He paid off his cabby a block from his apartment and went the rest of the way on foot as he usually did. Out of long habit he scrutinized the traffic, studied the parked cars and scanned the roof lines for a sign that someone was interested in him. But there was nothing out of the ordinary tonight.
tights were burning in his apartment windows. He stopped in the shadow of ‘a doorway across the street and watched to see if he could detect any movements. Jacqueline had not officially moved in with him yet, but often she spent nights at his apartment. A few of her things were hanging in the armoire, and in the bathroom. Had their relationship continued to develop it would only have been a matter of time before she gave up her apartment. She’d been hinting about it for the last week or so.
He figured that she’d be worried about him now, and would be watching the street. But she didn’t come to the window, and after five minutes McGarvey went up.
Only one light was on in the living room, and the bedroom door was ajar, the television playing inside. The air smelled of mentholated spirits.
“Jacqueline?” McGarvey called softly, as he moved across the room taking care to stay out of a sight line through the window.
“In here,” she answered, her voice husky.
McGarvey pushed open the door and went in. Jacqueline was propped up in bed, a bottle of mineral water and some medicine bottles on the nightstand. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “I feel like merde. I’ve got a fever, my head is about to explode and every bone in my body aches. Anyway, where have you been all day, I’ve been worried about you.”
McGarvey went to her side and felt her forehead. Her skin felt clammy. “You are sick,” he said. He picked up the medicine bottles, which contained French over the-counter cold and flu drugs. “Have you been here all day?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I wanted some sympathy. Where were you?”
“Shopping,” he said, giving her a wistful smile.
“Oh? What’d you buy?”
“Nothing much. Too many people, and I wasn’t much in the mood.”
“Are you still in your black ass from the weekend?” she asked. “If you are, I wish you’d get out of it. You’re not very much fun to be around when you’re like this.”
McGarvey went to the writing desk, and inspected his failsafes on the cabinet beside it. They’d not been tampered with. He could feel Jacqueline’s eyes on his back. “Printemps was very busy today,” he said. He unlocked the cabinet and took out his Voltaire manuscript.
“What time were you there?” she asked.
“About two-thirty.” McGarvey brought the manuscript back to the bed and handed it to her. “Unless you’re a Voltaire fan this may be a little dry.”
She was watching him, trying to gauge his mood.
“I saw a couple of people I knew.”
“Who’s that?” she asked calmly.
“You, of course. And Colonel Galan. I didn’t know that he was an agent runner, I thought he was a desk jockey running R-Seven.”
She set the manuscript aside. “How long have you known?”
“I suspected something from the beginning,” he said.
“Yet you let me make a fool of myself,” she flared. She tossed the covers back and got out of bed. She was wearing nothing but one of his shirts.
“At first it didn’t matter, but then I started to care for you and I didn’t want you to go.”
She’d started toward the bathroom, but she stopped. “Is that why you followed me today?”
“Something’s come up…”
“You met with the Russians on Saturday and they want you to kill someone for them,” she blurted. She’d expected him to react, but when he didn’t her eyes narrowed. “You know about that too?”
He nodded.
“How?”
“It’s what I do, Jacqueline. It’s my business.”
She nodded warily. “Don’t fool around, Kirk. Colonel Galan is a tough man. The Service doesn’t care what you do outside France as long as it doesn’t involve one of our citizens. But we take a very harsh stand on criminal acts inside the country.”
She was a pretty woman, and bright. He was going to miss her even more than he first thought he would.
“You could be brought in for questioning,” she said.
“Yes, I could,” he replied evenly.
“I don’t think Langley would interfere.”
“Probably not.”
“You’d be kicked out of France. Permanently.”
“I’ve done. nothing wrong.”
“Man cut!” Jacqueline swore. She ripped off his shirt, tossed it at him, and making no effort to hide her nakedness, strode across the bedroom to where she’d laid her clothes and got dressed.
“Don’t forget your things in the bathroom,” McGarvey said.
“Are you kicking me out?” she demanded.
“No, but you’re leaving.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes glistening, then went into the bathroom, tossed her perfumes and lotions into a cosmetics bag, and came out. “What shall I tell Colonel Galan?”
“Whatever you’d like. But tell him the truth because he’s heard everything.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“There are three bugs. One in the living room, one in the bathroom and one in the wall over the bed.”
Some color came to her cheeks. “Take care of yourself, Kirk.”
McGarvey nodded. “You too, Jacqueline. Je t’embrasse.”
“Je te J’aussi.”
After she was gone, McGarvey sat by the window in the living room while he smoked a cigarette and looked down at the busy street. For the most part he’d managed to put thoughts about his parents in the compartment of his mind that he rarely visited. The pain was very great; at times so great he couldn’t stand it. If what Yemlin had told him was true, he would be relieved of a burden he’d carried with him all of his adult life”. After his parents had died in an automobile accident he’d discovered what he thought was proof that they’d spied for the Russians. It had nearly killed him. But now he was being given a reprieve.
A bus lumbered by on the street below, trailing a cloud of blue exhaust. He’d wanted to talk about this with Jacqueline, but of course that was impossible, considering what she was. A relationship, any sort of a relationship, was the bane of a spy’s existence. A woman was excess baggage, and he’d always thought of them in that vein, which he supposed was one of the main reasons he’d never been able to sustain a relationship. It was an either/or situation, and he seemed incapable of giving up his profession. At least for now.
When he finished the cigarette” he turned off the television and switched on the stereo to Radio Luxembourg which beamed popular music all over Europe. He turned the volume up so that he could hear it in the kitchen while he fixed a three-egg cheese omelet and made some toast in the oven. He took his time, setting’ a place at the small table and opening a bottle of white wine. He hadn’t eaten much all day, and the food tasted good. When he was finished he read the morning’s Le Figaro, then washed up and put away the clean dishes.
Jacqueline’s case officer would have notified Colonel Galan as soon as McGarvey returned to the apartment. He would also have notified the colonel when Jacqueline left.
McGarvey glanced at his watch. If they were going to bring him in fpr questioning tonight they’d be showing up within the next hour or so.
Starting in the living room he cleaned the apartment from top to bottom, making no effort to mask the noises of what he was doing. In effect he was cleansing the place of Jacqueline’s presence. He’d found out she was a SDECE spy sent to watch him, and he was ridding himself of her.
In the bedroom he tossed out the few remaining traces of her, including the mineral water and medicines on
