him. Grierson couldn't let the Mercedes go too fast-the road was busy and at anything below ninety the Alfa could pace him easily. Outside Valence, a couple of girl hitchhikers were thumbing a lift. Grierson kept on going, but Craig pulled over and eased to a stop. He could do with someone to talk to, and besides, the dark one seemed to be limping. The two girls came running toward him, and he saw that the dark one, who carried a guitar, was limping no longer. He grinned to himself. There was a technique for getting lifts, like everything else. Firmly he reminded himself that he was English; that the Wogs begin at Calais. It was no longer disgraceful to speak French, but one must still not speak it very well.
Both girls wore tartan shirts, blue jeans and espadrilles, and both were pretty. There the resemblance ended, for one was blond, plump, relaxed, and French, the other dark, intense, manic, and American. They were going to St. Tropez, the French girl said, but it had to be by way of Avignon, the American girl insisted. They had to see the Palace of the Popes.
'Just as you like,' said Craig. 'We might as well lunch in Avignon as anywhere else.'
He squeezed the accelerator gently, and the Alfa moved forward in a joyous surge of power.
'Hey,' said the American girl, 'what kind of car is this?'
'Alfa Romeo,' Craig said.
'It moves,' said the American girl. 'Man, does it move.'
'It's supposed to,' said Craig.
'I can see that. But it doesn't look much, does it?' 'Doesn't look-' Craig choked. 'I mean it's so small.' 'Big heart,' said Craig.
The American girl offered around cigarettes, lit one for Craig, and put it in his mouth.
'You on vacation?' she asked. Craig nodded. 'So are we-in a way, that is. My name's Sikorski-Maria Sikorski. This is Sophie Gourdun.'
Craig said, 'I'm John Reynolds.'
'Hi,' said Maria.
'Hi,' said Sophie.
After that, all he had to do was listen and drive. The girls were singers, and hoped to work the Riviera through the season. Their entire assets were three hundred new francs, the contents of their rucksacks, and a work permit for Maria, and they hadn't a care in the world. They were twenty-one years old.
'I sing Western songs,' Maria said. 'I come from Detroit, but I worked in Las Vegas and I learned a few songs from the cowboys there. You ever been to Vegas?' She didn't wait for an answer. 'Maddest place you ever saw. Ten thousand miles of nothing and a city full of slot machines in the middle. You know what Las Vegas means? It means the Open Country. Those Spaniards never saw anything more open than Vegas. You look around, you can still find a few cowboys. They've got good songs too. Sophie's nuts about cowboys.'
'Do you sing Western songs too?' Craig asked.
'No,' Sophie said. 'I sing corny songs. Ballads. You know-late-at-night, sad songs.'
'Hey, she's good too,' said Maria. 'She makes me cry every time. You know what? She used to be a dancer. Worked in striptease even.' She looked at Sophie with pride, and Sophie tried but failed to look modest. Craig was intrigued.
'Did you like it?' he asked.
'Good money,' said Sophie, 'but very tiring work. Stupid too. On, off, on, off. Either one goes to bed or one does not.'
'Have you been a stripper too?' Craig asked Maria.
'No,' Maria said. 'I haven't got the temperament for it. The lazy ones do best. They look more sexy or something. I couldn't make myself be lazy in a million years.'
She talked all the way to Avignon, and Craig believed her.
Avignon enchanted her. She checked on the existence of the bridge in the song, and the fact that it was in ruins did not bother her at all. It had stood, once, and a song had been made, and that was enough. The cathedral and the view from the Promenade du Rocher were all that she had expected, and the sohd gray mass of the palace, austere and yet magnificent, the scented beauty of the hanging gardens, moved her for a brief while to silence.
'You see how lucky you are, giving us a lift,' she said at last. 'If you hadn't, you'd have missed all this.'
'I'm very much in your debt,' Craig said. 'Perhaps you'll permit me to buy you lunch.'
'Heavens, I should think so,' said Maria severely. 'I only hope it's good, that's all.'
They went to a Provencal restaurant, and ate long and well, and when they had finished, Maria said, 'I forgot to ask you. How near are you going to St. Trop?'
'I'm staying the night there,' Craig said.
'Hey, that's great,' said Maria.
'Tomorrow I'm going on to Cannes,' Craig lied.
'You're going a very long way round,' said Sophie.
'I may be meeting a friend in St. Tropez,' Craig said, 'and anyway I've never been there. I really think I ought to before I die.'
Sophie said seriously, 'You're not that old, surely?' and Craig laughed aloud. It seemed to him a long time since he had done that.
They drove on through Aix-en-Provence and Brig-noles to Cannet-des-Maures, leaving the N8 then, turning south to Grimaud, and so at last to St. Tropez. The girls left him at the port, and he promised to meet them for dinner. He drove up to the little hotel near the English church where he was to rendezvous with Grierson and wait with him for their next instructions. Already, at the end of May, the little town was crowded: twenty thousand people crammed in where in winter five thousand lived in no great luxury, but a room had been booked for Grierson and Craig, a cool, airy, spacious room, with french windows opening on to a garden, and a private shower. Madame la Proprietaire had been warned that the two Englishmen were wealthy, generous, and fussy about privacy. Moreover, she had been paid in advance. She was content.
Grierson was angry.
'You shouldn't have done it,' he said. 'We aren't here on holiday.'
'We're supposed to be,' said Craig, 'and a couple of girls are the best cover there is. Anyway, they're healthy -and human. I needed to talk to people like that. They reminded me of Tessa. In any case, we'll be leaving tomorrow. I told them we were going to Cannes.'
'You shouldn't have done it,' said Grierson. 'What's more, you know you shouldn't.'
'I like them. You don't think I would let them get hurt, do you? After tomorrow, they'll never see us again.'
Grierson sighed. 'All right,' he said. 'I'll come and have a look at them. But Loomis won't like it.'
'Loomis isn't invited,' said Craig.
The two men showered and changed, and drank cold, white Burgundy while Grierson read aloud a letter from Ashford which was waiting for them. 'Our friend is away still and won't be back for two days,' it said. 'I enclose a clipping which I've been asked to pass on to John. He may find it amusing-or so I'm told.'
The clipping was from a New York newspaper, and the article marked said stern things about the Longshoremen's Union. Below it was a tiny squib that told of the torturing and murder of an unidentified man in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Grierson waited until Craig had read it, then burned the letter and the clipping.
'And then there was me,' said Craig.
'Baumer?' Grierson asked.
'Yes. I don't find it amusing.'
'Ashford's got to be careful,' Grierson said.
Craig drank more wine. It would be Loomis who had sent the words that Ashford had used, knowing that they would make Craig angry. Loomis wanted St. Briac dead, and for that purpose no detail was too trivial, not even the use of the word 'amusing.'
They met Maria and Sophie in a bar by the port. Like every other male there, Craig and Grierson wore beach shirts and slacks, while the girls wore toreador pants and Provecnal blouses. So did every other girl. It reminded Grierson of his days in the marines. Craig wanted to drink more wine, and found that he had to have whisky: there wasn't any question of choice. Whisky was what he had to drink because whisky was what was drunk. In the face of such logic, he abandoned argument. Later he found that he had to eat grilled sardines in one of the only three
