Nerves near snapping point, Ross jumped when Cutter walked past the back of his chair and sat down in the next one. Cutter’s suit looked slept in; his shoes were scuffed. He rotated the fingertips of both hands against his temples and dropped his hands onto the chair arms. His shoulders seemed to droop or perhaps it was only Ross’s imagination; for the first time Cutter looked as if he could be beaten. He looked drab and uneasy, almost listless. To Ross it made him a little more real, more human.
The walls were thick but there was the thin stink of kerosene fuel pervasively in the room and dimly Ross could hear the jets whining outside. The chartered Lear was fueling up for them and there wasn’t much time.
Ross had been talking; now he went on:
“According to the introductory material it’s probably the chapter on how the Agency first installed Magsaysay as President of the Philippines and then decided he wasn’t playing ball and had him assassinated. Incidentally is that true?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Myerson murmured. “It wouldn’t have been our department.”
Cutter said, “Everything else has been true so far. He’d have had no reason to make it up.”
Ross said, “It was mailed two days ago in the post office two blocks from the hotel. One of the desk clerks did it. Kendig gave him a big tip. It’ll probably start showing up in today’s mail deliveries.”
There was no damming the flood of Myerson’s anger. “What the hell difference does it make what the chapter’s about? The man walked out right under our noses. He’s on the Continent right now and we’re sitting here with hundreds of people holding empty bags.” His face congested with blood. “He walks right into a public building and kidnaps one of our own agents in full view of fifty people. He uses our own man’s identification to get himself out of the country. He’s carrying the rest of the Goddamned manuscript around in a little brown case as if it was a bag of groceries. He’s one stinking man, unarmed and fifty-three years old and none of you high-paid geniuses can lay a finger on the son of a bitch. It’s my head that’s going to roll but I’m going to make good and Goddamn sure it’s not the only one. You comprenez that, Joe?”
Cutter spoke; he sounded as hoarse as if he’d spent weeks in a cell without talking. “There’s one thing I can still try.”
“Then you’d by God better try it because it’s your neck that needs saving right now. What is it?”
“We’ve played him by the book right along. We’ve used cold logic and detective work and saturation manpower. We’ve made all the right moves. But he’s anticipated every one of them—precisely because they were the right moves. Like the FBI trap, the post offices.”
Follett said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You want to make a wrong move on purpose.”
Cutter ignored it. “I want to forget forensics and go after him on sheer instinct.”
Myerson snorted. “Toss a coin? Throw darts at a map? That’s easy to say—what’s it mean?”
“I’m not getting anywhere trying to manage this stinking huge field army. I want to dump the command structure and the impedimenta and get out there on the pavement. I think you ought to turn my job over to Glenn here—turn me loose on my own. I’ll take Ross and we’ll see what we can smell out.”
“That’s clutching at straws for God’s sake.”
“Can you think of anything better to clutch at right now?”
Glenn Follett said, “I can. I already have.”
Myerson glared at him. “Well? Do you need to be prompted?”
“I called Laurier this morning, SDECE Paris. I’ve asked him to put a crowd into every bank in the city.”
“Why?” Myerson snapped.
“Before he started this caper he withdrew a lot of money from his bank in Zurich. He was living in Paris at the time. He laid out his plans there. It’s his most logical base of operations, and so far it’s the only place he’s returned to since he started playing hopscotch.” Follett held out his hand and jiggled the fingers as if he were bouncing a ball on his palm. “He gave your man Liddell a lot of cash to pay him for taking that ocean voyage for him. There’s a limit to how much cash a man can carry around. Stands to reason he must have been pretty broke by the time he went from Georgia to Spain. But someplace between Madrid and London he replenished his finances—remember the money belt? Well when he flew from Madrid to Copenhagen he picked a flight that gave him several hours’ stop-over in Paris. It’s a pretty good bet he’s got a bank in Paris—a cash account or a safe-deposit box. And right now he’s flat broke except for whatever small change he’s boosted to keep himself going. If he told Oakley the truth about going to ground then he’ll want to clean out his stash—but even if he was lying he’s still got to have money. I’m betting the money’s in a bank in Paris. I’ve had SDECE saturation on every bank in town since they opened their doors this morning.”
“That’s shrewd enough,” Cutter said, “but he’ll walk right past them the same way he walked past our people last night.”
Myerson slapped the arm of his chair. “Even if he does I agree we’ve got to assume he’s in Paris. I think we’ve got to bottle up the damn city the way it’s never been bottled before.”
Follett waved his big arms wildly. “There’s a thousand roads out of Paris. It can’t be done.”
Myerson glared at him and then shifted the glare to Cutter. “And you want to go out on your own and sniff like a bloodhound. That’s your last and best shot, is it?”
“If I get close to him I’ll feel it. I can’t get more exact than that.”
Ross said, “Is he really going under, do you think?”
“Maybe,” Cutter said. “He’s changed his tactics—it means he’s changed his mind. He doesn’t want to die any more, if he ever really did. What he’s got left is knowing he won’t give up and lie down and die. But he may have been telling the truth about going into hiding. I think he’s tired of the hectoring game.”
“That doesn’t change anything for us,” Myerson said.
“I realize that.”
Myerson gave him a cold look and sank the knife, twisting it: “Give it your best, Joe. Because I’m going to phone Mikhail Yaskov and give him every scrap we’ve got.”
Ross said, “What?”
“Yaskov was right all along,” Myerson said, not without bitterness. “The important thing was to stop Kendig—not who stopped him. I’m going to bring Yaskov right up to date and wish him luck. And if he gets in there ahead of you, Joe, you can kiss everything good-bye.”
They sent the overnight bags on with Follett and took a taxi in from Le Bourget; Cutter told the driver to let them off at the Place de l’Opéra and Ross followed him into the American Express and Cutter sat down on a bench on the mezzanine.
“Okay,” Ross said, “what now?”
“Put yourself in his shoes. You’re here in Paris and the whole world’s gunning for you. You want to disappear. You pick up whatever money you’ve got left in your stash. Then what do you do?”
“I don’t know. What do you do?”
“I don’t know either,” Cutter said. “Let’s just think a while.”
“Why’d you pick this place? Because he used to have a checking account here?”
“He still has it,” Cutter said. “But there’s only a few hundred francs in it. He won’t come here.”
“Then we shouldn’t be here either.”
“All right Ross, where should we be?”
“Put it this way. He knows we’re looking for him. He’d go where he didn’t expect us to go.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Folies? The bar at the Ritz?”
“Kendig? No.”
“It won’t be any kind of public transportation. He might steal a car—it wouldn’t be the first time.”