The Venetian Affair (2 page)

And failure, too. Although at that moment, surrounded and protected by a sweltering mass of the enemy, he gave it little thought.

Bill Fenner settled himself comfortably in the plane. There was plenty of space on this flight. It was almost the end of summer, the last day in August, when most people’s vacations were over. But it was also the end of summer in a year, 1961, that had produced its crop of alarms. The Wall in Berlin was nearly three weeks old, voices from Eastern Europe were alternating from cold to hot, memories of shoe-thumping and outshouting at the United Nations were still alive. So the average tourist must have decided that life was simpler at home, this year, where he didn’t have to depend on strangers or cope with a foreign language if a real emergency blew up in his face. There had been a lot of quiet cancellations. And the plane, ready to take off from Idlewild, was less than half filled.

The other passengers on the flight to Paris were either young enough to be unencumbered with wives and children or determined enough on pleasure—the kind of tourists who
would be found climbing Vesuvius on the day that smoke was already forming over the crater; or they were business-men, soberly optimistic; or they were lone travellers, like Fenner himself, with a job of work to do. At least, he thought, as they waited for take-off, there will be no crying children on this flight, no nervous old ladies fretting about the weight of their luggage, no neighbour crowding my elbow.

Not that Fenner was an antisocial type. He had spent the afternoon over a long luncheon at the club with three of his old friends, who, like himself, had begun as journalists some thirteen years ago, but had since diverged into book publishing, magazine editing, politics. Bill Fenner had stayed with the New York
Chronicle
, and for the last six years he had been its drama critic. Which was exactly what he had wanted to be in the first place: it was the job that would keep him alive, mentally and physically, pay the rent and stimulate his mind and—in the great moments of theatre—stir his soul. And in a few years, he would reach his second objective: the play he intended to write.

It hadn’t altogether worked out that way though. Perhaps the critical mind was too analytical, too pragmatic, for the creative to be bold enough to assert itself. Here he was, on his way to France for a four-week vacation combined with a job of writing. A play? Not on your life. Two articles for the
Chronicle
’s Sunday edition on the French national theatre, a starter for a book on the European theatre, which might be ready by the year 1967. God help me, he thought, perhaps I’d better never begin those articles.

What’s delaying us, anyway?

It was hot on the waiting plane. The air conditioning wouldn’t start until they were two thousand feet up or more.
He glanced at his watch. The man across the aisle was doing the same thing, only more intently. Like Fenner, he was travelling alone; a sturdy individual, with a solid chest expanding into fat under his heavy brown suit, and a red round face looking redder by the minute above his tightly knotted green tie. He was middle-aged. (Fenner, fully thirty-seven, was kinder about other people’s advancing years than he once had been.) And in no mood for any talk, thank heavens. For he had glanced across at Fenner, eyes sharp behind his horn-rimmed glasses, and looked quickly away. His fingers tapped on his arm. Nervous about flying? But who wasn’t?

Fenner glanced through the window. Two latecomers were joining the flight, looking as cool in their crisp white shirts and neat blue suits as if the hot sunset outside were only an evening mirage. Fenner concealed a smile: he knew the type well from his cub-reporting days, when he had been sent to haunt the law courts. They could give evidence as expertly as they had trailed a suspect. What was taking them to Paris—an extradition case, some federal offender who might now start wishing he had not jumped bail? Serious business, certainly, or the plane wouldn’t have waited. The delay had been only six minutes, but to those who were impatient to leave, each minute had seemed endless.

The smiling hostess was performing the usual ritual of take-off with a gentle prompting here, a helping hand there. The man across the aisle seemed adept at air travel, after all. He was already secure in his safety belt, and was setting his watch forward. He certainly wasn’t going to be caught unawares by a sunrise only a few hours away. He will eat a large dinner, Fenner surmised, go soundly to sleep, wake up looking efficient, while the rest of us, having had a nightcap or two, and read, and
talked, will be just about thinking of bed by the time we arrive. With that he dismissed the man in the brown suit, a pretty dull and harmless fellow, and began to look through a copy of
Réalités
to get some French phrases rolling on his tongue again.

Across the aisle, the man in the brown suit (who considered no one harmless) studied Fenner quietly until dinner arrived. Despite the heat of the day and the tensions of waiting at Idlewild, he had recovered something of his normal appetite. He ate quickly, greedily. In his youth, he had starved often enough in Odessa to make him appreciate any free meal. (He was, his nicely faked passport said, Mr. Albert Goldsmith, naturalised citizen originally from Frankfurt, resident of Newark, New Jersey, and an importer of ladies’ handbags.) Just as he had finished his steak and was eyeing the blueberry pie appreciatively, one of the efficient-looking men whose late arrival had delayed the flight six long agonising minutes chose to walk through the cabin, glancing (an automatic habit) at his travelling companions as he passed. He only wanted to chat with someone he knew in the forward section of the plane. But he stopped Mr. Goldsmith’s appetite cold.

Mr. Goldsmith did not panic. He was too experienced for that. His mind stayed alert, his thoughts were quick-darting but intensely rational, his face remained as placid as ever. Only his digestion betrayed him: the food he had eaten coagulated into a heavy, solid lump in his chest. Even the return of the brisk stranger with the photographic eye to his own seat didn’t help Mr. Goldsmith. A false alarm? Yet no alarm in Mr. Goldsmith’s profession could be treated as false. He sat quite still, planning emergency countermoves, elaborating his new identity so that his Mr. Albert Goldsmith was more than a fake
name. If there had been any suspicion about him, surely he would have been stopped as he entered this plane. No one knew of the contents of the envelope except the man who had given it to him that afternoon, and three others. And none of them, if they had been arrested, would talk. If they could have been interrogated by the Gestapo or the old NKVD, he might have good reason to fear. Logically, he was not afraid. Illogically, he was worried. His instincts would not be quietened. He felt threatened. By what?

He did not sleep, even with his raincoat safe under his hand. He felt cold—the air conditioning was as great a curse as the heat had been—yet beads of sweat kept gathering on his brow. A tight band seemed laid across his chest. Indigestion, he thought, it was just indigestion. He sat still, his hand gripping his coat, while his mind held firmly to one comforting thought: at Orly, it should not be too difficult. There was a long walk, yet, but no delays, few formalities. And in the entrance hall his contact would be waiting.

At Orly, the two brisk men in their neat blue suits were the first to leave the plane. They were joking, laughing, bright as two polished buttons. Bill Fenner left more slowly, admiring their resilience. He watched the narrow stream of passengers trail after the stewardess, the pretty one who swung her hips a little, toward the right entrance in the huge building of shining glass. Stiff legs in crumpled clothing began to pick up pace as the fresh morning air washed night-tired faces. Fresh, but tinged with the kerosene smell of jet planes. There was a long line of them, drawn up neatly, beautifully angled, exactly spaced. A nicely
welcoming honour guard, thought Fenner. Good morning to you, too, gentlemen!

He let the others pass him. Each was determined to be the first out of the giant airport and on the road to Paris. But he could enjoy stretching his legs, this feeling of release from a tightly sealed bullet. There was no hurry; no one meeting him, no urgent conferences, no brief stay into which Chartres and Versailles and Montparnasse had to be jammed, no plane connections to make, no wife to add to the worries of transport and wrong accommodations. This was one time, at least, when the solitary bachelor had an advantage. He was the casual observer, the disengaged, free to wander, free to do as he liked when he liked. Except, of course, for that little errand Walt Penneyman had assigned him. He might as well clean that off his plate this afternoon, oblige Penneyman by sending the facts he wanted, and retire into a long lazy week-end before he even started his own work. An odd kind of errand that Penneyman had assigned him. Yes, “assigned” was the word; Walter Penneyman was part owner, part editor, and total energist of the
Chronicle
; he had given Fenner his first chance at journalism, nursed him through that bad patch of his life just after Korea, when—

His thoughts were knocked aside as someone, passing him quickly, lurched against his arm. It was the man who had sat across the aisle from him. Extraordinary thing, Fenner thought, that some people can have the whole width of an enormous airfield to walk over and still manage to collide. The man’s white face looked at him without a smile. Did he think Fenner had blocked his path purposely? “Excuse me,” Fenner said. The man walked on rapidly, almost too much in a straight line to be natural. Was he drunk? Had he spent the night nipping from a
flask? He had been slow at coming out of the plane, but he was putting on speed. He stopped to put down the small case he was carrying, shifted his coat to his left arm, picked up the case with his right hand, and was off again. And don’t look around at me, Fenner told the departing back, I’m not following you: I’m just going where we’re all going. Well, where was I—oh yes, Walt Penneyman...

An odd assignment—an interview with a professor named Vaugiroud, whose interests were entirely political and had nothing to do with the theatre. It would be simple enough, something that Fenner would have treated as routine six years ago, when he was a foreign correspondent, but now—unusual. As odd, in fact, as Penneyman’s urgency yesterday morning when he had asked Fenner to look in at his office. “You’re leaving for Paris tonight, Bill? You’re just the man I need.” It was always flattering to be needed. Besides, this Vaugiroud character sounded like an interesting type.

He stepped into the glass palace and smiled for the little hostess, who waited worriedly for the last one of her flock. “That way,” she showed him, pointing to the cluster of people ahead. He had his passport and landing card all ready, so she forgave him. “The luggage will be examined when it reaches the arrival hall,” she told him. Now he saw that her worry was not about him.

“Baggage will be opened?” he asked her in surprise. That wasn’t usual at all.

“It won’t take long,” she said soothingly. “A formality.”

The well-trained nurse, he thought. If she knows, she is not telling. Nor was the welcoming committee, waiting patiently in the vast stretch of light-coloured wood and glass with the
slightly jaundiced eye that French officials keep for those who have time and money to waste on travel.

Fenner’s luck was in. He saw his suitcase and week-end bag travelling smoothly along a moving belt, and signalled to a blue-smocked porter. They were quickly placed on the counter. “
Vous n’avez rien à déclarer, monsieur?
”

Fenner shook his head, produced his keys. “Excuse me,” he said to the passenger standing beside him, and moved a couple of feet for elbow room. It was the man in the brown suit, who had been in such a hurry and now was waiting for his luggage. He didn’t look well, Fenner noted: he was no longer energetic and business-like; he was almost listless, withdrawn into some overwhelming worry—he hadn’t even noticed he was standing in Fenner’s way.

The French officials were serious-faced, silent. The innocent tourist was probably the least of their problems this bright and pleasant morning. Algiers and generals in open revolt had put the peaceable traveller into proper perspective: someone not necessarily likeable, but not inimical either. Yet, Fenner noted, the quick fingers examining his luggage were extremely thorough; the eyes glancing over him were equally searching. What interested them?

Nothing, so far. The Customs official saw just another American in a dark-grey suit, blue shirt, dark-blue tie; neatly cut brown hair, grey eyes, well-marked eyebrows, bone structure of his face noticeable and pleasant, an easy smile. He was fairly tall, thin, relaxed. He had a raincoat over one arm, a bundle of newspapers and magazines under the other, a hat which he preferred not to wear, and nothing to declare. Nothing? the sardonic French eyes seemed to ask; no failures, fears,
frustrations? “And what is that? In the pocket of your raincoat, monsieur? Thank you. Ah—”An eyebrow was raised in pleased surprise. “You are an admirer of our Comédie-Française?”

Fenner nodded. As it once was, he thought, and as it may be again. But he didn’t risk saying it. This, he felt, was not the year for plays upon words or double meanings. Beside him, he heard a hiss of breath—or was it a slow sigh of impatience?—from the man in brown. His suitcase had arrived. He leaned on it heavily. His face was set. “Are you all right?” Fenner asked him. He got no answer. Just a look that told him to mind his own business and get on with it.

“In French,” the Customs official observed. He smiled. “You are preparing yourself?”

“That’s my homework,” Fenner agreed, and jammed the small, thin edition of
Le Misanthrope
back into its hiding place. He dropped his coat on the low counter and began locking his cases. He glanced at the impatient stranger beside him as if to say, “There now, I’m hurrying, can’t you see?” He looked more closely. This man is ill, he thought worriedly; he won’t admit it, but he is ill. Fenner caught the eye of the Customs official, and nodded toward Mr. Goldsmith’s white face. “Where can I find a glass of water?” he asked.