‘Yes. Three men came to the house. They attacked the man who was with him and seem to have driven off with André in their car. He put up quite a struggle.’ I kept my voice calm, my tone factual. ‘I thought you might know where they’ve taken him.’
‘Me?’ The laugh didn’t come this time. ‘Why me?’
‘Because I believe you are in touch with Communist agents down here.’
‘What? Why the blazes would you think that?’ he demanded.
I placed my hand on his arm but he snatched it away. ‘Listen, Joel, you told me that your brother is in the aircraft industry in San Diego, California.’
He nodded warily. ‘So?’
‘Colonel Masson told us yesterday in his speech that the aircraft company Convair is located there. They build the Peacemaker and are developing the version of it that will be powered by nuclear energy. Is that right?’
‘Yes it is.’ He was shifting uneasily in his seat. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Answer me this, Joel. Does your brother work at Convair? Quite a coincidence if he does.’
Silence. Just the rain battering the roof of my car and turning the windows opaque.
‘Does he?’
He nodded. He watched me the way you watch a snake.
‘I believe that he has been passing information to you about aircraft development, which you have been passing on to Soviet agents here.’
‘No.’
‘I am informed that that’s exactly what you’ve been doing.’
His hand shot out to the door handle.
‘Wait, Joel, please. I am not interested right now in whether or not you are the leak at this camp. Or in the identity of the person to whom you passed any information. All I’m interested in is finding my brother.’
It took him a full minute to think about that.
‘Help me,’ I said, and even I could hear in my voice how much it meant to me, ‘and I will say nothing to anybody about your involvement.’
Did he believe me? Would he trust me?
‘You have no proof,’ he pointed out. He sat back in his seat and considered my offer.
‘No, but I have an informant. I could start them investigating you. I realise that there are two distinct factions of Communist allegiances in this country. There are the French Communist Party activists like my brother, Isaac, who cause trouble with strikes and industrial demands but who are not actual traitors.’
He turned his face away at the word traitor.
‘Then there are the Communists who are agents of the MGB and report directly to Moscow, feeding them stolen technical, military and political secrets.’ I paused. His gaze did not return to my face. We both knew which one he was. ‘There must be somewhere down here, some house or barn, where at times the agents and their handler meet together to plan their next move. Somewhere they might have taken André. A safe house.’
I took a deep breath and hung my heart on my next words. ‘Do you know of one?’
He brushed a hand across his mouth. I felt the minutes ticking away and André’s life ticking with them. Finally he nodded.
‘If you swear to keep your mouth shut, I’ll drive you there. I don’t want your brother to be killed.’ He looked at me in the dark and I could feel his sadness. ‘I am not a bad man, Eloïse, but I believe Communism is the only decent way forward for mankind.’
I quickly sidestepped that issue. ‘I’ll follow you in my car,’ I said.
He opened the door, turned up his raincoat collar and ran through the pouring rain to his car, which was parked further down the street. But instead of slipping into the driving seat he seemed to have opened the boot and was bent over it, rummaging inside for something. What was he doing? It was hard to see. I peered ahead through the rain, the windscreen awash with the downpour, the noise hammering on the roof and I felt panic rising in me. Something was wrong.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by the certainty that Joel was searching for a gun hidden in the boot with the intention of returning to my car and putting a bullet in me. No one would hear anything. Not in this torrential rain. He’d drive my car back out into the flooded marshes and abandon my body out there for the wild boar to find.
No. I told myself that was the panic talking. Out of control. The darkness and the rain were getting inside my head and the loss of André was pushing me over the edge. Joel was a decent person, even though he was handing information over to the enemy. Don’t lose your grip, not now when André’s life was at stake. I snatched up my shoulder bag, pulled up my oilskin hood and raced over to Joel’s car, splashing through puddles. When I reached his Chrysler through the dense curtain of rain he stopped rummaging in the boot and straightened up.
‘I can’t find the damn thing,’ he shouted over the drumming on the metal roof. ‘I’m looking for a map.’
A map? I experienced a rush of relief and felt foolish. Of course, a map to the safe house.
He stood back, ducking away from the rain. Before I could turn and run back to my car, his strong arms swept me right off my feet and threw me sideways into the boot. I screamed and shouted and kicked out viciously, but the thunder came again, rolling down the valley with a vengeance just as a hand wrenched my bag from my shoulder and slammed down the boot lid.
My world turned black.
*
Fear spread itself out in the cramped dark boot. It took up nearly all the space, leaving little room for me. I kicked and screamed. I called down the fires of hell on Joel Dirke’s head. I smashed my fists against the metal cage until they were raw, but it got me nowhere and drove out my power to think.
So I went quiet. My limbs ceased their thrashing. I forced my lungs to breathe deeply. Be silent. Be still. Be clever.
I curled in a ball but he was driving fast, so I was thrown back and forth. I banged my head when the car streaked over a pothole. A sharp bend in the road slammed my shoulder against a metal ridge. I was shaken. Juddered. Jarred. Jolted till my bones felt as if they were disconnecting.
But slowly, slowly, my mind started to function again. One by one small facts slotted into place.
Fact 1: I had pegged Joel for an information-carrier, that’s all. Passing documents from one person to another. I was wrong. He was dangerous.
Fact 2: the road was uneven and winding. So it was not the route to Serriac or Arles.
Fact 3: he was driving at high speed, too fast on flooded road surfaces. At night. In rain. In bad visibility. He was asking for trouble.
Fact 4: he hadn’t pulled over to the side of the road and shot me.
Fact 5: he hadn’t dumped my body in the marshes.
Fact 6: the guards at Dumoulin Air Base knew I drove in to meet him. My car was still there.
Fact 7: he now had no choice but to kill me.
My mind jammed on Fact 7. No choice but to kill me.
I smacked my thoughts back into action and the obvious question reared up: where was he taking me?
Where?
I didn’t know. I was blind in a box.
I felt around but there was only the cardboard carton with papers in it. Nothing else. My fingers found the boot lock and I cursed Major Dirke for having the sense to snatch my bag from me. To snatch my gun.
I lay as still as I could despite the jolting, with the rain hammering down on the boot lid. I had lost.
*
The car halted. Dimly I heard male voices. My heart was racing, fear playing tricks on me, jumbling my thoughts, but I readied myself. I had twisted round so that I was lying on my back with my knees scrunched up to my chin and my feet by the boot lock. It would be dark outside, so Dirke wouldn’t be able to see clearly when he opened the boot.
If he opened the boot. My mind circled round and round that if and my breath got all caught up on it, coming in gasps. He might drive the car into the water on the coast and leave me to drown in it. Because that would be my guess, that we’d driven half an hour south to the sea. If I were him, that’s what I’d do.
But
the voices?
I tensed my muscles. The boot lifted up. The moment I saw Joel Dirke I lashed out with my feet like a jack-in-the-box springing up. Yes, I felt my feet connect. With his face. I knocked him backwards into the rain, and he lost his footing on the muddy ground with a scream. I scrambled out to run but I was seized by strong arms on both sides and swung off my feet, hanging there like a ragdoll.
‘Don’t give us trouble, bitch,’ a deep voice shouted in Russian.
‘Get her on board,’ urged another Russian on my other side. ‘Bystro.’
I struggled like a wildcat, kicking and biting and screaming at the top of my lungs but it was pointless. They were big heavy men with close-cropped heads and no interest in me except as a package to deliver. As they hauled me along a short jetty I realised I was right. It was a shoreline. Through the driving rain I saw the yawning blackness of the sea and could make out off to my left the flickering lights of a fishing village. It had to be Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where the Camargue meets the Mediterranean.
I was dragged aboard a motor boat and dumped on its slippery wet deck, sobbing and soaked, a male hand knotted into my hair to stop me jumping overboard. The engine started up and I could feel fear wrap itself around my spine as we slid out into the darkness.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I was tipped down the companionway. No ceremony. No consideration for broken bones. I caught my nose on the way down as I tumbled into the saloon, but at least I could stand on my own two feet now without being shaken like a ragdoll. I braced myself against the roll of the boat.
Do you know what it’s like when the worst that can happen finally happens? The relief it brings is enormous. Because you no longer have to carry the weight of fear. That’s what I experienced now as I hit the floor in the saloon, the freedom that comes with having nothing to lose. The pounding in my head ceased and somewhere deep inside me strings were being cut that had tied me in knots.
‘Hello, André,’ I said.
‘Eloïse!’
‘You’re not looking so good.’ I smiled to show him I’d reached that point of freedom.
The boat’s saloon was all highly varnished wood and gleaming brass with red velvet benches on which sat three other people. Only one I didn’t know, and I think I can safely call him a heavy. Another big man, wearing a black waistcoat with silver buttons and a tattoo on the side of his neck. Russian, I’m guessing. He carried a gun in his hand.
On the other bench sat André and Joel Dirke. The difference between them was that whereas Joel was wearing a smart uniform, drinking out of a bottle of beer, and had a face unmarked by anything more than a few raindrops, André’s face bore signs of his recent struggles. Cuts and bruises marked his skin, and his hands were bound tightly together at the wrist. Worse, his wrists were attached by rope to a concrete block between his feet, the rope looped around a metal staple in the block. It was not hard to guess its purpose. Big enough to drag him to the seabed. I was certain I’d have one of my own very soon.
‘André, I’m sorry.’ I spoke as if no one else were in the room. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t protect you well enough.’
‘Eloïse.’ He said my name the way he used to when we were children, with the emphasis on the first syllable. ‘You did everything you possibly could.’ He smiled a sad smile at me. ‘Considering I tied one hand behind your back.’
The Russian who had dumped me down the companionway descended behind me and pushed me over to the bench beside his fellow countryman.
‘Sit!’ he shouted.
I sat and felt the boat rock under me in a sudden swell. ‘Major Dirke.’ The American officer didn’t look at me. ‘You are not the kind of man I thought you were.’
‘You and your brother are fighting for the wrong cause,’ he responded angrily, though it seemed to me that I was the one with cause to be angry. ‘The only way we can maintain peace in this world is by keeping an equal balance of power, so yes, you may rant and rage about treachery but I am passing technical information to the Russians for a very good reason. Otherwise America will ride roughshod over the whole world with its commercialism, backed up by its H-bombs.’
I wasn’t here to argue; it was too late for that.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, ‘what terrible forces you are unleashing on the Western world by enabling American expansionism to spread unchecked. You haven’t experienced it close up the way I have.’
I turned away from him with a shudder and spoke to my brother. ‘I lost you, André, I no longer know where your allegiance lies. Are you working for Russia? Or for America? Judging by that concrete block at your feet it seems the Communists have already made up their minds to that question.’
‘I told you to trust me, didn’t I? But I didn’t make it easy for you, I know. The only reason I told you that Bertin and Piquet were MGB Soviet agents was to keep you away from them. To ensure you stayed safe, Eloïse. I couldn’t bear for you to get hurt.’
‘But why? Why keep me away from them if they were CIA agents and no danger to me?’
‘Because I didn’t want you killed, my courageous little sister.’
I frowned in confusion. ‘Who would want to kill me?’
‘Me, of course, chérie.’
At the top of the companionway stood Clarisse.
*
‘How many times, chérie, did I ask you to return to Paris? To get away from here?’
Clarisse had raised her voice to compete with the rain thundering down on the cabin roof and shrugged off her bright orange oilskin. She was dressed in black, black for grief. That is what she said to me. ‘I don’t want to watch you die. It breaks my heart,’ she murmured.
I had no words. No recriminations. No rage at the woman who now freely admitted she was one of the Soviet handlers of MGB agents, not even when she confessed she had fired a rifle bullet into my hair and into my cat to warn me off staying down here in the Camargue. What good was rage to me now?
‘Why are you doing this, Clarisse?’
‘Didn’t your brother tell you? The CIA suspected I was working for the Soviets but they could find no proof. They were always sniffing around and getting nowhere, so your brother used you. To spy on me. When you were at my detective agency in Paris the CIA agents believed you were working for me in every sense – as a detective and as an espionage operative. You see, Eloïse, you were so damn good at the detective jobs that it enabled me to extract large amounts of cash from some of the richest men in Paris.’
‘What? How do you mean?’
‘Through blackmail, of course. To finance the Communist Party activists in France. All those dirty little secrets you were so adept at digging up for me and yet you never suspected a thing. You helped a lot.’ She smiled but I was not fooled by it this time.
I shook my head vehemently. ‘No! No, that’s not why I did my job for you. Not so you could blackmail them.’
‘Hush, chérie, calm down. I know that, but your charming CIA thugs – Bertin and Piquet – didn’t. I’d recruited your brother to defect to my side and they believed you had defected too. André is a double agent, yes. Handled by us. And yes, he used you. He got his little sister to work for me in Paris, so she could report back to the CIA on what I was doing. But he was very selective. He only gave them sufficient snippets to stop them getting suspicious that he had turned. Oh, chérie, don’t look like that. He was the one who suggested I recruit you that day when you sat in the café with your friend like a little flower waiting to be picked.’
I felt sick. And it was nothing to do with the rolling sea.
‘André? Is it true? I remember you were always asking what cases I was working on.’
André edged forward on his seat to be closer to me. ‘Yes, it’s true. I realise now that I should never have got you involved, but you were so eager and you could be so useful. But after the van crash, I knew the only way I could keep you alive was through ignorance. I tried to send you back to Paris so many times for your own safety but
you wouldn’t go. You just kept digging to find out who the informants were at Dumoulin Air Base. When that airman was stabbed, you just had to find out what other leaks were coming out of there, didn’t you? You sank your teeth in and wouldn’t let go.’
I turned away from him. It hurt too much to look at him.
‘Listen to me, Eloïse,’ he insisted. ‘I had to keep you away from the CIA men because if she,’ the word was filled with disgust, ‘thought for one second that you were in contact with them, she’d have killed you without hesitation.’ He raised tormented eyes to her. ‘Isn’t that so, Clarisse?’
She smiled at me with such sorrow. ‘Yes, it’s true.’
Something bad wrenched loose inside me. ‘So it was all about maintaining your network to get top-secret information out of Dumoulin?’
‘Of course it was,’ snapped Joel Dirke. ‘And you came and started tearing it apart.’
‘You are betraying your country,’ I said to Clarisse. ‘You are a traitor and you will be executed.’
She came over, sat on the bench next to me and draped an affectionate arm around my shoulders. I shook it off roughly. She winced and rubbed her ribs, pulling a face at André. ‘Your bloody bullet at the farm came close to ending it for me after I shot the wretched cat. You scraped my ribs raw. Don’t shudder, chérie.’ She kissed my cheek. ‘It was all working so well till you came.’
‘Do you really think no one else will realise what you are doing?’ I said. ‘I’ve already found out that you’ – I pointed at Joel – ‘and Mickey Ashton were handing stolen secret documents to my brother in the bars of Serriac on a Saturday night. He then took them to Paris. With Mayor Durand playing middleman.’
‘That foolish mayor,’ Clarisse said with a sigh of annoyance, ‘was getting too greedy. Always wanting more and more money for every scrap of information, however small. I had to teach him a lesson.’
‘A lesson?’
A lesson? Abruptly I made the connection and it sent a chill through me. What kind of evil person was she, this woman who’d been my friend? ‘You killed Bertin,’ I said. ‘With the mayor’s gun.’
The Guardian of Lies Page 27
