Agent in Place (44 page)

“His last word?” suggested Walt. “All right, let’s head for the beach. This storm is really building up now.”

The
Sea Breeze
had the same idea. “She’ll make it,” Walt said. “That kind of old tub usually does.”

“Old tub? She looks smooth enough.”

“But snub nosed.”

“Which was lucky for her.”

They fell silent, partly because of the rising sea. The
Monique
was still in sight, on a westerly course, under full power, keeping well clear of the land.

“She’ll make it, too,” Walt said as they entered Garavan Bay. “Pity that tail wind doesn’t catch her stern, tip her bows into—” He stopped short, staring, wiping spray out of his eyes.

For at that moment, the
Monique
had exploded. “My God,” said Walt.

And then a second explosion, bigger, louder, flashing a ball of flame.

“My God,” echoed Saul. “She had ammunition on board.” He looked back at the
Sea Breeze
. But she was still ploughing her steady course towards Menton harbour.

By Sunday morning, the storm had blown itself out, the bitter wind and chilling air had gone as quickly as they had come. The promenade was no longer an empty stretch of writhing palm-trees lashed by spray, or a target for pebbles picked up from the beach and thrown by angry waves. Once again people were walking and talking, or sitting at outside café-tables. All had returned to normal.

Except Nicole. She was still partly under shock, Tony noted as he entered under the yellow-striped awnings and saw her seated at her usual window-table. Her dark hair was as smooth and gleaming as ever, and her clothes as smart. But her pale face, perfect in its shape, was even whiter, her large brown eyes still larger. There was no smile on her lips. The morning paper had been pushed aside, coffee was untouched, three half-smoked cigarettes lay in the ashtray.

“Are you early or am I late?” Tony asked as he took the chair opposite her.

“I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stay in the house. I’ve been driving around.” She tried to smile, and failed. “But thank you for coming, Tony. It is safe to meet here now, isn’t it?”

“Well,” he said, “the opposition is in slight disarray. Meanwhile. But let’s keep our voices down—until my coffee arrives, at least.” He covered her hand with his, and pressed it. “Are you all packed? Ready to leave? I’ve got a car waiting at the garage—”

“First,” she said, drew her hand away, “first I must tell you something.” She fell silent, not meeting his eyes, until the waitress brought his coffee and left. Then she looked at him, her voice low but determined. “I’m leaving, Tony. Permanently. I am going to send in my resignation.”

“There’s no need for that,” he said quietly.

“I want out.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve lost confidence. I was of no help to you. I might even have endangered the whole—”

“On the contrary, you helped a great deal.”

“Tony, I don’t want excuses and I don’t want sympathy. I failed you. I failed everyone.”

He glanced around the room, empty except for the waiters and counterman, who were having a discussion of their own in this lull before lunchtime. “You helped,” he insisted. “You made that house up on Garavan Hill a very pleasant place for him.”

Yes, she thought in anguish, Parracini had found it very pleasant indeed, far easier than he had ever expected. “And so he became too sure of himself?” she asked bitterly. “He thought I was a simple-minded idiot, and Bill was an easy-going American, and Bernard and Brigitte were just part of the furniture.”

“Well, he’s disillusioned about all that now.”

“About Bill—yes.”

“It all worked out, you know,” Tony tried.

“With no help from me.”

“You’re really determined to ruin my day, aren’t you?” Tony asked half-jokingly.

“Sorry. You should be celebrating, instead of—sorry, Tony. At least you got your sleep, I see.” He looked a different man, in his well-cut jacket, excellent shirt and tie, from the one who had driven up to the house yesterday along with Bernard, two dishevelled figures in borrowed clothes, incongruous in a Mercedes. He had stayed only long enough to tell her about Parracini.

“Twelve solid hours.”

“At the
Alexandre
?”

He shook his head and smiled. He was thinking of the waiter who had been scared witless. It had seemed the easiest solution to have Saul pay his bill and collect his clothes.

“See?” she asked, and sighed unhappily.

“See what?”

“You don’t trust me, Tony.”

He said nothing to that. What’s behind all this? he wondered.

“You could have told me more when we met here on Friday. You could have drawn me into the action. You used to do that. We worked well together, once.”

“I hadn’t anything to tell you on Friday.”

She stared, incredulous. “You mean, you didn’t know about—about his real identity?”

“As much as we all knew, you included.”

“Then why did you come to Menton?”

“A simple tour of inspection. That was all.”

“But you sensed something, didn’t you?”

Again he said nothing.

“You thought I liked him too much. You thought—”

“Let’s say you were too uncritical of him.” Tony’s anger was sudden, surprising even him. He regained his calm. “You didn’t keep him in check. But what worried me most, on Friday morning, was that he was endangering himself.” Tony shook his head over that stupidity. “We were all fooled, at least part of the way. So shut up, will you, darling? You aren’t the only one who’s hiding a blistered ego under his celebration shirt.”

“Except,” she said slowly, “I didn’t even earn a celebration shirt. Not this time. And so I’m backing out. If this could happen once, it could happen again.”

“All you need is some rest and recreation. I’m driving to Paris, a nice slow trip, regular meals, no wet sea, no telephones. Will you join me?” The question was casual, the invitation not.

She smiled, but she shook her head. “You have plenty of girls, Tony. They’ll be at every stop along the way on that nice slow trip.” The smile vanished, her eyes left his, her voice seemed strangled. “I liked him, Tony.” She looked up, then, “I really liked him.”

So that’s it, thought Tony. She fell in love with Parracini. “And you’re still in love—” he began, and stopped, his lips compressed.

Nicole saw his face tighten. She gathered up her handbag and left so swiftly that he was only half-way to his feet as she touched his hand and was gone.

“Nicole—”

She was out on the sidewalk, walking steadfastly away, the skirt of her loose white coat swinging about her red leather boots.

She made the choice, he thought, and sat down again. His coffee tasted bitter. He reached for the abandoned newspaper, if only to stop thinking about Nicole.

Front-page prominence was given to the two explosions yesterday on board a luxury cabin cruiser, and to a lot of wild speculation. The only factual item was that a naval patrol-boat, arriving just after the
Monique
had disintegrated, had searched for survivors, an impossible task, due to the heavy seas prevailing at that time. None had been found.

But on an inside page, tucked away at the bottom of a column, was a small report on a suicide at Shandon Villa. Tony rose, went over to the telephone, searched for some
jetons
, and dialled the Kelsos’ number.

It was Dorothea who answered. “Tony—we wondered where you were. Why didn’t you call us yesterday?”

“I was pretty well tied up. But what about lunch today?”

“Oh, Tony—we can’t possibly. I’m in the middle of packing. We leave tomorrow. Tom is down in Menton now, making all the final arrangements. About Chuck. He’s—he’s going home too.”

“Did you see that Shandon made today’s paper?”

“Oh, that! It didn’t tell you anything. But I’ve got the inside story!”

“From whom?”

“Remember that nice young policeman, the one who came up to the house on Friday night to get our statement about the burglary?”

“Louis?”

“He came back yesterday to ask more questions.”

That was Louis. Definitely.

“He had been down at Shandon Villa—”

“When?” Tony asked, his interest quickening.

“Around breakfast time. Just after Rick Nealey shot himself. Incredible, wasn’t it?”

The only thing that had astonished Tony was the quickness of it all. He’d have given Nealey three or four more days, perhaps a week. What had happened that had made Gorsky move so fast?

Dorothea said, “It
was
suicide, Tony. He was found in his bedroom, with the gun in one hand and a letter in the other.”

“Typed?”

“No. It was in Nealey’s own writing.” She laughed as she added, “You really are a very suspicious man, Tony. Nealey had been overworked; and depressed. As I think he should have been.”

Tony restrained a sudden attack of sarcasm. Not to Dorothea, not to dear sweet trusting believing Dorothea. Had she forgotten the fakery of Chuck’s accident? “Yes,” he agreed. “But who else had been wandering in and out of that bedroom?” One of Gorsky’s electricians, or the little redhead...

“You don’t think it was—” Dorothea began slowly.

“No need to think anything. It’s all past tense now.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.” Then she roused herself. “Tom’s going to be disappointed he missed you. Can you drop in this evening?”

“No, I’m leaving too. I’m on my way, in fact.”

“Then we’ll see you in Washington. When are you coming to America again?”

“Can’t say exactly. But we’ll meet.”

“Yes. We really must have dinner together. And talk.” She sounded vague, as if she were already thousands of miles away.

“Better get back to your packing.”

She laughed. “You should see the complete chaos around me. Everything seems to have multiplied.”

But that was all she had to worry about now: where to put what into which suitcase. “Give Tom my best. How is he?”

“Fine, just fine,” she said happily. “Our thanks, Tony. And my love. See you some time.” She ended the call.

“Goodbye, beautiful,” he said into the silent ’phone. Some time... That was how it went.

He paid the check and moved quickly out of the café, felt a strange depression as he stood there, among brightly-checked tablecloths under a yellow-striped awning. Now the garage, he thought, and a car with luggage in place, ready to go. But he still stood, undecided. Out of habit he scanned the faces that passed him, the cars that were parked along the kerb. And suddenly, just ahead of him, there was a car he recognised. A small red Opel. He began walking.

Nicole hadn’t seen him. She was seated at the wheel, her smooth dark head bent, her shoulders drooping, her eyes on her hands lying inert on her lap. She was a girl crying out for help.

Tony opened the car door. She looked up, her cheeks tear-stained, her large eyes despairing. “Move over,” he said. And she did.

He got in and started the engine, glancing round at her suitcases piled into the back seat. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” she said, barely audible. She dried her cheeks, and tried to laugh at herself. She broke down once more. “Oh, Tony—I thought I’d never see you again.”

He wondered, then, if her tears might have been for him, and not for Parracini. For a moment he stared at her. “You don’t lose me as easily as that,” he told her. His old smile was back, his spirits rising. He edged out into the traffic and headed for the garage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helen MacInnes, whom the
Sunday Express
called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.

Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.

Since her first novel
Above Suspicion
was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers;
The Salzburg Connection
was also a major film.

Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.

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A series of slick espionage thrillers from
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bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”

Pray for a Brave Heart

Above Suspicion

Assignment in Brittany

North From Rome

Decision at Delphi

The Venetian Affair

The Salzburg Connection

Message From Málaga

While We Still Live

The Double Image

Neither Five Nor Three

Horizon

Snare of the Hunter

PRAISE FOR HELEN MacINNES

“The queen of spy writers.”
Sunday Express

“Definitely in the top class.”
Daily Mail

“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.”

The New York Times

“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.”
Times Literary Supplement

“Absorbing, vivid, often genuinely terrifying.”
Observer

“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.”
Newsweek

“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.”
The New Yorker

TITAN BOOKS.COM

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