and an american nuclear expert--but now the French police, a blackmailing psychiatrist and a beautiful woman all wanted in

Synopsis: It could have been any springtime in Paris--the sidewalk cafés coming back to life, birds wheeling in the sun over the rooftops, painters bringing out their work for a vernissage. But underneath the pleasant surface some rather tricky games were going on. There was, for instance, the big game whose rules London wanted to find out. There was the oblique game run by Monsieur Datt, psychiatrist, operator of a mysterious clinic in the Avenue Foch, a man of powerful, hidden influence--and altogether a nasty piece of work. There was the warning game played by SÛreté Chief Inspector Loiseau; and finally, there was the tantalizing game played by the beautiful Maria Chauvet.

Move One for me, British agent: Set the stage to make sure some highly secret documents about nuclear fallout got stolen from my apartment. Move Two: Find out the truth about Datt and the scandalous rumors about his clinic. But before that, in quick succession, I first had been warned by Loiseau, then drugged and interrogated by Datt--and saved by Maria, who, for her own reasons, mistranslated what I said under the drugs, and later took me into her bed ...

Coffee at a sidewalk café, the rain drumming on the awning overhead, two artists talking idly about painting--the time seemed right for Move One, and I casually let slip the fact that I kept something valuable sewn inside the armchair in my apartment. By the time Maria and I got back there, the place had been ransacked and the chair gutted. It seemed almost too coincidental when Jean-Paul, the artist, phoned a few moments later to warn me of an impending robbery; and to announce that Maria was the ex-wife of Loiseau, and a SÛreté informant.

When I next came across Datt, this time in a bistro, the ostensible game was Monopoly, but the deeper game was about the documents. Admittedly, he'd had them stolen--by Jean-Paul--and he wanted to buy the rest of them for 10,000 new francs. Why? "I shall use them merely to stimulate my mind," he said. Going on to talk about his work, Datt said the clinic was set up for analysis of human sexual activity--and he invited me back to have another look.

It wasn't a pleasant look. Immediately we got inside, there was a scream. Moving like a figure in a fantasy, a naked young girl with perhaps 20 or 30 stab wounds on her body, stumbled down the stairs and out into the street to die. It appeared that the killer was a Chinese named Kuang-t'ien, whom I'd met on my first visit to the clinic.

But there was something more to the affair. The next day, the British courier told me that the Chinese was a top nuclear expert, working on the Chinese version of the H-bomb. The dead girl was one of our agents. Not completely coincidentally, an American atomic scientist named Hudson had just turned up in Paris and was trying to meet me.

Maria had two encounters that same afternoon. The first was with Loiseau, who told her that Annie, the murdered girl, had been working for him; the second was with Jean-Paul, who said that there were films of the sexual activities at the clinic and that Loiseau probably had them all--even "that film of you and me." Maria had to get that one back. When she left, she picked up a copy of an afternoon paper. An American tourist had disappeared--the picture was a photograph of Hudson ...

Les Chiens is a dark, hot night club and it squirms like a tin of live bait. I was having a drink there with my English artist friend Byrd when a brawl broke out. Outside again and separated from him, I learned that the police were looking for Byrd for the murder of Annie. I also found out that Loiseau wanted to see me--at midnight, near the clinic.

I got to the avenue Foch at midnight.

At the corner of a narrow alley behind the houses were four shiny motorcycles and four policemen in crash helmets, goggles and short black-leather coats. They stood there impassively, as only policemen stand, not waiting for anything to happen, not glancing at their watches or talking, just standing and looking as though they were the only people with a right to be there. Beyond the policemen there was Loiseau's dark-green DS-19, and behind that, red barriers and floodlights marked the section of the road that was being excavated. There were more policemen standing near the barriers. I noticed that they were not traffic policemen but young, tough-looking cops with fidgety hands that continuously tapped pistol holsters, belts and batons to make sure that everything was ready.

Inside the barriers, 20 thick-shouldered men were bent over road rippers. The sound was deafening, like machine guns firing long bursts. The generator trucks played a steady drone. Near to me the ripper operator lifted the handles and prized the point into a sun-soft area of tar. He fired a volley and the metal buried its point deep, and with a sigh a chunk of paving fell back into the excavated area. The operator ordered another man to take over, and turned toward us, mopping his sweaty head with a blue handkerchief. Under the overalls he wore a clean shirt and a silk tie. It was Loiseau.

"Hard work," he said.

"You are going into the cellars?"

"Not the cellars of Datt's place," Loiseau said to me. "We're punching a hole in these cellars two doors away, then we'll mousehole through into Datt's cellars."

"Why didn't you ask these people?" I pointed at the house behind which the roadwork was going on. "Why not just ask them to let you through?"

"I don't work that way. As soon as I ask a favor I show my hand. I hate the idea of you knowing what we are doing. I may want to deny it tomorrow." He mopped his brow again. "In fact, I'm damned sure I will be denying it tomorrow." Behind him the road ripper exploded into action and the chiseled dust shone golden in the beams of the big lights, like illustrations for a fairy story, but from the damp soil came that sour aroma of death and bacteria that clings around a bombarded city.

"Come along," said Loiseau. We passed three huge Berliet buses full of policemen. Most were dozing with their kepis pulled forward over their eyes; a couple were eating crusty sandwiches and a few were smoking. They didn't look at us as we passed by. They sat, muscles slack, eyes unseeing and minds unthinking, as experienced combat troops rest between battles.

Loiseau walked toward a fourth bus; the windows were of dark-blue glass and from its coachwork a thick cable curved toward the ground and snaked away into a manhole cover in the road. He ushered me up the steps past a sentry. Inside the bus was a brightly lit command center. Two policemen sat operating radio and teleprinter equipment. At the back of the bus a large rack of MAT 49 submachine guns was guarded by a man who kept his silver-braided cap on to prove he was an officer.

Loiseau sat down behind a desk, produced a bottle of calvados and two glasses. He poured a generous measure and pushed one across the desk to me. Loiseau sniffed at his own drink and sipped it tentatively. He drank a mouthful and turned to me. "We hit some old pavé just under the surface. The city engineer's department didn't know it was there. That's what slowed us down; otherwise, we'd be into the cellars by now, all ready for you."

"All ready for me," I repeated.

"Yes," said Loiseau. "I want you to be the first into the house."

"Why?"

'Lots of reasons. You know the layout there, you know what Datt looks like. You don't look too much like a cop--especially when you open your mouth--and you can look after yourself. And if something's going to happen to the first man in. I'd rather it wasn't one of my boys. It takes a long time to train one of my boys." He allowed himself a grim little smile.

"What's the real reason?"

Loiseau made a motion with the flattened hand. He dropped it between us like a shutter or screen. "I want you to make a phone call from inside the house. A clear call for the police that the operator at the Prefecture will enter in the log. We'll be right behind you, of course, it's just a matter of keeping the record straight."

"Crooked, you mean," I said. "It's just a matter of keeping the record crooked."

"That depends where you are sitting," said Loiseau.

"From where I'm sitting, I don't feel much inclined to upset the Prefecture. The renseignements généraux are there in that building and they include dossiers on us foreigners. When I make that phone call it will be entered onto my file and next time I ask for my carte de séjour they will want to deport me for immoral acts and goodness knows what else. I'll never get another alien's permit."

"Do what all other foreigners do," said Loiseau. "Take a second-class return ticket to Brussels every ninety days. There are foreigners who have lived here for twenty years who still do that rather than hang around for five hours at the Prefecture waiting for a carte de séjour." He held his flat hand high as though shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun.

"Very funny," I said.

"Don't worry," Loiseau said. "I couldn't risk your telling the whole Prefecture that the SÛreté had enlisted you for a job." He smiled. "Just do a good job for me and I'll make sure you have no trouble with the Prefecture."

"Thanks," I said. "And what if there is someone waiting for me at the other side of the mousehole? What if I have one of Datt's guard dogs leap at my throat, jaws open wide? What happens then?"

Loiseau sucked his breath in mock terror. He paused. "Then you get torn to pieces," he said, and laughed, and dropped his hand down abruptly like a guillotine.

"What do you expect to find there?" I asked. "Here you are with dozens of cops and noise and lights--do you think they won't get nervous in the house?"

"You think they will?" Loiseau asked seriously.

"Some will," I told him. "At least a few of the most sophisticated ones will suspect that something's happening."

"Sophisticated ones?"

"Come along, Loiseau," I said irritably. "There must be quite a lot of people close enough to your department to know the danger signals."

He nodded and stared at me.

"So that's it," I said. "You were ordered to do it like this. Your department couldn't issue a warning to its associates but it could at least warn them by handling things noisily."

"Darwin called it natural selection," said Loiseau. "The brightest ones will get away. You can probably guess my reaction, but at least I shall have the place closed down and may catch a few of the less imaginative clients. A little more calvados." He poured it.

I didn't agree to go, but Loiseau knew I would. The wrong side of Loiseau could be a very uncomfortable place to reside in Paris.

It was another half hour before they had broken into the cellars under the alley and then it look 20 minutes more to mousehole through into Datt's house. The final few demolitions had to be done brick by brick, with a couple of men from a burglar-alarm company tapping around for wiring.

I had changed into police overalls before going through the final breakthrough. We were standing in the cellar of Datt's next-door neighbor under the temporary lights that Loiseau's men had slung out from the electric mains. The bare bulb was close to Loiseau's face, his skin was wrinkled and gray with brick dust through which little rivers of perspiration were shining bright pink.

"My assistant will be right behind you as far as you need cover. If the dogs go for you he will use the shotgun, but only if you are in real danger, for it will alert the whole house."

Loiseau's assistant nodded at me. His circular spectacle lenses flashed in the light of the bare bulb, and reflected in them I could see two tiny Loiseaus and a few hundred glinting bottles of wine that were stacked behind me. He broke the breech of the shotgun and checked the cartridges, even though he had only loaded the gun five minutes before.

"Once you are into the house itself, give my assistant your overalls. Make sure you are unarmed and have no compromising papers on you, because once (continued on page 106)Expensive Place to Die(continued from page 88) we come in you might well be taken into custody with the others and it's always possible that one of my more zealous officers might search you. So if there's anything in your pockets that would embarrass you ..."

"There's a miniaturized radio transmitter inside my denture."

"Get rid of it."

"It was a joke."

Loiseau grunted and said, "The switchboard at the Prefecture is being held open from now on"--he checked his watch to be sure he was telling the truth--"so you'll get through very quickly."

"You told the Prefecture?" I asked. I knew that there was bitter rivalry between the two departments. It seemed unlikely that Loiseau would have confided in them.

"Let's say I have friends in the Signals Division," said Loiseau. "Your call will be monitored by us here in the command vehicle on our loop line."*

"I understand," I said.

"Final wall going now," a voice called softly from the next cellar. Loiseau smacked me lightly on the back and I climbed through the small hole that his men had made in the wall.

"Take this," he said. It was a silver pen. thick and clumsily made. "It's a gas gun," explained Loiseau. "Use it at four meters or less but not closer than one, or it might damage the eyes. Pull the bolt back like this and let it go. The recess is the locking slot; that puts it on safety. But I don't think you'd better keep it on safety."

"No," I said, "I'd hate it to be on safety." I stepped into the cellar and picked my way upstairs.

The door at the top of the service flight was disguised as a piece of paneling. Loiseau's assistant followed me. He was supposed to have remained behind in the cellars, but it wasn't my job to reinforce Loiseau's discipline. And anyway, I could use a man with a shotgun.

I stepped out through the door.

One of my childhood books had a photo of a fly's eye magnified 15.000 times. The enormous glass chandelier looked like that eye, glinting and clinking and unwinking above the great formal staircase. I walked across the mirrorlike wooden floor, feeling that the chandelier was watching me. I opened the tall gilded door and peered in. The wrestling ring had disappeared and so had the metal chairs; the salon was like the carefully arranged rooms of a museum: perfect yet lifeless. Every light in the place was shining bright; the mirrors repeated the nudes and nymphs of the gilded stucco and the painted panels.

I guessed that Loiseau's men were moving up through the mouseholed cellars, but I didn't use the phone that was in the alcove in the hall. Instead, I walked across the hall and up the stairs. The rooms that M. Datt used as offices-- where I had been injected--were locked. I walked down the corridor trying the doors. They were all bedrooms. Most of them were unlocked: all of them were unoccupied. Most of the rooms were lavishly rococo with huge four-poster beds under brilliant silk canopies and four or five angled mirrors.

"You'd better phone," said Loiseau's assistant.

"Once I phone, the Prefecture will have this raid on record. I think we should find out a little more first."

"I think----"

"Don't tell me what you think or I'll remind you that you're supposed to have stayed down behind the wainscoting."

"OK," he said. We both tiptoed up the small staircase that joined the first floor to the second. Loiseau's men must be fretting by now. At the top of the flight of steps I put my head round the corner carefully. I put my head everywhere carefully, but I needn't have been so cautious, the house was empty. "Get Loiseau up here," I said.

Loiseau's men went all through the house, tapping paneling and trying to find secret doors. There were no documents or films. At first there seemed to be no secrets of any kind except that the whole place was a kind of secret: the strange cells with the awful torture instruments, rooms made like lush train compartments or Rolls-Royce cars and all kinds of bizarre environments for sexual intercourse--even beds.

The peepholes and the closed-circuit TV were all designed for M. Datt and his "scientific methods." I wondered what strange records he had amassed and where he had taken them, for M. Datt was nowhere to be found. Loiseau swore horribly. "Someone," he said, "must have told Monsieur Datt that we were coming."

Loiseau had been in the house about ten minutes when he called his assistant. He called long and loud from two floors above. When we arrived, he was crouched over a black metal device rather like an Egyptian mummy. It was the size and very roughly the shape of a human body. Loiseau had put cotton gloves on and he touched the object carefully.

"The diagram of the Couzins girl," he demanded from his assistant.

It was obtained from somewhere, a paper pattern of Annie Couzins' body marked in neat red ink show the stab wounds, with the dimensions and depth written near each in tiny careful handwriting.

Loiseau opened the black metal case. "That's it," he said. "Just what I thought." Inside the case, which was just large enough to hold a person, knife points were positioned exactly as indicated on the police diagram. Loiseau gave a lot of orders and suddenly the room was full of men with tape measures, white powder and camera equipment. Loiseau stood back out of their way. "Iron Maidens, I think they call them," he said. "I seem to have read about them in some old schoolboy magazines."

"What made her get into the damn thing?" I said.

"You are naïve," said Loiseau. "When I was a young officer we had so many deaths from knife wounds in brothels that we put a policeman on the door in each one. Every customer was searched. Any weapons he carried were chalked for identity. When the men left, they got them back. I'll guarantee that not one got by that cop on the door, but still the girls got stabbed, fatally sometimes."

"How did it happen?"

"The girls--the prostitutes;--smuggled them in. You'll never understand women."

"No," I said.

"Nor shall I," said Loiseau.

• • •

Saturday was sunny, the light bouncing and sparkling as it does only in impressionist paintings and Paris. The boulevard had been fitted with wall-to-wall sunshine and out of it came the smell of good bread and black tobacco. Even Loiseau was smiling. He came galloping up my stairs at 8:30 A.M. I was surprised; he had never visited me before, at least not when I was at home.

"Don't knock, come in." The radio was playing classical music from one of the pirate radio ships. I turned it off.

"I'm sorry," said Loiseau.

"Everyone's at home to a policeman." I said, "in this country."

"Don't be angry," said Loiseau. "I didn't know you would be in a silk dressing gown, feeding your canary. It's very Noel Coward. If I described this scene as typically English, people would accuse me of exaggerating. You were talking to that canary," said Loiseau. "You were talking to it."

"I try out all my jokes on Joe," I said. "But don't stand on ceremony, carry on ripping the place apart. What are you looking for this time?"

"I've said I'm sorry. What more can I do?"

"You could get out of my decrepit but very expensive apartment and stay out of my life. And you could stop putting your stubby peasant fingers into my supply of coffee beans." "I was hoping you'd offer me some. You have this very light roast that is very rare in France."

"I have a lot of things that are rare in France."

(continued on page 178)Expensive Place To Die(continued from page 106)

"Like the freedom to tell a policeman to 'scram'?"

"Like that."

"Well, don't exercise that freedom until we have had coffee together, even if yon let me buy you some downstairs."

"Oil, boy! Now I know you are on the tap. A cop is really on the make when he wants to pick up the bill for a cup of coffee."

"I've had good news this morning."

"They are restoring public executions."

"On the contrary," said Loiseau, letting my remark roll off him. "There has been a small power struggle among the people from whom I take my orders and at present Datt's friends are on the losing side. I have been authorized to find Datt and his film collection by any means I think fit."

"When does the armored column leave? What's the plan--helicopters and flame throwers and the one that burns brightest must have been carrying a tin of film?"

"You are too hard on the police methods in France. You think we could work with bobbies in pointed helmets carrying wooden sticks, but let me tell you, my friend, we wouldn't last two minutes with such methods. I remember the gangs when I was just a child--my father was a policeman--and most of all I remember Corsica. There were bandits; organized, armed and almost in control of the island. They murdered gendarmes with impunity. They killed policemen and boasted of it openly in the bars. Finally we had to get rough; we sent in a few platoons of the Republican Guard and waged a minor war. Rough, perhaps, but there was no other way. The entire income from all the Paris brothels was at stake. They fought and used every dirty trick they knew. It was war."

"But you won the war."

"It was the very last war we won," Loiseau said bitterly. "Since then, we've fought in Lebanon, Syria, Indochina, Madagascar, Tunisia, Morocco, Suez and Algeria. Yes, that war in Corsica was the last one we won."

"OK. So much for your problems; how do I fit into your plans?"

"Just as I told you before; you are a foreigner and no one would think you were a policeman, you speak excellent French and you can look after yourself. What's more, you would not be the sort of man who would reveal where your instructions came from, not even under pressure."

"It sounds as though you think Datt still has a kick or two left in him."

"They have a kick or two left in them even when they are suspended in space with a rope around the neck. I never underestimate the people I'm dealing with, because they are usually killers when it comes to the finale. Any time I overlook that, it will be one of my policemen who takes the bullet in the head, not me. So I don't overlook it, which means I have a tough, loyal, confident body of men under my command."

"Ok," I said, "so I locate Datt. What then?"

"We can't have another fiasco like last time. Now Datt will be more than ever prepared. I want all his records. I want them because they are a constant threat to a lot of people, including stupid people in the government of my country. I want that film because I loathe blackmail and I loathe blackmailers--they are the filthiest section of the criminal cesspit."

"But so far there's been no blackmail, has there?"

"I'm not standing around waiting for the obvious to happen. I want that stuff destroyed. I don't want to hear that it was destroyed. I want to destroy it myself."

"Suppose I don't want anything to do with it?"

Loiseau splayed out his hands. "One," he said, grabbing one pudgy finger, "you are already involved. Two," he grabbed the next finger, "you are employed by some sort of British government department, from what I can understand. They will be very angry if you turn down this chance of seeing the outcome of this affair."

I suppose my expression changed.

"Oh, it's my business to know these things," said Loiseau. "Three. Maria has decided that you are trustworthy and, in spite of her occasional lapses, I have great regard for her judgment. She is, after all, an employee of the SÛreté."

Loiseau grabbed his fourth digit but said nothing. He smiled. In most people, a smile or a laugh can be a sign of embarrassment, a plea to break the tension. Loiseau's smile was a calm, deliberate smile. "You are waiting for me to threaten you with what will happen if you don't help me." He shrugged and smiled again. "Then you would turn my previous words about blackmail upon me and feel at ease in declining to help. But I won't. You are free to do as you wish in this matter. I am a very unthreatening type."

"For a cop," I said.

"Yes," agreed Loiseau, "a very unthreatening type for a cop." It was true.

"Ok," I said after a long pause. "But don't mistake my motives. Just to keep the record straight, I'm very fond of Maria."

"Can you really believe that would annoy me? You are so incredibly Victorian in these matters: so determined to play the game and keep a stiff upper lip and have the record straight. We do not do things that way in France; another man's wife is fair game for all. Smoothness of tongue and nimbleness of foot are the trump cards; nobleness of mind is the joker."

"I prefer my way."

Loiseau looked at me and smiled his slow, nerveless smile. "So do I," he said.

"Loiseau," I said, watching him carefully, "this clinic of Datt's: Is it run by your Ministry?"

"Don't you start that, too. He's got half Paris thinking he's running that place for us." The coffee was still hot. Loiseau got a bowl out of the cupboard and poured himself some. "He's not connected with us," said Loiseau. "He's a criminal, a criminal with good connections, but still just a criminal."

"Loiseau," I said, "you can't hold Byrd for the murder of the girl."

"Why not?"

"Because he didn't do it, that's why not. I was at the clinic that day. I stood in the hall and watched the girl run through and die. I heard Datt say, 'Get Byrd here.' It was a frame-up."

Loiseau reached for his hat. "Good coffee," he said.

"It was a frame-up, Byrd is innocent."

"So you say. But suppose Byrd had done the murder and Datt said that just for you to overhear? Suppose I told you that we know that Byrd was there? That would put this fellow Kuang in the clear, eh?"

"It might," I said, "if I heard Byrd admit it. Will you arrange for me to see Byrd? That's my condition for helping you."

I expected Loiseau to protest, but he nodded. "Agreed," he said. "I don't know why you worry about him. He's a criminal type if ever I saw one." I didn't answer, because I had a nasty idea that Loiseau was right.

"Very well," said Loiseau. "The bird market at eleven A.M. tomorrow."

"It's Sunday tomorrow," I said.

"All the better, the Palais de Justice is quieter on Sunday." He smiled again. "Good coffee."

"That's what they all say," I said.

• • •

A considerable portion of that large island in the Seine is occupied by the law in one shape or another. There's the Prefecture and the courts, municipal and judicial police offices, cells for remand prisoners and a police canteen. On a weekday, the stairs are crammed with black-gowned lawyers clutching plastic briefcases and scurrying like disturbed cockroaches. But on Sunday the Palais de Justice is silent. The prisoners sleep late and the offices are empty. The only movement is the thin stream of tourists who respectfully peer at the high vaulting of the Sainte Chapelle, clicking and wondering at its unparalleled beauty. Outside in the Place Louis Lépine, a few hundred caged birds twitter in the sunshine and in the trees are wild birds attracted by the spilled seed and commotion. There are sprigs of millet, cuttle-bone and bright new wooden cages, bells to ring, swings to swing on and mirrors to peck at. Old men run their shriveled hands through the seeds, sniff them, discuss them and hold them up to the light as though they were fine vintage burgundies.

The bird market was busy by the time I got there to meet Loiseau. I parked the car opposite the gates of the Palais de Justice and strolled through the market. The clock was striking 11 with a dull dented sound. Loiseau was standing in front of some cages marked Caille Reproductrice. He waved as he saw me. "Just a moment," he said. He picked up a box marked Vitamine Phosphate. He read the label: Biscuits Pour Oiseaux. "I'll have that, too," said Loiseau.

The woman behind the table said, "The mélange saxon is very good: it's the most expensive, but it's the best."

"Just half a liter," said Loiseau.

She weighed the seed, wrapped it carefully and tied the package. Loiseau said, "I didn't see him."

"Why?" I walked with him through the market.

"He's been moved. I can't find out who authorized the move or where he's gone to. The clerk in the records office said Lyon, but that can't be true." Loiseau stopped in front of an old pram full of green millet.

"Why?"

Loiseau didn't answer immediately. He picked up a sprig of millet and sniffed at it. "He's been moved. Some top-level instructions. Perhaps they intend to bring him before some juged'instruction who will do as he's told. Or maybe they'll keep him out of the way while they finish the enquêtes officieuses."*

"You don't think they've moved him away to get him quietly sentenced?"

Loiseau waved to the old woman behind the stall. She shuffled slowly toward us.

"I talk to you like an adult," Loiseau said. "You don't really expect me to answer that, do you? A sprig." He turned and stared at me. "Better make it two sprigs," he said to the woman. "My friend's canary wasn't looking so healthy the last time I saw it."

"Joe's all right," I said. "You leave him alone."

"Suit yourself," said Loiseau. "But if he gets much thinner, he'll be climbing out between the bars of that cage."

I let him have the last word. He paid for the millet and walked between the cliff's of new empty cages, trying the bars and tapping the wooden panels. There were caged birds of all kinds in the market. They were given seed, millet, water and cuttlefish bone for their beaks. Their claws were kept trimmed and they were safe from birds of prey. But it was the birds in the trees that were singing.

*Under French law, the Prefect of Paris Police can arrest, interrogate, inquire, search, confiscate letters in the post, without any authority other than his own. His only obligation is to inform the public prosecutor and bring the prisoner before a magistrate within 24 hours. Note that the magistrate is part of the law machine and not a separate functionary as he is in Britain.

When he is brought before the magistrate--juge d'instruction--the police explain that the man is suspected and the magistrate directs the building up of evidence. (In Britain, of course, the man is not brought before a magistrate until after the police have built up their case.)

Inquiries prior to the appearance before a juge d'instruction are called enquêtes officieuses (informal inquiries). In law, the latter give no power to search or demand statements, but, in practice few citizens argue about this technicality when faced with the police.

• • •

I got back to my apartment about 12. At 12:35 the phone rang. It was Monique, Annie's neighbor. "You'd better come quickly," she said.

"Why?"

"I'm not allowed to say on the phone. There's a fellow sitting here. He won't tell me anything much. He was asking for Annie, he won't tell me anything. Will you come now?"

"Ok," I said.

• • •

It was lunchtime. Monique was wearing an ostrich-feather-trimmed negligee when she opened the door. "The English have got off the boat," she said and giggled. "You'd better come in; the old girl will be straining her earholes to hear, if we stand here talking." She opened the door and showed me into the cramped room. There was bamboo furniture and tables, a plastic-topped dressing table with four swivel mirrors and lots of perfume and cosmetic garnishes. The bed was unmade and a candlewick bedspread had been rolled up under the pillows. A copy of Salut les Copains was in sections and arranged around the deep warm indentation. She went across to the windows and pushed the shutters. They opened with a loud clatter. The sunlight streamed into the room and made everything look dusty. On the table there was a piece of pink wrapping paper; she took a hard-boiled egg from it, rapped the shell open and bit into it.

"I hate summer," she said. "Pimples and parks and open cars that make your hair tangled and rotten cold food that looks like leftovers. And the sun trying to make you feel guilty about being indoors. I like being indoors. I like being in bed; it's no sin, is it, being in bed?"

"Just give me the chance to find out. Where is he?"

"I hate summer."

"So shake hands with Père Noël," I offered. "Where is he?"

"I'm taking a shower. You sit down and wait. You are all questions."

"Yes," I said. "Questions."

"I don't know how you think of all these questions. You must be clever."

"I am," I said.

"Honestly, I wouldn't know where to start. The only questions I ever ask are 'Are you married?' and 'What will you do if I get pregnant?' Even then, I never get told the truth."

"That's the trouble with questions. You'd better stick to answers."

"Oh, I know all the answers."

"Then you must have been asked all the questions."

"I have," she agreed.

She slipped out of the negligee and stood naked for one millionth of a second before disappearing into the bathroom. The look in her eyes was mocking and not a little cruel.

There was a lot of splashing and ohing from the bathroom until she finally reappeared in a cotton dress and canvas tennis shoes, no stockings.

"Water was cold," she said briefly. She walked right through the room and opened her front door. I watched her lean over the balustrade.

"The water's stone cold, you stupid old cow," she shrieked down the stairwell.

From somewhere below, the voice of the old harridan said, "It's not supposed to supply ten people for each apartment, you filthy little whore."

"I have something men want, not like you, you old hag."

"And you give it to them," the harridan cackled back. "The more the merrier."

"Poof!" shouted Monique, and, narrowing her eyes and aiming carefully, she spat over the stairwell. The harridan must have anticipated it, for I heard her cackle triumphantly.

Monique returned to me. "How am I expected to keep clean when the water is cold? Always cold."

"Did Annie complain about the water?"

"Ceaselessly, but she didn't have the manner that brings results. I get angry. If she doesn't give me hot water, I shall drive her into her grave, the dried-up old bitch. I'm leaving here, anyway," she said.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I'm moving in with my regular. Montmartre. It's an awful district, but it's larger than this, and anyway, he wants me."

"What's he do for a living?"

"He does the clubs, he's--don't laugh--he's a conjurer. It's a clever trick he does: He takes a singing canary in a large cage and makes it disappear. It looks fantastic. Do you know how he does it?"

"No."

"The cage folds up. That's easy, it's a trick cage. But the bird gets crushed. Then when he makes it reappear, it's just another canary that looks the same. It's an easy trick, really, it's just that no one in the audience suspects that he would kill the bird each time in order to do the trick."

"But you guessed."

"Yes. I guessed the first time I saw it done. He thought I was clever to guess. As I said, 'How much does a canary cost? Three francs, four at the very most.' It's clever, though, isn't it; you've got to admit it's clever."

"It's clever," I said, "but I like canaries better than I like conjurers."

"Silly," Monique laughed disbelievingly. " 'The incredible Count Szell,' he calls himself."

"So you'll be a countess?"

"It's his stage name, silly." She picked up a pot of face cream. "I'll be just another stupid woman who lives with a married man."

She rubbed cream into her face.

"Where is he?" I finally asked. "Where's this fellow that you said was sitting here?" I was prepared to hear that she'd invented the whole thing.

"In the café on the corner. He's all right there. He's reading his American newspapers. He's all right."

"I'll go and talk to him."

"Wait for me." She wiped the cream away with a tissue and turned and smiled. "Am I all right?"

"You're all right," I told her.

• • •

The café was on the Boul' Mich, the very heart of the Left Bank. Outside in the bright sun sat the students; hirsute and earnest, they have come from Munich and Los Angeles, sure that Hemingway and Lautrec are still alive and that someday in some Left Bank café they will find them. But all they ever find are other young men who look exactly like themselves, and it's with this sad discovery that they finally return to Bavaria or California and become salesmen or executives. Meanwhile, here they sat in the hot seat of culture, where businessmen became poets, poets became alcoholics, alcoholics became philosophers and philosophers realized how much better it was to be businessmen.

Hudson. I've got a good memory for faces. I saw Hudson as soon as we turned the corner. He was sitting alone at a café table holding his paper in front of his face while studying the patrons with interest. I called to him.

"Jack Percival," I called. "What a great surprise."

The American hydrogen research man looked surprised, but he played along very well for an amateur. We sat down with him. My back hurt from the rough-house in the discothèque. It took a long time to get served, because the rear of the café was full of men with tightly wadded newspapers trying to pick themselves a winner instead of eating. Finally I got the waiter's attention. "Three grandes crèmes," I said. Hudson said nothing else until the coffees arrived.

"What about this young lady?" Hudson asked. He dropped sugar cubes into his coffee as though he were suffering from shock. "Can I talk?"

"Sure," I said. "There are no secrets between Monique and me." I leaned across to her and lowered my voice. "This is very confidential, Monique," I said. She nodded and looked pleased. "There is a small plastic bead company with its offices in Grenoble. Some of the holders of ordinary shares have sold their holdings out to a company that this gentleman and I more or less control. Now, at the next shareholders' meeting we shall----"

"Give over," said Monique. "I can't stand business talk."

"Well, run along, then," I said, granting her her freedom with an understanding smile.

"Could you buy me some cigarettes?" she asked.

I got two packets from the waiter and wrapped a 100-franc note round them. She trotted off down the street with them like a dog with a juicy bone.

"It's not about your bead factory," he said.

"There is no bead factory," I explained.

"Oh!" He laughed nervously. "I was supposed to have contacted Annie Couzins," he said.

"She's dead."

"I found that out for myself."

"From Monique?"

"You are T. Davis?" he asked suddenly.

"With bells on," I said and passed my resident's card to him.

An untidy man with a constantly smiling face walked from table to table winding up toys and putting them on the tables. He put them down everywhere until each table had its twitching mechanical figures bouncing through the knives, table mats and ashtrays. Hudson picked up the convulsive little violin player. "What's this for?"

"It's on sale," I said.

He nodded and put it down. "Everything is," he said.

He returned my resident's card to me.

"It looks all right," he agreed. "Anyway, I can't go back to the Embassy, they told me that most expressly, so I'll have to put myself in your hands. I'm out of my depth, to tell you the truth."

"Go ahead."

"I'm an authority on hydrogen bombs and I know quite a bit about all the work on the nuclear program. My instructions are to put certain information about fallout dangers at the disposal of a Monsieur Datt. I understand he is connected with the Red Chinese government."

"And why are you to do this?"

"I thought you'd know. It's such a mess. That poor girl being dead. Such a tragedy. I did meet her once. So young, such a tragic business. I thought they would have told you all about it. You were the only other name they gave me, apart from her, I mean. I'm acting on U.S. Government orders, of course."

"Why would the U. S. Government want you to give away fallout data?" I asked him. He sat back in the cane chair till it creaked like elderly arthritic joints. He pulled an ashtray near him.

"It all began with the Bikini atoll nuclear tests," he began. "The Atomic Energy Commission was taking a lot of criticism about the dangers of fallout, the biological result upon wildlife and plants. The AEC needed those tests and did a lot of follow-through testing on the sites, trying to prove that the dangers were not anything like as great as many alarmists were saying. I have to tell you that those alarmists were damn nearly right. A dirty bomb of about twenty-five megatons would put down about 15,000 square miles of lethal radioactivity. To survive that, you would have to stay underground for months, some say even a year or more.

"Now, if we were involved in a war with Red China, and I dread the thought of such a thing, then we would have to use the nuclear fallout as a weapon, because only ten percent of the Chinese population lives in large--quarter-million-size--towns. In the U. S. A. more than half the population lives in the large towns. China, with its dispersed population, can only be knocked out by fallout ..." He paused. "But knocked out it can be. Our experts say that about half a billion people live on one fifth of China's land area. The prevailing wind is westerly. Four hundred bombs would kill fifty million by direct heat-blast effect, one hundred million would be seriously injured, though they wouldn't need hospitalization, but three hundred and fifty million would die by wind-borne fallout.

"The AEC minimized the fallout effects in their follow-through reports on the tests--Bikini, etc. Now the more militant of the Chinese soldier-scientists are using the U. S. reports to prove that China can survive a nuclear war. We couldn't withdraw those reports, or say that they were untrue--not even slightly untrue--so I'm here to leak the correct information to the Chinese scientists. The whole operation began nearly eight months ago. It took a long time getting this girl Annie Couzins into position."

"In the clinic near to Datt."

"Exactly. The original idea was that she should introduce me to this man Datt and say I was an American scientist with a conscience."

"That's a piece of CIA thinking if ever I heard one."

"You think it's an extinct species?"

"It doesn't matter what I think, but it's not a line that Datt will buy easily."

"If you are going to start changing the plan now ..."

"The plan changed when the girl was killed. It's a mess; the only way I can handle it is my way."

"Very well," said Hudson. He sat silent for a moment.

Behind me, a man with a rucksack said, "Florence. We hated Florence."

"We hated Trieste," said a girl.

"Yes," said the man with the rucksack, "my friend hated Trieste last year."

"My contact here doesn't know why you are in Paris," I said suddenly. I tried to throw Hudson, but he took it calmly.

"I hope he doesn't," said Hudson. "It's all supposed to be top secret. I hated to come to you about it, but I've no other contact here."

"You're at the Lotti Hotel."

"How did you know?"

"It's stamped across your Tribune in big blue letters."

He nodded. I said, "You'll go to the Hotel Ministère right away. Don't get your baggage from the Lotti. Buy a toothbrush or whatever you want on the way back now." I expected to encounter opposition to this idea, but Hudson welcomed the game.

"I get you," he said. "What name shall I use?"

"Let's make it Potter," I said. He nodded. "Be ready to move out at a moment's notice. And, Hudson, don't telephone or write any letters; you know what I mean. Because I could become awfully suspicious of you."

"Yes," he said.

"I'll put you in a cab," I said, getting up to leave.

"Do that, their Metro drives me crazy."

I walked up the street with him toward the cab rank. Suddenly he dived into an optician's. I followed.

"Ask him if I can look at some spectacles," he said.

"Show him some spectacles," I told the optician. He put a case full of tortoise-shell frames on the counter.

"He'll need a test," said the optician. "Unless he has his prescription, he'll need a test."

"You'll need a test or a prescription," I told Hudson.

He had sorted out a frame he liked. "Plain glass," he demanded.

"What would I keep plain glass around for?" said the optician.

"What would he keep plain glass for?" I said to Hudson.

"The weakest glass possible, then," said Hudson.

"The weakest possible," I said to the optician. He fixed the lenses in in a moment or so. Hudson put the glasses on and we resumed our walk toward the taxi. He peered around him myopically and was a little unsteady.

"Disguise," said Hudson.

"I thought perhaps it was," I said.

"I would have made a good spy," said Hudson. "I've often thought that."

"Yes," I said. "Well, there's your cab. I'll be in touch. Check into the Ministère. I've written the name down on my card, they know me there. Try not to attract attention. Stay inside."

"Where's the cab?" said Hudson.

"If you'll take off those bloody glasses," I said, "you might be able to see."

• • •

I went round to Maria's in a hurry. When she opened the door, she was wearing riding breeches and a rollneck pullover. "I was about to go out," she said.

"I need to see Datt," I said.

"Why do you tell me that?"

I pushed past her and closed the door behind us. "Where is he?"

She gave me a twitchy little ironical smile while she thought of something crushing to say. I grabbed her arm and let my fingertips bite. "Don't fool about with me, Maria. I'm not in the mood. Believe me, I would hit you."

"I've no doubt about it."

"You told Datt about Loiseau's raid on the place in the Avenue Foch. You have no loyalties, no allegiance, none to the SÛreté, none to Loiseau. You just give away information as though it were toys out of a bran tub."

"I thought you were going to say I gave it away as I did my sexual favors." She smiled again.

"Perhaps I was."

"Did you remember that I kept your secret without giving it away? No one knows what you truly said when Datt gave you the injection."

"No one knows yet. I suspect that you are saving it up for something special."

She swung her hand at me, but I moved out of range. She stood for a moment, her face twitching with fury.

"You ungrateful bastard," she said. "You're the first real bastard I've ever met."

I nodded. "There's not many of us around. Ungrateful for what?" I asked her. "Ungrateful for your loyalty? Was that what your motive was: loyalty?"

"Perhaps you're right," she admitted quietly. "I have no loyalty to anyone. A woman on her own becomes awfully hard. Datt is the only one who understands that. Somehow, I didn't want Loiseau to arrest him." She looked up. "For that and many reasons."

"Tell me one of the other reasons."

"Datt is a senior man in the S.D.E.C.E., that's one reason. If Loiseau clashed with him, Loiseau could only lose."

"Why do you think Datt is an S. D. E. C. E. man?"

"Many people know. Loiseau won't believe it, but it's true."

"Loiseau won't believe it because he has got too much sense. I've checked up on Datt. He's never had anything to do with any French intelligence unit. But he knew how useful it was to let people think so."

She shrugged. "I know it's true," she said. "Datt works for the S. D. E. C. E."

I took her shoulders. "Look, Maria. Can't you get it through your head that he's a phony? He has no psychiatry diploma, has never had anything to do with the French government except that he pulls strings among his friends and persuades even people like you who work for the SÛreté that he's a highly placed agent of S. D. E. C. E."

"And what do you want?" she asked.

"I want you to help me find Datt."

"Help," she said. "That's a new attitude. You come bursting in here making, your demands. If you'd come in here asking for help, I might have been more sympathetic. What is it you want with Datt?"

"I want Kuang; he killed the girl at the clinic that day. I want to find him."

"It's not your job to find him."

"You are right. It's Loiseau's job, but he is holding Byrd for it and he'll keep on holding him."

"Loiseau wouldn't hold an innocent man. Poof, you don't know what a fuss he makes about the sanctity of the law and that sort of thing."

"I am a British agent," I said. "You know that already, so I'm not telling you anything new. Byrd is, too."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not. I'd be the last person to be told, anyway. He's not someone whom I would contact officially. It's just my guess. I think Loiseau has been instructed to hold Byrd for the murder--with or without evidence--so Byrd is doomed unless I push Kuang right into Loiseau's arms."

Maria nodded.

"Your mother lives in Flanders. Datt will be at his house nearby, right?" Maria nodded. "I want you to take an American out to your mother's house and wait there till I phone."

"She hasn't got a phone."

"Now, now, Maria," I said. "I checked up on your mother: She has a phone. Also, I phoned my people here in Paris. They will be bringing some papers to your mother's house. They'll be needed for crossing the border. No matter what I say, don't come over to Datt's without them."

Maria nodded. "I'll help. I'll help you pin that awful Kuang, I hate him."

"And Datt, do you hate him, too?"

She looked at me searchingly. "Sometimes, but in a different sort of way," she said. "You see, I'm his illegitimate daughter. Perhaps you checked up on that, too?"

• • •

The road was straight. It cartel nothing for geography, geology or history. The oil-slicked highway dared children and divided neighbors. It speared small villages through their hearts and laid them open. It was logical that it should be so straight, and yet it was obsessive, too. Carefully lettered signs--the names of villages and the times of Holy Mass--and then the dusty clutter of houses flicked past with seldom any sign of life. At Le Cateau I turned off the main road and picked my way through the small country roads, saw the sign Plaisir ahead and slowed. This was the place I wanted.

The main street of the village was like something out of Zane Grey, heavy with the dust of passing vehicles. None of them stopped. The street was wide enough for four lanes of cars, but there was very little traffic. Plaisir was on the main road to nowhere. Perhaps a traveler who had taken the wrong road at St. Quentin might pass through Plaisir trying to get back onto the Paris--Brussels road. Some years back, when they were building the auto route, heavy lorries had passed through, but none of them had stopped at Plaisir.

Today it was hot, scorching hot. Four mangy dogs had scavenged enough food and now were asleep in the center of the roadway. Every house was shuttered tight, gray and dusty in the cruel biting midday light that gave them only a narrow rim of shadow.

I stopped the car near a petrol pump, an ancient, handle-operated instrument bolted uncertainly onto a concrete pillar. I got out and thumped upon the garage doors, but there was no response. The only other vehicle in sight was an old tractor parked a few yards ahead. On the other side of the street a horse stood, tethered to a piece of rusty farm machinery, flicking its tail against the flies. I touched the engine of the tractor: It was still warm. I hammered the garage doors again, but the only movement was the horse's tail. I walked down the silent street, the stones hot against my shoes. One of the dogs, its left ear missing, scratched itself awake and crawled into the shade of the tractor. It growled dutifully at me as I passed, then subsided into sleep. A cat's eyes peered through a window full of aspidistra plants. Above the window, faintly discernible in the weathered woodwork, I read the word "Café." The door was stiff and opened noisily. I went in.

There were half a dozen people standing at the bar. They weren't talking and I had the feeling that they had been watching me since I left the car. They stared at me.

"A red wine," I said. The old woman behind the bar looked at me without blinking. She didn't move.

"And a cheese sandwich," I added. She gave it another minute before slowly reaching for a wine bottle, rinsing a glass and pouring me a drink, all without moving her feet. I turned around to face the room. The men were mostly farm workers, their boots heavy with soil and their faces engraved with ancient dirt. In the corner, a table was occupied by three men in suits and white shirts. Although it was long past lunchtime, they had napkins lucked into their collars and were putting forkfuls of cheese into their pink mouths, honing their knives across the bread chunks and pouring draughts of red wine into their throats after it. They continued to eat. They were the only people in the room not looking at me except for a muscular man seated at the back of the room, his feet propped upon a chair, placing the cards of his patience game with quiet confidence. I watched him peel each card loose from the pack, stare at it with the superior impartiality of a computer and place it face up on the marble tabletop. I watched him play for a minute or so, but he didn't look up.

It was a dark room; the only light entering it filtered through the jungle of plants in the window. On the marble-topped tables there were drip mats advertising aperitifs; the mats had been used many times. The bar was brown with varnish and above the rows of bottles was an old clock that had ticked its last at 3:37 on some long-forgotten day. There were old calendars on the walls, a broken chair had been piled neatly under the window and the floor boards squealed with each change of weight. In spite of the heat of the day, three men had drawn their chairs close to a dead stove in the center of the room. The body of the stove had cracked, and from it cold ash had spilled onto the floor. One of the men tapped his" pipe against the stove. More ash poured out like the sands of time.

"I'm looking for Monsieur Datt," I said to the whole room. "Which is his house?"

There was not even a change of expression. Outside I heard the sudden yelp of a frightened dog. From the corner came the regular click of playing cards striking the marble. There was no other sound.

I said, "I have important news for him. I know he lives somewhere in the village." I moved my eyes from face to face, searching for a flicker of comprehension; there was none. Outside, the dogs began to fight. It was a ragged, vicious sound: low growls and sudden shrieks of pain.

"This is Plaisir?" I asked. There was no answer. I turned to the woman behind the bar. "Is this the village of Plaisir?" She half smiled.

"Another carafe of red," called one of the men in white shirts.

The woman behind the bar reached for a liter bottle of wine, poured a carafe of it and pushed it down the counter. The man who had asked for it walked across to the counter, his napkin stuck in his collar, a fork still in his hand. He seized the carafe by the neck and returned to his seat. He poured a glass of wine for himself and took a large gulp. With the wine still in his mouth, he leaned back in his chair, raised his eyes to mine and let the wine trickle into his throat. The dogs began fighting again.

"They are getting vicious," said the man. "Perhaps we should do away with one of them."

"Do away with them all," I said. He nodded.

I finished my drink. "Three francs," said the woman.

"What about a cheese sandwich?"

"We sell only wine."

I put three new francs on the counter-top. The man finished his patience game and collected the dog-eared cards. He drank his glass of red wine and carried the empty glass and the greasy pack of cards to the counter. He put them both down and laid two 20-old-franc pieces on top, then he wiped his hands on the front of his work jacket and stared at me for a moment. His eyes were quick and alert. He turned toward the door.

"Are you going to tell me how to get to Monsieur Datt's house?" I asked the woman again.

"We only sell wine," she said, scooping up the coins. I walked out into the hot midday sun. The man who had been playing patience walked slowly across to the tractor. He was a tall man, better nourished and more alert than the local inhabitants, perhaps 30 years old, walking like a horseman. When he reached the petrol pump, he whistled softly. The door opened immediately and an attendant came out.

"Ten liters."

The attendant nodded. He inserted the nozzle of the pump into the tank of the tractor, unlocked the handle and then rocked it to pump the spirit out. I watched them close to, but neither looked round. When the needle pointed to ten liters, he stopped pumping and replaced the nozzle. "See you tomorrow," said the tall man. He did not pay. He threw a leg over the tractor seat and started the motor. There was an ear-splitting racket as it started. He let out the clutch too quickly and the big wheels slid in the dust for an instant before biting into the pavé and roaring away, leaving a trail of blue smoke. The one-eared dog awoke again as the sound and hot sun hit it and went bounding up the road barking and snapping at the tractor wheels. That awoke the other dogs and they, too, began to bark. The tall man leaned over his saddle like an Apache scout and caught the dog under its only ear with a wooden stick. It sang a descant of pain and retired from the chase. The other dogs, too, lost heart, their energy sapped by the heat. The barking ended raggedly.

"I'm thinking of driving to the Datt house," I said to the pump attendant.

He stared after the tractor. "He'll never learn," he said. The dog limped back into the shade of the petrol pump. The attendant turned to face me. "Some dogs are like that," he said. "They never learn."

"If I drive to the Datt house, I'll need twenty liters of the best."

"Only one kind," said the man.

"I'll need twenty liters if you'll be kind enough to direct me to the Datt place."

"You'd better fill her up," said the man. He raised his eyes to mine for the first time. "You're going to need to come back, aren't you?"

"Right," I said. "And check the oil and water." I took a ten-franc note from my pocket. "That's for you," I said. "For your trouble."

"I'll look at the battery, too," he said.

"I'll commend you to the tourist board," I said. He nodded. He look the pump nozzle and filled the tank; he opened up the radiator cap with a cloth and then rubbed the battery.

"Everything's OK," he said. I paid him for the petrol.

"Are you going to check the tires?"

He kicked one of them. "They'll do you. It's only down the road. Last house before the church. They are waiting for you."

"Thanks," I said, trying not to look surprised. Down the long straight road I watched the bus come, trailed by a cloud of dust. It stopped in the street outside the café. The customers came out to watch. The driver climbed onto the roof of the bus and got some boxes and cases down. One woman had a live chicken, another a bird cage. They straightened their clothes and stretched their limbs.

"More visitors," I said.

He stared at me and we both looked toward the bus. The passengers finished stretching themselves and got back aboard again. The bus drove away, leaving just four boxes and a bird cage in the street. I glanced toward the café and there was a movement of eyes. It may have been the cat watching the fluttering of the caged bird; it was that sort of cat.

• • •

The house was the last one in the street, if you call endless high railings and walls a street. I stopped outside the gates; there was no name or bellpull. Beyond the house a small child attending two tethered goats stared at me for a moment and ran away. Near the house was a copse and half concealed in it a large gray square concrete block; one of the Wehrmacht's indestructible contributions to European architecture.

A nimble little woman rushed to the gates and tugged them open. The house was tall and narrow and not particularly beautiful, but it was artfully placed in about 20 acres of ground. To the right, the kitchen garden sloped down to two large glass houses. Beyond the house there was a tiny park where statues hid behind trees like gray stone children playing tag, and in between, there were orderly rows of fruit trees and an enclosure where laundry could just be glimpsed flapping in the breeze.

I drove slowly past a grimy swimming pool where a beach ball and some icecream wrappers floated. Tiny flies flickered close to the surface of the water. Around the rim of the pool there was some garden furniture: armchairs, stools and a table with a torn parasol. The woman puffed along with me. I recognized her now as the woman who had injected me. I parked in a paved yard, and she opened the side door of the house and ushered me through a large airy kitchen. She snapped a gas tap en passant, flipped open a drawer, dragged out a white apron and tied it around her without slowing her walk. The floor of the main hall was stone flags, the walls were whitewashed and upon them were a few swords, shields and ancient banners. There was little furniture: an oak chest, some forbidding chairs, and tables bearing large vases lull of freshly cut flowers. Opening off the hall there was a billiard room. The lights were on and the brightly colored balls lay transfixed upon the green baize like a pop-art tableau.

The little woman hurried ahead of me, opening doors, waving me through, sorting among a bundle of large keys, locking each door and then darting around me and hurrying on ahead. Finally, she showed me into the lounge. It was soft and florid after the stark austerity of the rest of the house. There were four sofas with huge floral patterns, plants, knick-knacks, antique cases full of antique plates, silver-framed photos, a couple of bizarre modern paintings in primary colors and a kidney-shaped bar trimmed in golden tin and plastic. Behind the bar were bottles of drink and arranged along the bartop, some bartender's implements: strainers, shakers and ice buckets.

"I'm delighted to see you," said Monsieur Datt.

"That's good."

He smiled engagingly. "How did you find me?"

"A little bird told me."

"Damn those birds," said Datt, still smiling. "But no matter, the shooting season begins soon, doesn't it?"

"You could be right."

"Why not sit down and let me get you a drink. It's damned hot, I've never known such weather."

"Don't get ideas," I said. "My boys will come on in if I disappear for too long."

"Such crude ideas you have. And yet, I suppose the very vulgarity of your mind is its dynamic. But have no fear, you'll not have drugged food or any of that nonsense. On the contrary, I hope to prove to you how very wrong your whole notion of me is." Fie reached toward a bevy of cut-glass decanters. "What about Scotch whisky?"

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing at all."

"You're right." He walked across to the window. I followed him.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. We are both ascetics."

"Speak for yourself," I said. "I like a bit of self-indulgence now and again."

The windows overlooked a courtyard, its ivy-covered walls punctuated by the strict geometry of white shutters. There was a dovecot and white doves marched and countermarched across the cobbles.

There was a hoot at the gate, then into the courtyard drove a large Citroën ambulance, Clinique De Paradis, it said along the side under the big red cross. It was very dusty, as though it had made a long journey. Out of the driver's seat climbed Jean-Paul; he tooted the horn.

"It's my ambulance," said Datt.

"Yes," I said, "Jean-Paul driving."

"He's a good boy," said Datt.

"Let me tell you what I want," I said hurriedly.

Datt made a movement with his hand. "I know why you are here. There is no need to explain anything." He eased himself back into an armchair.

"How do you know I've not come to kill you?" I asked.

"My dear man. There is no question of violence, for many reasons."

"For instance?"

"Firstly, you are not a man to use gratuitous violence. You would only employ violent means when you could see the course of action that the violence made available to you. Secondly, we are evenly matched, you and I. Weight for weight, we are evenly matched."

"So are a swordfish and an angler, but one is sitting strapped into an armchair and the other is being dragged through the ocean with a hook in his mouth."

"Which am I?"

"That's what I am here to discover."

"Then begin, sir."

"Get Kuang."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean get Kuang, K. U. A. N. G. Get him here."

Datt changed his mind about the drink; he poured himself a glass of wine and sipped it. "I won't deny he's here," he said finally.

"Then why not get him?"

He pressed a buzzer and the maid came in. "Get Monsieur Kuang," he said.

The old woman went away quietly and came back with Kuang. He was wearing gray-flannel trousers, open-neck shirt and a pair of dirty white tennis shoes. He poured himself a large Perrier water from the bar and sat down in an armchair with his feet sprawled sideways over the arm. "Well?" he said to me.

"I'm bringing you an American hydrogen expert to talk to."

Kuang seemed unsurprised. "Petty, Barnes, Bertram or Hudson?"

"Hudson."

"Excellent, he's a top man."

"I don't like it," said Datt.

"You don't have to like it," I said. "If Kuang and Hudson want to talk a little, it's nothing to do with you." I turned to Kuang. "How long will you want with him?"

"Two hours," said Kuang. "Three at the most, less if he has written stuff with him."

"I believe he will have," I said. "He's all prepared."

"I don't like it," Datt complained.

"Be quiet," said Kuang. He turned to me. "Are you working for the Americans?"

"No," I said. "I'm acting for them, just this one operation."

Kuang nodded. "That makes sense; they wouldn't want to expose one of their regular men."

I bit my lip in anger. Hudson had, of course, been acting on American instructions, not on his own initiative. It was a plan to expose me so that the CIA could keep their own men covered. Clever bastards. Well, I'd grin and bear it and try to get something out of it.

"That's right," I agreed.

"So you are not bargaining."

"I'm not getting paid," I said, "if that's what you mean."

"How much do you want?" asked Kuang wearily. "But don't get big ideas."

"We'll sort it out after you've seen Hudson."

"A most remarkable display of faith," said Kuang. "Did Datt pay you for the incomplete set of documents you let us have?"

"No," I said.

"Now that our cards are on the table, I take it you don't really want payment."

"That's right," I said.

"Good," said Kuang. He hooked his legs off the arm of the chair and reached for some ice from the silver bucket. Before pouring himself a whiskey, he pushed the telephone across to me.

Maria was waiting near the phone when I called her. "Bring Hudson here," I said. "You know the way."

"Yes," said Maria. "I know the way."

• • •

Kuang went out to get ready for Hudson. I sat down again in a hard chair. Datt noticed me wince.

"You have a pain in the spine?"

"Yes," I said. "I did it in a discothèque."

"Those modern dances are too strenuous for me," said Datt.

"This one was too strenuous for me," I said. "My partner had brass knuckles."

Datt knelt down at my feet, took off my shoe and probed at my heel with his powerful fingers. He felt my ankle bone and tut-tutted, as though it had been designed all wrong. Suddenly he plunged his fingers hard into my heel. "Ahh," he said, but the word was drowned by my shout of pain. Kuang opened the door and looked at us.

"Are you all right?" Kuang asked.

"He's got a muscular contraction," said Datt. "It's acupuncture," he explained to me. "I'll soon get rid of that pain in your back."

"Ouch," I said. "Don't do it if it's going to make me lame for life."

Kuang retreated back to his room. Datt inspected my foot again and pronounced it ready.

"It should get rid of your pain," he said. "Rest for half an hour in the chair."

"It is a bit better," I admitted.

"Don't be surprised," said Datt, "the Chinese have practiced these arts for centuries; it is a simple matter, a muscular pain."

"You practice acupuncture?" I asked.

"Not really, but I have always been interested," said Datt. "The body and the mind. The interaction of two opposing forces: body and mind, emotion and reason, the duality of nature. My ambition has always been to discover something new about man himself." He settled back into his chair. "You are simple. I do not say that as a criticism, but rather in admiration. Simplicity is the most sought-after quality in both art and nature, but your simplicity encourages you to see the world around you in black-and-white terms. You do not approve of my inquiry into human thoughts and actions. Your puritan origin, your Anglo-Saxon breeding make it sinful to inquire too deeply into ourselves."

"But you don't inquire into yourself, you inquire into other people."

He leaned back and smiled. "My dear man, the reason that I collect information, compile dossiers and films and recordings and probe the personal secrets of a wide range of important men is two-fold: Primarily because important men control the fate of the world and I like to feel that in my small way I influence such men. Secondarily, I have devoted my life to the study of mankind. I love people; I have no illusions about them, it's true, but that makes it much easier to love them. I am ceaselessly amazed and devoted to the strange convoluted workings of their devious minds, their rationalizations and the predictability of their weaknesses and failings. That's why I became so interested in the sexual aspect of my studies. At one time I thought I understood my friends best when I watched them gambling: their avarice, kindness and fear were so much in evidence when they gambled. I was a young man at the time. I lived in Hanoi and I saw the same men every day in the same clubs. I liked them enormously. It's important that you believe that." He looked up at me.

I shrugged. "I believe it."

"I liked them very much and I wished to understand them better. For me, gambling could never hold any fascination: dull, repetitive and trivial. But it did unleash the deepest emotions. I got more from seeing their reactions to the game than from playing. So I began to keep dossiers on all my friends. There was no malign intent; on the contrary, it was expressly in order to understand and like them better that I did it."

"And did you like them better?"

"In some ways. There were disillusions, of course, but a man's failings are so much more attractive than his successes--any woman will tell you that. Soon it occurred to me that alcohol was providing more information to the dossiers than gambling. Gambling showed me the hostilities and the fears, but drink showed me the weaknesses. It was when a man felt sorry for himself that one saw the gaps in the armor. See how a man gets drunk and you will know him--I have told so many young girls that: See your man getting drunk and you will know him. Does he want to pull the blankets over his head or go out into the street and start a riot? Does he want to be caressed or to commit rape? Does he find everything humorous, or threatening? Does he feel the world is secretly mocking him, or does he throw his arms around a stranger's shoulders and shout that he loves everyone?"

"Yes. It's a good indication."

"But there were even better ways to reach deep into the subconscious, and now I wanted not only to understand people but also to try planting ideas in their heads. If only I could have a man with the frailty and vulnerability of drunkenness but without the blurriness and loss of memory that drink brought, then I would have a chance of really improving my dossiers. How I envied the women who had access to my friends in their most vulnerable--postcoital triste--condition. Sex, I decided, was the key to man's drives and postsex was his most vulnerable state. That's how my methods evolved."

I relaxed now that Datt had become totally involved in his story. I suppose he had been sitting out here in this house, inactive and musing about his life and what had led to this moment of supreme power that he was now enjoying so much. He was unstoppable, as so many reserved men are once explanations start burbling out of them.

"Eight hundred dossiers I have now, and many of them are analyses that a psychiatrist would be proud of."

"Are you qualified to practice psychiatry?" I asked.

"Is anyone qualified to practice it?"

"No," I said.

"Precisely," said Datt. "Well, I am a little better able than most men. I know what can be done, because I have done it. Done it eight hundred times. Without a staff, it would never have developed at the same rate. Perhaps the quality would have been even higher had I done it all myself, but the girls were a vital part of the operation."

"The girls actually compiled the dossiers?"

"Maria might have been able to if she'd worked with me longer. The girl that died--Annie Couzins--was intelligent enough, but she was not temperamentally suited to the work. At one time I would work only with girls with qualifications in law or engineering or accountancy, but to find girls thus qualified and also sexually alluring is difficult. I wanted girls who would understand. With the more stupid girls I had to use recording machines, but the girls who understood produced the real results."

"The girls didn't hide the fact that they understood?"

"At first. I thought--as you do now--that men would be afraid and suspicious of a woman who was clever, but they aren't, you see. On the contrary, men like clever women. Why does a husband complain, 'My wife doesn't understand me' when he goes running off with another woman? Why, because what he needs isn't sex, it's someone to talk to."

"Can't he talk to the people he works with?"

"He can, but he's frightened of them. The people he works with are after his job, on the watch for weakness."

"Just as your girls are."

"Exactly, but he does not understand that."

"Eventually he does, surely?"

"By then he no longer cares--the therapeutic aspect of the relationship is clear to him."

"You blackmail him into cooperating?"

Datt shrugged. "I might have, had it ever proved necessary, but it never has. By the time a man has been studied by me and the girls for six months, he needs us."

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand," said Datt patiently, "because you persist in regarding me as some malign monster feeding on the blood of my victims." Datt held up his hands. "What I did for these men was helpful to them. I worked day and night, endless sessions to help them understand themselves: their motives, their aspirations, their weaknesses and strengths. The girls, too, were intelligent enough to be helpful and reassuring. All the people that I have studied have become better personalities."

"Will become," I corrected. "That's the promise you hold out to them."

"In some cases, not all."

"But you have tried to increase their dependency upon you. You have used your skills to make these people think they need you."

"You are splitting hairs. All psychiatrists must do that. That's what the word 'transference' means."

"But you have a hold over them. These films and records: They demonstrate the type of power you want."

"They demonstrate nothing. The films, etc., are nothing to me. I am a scientist, not a blackmailer. I have merely used the sexual activities of my patients as a short cut to understanding the sort of disorders they are likely to have. A man reveals so much when he is in bed with a woman: It's this important element of release. It's common to all the activities of the subject. He finds release in talking to me, which gives him freedom in his sexual appetites. Greater and more varied sexual activity release in turn a need to talk at greater length."

"So he talks to you."

"Of course he does. He grows more and more free, and more and more confident."

"But you are the only person he can boast to."

"Not boast, exactly, talk. He wishes to share this new, stronger, better life that he has created."

"That you have created for him."

"Some subjects have been kind enough to say that they lived at only ten percent of their potential until they came to my clinic." M. Datt smiled complacently. "It's vital and important work showing men the power they have within their own minds if they merely take courage enough to use it."

"You sound like one of those small ads from the back pages of skin magazines. The sort that's sandwiched between acne cream and Peeping Tom binoculars."

"Honi soit qui mal y pense. I know what I am doing."

I said, "I really believe you do, but I don't like it."

"Mind you," he said urgently, "don't think for one moment I'm a Freudian. I'm not. Everyone thinks I'm a Freudian because of this emphasis on sex. I'm not."

"You'll publish your results?" I asked.

"The conclusions, possibly, but not the case histories."

"It's the case histories that are the important factor," I said.

"To some people," said Datt. "That's why I have to guard them so carefully!"

"Loiseau tried to get them."

"But he was a few minutes too late." Datt poured himself another small glass of wine, measured its clarity and drank a little. "Many men covet my dossiers, but I guard them carefully. This whole neighborhood is under surveillance. I knew about you as soon as you stopped for fuel in the village."

The old woman knocked discreetly and entered. "A car with Paris plates--it sounds like Madame Loiseau--coming through the vlilage."

Datt nodded. "Tell Robert I want the Belgian plates on the ambulance and the documents must be ready. Jean-Paul can help him. No, on second thought, don't tell Jean-Paul to help him. I believe they don't get along too well." The old woman said nothing. "Yes, well, that's all."

Datt walked across to the window and as he did so, there was the sound of tires crunching on gravel.

"It's Maria's car," said Datt.

"And your back-yard Mafia didn't stop it?"

"They are not there to stop people," explained Datt. "They are not collecting entrance money, they are there for my protection."

"Did Kuang tell you that?" I said. "Perhaps those guards are there to stop you getting out?"

"Poof," said Datt, but I knew I had planted a seed in his mind. "I wish she'd brought the boy with her."

I said. "It's Kuang who's in charge. He didn't ask you before agreeing to my bringing Hudson here."

"We have our areas of authority," said Datt. "Everything concerning data of a technical kind--of the kind that Hudson can provide--is Killing's province." Suddenlyhe flushed with anger. "Why should I explain such things to you?"

"I thought you were explaining them to yourself," I said.

Datt changed the subject abruptly. "Do you think Maria told Loiseau where I am?"

"I'm sure she didn't," I said. "She has a lot of explaining to do the next time she sees Loiseau. She has to explain why she warned you about his raid on the clinic."

"That's true," said Datt. "A clever man, Loiseau. At one time I thought you were his assistant."

"And now?"

"Now I think you are his victim, or soon will be."

I said nothing. Datt said, "Whoever you work for, you run alone. Loiseau has no reason to like you. He's jealous of your success with Maria--she adores you, of course. Loiseau pretends he's after me, but you are his real enemy. Loiseau is in trouble with his department; he might have decided that you could be the scapegoat. He visited me a couple of weeks ago, wanted me to sign a document concerning you. A tissue of lies, but cleverly riddled with half-truths that could prove bad for you. It needed only my signature. I refused."

"Why didn't you sign?"

M. Datt sat down opposite me and looked me straight in the eye. "Not because I like you particularly. I hardly know you. It was because I had given you that injection when I first suspected that you were an agent provocateur sent by Loiseau. If I treat a person, he becomes my patient. I become responsible for him. It is my proud boast that if one of my patients committed even a murder, he could come to me and tell me, in confidence. That's my relationship with Kuang. I must have that sort of relationship with my patients--Loiseau refuses to understand that. I must have it." He stood up suddenly and said, "A drink--and now I insist. What shall it be?"

The door opened and Maria came in, followed by Hudson and Jean-Paul. Maria was smiling, but her eyes were narrow and tense. Her old rollneck pullover and riding breeches were stained with mud and wine. She looked tough and elegant and rich. She came into the room quietly and aware, like a cat sniffing and moving stealthily, on the watch for the slightest sign of things hostile or alien. She handed me the packet of documents: three passports, one for me, one for Hudson, one for Kuang. There were some other papers inside, money and some cards and envelopes that would prove I was someone else. I put them in my pocket without looking at them.

"I wish you'd brought the boy," said M. Datt to Maria. She didn't answer. "What will you drink, my good friends? An aperitif, perhaps?" He called to the woman in the white apron, "We shall be seven to dinner, but Mr. Hudson and Mr. Kuang will dine separately in the library. And take Mr. Hudson into the library now," he added. "Mr. Kuang is waiting there."

"And leave the door ajar," I said affably.

"And leave the door ajar," said M. Datt.

Hudson smiled and gripped his briefcase tight under his arm. He looked at Maria and Jean-Paul, nodded and withdrew without answering. I got up and walked across to the window, wondering if the woman in the white apron was sitting in at dinner with us, but then I saw the dented tractor parked up close behind Maria's car. The tractor driver was here. With all that room to spare, the tractor needn't have boxed both cars tight against the wall.

• • •

"Read the greatest thinkers of the 18th Century," M. Datt was saying, "and you'll understand what the Frenchman still thinks about women." The soup course was finished and the little woman--dressed now in a maid's formal uniform--collected the dishes. "Don't stack them," M. Datt whispered loudly to her. "That's how they get broken. Make two journeys; a well-trained maid never stacks plates." He poured a glass of white wine for each of us. "Diderot thought they were merely courtesans, Montesquieu said they were pretty children. For Rousseau they existed only as an adjunct to man's pleasure and for Voltaire they didn't exist at all."

He pulled the side of smoked salmon toward him and sharpened the long knife.

Jean-Paul smiled knowingly. He was more nervous than usual. He patted the white starched cuff that artfully revealed the Carrier watch and fingered the small disk of adhesive plaster that covered a razor nick on his chin.

Maria said, "France is a land where men command and women obey. 'Elle me plaît' is the greatest compliment a woman can expect from men; they mean she obeys. How can anyone call Paris a woman's city? Only a prostitute can have a serious career there. It took two world wars to give Frenchwomen the vote."

Datt nodded. He removed the bones and the salmon's smoke-hard surface with two long sweeps of the knife. He brushed oil over the fish and began to slice it, serving Maria first. Maria smiled at him.

Just as an expensive suit wrinkles in a different way from a cheap one, so did the wrinkles in Maria's face add to her beauty rather than detract from it. I stared at her, trying to understand her better. Was she treacherous, or was she exploited, or was she, like most of us, both?

"It's all very well for you, Maria," said Jean-Paul. "You are a woman with wealth, position, intelligence," he paused, "and beauty ..."

"I'm glad you added beauty," she said, still smiling.

Jean-Paul looked toward M. Datt and me. "That illustrates my point. Even Maria would sooner have beauty than brains. When I was eighteen--ten years ago--I wanted to give the women I loved the things I wanted for myself: respect, admiration, good food, conversation, wit and even knowledge. But women despise those things. Passion is what they want, intensity of emotion. The same trite words of admiration repeated over and over again. They don't want good food--women have poor palates--and witty conversation worries them. What's worse, it diverts attention away from them. Women want men who are masterful enough to give them confidence, but not cunning enough to outwit them. They want men with plenty of faults so that they can forgive them. They want men who have trouble with the little things in life; women excel at little things. They remember little tilings, too; there is no occasion in their lives, from confirmation to eightieth birthday, when they can't recall every stitch they wore." He looked accusingly at Maria.

Maria laughed. "That part of your tirade, at least, is true."

M. Datt said, "What did you wear at your confirmation?"

"White silk, high-waisted dress, plain-front white silk shoes and cotton gloves that I hated." She reeled it off.

"Very good," said M. Datt and laughed. "Although I must say, Jean-Paul, you are too hard on women. Take that girl Annie who worked for me. Her academic standards were tremendous..."

"Of course," said Maria, "women leaving universities have such trouble getting a job that anyone enlightened enough to employ them is able to demand very high qualifications."

"Exactly," said M. Datt. "Most of the girls I've ever used in my research were brilliant. What's more, they were deeply involved in the research tasks. Just imagine ill at the situation had required men employees to involve themselves sexually with patients. In spite of paying lip service to promiscuity, men would have given me all sorts of puritanical reasons why they couldn't do it. These girls understood that it was a vital part of their relationship with patients. One girl was a mathematical genius, and yet such beauty. Truly remarkable."

Jean-Paul said, "Where is this mathematical genius now? I would dearly appreciate her advice. Perhaps I could improve my technique with women."

"You couldn't," said Maria. She spoke clinically, with no emotion showing. "Your technique is all too perfect. You flatter women to saturation point when you first meet them. Then, when you decide the time is right, you begin to undermine their confidence in themselves. You point out their shortcomings rather cleverly and sympathetically until they think that you must be the only man who would deign to be with them. You destroy women by erosion because you hate them."

"No," Jean-Paul said. "I love women. I love all women too much to reject so many by marrying one." He laughed.

"Jean-Paul feels it is his duty to make himself available to every girl from fifteen to fifty," said Maria quietly.

"Then you'll soon be outside my range of activity," said Jean-Paul.

The candles had burned low and now their light came through the straw-colored wine and shone golden on face and ceiling.

Maria sipped at her wine. No one spoke. She placed the glass on the table and then brought her eyes up to Jean-Paul's. "I'm sorry for you, Jean-Paul," she said.

The maid brought the fish course to the table and served it: sole dieppoise, the sauce dense with shrimps and speckled with parsley and mushrooms, the bland smell of the fish echoed by the hot butter. The maid retired, conscious that her presence had interrupted the conversation. Maria drank a little more wine, and as she put the glass down, she looked at Jean-Paul.

He didn't smile. When she spoke, her voice was mellow and any trace of bitterness had been removed by the pause.

"When I say I'm sorry for you, Jean-Paul, with your endless succession of lovers, you may laugh at me. But let me tell you this: The shortness of your relationships with women is due to a lack of flexibility in you. You are not able to adapt, change, improve, enjoy new things each day. Your demands are constant and growing narrower. Everyone else must adapt to you, never the other way about.

"Marriages break up for this same reason--my marriage did and it was at least half my fault: Two people become so set in their ways that they become vegetables. The antithesis of this feeling is to be in love. I fell in love with you, Jean-Paul. Being in love is to drink in new ideas, new feelings, smells, tastes, new dances--even the air seems to be different in flavor. That's why infidelity is such a shock. A wife set in the dull, lifeless pattern of marriage is suddenly liberated by love, and her husband is terrified to see the change take place, for just as I felt ten years younger, so I saw my husband as ten years older."

Jean-Paul said, "And that's how you now see me?"

"Exactly. It's laughable how I once worried that you were younger than me. You're not younger than me at all. You are an old fogy. Now that I no longer love you, I can see that. You are an old fogy of twenty-eight and I am a young girl of thirty-two."

"You bitch."

"My poor little one. Don't be angry. Think of what I tell you. Open your mind. Open your mind and you will discover what you want so much: how to be eternally a young man."

Jean-Paul looked at her. He wasn't as angry as I would have expected. "Perhaps I am a shallow and vain fool," he said. "But when I met you, Maria, I truly loved you. It didn't last more than a week, but for me it was real. It was the only time in my life that I truly believed myself capable of something worth while. You were older than me, but I liked that. I wanted you to show me the way out of the stupid labyrinth life I led. You are highly intelligent and you, I thought, could show me the solid good reasons for living. But you failed me, Maria. Like all women, you are weak-willed and indecisive. You can be loyal only for a moment to whoever is near you. You have never made one objective decision in your life. You have never really wanted to be strong and free. You have never done one decisive thing that you truly believed in. You are a puppet, Maria, with many puppeteers, and they quarrel over who shall operate you." His final words were sharp and bitter and he stared hard at Datt.

"Children," Datt admonished. "Just as we were all getting along so well together."

jean-Paul smiled a tight, film-star smile. "Turn off your charm," he said to Datt. "You always patronize me."

"If I've done something to give offense ..." said Datt. He didn't finish the sentence but looked around at his guests, raising his eyebrows to show how difficult it was to even imagine such a possibility.

"You think you can switch me on and off as you please," said Jean-Paul. "You think you can treat me like a child; well, you can't. Without me, you would be in big trouble now. If I had not brought you the information about Loiseau's raid upon your clinic, you would be in prison now."

"Perhaps," said Datt, "and perhaps not."

"Oh, I know what you want people to believe," said Jean-Paul. "I know you like people to think, you are mixed up with the S. D. E. C. E. and secret departments of the government, but we know better. I saved you. Twice. Once with Annie, once with Maria."

"Maria saved me," said Datt, "if anyone did."

"Your precious daughter," said Jean-Paul, "is good for only one thing." He smiled. "And what's more, she hates you. She said you were foul and evil; that's how much she wanted to save you before I persuaded her to help."

"Did you say that about me?" Datt asked Maria, and even as she was about to reply, he held up his hand. "No, don't answer. I have no right to ask you such a question. We all say things in anger that later we regret." He smiled at Jean-Paul. "Relax, my good friend, and have another glass of wine."

Datt filled Jean-Paul's glass, but Jean-Paul didn't pick it up. Datt pointed the neck of the bottle at it. "Drink." He picked up the glass and held it to Jean-Paul. "Drink and say that these black thoughts are not your truly considered opinion of old Datt, who has done so much for you."

Jean-Paul brought the flat of his hand round in an angry sweeping gesture. Perhaps he didn't like to be told that he owed Datt anything. He sent the full glass flying across the room and swept the bottle out of Datt's hands. It slid across the table, felling the glasses like ninepins and Hooding the cold blond liquid across the linen and cutlery. Datt stood up, awkwardly dabbing at his waistcoat with a table napkin. Jean-Paul stood up, too. The only sound was of the wine, still chug-chugging out of the bottle.

"Salaud!" said Datt. "You attack me in my own home! You casse-pieds! You insult me in front of my guests and assault me when I offer you wine!" He dabbed at himself and threw the wet napkin across the table as a sign that the meal would not continue. The cutlery jangled mournfully. "You will learn," said Datt. "You will learn here and now."

Jean-Paul finally understood the hornet's nest he had aroused in Datt's brain. His face was set and defiant, but you didn't have to be an amateur psychologist to know that if he could set the clock back ten minutes, he'd rewrite his script.

"Don't touch me," Jean-Paul said. "I have villainous friends just as you do, and my friends and I can destroy you, Datt. I know all about you, the girl Annie Couzins and why she had to be killed. There are a few diings you don't know about that story. There are a few more things that the police would like to know, too. Touch me, you fat old swine, and you'll die as surely as the girl did." He looked around at us all. His forehead was moist with exertion and anxiety. He managed a grim smile. "Just touch me, just try ... !

Datt said nothing, nor did any one of us. Jean-Paul gabbled on until his steam ran out. "You need me," he finally said to Datt, but Datt didn't need him anymore and there was no one in the room who didn't know it.

"Robert!" shouted Datt. I don't know if Robert was standing in the sideboard or in a crack in the floor, but he certainly came in fast. Robert was the tractor driver who had slapped the one-eared dog. He was as tall and broad as Jean-Paul, but there the resemblance ended: Robert was teak against Jean-Paul's papier-mâché.

Right behind Robert was the woman in the white apron. Now that they were standing side by side, you could see a family resemblance: Robert was clearly the woman's son. He walked forward and stood before Datt like a man waiting to be given a medal. The old woman stood in the doorway with a 12-bore shotgun held steady in her fists. It was a battered old relic, the butt was scorched and stained and there was a patdi of rust around the muzzle as though it had been propped in a puddle. It was just the sort of thing that might be kept around the hall of a country house for dealing with rats and rabbits: an ill-finished, mass-production job without styling or finish. It wasn't at all the sort of gun I'd want to be shot with. That's why I remained very, very still.

Datt nodded toward me, and Robert moved in and brushed me lightly but efficiently. "Nothing," he said. Robert walked over to Jean-Paul. In Jean-Paul's suit he found a 6.35 Mauser automatic. He sniffed it and opened it, spilled the bullets out into his hand and passed the gun, magazine and bullets to Datt. Datt handled them as though they were some kind of virus. He reluctantly dropped them into his pocket.

"Take him away, Robert," said Datt. "He makes too much noise in here. I can't bear people shouting." Robert nodded and turned upon Jean-Paul. He made a movement of his chin and a clicking noise of the sort that encourages horses. Jean-Paul buttoned his jacket carefully and walked to the door.

"We'll have the meat course now," Datt said to the woman. She smiled with more deference than humor and withdrew backward, muzzle last.

"Take him out, Robert," repeated Datt.

"Maybe you think you don't," said Jean-Paul earnestly, "but you'll find ..." His words were lost as Robert pulled him gently through the door and closed it.

"What are you going to do to him?" asked Maria.

"Nothing, my dear," said Datt. "But he's become more and more tiresome. He must be taught a lesson. We must frighten him, it's for the good of all of us."

"You're going to kill him," said Maria.

"No, my clear." He stood near the fireplace and smiled reassuringly.

"You are, I can feel it in the atmosphere."

Datt turned his back on us. He toyed with the clock on the mantelpiece. He found the key for it and began to wind it up. It was a noisy ratchet.

Maria turned to me. "Are they going to kill him?" she asked.

"I think they are," I said.

She went across to Datt and grabbed his arm. "You mustn't," she said. "It's too horrible. Please don't. Please, Father, please don't, if you love me." Datt put his arm around her paternally, but said nothing.

"He's a wonderful person," Maria said. She was speaking of Jean-Paul. "He would never betray you. Tell him," she asked me, "he must not kill Jean-Paul."

"You mustn't kill him," I said.

"You must make it more convincing than that," said Datt. He patted Maria. "If our friend here can tell us a way to guarantee his silence, some other way, then perhaps I'll agree."

He waited, but I said nothing. "Exactly," said Datt.

"But I love him," said Maria.

"That can make no difference," said Datt. "I'm not a plenipotentiary from God. I've got no halos or citations to distribute. He stands in the way--not of me but of what I believe in; he stands in the way because he is spiteful and stupid. I do believe, Maria, that even if it were you, I'd still do the same."

Maria stopped being a suppliant. She had that icy calm that women take on just before using their nails.

"I love him," said Maria. That meant that he should never be punished for anything except infidelity. She looked at me. "It's your fault for bringing me here."

Datt heaved a sigh and left the room.

"And your fault that he's in danger," she said.

"OK," I said, "blame me if you want to. On my color soul, the stains don't show."

"Can't you stop them?" she said.

"No," I told her, "it's not that sort of film."

Her face contorted as though cigar smoke was getting in her eyes. It went squashy and she began to sob. She didn't cry. She didn't do that mascara-respecting display of grief that winkles teardrops out of the eyes with the corner of a tiny lace handkerchief while watching the whole thing in a well-placed mirror. She sobbed and her face collapsed. The mouth sagged, and the flesh puckered and wrinkled like blowtorched paintwork. Ugly sight, and ugly sound.

"He'll die," she said in a strange little voice.

I don't know what happened next. I don't know whether Maria began to move before the sound of the shot or after; just as I don't know whether Jean-Paul had really lunged at Robert, as Robert later told us. But I was right behind Maria as she opened the door. A .45 is a big pistol. The first shot had hit the dresser, ripping a hole in the carpentry and smashing half a dozen plates. They were still falling as the second shot fired. I heard Datt shouting about his plates and saw Jean-Paul spinning drunkenly like an exhausted whipping top. He fell against the dresser, supporting himself on his hand, and stared at me popeyed with hate and grimacing with pain, his cheeks bulging as though he were looking for a place to vomit. He grabbed at his white shirt and tugged it out of his trousers. He wrenched it so hard that the buttons popped and pinged away across the room. He had a great bundle of shirt in his hand now and he stuffed it into his mouth like a conjurer doing a trick called "how to swallow my white shirt." Or how to swallow my pink-dotted shirt. How to swallow my pink shirt, my red and, finally, dark-red shirt. But he never did the trick. The cloth fell away from his mouth and his blood poured over his chin, painting his teeth pink and dribbling down his neck and ruining his shirt. He knelt upon the ground as if to pray, but his face sank to the floor and he died without a word, his ear flat against the ground, as if listening for hoofbeats pursuing him to another world.

He was dead. It's difficult to wound a man with a .45. You either miss him or you blow him in half.

The legacy the dead leave us are life-size effigies that only slightly resemble their former owners. Jean-Paul's bloody body only slightly resembled him: its thin lips pressed together and the small circular plaster just visible on his chin.

Robert was stupefied. He was staring at the gun in horror. I stepped over to him and grabbed the gun away from him. I said, "You should be ashamed," and Datt repeated that.

The door opened suddenly and Hudson and Kuang stepped into the kitchen. They looked down at the body of Jean-Paul. He was a mess of blood and guts. No one spoke, they were waiting for me. I remembered that I was the one holding the gun. "I'm taking Kuang and Hudson and I'm leaving," I said. Through the open door to the hall I could see into the library, its table covered with their scientific documents: photos, maps and withered plants with large labels on them.

"Oh no you don't," said Datt.

"I have to return Hudson intact, because that's my part of the deal. The information he's given Kuang has to be got back to the Chinese government or else it wasn't much good delivering it. So I must take Kuang, too."

"I think he's right," said Kuang. "It makes sense, what he says."

"How do you know?" said Datt. "I'm arranging your movements, not this fool; how can we trust him? He admits this task is for the Americans."

"It makes sense," said Kuang again. "Hudson's information is genuine, I can tell: It fills out what I learned from that incomplete set of papers you passed to me last week. If the Americans want me to have the information, then they must want it to be taken back home."

"Can't you see that they might want to capture you for interrogation?" said Datt.

"Rubbish!" I interrupted. "I could have arranged that at any time in Paris without risking Hudson out here in the middle of nowhere."

"They are probably waiting down the road," said Datt. "You could be dead and buried in five minutes. Out here in the middle of the country, no one would hear, no one would see the diggings."

"I'll take that chance," said Kuang. "If he can get Hudson into France on false papers, he can get me out."

I watched Hudson, fearful that he would say I'd done no such thing, but he nodded sagely and Kuang seemed reassured.

"Come with us," said Hudson, and Kuang nodded agreement. The two scientists seemed to be the only ones in the room with any mutual trust.

I was reluctant to leave Maria, but she just waved her hand and said she'd be all right. She couldn't take her eyes off Jean-Paul's body.

"Cover him, Robert," said Datt.

Robert took a tablecloth from a drawer and covered the body. "Go," Maria called again to me. and then she began to sob. Datt put his arm around her and pulled her close. Hudson and Kuang collected their data and then, still waving the gun around, I showed them out and followed.

As we went across the hall, the old woman emerged carrying a heavily laden tray. She said, "There's still the poulet sauté chasseur."

"Vive le sport," I said.

This is the first publication of a new spy thriller by the author of "The Spcress File" copyright © 1967 by Vico Patentverwertungs. Und Vermogensverwaltungs Ges. M. B. H.

Each table in the café had its twitching mechanical figures bouncing through the silverware. The American nuclear expert picked up one and asked what it was for. "Its on sale," I replied. He nodded, put it down and said, "Everything is."

This is the third installment of a new novel by Len Deighton. The conclusion will appear next month.