The Tears Of Autumn

l

Christopher did not imagine that the Truong toe would be immobilized by a photograph of Nicole. He’d hide the girl, as Christopher intended to hide Molly, and try again to kill Christopher. But he would have to adjust his operations. All this would take time. Time was what Christopher wanted, and Molly’s life.

It was raining in Rome and the Christmas decorations were up. The taxi driver let Christopher out by the door of his apartment on the Lungotevere. Christopher looked up and down the curving street and saw no one. One side of the street was open to the Tiber and the other was lined with old buildings whose heavy doors, built to accommodate horse-drawn coaches, were always locked. There was no place for surveillance to hide; that was why Christopher lived in this street.

Christopher’s training told him it was better to see the opposition than not to. He did not know how quickly the Truong toe could move. He felt the beating of his own heart as he went inside and climbed the stairs. Molly should be asleep. He used his mind to make his body stop trembling.

Letting himself into the apartment, he walked across the marble floors, hearing his own footsteps. Molly had decorated a small Christmas tree and placed it on a table in front of one of the windows. The paintings that had been in the bedroom now hung in the living room. She thought that pictures should be moved from one wall to another so that the eye would be surprised to see them in a new place each day.

It was not yet six o’clock in the morning, and the rooms seemed cold in the wintry light that filtered through the windows. Christopher went into the bedroom. Molly was not in the bed. The clothes she had worn the day before were draped over the back of a chair, and a book she had been reading lay open on the bedside table.

Christopher pushed open the bathroom door. It was a windowless room; he turned on the light and, hesitating for a moment, pulled the shower curtain aside. The tub was empty and the tap dripped on a brown stain he knew was only rust. He was still wearing his raincoat and its hard material whistled softly on the door frame as he brushed against it.

Christopher looked at the bed again. There was a small lump in the center of the mattress. He threw back the covers and saw a bottle of champagne lying on the sheet; there were beads of moisture on the cold glass. He stared at the bottle.

Feeling something at his back, he turned around and saw Molly standing in the doorway, pushing her tangled hair away from her face. She wore one of his T-shirts and carried two wineglasses between the long fingers of her left hand.

“Double bloody damn,” she said. “I wanted to be in bed with the wine poured when you came in. I forgot the glasses.”

Molly pushed the hair away from her cheek and smiled. “I heard the taxi in the street,” she said. “It woke me from a dream, and I looked out and saw you in the flesh, which was what the dream was about. You must have come in like a cat burglar-I didn’t hear you from the kitchen.”

She shivered and placed one bare foot on top of the other. Her eyes were defenseless with sleep. Christopher took several deep breaths, but he could not regain control of himself: he had believed for thirty seconds that she was dead. Blood poured through his heart-he felt its temperature, as hot as tears on the cheek.

“Open the wine,” Molly said. “Never too late.”

Christopher picked up the bottle and began to peel the foil off its neck. He lost control of his hands; they leaped on his wrists and he dropped the bottle. It exploded on the marble floor. He put his quivering hands in his armpits and sat down on the bed.

“Paul,” Molly said, “what’s the matter?”

“Be careful of the broken glass,” he said.

“What is it? Stop trembling, Paul.”

She knelt beside him on the bed and put her hand on his forehead, as if he might have a fever.

“You’re cold as ice,” she said. “You’ve caught a chill.”

When they made love, Christopher cried out as if he were in pain. Molly wanted to talk, but he put his fingers on her lips. After they had lain quietly for a few moments, he opened his eyes, thinking she would be asleep. But she lay on her side with her knees drawn up, gazing into his closed face. When he kissed her, she didn’t open her lips or put her hand on him. He fell asleep.

He woke before she did. Molly found him sitting on the sofa with the long strips of Yu Lung’s calligraphy spread on the coffee table before him.

Christopher rubbed her thick hair; it crackled with electricity in the damp winter air. Molly moved away from him.

“Don’t stroke me,” she said. “I’m not a cat.”

“All right. What do you want?”

“To be told. What was the matter with you when you came home this morning? I thought you were going to scream when I walked into the room.”

“I couldn’t find you.”

“Where would I be? Sleeping with an Italian?”

“I didn’t consider that possibility.”

“Then what?” Molly asked. I’ve never known anyone like you, Paul-each time you show your feelings you act like someone who’s been caught in a lie. *

“I’m trying to get over that.”

“Well, I wish you’d huny it up. I take you into my body. The least you can do is to tell me what it is that’s made you so cold when you’re not making love. When you get out of bed, you change, you know. I’d like to know whether you’re yourself when you’re lying down or when you’re standing up. I used to think it was Cathy, but it’s more than that, Paul.”

“Yes, it’s more than that.”

Something had changed in Molly. Christopher looked at her for the first time without a memory of sex or a desire for it. Molly’s personality had always been the force that lit her face or formed her gestures, something that made her physical beauty accessible to him. Now it leaped out of her flesh. There might have been two women facing him-one with Molly’s body and the other, entirely separate, a spirit that had escaped from it.

“For Christ’s sake, Paul, what is it?” Molly cried. “What am I to you? You confess that you love me at midnight, and go to America in the morning without a word. You go to Saigon for no reason and come back looking as if you’ve done murder. I thought your heart had dropped out of your body when I walked into the bedroom this morning with the wineglasses. Why were you so frightened?”

“I thought I’d killed you,” Christopher said.

He told her about the photograph the Truong toe had given him.

“Was that the picture that odd little Vietnamese took in the restaurant?” Molly asked.

“Yes. I was stupid to let him see you.”

“And you think they really would kill me in order to- what? Punish you for learning their secrets?”

“I know they would,” Christopher said.

Looking steadily into her eyes, Christopher told her what his life had been. He gave her no details, just the fact that he had always lied to her. Molly gazed back at him while he spoke, showing no flicker of surprise.

She said, “Is this what drove Cathy to do the things she did -knowing you were a spy?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Then she was a fool.”

“You may not say so when you’ve lived with it for a while, Molly. Ninety percent of the time it’s a foolish, joking sort of life. But once in a while something like this happens, and the joke stops.”

“Do these people really go about murdering strangers?”

“Not usually. This time they’re really threatened.”

Molly moved for the first time since they had begun to talk; she crossed her legs, clasped her bare knee, and put her chin on it, as if listening to a story about creatures she didn’t believe in.

“What do you have on them, for heaven’s sake?”

“Molly, it’s better that you don’t know that.”

“No,” she said, “we’re not going to have that again, Paul. If you don’t tell me I’ll go out into the streets and let them kill me. I won’t go on with you.”

“All right,” Christopher said. “I believe they assassinated Kennedy. I have some proof, and before I’m done I’ll have it all.”

“I see. And when you have the proof, what good will it be?”

“I don’t know, Molly. All my life I’ve believed that the truth is worth knowing, even if it leads to nothing. It usually leads to nothing. But what else is there?”

Molly touched herself, and with the same finger, touched Christopher.

“Yes,” he said. “But I didn’t know that always.”

“It’s funny,” Molly said, after a moment of silence. “I won’t say I’m not frightened. But it’s too unreal.”

“It’s real enough,” Christopher said. “I’m sorry you have to know.”

“Know what? I’ve always known you were dying of shame. Now I know why, and it’s not so bad as it might have been.

Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done for your country. Isn’t that supposed to justify anything?”

“That’s what we train ourselves to believe.”

“Yes,” Molly said. “I would like to know one more thing. Have you killed other men?”

Christopher closed his eyes. “Not with a gun or with my hands,” he said. “People have died because I made mistakes, or by accident. Sometimes I knew it was going to happen and did nothing to prevent it. I don’t know the difference between that and murder.”

2

Molly made them a cooked breakfast. She put a new record on the phonograph and stood with her arm around Christopher’s waist and a glass in her hand, waiting for him to laugh at the words of a new Italian love song.

After they ate, she gave him the mail and the telephone messages from the office. Christopher sorted out five of the telephone messages and pushed them across the table.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

“Herman. I don’t know whether that’s supposed to be a first or a last name. He talks Italian with an accent.”

“And this was the message?”

“Yes. It seems less mysterious now than it did then. He just kept saying he’d be standing by the Pietà in Saint Peter’s at ten o’clock in the morning and again at four in the afternoon. Then he’d say, ‘Molto urgente!’-and ring off.”

“Could you tell what sort of an accent he had?”

“Not really. A lot of tongue and lips in it.”

Christopher looked at his watch. “It’s three-thirty,” he said. “I ought to be back in less than two hours.”

Molly gave him a long look and then laughed. “Ah,” she said, “the joys of love.”

“Molly, you have to understand. This may be nothing-I may not even make the contact when I see who it is. But I have to know. It could be important.”

“It could be a killer.”

“In Saint Peter’s? Shooting a man in front of the Pietà is the sort of thing a lover or a lunatic would do-not a professional.”

“Kennedy was shot in Dallas, in the middle of a crowd of people with cameras.”

“Yes,” Christopher said, “but there’s no way to kill the President of the United States discreetly.”

“What you’re saying is that if they kill you-or me, I suppose-they’ll not simply kill us but destroy all trace of us. Isn’t that it?”

“That’s the idea, Molly.”

They sat on opposite sides of a narrow table, and Christopher could see every detail of Molly’s face. Her eyes were closed and she pressed her lips together, so that a web of lines appeared for an instant on her smooth skin. Tears ran through her lashes.

“My God, how cruel,” she whispered. “They leave a person no meaning at all.”

Christopher turned up the volume on the phonograph and told Molly what to do while he was gone. On his way out of the building, he used the stairs again, searching the hallways on each floor as he descended.

The day was as gray as slate. There was no one in the street except a shepherd, down from the Abruzzi for the Christmas season, who stood on the low wall above the river playing bagpipes. The shepherd’s wild music followed Christopher across the Ponte Sant’Angelo, but no one was behind him, and he was still alone when he reached Saint Peter’s Square. He walked through one of the colonnades of Saint Peter’s, loitering among the pillars, but still saw no one following.

Inside the basilica, he walked along the left wall, pausing to look at paintings. In an alcove near the great altar he saw the original of Luong’s picture of Christ: its meaning was being explained in German by a guide to a group of tourists. Christopher walked on, behind the main altar. Foreign priests were celebrating mass in the chapels along the sides of the basilica.

Gherman Klimenko, standing before the Pietà with a guidebook in his hand, saw Christopher coming. He leaned on the chapel rail, as if to read Michelangelo’s signature on the girdle of the Madonna, then snapped the guidebook shut and walked leisurely to the other side of the church. Christopher paused for a moment at the sculpture and watched Klimenko’s gray-tweed overcoat disappear into the group of German tourists.

He followed Klimenko past Luong’s Christ and saw the Russian get into the elevator that led to the roof of Saint Peter’s. Christopher took the stairway, and Klimenko was already on the gallery, gazing down into the Vatican gardens, when Christopher got there. He went to the opposite side of the terrace and waited until a young couple finished taking photographs and descended the stairs. Klimenko turned and looked at him, and Christopher walked across the flagstones toward him.

“This has been very dangerous for me, coming to the same place at the same hours for three days,” Klimenko said.

“I’ve been away. I only got your message today.”

Klimenko had no hair and he was always cold. Even in Africa he wore a buttoned suit. He stared morosely at Christopher and pulled his fur hat tighter on his bald head; a sharp wind filled with rain blew the skirt of his coat and he leaned over and tucked it between his knees.

“I think you know what I want,” Klimenko said.

Christopher remained silent. The great building and the trees in its courtyards absorbed the detonation of the Roman traffic, so that he and Klimenko stood in a pool of silence at the back of the roof.

“You won’t answer me,” Klimenko said.

“You haven’t asked me a question, Gherman.”

Klimenko turned his back to Christopher and rocked up and down on his toes.

“I’m worn out,” he said, as if speaking to one of the Swiss guards pacing below them in the garden. He turned around again. “I want to make a contact,” he said.

The wind nearly took Klimenko’s hat and they both reached for it; Christopher caught it and Klimenko screwed it down again on his forehead.

“Paul,” he said. “We can only talk for ten minutes. Don’t waste the time. You know what I want.”

“I think so. But I can’t help you, Gherman. Walk into the American embassy. You can be there in ten minutes in a taxi.”

“Christopher-don’t do this. They know. I’ve been running for a week. Where do you think they expect me to go? They’re waiting outside the embassy in the Via Veneto. You know the system-a car is waiting around the corner. They’d have me before I could walk across the sidewalk.”

Christopher shrugged. “Then go to Paris or Bern.”

“You’re my only hope. I’ve been waiting for three days. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Look,” Klimenko said. “I have no more energy for charades.” He seized Christopher’s arm. “I told you, I’m worn out.”

Klimenko’s teeth chattered. He walked back and forth rapidly on the roof, swinging his arms around his body to warm it. He came back, close to Christopher, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“Paul-have I ever given a hint that I knew about you in all the years? Ever? How many times have I seen you, in how many places? We drank whiskey together in the bar of the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi. We had lunch in the Fin Bee in Geneva, as if we were friends. We talked about opera, the ballet, the way BOAC is always late.”

“I’m glad you have such tender memories,” Christopher said, “but if you think you know anything about me, you’re wrong.”

Klimenko stood up to his full height. He was still a foot shorter than Christopher. Holding his clenched fists at his sides, he said, “All right. In 1959 you were in the Sudan; a Pole named Miernik was killed by the natives in the desert and you brought his body out. In 1960 you were meeting an agent named Horst Bülow in front of the S-bahn station at the zoo in Berlin; he was run down by a black Opel and killed before your eyes. In 1962 you penetrated the Chinese operation in Katanga with Alphonse Nsango and gave him gold to pay for the juju that broke one of their insurgent groups. In 1961 you were in Laos talking to a certain Hmong who is now a general. Your case officer is Thomas R. Webster, who lives at 23-bis, avenue Hoche, Paris. The chief of clandestine operations in Washington is David Patchen, and in practice you are answerable only to him. I can go on.”

Christopher said, “If all that is true, why do you think I won’t shoot you right now?”

Klimenko opened his eyes. “You people don’t kill. We know that, too.”

Christopher was not surprised at the quality of Klimenko’s information, and he knew that Klimenko did not expect him to be startled.

Klimenko took Christopher’s arm and walked him around the gallery. The mossy slope of Michelangelo’s dome rose behind them. Christopher heard the wail of pipes, and saw a shepherd walking across the piazza below; the man wore a sheepskin tied around his waist with a rope and a red cap like the bagpiper he’d seen by the Tiber. Straining his eyes, Christopher saw that this man had a different face.

“They close this gallery at four-thirty,” Christopher said. “We’d better go down.”

“I didn’t come out empty-handed, Paul. I can show you samples.”

Klimenko’s voice was growing thinner, as if he had suddenly caught cold. “Name a place,” he said. “Just make sure it’s secure.”

“This is not my work.”

Christopher put a hand on Klimenko’s shoulder; the flesh was loose under his thick overcoat. Christopher had always liked the Russian, but he knew what mistakes he could make. “How long do you expect to stay operational if you go around in public like this?” he asked.

“Not long. You see what’s happened to my nerves.”

“Why did you come out? You’ve always been a loyal Russian, haven’t you?”

The skin of Klimenko’s sagging face was blotched, brown and white like the meat of a bitten pear. “Loyal to Russia, yes -and I still am. I no longer agree with the line.”

“It’s no different than it ever was.”

“No. But I am. One gets tired. Doubts become more important-Klimenko’s Law: as life shortens, misgivings magnify.”

“Then I’m sorry you’ve come to the wrong man.”

“I can tell you how the arms come to the V. C. through Cambodia,” Klimenko said in a rush of words. “I can tell you what we are going to do with the structure of the Cuban intelligence service. I can give you names you don’t have. There’s been a change in the funding system-I set it up, I know the banks and the account numbers. Paul, don’t be foolish.”

Christopher shook his head.

“I know what you think,” Klimenko said. “You’re worried about your cover. But you have no cover with us. We know about you-we’ve known for years. When you begin thinking about yourself you lose your profession. I know.”

A Vatican guard appeared in the stairway door. “The gallery is closing,” he said in Italian.

“Do you want to go down first?” Christopher asked.

Klimenko uttered a little laugh; he was in possession of himself again.

“It’s comic how I fit the defector’s pattern,” he said. “I tell you how I love Russia, and offer you her secrets in exchange for safety. It’s no wonder people like you and me exist, Paul-men are so predictable, so easy to use. I know what you’ll do next. We’d better set up a meeting now. I don’t want to use the telephone anymore.”

“Gherman, I won’t see you again. I can’t help you. What I’m telling you is not technique, it’s the truth.”

“You don’t believe in the quality of the merchandise.”

“I care nothing about it one way or the other.”

“Signori,” the guard said, “you must descend now. The gallery is closing.”

Klimenko fluttered his gloved hand impatiently at the guard. He turned his back on the man and again put his face close to Christopher.

“There was an operation in the States last month,” he said. “The code word was Weedkiller. A million dollars went through a certain Swiss bank. An American got the money. A million dollars, Paul. Think about that.”

“When?”

“The money went into the bank in Zurich on November 25. It was taken out the next day, just before the bank closed.”

“By whom?”

Klimenko looked aside. “I don’t tell you that now. When we meet again, when I have assurances-but not on this roof, in the rain.”

“You’ll have assurances when I have this information,” Christopher said.

“Weedkiller?”

“Yes. All of it.”

“Tomorrow,” Klimenko said. “I can’t wait longer than that.”

Christopher nodded and smiled at the guard, who had come onto the gallery and was walking toward them with his arms thrown out and his shoulders shrugged to show that he was at the end of his patience.

“All right,” Christopher said. “Five o’clock in the morning, in the Protestant cemetery behind the Porta San Paolo. I’ll meet you on Shelley’s grave.”

“Romantic,” Klimenko said.

He walked away, leaving Christopher to talk to the remonstrating guard, who might remember him.

3

In one of the souvenir shops near Saint Peter’s, Christopher bought a postcard of John XXIII. He took a taxi to the main post office in the Piazza San Silvestro and, using the typewriter at the telegraph office, typed the name and address Nsango used in Elisabethville on it. In the message space he typed a Christmas greeting in French and signed the message with three initials. He could speak like a Frenchman, but his handwriting was plainly American.

He dropped the card in the airmail box outside and walked next door to the long-distance telephone office. When the call came through, the clerk put him in Cabin 10 as usual, and he could hear the tap sputtering on the line. Sybille answered.

“You’re coming for Christmas!” she said.

“No, I want to invite you down here.”

“My dear, we can’t. We’d have to charter an extra plane to carry the presents my husband has bought me to make up for his guilty conscience.”

“Is he there?”

“At five-thirty? Have you forgotten already what it is to be chained to a machine gun like a poor German private, rat-tatting away for the Fatherland?”

“Will you give him a message? Tell him I’d like to have lunch with him. Write down the date and time carefully-you know what his memory is.”

Christopher gave her a formula that would bring Webster, if he understood it, to Rome the following afternoon.

The shops had just reopened and the streets were teeming. Christopher went into a jewelry store and bought an opal ring for Molly. He put it in his pocket and walked into the Rinascente next door; the department store was so crowded that he moved sideways through a pack of unmoving Italians. He went to the top of the store on the escalator and came back down the stairs, leaving by the front entrance. By the time he reached the taxi stand behind the Galleria Colonna across the street, he was certain that he was still alone.

He rang his own doorbell six times, four long and two short. Molly tapped on the inside of the door four times, and he rang again twice. He heard the locks turning and the chain rattling, and Molly opened the door. She held a bottle of champagne in her hand.

“Can you open this without fumbling?” she asked. “It’s three thousand lire the bottle, you know.”

Sitting on the sofa, Christopher told Molly to close her eyes. He put the opal ring on her finger.

“It’s beautiful,” Molly said. “But aren’t opals supposed to bring bad luck?”

“A little superstition will do us good. Gaze into the stone, Molly, and live each day as if it were your last.”

“What a wonderful sense of humor you have. Is all this business really a joke to you?”

“Isn’t it a joke? Think of it-some little fellow with hate in his heart, deadly dramatic, stalking us in Christmas week. If he exists, he wouldn’t even have been told who we are or why he’s supposed to kill us. All he asks is a chance to be taken seriously.”

“I take him seriously.”

“Take his gun seriously, and his delusions,” Christopher said. “But not him. He’s just a man, and a weak and stupid one or he wouldn’t let himself be used. We know about him. That cancels his value.”

Molly kissed him. She wore no scent or makeup; he had always thought her as clean as a child. Molly did not like the image.

“After this morning,” she said, “I go on the premise that anything is permissible. I’ve been reading your poems again. Explain what you meant by these lines:

“In the cave where my father grows,

He sees my son undoubling from a rose.”

“Christ, Molly, I don’t know. It rhymed.”

“Open up,” she said, pointing a finger.

“I loved my father,” Christopher said. “He lived his whole life without doing anyone any harm. I think I hoped, if I ever had a child, that it would manage to stay innocent, the way the old man did.”

“What was the cave?”

“Silence. He stopped speaking when he was about fifty.”

“Stopped speaking? Altogether? Why? Was he mad?”

“My mother thought so,” Christopher said. “So did I, for a while. Then I began to read a little more and I realized that he would have been treated as a holy man in most places in the world.”

“On the other hand, he could have been mad.” “That’s possible. He refused to give evidence.” “Not a word, not a gesture, to the end of his life?” “Nothing.”

“You behave as if you think what he did was rather beautiful.”

“Oh, I do,” Christopher said.

4

Christopher heated milk in the dark kitchen and drank a cup of cocoa before he woke Molly so that she could lock the door after him. She had slept naked and he embraced her long body, still warm from the blankets. He stood in the hall until he heard all the locks fall into place.

It took him ten minutes to inspect his car. It was still dark and he had no flashlight. He felt the motor with his hands and lay on his back on the cold cobblestones and ran his fingers over the frame. The car had been standing in the rain for a week and the engine started reluctantly.

Christopher drove up the Tiber, crossed it on the Ponte Milvio where Constantine had seen the sign of the Cross, and came down the opposite bank. The streets were empty. When he parked the car and walked into the cemetery, there was enough light to see the tips of the cypresses against a sky filled with sailing clouds.

He walked on the grass among the headstones to avoid the noise of his footsteps on the gravel pathways.

At precisely five o’clock, Klimenko, wrapped in his long overcoat, emerged from a row of cypresses. The Russian walked without hesitation to Shelley’s grave, and Christopher thought again about Klimenko’s tendency to make mistakes: he must have come to the cemetery the evening before and marked the spot.

“Good morning, Paul.”

“Gherman. Did you case this place last night?”

“Why?”

“You knew right where to find Shelley.”

“I came earlier this morning. No one has picked me up.”

Klimenko lifted his feet, in pointed Italian shoes, one after the other out of the wet grass. “Nevertheless, I’d like to get under cover as soon as possible,” he said. “All this standing about in the open isn’t good.”

“That grave over there is where Edward John Trelawny is buried,” Christopher said. “He snatched Shelley’s heart out of his funeral pyre on the beach at Viareggio. Later Trelawny was a secret agent in Greece with Byron. He thought Byron was a romantic amateur.”

“Dung,” Klimenko said. “Let’s go over to the trees.” In shadow, surrounded by the straight stems of the cypresses, Klimenko seemed more at ease. “What arrangements have you made?” he asked.

“If what you have is valuable, I can hand you over to someone this afternoon. They’ll tell you what to expect.”

“What will that be, roughly?”

“Safe transportation to the States, debriefing, a place to stay until you’re ready to surface.”

“I don’t want money,” Klimenko said. “That has to be made plain. No money.”

“All right, I’ll tell them. What do you have with you?”

“Your interest was aroused by Weedkiller. I’ve brought you something.”

Klimenko removed his hat and turned out the sweatband. He handed Christopher three small photographs and a slip of paper with a series of numbers and letters written on it in red ink. The photographs showed two men in dark American suits and white shirts crossing a sidewalk. One of the men carried a large attaché case. The cameraman had been sitting in a car: the angle of the door showed in a corner of the picture. The faces were very clear.

“What bank in Zurich is the account number for?” Christopher asked.

“Dolder und Co., in the Bleicherweg. It’s a small bank. This was a one-time usage.”

“Who are these people?” Christopher held up the clearest photograph.

“The men who made the withdrawal. They spoke American English.”

“Names, Gherman.”

Klimenko shrugged. “They were couriers. The names they used on the hotel register were Anthony Rugged and Ronald Prince.”

“Rugged and Prince? Come on, Gherman.”

Klimenko reached into his hat and handed Christopher photocopies of two Swiss hotel registration cards. “The cards are genuine,” he said. “What do names like that suggest to you?”

“Clumsy Americanization.” Christopher looked again at the men in the photograph; they had dark, closed faces; one man’s mouth was open, as if he had been chewing gum. “Probably Ruggieri and Principi originally.”

“Something like that. I saw the passports they handed in at the hotel-genuine. Their names are Rugged and Prince.”

“What was the million dollars for?”

“I don’t know. I carried it from Stockholm. It was brought to me from Moscow by the head of my section. I made the deposit, and my instructions were to put the money in the account and leave Zurich at once. Center wanted no surveillance on the messengers.”

“Why not? Is that your standard procedure?”

“No. Do you want me to explain the whole system now? Briefly, this is the only cash transaction in any amount I’ve ever handled where no receipt was required. I couldn’t believe the irregularity of it.”

“Why would they do it this way? A million dollars.”

“Obviously security was more important than money. It was a very tight operation.”

“You must have been given a deposit slip.”

“No-they wanted no paper of any kind. Not even in the files at No. 2 Ulitza Dzerzhinskogo.” Klimenko smiled bleakly when Christopher did not react to the address of KGB headquarters, spoken aloud.

“What was the withdrawal code?” Christopher asked.

“Also spoken, not written. To make a withdrawal, one cited the number of the account and gave the codeword tortora, which means ‘dove’ in Italian.”

“Why Italian?”

“I’ll come to that-it was an insecure code, there’s a clue in it. But you know how incautious these administrators can be.”

“Who accepted the money at the bank?”

“One of the directors, Herr Wegel.”

“Where is his office?”

“Second floor, extreme northwest corner of the building. His name is on the door.”

“Could you sketch the layout of the office from memory?”

“Yes,” Klimenko said.

He produced a notebook and a pen and made a quick sketch, resting the pad on a gravestone as he drew.

“What’s this?” Christopher asked, pointing to a scribbled feature on one side of the sketch.

“A fireplace,” Klimenko said. “Herr Wegel had a coal fire going-he made a joke about being an unthrifty Swiss. I remember everything. I was worried about the lack of documentation.”

“So you decided to take some pictures and ask some questions?”

“Yes. I’d already decided not to go back. I thought the information might be useful.”

“Why didn’t you just take the million and run?”

“Where to? Mars? Besides, Paul, to steal official money? Why should I do such a thing? What would they think?”

Klimenko still held his hat in his hand. Astonishment drew wrinkles on his bald head: he could betray his service and his country, but he could not bear that his colleagues should think him a thief.

“This is an intriguing little mystery,” Christopher said, “but I don’t see why it should interest us. It’s incomplete. All you’ve given me is evidence of a big cash transfer and a couple of photographs. The rest is not even speculation.”

“I can speculate, if you like.”

Christopher waited.

“In the fifties, as you know, I was at the UN under deep cover as a Tass correspondent,” Klimenko said. “Mostly I handled Latin Americans-they’re easy, because they like women. Sometimes an African. My targets were all non-American, except one. I had a primary assignment targeted on a certain American group. The Latinos and the blacks were make-work. The American target was very, very difficult. I only made the recruitment three months before I was posted to Western Europe.”

“And you handed over the American asset when you left New York in 1956?”

“No, there was no handing over. I made the recruitment and told the man to go fictitious until we made contact again. It wasn’t really a recruitment. I didn’t tell him anything about his employers. We didn’t have him under discipline. He was an American patriot, he would have shot me if he had known I was a dirty Communist spy.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I represented a group in Belgium that might need work done in America. That my name was Blanchard. That the fee would be high. That he might not hear from us for years, but when he did, we’d expect action in whatever period of time we specified. I told him it might be as short a period as twenty-four hours.”

“How did you bind the recruitment?”

“I gave him one hundred thousand dollars as a retainer. We wanted him to know we were serious.”

“How did you set up the future contact?”

“Telegram and meeting. I rented a safe house in Chicago and put two unwitting people in it. The agent had the address. When he got a telegram from Naples saying, in Italian, that his uncle Giuseppe had died, he was to go to the safe house at 10:18 on the next night after the day of the week mentioned in the telegram as the day of his uncle’s death.”

“10:18-that sounds authentic,” Christopher said. “Why do you people split the clock that way?”

Klimenko was annoyed by the digression. “It’s just technique, it’s supposed to discipline agents. In czarist days no one could tell time in Russia. After the revolution, people were shot for being late. It was part of the pattern of changing everything, making a new society.”

“Who was the agent?”

“I told you it was a difficult target,” Klimenko said. “It took me three years to make contact. I wasted time. I should have realized their security is almost the same as ours. All clandestine organizations are more or less alike. When I did, I went in with almost no trouble, after I’d established my cover with them.”

“Who?”

“Franco Piccioni. He’s called Frankie Pigeon.”

“What is he?”

Klimenko laughed. “You have lived abroad for a long time, Paul. Think. What would someone called Frankie Pigeon be?”

“Mafia.”

“Yes, Chicago. Frankie is an important American.”

“But why? What would you need with him? You’ve got all the guns you need.”

“You never have all the guns you might need. You know how it is. One of the bolshoy chirey has an idea-do you know what that phrase means? The big boils-that’s what we call our senior officers, as if they will burst at any moment. It tells you something about the KGB. Anyway, someone had an idea in Moscow. I carried it out in the field. It was a contingency plan. Maybe someday they’d need a clean killing in the States. Then they’d have a man.”

“But it was insecure.”

“The Mafia is insecure? No one has ever convicted Frankie Pigeon of anything. It was compartmented very tightly. Frankie didn’t know who we were. He likes money, a little on the side. It wasn’t easy to find a man like Frankie-most of these gangsters won’t deal with outsiders.”

“How often did you use him?”

“Never, unless we used him last month. The idea all along was to employ him on a one-time basis against a target we couldn’t reach. He’ll never be used again.”

Klimenko was shivering violently, and Christopher felt the cold seeping through his own raincoat.

“Really, we must get under cover,” Klimenko said. “It’s getting light.”

“What was Pigeon used for?”

“That I don’t know. But consider the sum involved. Consider the date.”

“I have,” Christopher said.

“I can give you a piece of hard information, Paul. Frankie Pigeon is a sentimental man. He always spends the twelve days of Christmas in the village of Calabria where he was born. He brings his wife and children with him on Christmas Eve and stays until January 7.1 can show you on a map where he’ll be.”

“You can show me in the car,” Christopher said.

Sitting in the front seat beside Christopher, Klimenko drew a sketch of the roads leading to Frankie Pigeon’s house in the hills above Catanzaro. on the toe of the Italian boot. He handed it to Christopher.

“He takes two men with him,” he said. “I don’t know what their security arrangements are. He likes to hunt rabbits in the early morning and talk with the farmers in the evening. He goes for walks before dinner.”

“I thought you said you didn’t keep in touch.”

“I kept myself informed.”

“Is there anything else about this man Pigeon-as a person, I mean?”

“The weakness?” Klimenko said. “He’s a snob-he’s been bilked of thousands by genealogists attempting to prove that his mother’s family, the Cerruti, are bourgeoisie from the north of Italy; but all the Cerruti are Sicilian from way back, shepherds and shoemakers. That’s of no use to you.”

“Then tell me something that is useful.”

“Frankie Pigeon is a hypochondriac. He’s morbid about germs-washes his hands all the time. He has a servant who spreads sterilized towels over the floor for him to walk on in hotels. He boils his coins before he touches them, won’t handle paper money at all because of the danger of disease. You recognize the pathology-it’s common enough in murderers.”

The bleak shape of Monte Testaccio loomed above the car, with a cross mounted at its summit. “What’s the name of that hill?” Klimenko asked.

Christopher told him. “It’s made entirely of pottery-the jugs the ancient Romans used to transport wheat and honey from the eastern Mediterranean. It will appeal to your Leninist sense of irony that the Monte Testaccio, a dump, is the only remaining trace of the common people of the Roman Empire.”

Klimenko laughed, coughed, and covered his mouth. “What are the arrangements?” he asked.

Christopher gave him an address and a key. “Be ready at five o’clock, precisely on the hour. The man who comes will say his name is Edward Trelawny. You’ll reply, ‘Do you still have Shelley’s heart?’”

“Almost twelve hours. Can’t it be sooner?”

“No. One last thing, Gherman-don’t talk to anyone else about Frankie Pigeon for fourteen days. Then you can spill it.”

Klimenko was swiveling his head, watching the approaches to the car.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’ll tell your friends on January 6. There’ll be no trouble filling the time with other things, Paul.”

5

Christopher began to talk while Molly was still in the room. Tom Webster gave her a cold stare and held up his palm.

Molly smiled and said, “Tell me the etiquette, Mr. Webster.”

“Tom would feel more comfortable if you went into the bedroom and read a book,” Christopher said.

When the door had closed behind Molly, Webster said, “What does she know?”

“That I’m a retired agent. She had to know what she was involved in, so I told her. She took the call from Klimenko, but she doesn’t know his name or what he is.”

“Klimenko?”

“That’s what I have for you, Tom-Gherman Klimenko. He wants to defect.”

“He’s in Rome?”

“Yes, I met him twice, last night and this morning. You can pick him up at five o’clock.”

“Why does he want to come across?”

Christopher shrugged. “He’s pleading ideological disillusionment. I think he’s just tired of the life, the way they usually are. Even Klimenko feels his motives are a little peculiar. He doesn’t want to be offered money.”

Webster stood up and looked at his watch. The phonograph was playing Molly’s new love songs at full volume and Christopher had to strain to hear Webster’s voice.

“Where is Klimenko?”

“In a minute, Tom. There are some things I need.”

“You’re bargaining with me?”

“No,” Christopher said. “I’m going to ask a favor. You can have Klimenko whether you help me or not. What would I do with him?”

Webster sat down again and peeled the cellophane from a cigar. He watched Christopher through the flame of the match. “Wolkowicz sent a cable on your doings in Saigon,” he said. “He sent somebody out to that church you visited-the cellar is full of opium.”

“Is it? Well, that’s a dividend for Wolkowicz.”

“Like Klimenko is my dividend? For a retiree you’re pretty active.”

“I’m like a reformed tart,” Christopher said. “People just won’t believe I don’t enjoy it anymore.”

“You still won’t tell me what you’re up to? Wolkowicz is in a tizzy out there, and it’s going to communicate.”

“I’ll be finished soon. Tom, I’ve gone as far as I can go alone on this. I need some support.”

“Tell me what you’re after, and you’ve got all the support you can use.”

“No.”

“Then no support.”

“Okay, Tom,” Christopher said, with no inflection in his voice. “Klimenko’s at 6 piazza Oratorio, second floor. The name on the door is Busotti.”

“What’s that place?”

“It’s a pied à terre Cathy had for herself. She gave me the keys when she left-there was a paid-up three-year lease.”

“What does Klimenko expect?”

“All I gave him was a recognition code. Tell him your name is Edward Trelawny when you pick him up. He’ll reply, ‘Do you still have Shelley’s heart?’ He expects you at five.” Christopher handed Webster a key. “You’d better knock before entering,” he said. “He’s nervous.”

Webster stabbed the ashtray with his cigar, breaking it in half. “Let me ask you this-does this operation of yours have anything to do with the United States of America?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me about it when it’s all over? Have you told Patchen, or anybody, so that the file will be tidy if you get your brains blown out?”

“After it’s over, I’ll tell you if I can, Tom. Patchen knows. If I can’t tell you, try him.”

“Then you are working?”

“Not for the outfit, Tom. If you help me, you put your ass in hazard.”

Webster breathed loudly through his nose, attempting to keep his patience. “What do you need?”

“I want you to take Molly back to Paris with you and keep her off the streets until New Year’s Eve. She can stay with Sybille or you can put her in a safe house, but I want her covered twenty-four hours a day.”

“Why is that necessary?”

“They’ve threatened her. I can’t leave her alone-she has no idea how to protect herself.”

“All right. Sybille and I are going to Zermatt for the holidays. We can take your girl along.”

“Second,” Christopher said, “I want you to fix it up with the Rome station so that I can use their villa on the via Flaminia for a week, beginning day after tomorrow. It has to be the villa- I don’t want any other safe house. Third, I need the stuff on this list by tomorrow night. It can be left in the villa.”

Webster read the list and frowned. “You want weapons?” he said.

“Yes.”

“All that stuff in Saigon must have shaken you up,” Webster said.

“Parts of it did. Can you do all that?”

Webster ran his finger down the list. He said, “I think so. Rome will get credit for Klimenko-they won’t be in a mood to deny you anything.”

“You don’t have to say the villa and the weapons are for me. Find out how to turn off the microphones.”

Webster put on his coat. He opened his attaché case and held up a nine-millimeter Walther pistol. “Do you want this until I get back?”

“No. I’m going to stay inside.”

Webster balanced the flat automatic on his palm, then put it in his pocket. “Look for me about ten,” he said. “I may want to sleep here-Molly and I can get an early start in the morning.”

Webster started to close the briefcase, then snapped his fingers and reached inside it for a copy of France-Soir, folded to the crime page. He handed Christopher the newspaper, tapping a small item with his forefinger. “I almost forgot to show you this,” he said.

Christopher read the item:

DEATH OF A CRIMINAL

About eleven o’clock last night, police were summoned to the public lavatories near the place Clemenceau to provide assistance to a man who had been found unconscious inside.

The attendant, Mile. R. Calamier, told the guardians of the peace that the man entered a compartment about 10:15. Shortly thereafter, Mile. Calamier, who was cleaning the women’s portion of the public facility, heard sounds of a struggle through the partition.

It was a few moments later that Mile. Calamier found the unconscious man, or the man she believed to be unconscious, in the compartment and summoned policemen on duty nearby.

The investigating officers found that the man was, in fact, dead. He had been struck a hard blow on the nape, judo-style. Police suspected at first that it was an affair of perverts.

However, medical examination revealed that the victim had died from a massive overdose of heroin. A portion of the hypodermic needle used to administer the fatal dosage was found in his arm, perhaps broken in the struggle that preceded his death. The police physician was not of the opinion that the deceased was a heroin addict: his body bore none of the usual signs of that habit, apart from the single fresh puncture in the forearm.

The victim was said to be Jean-Claude Gaboni, a Corsican born in Algeria. Gaboni was known to the police as a criminal type involved in the traffic in drugs. An investigation is in progress.

“You see?” Webster said. “Sometimes poetic justice triumphs.”

Christopher handed back the newspaper. It had been six days since he had told the Truong toe about Gaboni, three days since the Truong toe had given him Molly’s photograph. They were moving no more quickly than he’d thought they could.

“Do you still have Kim’s place bugged?” Christopher asked.

“Yes.”

“You may hear something about Gaboni on those tapes. If you hear anything about me, or about Molly, I hope you’ll let me know.”

“We’re always a week behind on the logs because of the translation problem. They talk Vietnamese all the time.”

“That’s terrific,” Christopher said.

“Wait a minute,” Webster said. “How would Kim know about Gaboni?”

“I told them in Saigon about that mistake with young Khoi in Divonne-les-Bains.”

“You told them? Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“You have to give something to get something,” Christopher said. “I wondered if they’d kill on foreign soil and how quickly. Now I know.”

Molly packed her suitcases without speaking. She laid Christopher’s ski clothes on top of her own in an extra bag. “I suppose there’s some remote chance we’ll both be alive on New Year’s Eve,” she said. “If you come to the mountains you’ll be properly dressed.”

“The worst thing you can do is dramatize,” Christopher said. “I have to go away at least twice in the next few days and I can’t leave you alone. You’ll be all right with Tom and Sybille. They’re used to this kind of situation. They know what to do.”

“And what does one do?”

“Routine precautions,” Christopher said. “A doctor working in a cholera epidemic takes the necessary injections, boils his drinking water, burns his clothes. It’s the same idea-the play-acting, the secrecy, and the codes, and the loud music so that you can talk in a room that may be bugged-all that is the way agents immunize themselves. They may die anyway, but if they take the proper precautions, the chances are against it.”

“All right,” Molly said. “But all this business of solving the crime of the century annoys me so. It’s an interruption. It’s almost Christmas, Paul. I thought we’d be together. I build up these scenes for the two of us in my imagination, and then they don’t play.”

“I promise you I’ll be in Zermatt on New Year’s Eve. It’s a much better holiday than Christmas.”

Molly closed her eyes and put her fingertips on the lids. “I have to be so passive-all our life together I’ve waited for you to come back, waited for you to feel love, waited for you to speak,” she said. “Now I have to wait for you to prevent my dying, and the odd thing is, I’m less concerned about being murdered than about being alone for a week.”

“It’ll be over very soon.”

“I know it will,” Molly said. “Help me to get this stuff off the bed. Before I go I’d like to hold the clean part of you between my legs once more.”

Webster went ahead of them in another car the next morning. They met him on the road to the airport by the ruins of Ostia Antica. Webster turned his back while they kissed, and watched the road behind them. There was still no sign of danger.

Christopher wondered what the Truong toe was waiting for.