77 Rue Paradis (11 page)

Suddenly Chevard turned and looked at him. “Come,” he said. “You come with me. Get your coat on.” He walked swiftly out into the kitchen and Baron heard him talking with Jeanne. He took his coat off the back of the chair and slipped it on, his heart thudding stolidly against his ribs and into his throat. He knew very well this was it, and he hated to see Chevard doing it. He wanted to tell him it was all lies, but he could not. He knew Chevard would act the same. Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he? For the first time, now, doubt began to register in his mind. But he had to do it because of Bette. Yet, still in the back of his mind, he heard the question: Which was more to the point—a single person, or a whole nation?

Well, he thought, turning quickly away from the chair and the sunlight out there beyond the window, for me it’s this way. For me it’s got to be this way.

Chevard came from the kitchen. He carried a brief case now, and wore a stiff-brimmed felt hat. The hat made him look still more harried, the red-rimmed eyes peering at Baron quizzically, patiently, almost. Jeanne followed him and stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at Baron.

“Good luck to you, Frank,” she said. “Please come and see us. Why don’t you stay here while you’re in Marseilles?”

Baron made as if to answer, but Chevard cut him short with a laugh. “We’ll see,” Chevard said. “Won’t we, friend?”

Baron nodded to Jeanne and followed Chevard on through the house, out the side door. They got into a sleek, gray Italian Fiat 8V and Baron felt as if they were speeding even before Chevard started the engine.

“This is my baby,” Chevard said. He sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. “Wait till I take you over the mountain roads.” He hesitated, glanced at Baron.

“Where are we going?”

For answer, Chevard started the engine. The fine roar from twin exhausts sent leaves whirling in the driveway. “I have something to tell you,” Chevard said. “I’m sure you will be interested.”

He put the car in gear and they swooped abruptly from the drive, down into the street. Again Chevard shifted and Baron felt his shoulders come brutally back against the seat in a smooth, powerful drag. Trees flashed by, and the powerful engine whispered its challenge into the morning.

Baron’s left hand lay half across the smooth, cool leather of Chevard’s brief case there on the seat. He experienced a chill, knowing what might be inside that brief case. He was suddenly torn with a desire to look inside the case, and it was only with effort that he managed to keep from holding it in his lap and trying to look. This worried him. He began to wonder if he was losing control.

Soon they came out of Marseilles, to the south, and started up the mountain road on the way to Cassis.

“I don’t much like Marseilles at all,” Chevard said. They approached a curve, headed upward on the winding road, yet Chevard only increased the speed of the Fiat. Down over the side of the mounting road, Baron made out Marseilles, spread like a relief map below them. The golden Virgin atop Nôtre Dame de la Garde shone brilliantly in the morning sunlight, and beyond the sun-bright and shadowed city the Mediterranean glistened and gleamed. Somewhere down there Bette waited, with Lili. Gorssmann paced and held his breath, betting on Baron, betting against the standards of humanity, betting against the world.

“I’ve had to leave Paris,” Chevard said. “And I’m going to tell you why, Frank. I shouldn’t, but for many years we have been friends. I think you should know. And when you do know, perhaps I then can be of some help to you.”

Baron waited. He sat tightly in the seat, remembering now that Chevard had always driven much too fast, and on these roads it was frightening. Yet the car held tightly, even on the curves.

“I will tell you,” Chevard said.

And he did.

CHAPTER 13

The late morning turned hot as they drove through the thickly forested hills, after turning off the main road to Cassis. In the speeding Fiat, Baron wished there were something else to say. But Chevard was quite silent now, smiling behind the wheel, impatient to show Baron the things he had told him about. Baron knew he should not overquestion Chevard, yet he had to register just the right amount of enthusiasm and amazement. The only trouble was that Chevard had not once mentioned the cosmic breather. Perhaps it was too much to expect. Baron had waited, but Chevard talked only of the newly developed plane itself and of how they were reaching a peak of construction in the secret plant.

“And this is what you’re doing in Marseilles?” Baron said. He kept trying to get Chevard to talk more. Nothing seemed to work.

“That’s right. I’m in charge of the entire business,” Chevard told him. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to bring you here, Frank.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t. Is it against the rules?”

Chevard glanced over at him, wheeled the car sharply around a banked curve on the dirt road.

“Not even governmental officials come here,” Chevard said.

“No use getting the people you work with down on you.”

Chevard laughed. “Suppose I put you on salary. What then?”

Baron grinned and said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. Chevard was trusting him altogether too much. In one way, that is. On the other hand, Chevard hadn’t told him enough. Baron did not like it. As it was now, if Chevard didn’t tell him about the breather, Baron knew he would have to worm it out of his friend. It would be difficult. It would take time. During that time, he knew he would feel more and more sorry for Chevard.

Only a single thought held him solidly. Somewhere at the end of all this, he might meet the man who had originally begun the whole mess by sabotaging his plants in the States. So long as this desire burned in the back of his mind, he knew he was safe. Nothing would stop him.

But he was sick with it. Sick with all of it.

“I’m going to have to ask you to promise me one thing,” Chevard said. He looked soberly across at Baron.

“Yes?”

“You must promise to say nothing of any of this to anyone. I don’t like to ask it—I’m sure you wouldn’t. But I have to ask it, Frank.”

Baron forced a laugh. “You don’t have to worry,” he said, feeling the lie like a sharp-cornered rock in his mouth.

“That’s good enough for me,” Chevard said. “The future of France may well hang on this little enterprise.”

Baron swallowed.

“I’d rather you would not mention to Jeanne that I have told you anything. All right that I’ve brought you out here. She knew you were coming. But about what we are doing, no. She worries. There have been certain troubles.”

Baron waited for him to continue, but he stopped talking. What did Chevard mean?

The plant was not what Baron had expected. He had envisioned a vast, sprawling valley area, flat and sun-baked, with metal-roofed hangars and workshops and administration buildings of gleaming brick, their lawns and parking areas set out with grass and flower beds, sidewalks, and “For Official Cars Only.”

It was not like that, nothing like back in the States.

They came upon the entrance to the plant suddenly, without warning. The road was abruptly blocked from a sharp hillside curve in the thick woods by a tall wire-mesh gate. Separated in the middle by the gate was a single-storied, one-room building, with doorways on both sides of the fence. Three guards stood by the gate, two on the outside, one on the inside, and they all carried rifles and wore holstered guns on their uniformed hips. They did not come to attention as Baron and Chevard approached and stopped in the Fiat, but Baron sensed a stiffening of tension, of control. None of the guards smiled and there was something immensely foreboding about the whole thing.

“Get out,” Chevard said.

Baron opened the door and climbed out and stood beside the car. He glanced to the right and left, up the hillside and down, along the line of steel fence. The top of the fence jutted both inward and outward with a wild tangle of barbed wire and thrusting spikes. He noticed that the wire of the fence was nearly as thick as a pencil. It would be difficult material to cut through. No wonder Gorssmann had been stopped. The fence running up and down the hillside was camouflaged carefully, blending in with the woods and brush, and it had all obviously been erected with care. None of the smallest bushes or saplings near the fence had been broken or trampled in any way and the fenceline veered and curled and circled and zigzagged, following the natural inclination of the ground itself. It was not easy to follow the fence with the eye, or even to see it there in the woods. It was painted a dull green and he realized right away that he was being admitted to a place few even knew existed.

Beyond the gate, the road turned suddenly uphill and vanished from sight.

“Come,” Chevard said. He walked on ahead into the building. Inside there was a desk, a typewriter, and a single chair. There was nothing else save a mounted .30-caliber machine gun sitting in the corner, with boxes of ammunition beside it. Under the desk was a wooden box with the top slats ripped off. Baron looked and saw that it contained grenades.

Chevard spoke to the one guard that had entered with them.

The guard sat quickly behind the typewriter and typed on a small card. He did not speak. He was a close-lipped young man, with eyes the color of shallow water beneath the black bill of his cap.

“This is an identification card,” Chevard said. He handed it to Baron. Baron read it, reread it. It made no sense. The whole thing was in some kind of code. “It will admit you at any time,” Chevard said. “Take good care of it. Only one such may be issued. Without that card, you cannot get inside the gate. Not even I could enter. Watch.”

He walked on out of the building and Baron followed him. Chevard moved up to the gate and told the guard to open the gate.

The guard just looked at him. He did not move, nor did the other guard move. The one in the building came outside and stood there with his thumbs hooked into the brown leather belt that held his holster. Baron noticed that the man had cultivated a fine Western slouch.

“Come,” Chevard said to the guards. “Open up. You know me, I’m in a hurry!” He spoke loudly, ordering them.

Still none of them moved or spoke.

“You see what I mean?” Chevard said. He drew his wallet from an inside coat pocket, flashed the card, then folded the wallet and put it away. Still nobody moved. He grinned then, withdrew the card from the wallet, and handed it over. One of the guards accepted it, seemed to feel of it between thumb and index finger, returned it to Chevard with a slight grin.

“Back to the car.”

They climbed into the Fiat and Chevard put his wallet away as the gate swung open.

Baron was impressed, but for the first time this morning he began to perspire again. It had seemed almost too easy for Chevard to arrange with the guards about a card for him.

He questioned Chevard about this. There was no sense in letting it get by. He had to know everything there was to know.

Chevard grinned like a death’s-head above the almost perpendicular steering wheel. “I was waiting for you to ask that, Frank. Good thing you did too,—you would have worried me if you hadn’t asked.” He shook his head. “I called in from home. A card was arranged for you and sent to the gate. That accounted for the third guard. He was guarding your identity card.”

Baron looked straight ahead at the rushing dirt road. Yes, it was plain now why Gorssmann had found trouble. Nobody could get in there. He was coming in because of old friendship, and because Chevard trusted him; really trusted him.

“You notice nothing?” Chevard said suddenly.

At the instant he asked the question, Baron had noticed something. To the right, sunken into the hillside, shielded well by a large stand of pine, was the entrance to a cave, large enough to admit a full-grown battleship. Across the mouth of the cave, completely hidden from the air, and practically out of sight from the road, was another wire gate with two guards standing beside it. Through the gate, Baron saw a white stretch of concrete road, or street, stretching into the cave.

He craned his neck, peering back as they flashed by. Abruptly Chevard swung the Fiat off the road onto what resembled a bed of brown pine needles. The tires purred softly over solid-surfaced road, headed directly into a thrusting fall of greening forest that swung low, vine-clotted, to the surface of the road. He drove the car full tilt at the foliage.

“Look out,” Baron said softly, realizing what it was even as he spoke.

Chevard chuckled quietly as the Fiat nosed into the mass of foliage at fifty miles an hour. Baron braced himself. It lifted away and the car zoomed into a yellow-lighted, low-ceilinged space that was immense. The floor was macadam, black and smooth. It was the parking area, and Baron sat tightly watching, his heart hammering, as he saw what he faced. It was a tremendous garage. Cars were ranked three deep along the far wall. Chevard circled the interior, swung into line with a grand old Lagonda-Bugatti black-top convertible, and the tires yipped impolitely as they stopped.

“What do you think of it?” Chevard said.

Baron saw another young uniformed guard clipping toward them across the floor. He seemed to have a long way to walk, his hard heels echoing. He walked with one hand on his holster, the other wrapped around the balance of a Garand M1 rifle.

“It’s terrific.” That was all Baron could manage to say.

Chevard climbed out of the car and met the guard. They spoke rapidly in French for a moment. The guard turned and waved and a jeep roared out of a far dark passage in the wall and veered toward them, tires squealing on the macadam. The first guard waited, watching Baron closely as he stepped over by Chevard. The other guard halted the jeep, waved at Chevard, and joined the first guard, and they started walking slowly back across the floor.

“Come,” Chevard said.

He guided Baron over to the jeep and they got in. Baron saw that Chevard had not forgotten the brown leather brief case.

They headed for the dark passage and roared through, and Baron caught a glimpse of still another office, dimly lighted, with somebody seated at a desk behind a large glass window. Suddenly his head snapped around and his breath choked off.

“What’s the matter?” Chevard said.

Baron turned back and stared over the hood of the speeding jeep. They took a turn in what was now a tunnel, lighted with orange bulbs set into the cement walls.

“Nothing,” Baron said. “Nothing at all.” But there was still a brassy taste in his mouth. A man had been standing beside the desk in that office as they passed. Baron could have sworn it was Louis Follet. And yet, as he thought back, trying to reconstruct in his mind the exact picture of what he had seen, he told himself he was mistaken. The man had been wearing overalls, he was sure. Yet he could not get it out of his mind. There had been something about the man’s rigid stance, the way he held himself. What would Follet be doing here? But, he thought, it could not be Follet.

The tunnel went abruptly dark and Chevard switched on the jeep’s headlights. Baron stared across the hood into the brilliant white splash of light with everything crowding at his chest, choking him into a kind of breathlessness inside.

Where was Bette right now? What was she thinking? What had Gorssmann told her of her father? How much did she believe? He wondered if she knew that he was a paid enemy agent, an international spy, already in the camp of the enemy because he had lied to the one friend in the world who believed in him.

Baron glanced over at Chevard. He knew that just as sure as he was going to keep hunting until he got his hands on the man who had sabotaged his Stateside plants, so was he going to do Hugo Gorssmann’s bidding. He knew now that he would never renege, never fail.

Bette was worth that much. She was worth more. But right now, this was all he could afford to give her. He knew too that it well might be all he would ever be able to give her.

What was it Louis Follet had said behind the shredding tobacco and pale smoke of his cigarette? That there was only death to look forward to, when Gorssmann was finished.

“Everything is underground,” Chevard said.

Baron snapped himself back to the present.

“The large entrance we passed,” Chevard said, “is for the planes to take off from, in case of emergency—in case we have to clear the plant quickly.”