As Time Goes By (33 page)

Rick looked at his unwelcome guest. "So why tell
me this? Why not let Meredith's men finish us off and
let Salucci run the whole show?"

"Why not is because I like you," replied O'Hanlon.

"I admire your moxie, boy. Why not is that you run
the best saloon in town, so good it put my own darlin' Boll Weevil out of business—you and the regrettable
end of the Noble Experiment, which brought such good
fortune to us all. Why not is that you're cool under
pressure. In fact, Mr. Baline, you remind me very
much of me, which is the highest compliment I can pay
you.

"You know that I am something of a connoisseur of
the fight game," continued O'Hanlon, "and I'd like to
see you have a fighting chance in this little contest."
He reached for his hat, which was never farther away
than his outstretched arm could reach. O'Hanlon was
vain about his hats. "Well. I've said what I've come
to say, and now I feel as shriven as if I'd made a
clean breast of everything to Father Flynn. Full dis
closure is a grand thing—except, of course, in a
court of law."

He patted Rick on the arm. "As you know, we
have freedom of the press in this country: every man
is free to own a press and print what he likes. If he's
not inclined to buy the whole newspaper, why, then
he can always buy a writer or two. Call my friend Winchell," he advised. "Give him this, with my
compliments."

He handed Rick a dossier, produced from between
the pages of the newspaper. Rick flicked through it and saw it was about Meredith and Salucci. There were let
ters, papers, photographs, documenting the extent of
the mutually beneficial corruption. If this got into the
papers, it would be the end of both the senator and the
criminal. A play was starling to present itsclf—the only
play that might keep both him and Solly alive.
"Why are you doing this for me?" asked Rick.

O'Hanlon responded to the question with an enigmatic smile. "Although you're perforce not a church-
going man," he said, "I nevertheless hope you've
learned something from my little sermon today. The
moral of which is: Always give your opponent just enough information with which to hang himself. Full
disclosure, excepting those bits you don't choose to
disclose, and of which no one will be the wiser until
it's too late."

O'Hanlon put on his hat and pulled it down low over
his left eye, the way he always did. It was a beautiful
piece of fur felt, just the right mixture of beaver and rabbit, dyed light but not quite baby blue. He wore it
only on special occasions.

"Walter owes me more than he can ever repay," said
O'Hanlon. "He'll take care of you. The rest you'll have
to take care of yourself. If you're as smart as I think
you are, you'll know what to do." He gave Rick a long
look. "And if perchance, you're not, then rest assured that these documents will still get to Winchell. For I hate loose ends, boy; to me, they're a mortal sin. And
don't I share with Mr. Darwin a belief in the survival
of the fittest, no matter what Holy Mother Church may
think of his theories?"

O'Hanlon turned the doorknob and stepped sound
lessly into the hall. "So long, Mr. Baline, good luck to
you and may the best man win," he said as he disappeared into the shadows of the stairwell. "I'll be read
ing the papers, and not just the funnies, either."

Two minutes later Rick was out the door himself, grabbing the elevator to the ground floor and jumping
into his car, which was still parked in front of the build
ing. Within fifteen minutes he was pulling up in front
of the 45th Street offices of the
New York Mirror
and
dashing into the lobby like a madman.

"Where's Winchell?" he shouted at a guard.

"Second floor," said the guard. He'd seen plenty of
nutcases charge into the building before, and they all
wanted to see Winchell.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

Louis Renault had checked into the U T
ří
P
š
tros
ů
around noon under the name of Louis Boucher. He
rang Rick's room but was told "Mr. Lindquist" was at
lunch. He strolled outside and took the air, among other
things.

Plopping himself in an easy chair upon his return, he
looked out the window at the Charles Bridge and the
Vltava and assessed the situation. He was not sanguine,
but it wasn't his job to be. He was a little woozy and
more than a little sated, which was the way he wanted
to be.

More than ever, he felt the plan had no chance.
Throwing a bomb into a moving vehicle had been tried before, at Sarajevo, but Archduke Franz Ferdinand had
saved his own life by knocking it
away, into the path of another vehicle—only to be shot a few hours later
by Gavrilo Princip on his way to the hospital to visit
those wounded in the original bomb attack. Whoever
had thought up the idea of a bomb attack, reflected Re
nault, was no student of history.

As in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the plotters had
backup shooters ready to finish the job. Renault doubted
that Reinhard Heydrich would be as cooperative as Ar
chduke Ferdinand, though. "Hello, my good fellow,
lyes, please do climb aboard and shoot me right in the
heart of my imperial tunic, there's a good lad!"

He hated this assignment. He hated having to lie to
Rick about why he wanted to be here. He hated the
double life he was being forced to live. He was even starting to hate himself, distressing evidence of moral scr
uples he thought he had long since put behind him.
He found himself thinking about Isabel de Bonon-c
iere. He had known her for such a short while, yet she
had haunted him for a lifetime. Since the night he had
stood by and watched her die because he was too cow
ardly to defend her, he had relied on his slick charm,
his carefully cultivated sense of fashionable ennui, his
penchant for the apposite bon mot, the cut of his
clothes, and the tilt of his cap. Most of all, he depended
on the power vested in him by the state, which was not
his power at all.

True, he was taking part in the operation at the behest of the Resistance. But Louis Renault looked upon these
circumstances as similar to the unfortunate turn of
events that had led Mile, de Bononcière to his doorstep
on Montmartre. Fate had dealt him the cards, as fixed
as any card game he had ever played in, but fixed this
time by a higher power. His choice of the name Bou
cher, therefore, was fitting: if he had to die, let the
ghost of Isabel die with him.

The other woman who was very much in his thoughts
at this moment was Annina Brandel, the dark-haired
Bulgarian beauty who had been willing to sacrifice her
self to him in order that she and Jan might escape. He
knew why she had affected him so: there was a purity
about her he had never seen before. Most of the women
who entered his back room resented their participation
in the sordid act necessary for them to get what they
wanted. They were aware that he used their bodies, and
they were ashamed of it. But Annina, he knew, would
have given herself to him and emerged uncorrupted. To
be able to sup with the devil and yet still go with God:
how wonderful that must be! Would he ever get the
chance?

Rick's rigged roulette wheel, which had provided Renault so many hours of pleasant, effortless profit,
had robbed him of Annina Brandel. She had been the end for Louis Renault in Casablanca, the woman who
finally made him look in the mirror and behold the
soulless creature he had become. What had become of
her? He hoped she had arrived safely in America, preg
nant and happy. Somehow, though, he doubted it.

His reverie was interrupted by a soft knock on the
door. It was Rick.

"My dear . . . ," he began to say, but Rick held a
finger to his lips.

"Save it, Louie," he said softly.

Renault closed the door.

"We haven't got much time," said Rick. "We have
to move fast, and we have to move smart."

He went to the window to make sure no one was
even remotely close to them. Although the afternoon
was warm, he shut the window tight and stuffed towels
under the room's front door. Renault cocked an eye
brow, bemused. All this reflection was getting him
down. At least now he wouldn't be bored. When Rick
was around, things were never boring.

"Here's the situation," said Rick, practically chew
ing on an unlit cigarette. They were sitting in the center
of the room. The radio was on, loud, just in case the room was bugged. They didn't have time to hunt for
listening devices.

"Something's terribly wrong. Prague wants the oper
ation called off, but it's too late. Laszlo is out at a safe
house in Lidice with his assassination team. Ilsa's in
trouble; I think they might be on to her."

"What are we going to do?" Renault asked.

"We're going to do what you've wanted to do all
along," Rick said. "We're going to blow the operation
ourselves." He took a long drag on his cigarette,
"Ilsa's going to tell Heydrich the whole story. Tomorrow night. To his face. She'll tell him he's going to be
blasted sky high when he rides over the Charles Bridge
on his way to work."

Renault whistled softly. "Ricky, I've taken you for
many things," he said. "A crook. A liar. A thief. Even
a murderer. But never, before this moment, a traitor. I
congratulate you." He was not entirely surprised. He had always wondered about the depth of Rick's Casa
blanca conversion. Wasn't this just a way to get rid of
Laszlo and have Ilsa all to himself? He suspected it
might be, as uncharitable as that interpretation was.
Miss Lund lent herself very persuasively to all sorts of
uncharitable interpretations.

"Get off it, Louie," snapped Rick. "You know what
I'm doing; hell, you raised the issue first yourself." He
struck a match furiously. "Something's been fishy
about this whole show from the start. I've smelled lake
trout that didn't stink this bad a week after Sam'd
caught them and forgot to clean them because he was learning a new song."

He inhaled so hard that Renault thought he must
have seared his lungs. "You were right, Louie: Why did
Laszlo escape from Mauthausen so easily? Why have
the British outfitted him and his raggle-taggle team
with the worst kind of assassination weapon, a bomb?"

"You tell me," replied Renault

"There's only one answer, and the Czechs have fi
nally twigged to it. This operation isn't about Heydrich
at all. It's about the war—the larger war. The Brits
don't give a damn what happens to the Czech people.
They got Laszlo out of Mauthausen because they
needed him. Because they figure that by blowing Hey
drich to hell and gone they can provoke the Germans
into doing something really terrible and then the world
will be on their side. God damn it, Louie, they're pre
pared to see hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocents
die,
just for the sake of having them die,
so that the
world will get a fresh taste of the Hun's inhumanity to keep its mind focused on the job at hand. The Czechs
are on a sacrificial altar, my friend—and so are we!"
He stopped talking, exhausted.

"What do we do now?" Renault asked.

"We go through with it," replied Rick. "I've already signaled Laszlo that we strike the day after tomorrow. We come to the bridge armed for bear. We have our
bomb and our guns ready, because we may have to de
fend ourselves when Heydrich's goon squad shows up,
looking for trouble."

"That's just the problem," Renault objected.
"They'll shoot us on sight."

"No, they won't," replied Rick. "First of all, they
won't know who they're looking for. Second, we'll be
expecting them, which means the minute we spot them we can abort and look like heroes. We fall back to the
Church of St. Charles Borromeo, get word to Miles,
request extraction, and live to fight another day. Once back in London, you can file your report to the Resistance—don't try to kid me, I can guess what you're up
to—and tell them the British are the treacherous swine
the French know they are. As for me, Sam and I'll open
a new nightclub. London could use some decent night
life."

Renault smiled. The jaunty little police captain of Casablanca had banished the gloomy visage of M. Boucher. "Ricky, you've outdone yourself," he said
delightedly. He laughed at himself for his earlier melancholy. "One of the things I've always admired about you is your foresight. You've thought of everything."

"Except one," said Rick.

"Ilsa Lund."

"Right."
       

Renault was not about to let his friend dwell on that:
some things God would simply have to sort out. "One
question: Do we inform Laszlo and the team that Hey-
drich is not going to keep his little date with us?"

"Obviously not," said Rick.

"It's just the two of us, then? Our little secret, as it
were?"

Rick nodded brusquely in reply.

"Very well," said Renault smartly. "It won't be the
first one. You understand, though, that it is entirely pos
sible that neither of us will win this game? That we
both can lose?"
          

"Why else would I be playing?" said Rick. "I'm
sick of winning fixed crap games."

"If Laszlo finds out you knew Heydrich was taking
another route, then neither your life, nor, I regret to
say, mine will be worth—"

"A plugged nickel," finished Rick.

"Precisely," Renault agreed. "Whatever that is." He
fidgeted in his seat. "Let me present you with a series
of alternatives for your inspection. The first is that Hey
drich heeds the warning, the plot goes for naught, we
all escape successfully and live happily ever after in London. It's an attractive proposition, but unlikely."

"Why?"

"Because the British will smell a rat the minute we return," he said. "Perfidious Albion suspects all the world's countries of being as duplicitous as she is. We
will be lucky if we're not shot within twenty-four hours
of landing in London."

"You may be right about that."

"I
am
right," said Renault. "Now, to point number
two." He fumbled with his cigarette case for a moment,
then managed to open it. "Let us say that Heydrich,
despite your warnings, does indeed appear for his rendezvous with death, accompanied by overwhelming
force. What then?"

"We run like hell," replied Rick.

"And we're shot, either by the Germans or by the
Czechs or by the British. It doesn't matter: the result is
the same," said Renault.