by M. L. Huie
Livy started to speak, but Vance interrupted. “I can’t type to save my life, and shorthand is way above my pay grade. That’s her job. Don’t worry,” Vance said, good-old-boy irony dripping from every word, “she don’t bite.”
The MP fretted. “My captain says I have to get his okay on any unauthorized visitors. And it’s a little late.”
“Listen, the ambassador wants this report on his desk first thing in the morning,” Vance added. “And he has a lunchtime call to Washington. We all got regulations to follow, but I don’t want this to bounce back on either of us.”
“The ambassador, huh?”
“And he’s the impatient type,” Vance said, shaking his head.
The MP nodded at the soldier beside him. “I’ll clear her, then, but make it snappy.” The soldier plucked a key from a large ring on his belt and led the way to the holding cells.
Antoine Jabot, or Le Grand Diablo, as Livy knew him, sat in the back corner of his cell on a folding bed attached to the concrete wall. His right arm hung in a sling, tight against his body. His head whipped around as the door opened. He scrutinized the two new arrivals.
If Jabot saw through Livy’s disguise at all in the American soldier’s presence, they were sunk. Anticipating this, Vance kept his body between Livy and Jabot, speaking over his shoulder at the soldier to tell him they would need only fifteen minutes.
Jabot straightened up. He shot a look at Vance and sat forward, studying Livy closely. She didn’t want to seem suspicious and look away, so she walked to the small square table in the room, put down her steno pad, and prepared to take dictation. Jabot leered at her, even as Livy kept her eyes on the desk. Could he possibly recognize her through the glasses and all the rest?
Finally, the soldier closed the door. Vance stepped around the table behind Livy. “Mr. Jabot, I’m Tom Vance with the American Embassy,” he said in French.
“Who is she?” His voice, so clear at the theater, now sounded raspy. No doubt a lingering effect from Livy’s chop to his windpipe the week before at the Ritz.
“Secretary. We need a record of everything.”
“I don’t want to talk now. My arm hurts. I told that guard I want to see a doctor.”
Vance took a look out of the small window in the door. The soldier had walked back down the hall.
“Mr. Jabot, my secretary has some questions for you. I suggest you answer them carefully.”
“What is all this? Who is she?” Agitated now, Jabot stood up. His jowls jiggled as he spoke.
“Keep your voice down,” Vance warned. “I wouldn’t want to have to ask the guard to step back in here and move you to one of the less comfortable criminal cells on the other side of the building.”
Jabot sunk back to the bed.
“How long have you been part of the Mephisto network?” Livy said, trying to speak French with an American accent.
Jabot put his fists on the table and gave Livy a long, hard look. “I know you,” he said, his voice a croaking whisper.
“That’s right, you do, you little weasel,” Livy said, dropping the American accent and returning to her native directness. “So sit down and maybe I won’t kill you this time,”
“You—that woman! I knew it,” Jabot said, and then turned to Vance. “What is this? I will talk to you. But not her.”
For all of Vance’s breezy southern attitude and fancy suits, he had a presence. Right now, he seemed to swell up a bit in the chest as he crossed his arms and glared at the little magician.
“Mr. Jabot, my friend here nearly broke your windpipe once. Do you really want to provoke her a second time?”
Jabot fell back onto the little bed, his good arm held out in front of him like a white flag. “Please. Please. Ask your questions. Just—just keep her away from me.”
Livy took off the glasses. “Right then. How long have you known Valentine?”
“Since before the war. I toured with him. On the same bill.”
“So, he recruited you?”
“He was a great magician. I wanted to learn.”
“Like that ace-of-spades trick?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember recruiting a Claude D. who worked on the docks in Nice?”
Jabot scoffed. “Yes, but the only reason I know him is because he talked. And someone made sure he paid for it, too.”
Vance stepped into Jabot’s space, arms crossed, glaring.
“But it wasn’t me,” Jabot protested. “I just gathered information and passed it along. I had my own people who reported back to me.”
“And now you think someone tried to kill you?” Livy asked.
Jabot held up his arm. “Can you not see? I was shot. He would have finished the job, too, but I was lucky.”
Livy sat back at the table. “Tell us how it happened. All of it.”
Jabot was more than willing to play victim for his two interrogators. “It was two nights ago after the last show. Barely any audience. I went up to my dressing room on the second floor, and he was waiting inside. I smelled the connard first. Those disgusting cigarettes they smoke. But still I opened the door and flicked on the lights. I saw him—just for a second—and I knew. He was there for me. After what happened to Milos, the talent agent, I was nervous anyway. So I turned the lights off and ran. He fired through the door and hit me right here. The doctor said he missed the bone, but still it’s so painful, you can’t imagine.” Jabot gripped his arm and moaned like a mourner at a wake. “Anyway, I ran backstage. There were a few people there, and I never saw him after that, but—”
“You got a good look at him, then?” Livy said, interrupting.
“I told you—for a second.”
“And what did he look like?”
“He had a hat and coat, so I didn’t see much except that big mustache of his. And a nose that looked like he’d run into a brick wall a few times. Other than that he looked like all the rest of them. Russians.”
Livy looked away for a second. So Levchenko had killed Milos and tried the same with Jabot. He had half of the Mephisto list, but what was the point in killing them off one by one? Something was missing.
“And how do you know it’s the same man who killed Milos?” Vance asked.
“They shot him in the face,” the magician said to Vance. “That’s how they do it. To send a message. All Milos did was pass on information. Like me. The talent he hired for parties and big gatherings passed on what they heard. Back to me. To Valentine. That’s how the network worked. Milos wasn’t important. Just another link in the chain. I tell you, they are going to kill all of us,” Jabot said, his hoarse voice painful to hear. “You think the Nazis were bad, heh? Now the communists are murdering men right under your noses. We would never work for them. No!”
“I hate to break the news to you, but that’s exactly what your boss had in mind,” Livy said. “He was selling you all out to the highest bidder—Moscow.”
“My boss? Who are you talking about?”
“Valentine,” Livy answered.
Jabot’s entire demeanor changed. His face erupted into a wide grin and he chuckled quietly. Livy and Vance exchanged a look.
“Did we miss a joke?” Vance said through gritted teeth.
Jabot shook his head, the chortle rattling in his throat. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Their blank faces only caused him to laugh more. “Valentine? Ah, no, no, no. He hasn’t been in charge since before the war ended. And we would never,” he said, drawing the words out slowly, “work—for—communists.”
Livy felt as if the table had been upended. She didn’t want to ask the obvious question.
“Who is it, then?” Vance said.
Jabot narrow eyes flicked with glee from one to the other. “And if I tell you, what will you do for me?”
Vance stepped closer to the magician. “We won’t throw your fat ass back on the street for the Russians.”
Jabot’s grin faltered. “Okay. Okay. I was just surprised you
didn’t know. That’s all. I’ve only met him maybe twice—three times. That’s the way it works. No names. I only know Milos because he got me a few bookings.”
“This other man, you must call him something,” Livy said.
Jabot shrugged. “No one knows his real name. But they call him Marcel.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The plot to ensnare Marcel, the real leader of Mephisto, began that very night. Jabot refused to take part, at first. Even after Vance threatened him physically, the rotund magician vocalized his reluctance, fearing that his would-be assassin might take another shot. Vance assured him he would be protected and that his cooperation in the matter would be the only way to ensure he remained in U.S. custody.
Jabot agreed to set up a meeting with Marcel in the usual way. He instructed Vance to take out a small advertisement in tomorrow’s Le Monde. The ad indicated that a Madame Dupuis sought a one-bedroom flat in Paris, required immediately. One bedroom meant meet on the same day. The last bit indicated urgency. If all went according to plan, then Marcel would be in the audience at the Grand Guignol the next night.
It was well after midnight when Vance took Livy back to his flat. Vance lingered, fussing over her, making sure she knew where the extra blankets were kept if she became cold overnight. Then, with a promise to be back shortly after sunrise, he left.
Livy couldn’t eat. She didn’t sleep either. She sat and looked at the silhouetted outline of Notre-Dame framed by the moonlight. Thoughts flickered across her mind like a movie edited out of order. Valentine leaving Paris with Mirov. Mirov shot from behind. Valentine with a gun. Valentine dead. Nathalie running into the square toward the sniper.
Then, for reasons she didn’t understand at all, Livy remembered a time when she was very young, maybe six or seven years old. Her parents had been fighting. She never knew why, but there had been yelling after dinner back in their bedroom. Her father came out, but her mother stayed in all night. Livy went in to say good-night. Her mother’s eyes were still swollen from crying.
That night, while she lay in her bed, Livy’s mother came into her room and crawled into bed next to her. She hugged Livy very tight. The affection made Livy sadder and more scared. The tension in the house lasted two more days until suddenly everything returned to normal. Like magic. No gradual change. One day her parents were ignoring each other and the next they were smiling and hugging, and slept together again in their own bedroom.
Livy never knew what had happened during that terrifying week, but her mind devised countless scenarios, reasons for the near breakup of her parents. In each imaginary situation, the cause of the disintegration of her parents’ marriage was their young daughter. Like many only children who believed they kept the world spinning, Livy blamed herself.
She had the exact same feeling now.
Sometime around three AM she fell asleep in the chair in front of Vance’s window. She woke up a few hours later as the sun streamed in. Vance would be back soon. Livy had little time to think this through. Quickly she threw her things back in her travel bag and put it out of the way under Vance’s desk. She knew that after tonight, she might never see Vance again.
* * *
That night, foreign correspondents Tom Vance and Livy Nash paid a second visit to Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Madame Martel, of course, took this as a high compliment. She fawned over them and offered them house seats, second row aisle. Livy declined, saying they preferred the boxes at the rear of the theater so they could observe the audience’s reaction. Madame Martel was only too happy to oblige.
The curtain rose promptly at eight on a play aptly named The Bloody Trunk. It began innocently enough, with two French students losing all their money in a poker game. Of course, then they had to murder a young woman for her money, dismember her, and place the bits and pieces in the titular box.
Livy scanned the audience. She found the same mix of Parisian couples looking for cheap thrills and American servicemen lured by the temptations of the Pigalle district. They laughed at the excessive gore, as well as the severed arms and legs the two students shoved into the large trunk.
Livy knew she also shared this theatrical experience, if you could call it that, with the man called Marcel. A man who’d flown under everyone’s radar, even Fleming’s. The fact that this Marcel had been the shadow leader of the Mephisto network alone made him a more formidable enemy. More dangerous. Her mind returned to the not-so-subtle fate of the informer Claude: tongue ripped out, throat cut, and the other inmates scared silent.
The Grand Guignol’s plays had nothing on this Marcel.
The audience quieted down as the play moved to its conclusion. Guilt gnawed at one of the students. Livy had to admit the actor played this quite believably. He confessed his crime to another person, and his fellow student, incensed at this betrayal of their crime, shot his friend in the back of the head. As the guilt-ridden student died, his friend knelt over him and sobbed.
The stage went black, and the audience, still stunned by the unexpected reality of the final scene, didn’t applaud.
“Mesdames et messieurs, je vous présente Le Grand Diablo!”
The curtains billowed, and Jabot—aka Le Grand Diablo—appeared, stepping into his spotlight. He took a slow, ostentatious bow before the crowd, which gradually broke into polite applause. Livy imagined the wound in the magician’s right arm smarted under his tuxedo.
Even from the back, she could see a line of sweat running down the magician’s forehead. A tall, lanky MP had remained with him during the journey from the Paris jail to the theater. The MP has been instructed to remain just offstage while Jabot performed. Still the round Frenchman had worried that he would be exposed during his stint onstage.
“Like in that film The 39 Steps,” he’d said. “They shoot the mind reader.”
So Diablo dispensed with the warm-up tricks and started with the grand finale, Mephisto’s card trick. Again he asked for a volunteer from the audience, and again a young American soldier answered the call, bounding up onstage.
Diablo made small talk with the GI, who seemed to fancy himself a young Humphrey Bogart, with his stoic demeanor and tight-lipped grin. As the soldier prattled on about life during the war, Livy watched Jabot search the audience. Her eyes followed his. Was Marcel here?
The smirking soldier picked his card, let the audience see it, and replaced it in the deck. Diablo’s hand trembled as he pulled the gun. His voice even shook when he said, “Now, find your kart or—bang, bang.”
Laughing, the soldier pulled the wrong card out of the trick deck and showed it to the audience. Livy moved to the edge of her seat. The ace of hearts. The deck was nothing but aces of hearts. Another signal. If the deck had been spades, it meant the meeting was off. Hearts, Jabot had told them, meant the meeting was a go. Marcel was here.
Jabot fired the trick gun and the audience laughed. Most of them. Livy’s eyes landed on a man in the fourth row on the aisle who didn’t seem amused. He sat across the theater from her, so she could only make out a shock of blond hair and a dark suit. The low light obscured his profile.
Onstage, Diablo took his final bow and made his exit. The magician had said Marcel always met him at the stage door after the second play. All Vance had to do was walk around to the door and, along with the MP, take the mysterious Marcel into custody.
But Livy had other ideas. She had to talk to this Marcel first. Livy knew the answer to the questions that had been plaguing her might very well be answered in that alley. Whatever the risk, she had to confront him.
As the applause died down, Livy leaned over to Vance. “I’ll step into the alley and make sure no one leaves by the stage door.”
Vance put a hand on her arm. “By yourself?”
Livy smiled. “If I need a big, strong man, I’ll yell for the MP.” She kissed his cheek, adding, “Thank you.”
As the next play began and the lights dimmed, Livy dashed out into the street, turned to the right, and walked about hal
f a block until she reached an alleyway lit only by dim streetlamps. She hurried past the lit portion of the alley toward a small bulb at the end of the darkness, which hung just over the stage door.
There she stopped and waited. She stood in the alley, just off the loading dock where she’d shared that bitter French cigarette with the seamstress Lorraine. The sounds of a night in the Pigalle fell silent in this dark corner. Through the walls of the theater, Livy heard the occasional gasp.
Soon enough, Vance would come to check on her. Soon enough, the MP, who had been positioned backstage in plainclothes, would step outside in anticipation of the meet.
She heard the footsteps first. Boots. They crunched on the gravel at the alley entrance. Then a tall figure, silhouetted by the streetlamps, slowly ambled toward her. Livy moved away from the pool of light at the stage door. She didn’t want to be seen until the last second. The steps drew closer. Cautious. Deliberate. There would be a great deal at stake for him, she knew.
It must have taken only half a minute for him to walk the length of the alley, but to Livy it seemed interminable. Finally, fifteen feet away, he stopped, as if sensing her there. She stepped into the light, and they looked at each other.
Livy had known it would be him. She’d sensed it since the Gare du Nord. The name Marcel confirmed it. Now, here he was. Living. Breathing. The man she’d really come to Paris for. Alive and in front of her.
Peter Scobee had changed more than Livy had expected. His thick hair had been dyed blond, but even in this dim light she could see the dark roots. A deep scar ran from under the dyed hair across his forehead to the left of his eye, ending at his nose. The cut must have needed stitches, because even now its width and jagged edges made it stand out against his sunburned face. Otherwise he seemed much the same. His brown eyes, although guarded, flickered on seeing her, and the corners of his mouth turned up as if to smile before stopping.
They looked at each for several seconds. His cologne smelled of wood and spices. Livy thought he might speak. His lips parted, but he said nothing. Then Livy remembered the time. She had no interest in this ending here.
