“All right,” Devereaux said slowly. “I want to give you some identification.”
“Yes. Slowly,” Simeon said.
Devereaux removed the black case and opened it and held it up.
Simeon walked across the grass to a place ten feet in front of Devereaux.
He glanced at the card and then at Devereaux. “You have a pistol. Remove it and drop it on the ground.”
Devereaux removed his piece and dropped it. The pistol made no sound.
“Central Intelligence Agency. You have no authority here.”
“One of our men was killed,” Devereaux said.
“But this is France; you have no authority. Why didn’t you establish contact with the Deuxième Bureau?”
“This was a private matter,” Devereaux said. He held his hands apart from his body; he watched the policeman. The pistol was steady; the policeman stood too far away from him. There was nothing to do.
“How many others came in with you?”
“Just me. We want information.”
“We had watched the hotel. You inquired about Manning. The girl at the concierge desk notified me, of course. It was routine.”
“Someone followed me just now. Was that you?”
Simeon appeared puzzled for a moment. “I don’t know about that. I have followed you. What did you expect to learn here?”
“Who killed Manning.”
“No.” Simeon grinned. “That is not very important to you, I think. I think you want to know why they killed him.”
“You speak like an intelligence agent yourself.”
“No, only a policeman. I don’t like any of this. I don’t like Americans playing gangsters in my city.”
“Americans? Did it involve other Americans?”
“It involves you. It involved Manning.”
“And Jeanne Clermont.”
“Yes. That’s what I want to know. How is Madame Clermont involved in this?”
“You must know.”
“No. I know nothing. I have a photograph, I search the files. We have a file on Madame Clermont. She is in the government, in the Ministry of Internal Reforms. She was a radical. You know that? In her youth? She was arrested and she went to prison.”
Devereaux said nothing.
“But you, Monsieur Clay. What is the interest of the Central Intelligence Agency in Madame Clermont now?”
“I don’t know.”
Simeon was a large man but he moved with surprising grace. The pistol hand flicked out with scarcely a warning; Devereaux managed to turn away from the blow so that it caught him, not in the face as Simeon intended, but behind the ear. The blow stunned him; he fell. He felt nauseated and the earth did not seem firm beneath the touch of his fingers. He was on his hands and knees when the second blow came. Devereaux had expected it but he could not move, and it caught him in the ribs. He fell forward, and the third blow — another kick — cracked into the side of his chest. The policeman had not spoken as he worked. Now he stepped back a pace and the voice was heavy with labored breath.
Devereaux retched and the fluids of his empty stomach stained the ground. He pulled himself up to his knees and tried to rise further, but he couldn’t. He waited.
“Do you think your reply to my questions could be improved now?”
Devereaux said nothing.
“You’re a tough guy right?” Simeon took a step forward and raised his pistol hand again.
This time Devereaux drove the fingers of his left hand into the big belly before him, and at the same time pushed his shoulders against the other’s legs. Simeon swung down with the gun hand, but he was off-balance; in a moment, he was stumbling back, even as Devereaux rose and grabbed the pistol hand.
A single shot broke the silence. The trees rustled accusingly, like scolding aunts.
Simeon did not cry out as Devereaux wrenched the pistol out of his hand, nor when Devereaux’s second blow landed heavily on his nose. Blood stained his face. The third blow sent him reeling onto the grass.
Devereaux regained both guns and stood, propped against an elm. He watched Simeon on the ground. Simeon half rose, wiped his nose, and pulled out a handkerchief.
“Throw your identification over here,” Devereaux said.
“You can’t get out of the city, let alone France.”
“Here.”
The Frenchman pulled out a wallet and threw it across.
Devereaux squatted and flipped open the card case.
Simeon.
His photograph stared back at him.
But he was not with the CID.
Devereaux looked up. “Deuxième Bureau.”
“This is nonsense,” Simeon said. “Why don’t we be reasonable men?”
“There’s nothing to reason about. You followed me or had me followed. You’ve made your connections. Now I want to know what you’re doing about them.”
“A foreign agent was killed in Paris. Why? Why was he here? You have no right in this matter.”
“But I have the pistol.” Devereaux’s voice was low, plain, without traces of sentiment or pity.
“You can’t get out of Paris without me.”
“I don’t intend to leave right now. What did you find when you found Manning? Why did you know he was an agent?”
Now Simeon smiled and removed the bloodstained handkerchief. Again, the grin was unnaturally broad, as though he were enjoying a good joke. “We picked him up the moment he entered France four months ago. He went through customs using his own name, his own passport. It was the work of an amateur.”
“He had no reason to disguise it,” Devereaux said. The hard gray eyes stared into the comic face, as though they could penetrate the mask that Simeon offered.
“We had his name.”
“Why?”
“From…from before.”
Simeon frowned, annoyed by the slight hesitancy.
“That’s not possible,” Devereaux said. It was only a guess.
“But we knew. From 1968.”
“You never had the name of our agent. You never dealt with him directly. The information was passed back to CIA and traded to you.”
“By the R Section.”
“They were couriers.”
For the first time, something like doubt crossed Simeon’s features. He began to struggle up.
“No,” Devereaux said. “Stay where you are.”
“This is absurd.”
“Manning was our agent, at Langley,” Devereaux said. “He was pulled in and then we used R Section to make the camouflage trade with you.”
“That’s a lie,” Simeon said.
“It was 1968. We had done badly on Tet, there were internal memos that said we had lied in our gross estimates on Tet, on enemy strength, on where the enemy would strike. We needed R Section as a screen to trade information with you, so that we wouldn’t become involved either publicly or in private.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because the information was good,” Devereaux said. “He gave you Jeanne Clermont, he gave you a nest of radicals in the Sorbonne, he gave you their plans. After all, we were all on the same side.”
“Then,” Simeon said. “And now?”
“I don’t know. Who was the thin man who followed me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that the truth?”
“In this case, yes. He was a complication to me.”
“And what about Jeanne Clermont?”
“There is no suspicion of her. She is in the government; her records are all cleared. But why did Manning have her photograph in his pocket?”
Devereaux stared at the other man for a moment. “Perhaps he remembered her,” he said at last.
Simeon laughed then and got up despite Devereaux’s warning. He brushed bits of grass from his coat. He grinned again at Devereaux. “Well, Mr. Clay or whatever your name is, we know where we stand. What will you do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you should be on the evening flight to London. That’s what I think. I think you should return my pistol and you should let me escort you to Orly and wait until you get aboard the plane. That is what I think.”