The Venetian Affair Read online

  “Well,” Fenner said, “I suppose we have all been fooled one way or another at one time.” He mustered a smile. “Yes, I’ve met George Williston.”

  “He was in Paris last April for a very brief visit,” Rosenfeld said smoothly. “He met Mrs. Fane—that’s what she calls herself, these days—at a café over on the Left Bank. It could have been an innocent meeting, from Mrs. Fane’s point of view. Perhaps he was trying to pull her back into her old life again; perhaps she was refusing, and chose to meet him far away from the Avenue d’Iéna to save herself embarrassment. The truth is, she’s a question mark. She’s been living a perfectly normal life since her escape from Czechoslovakia.” If, Rosenfeld added to himself, being the mistress of a French government official with private means and a wide circle of friends could be called a normal way to live.

  Fenner said nothing. Not even the use of the word “escape” had aroused his interest. He looked at his watch.

  “But Williston is no question mark. He hasn’t changed his aim in life. So that is what makes the meeting with Mrs. Fane important. Was it real business or was it only an attempt at business that failed? The answer is essential, because of her—of her influence over a certain Monsieur Fernand Lenoir. He’s an important guy.”

  “Another blind idiot?”

  Rosenfeld looked nonplussed. But he wasn’t defeated. “Won’t you even think of accepting her invitation?”

  “What?”

  “She sent you one last night, by way of Ballard. Didn’t he pass it on?”

  “He never got the chance. I cut him off when he started talking about Sandra.” There was complete disbelief in Fenner’s eyes. “She’d never invite me—”

  “But she did. Stanfield Dade was there at the time. She was talking to Ballard and him. About you.”

  “Then she’s just using me again.” The words had slipped out. He cursed himself under his breath.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. There’s one way we could find out. That would answer the question about her meeting with Williston, too.”

  Fenner stared at him. “I hope you are not meaning—”

  “I’m meaning this. People who reform have anguish and remorse. Right? They feel better if they can give an honest apology to those they have hurt the most. Right? She would talk to you, more than she would talk to anyone else. She would feel she owes you that. Why don’t you see her?”

  “No.”

  “But you could be doing her a good turn.”

  “I’m doing her no kind of turn, either good or bad.”

  “Look, she proposed seeing you. Why don’t you—?”

  “No,” said Fenner quietly. “And no, and no.” If Sandra had wanted to see him, it was more likely for quite another reason: she could very well want to gauge how safe she was with him in Paris. She was a much more devious and intricate character than Rosenfeld imagined.

  Rosenfeld was saying, “Oh, well, it was worth a try. But I’m still curious why she talked about you to Ballard. Either she wants to say she’s sorry—she was the reason you ended your career as a news correspondent, wasn’t she?”

  Fenner studied the leaves in the garden outside. Some were beginning to shrivel at the edges into the first hint of autumn.

  “Or,” Rosenfeld went on, “she wants to know where you stand. You could do her a lot of damage. Not many people know her history; and you know her better than they do.” He noticed the look in Fenner’s eyes. “Yes?”

  “Oh, just making a mental apology. You’re a smart boy.”

  “Sometimes not smart enough.” Rosenfeld wished he had never brought up the subject of Sandra Fane. “Well, let’s go. Thanks for the two minutes. They stretched a little. I’m sorry.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “How’s your memory, by the way?”

  “At times, it can be very bad. I just can’t remember a thing you were talking about. How’s that?”

  “That’s fine.” Rosenfeld opened the door. “I’ll escort you across the frontier. When you reach France, turn right. You’ll be back at the Crillon Bar in no time.”

  At the side gate, Fenner looked at his watch and decided he would have to settle for a short lunch, after all. He had lost his appetite, anyway. He said goodbye to Rosenfeld. They went separate ways.

  Fenner crossed a busy narrow street to a small café with a red-striped awning. He was thinking gloomily that the past was never over. As long as you lived, you carried it with you. It shaped your life: what you were, today, depended on all you had seen and felt and heard yesterday; and what you now accepted or rejected would mould your tomorrow. We are, because of what we were... Shall we be, because of what we are?

  Let’s try some will power, he told himself, and blot out the ghosts that came rising up this morning. It had worked before, giving long stretches of blessed anaesthesia. No good in remembering the hurt and the misery and the damage that was done you: that only nurses your bitterness, and you inflict hurt and misery and damage on yourself. Just remember enough never to be vulnerable again: total forgetting could be as self-destructive as complete remembering.

  He settled at a small zinc table outside the café. He disregarded the traffic, the heat, the arms brushing past, the unsuccessful sandwich and the bitter coffee. Will power, he reminded himself wryly, was sometimes necessary for the present as well as for the past. But a small cluster of typists from the Embassy turned his mood. They were young and pretty, trying to be chic and worldly. Their chatter held pleasant no-meaning, more amusing, actually, than most first acts he had sat through this last season. Their laughter won. The traffic became friendly bustle, the heat was tempered by a small breeze, the passing faces were varied and intelligent, the second cup of coffee tasted better. Patient coming out of shock, he told himself almost cheerfully, and could smile. He would sit here and enjoy the Paris sun until it was time to move toward the Left Bank and Professor Vaugiroud.

  Only a few streets away from Fenner, in a small restaurant without any outside tables, Neill Carlson was having his third cup of coffee. The place was almost empty: the customers, mostly Frenchmen, had been leaving steadily for the last half-hour. He finished reading Figaro, slung it back on its hook on the brown panelled wall, took down Combat. As he was returning to his isolated table, Frank Rosenfeld joined him.

  “About time,” Carlson said. “Another five minutes, and I’d have to leave.”

  “Went back to the office,” Rosenfeld explained. “I got a face-to-face description of yellow-tie that was worth sending out.”

  “So?” Carlson was curious.

  “But that was about all I got from Fenner.” Rosenfeld broke into a description of his mother-in-law’s visit to Paris in July as the waiter approached for his order. An omelette and coffee, Rosenfeld decided.

  “You didn’t do so well?” Carlson asked when they were left alone again.

  “I don’t know.”

  Carlson looked puzzled. “He didn’t strike me as an evasive type.”

  “He wasn’t. He answered my questions. And he had a few of his own.” Rosenfeld grinned. “Wanted to know if yellow-tie was the friend who had helped Goldsmith into a cab.”

  “Reasonable deduction, seeing you were asking questions about yellow-tie.”

  “Then he suggested their meeting wasn’t in the tradition, was it?”

  “Well, he’s a critic. They like to cast doubts.”

  “He’s a bit of a comedian, too. Suggested how to be successful in espionage without really trying.”

  “How?”

  “Just break the accepted patterns.”

  Carlson laughed. “He might have something there.”

  “Yes,” Rosenfeld admitted. “That open contact and departure was a bit startling. I was beginning to wonder, this early morning, if Goldsmith wasn’t just a harmless soul being met by a patient friend. Kind of comic, when you think of it.”

  “Not for Mr. Goldsmith. It must have been a quick and agonising reappraisal on his part. He couldn’t pass on the wrong coat. C
ontact needed for explanation, and some reorganisation.”

  “That’s what worries me. This business must be pretty important to make him act with such speed. He’s a sick man.”

  “No ideas as yet?”

  “Just speculations. And you?”

  “Just speculations. Give us all time, Rosie.”

  “Do we have it to give?”

  “Well, the other side is stymied, too, meanwhile. How do they replace those ten bills? It must have taken them weeks to collect them, using carefully chosen people to ask for them at their banks. The Treasury boys can trace them; the banks make a note of that kind of transaction.”

  “Glad to hear someone can get results.”

  “You’ve made a start yourself. You’ve got an adequate picture of yellow-tie. Bernard’s files over at the Sûreté may be of help on that—they’re pretty complete on the Communist underground.”

  “If Bernard will co-operate.”

  “He smells another of those one-for-all-and-all-for-one situations. Sure, old Bernie will co-operate.”

  “At least,” Rosie said, “I made certain that yellow-tie isn’t going to be forgotten by Fenner.”

  “You think he may be in danger?”

  “If this business is as urgent and important as I feel it is, anyone involved is in danger.”

  “He’s back to his own life again, seeing his friends in Paris, going to theatrical parties, talking about Molière and Anouilh and Beckett. His involvement is over.”

  “Certainly,” Rosenfeld said, “he isn’t going to let himself be involved with Madame Fane.”

  “Your suggestion fell flat?”

  Rosenfeld saw his waiter approaching. “Flatter than a jalopy’s tyre running on its rim.” He began talking about the Grand Canyon’s pitted walls. The omelette was served, and the waiter left, surrounded by Hopi Indians taking refuge in the Canyon’s holes from a Navajo raiding party striking across the Painted Desert.

  “So,” Carlson said, “he just clammed up when you started probing?”

  “About her, yes. He did say he had met Comrade Bruno. Not as Bruno. Nor as Geoffrey Wills. George Williston was the name he used on the night Fenner threw him out of the apartment.”

  “Dear old Bruno-Wills-Williston,” Carlson murmured, “what would you do without him to lead you to such interesting people?”

  Rosenfeld laughed. “You know, that’s one question Fenner forgot to ask: why didn’t we nail Williston if we knew he was such a bastard? But I agree with you; he has his uses.”

  “New York will be preening itself on following that hunch. Bruno suddenly turned aesthete, visiting the Museum of Modern Art, standing a long time in front of Guernica, very close to a quiet man. Meaning? Nothing. Quiet man unknown, innocent visitor; Bruno just an admirer of Picasso. But next day Bruno turns animal lover, walks in Zoo, seems to be keeping friendly watch. On whom? Same quiet man. Quiet man now interesting. Becomes more interesting when he jigs around town, takes three taxis to get to his hotel from a dentist’s office only a few blocks away.” He noticed Rosenfeld’s deep gloom. “Didn’t I get your story right?”

  “You tell it better than I do,” Rosenfeld said sourly.

  “All is not lost, Rosie. After all—”

  Rosenfeld said, “Yes, they had a good hunch in New York. They tipped us off. And we missed.” He pushed his plate aside. “Never thought a French omelette could taste like a piece of flannel.”

  “After all,” Carlson persisted, “the man wasn’t half so interesting as the envelope he carried. And you’ve got that, Rosie, my boy.”

  “Through pure luck. Where’s the credit?”

  “Everything is luck and unluck. We get the credit when we use them properly. The only thing we can’t deal with is the bullet that flattens us out. Stone dead hath no fellow.”

  Rosenfeld’s brooding face looked up. He almost smiled.

  “What would you rather have? Someone trailing the puzzling Mr. Goldsmith all over Paris? Or the envelope in good hands?” He had Rosie’s frown ironing out. “Well—your little ray of sunshine is about to depart and tend to his own business. Sometimes I wish I were back in West Berlin. Bloomers are made there, all the time, but no one has to be cheered up.”

  “I see your British contacts in West Berlin have enlarged your vocabulary, anyway. Yes”—Rosenfeld brightened visibly—“that was a real fast-blooming bloomer about the Wall. There ought to have been advance notice on that. Why not, I wonder?”

  “It was left lying in someone’s in-tray too long,” Carlson suggested. He wasn’t so amused, but he had old Rosie back to normal.

  “They missed you, I guess. When do you return?”

  “Soon.”

  “Oh, you’ve got everything sewed up on your film producer?”

  “Yes and no. I’ve found out a lot. But it’s not enough.”

  “Who says so?”

  “I do. There’s something deeper—”

  “What? I thought you did a pretty good analysis in depth. You know him better than the men who made out his life history for him.”

  “Perhaps there’s a lot they don’t know either.”

  “You mean he is really a big wheel?”

  “If I could find out his real name, I could answer that.”

  “You can’t trace it?” Rosenfeld was astounded. “That really makes him very interesting.”

  Carlson nodded. “I’ll bequeath him to you, once you get the problem of Sandra Fane worked out. By the way, how much did you tell Fenner?”

  “A certain amount, to enlist his co-operation. But it wasn’t enough, obviously.” Rosenfeld frowned and shook his head. “He won’t talk, though. He has learned to keep his mouth shut. Don’t worry about that.”

  “So what’s worrying you about him?”

  “I’m just hurt,” Rosenfeld said with a broad grin. “He doesn’t take us seriously.” He pulled a note from his pocket. “Fenner slipped this into my hand when we said goodbye. He thought you’d want it back, so that you could burn it and save yourself extra work in searching Dade’s trash basket tonight.”

  “Indeed?” Carlson’s usual quick phrase deserted him. He took the note he had sent Fenner about the coat. He rose, saying, “Keep in touch, will you? I’d like to know how this puzzle ends.”

  “I’ll keep in touch,” Rosie promised. “And thanks for the help.”

  “Thank our critic,” said Carlson wryly, and departed.

  Rosenfeld glanced at his watch and called for his check. Time to get back to the office and be waiting for that woman’s telephone call. Who was she? Dade might have told him. He must have known who she was or else he wouldn’t have given her Rosenfeld’s number. People had odd ways of figuring out the limits of their actions: I’ll give Rosie’s number because this may be important; but if she changes her mind—as women do—and doesn’t call Rosie, then let’s leave her anonymous, and Rosie can’t try to reach her. And if that was the way Dade had figured it, the woman must be pretty important, too. For Rosie, happily married, didn’t go around trying to telephone women unless they were interesting. And “interesting” in Rosie’s vocabulary did not mean glamorous.

  6

  Bill Fenner took a taxi to get him across the Seine and along the stretch of tree-lined quays that marked the river’s left bank. He got out near the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was tempted to loiter among the bookstalls across the street, even sit under the coolness of the green leaves and watch the sun-speckled water swirl past the Louvre’s grey eminence. But there were only twenty minutes to Vaugiroud: ten minutes of walking, ten minutes of margin to find Number 7, Rue Jean-Calas. So he turned to his right, and headed south on a street that was long and narrow and, more importantly for his purpose, remarkably straight.

  It led him, at a good quick pace, past a sprinkling of antique shops and small studios where art objects were displayed or made. Here and there a bakery, with the sweet warm smell of new loaves; little bookstores to remind man that he did not live by bread alone.
And everywhere were the people who lived or worked in this quarter: craftsmen out of their workshops for a breath of air; students with books or portfolios of drawings; thick-waisted housewives clopping along in heelless sandals; thin-legged, button-eyed children, carrying pikes of bread as tall as themselves; two sculptors in clay-smeared smocks; girls with alert faces, fine eyes, tight skirts, loose sweaters, wild hair combed by the wind and washed by the rains. He crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, broad and busy. Shortly, he ought to branch off to his left, following a twist of side street which—if his map was accurate—would lead him into the Rue Jean-Calas. His map was correct: there was Vaugiroud’s entrance just ahead of him. And he had five minutes to spare.

  Fenner strolled past its huge doors, sun-seamed and rain-scrubbed. Like the house itself, they belonged to the eighteenth century, when they no doubt led to a porte-cochère, perhaps even to an interior courtyard. They stood closed; the windows above and around them were silent. There was no row of name plates, no indication of how many apartments now lay behind those doors. Fenner walked on, and reached the end of the short street. In front of him there was a small cobbled expansion, which someone had called a square: Place Arouet. It was more of a breathing space, to trap some sunshine, before another little street closed in with its walls of gently decaying houses. All around was the peace of age and forgetfulness, a sense of quiet resignation and retreat from busier streets and a noisy boulevard only a few minutes away.

  There were few people in the Place Arouet. Two old men, carefully dressed, had paused to talk in their late-afternoon saunter, a boy jolted over the cobblestones on a bicycle, a car was parked on the shaded side of the square near an antique shop. At the café opposite, marked by four zinc tables under a faded green awning, there was a man comatose over an unfinished drink. It would be pleasant to join him and have a long cool beer; but perhaps not, Fenner decided. The café lay on the sun-drenched side of the Place Arouet. It would be hot under that awning. The man who sat there must be a Finn enjoying a late-summer sauna.