The Last Supper (36 page)

Sybille, a Virginia girl, considered Paris a hardship post. She held out her hands to the fitful blue flames of a coal fire.

“This fireplace is all that saves us from freezing,” she said. “Poor Stephanie is covered in chilblains. I don’t know how we’re ever going to restore her
circulation so that she can go to dances and get herself married like other girls. She has this awful splotchy chest as a result of living without central heating. And now she’s decided to
wear her hair in a tonsure. It took years to grow her hair down to her waist. It was glorious. One visit to the hairdresser by herself and I am given back a nun with jug-handle ears.”

Stephanie, the Websters’ daughter, paid no attention to her mother. Her small hand was buried in her shining monk’s cap of black hair. Lying on the carpet with a book, she listened
intently to the conversation between her father and Paul Christopher. Her father liked to believe that she could not understand the elliptical speech that members of the Outfit used when discussing
their work. But Stephanie, who had learned Arabic as a small child in Amman, and who now spoke French in preference to English, had an ear for nuance.

Glasses glittered on her father’s plain face, concealing his eyes. The soles of his shoes whispered over the carpet as he shifted his feet, a sure sign that he was nervous. Paul
Christopher was his best friend; Stephanie had always called Christopher “Uncle Paul.” Tom Webster was talking in a low voice about Molly, who sat at the other end of the long
salon.

“She’s welcome here, don’t misunderstand me,” Tom Webster was saying. “But this isn’t the best place for her. They’re watching my front door.”

“You’ve seen them?”

“Photographed them.” Webster handed Christopher a strip of photographs, close-ups of faces, taken with a telephoto lens. Webster put a forefinger on a genial, open Vietnamese
face.

“Nguyên Kim,” Webster said.

Christopher recognized Kim, the Truong toc’s man in Europe.

“Nguyên Kim and his boys have killed a couple of Vietnamese here,” Webster said. “The French told Kim he’d be dead if he killed anybody else. There are
rules
, they explained. But Kim doesn’t know that there are rules.”

Christopher leaned over and ruffled Stephanie’s hair. “Stephanie,” he said, “would you ask Molly if she has any aspirin?”

When Stephanie was out of earshot, Christopher turned his back on the room. “Is a safe house possible?” he asked.

“Technically, no. You’re untouchable. Wolkowicz explained Patchen’s orders to you. I can help you as a friend, and I will. Even Barney will do that, though I’ve never
known him to risk his fat ass for anybody but Barney.”

“That’s a little harsh.”

“You have your opinion of Barney. I have mine. But if Washington finds out we’re even talking to you, we’ll all be selling encyclopedias.”

Stephanie slid back onto her spot on the carpet and reopened her book. “Molly’s bringing your aspirin, Uncle Paul,” she said.

Molly had put two aspirins into a tumbler of water. Christopher drank the mixture. Tom Webster offered Molly a drink.

“No, thank you,” Molly said. “I must say you two seem to be hard at it. What’s the subject? Can I join?”

“The subject was you, as a matter of fact. What to do with you.”

“Going back to sunny Rome seems much the best idea to me.”

“When Paul gets back from Saigon you can talk about that. Now, no.”

“ ‘No’? You sound like the thought police. Am I under arrest, then?”

“I wish you were,” Webster said. “You’d be well taken care of in a French jail.”

Stephanie closed her book and slammed it against the carpet. “Jail! That’s awful!” she said.

Sybille strode across the room and gently kicked her daughter’s narrow hip.

“Out, Stephanie,” Sybille said.

Stephanie uttered a theatrical sigh, rose to her feet, and went to the other end of the room. She lay down with her book by the fire.

“
All
the way out,” Sybille said. “Bedroom. Door closed. Tom, she’s a little spy. You should be more careful.”

Sybille poured herself a vodka. “If it weren’t for Stephanie, I wouldn’t mind the bombs and bullets,” she said. “We love having Molly here. But there
is
Stephanie.”

Molly looked from face to face. “You’re all absolutely serious, aren’t you?” she said. “You think I need protection. I don’t want to be locked up, in a French
jail or any other bloody French thing. I want to go back to Rome.”

“Listen to good advice,” Sybille said. “Tom will take good care of you while Paul’s away.”

“I know of an apartment you can borrow,” Webster said. “I can have it watched.”

“And I’ll be inside like Rapunzel?” Molly said.

“How can you do that without getting in trouble?” Christopher asked.

“It’s a legitimate operation,” Tom Webster said. “My job is to watch the Vietnamese in Paris.”

“I’m not exactly Vietnamese,” Molly said.

“No,” said Webster, “but they’ll be buzzing around you like bees around a honey tree.”

“What poetry,” said Molly.

— 5 —

Sybille helped Molly into her disguise: a curly black wig, sunglasses at three o’clock in the morning, a rabbit-skin coat, and baggy gold lamé harem trousers. The
baggy pants were especially important, they had told her, because of her memorable legs; Sybille, giggling, had bought them for her in a tarty shop on the Champs-Elysées that catered to
tourists from South America.

At ten minutes to three, the phone rang. Sybille did not answer. After a pause, it rang twice again. This time Sybille picked it up and spoke in her rushing Virginia voice to Tom, who was at the
other end.

“It’s all right,” Sybille said to Molly. “Remember, now—walk up toward the Etoile to the rue Tilsitt. Tom will pick you up in a black Citroën. Make sure
it’s Tom before you get in.”

Molly had been inspecting herself in a full-length mirror. Molly pointed to her changed self in the glass.

“Do you think Paul would betray me with this mysterious woman?”

Sybille kissed her. “I don’t think you have a thing to worry about, cookie,” she said.

Webster was waiting for her in the Citroën when she arrived at the rue Tilsitt. He flicked on the dome light so that she could see his face. Two caped policemen watched impassively.

“They’ll think I’m a fifty-franc girl,” Molly said.

“They know all the fifty-franc girls. They’ll think your husband is in Brussels on business.”

Webster put the car in gear. “We’re going to take the long way around,” he said, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.

During the long ride through the empty streets, Webster talked in code phrases on a hand-held radio. Molly opened the glove compartment, looking for a Kleenex, and saw a large blue pistol.

Webster closed the glove compartment. Molly sniffed. He gave her his clean handkerchief. “We’re almost there,” he said. “It’s an unusual place, as safe houses go.
It belongs to a sporting Brazilian.”

“A sporting Brazilian?”

“You’ll see.”

Peering through her sunglasses, Molly read the street signs. They were in the 16th Arrondissement, near a Métro station called Muette. She had been here with Christopher, to go to a
museum where they had a lot of Monets. After looking at blurry canvases from the artist’s water-lily period, they had walked through a park among crowds of dressy French children who looked
like midget graduates of the Ecole Normale.

Webster turned the Citroën into a cul-de-sac off the boulevard Beauséjour. This little street, hardly more than a courtyard, seemed to be deserted. Webster waited, the glove
compartment open and his hand inside on the pistol. Then someone standing in a doorway lit a cigarette.

“Let’s go,” Webster said. “Take off your shoes. Quick.”

They leaped out of the car. Webster drew Molly into an unlighted hallway and, pulling her by the hand, led her at a run in her stocking feet up the stairs. It was a long way up. Webster shone a
penlight on the stairs at every landing and in these brief bursts of incandescence Molly saw that his face was wet with sweat. He panted loudly in the darkness.

At the top, the door of an apartment opened. Christopher stood in the doorway. Molly and Webster plunged by him and he closed the door. Molly looked around her. The sporting Brazilian had
furnished his place with glass tables and cubical black chairs. Tiger skins were scattered over a fuzzy white carpet. The walls were mirrored from floor to ceiling and tinted blue and pink. Molly
saw thousands of images of herself in her curly black wig, her rabbit coat, her gold lamé harem pants.

“I feel like King Zog’s mistress,” Molly said. “Is it
always
like this, Paul?”

“Always,” Christopher said.

Because Christopher loved her so much, Molly had the power of drawing him out of his body and into her own. With a gesture, with a tiny change of expression, she did this now, and he saw the
absurd apartment, the ludicrous situation through her eyes. He began to laugh. Molly joined him. Tears of merriment streamed from their eyes. Wearing her wig and her streetwalker’s clothes,
she embraced him and covered his face with kisses.

“Is it possible to be happier than this?” Molly asked, watching their image in the mirrors.

Tom Webster shook his head in disbelief. He sank onto a tiger skin, gasping for breath; his big toe protruded from a hole in his sock.

“I think I’ll have a drink,” he said.

Whisky and water in hand, Webster fixed Molly with a solemn look.

“Listen to me,” he said. “This is a safe house. You’ll be safe here as long as you don’t go outside. That’s the cardinal rule, Molly. Stay in this apartment.
If you do that, we can guarantee your safety. If you don’t, nobody can protect you.”

He gave her the little radio he had used in the car and showed her how it worked. He hung it around her neck by its strap, knocking her wig askew. Molly stripped off the wig and tossed it onto
one of the glass tables. Her rabbit-skin coat already lay on the floor by the door.

“Wear the radio twenty-four hours a day,” Webster said. “Take it to bed with you. There’ll always be a man downstairs.”

Webster led her to the window and pointed out the man standing in the doorway across the cul-de-sac.

“If you want us,” he said, “just push the button to transmit and say
Australia
. That’s your code word. If one of us is coming up, we’ll call
you
and
say
Sydney
. Nobody else gets through the door—not a woman, not a child, not a stray cat. Okay?”

“Right,” Molly said.
“Australia. Sydney.”

She pressed a button and the radio emitted a squawk. She dropped it, startled.

Webster pointed at the radio, reminding her of all his warnings. “I’ll see you tomorrow, after Paul is on his way,” he said. “Paul, walk down with me.”

In fact they took the elevator. Molly heard it whine down the shaft and heard the gates clashing far below in the night. She went to the window and looked out. Webster and Christopher were
talking to the sentinel in the doorway. The man nodded as if to acknowledge an instruction, then dug in his pocket and searched through a handful of change. When he couldn’t find what he
needed, Christopher gave him what seemed to be a coin and he hurried away.

The face of a clock was reflected in the mirrored walls. Five minutes passed and the sentinel returned. Christopher looked up and saw Molly in the window. She waved. He made no sign in return.
Molly’s radio crackled.

“Sydney,” a voice said.

“Where did the sentinel go?” Molly asked, when Christopher came back.

“To the Métro station to make a phone call.”

“Was that a
jeton
you gave him?”

“Yes.”

“You always have what they need, don’t you?” Molly said. “What will they do without you?”

They embraced among the mirrors. The radio was caught between them. Molly unfastened the strap and let it fall with a thud onto the white carpet by her rabbit-skin coat.

“Time enough tomorrow for code words,” she said.

— 6 —

Later, as he walked across the tarmac to board his plane for Saigon, Christopher thought of Molly: asleep as he had left her, and awake as she must soon be, filled with anger
and sadness. She could not understand why he could never say good-bye to her. He had left her alone many times before in the same way, without a word.

“It’s the only thing about you that I hate,” she told him each time he returned. “It’s such a simple thing to wake me up and kiss me before you go. Why can’t
you do it?”

Molly was right. It was a simple thing. But in the end, he never woke her.

Inside the plane, Nguyên Kim knelt in a first-class seat, gripping the fingers of a blond stewardess with one delicate brown hand while with the other he stroked the
inside of her wrist. Kim’s fingers moved sensuously from pulse to palm and back again, tracing veins and bones. The stewardess, a French girl with a meticulously painted face, stood with her
legs apart, spike heels planted in the carpet, anger in her eyes that this colored man should dare to touch her.

Christopher sat down in the seat behind Kim’s.

Kim spoke to the stewardess in the breezy American English he had learned at UCLA. The stewardess tugged, trying to free her hand, and when Kim did not loosen his grip, she flushed under her
paint.

“I don’t understand English,” she said in French.

Kim switched to French. “I’ll teach you,” he said. “Tell me your name.”

“Dominique, monsieur.”

“English is a fantastic language, Dominique. You mustn’t be against it just because it’s spoken by Americans.”

Kim had seen Christopher get aboard. He let go of the stewardess and she hurried away. Kim stood up and took off his jacket, folding it neatly and placing it in the overhead rack. He went on
smiling even when he was alone; he had learned affability as well as English at UCLA. Kim was a member of the royal Nguyên family; his ancestors had been kings of Vietnam. Now he floated
between the new order and the old, taking money and doing whatever was necessary to earn it. Because of his ancestry he believed that he had more right to live than others; certainly more right
than any pompous Frenchman or any hulking mongrel of an American.