Pim felt the blade point against his arm. He was ready.
Devereaux was silent for a moment.
“What else was there?”
“It was all he told me. I didn’t have much time, y’see.”
“A matter of urgency for you as well,” Devereaux said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you swim well?”
“What do you mean? I told you everything I know.”
Devereaux got back inside the car.
“What are you gonna do? Yank? Yank?”
“Give you a moment to consider the alternatives. Do you want to jump into the broad? Or do you want to be pushed in by the car?”
“Dammit. This isn’t fair.”
“It’s fairer than Reed got.”
“Dammit, we’re allies.”
“Go ahead, Pim.” The voice was cold, mild, even a little amused.
And then Pim thought of the brass rubbings. They’d be ruined, even in the oilcloth.
“One favor, Yank? One favor. Let me take out the rubbings.”
“What?”
“Brass rubbings. Got them up in Cambridge today at the King’s Chapel. Please. Let me take them out.”
“Carefully.”
Slowly, Pim unbuttoned his coat and opened it. He pulled out the oilskin and set it down gently on the ground beside him.
“Brass rubbings,” Pim said with reverence. “I collect them.”
Devereaux did not speak. He flicked on the headlamps again and Pim was framed in the piercing white light. Pim trembled with rage; he felt a fool. The Yank had made him feel a fool. There would be a time for avenging this. He was Alfred Pim, he wasn’t from the East End anymore; no man told him his place, no man told him about dropping his bloody h’s.
The motor roared.
Pim turned and jumped over the precipice into the murky waters of the broad, near the place where he had dumped Reed’s body three months before. For a moment he held still as the icy waters closed over him, and then his feet touched bottom. It was barely six feet deep. He struggled up and broke the surface.
All was darkness.
He could hear the motor already roaring in the distance.
Damn. Damn him. Pim struggled to the reedy bank and lifted himself out of the water.
16
For a long time — she thought later that it had been at least two hours — the car was on the road outside the capital, fleeing down one of the empty predawn highways into the lush and rolling countryside. She could not tell the direction, but she felt the rise and fall of the Renault as it dipped and climbed, valley to valley; she guessed they were heading southwest, into the countryside north of Tours, not far from the Loire.
They had placed a blindfold over her eyes. They had been courteous but the requirement was firm. She had offered no resistance. She was still numb from the death of William, from the sense of anxiety that had turned to fear and then to the certainty confirmed on the third page of Le Monde.
The big Algerian named Bourgaine had come for her in the afternoon and taken her to Le Coq. The location of the apartment had been changed; everyone in the terror cell seemed on edge.
Le Coq had flown into her. “He was with you, in your apartment, madame, and then he was killed. Why did you kill him?”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said, her words offering no explanation and no defense.
“Because of your petty jealousies,” Le Coq had screamed. “He betrayed you in 1968 and that was more important than the work of our organization. You would be avenged like a cheap Corsican whore, you wanted his life.”
She had said nothing while Le Coq berated her, described fantastic scenarios, stomped around the room like a child.
“You killed him!” Le Coq had screamed at her.
“No” was all she permitted herself to say, sitting on a chair alone in the middle of the darkened room while the shadows of the others were around her. She thought of the torn body pulled from the murky Seine, the blood upon his beautiful face, the holes torn in the white flesh of his body. Was it a moment before that he had covered her with his body, alive, warm and hard, held her with his arms, let his warmth spread over her, engulf her?
William, she had thought as Le Coq berated her and then lashed out at the others. William. He had left her without a good-bye, silently fleeing the dark room in the morning calm of Paris. She dreamed she had heard the shots that tore his life from him.
And then, after what seemed a long time, the ravings were done and she still sat in the room and the others would not speak to her. Would they kill her? Would they banish her from La Compagnie Rouge?
But now it did not matter to her; all her life was drained from her in his wounds. What did revolutions or governments mean to her when William was dead?
Le Coq had made a telephone call finally and come back to her a chastened man. “Perhaps you had nothing to do with Manning’s death after all,” he had said with a gentle tone.
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” she had replied sadly. “I want to leave now.”
“No, madame. Not now. The games are over,” he said. “Tonight you will begin your real work for La Compagnie Rouge.”
And she had waited, in silence and alone, during the long night as strangers came and left the garret, as there were little muttered conferences in the corners of the room. After three in the morning, when most of the bistros and brasseries in the fifth arrondissement — the Latin Quarter — were closed and the streets were at last quiet, Bourgaine reentered the rooms and said everything was ready.
“She will have to be blindfolded,” Le Coq had said, and everyone agreed.
“Why?” she had asked.
“For security.”
She had stared at him sadly. “More games?”
“No, madame. No more games. From this night, the games are finished.”
And so they had taken her in the car along the streets of the sleeping city, out past the Bois de Boulogne, through the suburbs, into the countryside. The games are over, she thought as the car hummed relentlessly down the road, and then she would think of William again and she knew there were tears pressed beneath her blindfold. It was better that they not see the tears, she thought; it would be better if she could not cry for him anymore.
Now he suddenly pulled her blindfold away, and Jeanne blinked at the morning light. The day was soft, the fields — there were fields of wheat in every direction — were damp with dew, and a little mist hung over the sprouting tops of the wheat.
They had pulled up at a small, stone farmhouse with a red tile roof. The house was at the end of a dirt road that wound around two low, brooding hills. The house commanded a fine view of the fields beyond; in the distance, nearly at the line of the horizon, the windows of a château glinted in the light. The day was calm, already full of promised warmth; a few fat clouds drifted against the clear sky. They might have been a thousand miles from Paris, but they had driven less than three hours, Jeanne knew.
The large man who had blindfolded her now helped her step from the small car. Her heels sank in the damp earth of the path that led to the wooden cottage door. Bourgaine pulled the car around the cottage and parked it behind a wooden fence at the back of the property. Without effort, the house was as isolated as one could be; it commanded a good, long view of the only road that ran near the property.
It was safe, Jeanne realized, and she felt again the excitement that had mingled with her grief at Manning’s death. Everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours had pulled her back and forth. If Manning had not been killed, they might not have trusted her enough to bring her here, to show her the secret heart of La Compagnie Rouge.