“It’s not too convenient for the rest of us, you know. There are twenty-six principal agents in eighteen different countries out there who won’t talk to anyone but you.”
“They’ll get along. Ninety percent of what they do, they do out of their own resources. They aren’t photographing documents, they’re running political movements. I’ve held their hands for a long time-let them go on alone.”
Webster sat down heavily. “I’m not used to operating against you, Paul, and I don’t like to do it. I think this smells very, very funny. Patchen doesn’t give a shit about your agents, either. He wouldn’t discuss handing them over to somebody else. It’s like he expects you back after a short vacation.”
“I won’t be back, Tom. David knows that.”
“Then what’s he waiting for? He doesn’t want word of your leaving to get around, isn’t that right?”
“You read Patchen’s mind if you want to. I’ve never been able to do it. What do you mean by operating against me?”
“Trying to get you to open up,” Webster said. “Sybille may think things have changed, but I don’t. We’ve never lied to each other, Paul.”
“Then let’s not start now.”
“All right, I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t think you’re out. I think you and David have got something going. You went to Washington without even telling us. I didn’t know you’d been there until Patchen showed up on the doorstep day before yesterday.”
“When I went to Washington, it seemed the thing to do, Tom. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you-but I go a lot of places without telling you, when I pay for my own ticket.”
“So you fly home at your own expense, resign, make plans to shack up in Rome for the rest of your life with that Australian you’ve got, right?” Webster said. “And a week later I spot you in La Coupole, with Nguyen Kim, with no French surveillance closer than wherever you lost it. The French are on him like ten pots of glue, all the time. You’re telling me they took a night off so you two could eat oysters and gossip about old times?”
“Tom, I’m not telling you that-you’re making it up.”
“Well, I’m not making this up. Kim has run just over two million dollars through the Banque Sadak in Beirut in the last ten days. He’s got couriers going every which way.”
“He didn’t mention that to me,” Christopher said.
“The French have got him bugged. We couldn’t get mikes in there because there’s always someone in the house, so we’re piggybacking the French wires.”
Christopher laughed. “I’ll bet the French are going to like that.”
“They won’t find out. We’re not going to find out a hell of a lot listening to tapes. We need someone next to Kim-like you. But you’re an outsider. I’m not telling you any more.”
“I can guess,” Christopher said. “You think they’re talking to Hanoi-put us back in, and we’ll let you in after we get rid of the Yankee devils.”
“Maybe. But it may just be business. Kim’s in touch with a heroin factory in Marseilles.”
“Why? They’ve got more opium in Vietnam than they know what to do with.”
“I don’t know-maybe he’s buying technology. If Kim can process it himself instead of shipping it raw, he’ll make fifty, a hundred times the profit.”
“Do you really think they’re serious about the heroin business?”
“Kim sure as hell is,” Webster said. “He puts in all his time on it, night and day. He wants to buy a factory. I’m certain of it.”
Christopher grinned. “Were you in touch with your wire man today?”
“Yeah, How’d you enjoy your beer at Fouquet’s?”
“Okay. You had nobody behind me after I left.”
“Didn’t I? I stuck a bleeper under the left rear fender of your fucking Peugeot, buddy.”
Webster was filled with sly pride. He showed Christopher a rigid middle finger and poured himself another cognac.
“That’ll teach me to believe in coincidence,” Christopher said.
“You just aren’t used to operating against a professional service,” Webster said. “You’re not going to explain a goddamn thing, are you?”
“Tom, there’s nothing to explain. If you think I’m not out, you’re wrong. I’m through. I don’t work for you people any longer.”
Webster took off his glasses. He was a young man, but there were heavy pouches beneath his eyes and broken veins under the skin of his face. “Okay, Paul,” he said, “I’ll say this-next to Sybille, you’re the most sensitive human being I know. You don’t think for a minute that I believe any of this. Patchen sat right here and told me to help you any way I could and to keep my mouth shut about it. That seemed a little unusual to me.”
“If I need any help, I’ll let you know,” Christopher said. “One thing-have you picked up anything on the audio you have on Kim about somebody called Lê Thu?”
Webster thought, and shook his head. “I don’t recall, but I’ve got some logs in my briefcase. Hold on.” He looked through a sheaf of typed sheets. “No, nothing in these, Who’s he supposed to be?”
“I think it’s a she-Lê is a female indicator in Vietnamese names, like Lé Xuan, for Mrs. Nhu. It was a name Kim mentioned, as if he were playing a practical joke on me. Maybe he is.”
“I can run it through for a name check, if you want.”
“No,” Christopher said. “Don’t do that. I’m not entitled to such services. You’ve got to start remembering I’m a private citizen.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Webster said. “Go to bed.”
5
Christopher rose while it was still dark. He left a note for Sybille on the kitchen table and went down the carpeted stairs. In the cobbled courtyard of the apartment building he encountered the Webster’s concierge. She was collecting the garbage, and she raised her wizened face, narrowing her eyes in the smoke of her morning cigarette. Her squint of suspicion changed to a smile.
“Husbands travel, don’t they?” she said.
Christopher rapped softly on the lid of one of the concierge’s garbage cans. “It’s the age of the airplane-everybody can afford to fly,” he said.
The old woman grinned. “But some have to take off early, eh?”
Christopher gave her a ten-franc note, and she trotted ahead of him through the rain to open the heavy door to the street.
He found a café filled with workmen and a few pallid whores; the girls sat at the tables by the window, talking about shops and movies with the kindness and generosity they have for one another. He was reminded of Webster; like him, the girls were aging too quickly, and they placed the same value on people who knew the things that they had learned. They understood one another’s fatigue.
Christopher had two cups of coffee and went out into the rain again. By the time he had walked to Montparnasse, the rain had stopped and Paris was filled with its winter light, a dull atmosphere of mother-of-pearl. There was no one in the street behind the Select where he had parked his car. He felt inside the left rear fender until he found the transmitter Webster had put there. It was attached with a strong adhesive, and Christopher broke a fingernail prying it loose. He stuck it under the tailgate of a truck with Nice license plates.
Christopher headed north, toward Brussels. He reached the airport there by noon. In the tax-free shop he bought Molly a ring shaped like a cobra with rubies for eyes. That afternoon in the sunlight in Piazza del Popolo, he watched her slip it on her finger.
“A stealthy gift,” she said. “What lovely surprise have you in store for me next?”
“I’m going to the Far East tomorrow,” Christopher said.
“Christ. You just got back from there.”
“I promise to love you the whole time I’m gone,” Christopher said.
Molly removed the ring and put it on the table between them.