She smiled then, with sadness, with a gentle memory revealed behind the eyes. “We are all alone at last, Calle; age assures us of that. Why are you afraid of a woman alone?”
“Because we must be certain of you.”
“Why?”
Calle studied the remains of the cigarette smoldering in his large, hairy hand. He dropped it on the floor with the others and crushed it out. He lit another.
“What do you do with your reports?”
She seemed surprised. She sat up straight and looked at him and then answered. “They are filed with Monsieur de Forêt, you know that.”
“Yes, yes. But that isn’t what I asked you. What do you do with them? I mean, when everyone has seen them?”
“They’re filed, of course.”
“Of course. Where?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Madame, since 1974 the records of the ministries as well as the records of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate have been filed by computer.”
She stared at him.
“Is this correct?”
“Yes. I didn’t understand what you—”
“Yes. What we want. Simple. What is the access code to the computer in the Ministry of Internal Reforms?”
“But I…”
“I what? It’s a simple matter.”
“But I don’t use the computer, I don’t know…”
“How difficult would it be to find out? How difficult? Will it take months, years?” He was sarcastic now, and Jeanne felt uncomfortable at the mean change in the tone of his voice. The voice still rumbled but it was the growl of the beast now, hidden in some depth of his soul.
“I don’t know, I never thought of inquiring.”
“There are two codes to the computer. One is general, for the entire ministry; the other is personal, for the individual who has access. It is important that the individual is of sufficient importance to have access to all other bins of the computer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Madame, the computer of your ministry is interlocked with other computers in the government. At each level, lesser numbers of persons have access to a wider range of computer storage areas. At the lowest level, a clerk — a file clerk — will have access to the computer of the ministry and only to the file in her small section. At the next level, her supervisor will have access to all the bins of all the clerks. At the next level, the departmental supervisor will have access to all the bins of those below her.”
“And the highest level…”
“Will have access to other departments,” Calle finished.
“But why do—”
“It is important that we have the access codes to the computers at the highest level. If it is necessary, we are willing to pay for the information.” He said the last words with contempt, and Jeanne returned the tone in her reply:
“Who would you pay, Calle? Obviously, you have thought to bribe someone before you spoke to me. Do you want to pay me? Or is my loyalty to the cause sufficient?”
The man stared at her, wreathed in smoke from his burning cigarette. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I would prefer not to trust you.”
“Why? What reason have I given you or anyone in the movement not to trust me?”
“None. That frightens me. Are you so dedicated after all these years? You flaunt your middle-class morality, you pray at Mass every Sunday, and yet you sleep with your lover and you married your husband out of pity. I am frightened by that which I cannot understand, madame. You are a member of the petty bourgeoisie and yet you flirt with a revolution.”
“My dedication is questioned,” she replied, “because I prefer clean clothes to dirty ones, because I prefer to live as a human being in my apartment and not as an animal.”
Again the rumbling, low sound, half of a man’s laughter, half of the warning growl of the beast. “So Le Coq says we must trust you. You have fooled him at least; but you must do more to fool me.”
“The code,” she said. “This access code. I will get it.”
“How?”
“Should I ask you why you want it? The computer is for storage of files; what files would our ministry provide you that I could not request myself?”
“How will you obtain the access codes?” Calle repeated, ignoring her.
“I don’t know. I’ll get them. From de Forêt.”
“Will you sleep with him?”
“Why should that be necessary?”
“Is he in love with you?”
She waited for her voice to come back. “Who are you, Calle, to ask me such things?”
“It is too important not to tell you.”
“Yes, You have said that. This is important and that is important. But I cannot be trusted.”
“No one can be trusted,” Calle said.
“Not even you.”
“Not even me. No one.”
“Why do you want this access code?”
“That’s obvious.”
“But what can you learn from a file?”
“Madame, who killed William Manning?”
“You asked me that at first, and I told you I don’t know.”
“But the question is more important than your answer. Madame, William Manning was an American intelligence agent who wanted to use you. Use you for what? He was killed. By whom? Do you see, you are at the center of this business whether or not you are involved. You were the conduit for Manning — but for what? And then Manning is killed. Why?”
“I don’t know.” But suddenly, a horror seized her and she thought for a moment she would choke or faint or be overwhelmed by some force she never knew existed. For the first time since Manning’s body had been found in the Seine, she saw his death clearly. All during the hours of agony, of studying his dead features in the daily papers, of sitting in gloomy silence in her rooms, of reliving again and again their last meeting until the pain of memory had opened every wound, until every moment they had spent together was remembered with sadness, Jeanne had not understood until now.
She had caused his death. If she had not existed, he would not have died.
“Madame?” The small man leaned forward. Her face had gone white with shock, her eyes had opened wide; he saw the horror reflected. “Madame Clermont?
Madame?”
She could not speak to him. In a moment, there would be tears. But now she could not speak because the inevitability of William’s death was finally understood.
17
Devereaux had arrived in Paris thirty-six hours too late. The police had already ransacked Manning’s hotel room; his few, anonymous possessions had been removed to the evidence room in the basement of that part of the Palace of Justice devoted to the workings of the Criminal Investigations Division.
They would remain there, unclaimed.
No one would avow Manning’s identity. After a time, his body — unclaimed by relatives or friends — would be buried in the potter’s field in Neuilly, outside the capital. He had been single, his parents were dead. There was no reason for anyone to acknowledge that Manning had existed at all.
For two days, Devereaux had done nothing. The lack of action was not characteristic of him, but if the game had not changed — as he told Hanley — the rules had shifted, and he was not certain of his ground. Hanley suspected something was wrong within the Section and so he could not turn to the Section for aid. And so he could not interview Herbert Quizon as a member of the Section; nothing could be floated back to Section — by Quizon or anyone. Nothing could be confirmed by Section.
For two days, in the dull, old-fashioned rooms he had rented in the same hotel where Manning had stayed, he tried to feel his way beneath the skin of the murdered agent. If Lakenheath and Felker and the dead agent Cacciato were all linked back to Paris and Jeanne Clermont, what was the link? And why had Manning been killed when nothing in his reports to Hanley indicated that Manning had any clue to a link? Or to Jeanne Clermont’s part in a supposed chain of circumstances that stretched across Western Europe? And why had Manning chosen this hotel to live in?