in a soiled little room, not a breath of air stirred through the window; he read trashy French novels, stared out at the street.
Actually he could imagine, and did. Her presence in the hallway was announced by a trail of scent called Cri de la Nuit, cheap, crude, sweet, which drove his imagination to absurd excesses. As did her bitter mouth, set in a permanent sneer that said to the world, and especially to him, “Well?”
Before he could answer, the phone rang.
“Can you come to dinner?” Odile said. Heart pounding, Szara found a cranky old taxi at the Suresnes Mairie and reached the Puteaux house in minutes. Odile was standing well back from the window, looking through a pair of opera glasses. With a little grin of triumph she handed them over. “Second floor,” she said. “To the left of the entryway.”
By the time he focused, they weren’t where she said they were, but had moved to the top floor, two colorless men in dark suits seen dimly through the gauze curtain shielding the window. They vanished, then reappeared for a moment when they parted the drapes in an adjoining room. “A security check,” he said.
“Yes,” Odile said. “Their car is parked well down the street.”
“What model?”
“Not sure.”
“Big?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “And shiny.”
Szara felt his blood race.
The following afternoon, 8 July, they were back. This time it was Szara on duty. He’d moved the bezique table in front of the window and, having begged the old lady’s pardon, removed his shirt, appearing in sleeveless undershirt, a cigarette stuck in his lips, a hand of playing cards held before him, a sullen expression on his face. This time a heavy man with a bow tie accompanied the other two and from the open gateway stared up at Szara, who stared right back.
9 July was the day.
At 2:00 P.M. sharp, two glossy black Panhards pulled up at the gate. One of the security men left the first car and opened the gate as his partner drove off. The second car was aligned in such a way that Szara could identify the driver as the man with the bow tie. He also caught a glimpse of the passenger, who sat directly behind the driver and glanced out the window just before the Panhard swung through the gateway and the security man pushed the doors shut. The passenger was in his early forties, Szara guessed. The angle of sight, from above, could be misleading, but Szara took him to be short and bulky. He had thick black hair sharply parted, a swarthy, deeply lined face, and small dark eyes. For the occasion he wore a double-breasted suit, a shirt with a stiff high collar, a gray silk tie.
“Ten of clubs,” said the old lady.
Fifteen minutes later, a gray Peugeot coasted to a stop in front of the house. A hawk-faced man got out on the side away from Szara and the car immediately left. The man looked about him for a moment, made certain of his tie, then pressed the doorbell set into the portal of the gateway.
Dershani.
Seneschal knocked twice, then entered the apartment. “Christ, the heat,” he said. He collapsed in an armchair, set a Leica down carefully among the framed photographs on a rickety table. His suit was hopelessly rumpled, black circles at the armpits, a gray shadow of newsprint ink darkening the front of his shirt. He had spent the last two hours lying on sheets of newspaper in a lead-lined gutter at the foot of the sloped roof. The building’s scrollwork provided a convenient portal for photography.
Seneschal wiped his face with a handkerchief. “I took all the automobiles,” he said. “The security man who worked the door- several of him. Tried for the second man, but not much there I’m afraid, perhaps a one-quarter profile, and he was moving. As for the face in the back seat of the Panhard, I managed two exposures, but I doubt anything will show up.”
Szara nodded silently.
“Well? What do you think?”
Szara gestured with his eyes toward the old lady, waiting not quite patiently to resume the card game. “Too early to know much of anything. We’ll wait for them to use the garden,” he said.
“What if it rains?”
Szara looked up at the sky, a mottled gray in the Paris humidity. “Not before tonight,” he said.
They appeared just before five-
The man he took to be a German intelligence officer was short and heavy, as he’d supposed. Magnification revealed a thin white scar crossing his left eyebrow, a street fighter’s badge of honor. The two men stood at the garden entrance for a moment, open French doors behind them. The German spoke a few words, Dershani nodded, and they walked together into the garden. They were the image of diplomacy, strolling pensively with hands clasped behind their backs, continuing a very deliberate conversation, choosing their words with great care. Szara studied their lips through the opera glasses but could not, to his surprise, determine if they were speaking German or Russian. Once they laughed. Szara fancied he could hear it, faintly, carried on the heated air of the late afternoon amid the sound of sparrows chirping in the trees of the garden.
They made a single circuit on the gravel path, stopping once while the German pointed at an apple tree, then returned to the house, each beckoning the other to enter first. Dershani laughed, clapping the German on the shoulder, and went in ahead of him.
At 7:20, Dershani left the house. He turned up the street in the direction his car had gone and disappeared from view. A few minutes later, the security man opened the gate and, after the car had passed through, closed it again. He climbed in beside the driver and the Panhard sped away. In the garden, the setting sun made long shadows on the dry grass, the birds sang, nothing moved in the still summer air.
“Oh, too bad,” she said.
Odile left first, to walk to the Neuilly Metro stop. Seneschal disappeared into the old lady’s closet and emerged a few minutes later smelling faintly of mothballs. He handed Szara a spool of film. Szara thanked the old lady, told her they might be back the following day, gave her a fresh packet of money, and went out into the humid dusk.
Seneschal’s car was parked several blocks away. They walked through streets deserted by the onset of the dinner hour; smells of frying onions and potatoes drifted through the open windows.
“Do we try again tomorrow? ” Seneschal asked.
Szara thought it over. “I sense that they’ve done what they came together to do.”
“Can’t be certain.”
“No. I’ll contact you at your office, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
“I should say, officially, that gratitude is expressed-charming the way they put these things. Personally, thank you for everything, and I’m sorry your shirt is ruined.”
Seneschal inspected the front of his shirt. “No. My little friend is a wonder. No matter what I get into she knows a way to take care of it. Nothing is to be thrown out, it can always last ‘a bit longer.’ “
“Is she aware of your, ah, love affair?”
