Nothing at all had happened; nothing appeared out of order; even a close examination by historians would not have detected anything unusual in the workings of the official world of Washington or Moscow or even Paris.
Without any explanation at all, Acting Director Hanley of R Section reinstated a field agent who bore the code name “November.” He was put back on staff and salary, retroaction to his apparent resignation the previous January. The files involved in the “resignation” were altered, both on paper and in the maw of the computer Tinkertoy. Where they could not be altered, they were destroyed.
And a woman named Jeanne Clermont, who had been attached to the Ministry of Internal Reforms in the government of François Mitterand, resigned her post on June 11 without any explanation. It was rumored, of course, that she had accused Simeon of being the man called Three who headed the terror squads operating on French soil. The accusation could not be proved, and the old guard within the Deuxième Bureau had rallied around Simeon; Madame Clermont, in any case, was an outsider in the government, a radical, a passing member of an aberrant regime. Mitterand would step down one day and so would his radical friends — so the old guard agreed — but the structure of the government of France would remain. And they were certain they were the structure.
Jules Simeon had been touched by the respect of his friends within the government. He had not panicked in the bad week of accusations and charges that followed the arrests of the terrorists. He was a simple man, he explained, and not the first policeman ever accused of working in concert with the enemies of the law. His record was blameless, his decorations many, his loyalty previously unquestioned.
Mitterand’s principal political advisers urged him not to act against Simeon; “Be patient, he is neutralized in any case,” they counseled, and the cautious Socialist, who had endured years of compromise to become the president of France, listened to their counsel.
So Jules Simeon remained untouched by all the events that had not happened on the sixth of June. He even continued as the chief of the antiterror bureau, though he realized his future actions would be monitored closely by his enemies. It did not trouble him.
The Americans, of course, operating on the information provided by November, protested to the Deuxième Bureau, to no avail. It was no secret that the Bureau maintained a cold and jealous distance from the American agencies, an aloofness that reached back to the early 1970s, when French ports served as the prime gateways for the heroin traffic to America and the Americans accused the French of doing nothing to stop the trade.
Simeon had been brilliant. He professed outrage at the charges of the Americans and Madame Clermont. He pointed out that he had served France with honor for twenty-five years and that he had helped break the back of the terrorist plot against President Mitterand.
If it was a charade, then all the participants had agreed to take the charade very seriously.
In Moscow, Gogol saved his job. He pointed out to his superiors within the KGB that the plan for the Shattered Eye had failed not because of any intrinsic weakness but because of the traitorous acts of Warnov, who fed the plan into the computer called Naya, which all sides knew was tapped by the Americans. To the relief of the bureaucrats who ran the KGB and reported to the bureaucrats on the Central Committee, Gogol was exonerated with a reprimand. After all, the bureaucracy had to look to itself; it was the State, in any case. And Gogol, carefully, began to plan reestablishment of the terror network in France. In time, it might even be possible to use Simeon again.
Jeanne Clermont emerged from the English book shop across the narrow street. She stared at the café where she had seen William Manning on that damp, fog-shrouded morning. She crossed the street and entered the café and saw him, sitting at the table, watching her. This time, she was not startled, as she had been when she first saw Manning; it was as though she expected him.
She sat down next to him at the table and nodded when he ordered her a café au lait. His own coffee sat cold and still and milky in his cup. He ordered from the waiter in an accentless French that was nonetheless perfectly clear, perfectly at home. Each word surged relentlessly into the next word he spoke. His voice was remorseless and flat and calm.
“Why did you resign?” Devereaux asked at last.
“Because there was nothing else to do. If Simeon is the beast, then I have failed.”
“It’s never a matter of winning,” Devereaux said.
“How did you know I would come here?”
“I read his reports.”
“William.”
“He noted everything in detail.”
“Why did you come here?”
“To speak to you.”
“Is there anything more to say?”
“About Simeon.”
“You have made your reports and I have made mine, but the government — even this government — is like all governments.” She realized the words sounded bitter to her ear; would he understand the nuances in her voice?
His eyes held hers: cold, gray eyes that captured, made still, the changing light in them.
“Why did you think it would be different?”
“Because I had to believe that. What is the worth of my life if everything that I believed in was not so?”
He said nothing.
She sipped the coffee, tasting the mixed sweetness and bitterness.
“There is nothing that can be done now,” she said at last. It was a statement but her tone had framed it as a question.
“For what purpose?” he said. “Revenge?”
“I thought I was beyond revenge.”
“Then why should anything be done?”
“Because he still exists.”
“No,” Devereaux said. “That’s not the reason. Because he killed Manning.”
She stared at him for a moment before she spoke again. “Yes. He killed William.”
“Almost certainly,” Devereaux said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“And you can do nothing?”
He did not speak for a long moment. His eyes rested on her face. His large hands lay flat on the little table between them.
“Do you want me to kill him?” Devereaux asked at last.
She closed her eyes as though in pain. When she opened them, he sat still.
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I can do it,” Devereaux said. “It is what I can do.”
“Is it such a little thing?”
“Is it a little thing to ask me?”
Again, she closed her eyes as though to hide herself, like a child who imagines herself invisible when her eyes are shut.
But he waited for her.
“No. I can’t ask that. I don’t want that. I do not want his death.”
“Not for revenge? Not for Manning?”
“No.” And then she understood what she would do; it was as though the weight in her had been lifted. “No. I can’t kill him, not at all; I won’t regret Simeon’s death, too. One grief is enough. To remember that William is dead is more than I can bear.”
“Then what will you do?” Devereaux said.
But now she could not tell him.
35
Simeon groaned beneath the coverlet and turned in the bed, but the ringing of the telephone would not cease. He opened his eyes at last and blinked in the darkness of the bedroom: What time was it? Who would call him at this hour?