An Expensive Place To Die

Conclusion of a new novel

Synopsis: It began on one of those bright spring days in Paris. London had a job for me, the Embassy courier explained, and it involved two things. First, I had to do a little inquiring into the affairs of a certain Monsieur Datt, who operated a fashionable psychiatric clinic in the Avenue Foch. Second, I was to make sure that some highly secret documents on nuclear fallout got stolen from me. So, there were two moves--but I didn't know the rules of the game or even the names of the other players.

I began to find out. As soon as I started to ask questions about Datt, a number of people developed an interest in me. There was SÛrèt Chief Inspector Loiseau, who gave me a stiff hands-off warning; there was Maria Chauvet, the girl with the green eye shadow, who took me to a party at the clinic. There was Datt himself, who trapped me, then had me drugged and interrogated--a disaster retrieved only when Maria purposely mistranslated my answers. There was Jean-Paul, the painter, who stole the secret papers I'd planted; there was Annie Couzins, the model who stumbled out of the clinic nude and bleeding one day to die in the street from a score of stab wounds. Finally, there was my English friend Byrd, who, according to the police, was her murderer.

The complex game seemed to be heading for one sort of climax when the police dug a tunnel from the street into the cellars of Datt's clinic--with me, unwillingly, leading the way in. The place was deserted--but we did come across the murder weapon, an Iron Maiden, the kind you read about in stories of medieval torture chambers.

When I met Inspector Loiseau again, he told me that his main objective was to get hold of a collection of film. For a long time, Datt had been secretly photographing the sexual activities in the clinic's private rooms. It was a perfect blackmail weapon against some highly important people. But my immediate interest was in getting Byrd cleared of the murder charge--a job made no easier because the police weren't telling where they'd put him.

And then there was Hudson: according to the newspapers, an American tourist who had suddenly vanished in Paris--but he was far more than that. He was a top American nuclear scientist. I met him through Monique, one of the clinic girls, and I found him sitting in a sidewalk café. What he told me began to shed some light on the bigger strategy and the stakes of the game. American testing in the Pacific had shown an unexpectedly high level of fall out--it was a far dirtier bomb than ever reported by the AEC, whose understated public reports had given satisfaction to the belligerent wing of the Chinese Communist leadership. As they saw it, China could start a nuclear war, survive and win. Thus, the fallout documents with their gruesome facts had to be leaked to Peking.

I arranged to keep Hudson under cover; I got Maria to promise to bring him quietly to Datt's country house for a meeting with the Chinese scientist Kuang-t'ien. I went on ahead by myself.

When I inquired in the dusty little village for the whereabouts of Datt's house, I got only a surly silence at first--but when I found it, Datt was wailing for me. Jean-Paul, driving an ambulance, arrived shortly thereafter. I got down to business by asking for Kuang and, when Datt produced him, I phoned Maria to bring Hudson round. In the meantime, Datt entertained me with a long discussion of his motives and his philosophy--all of the films and recordings he'd made at the clinic were part of an attempt to analyze human psychology through sexual behavior.

After Maria arrived, Hudson went off for a private talk with Kuang. The rest of us sat down to a fairly elaborate dinner. The food was good, but the conversation turned ugly--Maria announced that she'd definitely fallen out of love with Jean-Paul. He turned on Datt and began to threaten him. There were, he said, a few things about Datt and Annie Couzins' murder that hadn't been told yet. "You need me," Jean-Paul said. But he was exactly what Datt didn't need.

One of Datt's handymen took Jean-Paul into the kitchen. They shot him there, after the fish course and before the meat. When he was hit, Jean-Paul pulled his white shirt from his trousers and began to stuff it into his mouth. It looked like a magician's trick: how to swallow a white shirt; how to swallow a pink-dotted shirt; how to swallow a dark-red shirt. But he never finished the trick.

I had to leave. I had to get Hudson and Kuang out of France.

From the garage we took the camionette--a tiny gray corrugated-metalvan--because the roads of France are full of them. I had to change gear constantly for the small motor, and the tiny headlights did no more than probe the hedgerows. It was a cold night and I envied the warm grim-faced occupants of the big Mercs and Citroens that roared past us with just a tiny peep of the horn to tell us they had done so.

Kuang seemed perfectly content to rely upon my skill to get him out of France. He leaned well back in the hard upright seat, folded his arms and closed his eyes, as though performing some Oriental contemplative ritual. Now and again he spoke. Usually it was a request for a cigarette.

The frontier was little more than a formality. The Paris office had done us proud: three good British passports--although the photo of Hudson was a bit dodgy--over £25 in small notes (Belgian and French), and some bills and receipts to correspond to each passport. I breathed more easily after we were through. I'd made a deal with Loiseau, so he'd guaranteed no trouble, but I still breathed more easily after we'd gone through.

Hudson lay flat upon some old blankets in the rear. Soon he began to snore. Kuang spoke:

"Are we going to a hotel or are you going to blow one of your agents to shelter me?"

"This is Belgium," I said. "Going to a hotel is like going to a police station."

"What will happen to him?"

"The agent?" I hesitated. "He'll be pensioned off. It's bad luck, but he was the next due to be blown."

"Age?"

"Yes," I said.

"And you have someone better in the area?"

"You know we can't talk about that," I said.

"I'm not interested professionally," said Kuang. "I'm a scientist. What the British do in France or Belgium is nothing to do with me, but if we are blowing this man, I owe him his job."

"You owe him nothing," I said. "What the hell do you think this is? He'll be blown because it's his job, just as I'm conducting you because that's my job. I'm not doing it as a favor. You owe no one anything, so forget it. As far as I'm concerned, you are a parcel."

Kuang inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then removed it from his mouth with his long, delicate fingers and stubbed it into the ashtray. I imagined him killing Annie Couzins. Passion or politics? He rubbed the tobacco shreds from his fingertips like a pianist practicing trills.

As we passed through the tightly shuttered villages, the rough pave' hammered the suspension and bright-eyed cats glared into our lights and fled. One a little slower than the others had been squashed as flat as an ink blot. Each successive set of wheels contributed a new pattern to the little tragedy that morning would reveal.

I had the camionette going at its top speed. The needles were still and the loud noise of the motor held a constant note. Everything was unchanging except a brief fusillade of loose gravel or the sudden smell of tar or the beep of a faster car.

"We are near Ypres," said Kuang.

"This was the Ypres salient," I said.

Hudson asked for a cigarette. He must have been awake for some time. "Ypres," said Hudson as he lit the cigarette. "Was that the site of a World War One battle?"

"One of the biggest," I said. "There's scarcely an Englishman that didn't have a relative die here. Perhaps a piece of Britain died here, too."

Hudson looked out of the rear windows of the van. "It's quite a place to die," he said.

• • •

Across the Ypres salient the dawn sky was black and getting lower and blacker, like a Bulldog Drummond ceiling. It's a grim region, like a vast ill-lit military depot that goes on for miles. Across country go the roads; narrow slabs of concrete not much wider than a garden path, and you have the feeling that to go off the edge is to go into bottomless mud. It's easy to go around in circles and even easier to imagine that you are.

Every few yards there are the beady-eyed green-and-white notices that point the way to military cemeteries where regiments of blanco-white headstones parade. Death pervades the topsoil, but untidy little farms go on operating, planting their cabbages right up to Private Of The West Riding--Known Only To God. The living cows and dead soldiers share the land and there are no quarrels. Now in the hedges evergreen plants were laden with tiny red berries, as though the ground were sweating blood. I stopped the car. Ahead was Passchendaele, a gentle upward slope.

"Which way were your soldiers facing?" Kuang said.

"Up the slope," I said. "They advanced up the slope, sixty pounds on their backs and machine guns down their throats."

Kuang opened the window and threw his cigarette butt onto the road. There was an icy gust of wind.

"It's cold," said Kuang. "When the wind drops, it will rain."

Hudson leaned close to the window again. "Oh, boy," he said, "trench warfare here," and shook his head when no word came. "For them it must have seemed like forever."

"For a lot of them it was forever," I said. "They are still here."

"In Hiroshima even more died," said Kuang.

"I don't measure death by numbers," I said.

"Then it's a pity you were so careful not to use your atom bomb on the Germans or Italians," said Kuang.

I started the motor again to get some heat in the car, but Kuang got out and stamped around on the concrete roadway. He did not seem to mind the cold wind. He picked up a chunk of the shiny, clay-heavy soil peculiar to this region, studied it and then broke it up and threw it aimlessly across the field of cabbages.

"Are we expecting to rendezvous with another car?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You must have been very confident that I would come with you."

"Yes," I said. "I was. It was logical."

Kuang nodded. "Can I have another cigarette?" I gave him one.

"We're early," complained Hudson.

"That's a sure way to attract attention."

"Hudson fancies his chances as a secret agent," I said to Kuang.

"I don't take to your sarcasm," said Hudson.

"Well, that's real old-fashioned bad luck, Hudson," I said, "because you are stuck with it."

Gray clouds rushed across the salient. Here and there old windmills--static in spite of the wind--stood across the skyline, like crosses waiting for someone to be nailed upon them. Over the hill came a car with its headlights on.

They were 30 minutes late. Two men in a Renault 16, a man and his son. They didn't introduce themselves; in fact, they didn't seem keen to show their faces at all. The older man got out of the car and came across to me. He spat ùpon the road and cleared his throat.

"You two get into the other car. The American stays in this one. Don't speak to the boy." He smiled and gave a short, croaky, mirthless laugh. "In fact, don't speak to me, even. There's a large-scale map in the dashboard. Make sure that's what you want." He gripped my arm as he said it. "The boy will take the camionette and dump it somewhere near the Dutch border. The American stays in this car. Someone will meet them at the other end. It's all arranged."

Hudson said to me, "Going with you is one thing, but taking off into the blue with this kid is another. I think I can find my own way . . ."

"Don't think about it," I told him.

"We just follow the directions on the label. Hold your nose and swallow." Hudson nodded.

We got out of the car and the boy came across, slowly detouring around us as though his father had told him to keep his face averted. The Renault was nice and warm inside. I felt in the glove compartment and found not only a map but a pistol.

"No prints," I called to the Fleming. "Make sure there's nothing else, no sweet wrappers or handkerchiefs."

"Yes," said the man. "And none of those special cigarettes that are made specially for me in one of those exclusive shops in Jermyn Street." He smiled sarcastically. "He knows all that." His accent was so thick as to be almost unintelligible. I guessed that normally he spoke Flemish and the French was not natural to him. The man spat again in the roadway before climbing into the driver's seat alongside us. "He's a good boy," the man said. "He knows what to do." By the time he got the Renault started, the camionette was out of sight.

I'd reached the worrying stage of the journey. "Did you take notes?" I asked Kuang suddenly. He looked at me without answering. "Be sensible," I said. "I must know if you are carrying anything that would need to be destroyed. I know there's the box of stuff Hudson gave you." I drummed upon it. "Is there anything else?"

"A small notebook taped to my leg. It's a thin book. I could be searched and they would not find it."

I nodded. It was something more to worry about.

The car moved at high speed over the narrow concrete lanes. Soon we turned onto the wider main road that led north to (continued on page 108) Expensive Place to Die (continued from page 102) Ostend. We had left the overfertilized salient behind us. The fearful names--Tyne Cot, St. Julien, Poelcapelle, Westerhoek and Pilckem--faded behind us as they had faded from memory, for 50 years had passed and the women who had wept for the countless dead were also dead. Time and TV, frozen food and transistor radios had healed the wounds and filled the places that once seemed unfillable.

"What's happening?" I said to the driver. He was the sort of man who had to be questioned or else he would offer no information.

"His people," he jerked his head toward Kuang, "want him in Ostend. Twenty-three hundred hours tonight at the harbor. I'll show you on the city plan."

"Harbor? What's happening? Is he going aboard a boat tonight?"

"They don't tell me things like that," said the man. "I'm just conducting you to my place to see your case officer, then on to Ostend to see his case officer. It's all so bloody boring. My wife thinks I get paid because it's dangerous, but I'm always telling her: I get paid because it's so bloody boring. Tired?" I nodded. "We'll make good time, that's one advantage; there's not much traffic about at this time of morning. There's not much commercial traffic if you avoid the intercity routes."

"It's quiet," I said. Now and again small flocks of birds darted across the sky, their eyes seeking food in the hard morning light, their bodies weakened by the cold night air.

"Very few police," said the man. "The cars keep to the main roads. It will rain soon and the cyclists don't move much when it's raining. It'll be the first rain for two weeks."

"Stop worrying," I said. "Your boy will be all right."

"He knows what to do," the man agreed.

• • •

The Fleming owned a hotel not far from Ostend. The car turned into a covered alley that led to a cobbled courtyard. A couple of hens squawked as we parked, and a dog howled. "It's difficult," said the man, "to do anything clandestine around here."

He was a small, broad man with sallow skin that would always look dirty, no matter what he did to it. The bridge of his nose was large and formed a straight line with his forehead, like the nose metal of a medieval helmet. His mouth was small and he held his lips tight to conceal his bad teeth. Around his mouth were scars of the sort that you get when thrown through a windscreen. He smiled to show me it was a joke rather than an apology, and the scars made a pattern around his mouth like a tightened hair net.

The door from the side entrance of the hotel opened and a woman in a black dress and white apron stared at us.

"They have come," said the man.

"So I see," she said. "No luggage?"

"No luggage," said the man. She seemed to need some explanation, as though we were a man and a girl trying to book a double room.

"They need to rest, ma jolie môme," said the man. She was no one's pretty child, but the compliment appeased her for a moment.

"Room four," she said.

"The police have been?"

"Yes," she said.

"They won't be back until night," said the man to us. "Perhaps not then, even. They check the book. It's for the taxes more than to find criminals."

"Don't use all the hot water," said the woman. We followed her through the yellow peeling side door into the hotel entrance hall. There was a counter made of carelessly painted hardboard and a rack with eight keys hanging from it. The lino had the large square pattern that's supposed to look like inlaid marble; it curled at the edges and something hot had indented a perfect circle near the door.

"Name?" said the woman grimly, as though she were about to enter us in the register.

"Don't ask," said the man. "And they won't ask our name." He smiled as though he had made a joke and looked anxiously at his wife, hoping that she would join in. She shrugged and reached behind her for the key. She put it down on the counter very gently, so she could not be accused of anger.

"They'll need two keys, Sybil." She scowled at him. "They'll pay for the rooms," he said.

"We'll pay," I said. Outside, the rain began. It bombarded the window and rattled the door as though anxious to get in.

She slammed the second key down upon the counter. "You should have taken it and dumped it," said the woman angrily. "Rik could have driven these two back here."

"This is the important stage," said the man.

"You lazy pig," said the woman. "If the alarm is out for the car and Rik gets stopped driving it, then we'll see which is the important stage."

The man didn't answer, nor did he look at me. He picked up the keys and led the way up the creaky staircase. "Mind the handrail," he said. "It's not fixed properly yet."

"Nothing is," called the woman after us. "The whole place is only half built."

He showed us into our rooms. They were cramped and rather sad, shining with yellow plastic and smelling of quick-drying paint. Through the wall I heard Kuang swish back the curtain, put his jacket on a hanger and hang it up. There was the sudden chug-chug of the water pipe as he filled the washbasin. The man was still behind me, hanging on as if waiting for something. I put my finger to my eye and then pointed toward Kuang's room; the man nodded. "I'll have the car ready by twenty-two hundred hours. Ostend isn't far from here."

"Good," I said. I hoped he would go, but he stayed there.

"We used to live in Ostend," he said. "My wife would like to go back there. There was life there. The country is too quiet for her." He fiddled with the broken bolt on the door. It had been painted over but not repaired. He held the pieces together, then let them swing apart.

I stared out of the window; it faced southwest, the way we had come. The rain continued and there were puddles in the roadway and the fields were muddy and windswept. Sudden gusts had knocked over the pots of flowers under the crucifix and the water running down the gutters was bright red with the soil it had carried from somewhere out of sight.

"I couldn't let the boy bring you," the man said. "I'm conducting you. I couldn't let someone else do that, not even family." He rubbed his face hard, as if he hoped to stimulate his thought.

"The other was less important to the success of the job. This part is vital." He looked out of the window. "We needed this rain," he said, anxious to have my agreement.

"You did right," I said.

He nodded obsequiously, as if I'd given him a ten-pound tip, then smiled and backed toward the door. "I know I did," he said.

• • •

My case officer arrived about 11 A.M.; there were cooking smells. A large black Humber pulled into the courtyard and stopped. Byrd got out. "Wait," he said to the driver. Byrd was wearing a short Harris-tweed overcoat and a matching cap. His boots were muddy and his trouser bottoms tucked up to avoid being soiled. He clumped upstairs to my room, dismissing the Fleming with only a grunt.

"You're my case officer?"

(continued on page 173) Expensive Place to Die (continued from page 108)

"That's the ticket." He took off his cap and put it on the bed. His hair stood up in a point. He lit his pipe. "Damned good to see you," he said. His eyes were bright and his mouth firm, like a brush salesman sizing up a prospect.

"You've been making a fool of me," I complained.

"Come, come, trim your yards, old boy. No question of that. No question of that at all. Thought you did well, actually. Loiseau said you put in quite a plea for me." He smiled again briefly, caught sight of himself in the mirror over the washbasin and pushed his disarranged hair into place.

"I told him you didn't kill the girl, if that's what you mean."

"Ah, well," he looked embarrassed. "Damned nice of you." He took the pipe from his mouth and searched around his teeth with his tongue. "Damned nice, but to tell you the truth, old boy, I did."

I must have looked surprised.

"Shocking business, of course, but she'd opened us right up. Every damned one of us. They got to her."

"With money?"

"No, not money; a man." He put the pipe into the ashtray. "She was vulnerable to men. Jean-Paul had her eating out of his hand. That's why they aren't suited to this sort of work, bless them. 'Men were deceivers ever,' eh? Gals get themselves involved, what? Still, who are we to complain about that; wouldn't want them any other way myself."

I didn't speak, so Byrd went on.

"At first the whole plan was to frame Kuang as some sort of Oriental Jack the Ripper. To give us a chance to hold him, talk to him, sentence him if necessary. But the plans changed. Plans often do; that's what gives us so much trouble, eh?"

"Jean-Paul won't give you any more trouble; he's dead."

"So I hear."

"Did you arrange that, too?" I asked.

"Come, come, don't be bitter. Still, I know just how you feel. I muffed it, I'll admit. I intended it to be quick and clean and painless, but it's too late now to be sentimental or bitter."

"Bitter," I said. "If you really killed the girl, how come you got out of prison?"

"Set-up job. French police. Gave me a chance to disappear, talk to the Belgians. Very cooperative. So they should be, with this damned boat these Chinese chappies have got anchored three miles out. Can't touch them legally, you see. Pirate radio station; think what it could do if the balloon went up. Doesn't bear thinking of."

"No. I see. What will happen?"

"Government level now, old chap. Out of the hands of blokes like you and me."

He went to the window and stared across the mud and cabbage stumps. White mist was rolling across the flat ground like a gas attack.

"Look at that light," said Byrd. "Look at it. It's positively ethereal, and yet you could pick it up and rap it. Doesn't it make you ache to pick up a paintbrush?"

"No," I said.

"Well, it does me. First of all, a painter is interested in form; that's all they talk about at first. But everything is the light falling on it--no light and there's no form, as I'm always saying; light's the only thing a painter should worry about. All the great painters knew that: Francesca, El Greco, Van Gogh." He stopped looking at the mist and turned back toward me, glowing with pleasure. "Or Turner. Turner most of all; take Turner any day . . . " He stopped talking, but he didn't stop looking at me. I asked him no question, but he heard it just the same. "Painting is my life," he said. "I'd do anything just to have enough money to go on painting. It consumes me. Perhaps you wouldn't understand what art can do to a person."

"I think I'm just beginning to," I said.

Byrd stared me out. "Glad to hear it, old boy." He took a brown envelope out of his case and put it on the table.

"You want me to take Kuang up to the ship?"

"Yes, stick to the plan. Kuang is here and we'd like him out on the boat. Datt will try to get on the boat; we'd like him here, but that's less important. Get Kuang to Ostend. Rendezvous with his case chappie--Major Chan--hand him over."

"And the girl, Maria?"

"Datt's daughter--illegitimate--divided loyalties. Obsessed about these films of her and Jean-Paul. Do anything to get them back. Datt will use that factor, mark my words. He'll use her to transport the rest of his stuff." He ripped open the brown envelope.

"And you'll try to stop her?"

"Not me, old boy. Not my part of the ship, those dossiers; not yours, either. Kuang to Ostend, forget everything else. Kuang out to the ship, then we'll give you a spot of leave." He counted out some Belgian money and gave me a Belgian press card, a card of identification, a letter of credit and two phone numbers to ring in case of trouble. "Sign here," he said. I signed the receipts.

"Loiseau's pigeon, those dossiers," he said. "Leave all that to him. Good fellow, Loiseau."

Byrd kept moving like a flyweight in the first round. He picked up the receipts, blew on them and waved them to dry the ink.

"You used me, Byrd," I said. "You sent Hudson to me, complete with prefabricated hard-luck story. You didn't care about blowing a hole in me as long as the over-all plan was OK."

"London decided," Byrd corrected me gently.

"All eight million of 'em?"

"Our department heads," he said patiently. "I personally opposed it."

"All over the world people are personally opposing things they think are bad, but they do them anyway, because a corporate decision can take the blame."

Byrd had half turned toward the window to see the mist.

I said, "The Nuremberg trials were held to decide that whether you work for Coca-Cola, Murder Inc. or the Wehrmacht General Staff, you remain responsible for your own actions."

"I must have missed that part of the Nuremberg trials," said Byrd unconcernedly. He put the receipts away in his wallet, picked up his hat and pipe and walked past me toward the door.

"Well, let me jog your memory," I said as he came level, and I grabbed at his chest and tapped him gently with my right. It didn't hurt him, but it spoiled his dignity, and he backed away from me, smoothing his coat and pulling at the knot of his tie, which had disappeared under his shirt collar.

Byrd had killed, perhaps many times. It leaves a blemish in the eyeballs, and Byrd had it. He passed his right hand round the back of his collar. I expected a throwing knife or a cheese wire to come out, but he was merely straightening his shirt.

"You were too cynical," said Byrd. "I should have expected you to crack." He stared at me. "Cynics are disappointed romantics; they keep looking for someone to admire and can never find anyone. You'll grow out of it."

"I don't want to grow out of it," I said.

Byrd smiled grimly. He explored the skin where my hand had struck him. When he spoke, it was through his fingers. "Nor did any of us," he said. He nodded and left.

• • •

I found it difficult to get to sleep after Byrd had gone, and yet I was too comfortable to make a move. I listened to the articulated trucks speeding through the village: a crunch of changing gears as they reached the corner, a hiss of brakes at the crossroads and an ascending note as they saw the road clear and accelerated. Lastly, there was the splash as they hit the puddle near the Drive Carefully Because Of Our Children sign. Every few minutes another came down the highway, a sinister alien force that never stopped and seemed not friendly toward the inhabitants. I looked at my watch. Five-thirty. The hotel was still, but the rain hit the window lightly. The wind seemed to have dropped, but the fine rain continued relentlessly, like a long distance runner just getting his second breath. I stayed awake for a long time thinking about them all. Suddenly I heard a soft footstep in the corridor. There was a pause and then I saw the doorknob revolve silently. "Are you asleep?" Kuang called softly. I wondered if my conversation with Byrd had awakened him, the walls were so thin. He came in.

"I would like a cigarette. I can't sleep. I have been downstairs, but no one is about. There is no machine, either." I gave him a pack of Players. He opened it and lit one. He seemed in no hurry to go. "I can't sleep," he said. He sat down in the plastic-covered easy chair and watched the rain on the window. Across the shiny landscape, nothing moved.

We sat silent a long time, then I said, "How did you first meet Datt?"

He seemed glad to talk. "Vietnam, 1954. Vietnam was a mess in those days. The French colons were still there, but they'd begun to realize the inevitability of losing. No matter how much practice they get, the French are not good at losing. You British are skilled at losing. In India, you showed that you knew a thing or two about the realities of compromise that the French will never learn. They knew they were going and they got more and more vicious, more and more demented. They were determined to leave nothing--not a hospital blanket nor a kind word.

"By the early Fifties, Vietnam was China's Spain. The issues were clear, and for us party members, it was an honor to go there. It meant that the party thought highly of us. I had grown up in Paris. I speak perfect French. I could move about freely. I was working for an old man named De Bois. He was pure Vietnamese. Most party members had acquired Vietnamese names, no matter what their origins, but De Bois couldn't bother with such niceties. That's the sort of man he was. A member since he was a child. Communist Party advisor; purely political, nothing to do with the military. I was his secretary--it was something of an honor; he used me as a messenger boy. I'm a scientist, I haven't got the right sort of mind for soldiering, but it was an honor.

"Datt was living in a small town. I was told to contact him. We wanted to make contact with the Buddhists in that region. They were well organized and we were told at that time that they were sympathetic to us. Later the war became more defined--the Viet Cong versus the Americans' puppets--but then the whole country was a mess of different factions, and we were trying to organize them. The only thing that they had in common was that they were anticolonial--anti--French-colonial, that is: The French had done our work for us. Datt was a sort of soft-minded liberal, but he had influence with the Buddhists--he was something of a Buddhist scholar and they respected him for his learning--and, more important, as far as we were concerned, he wasn't a Catholic.

"So I took my bicycle and cycled sixty kilometers to see Datt, but in the town it was not good to be seen with a rifle; so two miles from the town where Datt was to be found, I stopped in a small village. It was so small, that village, that it had no name. Isn't it extraordinary that a village can be so small as to be without a name? I stopped and deposited my rifle with one of the young men of the village. He was one of us: a Communist, insofar as a man who lives in a village without a name can be a Communist. His sister was with him. A short girl--her skin bronze, almost red--she smiled constantly and hid behind her brother, peering out from behind him to study my features. Han Chinese* faces were uncommon around there then. I gave him the rifle--an old one left over from the Japanese invasion; I never did fire a shot from it. They both waved as I Cycled away.

"I found Datt.

"He gave me cheroots and brandy and a long lecture on the history of democratic government. Then we found that we used to live near each other in Paris, and we talked about that for a while. I wanted him to come back and see De Bois. It had been a long journey for me, but I knew Datt had an old car; and that meant that if I could get him to return with me, I'd get a ride back, too. Besides, I was tired of arguing with him. I wanted to let old De Bois have a go; they were more evenly matched. My training had been scientific; I wasn't much good at the sort of arguing that Datt was offering me.

"He came. We put the cycle in the back of his old Packard and drove west. It was a clear moonlit night, and soon we came to the village that was too small even to have a name.

"'I know this village,' said Datt. 'Sometimes I walk out as far as this. There are pheasants.'

"I told him that walking this far from the town was dangerous. He smiled and said there could be no danger to a man of good will.

"I knew that something was wrong as soon as we stopped, for usually someone will run out and stare, if not smile. There was no sound. There was the usual smell of sour garbage and wood smoke that all the villages have, but no sound. Even the stream was silent, and beyond the village the rice paddy shone in the moonlight like spilled milk. Not a dog, not a hen. Everyone had gone. There were only men from the SÛrete there. The rifle had been found; an informer, an enemy, the chief--who knows who found it? The smiling girl was there, dead, her nude body covered with the tiny burns that a lighted cigarette end can inflict. Two men beckoned Datt. He got out of the car. They didn't worry very much about me; they knocked me about with a pistol, but they kicked Datt. They kicked him and kicked him and kicked him. Then they rested and smoked Gauloises, and then they kicked him some more. They were both French, neither was more than twenty years old; and even then Datt wasn't young, but they kicked him mercilessly. He was screaming. I don't think they thought that either of us was Viet Minh. They'd waited for a few hours for someone to claim that rifle; and when we stopped nearby, they grabbed us. They didn't even want to know whether we'd come for the rifle. They kicked him and then they urinated over him and then they laughed and they lit more cigarettes and got in their Citroën and drove away.

"I wasn't hurt much. I'd lived all my life with the wrong-colored skin. I knew a few things about how to be kicked without getting hurt, but Datt didn't. I got him back in the car--he'd lost a lot of blood and he was a heavy man; even then he was heavy. 'Which way do you want me to drive?' I said. There was a hospital back in the town and I would have taken him to it. Datt said, 'Take me to Comrade De Bois.' I'd said 'comrade' all the time I'd spoken with Datt, but that was perhaps the first time Datt had used the word. A kick in the belly can show a man where his comrades are. Datt was badly hurt."

"He seems to have recovered now," I said, "apart from the limp."

"He's recovered now, apart from the limp," said Kuang. "And apart from the fact that he can have no relationships with women."

Kuang examined me carefully and waited for me to answer.

"It explains a lot," I said.

"Does it?" said Kuang mockingly.

"No," I said. "What right does he have to identify thuggery with capitalism?" Kuang didn't answer. The ash was long on his cigarette and he walked across the room to tap it into the washbasin. I said, "Why should he feel free to probe and pry into the lives of people and put the results at your disposal?"

"You fool," said Kuang. He leaned against the washbasin, smiling at me. "My grandfather was born in 1878. In that year, thirteen million Chinese died in the famine. My second brother was born in 1928. In that year, five million Chinese people died in the famine. We lost twenty million dead in the Sino-Japanese War, and the Long March meant the Nationalists killed two and a half million. But we are well over seven hundred million and increasing at the rate of fourteen or fifteen million a year. We are not a country or a party, we are a whole civilization, unified and moving forward at a speed that has never before been equaled in world histroy. Compare our industrial growth rate with India's. We are unstoppable." I waited for him to go on, but he didn't.

"So what?" I said.

"So we don't need to set up clinics to study your foolishness and frailty. We are not interested in your minor psychological failings. Datt's amusing pastime is of no interest to my people."

"Then why did you encourage him?"

"We have done no such thing. He financed the whole business himself. We have never aided him or ordered him, nor have we taken from him any of his records. It doesn't interest us. He has been a good friend to us, but no European can be very close to our problems."

"You just used him to make trouble for us."

"That I will admit. We didn't stop him making trouble. Why should we? Perhaps we have used him rather heartlessly, but a revolution must use everyone so." He returned my pack of cigarettes.

"Keep the pack," I said.

"You are very kind," He said. "There are ten left in it."

"They won't go far among seven hundred million of you," I said.

"That's true," he said, and lit another.

• • •

I was awakened at 9:30. It was la patronne. "There is time for a bath and a meal," she said. "My husband prefers to leave early, sometimes the policeman calls in for a drink. It would be best if you were not here then."

I suppose she noticed me look toward the other room. "Your colleague is awake," she said. "The bathroom is at the end of the corridor. I have put soap there and there is plenty of hot water at this time of night."

"Thanks," I said. She went out without answering.

We ate most of the meal in silence. There was a plate of smoked ham, trout meuniere and an open tart filled with rice pudding. The Fleming sat across the table and munched bread and drank a glass of wine to keep us company through the meal.

"I'm conducting tonight."

"Good," I said. Kuang nodded.

"You've no objection?" he asked me. He didn't want to show Kuang that I was senior man, so he put it as though it were a choice between friends.

"It will suit me," I said.

"Me, too," said Kuang.

"I've got a couple of scarves for you, and two heavy woolen sweaters. We are meeting his case officer right on the quayside. You are probably going out by boat."

"Not me," I said. "I'll be coming straight back."

"No," said the man. "Operations were quite clear about that." He rubbed his face in order to remember more clearly. "You will come under his case officer, Major Chan, just as he takes orders from me at this moment."

Kuang stared impassively. The man said, "I suppose they'll need you if they run into a coastguard or fisheries protection vessel or something unexpected. It's just for territorial waters. You'll soon know if their case officer tries something."

"That sounds like going into a refrigerator to check that the light goes out," I said.

"They must have worked something out," said the man. "London must----" He stopped and rubbed his face again.

"It's OK," I said. "He knows we are London."

"London seemed to think it's OK."

"That's really put my mind at rest," I said.

The man chuckled. "Yes," he said, "yes," and rubbed his face until his eye watered. "I suppose I'm blown now," he said.

"I'm afraid so," I agreed. "This will be the last job you'll do for us."

He nodded. "I'll miss the money," he said sadly. "Just when we could most do with it, too."

• • •

Maria kept thinking about Jean-Paul's death. It had thrown her off balance, and now she had to think lopsidedly, like a man carrying a heavy suitcase; she had to compensate constantly for the distress in her head.

"What a terrible waste," she said loudly.

Ever since she was a little girl, Maria had had the habit of speaking to herself. Many times she had been embarrassed by someone coming close to her and hearing her babbling on about her trivial troubles and wishes. Her mother had never minded. It doesn't matter, she had said, if you speak to yourself; it's what you say that matters. She tried to stand back and see herself in the present dilemma. Ridiculous, she pronounced; all her life had been something of a pantomime, but driving a loaded ambulance across northern France was more than she could have bargained for even in her most imaginative moments. An ambulance loaded with 800 dossiers and sex films; it made her want to laugh, almost. Almost.

The road curved and she felt the wheels start to slide and corrected for it, but one of the boxes tumbled and brought another box down with it. She reached behind her and steadied the pile of tins. The metal boxes that were stacked along the neatly made bed jangled gently together, but none of them fell. She enjoyed driving, but there was no fun in thrashing this heavy old blood wagon over the ill-kept back roads of northern France. She must avoid the main roads; she knew--almost instinctively--which ones would be patrolled. She knew the way the road patrols would obey Loiseau's order to intercept Datt, Datt's dossiers, tapes and films, Maria, Kuang or the Englishman, or any permutation of those that they might come across. Her fingers groped along the dashboard for the third time. She switched on the wipers, cursed, switched them off, touched the choke and then the lighter. Somewhere there must be a switch that would extinguish that damned orange light that was reflecting the piled-up cases, boxes and tins in her windscreen. It was dangerous to drive with that reflection in the screen, but she didn't want to stop. She could spare the time easily, but she didn't want to stop didn't want to stop. Didn't want to stop until she had completed the whole business. Then she could stop, then she could rest, then perhaps she could be reunited with Loiseau again. She shook her head. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to be reunited with Loiseau again. It was all very well thinking of him now in the abstract like this. Thinking of him surrounded by dirty dishes and with holes in his socks, thinking of him sad and lonely. But if she faced the grim truth, he wasn't sad or lonely; he was self-contained, relentless and distressingly complacent about being alone. It was unnatural; but then, so was being a policeman unnatural.

She remembered the first time she'd met Loiseau. A village in Périgord. She was wearing a terrible pink cotton dress that a friend had sold her. She went back there again years later. You hope that the ghost of him will accompany you there and that some witchcraft will reach out to him and he will come back to you and you will be madly in love, each with the other, as you were once before. But when you get there, you are a stranger; the people, the waitress, the music, the dances, all of them are new and you are unremembered.

Heavy damned car; the suspension and steering were coarse, like a lorry's. It had been ill treated, she imagined, the tires were balding. When she entered the tiny villages, the ambulance slid on the pavé stones. The villages were old and gray, with just one or two brightly painted signs advertising beer or friture.In one village there were bright flashes of a welding torch as the village smith worked late into the night. Behind her, Maria heard the toot, toot-toot of a fast car. She pulled over to the right and a blue Land Rover roared past, flashing its headlights and tooting imperious thanks. The blue rooftop light flashed spookily over the dark landscape, then disappeared. Maria slowed down; she hadn't expected any police patrols on this road, and she was suddenly aware of the beating of her heart. She reached for a cigarette in the deep, soft pockets of her suede coat, but as she brought the packet up to her face, they spilled across her lap. She rescued one and put it in her mouth. She was going slowly now, and only half her attention was on the road. The lighter flared and trembled, and as she doused the flame, more flames grew across the horizon. There were six or seven of them, small flaring pots, like something marking an unknown warrior's tomb. The surface of the road was black and shiny like a deep lake; and yet it couldn't be water, for it hadn't rained for a week. She fancied that the water would swallow the ambulance up if she didn't stop. But she didn't stop. Her front wheels splashed. She imagined the black water closing above her, and shivered. It made her feel claustrophobic. She lowered the window and recoiled at the overwhelming smell of vin rouge. Beyond the flares there were lamps flashing and a line of headlights. Farther still were men around a small building that had been built across the road. She thought at first that it was a Customs control hut, but then she saw that it wasn't a building at all. It was a huge wine tanker tipped onto its side and askew across the road, the wine gushing from the split seams. The front part of the vehicle hung over the ditch. Lights flashed behind shattered glass as men tried to extricate the driver. She slowed up. A policeman beckoned her to the side of the road, nodding frantically.

"You made good time," the policeman said. "There's four dead and one injured. He's complaining, but I think he's only scratched."

Another policeman hurried over. "Back up against the car and we'll lift him in."

At first Maria was going to drive off, but she managed to calm down a little. She took a drag on the cigarette. "There'll be another ambulance," she said. She wanted to get that in before the real ambulance appeared.

"Why's that?" said the policeman."How many casualties did they say on the phone?"

"Six," lied Maria.

"No," said the policeman. "Just one injured, four dead. The car driver injured, the four in the tanker died instantly. Two truck drivers and two hitchhikers."

Alongside the road the policemen were placing shoes, a broken radio, maps, clothes and a canvas bag, all in an impeccably straight line.

Maria got out of the car. "Let me see the hitchhikers," she said.

"Dead," said the policeman. "I know a dead 'un, believe me."

"Let me see them," said Maria. She looked up the dark road, fearful that the lights of an ambulance would appear.

The policeman walked over to a heap in the center of the road. There from under a tarpaulin that police patrols carry especially for this purpose stuck three sets of feet. He lifted the edge of the tarpaulin. Maria stared down, ready to see the mangled remains of the Englishman and Kuang, but they were youths in beards and denim. One of them had a fixed grin across his face. She drew on the cigarette fiercely. "I told you," said the policeman. "Dead."

"I'll leave the injured man for the second ambulance," said Maria.

"And have him ride with four stiffs? Not on your life," said the policeman. "You take him." The red wine was still gurgling into the roadway and there was a sound of tearing metal as the hydraulic jacks tore the cab open to release the driver's body.

"Look," said Maria desperately. "It's my early shift. I can get away if I don't have to book a casualty in. The other ambulance won't mind."

"You're a nice little darling," said the policeman. "You don't believe in work at all."

"Please." Maria fluttered her eyelids at him.

"No, I wouldn't, darling, and that's a fact," said the policeman. "You are taking the injured one with you. The stiffs I won't insist upon; and if you say there's another ambulance coming, then I'll wait here. But not with the injured one, I won't." He handed her a little bundle. "His personal effects. His passport's in there; don't lose it, now."

"No, I don't parle," said a loud English voice. "And let me down, I can toddle myself, thanks."

The policeman who had tried to carry the boy released him and watched as he climbed carefully through the ambulance near doors. The other policeman had entered the ambulance before him and cleared the tins off the bed. "Full of junk," said the policeman. He picked up a film tin and looked at it.

"It's hospital records," said Maria. "Patients transferred. Documents on film. I'm taking them to the other hospitals in the morning."

The English tourist--a tall boy in a black woolen shirt and pink-linen trousers--stretched full length on the bed. "That's just the job," he said appreciatively.

The policeman locked the rear doors carefully. Maria heard him say, "We'll leave the stiffs where they are. The other ambulance will find them. We'll get up to the roadblocks. Everything is happening tonight. Accident, roadblocks, contraband search, and the next thing you know, we'll be asked to do a couple of hours' extra duty."

"Let the ambulance get away," said the second policeman. "We don't want her to report us leaving the scene before the second ambulance arrived."

"That lazy bitch," said the first policeman. He slammed his fist against the roof of the ambulance and called loudly, "Right, off you go."

Maria turned around in her seat and looked for the switch for the interior light. She found it and switched off the orange lamp. The policeman leered in through the window. "Don't work too hard," he said.

"Policeman," said Maria. She said it as if it were a dirty word, and the policeman flinched. He was surprised at the depth of her hatred.

He spoke softly and angrily: "The trouble with you people from hospitals," he said, "you think you're the only normal people left alive."

Maria could think of no answer. She drove forward. From behind her, the voice of the Englishman said, "I'm sorry to be causing you all this trouble." He said it in English, hoping that the tone of his voice would convey his meaning.

"It's all right," said Maria.

"You speak English!" said the man. "That's wonderful."

"Is your leg hurting you?" She tried to make it as professional and clinical as she knew how.

"It's nothing. I did it running down the road to find a telephone. It's hilarious, really: those four dead and me unscratched except for a strained knee from running down the road."

"Your car?"

"That's done for. Cheap car, Ford Anglia. Crankcase sticking through the rear axle the last I saw of it. Done for. It wasn't the lorry driver's fault. Poor sod. It wasn't my fault, either, except that I was going too fast. I always drive too fast, everyone tells me that. But I couldn't have avoided this lot. He was right in the center of the road. You do that in a heavy truck on these high camber roads. I don't blame him. I hope he doesn't blame me too much, either."

Maria didn't answer; she hoped he'd go to sleep so she could think about this new situation.

"Can you close the window?" he asked. She rolled it up a little but kept it a trifle open. The tension of her claustrophobia returned and she knocked the window handle with her elbow, hoping to open it a little more without the boy's noticing.

"You were a bit sharp with the policeman," said the boy. Maria grunted an affirmative.

"Why?" asked the boy. "Don't you like policemen?"

"I married one."

"Go on," said the boy. He thought about it. "I never got married. I lived with a girl for a couple of years . . ." He stopped.

"What happened?" said Maria. She didn't care. Her worries were all upon the road ahead. How many roadblocks were out tonight? How thoroughly would they examine papers and cargo?

"She chucked me," said the boy.

"Chucked?"

"Rejected me. What about you?"

"I suppose mine chucked me," said Maria.

"And you became an ambulance driver," said the boy with the terrible simplicity of youth.

"Yes," said Maria and laughed aloud.

"You all right?" asked the boy anxiously.

"I'm all right," said Maria. "But the nearest hospital that's any good is across the border, in Belgium. You lie back and groan and behave like an emergency when we get to the frontier. Understand?"

Maria deliberatley drove eastward, cutting around the Forêt de St. Michel, through Wasigny and Signy-le-Petit. She'd cross the border at Riez.

"Suppose they are all closed down at the frontier?" asked the boy.

"Leave it with me," said Maria. She cut backthrough a narrow lane, offering thanks that it hadn't begun to rain. In this part of the world, the mud could be impassable after half an hour's rain.

"You certainly know your way around," said the boy. "Do you live near here?"

"My mother still does."

"Not your father?"

"Yes, he does, too," said Maria. She laughed.

"Are you all right?" the boy asked again.

"You're the casualty," said Maria. "Lie down and sleep."

"I'm sorry to be a bother," said the boy.

Pardon me for breathing, thought Maria; the English were always apologizing.

• • •

Already the brief butterfly summer of the big hotels is almost gone. Some of the shutters are locked and the waiters are scanning the ads for winter-resort jobs. The road snakes past the golf club and military hospital. Huge white dunes, shining in the moonlight like alabaster temples, lean against the gray Wehrmacht gun emplacements. Between the points of sand and the cubes of concrete, nightjars swoop openmouthed upon the moths and insects. The red glow of Ostend is nearer now and yellow trams rattle alongside the motor road and over the bridge by the Royal Yacht Club, where White yachts--sails neatly rolled and tied--sleep, bobbing on the gray water like seagulls.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I thought they would be earlier than this."

"A policeman gets used to standing around," Loiseau answered. He moved back across the cobbles and scrubby grass, stepping carefully over the rusty railway lines and around the shapeless debris and abandoned cables. When I was sure he was out of sight, I walked back along the quay. Below me the sea made soft noises like a bathful of serpents, and the joints of four ancient fishing boats creaked.

I walked over to Kuang. "He's late," I said. Kuang said nothing. Behind him, farther along the quay, a freighter was being loaded by a huge traveling crane. Light spilled across the waterfront from the spotlights on the cranes. Could their man have caught sight of Loiseau and been frightened away? It was 15 minutes later than rendezvous. The standard control procedure was to wait only four minutes, then come back 24 hours later; but I hung on. Control procedures were invented by diligent men in clean shirts and warm offices. I stayed. Kuang seemed not to notice the passage of time--or, more accurately, perhaps, he reveled in it. He stood patiently. He hadn't stamped his feet, breathed into his hands or smoked a cigarette. When I neared him, he didn't raise a quizzical eyebrow, remark about the cold or even look at his watch. He stared across the water, glanced at me to be sure I was not about to speak again, and then resumed his pose.

"We'll give him ten more minutes," I said. Kuang looked at me. I walked back down the quayside.

They yellow headlight turned off the main road a trifle too fast and there was a crunch as the edge of an offside wing touched one of the oil drums piled outside the Fina station. The light kept coming, main beams. Kuang was Illuminated as bright as a snowman, and there was only a couple of feet of space between him and the wire fence around the sand heap. Kuang leaped across the path of the car. His coat flapped across the headlight, momentarily eclipsing its beam. There was a scream as the brakes slammed on and the engine stalled. Suddenly it was quiet. The sea splashed greedily against the jetty. Kuang was sucking his thumb as I got down from the oil drum. It was an ambulance that had so nearly run us down.

Out of the ambulance stepped Maria.

"What's going on?" I said.

"I'm Major Chan," said Maria.

"You are?" Kuang said. He obviously didn't believe her.

"You're Major Chan, case officer for Kuang here?" I said.

"For the purposes that we are all interested in, I am," she said.

"What sort of answer is that?" I asked.

"Whatever sort of answer it is," said Maria, "it's going to have to do."

"Very well," I said. "He's all yours."

"I woun't go with her," said Kuang. "She tried to run me down. You saw her."

"I know her well enough to know that she could have tried a lot harder," I said.

"You didn't show that sort of confidence a couple of minutes ago," Maria said. "Scrambling out of the way when you thought I was going to run you down."

"What's confidence?" I said. "Smiling as you fall off a cliff to prove that you've jumped?"

"That's what it is," said Maria, and she leaned forward and gave me a tiny kiss, but I refused to be placated.

"Where's your contact?" I said.

"This is it," said Maria, playing for time.

I grabbed her arm and clutched it tight. "Don't play for time," I told her. "You said you're the case officer. So take Kuang and start to run him." She looked at me blankly. I shook her.

"They should be here," she said. "A boat." She pointed along the jetty. We stared into the darkness. A small boat moved into the pool of light cast by the loading freighter. It turned toward us.

"They will want to load the boxes from the ambulance."

"Hold it," I told her. "Take your payment first."

"How did you know?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" I said. "You bring Datt's dossiers as far as this, using your ingenuity, your knowledge of police methods and routes, and if the worst comes to the worst, you use your influence with your ex-husband. For what? In return, Datt will give you your own dossier and film, etc. Am I right?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then let them worry about loading." The motorboat was closer now. It was a high-speed launch; four men in pea jackets stood in the stern. They stared toward us but didn't wave or call. As the boat got to the stone steps, one man jumped ashore. He took the rope and made it fast to a jetty ring. "The boxes," I called to them. "Your papers are here."

"Load first," said the sailor who had jumped ashore.

"Give me the boxes," I said. The sailors looked at me and at Kuang. One of the men in the boat made a motion with his hand and the others took two tin boxes, adorned with red seals, from the bottom of the boat and passed them to the first man, who carried them up the steps to us.

"Help me with the boxes," said Maria to the Chinese sailor.

I still had hold of her arm. "Get back into the ambulance and lock the doors from inside," I said.

"You said I should start----"

I pushed her roughly toward the driver's door.

I didn't take my eyes off Maria, but on the periphery of my vision to the right, I could see a man edging along the side of the ambulance toward me. He kept one hand flat against the side of the vehicle, dabbing at the large scarlet cross as if testing to see if the paint was wet. I let him come to within arm's length and, still without swiveling my head, I flicked out my hand so that my fingertips lashed his face, causing him to blink and pull back. I leaned a few inches toward him while sweeping my hand back the way it had come, slapping him not very hard across the side of the cheek.

"Give over," he shouted in English. "What the hell are you on?"

"Get back in the ambulance," Maria called to him. "He's harmless," she said. "A motor accident on the road. That's how I got through the blocks so easily."

"You said Ostend hospital," said the boy.

"Stay out of this, sonny," I said. "You are in danger even if you keep your mouth shut. Open it and you're dead."

"I'm the case officer," she insisted.

"You are what?" I said. I smiled one of my reassuring smiles, but I see now that to Maria it must have seemed like mockery. "You are a child, Maria; you've no idea of what this is all about. Get into the ambulance," I told her. "Your ex-husband is waiting down the jetty. If you have this carload of documents with you when he arrests you, things might go easier for you."

"Did you hear him?" Maria said to the sailor and Kuang. "Take the documents, and take me with you--he's betrayed us all to the police." Her voice was quiet, but the note of hysteria was only one modulation away.

The sailor remained impassive and Kuang didn't even look toward her.

"Did you hear him?" she said desperately. No one spoke. A rowboat was moving out around the far side of the yacht club. The flutter of dripping blades skidding upon the surface and the gasp of oars biting into the water was a lonely rhythm, like a woman's sobs, each followed by the sharp intake of breath.

I said, "You don't know what it's all about. This man's job is to bring Kuang back to their ship. He's also instructed to take me. As well as that, he'll try to take the documents. But he doesn't change plans because you shout news about Loiseau waiting to arrest you. In fact, that's a good reason for leaving right away, because their big command is to stay out of trouble. This business doesn't work like that."

I signaled Kuang to go down to the motorboat, and the sailor steadied him on the slimy mental ladder. I punched Maria lightly on the arm. "I'll knock you unconscious, Maria, if that's the way you insist I do it." I smiled, but I meant it.

"I can't face Loiseau. Not with that case, I can't face him." She opened the driver's door and got into the seat. She would rather face Datt than Loiseau. She shivered.

The boy said, "I feel I'm making a lot of trouble for you. I'm sorry."

"Just don't say you're sorry once again," I heard Maria say.

"Get," I called to the sailor. "The police will be here any moment. There's no time to load boxes." He was at the foot of the ladder and I had my heavy shoes on. He shrugged and stepped into the boat. I untied the rope and someone started the motor. There was a bright flurry of water and the boat moved quickly, zigzagging through the water as the helmsman got the feel of the rudder.

At the end of the bridge, there was a flashlight moving. I wondered if the whistles were going. I couldn't hear anything above the sound of the outboard motor. The flashlight was reflected suddenly in the driver's door of the ambulance. The boat lurched violently as we left the harbor and entered the open sea. I looked at the Chinese sailor at the helm. He didn't seem frightened; but then, how would he look if he did? I looked back. The figures on the quay were tiny and indistinct. I looked at my watch: It was 2:10 A.M. The Incredible Count Szell had just killed another canary; they cost only three francs, four at the very most.

• • •

Three miles out from Ostend, the water was still and a layer of mist hugged it; a bleak, bottomless caldron of broth cooling in the cold morning air. Out of the mist appeared M. Datt's ship. It was a scruffy vessel of about 10,000 tons, an old cargo boat, its rear derrick broken. One of the bridge wings had been mangled in some long-forgotten mishap, and the gray hull, scabby and peeling, had long brown rusty stains dribbling from the hawsepipes down the anchor fleets. It had been at anchor a long time out here in the Straits of Dover. The most unusual features of the ship were a mainmast about three times taller than usual and the words Radio Janine newly painted in ten-foot-high white letters along the hull.

The engines were silent, the ship still, but the current sucked around the draft figures on the stem and the anchor chain groaned as the ship tugged like a bored child upon its mother's hand. There was no movement on deck, but I saw a flash of glass from the wheelhouse as we came close. Bolted to the hullside there was an ugly metal accommodation ladder, rather like a fire escape. At water level the steps ended in a wide platform complete with stanchion and guest warp, to which we made fast. M. Datt waved us aboard.

As we went up the metal stairs, Datt called to us, "Where are they?" No one answered, no one even looked up at him. "Where are the packets of documents--my work? Where is it?"

"There's just me," I said.

"I told you . . ." Datt shouted to one of the sailors.

"It was not possible," Kuang told him. "The police were right behind us. We were lucky to get away."

"The dossiers were the important thing," said Datt. "Didn't you even wait for the girl?" No one spoke. "Well, didn't you?"

"The police almost certainly got her," Kuang said. "It was a close thing."

"And my documents?" said Datt.

"These things happen," said Kuang, showing little or no concern.

"Poor Maria," said Datt. "My daughter."

"You care only about your dossiers," said Kuang calmly. "You do not care for the girl."

"I care for you all," said Datt. "I care even for the Englishman here. I care for you all."

"You are a fool," said Kuang.

"I will report this when we are in Peking."

"How can you?" asked Kuang. "You will tell them that you gave the documents to the girl and put my safety into her hands because you were not brave enough to perform your duties as conducting officer. You let the girl masquerade as Major Chan while you made a quick getaway, alone and unencumbered. You gave her access to the code greeting and I can only guess what other secrets, and then you have the effrontery to complain that your stupid researches are not delivered safely to you aboard the ship here." Kuang smiled.

Datt turned away from us and walked forward. Inside, the ship was in better condition and well lit. There was the constant hum of the generators, and from some far part of the ship came the sound of a metal door slamming. He kicked a vent and smacked a deck light that miraculously lit. A man leaned over the bridge wing and looked down on us, but Datt waved him back to work. He walked up the lower bridge ladder and I followed him, but Kuang remained at the foot of it. "I am hungry," Kuang said. "I have heard enough. I'm going below to eat."

"Very well," said Datt, without looking back. He opened the door of what had once been the captain's cabin and waved me to precede him. His cabin was warm and comfortable. The small bed was dented where someone had been lying. On the writing table there were a heap of papers, some envelopes, a tall pile of gramophone records and a vacuum flask. Datt opened a cupboard above the desk and reached down two cups. He poured hot coffee from the flask and then two brandies into tulip glasses. I put two heaps of sugar into my coffee and poured the brandy after it; then I downed the hot mixture and felt it doing wonders for my arteries.

Datt offered me his cigarettes. He said, "A mistake. A silly mistake. Do you ever make silly mistakes?"

I said, "It's one of my very few creative activities." I waved away his cigarettes.

"Droll," said Datt. "I felt sure that Loiseau would not act against me. I had influence and a hold on his wife. I felt sure he wouldn't act against me."

"Was that your sole reason for involving Maria?"

"To tell you the truth, yes."

"Then I'm sorry you guessed wrong. It would have been better to have left Maria out of this."

"My work was almost done. These things don't last forever." He brightened. "But within a year we'll do the same operation again."

I said, "Another psychological investigation with hidden cameras and recorders, and available women for influential Western men? Another large house with all the trimmings in a fashionable part of Paris?"

Datt nodded. "Or a fashionable part of Buenos Aires, or Tokyo, or Washington, or London."

"I don't think you are a true Marxist at all," I said. "You merely relish the downfall of the West. A Marxist at least comforts himself with the idea of the proletariat joining hands across national frontiers; but you Chinese Communists relish aggressive nationalism just at a time when the world is becoming mature enough to reject it."

"I relish nothing. I just record," said Datt. "But it could be said that the things of western Europe that you are most anxious to preserve are better served by supporting the real, uncompromising power of Chinese communism than by allowing the West to splinter into internecine warrior states. France, for example, is traveling very nicely down that path; what will she preserve in the West if her atom bombs are launched? We will conquer, we will preserve. Only we can create a truly world order based upon seven hundred million true believers."

"That's really 1984," I said. "Your whole setup is Orwellian."

"Orwell," said Datt, "was a naïve simpleton. A middle-class weakling terrified by the realities of social revolution. He was a man of little talent and would have remained unknown had the reactionary press not seen in him a powerful weapon of propaganda. They made him a guru, a pundit, a seer. But their efforts will rebound upon them, for Orwell in the long run will be the greatest ally the Communist movement ever had. He warned the bourgeoisie to watch for militancy, organization, fanaticism and thought planning, while all the time the seeds of their own inadequacy, apathy, aimless violence and trivial titillation. Their destruction is in good hands: their own. The rebuilding will be ours. My own writings will be the basis of our control of Europe and America. Our control will rest upon the satisfaction of their own basest appetites. Eventually a new sort of European man will evolve."

"History," I said. "That's always the alibi."

"Progress is only possible if we learn from history."

"Don't believe it. Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history."

"You are cynical as well as ignorant," said Datt, as though making a discovery.

"Get to know yourself, that's my advice. Get to know yourself."

"I know enough awful people already," I said.

"You feel sorry for the people who came to my clinic. That's because you really feel sorry for yourself. But these people do not deserve your sympathy. Rationalization is their destruction. Rationalization is the aspirin of mental health and, as with aspirin, an overdose can be fatal.

"They enslave themselves by dipping deeper and deeper into the tub of taboos. And yet each stage of their journey is described as greater freedom." He laughed grimly. "Permissiveness is slavery. But so has history always been. Your jaded, overfed section of the world is comparable to the ancient city-states of the Middle East. Outside the gates, the hard nomads waited their chance to plunder the rich, decadent city dwellers. And in their turn the nomads would conquer, settle into the newly conquered city and grow soft, and new hard eyes watched from the barren stony desert until their time was ripe. So the hard, strong, ambitious, idealistic peoples of China see the overripe condition of Europe and the U.S.A. They sniff the air and upon it floats the aroma of garbage cans overfilled, idle hands and warped minds seeking diversions bizarre and perverted; they smell violence, stemming not from hunger but from boredom; they smell the corruption of government and the acrid flash of fascism. They sniff, my friend: you!"

I said nothing, and waited while Datt stipped at his coffee and brandy. He looked up. "Take off your coat."

"I'm not staying."

"Not staying?" He chuckled. "Where are you going?"

"Back to Ostend," I said. "And you are going with me."

"More violence?" He raised his hands in mock surrender.

I shook my head. "You know you've got to go back," I said. "Or are you going to leave all your dossiers back there on the quayside, less than four miles away?"

"You'll give them to me?"

"I'm promising nothing," I told him, "but I know that you have go to back there. There is no alternative."

I poured myself more coffee and gestured to him with the pot. "Yes," he said absent-mindedly. "More."

"You are not the sort of man that leaves a part of himself behind. I know you, Monsieur Datt. You could bear to have your documents on the way to China and yourself in the hands of Loiseau, but the converse you cannot bear."

"You expect me to go back there and give myself up to Loiseau?"

"I know you will," I said. "Or live the rest of your life regretting it. You will recall all your work and records and you will relive this moment a million times. Of course you must return with me. Loiseau is a human being, and human activities are your specialty. You have friends in high places; it will be hard to convict you of any crime on the statute book . . ."

"That is very little protection in France."

"Ostend is in Belgium," I said. "Belgium doesn't recognize Peking; Loiseau operates there only on sufferance. Loiseau, too, will be amenable to any debating skill you can muster. Loiseau fears a political scandal that would involve taking a man forcibly from a foreign country . . ."

"You are glib. Too glib," said Datt. "The risk remains too great."

"Just as you wish," I said. I drank the rest of my coffee and turned away from him.

"I'd be a fool to go back for the documents. Loiseau can't touch me here." He walked across to the barometer and tapped it. "It's going up." I said nothing.

He said, "It was my idea to make my control center a pirate radio boat. We are not open to inspection nor even under the jurisdiction of any government in the world. We are, in effect, a nation unto ourselves on this boat, just as all the other pirate radio ships are."

"That's right," I said. "You're safe here." I stood up. "I should have said nothing," I said. "It is not my concern. My job is done." I buttoned my coat tight and blessed the man from Ostend for providing the thick extra sweater.

"You despise me?" said Datt. There was an angry note in his voice.

I stepped toward him and took his hand in mine. "I don't," I said anxiously. "Your judgment is as valid as mine. Better, for only you are in a position to evaluate your work and your freedom." I gripped his hand tight, in a stereotyped gesture of reassurance.

He said, "My work is of immense value. A breakthrough, you might almost say. Some of the studies seemed to have . . ." Now he was anxious to convince me of the importance of his work.

But I released his hand carefully. I nodded and smiled. "I must go. I have brought Kuang here; my job is done. Perhaps one of your sailors would take me back to Ostend."

Datt nodded. I turned away, tired of my game and wondering whether I really wanted to take this sick old man and deliver him to the mercies of the French Government. They say a man's resolution shows in the set of his shoulders. Perhaps Datt saw my indifference in mine. "Wait," he called. "I will take you."

"Good," I said. "It will give you time to think."

Datt looked around the cabin feverishly. He wet his lips and smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. He flicked through a bundle of papers, stuffed two of them in his pocket and gathered up a few possessions.

They were strange things that Datt took with him: an engraved paperweight, a half bottle of brandy, a cheap notebook and, finally, an old fountain pen, which he inspected, wiped and carefully capped before pushing it into his waistcoat pocket. "I'll take you back," he said. "Do you think Loiseau will let me just look through my stuff?"

"I can't answer for Loiseau," I said. "But I know he fought for months to get permission to raid your house on the Avenue Foch. He submitted report after report proving beyond all normal need that you were a threat to the security of France. Do you know what answer he got? They told him that you were an X, an ancien X. You were a polytechnic man, one of the ruling class, the elite of France. You could tutoyer his Minister, call half the Cabinet cher camarade. You were a privileged person, inviolate and arrogant with him and his men. But he persisted, he showed them finally what you were, Monsieur Datt. And now perhaps he'll want them to pay their bill. I'd say Loiseau might see the advantage in letting a little of your poison into their blood stream. He might decide to give them something to remember the next time they are about to obstruct him and lecture him, and ask him for the fiftieth time if he isn't mistaken. Permit you to retain the dossiers and tapes?" I smiled. "He might well insist upon it."

Datt nodded, cranked the handle of an ancient wall phone and spoke some rapid Chinese dialect into it. I noticed his large white fingers, like the roots of some plant that had never been exposed to sunlight.

He said, "You are right, no doubt about it. I must be where my research is. I should never have parted company from it."

He pottered about absent-mindedly. He picked up his Monopoly board. "You must reassure me on one thing," he said. He put the board down again. "The girl. You'll see that the girl's all right?"

"She'll be all right."

"You'll attend to it? I've treated her badly."

"Yes," I said.

"I threatened her, you know. I threatened her about her file. About her pictures. I shouldn't have done that, really, but I cared for my work. It's not a crime, is it, caring about your work?"

"Depends upon the work."

"Mind you," said Datt, "I have given her money. I gave her the car, too."

"It's easy to give away things you don't need," I said. "And rich people who give away money need to be quite sure they're not trying to buy something."

"I've treated her badly," he noted to himself. "And there's the boy, my grandson."

I hurried down the iron steps. I wanted to get away from the boat before Kuang saw what was happening, and yet I doubt if Kuang would have stopped us; with Datt out of the way, the only report going back would be Kuang's.

"You've done me a favor," Datt pronounced as he started up the outboard motor.

"That's rights," I said.

• • •

The Englishman had told her to lock the ambulance door. She tried to, but as her finger hovered over the catch, the nausea of fear broke over her. She imagined just for a moment the agony of being imprisoned. She shuddered and pushed the thought aside. She tried again, but it was no use; and while she was still trying to push the lock, the English boy with the injured knee leaned across her and locked the door. She wound the window down, urgently trying to still the claustrophobia. She leaned forward with her eyes closed and pressed her head against the cold windscreen. What had she done? It had seemed so right when Datt had put it to her: If she took the main bulk of the documents and tapes up to the rendezvous for him, then he would be waiting there with her own film and dossier. A fair exchange, he had said. She touched the locks of the case that had come from the boat. She supposed her documents were inside, but suddenly she didn't care. Fine rain beaded the windscreen with little lenses. The motorboat was repeated a thousand times upside down.

"Are you all right?" the boy asked. "You don't look well."

She didn't answer.

"Look here," he said, "I wish you'd tell me what all this is about. I know I've given you a lot of trouble and all that; you see . . ."

"Stay here in the car," Maria said. "Don't touch anything and don't let anyone else touch anything. Promise?"

"Very well. I promise."

She unlocked the door with a sigh of relief and got out into the cold, salty air. The car was on the very brink of the waterside and she stepped carefully across the worn stones. Along the whole quayside, men were appearing out of doorways and warehouse entrances. Not ordinary men, but men in berets and anklets. They moved quietly and most of them were carrying automatic rifles. A group of them near to her stepped under the wharfside lights, and she saw the glitter of the paratroop badges. Maria was frightened of the men. She stopped near the rear doors of the ambulance and looked back; the boy stared at her across the metal boxes and film tins. He smiled and nodded to reassure her that he wouldn't touch anything. Why did she care whether he touched anything? One man broke away from the group of paratroops near her. He was in civilian clothes, a thigh-length black-leather coat and an old-fashioned trilby hat. He had taken only one step when she recognized Loiseau.

"Maria, is it you?"

"Yes, it's me."

He hurried toward her, but when he was a pace away, he stopped. She had expected him to embrace her. She wanted to hang onto him and feel his hand slapping her awkwardly on the back, which was his inadequate attempt to staunch miseries of various kinds.

"There are a lot of people here," she said."Biffe?"

"Yes, the army," said Loiseau. "A paratroop battalion. The Belgians gave me full cooperation."

Maria resented that. It was his way of saying that she had never given him full cooperation. "Just to take me into custody," she said, "a whole battalion of Belgian paratroops? You must have exaggerated."

"There is a ship out there. There is no telling how many men are aboard. Datt might have decided to take the documents by force."

He was anxious to justify himself, like a little boy seeking an advance on his pocket money. She smiled and repeated, "You must have exaggerated."

"I did," said Loiseau. He did not smile, for distorting truth was nothing to be proud of. But in this case, he was anxious that there should be no mistakes. He would rather look a fool for over-preparation than be found inadequate. They stood there staring at each other for several minutes.

"The documents are in the ambulance?" Loiseau asked.

"Yes," she said. "The film of me is there, too."

"What about the tape of the Englishman? The questioning that you translated when he was drugged?"

"That's there, too; it's a green tin; number B fourteen." She touched his arm. "What will you do with the Englishman's tape?" She could not ask about her own.

"Destroy it," said Loiseau. "Nothing has come of it, and I've no reason to harm him."

"And that's part of your agreement with him," she accused.

Loiseau nodded.

"And my tape?"

"I will destroy that, too."

"Doesn't that go against your principles? Isn't destruction of evidence the cardinal sin for a policeman?"

"There is no rulebook that can be consulted in these matters, whatever the Church and the politicians and the lawyers tell us. Police forces, governments and armies are just groups of men. Each man must do as his conscience dictates. A man doesn't obey without question or he's not a man anymore."

Maria gripped his arm with both hands and pretended just for a moment that she would never have to let go.

"Lieutenant," Loiseau called along the wharf. One of the paratroops slammed to attention and doubled along the waterfront. "I'll have to take you into custody." Loiseau said quietly to Maria.

"My documents are on the front seat of the ambulance," she told him hurriedly before the lieutenant reached them.

"Lieutenant," Loiseau said, "I want you to take the boxes out of the ambulance and bring them along to the shed. By the way, you had better take an inventory of the tins and boxes; mark them with chalk. Keep an armed guard on the whole operation. There might be an attempt to recover them."

The lieutenant saluted Loiseau warmly and gave Maria a passing glance of curiosity.

"Come along, Maria," said Loiseau. He turned and walked toward the shed.

Maria patted her hair and followed him.

• • •

It was a wooden hut that had been put up for the duration of World War Two. A long, badly lit corridor ran the whole length of the hut, and the rest was divided into four small, uncomfortable offices. Maria repaired her make-up for the third time. She decided to do one eye at a time and get them really right.

"How much longer?" she asked. Her voice was distorted as she held her face taut to paint the line over her right eye.

"Another hour," said Loiseau. There was a knock at the door and the paratroop lieutenant came in. He looked briefly at Maria and then saluted Loiseau.

"We're having a little trouble, sir, getting the boxes out of the ambulance."

"Trouble?" said Loiseau.

"There's some madman with an injured leg. He's roaring and raging and punching the soldiers who are trying to unload the vehicle."

"Can't you deal with it?"

"Of course I can deal with it," said the paratroop officer. Loiseau detected a note of irritation in his voice. "It's just that I don't know who the little squirt is."

"I picked him up on the road," said Maria. "He was injured in a road crash. I told him to look after the documents when I got out of the car. I didn't mean . . . he's nothing to do with . . . he's just a casualty."

"Just a casualty," Loiseau repeated to the lieutenant. The lieutenant smiled. "Get him along to the hospital," said Loiseau.

"The hospital," repeated Maria. "Everything in its proper place."

"Very good, sir," said the lieutenant. He saluted with an extra display of energy, to show that he disregarded the sarcasm of the woman. He gave the woman a disapproving look as he turned about and left.

"You have another convert," said Maria. She chuckled as she surveyed her painted eye, twisting her face slightly so that the unpainted eye was not visible in the mirror. She tilted her head high to keep her chin line. She heard the soldiers piling the boxes in the corridor. "I'm hungry," she said after a while.

"I can send out," said Loiseau. "The soldiers have a lorry full of coffee and sausage and some awful friend things."

"Coffee and sausage."

"Go and get two sweet coffees and some sausage sandwiches," Loiseau said to the young sentry.

"The corporal has gone for his coffee," said the soldier.

"That's all right," said Loiseau. "I'll look after the boxes."

"He'll look after the boxes," Maria said flatly to the mirror.

The soldier looked at her, but Loiseau nodded and the soldier turned to get the coffee. "You can leave your gun with me," Loiseau said. "You'll not be able to carry the coffee with that slung round your neck, and I don't want guns left lying around in the corridor."

"I'll manage the coffee and the gun," said the soldier. He said it defiantly, then he slung the strap of the gun around his neck to prove it was possible.

"You're a good soldier," said Loiseau.

"It won't take a moment," said the soldier.

Loiseau swung around in the swivel chair, drummed his fingers on the rickety desk and then swiveled back the other way. He leaned close to the window. The condensation was heavy on it and he wiped a peephole clear so that he could see the waterfront. He had promised the Englishman that he would wait. He wished he hadn't: It spoiled his schedule, and also it gave this awkward time of hanging about here with Maria. He couldn't have her held in the local police station, obviously she had to wait here with him; it was unavoidable, and yet it was a bad situation. He had been in no position to argue with the Englishman. The Englishman had offered him all the documents as well as the Red Chinese conducting officer. What's more, he had said that if Loiseau would wait here, he would bring Datt off the ship and deliver him to the quayside. Loiseau snorted. There was no good reason for Datt to leave the pirate radio ship. He was safe out there beyond the three-mile limit, and he knew it. All the other pirate radio ships were out there and safe. Datt had only to tune in to the other ships to confirm it.

"Have you got a cold?" Maria asked him, still inspecting her painted eye.

"No."

"It sounds like it. Your nose is stuffed up. You know that's always the first sign with those colds you get. It's having the bedroom window open; I've told you about that hundreds of times."

"And I wish you'd stop telling me."

"Just as you like." She scrubbed around in the tin of eye black and spat into it. She had smudged the left eye and now she wiped it clean so that she looked curiously lopsided: one eye dramatically painted and the other white and naked. "I'm sorry," she said. "Really sorry."

"It will be all right," said Loiseau. "Somehow I will find a way."

"I love you," she said.

"Perhaps." His face was gray and his eyes deep-sunk, the way they always were when he had missed a lot of sleep.

They had occupied the same place in her mind, Loiseu and her father, but now she suddenly saw Loiseau as he really was. He was no superman; he was middle-aged and fallible and unrelaxingly hard upon himself. Maria put the eyeblack tin down and walked across to the window near Loiseau.

"I love you," she said again.

"I know you do," said Loiseau. "And I am a lucky man."

"Please help me," said Maria, and Loiseau was amazed, for he could never have imagined her asking for help; and Maria was amazed, for she could not imagine herself asking for help.

Loiseau put his nose close to the window. It was hard to see through it because of the reflections and condensation. Again he rubbed a clear place to look through.

"I will help you," said Loiseau.

She cleared her own little portion of glass and peered along the waterfront.

"He's a damn long time with that coffee," said Loiseau.

"There's the Englishman," said Maria, "and Datt."

"Well, I'm damned," said Loiseau. "He's brought him."

Datt's voice echoed down the corridor as the hut door swung open.

"This is it," he said excitedly. "All my documents. Color seals denote year, index letters, code names." He tapped the boxes proudly. "Where is Loiseau?" he asked the Englishman as he walked slowly down the rank of stacked tins and boxes, stroking them as he read the code letters.

"The second door," said the Englishman, easing his way past the boxes.

Maria knew exactly what she had to do. Jean-Paul said she'd never made one real decision in her life. It was not hysteria nor heightened emotion. Her father stood in the doorway, tins of documents in his arms, nursing them as though they were a newly born child. He smiled the smile she remembered from her childhood. His body was poised like that of a tightrope walker about to step off the platform. This time his powers of persuasion and manipulation were about to be tried to the utmost, but she had no doubt that he would succeed. Not even Loiseau was proof against the smooth, cool method of Datt, her puppetmaster. She knew Datt's mind and could predict the weapons he would use: He would use the fact that he was her father and the grandfather of Loiseau's child. He would use the hold he had over so many important people. He would use everything he had and he would win.

Datt smiled and extended a hand. "Chief Inspector Loiseau," he said. "I think I can be of immeasurable help to you--and to France."

She had her handbag open now. No one looked at her.

Loiseau motioned toward a chair. The Englishman moved aside and glanced quickly around the room. Her hand was around the butt by now, the safety catch slid down noiselessly. She let go of the handbag and it sat upon the gun like a tea cozy.

"The ship's position," said Datt, "is clearly marked upon this chart. It seemed my duty to pretend to help them."

"Just a moment," said Loiseau wearily.

The Englishman saw what was happening. He punched toward the handbag. And then Datt realized, just as the pistol went off. She pulled the trigger again as fast as she could. Loiseau grabbed her by the neck and the Englishman punched her arm. She dropped the bag. Datt was through the door and fumbling with the lock to prevent them chasing him. He couldn't operate the lock and ran down the corridor. There was the sound of the outer door opening. Maria wrenched herself free and ran after Datt, the gun still in her hand. Everyone was shouting. Behind her she heard Loiseau call, "Lieutenant, stop that man."

The soldier with the tray of coffee may have heard Loiseau's shout or he may have seen Maria or the Englishman brandishing a pistol. Whatever it was that prompted him, he threw the tray of coffee aside. He swung the rifle around his neck like a hula hoop. The stock slammed into his hands and a burst of fire echoed across the waterfront almost simultaneously with the sound of the coffee cups smashing. From all over the waterfront, shots were fired; Maria's bullets must have made very little difference.

• • •

You can recognize a head shot by a high-velocity weapon; a cloud of blood particles appeared like vapor in the air above him as Datt and his armful of tapes, film and papers was punched off the waterfront like a golf ball.

"There," called Loiseau. The highpower lamps operated by the soldiers probed the spreading tangle of recording tapes and films that covered the water like a Sargasso Sea. A great bubble of air rose to the surface and a cluster of pornographic photos slid apart and drifted away. Datt was in there among it, and for a moment it looked as though he were still alive as he turned in the water very slowly and laboriously, his stiff arm clawing out through the air like a swimmer doing the crawl. For a moment it seemed as if he stared at us. The tapes caught in his fingers and the soldiers flinched. "He's turning over, that's all," said Loiseau. "Men float face down, women face up. Get the hook under his collar. He's not a ghost man, just a corpse, a criminal corpse."

A soldier tried to reach him with a fixed bayonet, but the lieutenant stopped him. "They'll say we did it if the body is full of bayonet wounds. "They'll say we tortured him."

Loiseau turned to me and passed me a small reel of tape in a tin. "This is yours,"he said. "Your confession, I believe, although I haven't played it."

"Thanks," I said.

"That was the agreement," said Loiseau.

"Yes," I said, "that was the agreement."

Datt's body floated deeper now, even more entangled in the endless tape and film.

Maria had hidden the gun, or perhaps she'd thrown it away. Loiseau didn't look at her. He was concerned with the body of Datt--too concerned with it, in fact, to be convincing.

I said, "Is that your ambulance, Maria?" She nodded; Loiseau was listening, but he didn't turn round.

"That's a silly place to leave it. It's a terrible obstruction; you'll have to move." I turned to the Belgian para officer. "Let her move it," I said.

Loiseau nodded.

"How far?" said the officer. He had a mind like Loiseau's. Perhaps Loiseau read my thoughts. He grinned.

"It's all right," said Loiseau. "The woman can go."

The lieutenant was relieved to get a direct order. "Yes, sir," he said and saluted Loiseau gravely. He walked toward the ambulance.

Maria touched Loiseau's arm. "I'll go to my mother's. I'll go to the boy," she said. He nodded. Her face looked strange, for only one eye was made up. She smiled and followed the officer.

"Why did you do that?" Loiseau asked.

"I couldn't risk you doing it," I said. "You'd never forgive yourself."

It was light now. The sea had taken on a dawn-fresh sparkle and the birds began to think about food. Along the shore, herring gulls probed for tiny shellfish left by the tide. They carried them high above the dunes and dropped them upon the concrete blockhouses. Some fell to safety in the sand, some hit the ancient gun emplacements and cracked open, some fell onto the concrete but did not crack; these last were retrieved by the herring gulls and then dropped again and again. The tops of the blockhouses were covered with tiny fragments of shell, for eventually each shell cracked. Very high, one bird flew purposefully and alone on a course as straight as a light beam. Farther along the shore, in and out of the dunes, a hedgehog wandered, aimlessly sniffing and scratching at the colorless grass and watching the gulls at their game. The hedgehog would fly higher and stronger than any of the birds, if only he knew how.

*A Chinese description to differentiate pure Chinese from various minority groups in China or even Vietnamese, etc. Ninety-five percent of China's population is Han Chinese.

This is the conclusion of a new novel by Len Deighton.

This is the first publication of a new spy thriller by the author of "The Ipcress File"-- Copyright © 1967 by Vico Patentverwertungs. Und Vermögensverwaltungs Ges. M.B.H.