Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Chapter Ten

There was no sky, no sun, no earth: until a few hundred square miles of France appeared like a smear upon the lowest layer of cloud. And as suddenly it was gone again.

'I don't want to phone from the airport,' I told Mann, 'but I'll check that there is nothing for us on the telex.'

'Worry about something else,' Mann told me, as the stewardess removed the tray containing the dried-out chicken, shrivelled peas and brightly coloured pieces of tinned fruit. 'Worry about income tax. Worry about the inflatable life-rafts. Worry about pollution. Worry about ptomaine poisoning. Worry about youth. But quit worrying about Red Bancroft.'

'I've stopped worrying about Red Bancroft,' I said.

'She's been checked by the F.B.I., by the C.I.A. and her hometown police department. That girl is O.K. There is good security: she'll be safe. It will all be O.K.'

'I've stopped worrying, I told you that.'

Mann turned in his seat so that he could see my face. He said finally, 'Bessie said you two were hitting it off, and I didn't believe her.' He leaned across and punched my arm so that my coffee spilled. 'That's just great,' he said.

There's something wrong there,' I confided. 'She's a wonderful girl and I love her — at least I think I do — but there is something in her mind, something in her memory… something somewhere that I can't reach.'

Mann avoided my eyes as he pressed his call-button and asked the stewardess to bring a bottle of champagne. 'We're getting awfully near Paris,' said the girl.

'Well, don't you worry, your pretty little head about that, honey,' Mann told her. 'We'll gulp it down.'

I saw him touch the document case beside him. It contained the paperwork that we would need if Mann decided to drag Hank Dean, screaming and swearing, back to the New World. Mann caught my glance. 'I'm not looking forward to it,' he admitted. 'And that's a fact.'

'Perhaps he will talk,' I said.

'Perhaps he knows nothing,' said Mann.

The stewardess brought the champagne. Her uniform was one size too small, and the hair-do three sizes too big. 'We'll be going down in a minute or two,' she told us.

'All three of you?' said Mann. The stewardess departed. Mann poured the champagne, and said, 'I guess everything depends upon the way you look at it. Maybe if I'd been at college with Andrei Bekuv, I could even feel sorry for that schmendrik.'

'Everything depends upon the way you look at it,' I agreed. 'But I already feel a bit sorry for Andrei Bekuv.'

Mann made a noise like a man blowing a shred of tobacco from his lips. It was a sign of his disagreement.

'I feel sorry for him,' I said. 'He's crazy about his wife, but she's wrong for him.'

'Everybody is wrong for that jerk,' said Mann. 'Everybody and everything.' He picked up his champagne. 'Drink up,' he commanded.

'I don't feel like celebrating,' I said.

'Neither do I, my old English buddy, but we are pals enough to drink together in sorrow — right?'

'Right,' I said, and we both drank.

He said, 'Mrs Bekuv is the best thing that ever happened to that creep. She's one of the most beautiful broads I've ever seen — and I'm telling you, pal, if Bessie wasn't around, I'd be tempted. Bekuv doesn't deserve a doll like that. And she wet-nurses that guy: wipes his bottom, checks his haircuts, demands more dough from us. And she even takes a blade that's coming his way. No wonder he's in a constant sweat in case she kisses him goodbye.'

'Well, everything depends upon the way you look at it,' I said.

'Don't tell me you haven't felt some stirring of carnal lust for Mrs Bekuv,' said Mann. 'Don't tell me you haven't fancied it.'

'I've got Red,' I said smugly.

Mann repeated his tobacco noise. 'You know something,' he said scornfully. 'You can be very, very British at times.'

I smiled, and pretended to think that it was a compli ment. And I returned to him the Biographical Abstract I'd been reading. He locked it away in his case.

'Drink up. We'll be landing any minute,' he said. But, in fact, we joined the stack, somewhere over the great wooded region of Compiegne, and circled to await landing permission which did not come until forty minutes later.

It gave me time to think about Hank Dean. It was the new format BIO-AB, dressed-up to look like a report from a particularly energetic personnel manager. This one was typed on onion-skin paper, carrying the logo of a small furniture factory in Memphis, Tennessee. Attached to it was an employee-record punchcard and a photo. It had been 'styled' to provide a cause-and-effect view of Hank Dean's life, instead of being, as the earlier sheets were, a list of dates and a terse summary.

And yet these sheets are always a poor substitute for sight and sound of the real person. What use was it to know that his middle name was Zacharias, and that some schoolfriends call him Zach. How many schoolfriends remain for a man who is nearly fifty years old? Dean had 'a drinking problem'. That had always struck me as an inappropriate euphemism to apply to people who had absolutely no problem in drinking. What Dean had was doubtless a sobriety problem. I wondered if that was anything to do with the break-up of his marriage. The wife was a New Yorker of German extraction, a few years younger than Dean. There was one child — Henry Hope Dean — who lived in Paris and spent his vacations fishing with his father.

I closed the file. Henry Zacharias Dean, Ph.D., 210 pounds at last dossier revision, soldier, company executive, failed C.I.A. agent, failed husband but successful father… here we come. And won't you wish you were back in that village near Cleveland, getting punched in the head by the local kids.

'Did you say something?' asked Mann.

'The no-smiling sign is on,' I said.

Mann poured the last of the champagne into our glasses.

One Christmas — so many decades ago that I can't remem ber when exactly — an aunt gave me a book about some children who were captured by the crew of a pirate ship. The pirate captain was a huge man, with a hooked nose and a magnificent beard. He drank rum in copious amounts, and yet was never obviously drunk. His commands could be heard from fo'c's'le to crow's-nest, and yet his footsteps were as deft, and as silent, as a cat's. That pirate captain's mixture of bulk and dexterity, cruelty and kindness, shouts and whispers, drinking and sobriety were also the make-up of Hank Dean.

He would need only a Savile Row suit, some trimming of the beard and a glass of sherry in his hand to be mistaken for a wealthy gynaecologist or a stockbroker. And yet, in this shaggy sweater, that reached almost to his knees, denim trousers washed to palest blue, and swilling Cahors, the local wine, round and round in the plastic cup that had once contained Dijon mustard, he would have had trouble thumbing a ride to Souillac.

'Should have done it years ago. Should have done it when I was eighteen. We both should have done it, Mickey.' Hank Dean swigged his wine and poured more. He closed the typescript of his comic detective novel Super-dick, put it into a manila envelope and shut it away in a drawer. 'That's just my excuse for staring into space,' he explained.

The heat from the big black iron stove disappeared up the huge chimney, or through the cracks and crevices that could be seen round the ill-fitting doors and windows. Only when Hank Dean threw some wax cartons and wrapping paper into the stove did it give a roar and a brief show of flame.

Dean lifted the frying-pan that was wanning on the stove. Two eggs or three?'

'I'm not hungry,' said Mann. 'Give me a piece of that salami.' He picked up a slice of the sausage on his fork and chewed at it.

Dean said, 'Jesus Christ, of course you're hungry. You've come all the way down from Paris, haven't you. And this is the greatest food in the world. You're having an omelette with truffles — it would cost you a king's ransom in one of those phoney New York traps — and that's not salami, goddamn it, it's pork sausage, smoked at the farm just up the hill there.'

Mann stopped eating the pork sausage and put his fork down.

'I miss the ball games,' said Dean. 'I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit to missing the ball games. But I can hear them on the radio sometimes.'

'Short-wave radio?' said Mann.

'And the Voice of America. On a good night, the Armed Forces Network from Germany. But I'm surrounded by high ground here, as you see.'

'Sure,' said Mann.

I wondered how much of that exchange was about baseball, and how much was about short-wave radio reception — and maybe transmission too. I took some sausage, and tore a crusty piece of bread from the end of the loaf. It would all go on a long time yet, I decided. Mann and Dean would pretend to talk about old times, while talking about new times. And Mann would pace up and down, looking into cupboards and assessing the length of drawers and the thickness of walls to decide whether something could be concealed behind them. He would judge it all on a basis of infallibility, while hoping for a careless mistake.

'My kids went to camp this Christmas,' Mann told Dean. 'It cost me an arm and a leg. How I'm going to pay for them when they go to college, like your boy, sometimes scares the arse off me.'

Dean was cutting a large truffle into slices as thin as a razor blade. He was using a wooden-handled folding knife, of the type the Wehrmacht issued to special units that had to cut sentries' throats.

'Living here costs me practically nothing,' explained Dean. 'The company pays me five hundred bucks a month, and I'm still getting ten dollars a week for that ball-game injury back when we were kids. The team carried insurance and that was lucky for me.' He lifted the bread-board and carefully bulldozed the truffle slices into the beaten egg, then stood up and walked to the stove.There was a limp in his left leg. Whether this was for our benefit, because he'd been thinking of it, or simply a result of sitting too long I could not be sure.

'But didn't you say your boy went to some kind of private college in Paris? Doesn't that really cost?'

Dean stirred the egg, and checked the heat of the frying-pan by tossing a scrap of bread into it. It went golden brown. He forked it out, blew on it and ate it before adding some salt and pepper to the egg mixture. Then he stood with the bowl of egg poised above the stove. 'You must have got it wrong, Mickey,' he said. The boy went to an ordinary French technical school. There were no fees.'

With a quick movement, and using only one hand, he closed the knife and slipped it back into the pocket of his, jeans. He said, 'My old Renault will do more miles per gallon than any automobile I ever used. The running repairs I do myself. In fact, last month I changed the piston rings. Even with the present price of gas, I spend no more than the ten bucks a week that my injury provides — I figure I owe my leg that car.'

He turned round from the stove and smiled. 'As for the rest; that little restaurant next door sells me my lunch for about what I could buy the ingredients for. I don't know how they do it. In the evening I manage on a bit of char-cuterie, eggs, bread and stuff. For special occasions, one of these twenty-franc truffles…' He smiled. 'Of course if my book hit the jackpot…'

'How often do you manage to get to the big city?' Mann asked him. Dean tipped the egg mixture into the pan. The sudden splutter of the egg in the hot fat made Mann turn his head.

'Paris, you mean?' said Dean.

'Or New York,' said Mann. 'Or London, or Brussels — even Berlin.' He let the word hang in the air for a long time. 'Any big city where you can do some shopping and see a show.'

'I haven't seen a show — or even a movie — in a lot of years, Mickey,' said Dean. He dragged at the egg with urgent movements of a wooden spoon, twisting and turning the pan, so that the uncooked egg would run on to the hot metal that he uncovered. 'No time, and no money, for those bourgeois pastimes.'

In another place, and at another time, such comment would have passed unnoticed but now Dean bent low to the pan, and watched the egg cooking with a concentration that was altogether unmerited, and I knew he could have bitten his tongue off.

Dean turned the pan up, so that the giant omelette rolled on to a serving-dish. He divided it into three equal " parts and put it on our plates. Above the table the lamp was a curious old contraption of brass and weights and green shade". Dean pulled at the strings so that the lights came low over the dining-table.

We ate the meal in complete silence. Now that only the table was illuminated, it gave everything there an artificial importance. And the three sets of busy hands, under the harsh light, were like those of surgeons co-operating in some act of dissection. In spite of his protests about not being hungry, Mann gobbled the omelette. When there was no more than a few smears of uncooked egg on his plate, he took a piece of bread and wiped up the egg with obsessional care before putting the bread into his mouth.

'The reason we came down here to see you, Hank…' Mann took another piece of bread, tore it into pieces and ate it piece by piece, as if trying to find reasons for not continuing.

'You need no reasons, old buddy,' said Dean. 'Nor your friend either. Hank Dean — open house. You know that by now, don't you? In the old days, I've had parties where they've slept under the table, and even in the bath.'

'Yeah, I know,' said Mann.

'And done a few other things under the table and in the bath,' said Dean. He let out a whoop of laughter and refilled the glasses. 'Cahors — black wine they call it here. Drink up!'

'We're squeezing a couple of Russkies,' said Mann. Again his tone of voice made it sound as if he'd stopped in the middle of a sentence.

'Defectors?' said Dean, helping himself to a slice of goat cheese, and pushing the plate nearer to me. 'Try the tiny round one, that's local,' he said.

'Defectors,' said Mann.

'I guess I always felt a bit too sorry for those kids that came over the wall, back in my time,' said Dean. 'They'd toy with their goddamn transistor radios, and admire their snazzy new clothes in front of a full-length mirror. And they'd come along each day, and I'd write down the sentry details or the factory output or whatever kind of crap they thought was worth reporting to us. Then, one day, they'd feel like eating Sunday lunch with Mom and Pop, and suddenly they'd realize there were going to be no more of those Sundays. They'd come over the wall; there would be no more nothing with any of their relatives, or their buddies, or their girls. And they would take it real bad.'

'Is that right,' said Mann.

'And I'd wonder whether it was worth it,' said Dean. 'They were going to get some lousy job in a plastics factory, not unlike the lousy job they had back with the commies. Maybe they would be stacking away a little more bread and listening to their pop groups — but should we have encouraged those kids? Well, I don't know.'

'That's the way you see it, is it?' said Mann.

'That's the way I see it,' said Dean.

'No wonder you were such a lousy field-man.'

'Now you know I was pretty good,' said Dean. 'You know I was.'

Mann didn't answer but I knew he'd signed a few reports that said that Dean had been very good indeed. One of them helped to earn Dean a medal.

'These defectors of ours,' said Mann, 'aren't sitting on sentry-duty timetables, or plastic toilet-seat outputs. This one could slice some balls in Washington, D.C.' Mann moved his hand to indicate me. 'My friend here has been heard to express the opinion that it will carve a hole in the hierarchy at Langley, Virginia.'

'You don't mean that someone as high as C.I.A. Special Projects might be involved?'

They don't call it Special Projects any more,' Mann told him. 'But apart from that, you catch the exact nuance of my colleague's stated belief.'

'Jesus,' said Dean.

The kettle boiled and Dean poured the water on to the coffee. He put milk into a saucepan and lit a flame under it. Without turning round he said, 'I'm really glad, Mickey. Really pleased.'

'What are you talking about?' said Mann.

'This could give you a Class A station, Mickey. Paris maybe. Romp home with this between your teeth, and you'll never look back. Hell, you could get a Division even.'

Dean sat down and watched the coffee dripping through the paper filter. He looked up and smiled at Mann. It was difficult to understand what was going on between the two men. I wondered if Dean guessed the purpose of our visit, and if he thought Mann was going to turn the investigation into a witch hunt through the C.I.A., with the ultimate aim of securing a high position in it.

'These two commie defectors are stalling,' said Mann.

'There is always that initial inertia,' said Dean. 'In the good ones, anyway. It is only the hustlers who come in talking.'

'Your name cropped up,' said Mann.

Dean watched the milk as it started to bubble and then poured it into a jug. 'I drink it black, like the French do,' he explained. 'But I guess you foreigners might like milk in your coffee. My name what?' He poured coffee into the thick, brown coffee-cups of the sort they use in restaurants because they are so difficult to break. 'Your name was given in connection with the 1924 Society. Your name was offered to us by one of the Russkie defectors. They say you are working for Moscow.'

'Common enough trick,' said Dean. He drank some of the strong coffee. 'Enough people know me as a one-time C.I.A. agent. I guess the story of the foul-up that night in Berlin must be on K.G.B. file.'

'It's probably a standard part of their instruction course,' said Mann bitterly.

'Perhaps it is,' said Dean. He laughed and stroked his beard. 'Well, there you are then.'

'No, there you are,' said Mann.

'Do you mean this is on the level, Mickey?'

'That's what I mean, Hank.'

'Working for Moscow.. you guys must be out of your minds.'

'You haven't asked me what the 1924 Society is,' said Mann.

'I haven't asked you what it is, because I know what it is,' said Dean. 'In the early 'fifties I did a 150-page report on the 1924 Society. And don't tell me you didn't read up my file before you came here. I know you better than that.'

It was Mann's turn to look disconcerted. 'No mention of it in your file now,' he said.

'Well, what a coincidence,' said Dean sarcastically. 'It's been mislaid just about the time your Russkies fingered me. Now maybe you'll get your mind back into working condition again.'

'You mean because someone raided your file, we should write you off as innocent?' Mann asked incredulously.

'Right,' said Dean.

Mann dabbed a finger through the tobacco smoke. 'You've been too long with the birds and the bees, St Francis. When we find there's a chapter missing from someone's personal file, the subject is the prime suspect. Is it all coming back to you now?'

Hank Dean poured himself a large glass of 'black' wine but changed his mind about drinking it. In a gesture that Sigmund Freud would have appreciated, he pushed it far across the table, out of arms' reach.

'You're wrong,' said Dean. 'You're both making a big mistake. It would be crazy for a man in my position to get involved in any such caper. I'm on French political file… probably on local police-records even. I'd have to be crazy to do it…" his voice tailed away disconsolately. 'But you don't scare me. You go away and dig up some evidence. Until then, I'll sit here drinking plonk and eating truffles.'

'Not a chance, Hank,' said Mann. 'Make it easy on your self. Let's do a deal, while we still need a deal. Play hard to get, and I'll harass you until you weep.'

'For instance?' said Dean.

Tell him,' Mann said.

'Your pension has already stopped,' I said. 'You'll get no cheque this month, unless Major Mann signs a chit for the financial director. The money from the insurance will go on for a few weeks but eventually the insurance company will have a medical report from one of our doctors. He'll certify that your injury is no longer twenty-five per cent debilitating. As you remember, there is no award if the injury is less than twenty-five per cent debilitating.'

'What is this guy,' roared Dean. 'Some kind of speak-your-weight machine?'

'Do you want me to continue?' I asked.

'Go ahead, go ahead,' said Dean.

'The State Department have given us permission to declare your passport void, and make this known to the French authorities in any way we choose. That is to say, we can either tell them that it is invalid, or request them to hold you for using false or forged travel documents.'

'What are you talking about? My passport is real, issued by the State Department only two years back.'

'If the State Department say a U.S. passport is forged, Mr Dean, I don't think you can hope that the French will argue with them.'

'So you'll try to get me Stateside?'

'What did you imagine would happen?' Mann asked him. Dean swivelled to face Mann, his eyes dilated and his teeth bared. He was like some kind of wild animal trapped in a cave, while two hunters prodded him with long sticks — and there was a picture of that in one of my children's books too.

'I'm innocent, goddamn it,' said Dean. He hammered his mighty fist down upon the table so that the crockery jumped high into the air and landed with a rattle.

'Then co-operate,' shouted Mann.

'What do you want me to do?' yelled Dean. 'Dream up some fairy stories for you?'

'It might be a step in the right direction,' Mann growled.

I held up my hands in a gesture of peace-making. 'Now boys, you know the rules,' I said. 'No butting, no kicking, no gouging, and nobody slugs the referee. We've had a skinful of Hank's wine, and he knows he can't get very far, with or without his passport. There's no phone here and by now he probably guesses that we have immobilized his car and ours…'

'And I don't mean removing the distributor arm,' said Mann.

'So let's get some shut-eye,' I suggested. I looked to the end of the table where stood the three wine bottles we'd emptied. 'In the morning we can talk some more, and perhaps to better purpose.'

Hank Dean's cottage was built in the three-level style typical of rural buildings in this part of France. The ground floor was a cellar that Hank had converted into a storeroom and a primitive sort of bathroom and shower. Stone steps led up to the front door and the living-room-kitchen-dining-room that opened from it. A creaking old wooden staircase led to the top floor where there were four cell-like bedrooms, with tiny dormer windows, fitted with the sort of bubbly glass that made it look as if the landscape was melting.

No matter what the scientists say, when the moon is full and low upon the horizon it is gigantic. This night, coloured by the earth's dust, the great golden orb looked as if it was about to collide with our planet. From the upstairs window I could see the snow on the hills that faced us across the valley. St Paul Chauvrac is a hamlet of a couple of dozen families, dominated by the houses and out-buildings of two middle-sized farms. Two cottages have fallen into ruin. One of them still has the pink lettering of a boulangerie, but that faded many years ago, and now the baker visits three times a week in a corrugated van. There was also a large house, which some hopefuls back in the 'thirties had converted to a hotel and restaurant. But nowadays the Hostellerie du Chateau provided no more than a clean bed and a wholesome meal. Its management did not strive for stars in the guidebooks they sold in Paris, or for the bright enamel plaques that promise elegance in three languages, but it was popular with travelling salesmen. There were still lights burning at the Hostellerie when we all retired to our respective bedrooms. They were the only lights in the village. I heard a rusty catch being unfastened, and the creak as the next room's window opened. I knew that a man of Hank Dean's girth could not get through it.

I didn't go to sleep. It was cold and I took a blanket from the bed and draped it round my shoulders. I heard the bed in Dean's room creak. He would not sleep; he would think things over and, if Mann's plan came to fruition, he would sit down to breakfast singing like a bird. Or perhaps that wasn't Mann's plan; perhaps that was simply the cosy piece of self-deception that had enabled Mann to jump so heavily upon his old friend's neck.

My eyes must have closed for a few minutes, for I looked at my watch after hearing the noise, and saw it was after 3 a.m. There were no lights in the Hostellerie du Chateau. The hamlet was in darkness and so was the whole landscape, for by now the moon was down. Again I heard the sound. This time it was not the creak of ancient woodwork but a metallic sound. No more than the slightest of vibrations, it was a deep chime, like that of an artillery shell being loaded into the breach of a siege gun.

I waited for a minute, wondering if it was the striking of some antique clock that I had not noticed in the house. I wondered if Mann had heard the sounds too. I even wondered whether Mann had made the sounds, and what sort of reaction he'd have if I made the wrong move — or no move at all. Finally I was prompted as much by my own curiosity as by reasoning. I had wedged the door with a piece of paper, instead of using the door-catch, and now I was able to get to the top of the stairs without a sound. But the staircase would, defeat me. Dean would know each creaky step, and how to negotiate them but such an obstacle will always betray a stranger. I bent low, and tried to see into the room below. The room was dark but I could just make out the figure of a man standing with his backside resting against the edge of the table. There was a flicker of light from the stove and it lit Hank Dean's face. It was a haggard face and deeply drawn. He was bending low over the stove, as he had been last night cooking the omelette. Again there was a flicker of flame. This time he replaced the circular metal top of the stove so that the flame was fanned by the draught from the chimney. That was the metallic sound that had awakened me.

I jumped down most of the short staircase, and stepped across the tiny room. Dean turned and raised his fist. He was a giant, and now he rose above me like the Statue of Liberty. I took the blow of his fist upon my arm. It hurt but it didn't prevent me wrenching the metal top from the stove. I stuck my right hand into the flames and found the stove filled with papers. There were bundles of paper tied so tight that they would not burn. I smelled paraffin, and, as I started to pull the great handfuls of paper from the stove, it all ignited. There was a 'woof of flame that licked up round the saucepans and utensils hanging inside the chimney piece. I dropped the flaming bundle, and beat at the flames that were coming from my sleeve.

'You stupid bastard, Hank! Why didn't you tell me?' It was Mann's voice. He switched on the electric light, to help us see the gun he was holding. I beat out the flames on my sleeve, and stamped upon the last remains of the burning papers.

'Don't worry about rescuing that stuff,' Mann said. 'This whole goddamned house is full of it.' I could see now what I was stamping upon. The floor was covered in paper money. There were French francs, Swiss francs, German marks, U.S. bills, sterling and even Lebanese and Australian money. Some of the notes were charred along the edges, some almost completely destroyed, some were crisp, new and undamaged, some were old and dog-eared But all of them were of high denomination. There must have been one hundred thousand dollars' worth of currency on the floor of that kitchen, and we found at least as much again when we took up the floorboards.

'Get nothing out of a guy within three hours and you'll get nothing for three weeks.'

'If there's anything to get.' I reminded him. It was early.

A couple of starlings were pecking at last night's breadcrumbs, and the cows in the next field were moving over to the gate ready to go to the milking shed.

'Do you believe the money arrived by parcel post two days ago?' Mann asked.

'Hank was poor — broke, in fact — naturally he'd try to hang on to it, and hope we'd go away.'

'I would have called C.I.A. Langley within the hour,' said Mann with simple truth.

'You're not natural, and neither am I. And that's why we're investigating Dean, instead of him investigating us.'

'Yeah, well I was wondering about that,' said Mann, and was able to smile at the absurdity of having principles that might cost so much.

'Don't worry,' I said. There's no one in Moscow planning to send us a quarter of a million dollars in used paper money.'

'I'm more worried by the chance that Hank Dean will…'

'Try to do a deal with the French,' I completed it.

'He wants to stay here,' said Mann. 'And he wants that desperately.'

'Not much in it for the French,''! said. 'A probe into our way of working, a bit of I told you so, but they'd have to give it to us in the end.'

'In the end,' said Mann. 'Yeah, that's the place they'd give it to us. What's it going to cost them — one French passport.'

'And American goodwill.'

Mann made his tobacco noise. 'I hate leaving him down there with those French cops talking to him.'

'Well, let's take another look round this place,' I said. I moved the corner cupboard that was filled with Hank Dean's classical gramophone records. 'The C.I.A. guy from the embassy should be here soon. Then we can go, and take Hank Dean with us, if that's the way you want to play it.'

Mann paced up and down. 'This is a guy who stays in all the time. We can guess that from the mileage clock in the car. He's not running round Europe like a courier.'

'At least not in that car,' I corrected him gently.

'Not in any car,' said Mann tartly. 'Look at him — face fungus, all that hair — he'd stand out like a sore thumb, any place he stopped.'

'I agree,' I said. Mann moved his thinking on a stage. 'So they come here. Same guy or different guy?'

'Same guy — no one knocking on doors asking for Dr Dean in a foreign accent late at night.'

'I buy that,' said Mann. He looked round the tiny room. 'You know something,' he said. 'This is just about the dirtiest, smelliest dump I've ever been in.' He looked at me to get my reaction.

'Well, you're always complaining about the crummy places you find yourself in,' I told him. 'If this is the worst, it must be something for the record books.'

Mann gave me a humourless little smile. 'Look at that frying-pan. It hasn't been cleaned in an age.'

'It's an omelette pan,' I explained. 'You never wash omelette pans, it spoils the surface for all time.'

'I should have known you'd find an excuse for filth,' said Mann. 'Now you're going to tell me the downstairs toilet never has to be cleaned, in case it spoils the surface for all time.'

'I don't spend as much time in the toilet as you do,' I said. 'I get in and get out again, I don't spend a lot of time looking around.'

'Yuck,' said Mann.

'But you start me thinking,' I said.

'You mean you're going to start using laundries and showers, and take a haircut from time to time?'

'Suppose Hank Dean's courier felt the same way about this place that you do.'

'He'd arrive after lunch and take off at tea-time,' said Mann.

'Complicated material,' I said. 'You said it would need six or seven hours of explanation.'

'Well, I'll stick by that,' said Mann.

'So suppose the courier checked in to the Hostellerie.'

'Hostellerie du Chateau?' said Mann. This flea-pit at the end of the alley?'

'No other,' I said.

'You don't imagine he left a forwarding address, do you?'

'I'll take a look if you don't mind, Major,' I said.

'I'll come with you. What have we got to lose.'

The roadway was surfaced in loose gravel. This back road did not even qualify for a French map numeral. Not many cars came along here. Outside the Hostellerie, a battered van was parked, and a mangy dog tried to break from its chain and, having failed to do so, snarled at us. There were two people in the bar, both dressed in greasy black suits. Behind the bar there was a fragile-looking man, in a threadbare shirt and denim trousers. His hair was wispy and grey, and he peered myopically from behind thick, rimless spectacles.

'Two beers,' I said.

He reached behind him, opened a wood-faced refrigerator, found two Alsace lagers and slammed them on the counter. The men in black suits ended their conversation abruptly. The barman rinsed two glasses under the tap and pushed them towards us. 'Visiting the doctor,' he said. It was not a question.

'That's right,' I said. I had already discovered that all the villagers called Hank Dean the doctor. It was probably the way he was referred to on his pension envelope.

'Not many visitors at this time of year,' said the barman. If he had seen the policemen arrive to collect Dean, he was not admitting it.

'I want to talk to you about that,' I said. There is one particular friend of the doctor whom we must get in touch with.'

'Oh,' said the barman.

'Came every few weeks,' I said.

'Perhaps,' said the barman.

'Did he stay here?' Mann put the question too hurriedly.

'Are you the police?' said the man.

'Yes,' I said, but Mann had already said no. The barman looked from one to the other of us, and allowed himself that vacuous smile which peasants reserve for government officials. 'A sort of police,' I continued. 'A sort of American police.'

'The F.B.I.?' offered one of the men in black.

'Exactly,' I said.

'What has the doctor done?' asked the barman.

I tried to see in his face whether he would prefer to see the doctor exonerated, pursuing criminals or taken away in a small black van. Unsure of myself I said, 'The doctor is accused of defrauding an American bank.' I turned to Mann and raised an eyebrow as if seeking his permission to take the old man further into our confidence. Mann, playing along with the game, nodded sagely. I leaned across the counter and said, 'Now we are beginning to think he is innocent. We need to find this man who visited the house.'

'Why won't the doctor tell you?' the man asked.

It was a hell of a good question. 'That's a very good question,' I told him. 'But it's a rule of the underworld. Even when you can help yourself, you never help the police.'

'Of course,' said Mann hurriedly. 'That doesn't apply to citizens. It doesn't apply to people who obey the law, and suffer from the criminals. Especially,' he added archly, 'especially it doesn't apply to licensed innkeepers.'

'The man you seek is young and slim, with hair that covers his ears. He wears the sort of clothes they wear in the Riviera- fancy silk neckerchiefs, tightly tailored trousers that show everything, and cheap imitation-leather jackets of all shapes and sizes and colours.'

'Shut your mouth, you old fool.'

A young man had entered the bar from a door marked 'private'. He was about twenty years old, wearing a large black droopy moustache and dressed in a phoney U.C.L.A. sweat-shirt and faded jeans. Around his wrist he wore a studded leather support, of the sort that old prize-fighters sometimes need. Tell these people nothing,' he said. 'They are Americans, capitalist police spies…'

'Now hold it, son,' said Mann mildly.

I think it was the gentleness of Mann's tone that incensed the boy. Feeling that he was not being taken seriously, he called us pigs, reactionary oppressors and Gestapo. One of the old men at the other end of the bar smiled derisively. Perhaps he remembered the Gestapo.

The boy saw the old man smile. He grabbed my sleeve in an attempt to drag me from the bar. He was stronger than he looked, and I felt a seam give way under his grip.

'Pig, pig, pig,' said the boy as if the physical exertion had driven all reason, and vocabulary, from his head. All the while he was tearing at my coat, so that I must either move with him or watch it tear apart.

I hit him twice. The first punch did no more than position him, head down and off balance, for the hook that sent him flying across the room. It knocked the breath out of him, and he made that sort of whistling howl with which an express train acknowledges a country station. Two chairs toppled with him, and a table was dislodged, before the boy struck a pile of crates and collapsed to the floor.

'Paid cash,' said the barman continuing as if nothing had happened. 'Never cheque, or those fancy travellers' things; always money.'

'Stayed overnight?' I said. I straightened my clothes and sucked the blood off my grazed fist, which hurt like hell. The boy remained on the floor in the far corner. He was blinking and watching us and mouthing obscenities but he did not get to his feet.

'It varied,' said the barman. 'But he seldom had any baggage with him. Just shaving things.'

'Give me the car registration,' I said.

'I don't have that,' said the man.

'Come along,' I said. 'A hotelier who takes clients without baggage, and doesn't make a note of the car registration. I'm sure you'll find it somewhere. I'll pay you twenty francs for it."

The man reached below the bar to get a battered hotel register. It was a mess of illegible signatures and unlikely addresses. Its pages were creased and ringed with the marks of wine and beer, and goodness knows what else. Hank Dean's guest had not entered his name here but the barman was able to find his own scribbled note of the car registration. He read the number aloud, and I wrote it into my notebook and passed him the twenty francs. He smoothed the note carefully and inspected both sides of it before putting it into his bulging wallet.

'Thank you,' I said.

'There are more,' he said.

'More registration numbers?' I asked.

'Certainly there are.'

'Different ones?'

He nodded.

'Goddamn rental cars,' said Mann.

'Ten francs each,' I bargained.

'Twenty was the price you yourself set,' said the barman.

I looked at Mann. 'But no duplicates,' Mann warned him.

'We'll have the duplicates too,' I contradicted. 'But we must have the dates for each number.'

Page by page the man went through the book until we had a list of dates and numbers going back nearly two years. We finished our beers and drank two more.

'The same registration!' said Mann excitedly. 'That makes four times the same number.' He drained his beer, wiped his mouth and then pulled a face. 'It could be that it's a small rental company, or that he asks for that particular car.'

'I don't think so,' I said. 'Rental companies usually unload their cars every year or two. Those dates are too far apart. Here it is back at the beginning, soon after Dean moved here, and then again last August.'

'Always at holiday times,' said Mann.

'Yes,' I said. 'Always at a time when rental companies might not have had a car available. It must be his own car.'

'The first lucky break we've had,' said Mann.

'Mine host feels the same way about it,' I said as we watched the man tucking a small fortune into his wallet. The man looked up and smiled at us.

'Goodbye and thank you,' I said. 'I'm sorry about the boy.'

'My son had it coming to him,' said the barman. 'But there is eight francs to pay for your beers.'