The Tristan Betrayal Page 7

  “I’ll do my best.” Flora never stopped angling for black-market goods from her Argentine lover. She was so mercenary, so relentless in demanding things from him, that he no longer felt that he was using her to provide him with intelligence. If anything, she was using him.

  “Really, Daniel,” Flora scolded. “The idea of you just popping in on me like this! And in the middle of the night! I don’t know what to say.” She went into her bathroom and closed the door. She emerged ten minutes later in a pretty, if threadbare, silk dressing gown, the curlers gone, her hair done up. She’d put on lipstick and pancake makeup. Though she was no beauty, she was now almost pretty.

  “Look at you!” Metcalfe said.

  “Oh, please,” Flora said with a dismissive flip of her hand. But she blushed; Metcalfe knew she enjoyed his compliments. She did not receive compliments often, and she luxuriated in them. “Tomorrow I will get a permanent.”

  “You don’t need one, Flora.”

  “You men. What do you know? Some women get a permanent every week. Now, I have hardly anything to serve you. I made a chocolate cake using a recipe my neighbor gave me—it’s made of pureed noodles with a drop of chocolate, and it’s horrible. Would you like some?”

  “I’m fine, I told you.”

  “If only I had some real chocolate . . .”

  “Yes, my dear, I can get you some.”

  “You can? Oh, that would be delightful! When I went to Paquet the grocer after work yesterday, all he’d give me was one bar of soap and a pound of noodles. So there’s no butter for breakfast.”

  “I can get you butter, too, if you’d like.”

  “Butter! Really? How wonderful. Oh, Daniel, you don’t know how terrible it’s all gotten. I have nothing to feed my Fifi. There’s no poultry, no game.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Why, I’ve even heard of people eating their own dogs!”

  Fifi looked up and growled.

  “People are using cats in stews, Daniel! And a few days ago I saw a respectable old woman braining a pigeon in the park to take home to cook!”

  Metcalfe suddenly remembered the little square flask of Guerlain’s Vol de Nuit he had in the pocket of his dinner jacket, out of the same cache from which he’d gotten Madame du Châtelet’s bottle. He’d meant to give a bottle to Geneviève but had forgotten. Now he pulled it out and put it in Flora’s hands. “Until then, this is for you.”

  Flora’s eyes widened, and she gave a little squeal. She threw her arms around Metcalfe. “You are a miracle worker!”

  “Flora, listen. I have a friend who’s going to Moscow this week—he just told me—and I’d like to do a little business there.”

  “Business? In Moscow?”

  “The Germans there are just as greedy as the Germans here, you know.”

  “Oh, the Germans—ils nous prennent tout! They’re swiping everything. This evening, some Fritz soldier gave up his seat for me on the Métro, but I refused to accept it.”

  “Flora, I need you to get something else for me at the office.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “The gray mice are always watching me. It’s dangerous. I must be careful.”

  “Of course. You’re always careful. Listen, my dear. I need a complete personnel list of all Germans stationed at the embassy in Moscow. Can you get that for me?”

  “Well . . . I can try, I suppose. . . .”

  “Excellent, my darling. It will be a big help to me.”

  “But then you must do two things for me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you get me a pass to the unoccupied zone? I want to visit my mother.”

  Metcalfe nodded. “I know someone in the Préfecture.”

  “Wonderful. And one more thing.”

  “Certainly. What is it?”

  “Undress me, Daniel. Right this minute.”

  Chapter Six

  It was very early in the morning when Metcalfe finally returned to his apartment, on the fifth floor of a Belle Epoque building on the rue de Rivoli. It was a large and lavish flat, expensively furnished, as befit the international playboy that was his cover. Several of his neighbors were high-ranking Nazi officials who had seized apartments in the building from Jewish owners. They appreciated the convenience of having this wealthy young Argentine living nearby, who could procure for them the unobtainable luxuries, and so of course they left “Daniel Eigen” alone.

  At the front door to his apartment, he inserted the key in the lock and then froze. He felt a tingling sensation, some kind of premonition. Something that told him that all was not quite right.

  Quietly he pulled the key out, then reached up to the top of the door, where it jutted out an eighth of an inch. The pin he placed there whenever he left was gone.

  Someone had been in his apartment.

  No one but he had the key.

  Although he was exhausted, having been up the entire night, his every instinct was now fully alert. He backed away from the door, looked both ways down the dark, empty corridor, then placed an ear against the door to listen for a few seconds.

  He could not hear any sound, but that didn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that someone was inside.

  In all his time in Paris, this had not happened before. He had lived his cover, attending dinners and parties, having lunch at Maxim’s or the Chez Carrère in the rue Pierre Charron, and conducting his affairs, and all the while collecting sensitive intelligence on the Nazis. Never had he had even an inkling that he might have been suspected. His apartment had never been searched; he had never been taken in for questioning. Perhaps he had grown complacent.

  But something had changed. The evidence of that was as minute as the absence of a pin atop his front door. But it meant something. He was sure of it.

  He touched the ankle holster under his trousers, assuring himself that the compact .32 caliber Colt pistol was in place, ready to whip out if he needed it.

  There was only one entrance to his apartment, Metcalfe reflected. No, not quite. Only one door to his apartment.

  Silently, swiftly, he ran down the hallway to the end. The casement windows there were rarely opened except on the most sweltering of summer days, but he had tested them, knew they worked. Always know your exits, Corky had drummed into him from day one of his training on the farm in Virginia.

  The volets, the wooden shutters, were always left open to let in the light. He peered out, confirmed his recollection that a fire escape ran along this side of the building, accessible through the windows here. There was no one in the alley that he could see, but he would still have to move fast. The sun had risen; it was a bright, clear morning, and he risked being seen.

  Moving quickly, he twisted the lever of the crémone in the center where the windows met. The rack and pinion assembly turned with a soft moan. He opened the windows inward, reached up to the sill, and climbed out onto the iron railing of the fire escape.

  Stepping gingerly along the icy, slick iron slats, he made his way around until he reached the window that he knew opened into his bedroom. It was, of course, locked, but he always carried with him his trusty Opinel penknife. Having satisfied himself that there was no one in the bedroom, he slid in the blade and pried the lock, then worked the crémone open. Quiet, he commanded himself. He had oiled the window locks not that long ago, so he was able to work without making much of a sound, but it was not silent. Perhaps the slight scrape of the window opening would be masked by the ambient noise from the street. He stepped down into his bedroom, landing softly on his feet, crouching slightly as he touched down to minimize the sound of the impact. Now he was inside. He stood still for a moment, listening. He heard nothing.

  Then something caught his eye: something subtle, imperceptible to anyone else. It was the gleam on the top of his mahogany credenza, the sun reflecting off the burnished surface.

  There had been a fine layer of dust there this morning—no, it was yesterday morning already. The Provençal woman who came in to clean twice a week wasn’t due in until
tomorrow, and in this old apartment dust tended to settle quickly. Metcalfe hadn’t polished it, of course. Someone had wiped it down, no doubt in order to eliminate any traces of a search. Someone had been here, he now knew for certain.

  But why? The Nazis didn’t break into apartments in Paris, as a rule. Furtive entry was not their modus operandi. When they conducted their house-to-house searches for criminals, for British servicemen in hiding, it was almost always in the middle of the night, yes, but always in the open. And always with a pretense of legality. Papers were produced, signatures waved about.

  Who, then, had been here?

  And: Was it possible that the intruder was still here?

  Metcalfe had never killed anyone. He was entirely comfortable with the use of a gun, going back to his boyhood days on the estancia in las pampas. At the training farm in Virginia, he had been trained in the lethal techniques. But he had never had the opportunity to shoot a man to death, and it was an opportunity he was not looking forward to.

  Still, if he had to, he would.

  But he would have to be extraordinarily careful. Even if there was an interloper in his apartment, he could not fire unless his life was threatened. Far too many questions would arise. If he killed a German, the questions would not stop. His cover would be blown for sure.

  His bedroom door was closed, and that was another thing. He always left it open. He lived alone, and when he was not there, there was no reason to close his bedroom door. The little things, the tiny unnoticed habits. They made up a scrim of normalcy, a mosaic of everyday life. And now that mosaic had been disturbed.

  Approaching the bedroom door, he stood still and listened for a minute. Listened for the creak of footsteps, the movements of a stranger who did not know which floorboards squeaked. But nothing: not a sound.

  Standing to one side of the doorway in a sniper stance, he turned the knob and pulled the door open slowly, let it swing open. His heart hammering, he stared into the living room, waiting for a minute shift in the light, a movement in the shadows, expecting it.

  Now he shifted his gaze, sweeping the room, pausing at the places where someone might try to hide, assuring himself that no one was there. He reached for his gun, withdrew it from the holster.

  Suddenly he stepped into the room, gun extended, and said, “Arrêt!”

  Whipping his body from one side to the other, he thumbed the safety, cocked the hammer by pulling back the slide, and prepared to fire.

  The room was empty.

  No one was there. He was fairly certain of it. He did not sense the presence of an intruder. Still, keeping the weapon pointed, he swiveled from side to side, advancing along the wall until he reached the door to the small library.

  The door was open, as he had left it. The library—really just another, smaller sitting room furnished with a desk and chair and lined with books—was empty. He could see every inch of the room; there were no hidden corners.

  But he would take no chances. He raced to the kitchen, pushed open the double doors, entered with his weapon extended. The kitchen was empty, too.

  He searched the potential hiding places that remained—the dining room, the pantry, his large clothes closet, a broom closet—and satisfied himself that they were all empty.

  He relaxed his vigilance a bit. No one was here. He felt a little foolish, but he knew he couldn’t take chances.

  Returning to the living room, he noticed another tiny change. It was his bottle of Delamain Réserve de la Famille Grande Champagne Cognac on the bar. The label normally faced out; now it faced in. The bottle had been moved.

  He opened his ebony cigarette box and saw that the double layer of cigarettes had been shifted as well. The gap in the row of cigarettes had been third from the end; now it was fifth from the end. Someone had taken out the cigarettes to search underneath—for what? Documents? Keys? He concealed nothing there, but the intruder didn’t know that.

  Other traces. The switch on the antique brass lamp was now on the right, not on the left, indicating that someone had lifted it to search its base. A good hiding place, but not one he used. The telephone handset had been hung up differently, so that the cloth-wrapped cord now hung on the opposite side from the way he had left it. Someone had picked up the phone for some reason: To make a call? Or simply to move the phone in order to look inside the chest on which it rested? The heavy ornate marble mantel clock above the fireplace had been shifted a fraction of an inch: the dust outline told the tale. The search had been remarkably thorough: even the ashes in the fireplace had been swept aside and then moved back; someone had looked in the ash box, another clever hiding place he hadn’t used.

  Now Metcalfe raced to the clothes closet, in the alcove off his bedroom. His suits and shirts still hung in the proper order, though the precise gaps between the hangers were different. Obviously someone had carefully removed his clothes and searched pockets.

  But he, or they, had apparently not noticed the compartment that had been skillfully built into the wall by one of Corky’s craftsmen. He slid the panel open, revealing the heavy iron safe. Its dial still pointed to the number seven, and the fine patina of dust had not been disturbed here. The safe, which contained cash, encoded telephone numbers, and various identity papers in different names, had not been touched. That was a relief.

  Whoever had searched his apartment so thoroughly—and with such neatness—had not discovered his safe, the only evidence that Daniel Eigen was in fact the cover of an American spy. And they hadn’t learned his true identity.

  They had not found what they were looking for.

  But . . . but exactly what were they looking for?

  Before leaving his apartment, he placed a trunk call to Howard in New York.

  His brother was surprised, if pleased, to hear from him. He was even more surprised at Stephen’s sudden interest in the family’s manganese mining concession in Soviet Georgia, which the Metcalfes still operated in partnership with the Soviet Ministry of Trade. It was a minor operation, and with all the Soviet restrictions and the necessary payoffs, it barely eked out a profit. The Russians had long expressed an interest in buying the Metcalfes out. Stephen suggested that maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe he could go to Moscow, meet with some people, and further the discussion. After a long silence—the hiss of the transatlantic call loud—Howard understood what his brother was asking. He promptly agreed to make arrangements. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am,” Howard said dryly, “that my baby brother wants to play a more active role in the family business.”

  “You shouldn’t have to shoulder all the burden.”

  “I don’t suppose a certain ballerina has anything to do with this resurgence of interest in business, right?”

  “How dare you impugn my motives,” Metcalfe replied, a smile in his voice.

  He changed quickly out of his tuxedo, putting on the more casual suit and tie of the international businessman he pretended to be. Fortunately, the fashion in the last few years had been loose, almost baggy trousers: they concealed the revolver, whose holster he strapped to his ankle.

  He walked out of his building into the bright, cold morning, unable to suppress a feeling of dread.

  About an hour later he was sitting in the dark nave of a gloomy, decrepit church in Pigalle. Barely any light filtered through the grimy stained-glass window in the apse. The only other parishioners here were a few old women, who knelt, prayed briefly, and lit candles. The place smelled, not unpleasantly, of matches and beeswax candles and sweat.

  This small church had been neglected for years, but at least it had survived the Nazi invaders. Not that they had demolished any buildings in Paris, nor had they destroyed or even shut any churches. Far from it. The Catholic Church had struck its own, separate accommodation with the Nazi occupiers, hoping to safeguard its rights by accepting the new dictators.

  Once again he felt for his gun.

  Now, Metcalfe noticed a cassocked priest in a Roman collar, his rail-thin figure mostl
y concealed beneath the loose black vestments, enter and kneel at the statue of a saint. He lit a candle and then got to his feet. Metcalfe followed him to the ancient door that led to the underground crypt.

  The small, dank room was dimly lit by a hanging overhead fixture. Corcoran removed the hood of his cassock and sat at a small round table next to an unfamiliar man. He was a fireplug of a man: short, ruddy-faced, rumpled. His shirt collar was too tight, his necktie too short, his suit jacket cheap and ill-fitting. Next to the elegant, gaunt Corky, he looked markedly out of place.

  “James,” Corcoran said pointedly to Metcalfe. “I want you to meet Chip Nolan.”

  Interesting: Corcoran had called him by a fake name. Of course, Corky was famously paranoid, always making sure one hand never knew what the other hand was doing. He wondered whether “Chip Nolan” was a real name, either.

  Metcalfe shook the smaller man’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  Nolan’s grip was firm; his clear eyes regarded him steadily. “Same here. You work in the field for Corky, that’s all I know. But it’s enough to impress the hell out of me.”

  “Chip’s on loan from the FBI to our Technical Section. An expert on flaps and seals, and technical equipment.”

  “You’re going to Moscow, huh?” Nolan said, lifting a large, heavy leather suitcase from the floor and placing it on the table. “I don’t know beans about your assignment, and that’s the way we’re gonna keep it. I’m here to outfit you, give you all the toys you might need. The bag of tricks, we like to call it.” He ran his hand over the worn hide of the case. “This is yours, by the way. A gen-u-ine Soviet suitcase, made in Krasnogorsk.” He popped open the case, revealing a row of neatly folded clothing, including a suit, all of it wrapped carefully in tissue paper. “Real Soviet clothing,” Nolan went on. “Manufactured at the October Revolution Textile Factory and bought at GUM, the Soviet department store on Red Square. Artificially aged and distressed, though. The Roos-kies don’t exactly get to buy duds often, so they have to wear stuff far longer than we Americans do. Everything’s been tailored to your exact measurements.” He unwrapped a pair of cheap-looking brown shoes. “These fellas here are the real thing as well. Believe me, you can’t buy shoes as lousy as this in the West. And the first thing the Russians look at is your shoes, you’ll see. That’s how they can spot a foreigner right away.”