He knew where to go from the instructions; they had met here before.
He strolled around the edge of the square to the fenced-in park that clung to the side of the hill rising to the church. The steep park was laced with paths, cleverly concealed in the rocks and among the bushes and trees that stretched down the side of the hill.
For a moment, Quizon leaned against the fence and looked down at the city he loved, and again marveled at all the changes that had been wrought in it in the forty-two years he had lived here. In the hazy distance, great office tower blocks marched along the rim of the old city, spoiling the sweep of the low buildings of the city center. The strange, hideous bulk of the ultramodern Pompidou Centre museum with its exposed piping and escalator tubes on the outside of the building in the old Beaubourg district offended Quizon’s eye. He turned his lips down in a practiced pout and then lowered his gaze to the park in front of him.
He opened a gate and started along the path that wound down the hillside.
The man he had come to see was sitting on a bench behind some shrubs, regarding the same view that had entranced Quizon a moment before.
Quizon sat down next to him without a word.
They waited in silence for a moment as though this was a ritual they had to observe; in fact, it was elementary caution. Perhaps no contact should be made; perhaps someone had followed Quizon.
“A fine day,” Quizon said at last, his French lisping easily into the rhythms of the capital dialect.
Simeon said nothing.
Quizon touched the flower in his lapel again and rearranged it minutely.
“Who is the man?” Simeon said at last. His voice was rough, low and hard and without humor, though the comic arrangement of features of his face could not be altered.
“I received a message from Hanley,” Quizon began. “This morning. After you asked for the meeting. Hanley said that Madame Clermont would make contact with me in six days and that she was working for us.”
Simeon stared at the small, birdlike man in his straw hat and bow tie.
“What kind of nonsense is this?”
“I’m telling you what Hanley signaled to me. This morning at seven.”
“This is impossible.”
“Why? It would explain other things.”
“What things? Manning was sent here to spy on her. Do you mean now that Manning was sent here to turn her? And that she was flipped after he was killed?”
“I don’t know, Inspector. I’m just reporting.”
“I wanted to know about this man. The one in the Bois de Boulogne.”
“It can only be Devereaux,” Quizon said. “But it can’t be him either. He was separated from the Section six months ago. Resigned, they said.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have my own sources…”
“Your sources are Le Matin,” Simeon said. “You know nothing that I don’t tell you.”
“I know about the Section.”
“Then why has he been sent here?”
“I don’t know. Especially in light of this business about Jeanne Clermont. Why would she contact me?”
“You’re the station man here for the Section,” Simeon growled.
“But Manning gave me no indication…”
“Manning was going to quit the assignment,” Simeon said. “That was the indication he gave you. You told me that afternoon.”
Quizon was silent. He stared at the city and smelled the trees in the park around him. So peaceful, he thought, and yet we talk about murder. Of course Simeon had killed Manning; it was the inevitable act after Manning indicated he would not compromise Madame Clermont.
The thought of Manning’s death did not horrify him; he was accustomed to death, because he was growing old and too many of his friends of youth had died.
“Why would Hanley tell you this? So suddenly?” Simeon spoke out loud but he was not asking Quizon a question, and Quizon kept his silence.
“Because,” Simeon answered his own question. “Because it is not true.”
“What?”
“Because it is not true,” Simeon said, staring again with his large, comic eyes at the little man. He stretched out a paw and placed it on Quizon’s frail shoulder. He felt the bones beneath his hand. “Do you see, Herbert?”
“No.”
“Devereaux. Devereaux is working for Hanley, Devereaux has not contacted you—”
“I’m just a station man, sometimes they don’t contact—”
“No, no, Quizon, you don’t understand at all.” Simeon smiled then, a vicious cunning smile like the smile of a cat with a mouse in its mouth. “They don’t trust you anymore. They are passing along disinformation. To whoever they suspect you work for. They are giving you the wrong information to give Devereaux time. But for what? To get to Madame Clermont and try to trace back through her to whoever killed Manning. It’s not such a bad idea, but I’m afraid they didn’t understand you would tell me. If I had taken it from a tap, I might have believed it. They didn’t understand that you work for me.”
“Inspector.” Again the little man wriggled beneath the heavy hold of the other’s hand. Simeon was powerful, both physically and in a sense of presence. Simeon had concluded an arrangement with Quizon eight years before. The choice for Quizon had not been difficult. Simeon would have deprived the old man of the only thing he had loved in his life: the city of Paris. “You see, my friend, we are on the same side in any case, but I want you to be more on our side than on the American side.” So Simeon had argued that day in Quizon’s rooms eight years ago. “If you can accommodate us, then we can help you. First, you will remain in Paris. Second, we will supplement your income. There will be no danger for you.”
“But I would be a traitor,” Quizon had argued.
“Are you such a patriot?” Simeon had laughed then. “You have lived in Paris since you were eighteen. You were here during the occupation of the Germans. You have not been to America for thirty years. Where is your loyalty then? To Paris? Or to some faraway Washington and some bureaucrats you never see.”
“I was in Washington just two years ago.”
“For four days. Four days in thirty years. There is no choice, my friend. You will accept my offer or you will be exiled from Paris within twenty-four hours. I promise you there will be no hearing, no plea, no appeal. You will never set foot in France again.”
Quizon had argued but it had been fruitless. Simeon had presented the choices brutally and honestly; he had lived up to his word. And Quizon, for the sake of the only thing he loved, had agreed, little by little, day by day, to compromise himself and the workings of the Section.
It was all routine and nothing had been done with his information, so far as Quizon could see. Paris had not been an important center for espionage since the NATO headquarters had moved to Brussels; Quizon lived in a sort of information backwater, and his dealings with the agent from the Deuxième Bureau were not frequent.
Until last November, when Simeon began to make a series of demands on him and requests for odd bits of information on the workings of the Section.
“So they don’t trust you, little friend, and they are afraid of me. And so they are giving you this lie to pass along to me. Well, let us use the lie.” Simeon smiled. “Maybe we can turn it back on them. Yes. I think that would be possible.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The question is what this man Devereaux is going to do. And I think he will see Madame Clermont as soon as possible.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Quizon said.
“No. And it’s better for you not to. Manning could have been useful to us — until he decided he could not bear to betray Madame Clermont a second time. A weak fool. Well, we will make do; we will make Monsieur Devereaux useful to our purposes.”