Cloak of Darkness (7 page)

Claudel had picked up his coat and was headed for the kitchen. “I’ll use the rear staircase—the car is parked down there, anyway.” He paused for a moment. “Did you know Bernie has made a chip to imitate a small sequin on a lady’s dress? Now all we need is a girl to wear the damned thing.” Then he was into the kitchen, saying, “Good night, fair ladies, good night. What about dinner at my place next week?” And with a kiss for each of them, he made his exit.

The Gilmans’ leave-taking was equally short. “Dinner next week?” Gemma asked, and then remembered that if there was one thing that irritated Ron, usually the mildest of men, it was the protracted goodbye. So she didn’t sit down for a last five-minute chat, but let Ron drape her coat around her. “Day and time to be arranged, I suppose. Isn’t that always the way?” she added lightly to sweeten her small criticism. “But at least we saw you tonight.”

“And thank you for that.” Renwick’s voice said more than his words. A hug and a kiss between the women, an answering nod from Gilman, and he could close the door, lock it securely, and openly look at his watch. Almost twelve.

“You know my trouble?” Nina asked him as he slipped an arm around her waist and led her back into the living-room.

“Me.”

She laughed and shook her head, her soft blond hair falling over her eyes. She brushed it away. “My trouble is that I never can guess what is really happening.”

“I tell you when I can. And as much as I can.”

“I know. But only after everything is solved, another case filed away. And not everything is told, either. It can’t be, I suppose.”

“You suppose right, my love.” He folded his arms around her, held her close.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I shouldn’t probe. I really don’t mean to, but the questions do rise up and won’t lie down.”

“Like my problems. They always seem to come in clusters.”

Nina broke free, looked at him anxiously. “That kind of day?” I knew it, she thought; I could sense it over the telephone tonight. “Not just one problem?”

He eased his voice to reassure her. “Don’t worry, pet. We’ll take them as they come.”
New address to follow
—the phrase kept haunting him. Essex Gardens could even now be reported to Brimmer. How did he get Nina safely away until that threat was over? He looked around the room. “Yes, this place is too small. I think we have to face another move, honey.”

Nina stared at him. “Bob! We are scarcely settled! And it does get sunshine and fresh air; the windows
are
big. It’s so convenient for your office, too—no changing trains, a straight run through. And it’s—” She cut that sentence short. The flat was affordable, its rent within their budget. “I thought you loved it,” she said, all joy leaving her face. “When we moved here in April, you—Bob, what’s wrong?”

Residence changed in April...
Who the hell gave Klingfeld that information? “I’m all right, honey. Just pooped. Come on, let’s go to bed.” He pulled her close again, smoothed back a rebellious lock of hair, looked deep into her blue eyes, brought a smile back to her lips as he kissed her chin, her cheeks, her brow, her mouth. “I’m never too tired for that,” he told her.

***

Afterward, he lay beside her, not moving, not wanting to disturb the deep sleep into which Nina usually drifted. His dejection had lifted, his exhaustion, too, perhaps that had only been part of the depression, the feeling of uselessness—so few of us against the hidden threats, the secret intents of a widespread power-force. Not organised crime, he judged, although crimes enough were being committed: if Brimmer or Klingfeld were backed by any kind of Mafia, they wouldn’t need to search for assassination squads. They’d have their own hit men already taking direct action. Political backing, then? Klingfeld & Sons could have introduced that note. What else to think of a firm that had so much seeming power and money behind it and yet appeared to be anonymous? Neither Gilman nor Claudel had heard of it, and he was willing to bet that it was unknown, as an illegal business trafficking in forbidden exports of military equipment, to all other Intelligence agencies. If its name was recognised, it would be as some family firm in the regular import-export trade.

He looked down at Nina, resting within his arm, her body soft and warm drawn close to his. Protect and comfort, for better or worse, until death—

She may have heard his small intake of breath. She opened her eyes, saying, “I’m not asleep, either.” She turned sideways to face him, drew still closer, slid her arm over his body. “And I thought I had driven away your worries, darling.” She laughed, the light small laugh that echoed the affection in her voice. “Bob, you were right. This flat is too small. Look at this room. The bed almost fills it.”

He had to smile. King-size was what Nina had wanted. We could have done with a single bed for all the space we take up, he thought.

“But it’s storage that really is the problem. Of course, when that carpenter
does
arrive and makes us some closets—I’ve drawn out all the plans for him, measured everything—we’ll have more space. Much more. Bob.” He’s been so patient about that, she thought. His suits were hung on a rack near the bathroom door. “We could really be settled by July. Or August,” she added, thinking of the nonappearing carpenter.

“How about the Fourth of July in Washington?”

She pulled away from him, tried to sit up and look at him in wonder.

“Don’t you get homesick, Nina?”

“Yes. As you do. But I thought we were going back in September for two weeks—if you were free then.”

“I’m free now. Let’s make the trip when we can.”

“Leave in a few days?” She was dumbfounded.

“Leave tomorrow—no, day after tomorrow. On Wednesday.”

“Bob—how can we? You’ve got meetings.” And problems, she remembered. Even one problem always meant several late nights at the office. “And I’ll have to pack, and close up the flat—Why, the Fourth is on Saturday! We’d never make it.”

He reached out, took firm hold of her slender waist, pulled her down where she belonged. “Remember the evening in Georgetown when I waited for you in that half-built conservatory behind your father’s house, and you came running into my arms?”

“And you swung me up. Told me we were leaving the next morning to get married.” Nina was smiling again.

“You didn’t find it so hard to pack in a hurry then,” he said gently, and kissed her.

“Then,” she told him, “I was a foot-loose student. Now, I’m an old married woman.”

“The difference,” he said in mock wonder, “that nineteen months can make to a twenty-one-year-old!”

“Darling”—her arms were around him, her body yielding— “we’ll leave day after tomorrow. I’ll pack and write notes to everyone and close the flat up tight.”

“No notes,” he said quickly, then softened that small command by adding, “A waste of time. We’ll just slip away and forget this flat. We’ll leave Gemma in charge of the key.” And Gemma could start looking for some other place for them. Gemma would love that: no imposition. “We may stay in America for several weeks.”

“Can you manage it?” She looked at him. “Or is this a business trip?”

“Now and again,” he admitted. “I’ll take you to see my—” cut out the word “people”—“my sister who married an ex-Marine and lives in La Jolla.” Not to see anyone with the name Renwick, not now at least. And what about the name O’Connell, if Nina’s family connection was being traced? “Is your father in Washington, or has he left for the Maryland shore?” Nina’s stepmother liked its cooler temperatures in the summer months for her incessant dinner parties.

“He isn’t very happy in either place nowadays.”

Out of a job, Renwick thought. No longer an economic adviser to the White House or attached to the State Department. A quick and total resignation—the modern way for an honourable man to put a bullet through his brain. Nina was watching him. “He likes you, Bob.”

“That’s news.” Why should a proud man like Francis O’Connell like anyone who knew about his stupidity? With his high-minded scorn for all security, he had almost walked into a White House meeting with an explosive device planted in his attaché case by someone he had taken on trust.

Nina was suddenly still. She said, “He told me all about it. You saved him. And the president. And all the others in that room.”

“He told you?” The words were jolted out of Renwick.

“I’m glad he did. Don’t try to shelter me so much, Bob.”

“And you never mentioned it—”

“I was waiting for you to tell me. The obedient wife,” she said, turning it into a joke.

“How obedient?” he asked, and took her into his arms again.

Djibouti was as hot as Claudel had predicted, and more crowded than he remembered from last year’s visit. It always had held half the inhabitants of this small and arid land, a sliver of scrub and desert stretching a rough hundred miles in length, even less in breadth, tightly bound both north and west by Ethiopia, in the south by Somalia, freely breathing to its east with an indented coastline that lay on the Gulf of Aden just where the Red Sea began its long stretch northward to the Suez Canal. Facing South Yemen across the Gulf, Djibouti had always been a trader’s delight, but with the reopening of Suez it was once again on a major shipping lane—from India and the Far East right up into the Mediterranean. It might be a minuscule republic, a speck on the map of Africa, but it had significance. Today, it seemed to Claudel as if the town would soon hold most of the country’s population and its assimilated foreigners.

He poured another cup of coffee, finished the last croissant. He was sitting on the Café-Restaurant’s deep-set verandah, shaded almost to the point of darkness against the morning sun. The Café-Restaurant de l’Univers, six modest bedrooms upstairs (one of which was occupied by Claudel), owned by good friend Aristophanes Vasilikis: once of Athens, later of the Sudan, and for the last ten years a resident in Djibouti, capital of the Republic of Djibouti. Too bad, thought Claudel, that independence had ditched the old name: Territory of the Afars and Issas. That had a sound that few countries could match.

The Afars and Issas were still around, he had been glad to see, and still predominant; dark-skinned nomads, thin and tall with hawk-nosed faces, who wandered in from the barren hinterland with camels and goats, and lingered indefinitely. Muslims, of course, like the Arab traders who had modernised their act and no longer exported slaves. There were European settlers, too: venturesome small business-men from Greece and Italy. And, of course, the residue of French who had simply stayed on. Add to that mix the indefatigable Indian merchants, the Somali refugees, the Sudanese fishermen, the Ethiopian labourers, and you had a full house.

Watching the variety of faces and dress out in the street, people on foot going their own mysterious way, Claudel could be grateful that they made his visit easier, less noticeable. But it also meant that the elusive Erik, if he had escaped to Djibouti, had found a place where he could stay submerged until his plans were completed for the next stage of his journey toward West Germany. Yet, once here—if he were here—he would find it more difficult to leave than to reach. There were only fifty miles of paved road in the whole country, hundreds of trails and tracks. And where would they lead him? Into the desert regions of Ethiopia, or south to Somalia, now filled with starving refugees from the war with Ethiopia—hardly worthwhile trying to hire a car (scarce and difficult) or a camel (slow and stately). The railway—one railway only, connecting Addis Ababa in Ethiopia with the port at Djibouti—hauled mostly freight: import-export trade, Ethiopia’s one direct outlet to the sea. And Addis Ababa, Communist, had Soviet advisers and Cuban agents in control. It was unlikely that Erik would find that an attractive prospect.

So there were two possibilities left to Erik, and Claudel in the last three days had been checking them both.

First, there was the port for Djibouti, built by the French some three miles from the town. (Or the other way around, Claudel reminded himself: the port was begun first; the town came a few years later.) It had become a complex of installations: piers, quays, docks, water reservoirs, fuel-storage tanks, even a refrigeration plant—everything that was needed for the refuelling and replenishing of French naval vessels (two destroyers were there now; an aircraft carrier had just sailed). There were many paying customers, too, such as passenger ships that had docked for supplies and oil before they cruised onward, and numerous freighters at the loading and unloading piers. Yes, there was a choice for Erik in that variety of vessels. Except that the French were still in command of the port—its strategic importance higher than ever since the Soviet Union now had its friends established on the other side of the Red Sea’s narrow entrance. On Claudel’s arrival in Djibouti, he had visited the port to see his friend Georges Duhamel, whom he had known when they were both semi-attached (a diplomatic way of describing their function) as French Intelligence representatives of NATO. It was part of De Gaulle’s ambiguity—keeping one French foot inside the Western alliance while withdrawing the other foot. Duhamel was now with French Naval Intelligence and had been sent on special assignment to assist the head of security at the port. He had been delighted to see Claudel again, and there were no false pretenses: Duhamel knew of Interintell and approved. He assured Claudel that there had been no European, no imitation Arab, trying to stow away on any freighter during the last two weeks. So, with the alarm on Erik sounded, Claudel could only return to the town and wait, and rely on Duhamel’s eagle eye.

Secondly, there was the airport. Flights were limited, and checking the passenger lists for the last two weeks was fairly simple. Claudel concentrated on the flights to Egypt and France. The others, to Mombasa and Addis Ababa, were obviously less attractive for Erik: the former because it only led Erik farther afield, farther from Germany; the latter because Ethiopia now had an influx of helpful Cubans. But there was nothing to discover. No record or sighting of any unknown European, of any unidentified Arab. The French kept tight watch over the airport, a precaution particularly against hijackers. So again, Claudel could only give a warning about Erik and go back to the town, and wait. And wonder if Erik had ever come to Djibouti in the first place.