Madeleine's War (35 page)

She lay back. “Roger Clayard is a brilliant organiser—I think he will become the leader when the war is finally over. He has charisma, he has the rhetoric. But François Perrault is the thinker. He doesn't want the top job, he is the purist, the idealist. He will keep us clean, good communists. He gives a weekly seminar at the École Normale Superior, on communist philosophy.”

“Is he married?”

“Why do you ask?”

Slow down!
Careful. “You make him sound a bit of a monster, a dry zealot. Is he human?”

She didn't reply straightaway. “I think he may have been married once, but his wife died—he never talks about it. And I think he had a child who for some reason he never saw.” She crossed her fingers. “He and I, we were like this, once, many months ago.”

“It didn't work out? Why not?”

She shrugged. “He is—or was—a scientist, interested in abstract physics and mathematics. He has a great attention to detail and a passion for justice. He is in charge of
épuration
policy and is determined to ensure that people are not charged improperly. That's why I was so interested in the fact that you have seen Monique Brèger. Where does she live, by the way? François wants to know.”

“I don't know,” I lied. “We met in a café, by appointment.”

“Does she go out, looking like you say she does?”

“We met at night,” I lied again. “Tell me about François.”

She curled a strand of hair in her fingers. “He is amazing. So many interests and abilities. He tries to keep up with science, though it's hard. He liaises with the Resistance all over France, keeps track of who has been arrested, interrogated, put in prison or hospital, or sent east. It is easy for
people to be forgotten in war, he says, so he keeps an archive. And he says we must be more understanding about
épuration
, otherwise…otherwise what happened to Monique Brèger will happen to others—other heroes.

“But he is so wrapped up in Resistance work, I couldn't get close to him. I gave up.”

“So he's not married now?”

“I don't think he's had a woman since me. And he didn't have me for very long. He lives alone in a flat on the Place Royère, which he shares with six thousand books. He's a great man in many ways, and he will do great things for France—he has
already
done great things for France. But I couldn't live with him.”

Time to move on.

“And us, Justine. What are we doing?”

She curled back into me. “We are thrown together. What's happened is lovely. You are still…Madeleine is still in your head somewhere, in your heart—I think, of course she is. But who knows with us, we are doing what we are doing. One day at a time, yes? We are thrown together,
bricolage
, as we say in France, a
bric-à-brac
affair, yes? Let's not make it more than it is, not yet anyway.”

That was her good answer to a fraudulent question. No one in Paris in those days expected anything to last. It suited me tactically—oh yes. But was she really over François Perrault? It didn't sound like it—and that made everything ahead of me that much harder.

THE NEXT MORNING I WAS AT
the café in the Place Royère at seven o'clock. It spilled out on to the pavement in the normal way of cafés. I sat inside, armed with two newspapers and a notebook so that I could see out but couldn't be easily identified by anyone across the
place
, where François Perrault's flat was. I ordered two croissants and a café au lait, opened the first of my papers, and set about waiting.

I was there with a heavy heart, but I was there. My aim today was to study Perrault's movements and refine my plan as to how to kill him.

I had known this moment would come. That day in the prime minister's bunker, when I had agreed to the deal that had been proposed, I had not been blind, or blinkered, or unthinking. I was thirty-one, a full-grown man. Yes, I was at the time in love properly for only the second time, and love does change us. Perhaps my emotional state had clouded my judgement, or made me desperate. But I hadn't
felt
desperate. Yes, I was worried sick about Madeleine, but both my feet had been firmly on the ground when I had agreed to Hathaway's plan. He had made the task seem all-important and the PM himself had taken time out to lend weight to what Hathaway was proposing.

I had been let in on the war's biggest secret, perhaps a secret even bigger than the date and location of the invasion itself, which had dominated my thoughts for so long. And now I had to fulfill my part of the bargain. I had to close my mind to the dreadful details of the specific task I was about to carry out and consider the wider picture. The bigger picture.

At Ardlossan we trained people to kill. It was only the fact that Perrault was an ally that troubled me. But I had the prime minister's blessing. His
authority
. A soldier couldn't ask for more.

I opened the paper. Aachen had fallen, finally, after fierce hand-to-hand fighting in the streets. How terrifying that must have been. The paper had a page of small notices, paid for by individual families, giving news of sons lost in the war. I lifted my eyes, unable even to engage with the private torment those notices meant.

I looked out and surveyed the
place
. There were a couple of plane trees in the centre, a fountain, some iron benches, a patch of gravel where, on warm nights, the locals played boules. The houses were mainly narrow, three storeys high—all of them walk-ups. They weren't wide enough or the area plush enough to have lifts. They had steeply sloping slate roofs. The shutters on some were completely closed; on others lines of thin rope ran between them with washing hung out to dry. A few motorbikes were grouped in one corner, near some double doors, set back, and a taxi was parked nearby. But it wasn't waiting for anyone. Most likely the taxi driver himself lived in the square. This wasn't a location where taxis came and went, dropping people off or picking them up. It wasn't smart enough. I stared for a while at the double doors in the far corner.

Seven thirty came and went. By my calculation, and my understanding of Paris life, two croissants, two newspapers, and the second café au lait, which I would order in due course, would buy me a good two hours in that café before anyone became inquisitive.

Ten to eight. I opened the second paper. I read that Argentina had given the Allies a “definite assurance” that the country would be no safe haven for war criminals. Five hundred artworks were apparently missing from Florence following the Germans' retreat.

Twenty past eight. I was just thinking of ordering my second café au lait when I saw the door to Perrault's walk-up—next to the tabac—open. There he was, wearing a raincoat today and carrying a briefcase, but with the same black sweater just showing at his throat. He started across the
place
. I had paid for my breakfast when I ordered it and so I now began to fold my papers and collect them together. But then I noticed that Perrault was heading straight towards the café where I was seated.

He was going to have his breakfast here too
.

I had half anticipated this. I couldn't risk Perrault getting even a glimpse of my face. There was always a dim chance that he would recognise me from the meeting in the Théâtre Stendhal. We hadn't been introduced, or met face-to-face, but he knew Justine intimately and, according to her, they had had a fling in the distant past. It would have been natural for him to pay attention to whoever she was with.

I turned naturally so that I had my back to the entrance and opened one of my papers again and buried myself in it. Perrault swept into the café and stood at the bar, the way many French did. I heard him order a croissant and a black coffee. I heard a tall stool being scraped across the floor. Was he sitting down?

I studied my paper assiduously.

I felt pretty sure that he hadn't noticed me, or recognised me, but obviously it was too risky for me to look up or turn and look at him. All I could do was wait and keep my back to him. Fortunately, I had some of my second croissant left, so I ate it slowly as I inspected the paper.

Ten minutes went by. I heard him order another black coffee. What was he
doing
? Reading the paper like I was? Smoking a cigarette? I kept calm and waited.

“Encore un café, monsieur?”
The waiter was standing over me. This would surely draw Perrault's attention to me.

“Merci,”
I said, shaking my head.

Another ten minutes went by.

Then I heard Perrault say, softly but distinctly,
“L'addition, s'il vous plaît, Sylvaine.”

“Tout de suite,”
said the waitress at the cash register.

I sat stock-still, where I was. Would Perrault acknowledge me in any way, as he went out? Just to let me know nothing escaped him? I felt pretty sure he was oblivious to my presence but…

I heard money rattle on the counter. I heard a tall stool shift, scraping on the floor tiles of the café.

“À tout à l'heure,”
I heard him say.

And he went past me. No tap on the shoulder, no glance in my direction, no turn as he stepped outside, and no nod of recognition. He just buttoned his raincoat and kept on walking. As he fiddled with the buttons of his coat, I noticed a gold ring on one of his fingers as it caught the light. Was there a new woman in his life?

I allowed him to reach the edge of the square and then got up myself and followed him.

One thing I did know: I couldn't get too close. He might not have spotted me in the café—I mean he didn't seem to have linked me to the man who had been with Justine at the Communist Party meeting in the Théâtre Stendhal—but if he saw me in his vicinity, he would certainly recognize me as the man who had been in the café.

So I didn't get any closer than fifty yards, and even then I kept to the other side of the street. And I wore the flat cap I had brought from Ardlossan. That shielded part of my face.

But I soon saw where he was headed—it didn't take a genius.

He skipped down the steps of the Métro and I followed at a distance, lingering at the ticket barrier and not emerging on to the platform until a train was coming in. I knew this line from previous visits to Paris. As before, I entered the carriage next to the one he used.

He got off at Grands Boulevards.

I had no difficulty following him out of the station and along boulevard Haussmann. He turned in to rue Lafayette, crossed the street, and reached rue Taitbout. There he entered a large stone building where—I could see—a carved stone façade announced the PCF, the Communist Party of France. So this was their headquarters.

A few yards further along the street was a café—thank God Paris was a city of cafés. My plan was falling into place, but I had one more hurdle to clear before I could really start on the detailed reconnaissance.

I still had the newspapers with me, so I sat inside the café, ordered a
thé au citron
and a
pain au chocolat
, sufficient to keep me there for at least an hour.

I deliberately chose small drinks, to go easy on my system.

I read more about the bombing of Germany—Bremerhaven as well as Berlin this time. The south coast of Britain was being shelled, one or two people had been killed in Dover, where Madeleine and Philippe had…

I couldn't keep my mind off her.

Ten fifteen a.m. A second small tea bought me another forty minutes. After that I played on the pin table for twenty minutes, taking me to 11:15. Still no sign of Perrault.

Now I switched to a water and nursed that for more than another half an hour. I had a map of the Métro with me and brushed up on what I could remember. You never knew when such knowledge might come in handy.

Halfway through my second Perrier, by which time it had gone noon, I saw him. He walked swiftly out of the headquarters building, accompanied by another man. He had on his raincoat but was carrying no briefcase. They turned right and walked briskly down the street.

I followed. At the far end of the street, they turned right again, crossed a wide, busy boulevard and marched straight into a restaurant, Le Flandrin.

He had done exactly what I hoped he would do; he had gone for lunch. This was my chance. He would be in Le Flandrin for at least an hour and a half, maybe two.

I waved for a taxi and gave the driver an address about two city blocks from the Place Royère.

The journey between Place Royère and Communist Party headquarters had been thirty-five minutes by Métro; it was fifteen by cab. That meant I had an hour and a quarter at least.

There was a bench in the middle of the place and I sat on it.

I waited a few minutes, until there was a crowd of people in the tabac, and then moved quickly, but not too quickly, to Perrault's front door.

The lock was no problem. With all my years and training in SC2, I had more than sufficient unobtrusive equipment—and the skill—to open the door.

I inserted the short arm of an L-shaped tension wrench into the keyhole and gently swiveled it. The difference in the resistance—more spongy to the right than the left—told me that the lock turned clockwise. Holding the wrench in place with one hand, with the other I slid the small hooked pick I had with me as far as it would go into the lock. Then I pulled it back towards me, pressing upwards, until I felt the first tumbler fall. Then the second, and third, until all five were dislodged. The door swung open.

I closed it behind me and stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, listening, in case he should have someone else staying in his flat, or a cleaning woman had arrived. But all was quiet. I looked at my watch: 12:55. I still had a good hour to myself.

I climbed the stairs. They were steep, covered in brown linoleum.

On the first floor was a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room. The bathroom was virtually empty, save for the bath and the lavatory, and the usual soaps, razors and combs.

The kitchen likewise was functional. This was not a man who liked to cook. I had guessed as much when I saw that he took breakfast at the café in the square. The shelves were tidy; there wasn't much in the way of food, no fresh fruit so far as I could see.

The kitchen was directly over the tabac—its floor was the tabac's ceiling. There was even a faint tabac smell in the room. Or did Perrault smoke? I didn't recall him doing so.

The living room had a fireplace but all it contained were matches and cigarette stubs—so maybe he did smoke. There were a few photographs
on the mantelshelf, including one of Perrault and Justine. A new possibility suggested itself: She might be over their fling, but was he? There were other photographs, of people I didn't recognize, and one that I did: Perrault, in white tie and tails, receiving his Nobel Prize from the king of Sweden.

The furniture in the room was undistinctive, the carpets worn, the lamps uncared for, in that two of the bulbs didn't work when I tried them. There were one or two contemporary paintings on the walls, but none by a hand that I recognized.

I went upstairs.

The bedroom was on a par with the living room. A bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, more pictures like those on the floor below. A stack of books by the bed, some scientific, some political, no novels or history. An alarm clock, three packs of cigarettes—so he did smoke—very few clothes in the wardrobe, some condoms in the chest of drawers. Some money rolled up in an elastic band, a set of spectacles, some candles for when the electricity failed.

A gun.

A revolver which, if I was not mistaken, was of Russian make. It wasn't loaded but a box of bullets was half hidden under some underwear in the same drawer.

Now why would François Perrault need a Russian gun?

I didn't stop to think but picked it up, with the bullets, and went through into the study.

This, clearly, was where Perrault lived, where he spent his time.

It was a large room, with one window on the square, a large desk in the middle, piled high with papers and what looked like scientific models. There was a sofa against one wall. There were no pictures on the walls here, for every available area of space was covered by bookshelves—there must have been thousands of books in this room. Science titles predominated, and politics was also well represented, but so too were modern French novels—Gide, Camus, Genet.

I moved to the desk. A bulky typewriter stood in pride of place, paper still in it. Scientific journals, typed pages, folders, cigarette packets, ashtrays, a candlestick, a camera, all competed for space here. There was a black folder with, in gold capitals,
UNIVERSITAIRE DE BELFORT
on the cover—his old place of employment. Next to the chair, papers were stacked on the floor—Perrault was clearly in the course of writing something. I
cast my eye over what was in the typewriter, but it was mathematical and I could make neither head nor tail of it.

Next to the typewriter was what looked like a diary, open. I looked at the entries. There, in an entry for the very next day, were written four words followed by a large exclamation mark:
“Legros, soudain et enfin!”