Spitfire

by M. L. Huie

  Livy poured herself another shot. She had no intention of drinking it, but she needed the time to think. Sharing the Mephisto network with the Soviets was a no-go, but she wondered how she might use the offer to her advantage.

  “Mr. Mirov, the Yanks may lack subtlety, but at least one of them didn’t slap me across the face with a silencer.”

  “Vance is following you. He’s been following you since you left London.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “Because we followed you, too.”

  “Of course.” Her mouth felt dry. Instinctively she reached for the shot, but she just cradled it in her hand.

  “Miss Nash, no one knows what the world is going to be like now that the war is over. It’s chance. All Vance and the Americans really want is to sell Coca-Cola,” he said, pronouncing the name just like an American. “Coca-Cola everywhere. All over the world. That’s their highest calling now. Soft drink.”

  “And what are you selling? Gulags? Bread lines?”

  Mirov wagged a finger at her. “Now, now, you will get me into trouble, and we are enjoying each other’s company. I am not here to make apologies for world socialism. There are many here in France, and even in your own country, who see its merits.”

  “Yeah, I heard you were invading Paris by parachute.”

  “Yes, and a few weeks ago we helped the French communists plan a coup d’etat.” Mirov smirked. “Some people will say anything to get the Americans to come to the rescue.”

  “People like their Coca-Cola.”

  Mirov leaned back and laughed. “You even make jokes like a Russian. You know, I have a daughter, a few years younger than you. She is afraid of me. Truly, she is.” His voice became softer and his eyes fell to the table. “She knows who I work for, what we do, and she—um—she won’t look me in the face anymore.” Then, as quickly as the melancholy hit him, it disappeared like his Scottish accent. “But you and I, we can work together to do something good, you see?”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Livy stood. “You don’t really have a daughter, do you?”

  Mirov shrugged with a grand, theatrical gesture.

  The dark circles under her eyes felt like they had weight. “Thanks for the drink, luv.”

  As she walked back to Madame Riveaux’s, Livy stuck to nearly empty side streets, following the breeze from the Seine a few blocks ahead. Despite her exhaustion, she considered her position. Tom Vance wanted her on his side. As did Mirov. But the Russian had made a firm offer. Still, Livy could tell he’d been playing her. That phony story about his daughter. This is what it must feel like to be caught between Scylla and Charybdis. The glow of the lights on the river came into view as she turned on to the Quai de Grenelle. Hands in her coat pockets, she caught herself walking conspicuously fast. A sure sign she felt overwhelmed. Sleep now. Face the two monsters on either side tomorrow. Even Odysseus needed rest.

  * * *

  The next morning Livy woke with a distant hangover that reminded her of mornings when she worked at the P&J. The bitter tang of the alcohol felt thick on her tongue, and she scolded herself for taking even two shots. Her body still craved it, but she knew drinking stood in her way on this job—and the rest of her life, for that matter. Besides, what would Mrs. O’Toole say to a young woman drinking vodka with a Soviet spy in a Parisian café? Ooh la la.

  She dressed quickly, deciding on the gray suit with a tapered skirt and jacket, fitted at the waist. The outfit came with a matching fedora with a black band and wide brim. When she pulled it over her left eye, she reminded herself a bit of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Lipstick on, she admired herself in the bath mirror and grinned. Eat your heart out, Humphrey Bogart.

  She still didn’t know how to handle Vance or the charming Comrade Mirov, but she felt purpose. The one thing neither the Yanks nor the Soviets had was Claude and his information about Nathalie, the Mephisto seductress. Finding Nathalie topped her agenda for the day.

  An insistent rapping at her door put those thoughts on hold. She considered picking up the Webley but decided against it. Her press credentials from the Kemsley Group ought to be the only weapon she’d need. No one could dispute that.

  She opened the door.

  Three men stood in the hallway. The man in front wore tweeds and had a pipe clenched between his teeth. Two younger men in U.S. Army uniforms with black MP armbands around their considerable biceps flanked him.

  “Miss Olivia Nash?” the older man said, looking at her through black spectacles. “I apologize for the early hour, but we need you to come outside with us. Now. If you please.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Minutes later, Livy and the ranking Yank sat on an iron bench overlooking the Seine across the street from Madame Riveaux’s. The two younger flatheads stood about ten feet away as if to guard the perimeter, even though only a few older couples passed by on their morning walks.

  The professorial type, who identified himself as Charles Gray of the American Embassy, had a lean, studious look. His Harris Tweed jacket, which definitely was out of season, and horn-rimmed glasses gave him an air of academic condescension.

  Gray smiled easily and often, although he had a way about him, as if he was used to giving orders and having people follow them. “Miss Nash, it’s come to our attention that we might be working at cross-purposes.”

  Livy returned Gray’s smile. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “I’m pretty sure you do. You have inserted yourself in the middle of an ongoing United States War Department operation. So I’m asking you to step back and let us take this one.”

  “I’m only here to file a story for my editor. About the Grand Guignol theater,” Livy said, handing him her press card.

  Gray looked it over. “Kemsley? That’s Ian Fleming’s show, isn’t it?”

  “Mr. Fleming’s the foreign manager, yes.”

  Gray’s smile evaporated as he handed the card back. “Let me be frank, Miss Nash,” he said, pulling his pipe from his lips for effect. “I seriously doubt you have any idea what you have gotten yourself into. I knew Commander Fleming during the war. He served his country well, I’ll give him that. But even then he had a lot of—how shall I put it?—cockamamy ideas that just didn’t pan out. Now you’re telling me he’s back in journalism and playing spy? Fine. That’s none of my concern. But if I may offer you a bit of advice … I’d be very wary of whatever it is Mr. Fleming might have told you and sent you out here to do, because you have stepped in the proverbial pile of horseshit. Pardon my French.”

  Livy didn’t miss a beat. “I have several interviews scheduled today, as well as a deadline I have to meet. So I can assure you I don’t have time for horseshit.”

  Gray replaced his pipe and nodded at the young MPs behind him. They walked away in double time. Then he leaned in toward Livy, the morning sun glinting off his glasses.

  “You were observed last night having a drink with a well-known Soviet MGB agent. We both know what’s going on here, Miss Nash, so let’s not play games. Our countries are allies. We have a—a special relationship. Sometimes little miscommunications, such as this, become much larger than they need be. I’m asking you—in a very collegial manner—to step away from what you’re doing in Paris. The next time we speak—if there is a next time—I will not ask.” He stood up, replaced the pipe in his mouth, and gave a slight awkward bow. “I do hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Paris.”

  Livy watched the Americans stroll off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.

  First Tom Vance had tried to cozy up to her. Then Mirov. Now some Yank she’d never heard of was trying to give her orders. She looked out over the river and wondered if these same men might try to tell the Seine which way to flow. Of course they would. She stood up, straightened her skirt, and decided—from here on out—to go her own way.

  * * *

  Later that morning Livy sat behind Allard in his Renault as they navigated the busy streets of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quar
ter.

  Livy had nursed a dull ache behind her eyes since her meeting with the professorial Mr. Gray. Her thoughts felt jumbled and she hated being chauffeured.

  “So, I assume we’re being followed? Again?”

  “Of course.” His dark eyes flashed to the rearview. “Dark-blue Morris this time. I’d say it’s the Russians.”

  “Then lose them.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  If her first day in Paris had taught her anything, it was that she needed breathing room if she was going to get this job done.

  “Lose the tail, if you don’t mind.”

  Allard glared at her in the rearview. “I’m not used to taking orders from our correspondents, Miss Nash.”

  “Look, everyone may follow everyone in this town, but I’ve had it with people being in my business, so I say we take the initiative and try to regain the upper hand.”

  “I see your point. It does become tiresome.”

  Allard flicked his eyes back to the road, then took a hairpin left on Quai Voltaire. He accelerated into the turn. Livy grinned. She turned, glancing out the back window. Cars and bicycles filled the street. It looked like a bloody Grand Prix. But there, flashing out into the far lane, sped a blue Morris.

  The Renault continued to accelerate as they sped toward the Champs-Élysées, keeping the Seine on their right. Livy leaned back in her seat as the Pont Alexandre III appeared in the distance ahead. Allard swerved in and out of traffic, moving between lanes. Then, just before reaching the Pont de l’Alma, he veered into the outer lane and spun the steering wheel into a hard right turn. The force of the change threw Livy against the opposite door. He was taking them to the Champs-Élysées.

  “Didn’t know you had it in you,” she said as the car shuddered into a hard left turn.

  “You can leave the driving to me, Miss Nash.”

  A look in the rearview told Livy the Morris was still following, two cars behind.

  Allard kept the speed steady so as not to alert the police as the Renault maneuvered through the traffic of the city’s most famous street. But instead of heading for more open road, Allard sped toward the worst roundabout in Europe: the Arc de Triomphe. As they surged up the avenue, Allard kept to his strategy of quick lane changes. Up ahead a mass of cars clung to the inner lanes near the arc, four and five cars beside one another. Allard downshifted, creeping toward the pileup. He glanced in the rearview. The cars ahead came to a halt, allowing those coming from the northwest to enter.

  Another glance to the mirror.

  Allard shifted. The car lurched forward as the engine roared and the Renault sped into the outside lanes, slicing in front of two other slower-moving cars. Horns blared. Livy heard shouts from the open windows, but Allard kept the pedal down. She turned and spotted the blue Morris jammed between two cars on the inside lanes. The Renault emerged from the pack of cars and sped up the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Livy barely had time to catch her breath from that perilous maneuver before Allard jammed on the brakes and turned into the first narrow side street just beyond the notorious Avenue Foch, where the Germans had held prisoners for torture during the occupation.

  The car slammed to a halt. Allard turned around, watching the traffic. After a minute, his dark eyebrows relaxed.

  “They just passed us,” he said. “And now what?”

  “Now you let that blue Morris find you again, and I’ll have myself a little walk.” She gave the older man a genuine smile and eased herself out of the back seat. “And well done, Mr. Allard.”

  * * *

  About forty minutes later Livy had walked across the city to the Pigalle district and the home of the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. She’d taken a couple of detours to make sure no one had followed her, but after Allard’s evasive driving she felt certain she was alone.

  The approach to the theater felt much less intimidating by day. Last night these doorways had been alive with young women, and a couple of men, offering their services to the theater’s patrons. By day, the doorways remained closed. She still had ten minutes before Madame Martel expected her, so Livy found a cozy one, about a hundred feet away from the theater’s main entrance, and ducked in. The doorway was recessed so far from the street it felt like an alcove. Albeit one with dozens of cigarette butts underfoot.

  So, she thought, now what?

  She’d been in Paris less than twenty-four hours and had been approached by a Soviet agent and his American counterparts. The Russians seemed to want to work with her and the Yanks wanted her to cease and desist. Cease and desist what exactly? How seriously should she take the warning from Gray? He’d threatened her before popping off, and those bulky military coppers probably weren’t his cousins.

  Gray’s sly jabs at Fleming gave her pause, though. True, he was the sort of cad she’d like to punch, and that office with the ridiculous light-up world map only added to his adolescent credentials. Just the sort of bloke they like at MI6, actually.

  No, clearly she’d wandered into a minefield and the boys were worried she might make something go bang.

  She took a glance down the alley. Livy hoped she’d find answers inside that theater. Nathalie, the contact, had worked there. Plus there was the matter of that fat magician and the ace-of-spades card trick.

  Gray was right about the pile of horseshit, she decided. But then she was from Lancashire, and Lanky girls knew how to avoid the piles.

  Livy stepped into the alley just in time to see Tom Vance strolling out the front door of the theater headed her way. Damn him. Right on her heels again. Taking a hurried step back into the recessed doorway, Livy rattled the knob. Behind the door, a torrent of French curse words erupted. The door opened and a very short, plump woman with red hair, a beauty mark above her lip, wearing nothing but a garter belt on her right leg, stood in the opening.

  “Qu’est-ce que vous fais?” The short woman sounded like a munchkin from Oz.

  Vance would be passing her in a second. Livy pushed past the little naked woman with a brusque “Pardon” and lost herself in the darkness of the smoke and sex-smell of the flat. The munchkin turned her bare ass to the door just as Vance walked past. He glanced in, smirked, and continued on his way.

  Livy caught her breath and reached into her purse. She placed two francs in the little woman’s hand, at the same time hushing her with a finger over her lips. Just then she heard a shuffling behind and turned to find what had to be the little woman’s identical-twin brother—also naked except for a garter on his right leg. The naked man held his hand out as well.

  * * *

  Madame Martel had croissants with whipped butter and jam as well as tea ready for her second reporter of the morning. Livy assumed Martel was plying her with breakfast, especially after her queasy-stomach incident the night before.

  Livy graciously accepted and straightaway launched into background questions with the slant of how Martel felt the war might impact the theater’s box office. She raved about last night’s performance, inquired after the hilariously devilish magician Diablo (of whom she got a useless standard biography), and then, oh so subtly, asked about her American’s counterpart’s angle.

  Smiling the whole time, Martel denied that Monsieur Vance of the United Press had been to the theater that morning.

  One croissant later, Livy asked to interview any theater personnel who might be working that morning. The artistes, madame explained, gave their all during a long week of eight shows and therefore were entitled to rest during the day. So no Diablo. She did offer Livy the chance to speak to one of the theater’s on-site playwrights whose revenge tragedies followed in the line of great English writers such as Webster and Shakespeare.

  Livy doubted John Gielgud had ever had his face melted on a stove during Hamlet.

  After a brief tour of the stage itself, which could not have been more than twenty feet square, Martel showed Livy backstage, where furniture and set pieces for the current shows in repertory were jammed up against a concrete wall. Martel shut
tled Livy in the direction of a burly stagehand who looked a bit like a character from one of the plays, as scar tissue covered almost the entire right side of his face. She talked to a woman who did makeup and offered to build a few scars on Livy’s face. She declined.

  Finally, Madame Martel excused herself to take a call in the box office. Livy accepted her unctuous apologies and wandered backstage until she found a large, nondescript metal door with a sign reading L’ENTRÉE DES ARTISTES. Livy pushed it open.

  Daylight stunned her eyes for a second. What a shift, leaving the shadow world of the Grand Guignol’s backstage to walk into the brilliant sunlight of a Parisian noon.

  The door opened onto a wooden loading dock about four feet above street level. Rubbish bins for the whole block dominated the alley outside the theater. Garbage was stacked up against the opposite wall and for another fifty yards down until the alley intersected with a busy street.

  Livy turned to go back inside then realized that a young woman sat on the edge of the loading dock just a few feet to her right. The dark-red check dress she wore camouflaged her slightly against the brick of the adjacent building. She sat kicking her legs, smoking a cigarette, savoring each puff.

  “Bonjour.”

  Livy’s greeting startled the girl. She turned as if to stand, registered who had called, then resumed her nonchalant cigarette break after giving Livy the briefest of nods.

  This morning’s carefully choreographed interviews with Martel and her chosen workers had been a waste of time. Something about the girl’s lackadaisical response made Livy suspect that this reticent young woman taking a break on the dock might be worth a chat.