Yesterday's Spy

Chapter 27

When Champion broke from the department, we set up this small office in Nice. The modest entrance bore the trademark of a well-known British travel company, and three of our staff gave their full-time attention to legitimate travel business.

Schlegel had taken an office on the top floor. He was standing in the window when I entered, looking across the square to Nice railway station. When Cimiez, in the northern part of Nice, had been chic, this section had also been fashionable. But now it was dirty and rundown. The tourists arrived at the airport, and they wanted hotels near the sea. I walked over to the window.

The railway station had hardly changed since the day I waited for Champion to arrive, and watched him being arrested. The tiled floor was a little more chipped, the mural of the Alps a little dirtier, but what else had stayed so much the same? Certainly not me.

Schlegel could always find himself a clean shirt, but his suit was creased and baggy, and the oil-stain on his knee was the one he’d got from the wheel of the big truck. His eyes were red, and he rubbed them. ‘They should tear this whole lousy district down. Put the bus depot and the railroad station in one complex, and stack twenty floors of office accommodation overhead.’

‘Is that why you sent down for me?’ I said.

‘What are you doing downstairs?’

‘Trying to catch up on my sleep. First time since I got up on Sunday.’

‘You want to learn to cat-nap. No. I mean what are you working on down there?’

‘I sent out for some maps. I’m waiting for them,’ I told him.

‘I know all about that,’ said Schlegel. ‘When people in this office send out for things, I get a copy of the requisition. Your goddamn maps have arrived. I’ve got them here.’

‘I can see you have,’ I said.

‘That’s the way I work.’

‘Well, good luck, Colonel. I’ll go back downstairs and try to get a little more sleep.’ I got up and went to the door.

Schlegel suppressed a yawn. ‘OK, OK, OK. We’re both tired. Now come over here and show me what you want the maps for.’

I went around to the other side of his desk and sorted through the survey maps of the country round Champion’s house, and copies of the land registration, and some data about drainage and changes of ownership. I tipped everything — except the map that showed the whole region — into Schlegel’s wastepaper basket. ‘That stuff was just to make it look like an ordinary lawyer’s inquiry,’ I said.

‘You want to tell me what’s on your mind?’ demanded Schlegel.

‘Those five empty trucks. Suppose they unloaded the contents at the Champion house.’ I spread the map.

‘No, no, no,’ said Schlegel. ‘I thought of that, but the gendarmerie patrol that area up there. They fixed a new lock on the back door. They go in there to look round.’

‘Let’s suppose,’ I said patiently.

‘That Champion is sitting in the dark up there, testing the spark plugs in some reconditioned dragster?’

‘Engine parts,’ I said. ‘That might mean pumps, to get the old workings going again.’

‘The mine.’ He snatched the map and unrolled it across his desk. He used the phone, a paperweight and his desk-set to hold the corners. He sucked his teeth as he looked at the full extent of the mine workings: the shafts, seams and the long haulage roads. ‘That was quite a layout.’

I rapped my knuckle against the telephone with enough effort to make the bell tinkle. ‘And just about here, remember — the artillery depot, Valmy.’

‘Jesus!’ whispered Schlegel. ‘They’ve got atomic shells in that store.’ For the first time Schlegel took the idea seriously.

‘Nuclear artillery shells — at Valmy! And you knew that all along?’ I said.

‘It was need-to-know,’ said Schlegel defensively.

‘And I didn’t need to know?’

‘Keep your voice down, mister. You were going to sit in Champion’s pocket. Telling you that there were nukes in Champion’s back yard would have been stupid.’

I didn’t reply.

‘It wasn’t a matter of trust,’ said Schlegel.

‘You’re a stupid bastard,’ I said.

‘And maybe you’re right,’ he admitted. He ran his thumb and index finger down his face, as if to wipe the wrinkles from his cheeks. It didn’t work. ‘So what do we do about this?’ He smacked the map with his fingers so that he made a tiny tear in the brittle paper.

‘We’d better tell Paris,’ I said.

‘If we’re wrong, they’ll hate us. If we’re right, they’ll hate us even more.’

‘You’d better tell them,’ I said.

‘You don’t know those people like I do,’ said Schlegel. ‘Champion was once one of ours — that’s all they will need to blame us for everything.’

‘We’ve had these maps from the municipal authority — and that’s on record — you’ve been told about the atomic shells — and that’s on record, too. They will crucify us if we don’t tell them immediately.’

Schlegel looked at his watch. ‘They will have packed up by now. I don’t want to spend an hour explaining things to the night-duty officer.’ He looked up at me. ‘And I know that you don’t, either. Let’s go out to the house and take another look at it. It might be just another false trail. If it’s worth a damn, we’ll tell Paris in the morning. What do you say?’

‘I don’t like it,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t like it,’ I said, ‘because when we get out there, you’ll want to go inside. And then, you’re going to want to find the entrance to the mine. And then you’re going to want to go down there … and all the time, you’re going to be holding me in front of you.’

‘How can you say that! Did I ever do that to you before?’

Before I could answer, Schlegel picked up the phone to get a car.