“Madame Clermont,” he began, “it would seem that the Deuxième Bureau has been less than efficient in this matter.” The sarcasm was intended.
Jeanne Clermont did not gesture as she responded. “This is more than a laxity. I am convinced of it. For two years, there have been bombings of synagogues, killings of American military officers, as well as that matter with the American chargé d’affaires.”
“And now your American agent. Mr. Manning.”
Jeanne Clermont stared at him but did not show any emotion. “It was not the terrorists,” she said at last. “I am convinced it was from within the government. From the Deuxième Bureau, the CID, from some security source.”
“When the army sought to overthrow the government in de Gaulle’s time, after the Algerian settlement, there were pockets of resistance to democracy, one might say,” Mitterand replied.
“What more can be done, Mr. President? La Compagnie wishes the communications code access and source route, and they have indicated to me that the matter has some urgency.” She spoke quickly, with the conscious understatement of the Parisian, who used the language to play words against each other for a subtle shading of effect.
“And so you think it involves me, when I travel to Normandy this Sunday.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, Mitterand studied the painting of Charles de Gaulle that dominated the far end of the elegant room. De Gaulle was pictured in gray uniform, standing in his stiff and yet oddly graceful way, one hand resting on the same table that Mitterand now sat next to.
“How far we have come,” the president said. “When de Gaulle — of all people — sought to settle the war in Algeria, the rebels in the army sought to assassinate him. And from that moment, we have progressed to the point where the faction that wishes to destroy the Right works to sabotage the Left first. Right against Right, Left against Left, all in the name of reason and logic.”
“I must give them the code,” Jeanne Clermont began.
“No, madame, that is what you must not do. There is nothing more to be gained by your dangerous liaison with La Compagnie Rouge or by risking anyone’s safety. In forty-eight hours we shall begin the arrests and break the back of the conspiracy.”
“They are terrorists. I have only uncovered a part of the group.”
“Madame,” the president said, inclining his head in a little bow. “You have been courageous, as courageous as the women in the Maquis during the war. More than that; your duty was not as clear to you as it was to them.”
Jeanne Clermont smiled sadly at that, at the irony of her betrayal of the cause. No one would call it betrayal, of course, except her.
“You have served France,” Mitterand said. “Perhaps you have served peace.”
She did not speak to him further. The president touched a button at the side of the elegant table, and in a moment two men appeared, dressed in the stiff collars and soft suits of the civil service. One was the minister for Internal Reform, the other the secretary of the Deuxième Bureau, the supreme intelligence agency of the French government. Both men had been summoned to the Elysée Palace and made to wait twenty minutes outside the hidden room for the private interview to be concluded.
The minister appeared startled to see Jeanne Clermont. She barely glanced at him.
“Gentlemen, this is Madame Jeanne Clermont, who has worked for me, secretly, for nearly a year. She has much to tell you, and then, I assure you, you will have much work to do. Everything will be said only here, in this room. Even as the operation is carried out, the secrecy must be maintained even when dealing with your trusted subordinates. And, Mr. Secretary, Jeanne Clermont is to be protected from this evening. Taken from Paris to one of our safe houses in the South. Until the matter is concluded.”
The puzzled secretary of the Deuxième Bureau could only nod in agreement.
“There are other matters,” the president said vaguely. He turned, and the interview was concluded. But he turned back again and went to Jeanne Clermont, who rose from the armchair where she had delivered the names of La Compagnie Rouge into the hands of their enemies.
“Madame, you have served our cause all your life without rewards, and there will be none this time, only thanks, offered in secret.” The large head, the large eyes so clear and shrewd beneath the dark eyebrows, stared directly into the eyes of the woman before him. “Do you feel you betray the Left when you work for me in this matter?”
She did not speak, but the president waited a moment.
“Terror, madame. Two hundred years ago, it nearly destroyed the Revolution and gave us dictators and wars. We cannot let our revolution go the same course.”
He shook her hand in the formal way of Parisians and turned again, this time leaving by one of the doors that led back into the passages of the palace.
“Madame?” The minister spoke softly, awed by the moment and his presence in the hidden room.
Jeanne Clermont stared at him for a moment and then began to speak of the things she had learned over a year with La Compagnie Rouge and with the terror cells she had penetrated.
Two hours later, the secretary for the Deuxième Bureau made a discreet telephone call to the superintendent of liaisons, the officer in charge of “arrangements.”
“We have a holding matter,” the secretary said. “Who do you have?”
“Who is it?”
“A woman named Jeanne Clermont. She lives in the sixth arrondissement, on rue Mazarine. Can you have someone — discreetly — remove her at eight tonight?”
“Yes. Does it matter which house she is to be taken to?”
“No. Out of Paris. She is in extreme danger and it is a delicate matter. From the palace itself.”
The superintendent paused. “I can give it to Simeon. One of the old-timers.”
“Good. At eight.”
“It will be done.”
The connection was broken and the secretary began other calls. The matter was put out of his mind.
26
Bill had been right all along. He had taken the Polaroid snaps of Leo Neumann and presented them to Lydia. The threat against Leo was implicit in the fact of the snapshots; she had given in and told them everything. There was still time; the NSA computer analysts hadn’t even gone through all the background sheets yet.
The room was dark; it was nearly seven o’clock at night. Marge preferred to work in the dark, but she couldn’t during the day because the others objected. Marge liked to sit before the green glow of the computer display terminal and punch in letters and numbers and watch the computer respond with its flat declarations and sharp questions. It was like watching a program on television in a darkened room; all the senses became tuned to the display as the real world around faded in the blackness. At these moments Marge felt she had fallen into Tinkertoy, like Alice through the Looking Glass.
She couldn’t explain the sensation even to Bill, who understood most of what she told him. But Bill wasn’t a romantic; perhaps that was why Marge kept these things secret.
“What are we going to do after I expunge the material?”
“Don’t worry about it, honey.”
The conversation had taken place that morning in the kitchen as the two of them prepared to go to work. Bill was an assistant systems evaluator in the Department of Defense. He shared an office with two other junior men on the third floor in the south ring of the Pentagon. Marge and Bill had met at Ohio State University at Columbus and dated from their sophomore year. They were married at twenty-two, when they were both getting into government work. They were thirty-one now, they had no children, by choice; they had a pleasant three-bedroom home on a broad, pleasant avenue in Fairfax, Virginia. Every summer, in August, they traveled. One year they went to Hawaii. One year to England and Scotland. Another year to Scandinavia. What their passports never revealed were the trips to the Soviet Union. In fact, a number of things about Marge and Bill Andrews were never revealed.