Son of Holmes (8 page)
“I live here,” he explained. “You are now my guest. Would you care for some heated milk? Coffee?”
I looked carefully at this man who had been changed so completely by the act of my coming into his living quarters. He went into some other rooms to deposit the coat, then back to the kitchen, evidently to prepare the milk. For nearly a quarter of an hour I sat while he moved back and forth, bringing first the milk, then a pair of pajamas that he insisted I change into, though they were much too large, then a warm housecoat in which I wrapped myself. He stoked the fire, and before long we were sitting comfortably in silence.
“Now,” he said after a time, “what is it that you think I understand?”
I smiled. “I am not a fool, Monsieur Lupa. I am older than you, and perhaps not as naturally gifted, but I have been in my business—perhaps I should say ‘our’ business—for over twenty years, and I have learned a few things. My efforts have been checked and checked again since coming to Valence, and I feel that yours have been likewise. I think we should work together.”
“Indeed,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d worked as a chef.” Suddenly he chuckled. “Of course, I jest. I thought it would be necessary that we work together, but I wanted to be sure of you, and certain of your superiors were less than rapturous in their recommendations.”
I bridled somewhat and spoke in clipped tones. “You may be sure of me.”
“I know that. I have been satisfied. But have you? Can you be sure of me?”
My head was swimming with cognac and fatigue, and yet I immediately perceived the import of the question. Here, indeed, was a Rubicon of sorts, and I must either cast my die with this man or count him as an enemy. There was, there could be, no middle ground.
And what, in fact, did I know of him beyond the briefs, the hearsay, the professional reports that—and no one knew this as well as I—often hid as much as they revealed?
He was an agent. Of that there was no doubt. I was reasonably sure that he didn’t work for the Germans, but could I be as certain that he was committed, as I was, to the interests of France? Before hostilities had erupted, Europe had been a checkerboard of conflicting states, and even now, with the combatants clearly defined, only a fool would suppose that the goals of England, for example, everywhere coincided with those of France. Where did Lupa stand?
I felt his eyes boring into my own as his question hung in the room, and yet he didn’t seem inclined to press. Could I be sure of him?
The answer, of course, had to be no. We were both agents at war, trained to trust no one. Hadn’t Lupa been sitting in Marcel’s seat just before he’d been poisoned? But then another thought occurred to me: it really wasn’t my decision to make. I’d been ordered to find and work with Lupa. I didn’t have to trust or respect my superiors, but as a soldier I had to obey them.
And there was another point: I had already revealed myself to the younger man. If he was not to be trusted, then my usefulness here in Valence was at an end. Now my own vulnerability, here in Lupa’s quarters, could become my own best test of his credibility. Simply put, if I were alive in the morning, he would have proven himself worthy of my confidence. It may not have been the most professional of solutions, but in my wearied state it made a great deal of sense.
One final consideration, even more unprofessional, forced itself into my consciousness. With Marcel dead, perhaps I simply needed to trust someone to fill the hole he had left. With more instinct than reason, I felt Lupa to be the man for that role.
“I have to believe in you,” I said at last. “I have no choice.”
He sipped at his beer and stared into the fire. Quite some time passed. “I suspect everyone,” he said finally.
A wave of regret over the loss of my friend passed over me. “Please,” I said. “I need your help.” He started to blur before me as fatigue set in. I put my hand over my eyes and felt his come to rest on my shoulder.
“Come,” he said, “we’ll talk in the morning.”
He took me back to his quarters, down a hall that seemed to be a dead end. He put down a mattress on the floor and brought a thick blanket for it.
“Let us be careful,” he said almost gently. We were by now speaking in the familiar. “We’re going to be needing each other.” I lay down and blew out the candle beside me. He retreated a few steps, then stopped. “Do you mind if I call you Jules?”
“No.”
“Satisfactory.” Another pause. “I am very sorry.”
I slept for seven hours. When I woke up, my clothes had been sent out and already returned, so I dressed and walked back out to the kitchen. No one was there. I went outside and found Lupa on the sidewalk finishing his beer. It was still drizzling, but the awning had been pulled.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
I felt miserable, so I merely grunted. He ordered me a
petite calva
; and I drank it off quickly.
petite calva
; and I drank it off quickly.
“Have you been awake long?” I asked.
“Since eight o’clock.” I must have looked at him in disbelief, for he continued, “A schedule that may be whimsically broken is no schedule at all. In the end the logical order one tries to impose on one’s life is sacrificed to quotidian cares. Even this beer,” he said, motioning to the brew, “though it doesn’t compare to yours, helps in its way to reestablish the order that last night destroyed.”
I thought he was being peevish, so I said nothing. He looked at me and smiled, emptying his glass. “Come with me, Jules. I have an appointment.”
We went back down to his quarters, which seemed smaller than they had been in the early morning, or even a half hour before. The hall I’d slept in was off to the left of the sitting room, but we crossed over to a door at the right and into a rather large office. The right-hand wall was covered with pots and pans, costly copper and cast iron, while the left sported a picture of Dreyfus and, somewhat incongruously, a bull’s ear. Behind the desk was another of the cheap tapestries that he used to cover the bare rock wall. His entire quarters seemed to be a type of bunker—certainly nothing like the typical cellar one finds around here.
He walked to the corner nearest the bull’s ear—a memento from Spain, I later learned—and lifted away the tapestry, showing a large hole opening into blackness, into which he stepped, motioning for me to follow. He lit a tallow and we moved through a narrow, high cave for several hundred meters. So this was where he disappeared to in the afternoons. I wondered where the cave would come out.
“Handy having all the limestone around here,” he said. “It took comparatively little work to finish this passage after I arrived here.”
I found that difficult to believe, though I knew that some of the natural caves in the region extended for incredible distances. In the end, the cave proved to be nearly a kilometer in length, and I was totally unprepared for where it abutted. Lupa pulled aside another bit of rug and stepped into a cellar of amazing fragrance.
“Where are we?” I asked. The smell alone had nearly driven away my headache.
He seemed almost playful as he leaned back against a waist-high bench. He held the candle out behind him, and I could make out rows and rows of flowers. He breathed deeply.
“Marvelous,” he said. “It always affects me.”
Then quickly he straightened up again and moved to a door, which led to a stairway, which in turn opened into a well-lighted planting room. There was a partition in front of the door, and we waited behind it while Lupa peeked out to see who was in the shop. When he was satisfied, we walked out. A woman, about thirty, with dark hair and features, stood talking with a man whose back was toward us as we approached. Lupa went up to the woman, kissed her on the cheek, and said something to her in a language I didn’t understand—and I speak five languages. She disappeared to where we’d been.
“Watkins.”
“Hello.”
The two men embraced and began speaking in English.
“Where have you sent Anna?” asked the stranger.
“She forgot to turn on the cellar lights again. The plants will surely die. I’m glad you’re here. We’ve had problems.”
“I’ve heard already. Routier’s been killed. No clues. You were there. Who did it?”
The man was in his twenties and would have looked perfectly nondescript except for the great swelling in his left cheek. His hair was short and brown, his suit common, and he wore no tie. Occasionally he chewed at his cheek.
“I haven’t much of an idea,” said Lupa. “It could have been any of us. Oh, excuse me, this is Jules Giraud. Joseph Watkins.”
We shook hands as the woman returned.
“Look at his cheek, will you?” she said. “Those damned olives again.”
Watkins grinned crookedly. “Addicted,” he said. “Can’t get enough of the blasted things.”
“He’s been horrible all morning,” said the woman. “Eating so many of them he can’t talk, spitting the pits wherever he happens to be. I should have tossed him out long ago. If he wasn’t so . . .” She smiled and touched his arm. He moved aside. “Hello,” she said, crossing to me, “my name is Anna Dubrov. I’ve seen you before in town.”
I nodded. “Jules Giraud.”
Lupa suggested we go to the back of the shop. On the way, Watkins leaned over one of the potted plants and straightened up again without the swelling in his cheek. He was grinning broadly.
“Anyone care for an olive?” he asked, taking ten or fifteen from his coat pocket. When no one responded, he deposited the entire handful into his mouth.
Lupa stood with an arm around Anna, waiting for this frivolous Englishman to finish chewing. When the pits had been stuffed into his cheek, Lupa began.
“Any news?”
“Yes, and specific.” Once he started talking, he was entirely businesslike. Perhaps he wasn’t as frivolous as he seemed.
“Continue.”
“Well, naturally you’re here on your own affairs, something about assassinations and so forth, but I thought—”
“You can drop that,” said Lupa. “M. Giraud, as you know, is an agent of the French, and he is now in our confidence.” He turned to me, continuing, “I am a free operative working for the English government. I know all this has been denied time and again in your inquiries about me. You know how that is. My uncle is a nonambulatory genius whom I detest, but he is probably the most important man in England, and we share some views during wartime.”
“So you work for England?”
“For the time being, yes, but I direct my own inquiries.”
“By the way,” said Watkins, “Altamont says—”
“That will do,” Lupa said abruptly. “Let us get on with your information.”
“Yes, well, um . . .” He fumbled a moment, then leaned over and spit out the pits. “We’ve got information that he is not here for assassination. You’re aware of the arms and munitions factory at St. Etienne?”
Lupa’s gaze was withering.
Watkins pressed on. “It’s going to be blown.”
I found myself smiling. “How do you know?”
“One of the boys flushed a Kraut spy and persuaded him to drop a few tidbits, and this was one of them. Unfortunately, our man brought some friends. They all got a bit carried away during the interrogation, and the Kraut died before he could be of much more use.”
Lupa looked at me. “And they say that we are fighting the barbarians.” To Watkins: “Did you get any descriptions, anything definite?”
“Not of your man, no. But there was something.”
“What was that?”
“It’s to be an inside job.”
I laughed, and the man looked at me angrily.
“What’s funny, mate?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but it would have to be. Have you seen the place? It’s guarded rather completely.”
Lupa was absently running his fingers through some dirt in a pot next to him. He seemed lethargically calm until he spoke, at which time he fired his questions at the other man.
“Where was he caught?”
“Marseilles. Usual narcotics stuff. He was delivering to their man in St. Etienne.”
“Why didn’t the fools let him deliver?”
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