Agent in Place (25 page)

At the first signal, Tony had already begun moving and was ten paces ahead of the startled Maclehose. Georges, turning on his heel, raced back the way he had come. A gardener lifted his head from setting out masses of begonias in a lower-terrace bed, rose from his knees as he saw the running men, and, trowel still in his hand, followed Georges. Someone else—a workman in dungarees—emerged from some trees to stand bewildered at this madness. He let Tony and Maclehose pass him before he too started downhill. There was a shout from the gardener, now hidden on the last terrace by a hedge of trimmed shrubs. Another yell from him—a warning? An answering shout from Georges.

Behind Tony, Maclehose called out, “They’re at the swimming-pool. My God—the children—” And he put on a desperate burst of speed that brought him slithering over the steep slope of grass to end up crashing against the hedge. He tried to see over the top of the clipped yews, but they were chin-height, and dense. “Oh, my God!” he said again, and he followed Tony down the short flight of steps to the last terrace. Then his fears calmed as he caught sight of the pool.

It was only half-full of water, probably had been emptied that morning for work on the under-surface lights—some heavy wires still snaked over the terrace as evidence that the electricians had been busy there, perhaps still were. At the shallow end, floating face-down with arms stiffly spread, was a man. He was fully clothed, tweed jacket and all, except for his shoes. They lay haphazardly, scattered below the body, on the pale blue floor of the pool.

The gardener, in a mixture of Provençal and French, was shouting at everyone. Georges translated as best he could. “He says the water’s dangerous—he was warned to stay away from this terrace—work was going on here.”

Tony stared down at the pool. The back of the dead man’s head, dark hair, was all he could see. Sharply, he glanced at Maclehose who stood there, absolutely speechless, his eyes bulging in a face whose tan had faded to a pale yellow. Then, as a woman appeared on the far side of the terrace, Maclehose came to life. “Get back, Mattie, get back there! For God’s sake don’t step on those wires. Keep off the wet paving! Get back!”

Mattie stood still, incredulous. “Chuck Kelso,” she said slowly. “It’s Chuck!”

“I know, I know,” Maclehose shouted angrily. “Get back to the house, Mattie! Keep the children away from here.”

“The children—but they’re safe at the garage. We were all waiting for you, and I came down to see what was delaying—”

“Get someone else to drive you into town.”

Unbelievable, thought Tony. Here we all are standing in the exact same spot where we stopped short on this terrace as if we were in a bloody minefield, a man is telling his wife he can’t drive her into town, and there’s a corpse floating in the water beside us. And as background to all this, a three-way argument was going on between the gardener and Georges and the workman. The gardener said there were live wires all around; the electrician said the current was shut off—no one, but no one, would work at the pool with the current still on; and Georges was trying to get an answer to a sensible question. “Where is the main switch?” he kept asking. “Where?”

Tony walked over to the gardener, took the trowel from his hand, threw it into the pool. It broke the surface without a flare or a sizzle, and sank. “Let’s get the body out of there,” Tony said, and looked round for a rake.

“We’ll stop here for a few moments,” Tony said, breaking their long silence, as they reached the Roquebrune road. Georges nodded, found a parking space near a group of small shops, and turned off the Renault’s engine.

Neither had spoken since they left Shandon Villa. The police were still there, questioning the electrician, all interest now focused on what power near the pool area had been turned off, what turned on, when and why. The pool itself was safe enough, all work there completed. Only one section, controlling the lights that would illuminate the trees at one side of the pool, was still under repair. The power-switch controlling that small area was still active. A regrettable oversight, a case of human failure; judgment against which the unfortunate electrician kept protesting. (The power had been off today on all areas of the pool and its surroundings. No, he hadn’t seen this done: he had just assumed it to be so. As for the other electricians, they’d be back tomorrow to clear up the mess they had left: his job was to check the lights on the upper terraces, and that’s where he had been working, hadn’t heard or seen anything.)

Yes, everyone had been thoroughly baffled. And Maclehose gave the verdict that possibly would stand. “An accident, a terrible accident,” he kept repeating. It seemed a plausible explanation: the trees at the dangerous corner of the terrace screened the small pavilion where Maclehose had installed his visitor. “Official guests at the villa, our own friends in the pavilion near the pool—Mattie fixed up the upper floor nicely for them, just no room over at our place. Poor Kelso, he was the first to use our guest-house. Arrived this morning, was only going to stay here overnight. Tomorrow he’d be on his way to Gstaad—always takes a winter vacation—two weeks, he said. Suicide? Ridiculous. He wasn’t depressed. Preoccupied, perhaps. Certainly, he was in a serious mood at lunchtime, seemed ten years older than I remembered him. Just wouldn’t let us plan his afternoon. He said he was going to wait for Rick Nealey’s return. And after that he was going to see his brother. His brother—good God, Lawton, what do we do about his brother?”

And Tony said, “You let him know.”

“Yes. Yes. I’d better call him right away. You are leaving?”

“The police have our names and addresses. They’ll know where they can reach us.” Which was true enough. And if the police wanted to check further than Tony’s hotel or the
Sea Breeze
, they’d end up at a wine-shipper’s office in London and a journalist’s desk in Paris.

“I don’t think they’ll trouble you,” said Maclehose. And I hope, his anxious eyes were praying, they won’t trouble Shandon Villa either. “No publicity about this,” he added, glancing at Georges. “The less the better, don’t you agree?”

“I agree.”

“Accidents will happen,” Maclehose said miserably. He sighed a deep sigh as he shook their hands, and went back to staring at the figure, covered now by a blanket, as if he could by sheer will-power bid the stretcher-bearers move it out of sight, out of his life.

Tony turned abruptly away, said nothing more. He began climbing up through the gardens, with Georges hurrying to catch up.

“Accident?” Georges wondered aloud. “Perhaps it was. When I passed across that terrace on my way to the beach, there was nothing to see. No one, nothing. Just a pool that was half-full of water. And five minutes later, there he was—Kelso.”

“And a few minutes before that two men had come up from that terrace.”

“Two men? But I saw nobody—or were they inside the pavilion—?”

“Where else?”

Then Georges remembered Tony’s brief visit to the upper floor of the pavilion in search of a blanket to cover Kelso’s body. “What did you find there?”

“A bed where a man had been lying. Tie and sweater on one of those valet-stands. Keys and wallet on a dresser. Jacket certainly off—who sleeps in a jacket? Shoes probably off, too. They managed to get the jacket back on him, hadn’t time for the shoes—you had given them a scare, walking down towards the beach—so they heaved him into the pool and the shoes after him; turned on the power to look as if he had stumbled over a live wire and been jerked into the water by the shock.”

“How was he killed? There was no sign of a wound.”

“An injection, possibly: enough to knock him out and let the pool do the rest.”

“Expert.”

“They should be. I recognised one of them. Boris Gorsky.”

“Gorsky is here?” Georges was dumbfounded. My God, he thought, Nealey has some real support: he must be of major importance. He glanced back over the placid gardens. None of the stress and strain down at the pool was either audible or visible from this upper terrace. Sheltered by hedge and trees, it was all peace and tranquillity.

In silence, they entered the house and passed through the hall. A policeman was taking statements from two electricians. But there was no sign of Gorsky. “Expert,” Georges had murmured again. Tony’s only comment had been a tightening of his lips.

And then, on the Roquebrune road, as Georges switched off the ignition and sat back to wait for further instructions, his eyes on the traffic, his thoughts on Boris Gorsky, Tony startled him by saying vehemently, “Jean Parracini—that’s our best bet. Our only one, now.”

Georges, his mind still circulating around the pool, the body, the guest pavilion, looked blankly at Tony.

“He must have something tucked away in a corner of his memory that could help us. Just one small lead, that’s all we want to find Rick Nealey’s true identity. God damn it, Parracini must have tried to uncover that. His chief Washington source—surely it was something he would try to ferret out.”

“He did name Alexis as his chief source in Washington,” Georges volunteered.

Tony brushed that aside. “No big deal. We had guessed that. But who
is
Alexis?—Rick Nealey?” Tony paused for emphasis. “And who is the man who calls himself Nealey?”

“And what happened in East Germany to the real Heinrich Nealey?” Georges asked softly. Silenced, as Chuck Kelso had been silenced?

But Tony was following his own train of thought. “You worked with Gerard, when he was in charge of Parracini’s debriefing in Genoa. Did you talk with Parracini himself?”

“No. Never met him. My job was background research on all the reports Parracini—as Palladin—had sent us from Moscow. The idea was that I might find certain pieces of information in them that needed more clarification or expansion. Gerard questioned him about than. Results were satisfactory.”

“With occasional blackouts?”

“What did you expect? Palladin’s reports from Moscow covered twelve years.”

“How many altogether?”

“Just over a hundred—only about nine or ten each year. He was a very careful operator. Didn’t send them regularly, and never from the same location twice running. A broken pattern like that makes it more difficult to recall every small detail stretching over twelve years.”

“I know, I know.” Tony was irritated. Not with Georges. With Gerard. “He didn’t press Parracini hard enough.”

“Gerard? He did shoot off the names you had suggested. Alexis. Oleg. Heinrich Nealey.”

“And no impact on Parracini?”

“None. Except for an educated guess about Alexis, someone with important contacts and friends in Washington; someone who could supply all varieties of information, from facts and figures to scurrilous gossip. So he could be a political journalist on an important newspaper, or a television reporter, or a columnist. Not a young man—too judicious, too experienced—possibly in his forties or even fifties, judging by the age-groups with which he mixed.”

“An educated guess,” Tony echoed in disgust. “Was that the most that Gerard could get out of Parracini?”

“It doesn’t sound much like Rick Nealey,” Georges admitted. “Could it be that there’s another agent—”

“There were only two of them in Central Park with Vladimir Konov on the night he was mugged.”

He’s really stuck with his theory that Alexis must be Nealey’s code name, Georges thought, and Parracini’s analysis doesn’t back it up. “Take it easy, Tony.”

“Two of them. Alexis and Oleg,” insisted Tony, exasperated with everyone, himself included. “One was security; the other was Konov’s Washington agent. Which name fits Nealey?”

“Are you certain he was in Central Park that night?”

“The New York police have a description that matches Nealey exactly. Also a composite picture of the other man. He is a ringer for Gorsky.”

“Ah,” said Georges, “I didn’t know that.”

You might, thought Tony, have assumed that I did know. Or were you actually thinking I was just frothing at the mouth? He glanced at his watch. Surely Maclehose had called Tom Kelso by this time. “All right, Georges—let’s get cracking. Up the hill until you see, on the left-hand side, a nursery marked
MICHEL
. There used to be yellow mimosa trees to mark the spot. Drop me just inside the gate.”

Georges switched on the ignition, released the brake, kept his eye on the traffic and waited for the first safe chance to join the procession of cars. “We really may trigger some new detail in Parracini’s memory tomorrow. He’s had time to rest and think. And remember.”

“He’d better.”

“That was a devilish journey he had. He almost lost his life in an Aegean north-easter—the fishing-boat that was taking him from Istanbul to Lesbos nearly foundered. Most of their gear went overboard, and two of their men.”

“I know, I know.” Tony restrained himself, tried to smile. “I’m short on patience today. But we haven’t much time. Shandon Villa is a perfect set-up for Nealey’s kind of work.” Nealey could gather all kinds of information, some hard intelligence, some dealing with the personal quirks and indiscreet remarks of prominent men. The Disinformation boys in Moscow would have a propaganda bonanza. They’d take the facts and twist and magnify and drop them into a willing journalist’s ear for his next exposé of Western chicanery. It was all too simple nowadays to drive a wedge between democratic friends and allies: they were in a self-destructive syndrome, always willing to believe the worst about themselves and the best about their enemies. “Yes,” he said as Georges at last joined the stream of traffic, “it’s a perfect set-up.”

“And Nealey won’t be working alone. We’ll have a nest of agents—”

“That we will.”

“Who’s directing them? Gorsky?”

“Could be. He’s senior enough.” Or perhaps he was only acting as protector-in-chief.

“He doesn’t hesitate, does he, when he thinks security is threatened? Could Chuck Kelso really have been such a hazard to them?”

“You saw the action they took.” Which only proved, in its desperate haste, that Rick Nealey was an agent of prime importance. “One more thing: memorise this telephone number in New York.” Slowly Tony repeated Brad Gillon’s private number. “Call it immediately. Speak only with Bradford Gillon, tell him the message is from me. Give him the news about Chuck Kelso. Advise him to warn Martin Holzheimer to keep his mouth shut and get an assignment in Alaska.”