The Company of Saints (22 page)

Two drivers remembered a young man hiring the little vaporetto that morning. Their descriptions didn't quite tally, but then descriptions never do. To one he was tall, the second said slight. Age varied, but both settled for less than forty, and both agreed, without being specific, that he wasn't dark and didn't look Italian. From all these fragments, the CIA had built up an identikit picture with a rough schedule of movements. The picture was one among half a dozen others with less convincing credentials.

Johnson stayed in the background in the cell. He was fascinated by the girl. She was very young, very thin and sallow. She reminded him of a trapped animal. She had glared at him when he came in after Modena and then looked away. But she hung on the Italian's words, staring at him with a helpless dependence. He'd done a good job there, Johnson decided. He'd got her totally subjected. He preferred not to wonder how he'd managed it. That wasn't his business. She took the pictures and leafed through them. Then she stopped. She held one out to Modena. ‘That's him,' she said. ‘Near enough.'

‘Good.' Modena smiled approvingly at her. He glanced over his shoulder at Johnson and said in Italian so she could understand, ‘Elsa has been a great help to us. Not without a lot of soul-searching, you understand. And she has suffered considerably. Now she has decided not to suffer for other people's crimes. Which is very brave as well as sensible.'

Johnson saw her blush. Christ, he said to himself, I've heard about his technique but I've never seen it working before. It's like getting a bloody tiger to lie down and lick your feet.…

Modena stood up. He smiled at the girl again. ‘Good,' he repeated. He took Johnson upstairs. ‘They'll send in some lunch,' he said. ‘It's not bad. Let's put this together then.'

Slowly the picture was emerging. The killer had stayed at a pensione – the padrone remembered him talking about architecture and saying he was a student. Both men dismissed this. Also the cover that he was going on to Padua. The girl Valdorini said he had a northern accent, which the padrone corroborated. He looked like someone who lived in the open, and who walked a lot. Not a city type, more a village man, but not a labourer. The girl had noticed his hands, as she had his other physical characteristics, when she was thinking about sleeping with him. His hands were well kept. He was clean in his habits. Fair hair, blue-grey eyes, outdoor skin, but not a labourer. The trail had gone on to the airports, which were closed until some days after the man had left Valdorini's house. That left the railways. A close study of the timetables for the day he left Venice established that there were two connections he could have caught to Trieste.

Modena was working on the assumption that the assassin had gone home and into hiding. And home was in the north. ‘We'll get the trains and buses checked,' he said. ‘And from there, we'll send men up to make inquiries at the places where the buses call. People in that region of Italy use the bus more than the car, and the bicycle isn't suited to the Dolomites. That is where I think our killer came from, judging by the accent Valdorini described. He used certain expressions that you find in that part of the country. She remembered them because they were comic to a Venetian. So, we will have to follow up our leads and wait.' He leaned back, stretched out his arms and sighed. ‘I see her every day,' he said. ‘I keep the contact going between us. Otherwise she could go back on it and refuse to testify if we catch this man. You can never trust these people.'

‘How did you get her to make a deal?'

Modena managed a slight smile. He didn't often smile or laugh, Johnson noticed. He was not in the least light hearted. ‘I showed her what would happen to her if she didn't,' he said. ‘Fortunately she was too conditioned to look at it too closely. It was a prison for dangerous criminal lunatics and it's been closed for two years. I put on a little window dressing for her benefit, and it worked. Strange, Signor Johnson, the things that break a human spirit – I could have stood that girl against a wall and lined up the firing squad and she'd have spat in my face. But the sight of a padded cell was just too much. Ah, well. Will you take some coffee? I've been drinking too much espresso. It's bad for the nerves.'

‘What will happen to her?' Johnson asked.

Modena grimaced. ‘Fifteen years. She'll go to the south. That's where we keep the women. On a small island, off the coast of Calabria. They don't escape from there.'

Hélène Blond didn't eat her dinner. To her aunt's inquiry she said irritably that she wasn't hungry, and added a clipped plea not to fuss. She had become very short-tempered in the last few days, the bewildered woman thought. Quite unlike her usual self. She'd changed since that dreadful experience. It wasn't a nice thing to think, but she couldn't help being glad that the influence of people like the Duvaliers was gone. Too much money, no moral sense, and a disregard for old-fashioned standards that she found so disturbing. She kept an eye on her niece, but was careful not to say any more. There was a difficult, even forbidding side to the girl's character which made her feel uneasy sometimes.

Hélène excused herself. ‘I'm going out for a walk,' she said. ‘I won't be late, so don't worry about me.' She bent and gave her aunt a kiss. It was a contact she hated, but it pacified the old bitch. It stopped her asking questions and following her round.

She couldn't have eaten anything that night. Her stomach was in a knot, and she couldn't stop thinking about the man who'd broken his silent watch on her that day.

‘The others have been killed. You will be next.'

The one who had killed in Venice, the one who had destroyed the Soviet Minister in Poland, the one who had shot the peace-mongering priest in London. Others? She couldn't think of any others but those who had done what she had done.

Killed by whom? The question was gripping her guts with suspicion. Killed by their own, to stop them being caught and talking? Nobody had approached her since she came back to Paris after the deaths of the Duvaliers. That was the formula, agreed and understood. The preparation for the mission after you had been chosen, the mission itself, and then silence for the rest of your life. A return to normal life with the secret of what you had done locked away for ever.

But in her case something had gone wrong. She went up to her room, paced up and down, looked at her watch and then very carefully, with the lights out, drew back the curtains and searched the street below. It was empty. There were no parked cars, no strollers idling past. He wouldn't still be watching, whoever he was. He'd given his warning. She went downstairs, opened the front door and made sure there was nobody in sight. Then she slipped out and began walking very rapidly towards the Metro station. She didn't see Lomax. She didn't see him follow her onto the train and get out after her at the station in the 20th arondissement.

She didn't see him because he was in jeans and denim jacket, dark glasses and sneakers. He blended so skilfully into the evening crowd making its way to the centre of Paris that she didn't give him or anyone near him a second glance.

They arrived in a little square, charming and antiquated, with a cobbled pavement and eighteenth-century houses and shop fronts. A secret corner of the old Paris. Lomax hung back, sheltering round a corner. The girl's footsteps echoed across the uneven road surface. She stopped at a door and waited. It opened after a few minutes and a beam of light shot out into the semidarkness shrouding a tall figure that stepped aside and let her in. The door closed and the square was dim again, lit only by the two street lamps that had been adapted from gaslight. Lomax didn't go near the house. He turned back and went home to his pension. From there he made a telephone call to Davina's flat. It rang and rang and he swore, thinking she was out, where the hell is she? But then someone picked up the receiver. ‘Davina? It's me.'

‘I heard the phone as I was opening the door,' she said. She sounded out of breath. ‘Any news?'

Not how are you, or any civility of that sort, he thought, and felt angry. ‘I think I've stirred it up,' he said. ‘I'll let you know more tomorrow.' He could be brisk too. He was going to hang up when she said, ‘Colin? Don't take any risks, will you.…'

He paused. ‘Don't worry! How's it going at your end?'

‘Well,' she answered. ‘We've got a breakthrough too. Italy at least. If you can establish something there, we could be closing in. When will you call tomorrow?'

‘After I've sussed out a house,' he said. ‘Our friend went scuttling round there tonight, after I'd had a word with her. I want to see who lives there.'

‘You spoke to her?' Davina sounded anxious.

‘Just a few well-chosen words,' he said. ‘My French isn't exactly fluent. But good enough to put the fear of God into her. We'll know more by tomorrow. I'll call you tomorrow evening. Will you be there?'

There was no hesitation. ‘Of course. But if you run into trouble, don't wait – call the red number.'

‘Yes, ma'am,' he mocked.

‘Good night, Colin. And thanks for doing this.'

He grinned. About time she said that. Not that he cared.

‘Don't mention it.' He hung up.

‘I've been followed,' Hélène Blond insisted. ‘A man's been following me for the last four days. And this afternoon he came up and said something. I had to contact you!'

The man looked at her – a cold impassive face, with a glint of anger in the hooded eyes. ‘You've broken the rule,' he said. ‘You were told never to come back again, whatever happened. You are the only member who has lost her head.'

Hélène could feel her panic growing. They weren't going to help. They were sheltering behind the very rules that had once made her feel so safe. And how did she know what the others had done?

‘He said I was going to be killed!'

The expression on her listener's face didn't change. ‘You must go away,' he said. ‘I don't want to hear any more. You know the rules and you swore to keep them. You don't exist and we don't either. If you are being threatened, then do what an innocent person would do. Go to the police.' He crossed the room and opened the door into the hall. ‘Leave at once.'

Hélène didn't move. ‘Suppose he knows something about all of us? Don't you care about that?'

The answer was impassive. ‘Nobody knows about us. If you think you have been discovered, you know the rule.'

She glared at him, and the fury in her overcame the fear. They all possessed that inner core of seething violence, the man knew. He knew it could erupt at any moment. They wanted to kill, these people, and to die themselves. But not this one. He could see the defiance flaming in her, the refusal to carry out her oath. So he said, ‘You go home. I will see what we can do. But don't come here again. Trust us to take care of you.'

‘You'd better,' Hélène said. ‘I want to know one thing. How are the others? How is Italy and Russia and Ireland? Are they safe?'

He didn't lie to her. ‘Only Russia is dead. They caught him and he was killed. He didn't speak. The rest have gone their ways and we know nothing about them. You should leave now.' There was an insistent note in his voice.

‘All right, I'll go.' She went with him to the front door. ‘If I see him again, what do I do?'

‘Go to the police. And leave the rest to us.'

There was nobody in the little square when she came out. A peaceful, pleasant summer's night. She hunched a little as if there was a wind, and walked all the way home to her aunt's house. She was not going to obey their rule. She was not going to be a good girl and commit suicide if anything went wrong.

The man watched from a darkened room as Hélène crossed the cobbled square and vanished round the corner. Nobody followed her. But somehow the strongest link in the chain was showing weakness. She had made a slip without anyone realizing, and the man who was following her had threatened her because he knew she would react as she did and do the one thing which was forbidden to all of them: return after the mission. He went to the back of the house and down the stairs into what had been the servants' quarters in the old days. It was entered by a reinforced door. Inside what had once been a big gloomy kitchen was a brightly lit room, equipped with a highly sophisticated communications system. Three people were on duty. Two women and a young man. They stood up when he came in. They spoke in a language that was clipped and tonal. He checked the time, paused and then announced his decision.

Lomax saw her leave for the Lycée the next morning. He didn't follow her. That side of it was over for the moment. He ordered a cab and gave the name of the square.

‘What number?'

Lomax shrugged. ‘I'm not sure, but I'll recognize the place.' The driver said something to himself which Lomax didn't catch, but he was fairly sure it wasn't complimentary about foreigners who didn't know where they were going.

When they turned into the square he leaned forward and said, ‘That house, second on the right. No, don't stop, just drive past, will you?' He ignored more Gallic mutterings and as they drove up to the entrance he saw the brass plate and read the inscription. The House of Ma-Nang. ‘Okay, drive back on to the main street. Do you know that place? Ma-Nang – what does it mean?'

The driver looked round, raised his eyebrows and said, ‘I don't know, monsieur. I'm not Chinese.'

Lomax got out and gave him something to complain about by not adding a tip to the fare. He went to the Bibliothèque Nationale. The woman at the inquiry desk was helpful. She suggested that Lomax try the oriental section. He did, and the librarian was eager to assist him. Ma-Nang. They consulted the
Dictionary of Cantonese
but without any success. There were many hundreds of versions of the Chinese language and thousands of derivatives. Lomax said yes, he appreciated that, but what could she suggest? They looked through the religious and philosophical reference books – the hours were running away. The House of Ma-Nang. The librarian was at the end of her suggestions. Why not look in the telephone directory? It might explain the meaning. Lomax thanked her, wondered why he hadn't done that first, and went into her office. And there it was. The House of Ma-Nang, School of Meditation. They looked at each other and laughed with relief.