trap beneath the washbasin, the toilet tank, the bath tank. Nothing. Driver was no more than seven suits, five pairs of slacks, six pairs of shoes, and some expensive cashmere. And then he found it, beneath the bottom shelf of the wardrobe—a fiberglass briefcase with the most effective locks Craig had ever seen. He smashed them open at last with a wrought-iron lampstand. Inside the case were a Walther P38 with a three-inch barrel, a thousand pounds in one-pound notes, four twenty-dollar bills that matched the one Loomis had given him, and five decks of playing cards with the seals unbroken. Craig broke them. Every pack of cards was marked.
He emptied the briefcase, then attacked it again with the lampstand, bringing it down with all his strength on the case's lid and container. They cracked eventually, and Craig probed into the cracks with a carving knife, his hands careful and precise. The container yielded nothing except four clips of bullets for the Walther. Craig pocketed them, and the weapon: a Walther was always a reliable gun. The lid held an I.O.U. from Fat Arthur to Driver for one thousand pounds, a Swiss passport in the name of Dumont, and a German passport made out to Donner. Both the passport photographs were of Driver. Craig thought he
must like the letter D.
* * *
'Driver's suitcase was made in Germany,' said Loomis, and for some reason he slowed down to run parallel with a hearse that was moving at twenty miles an hour. Anguished squeals of brakes behind him proclaimed that other drivers too were showing their last respects.
'So were his handkerchiefs,' said Loomis, and removed his hat, a battered unconquerable bowler. 'Know what?' He looked at Craig, and accelerated craftily. The Rolls reached a speed of 69.5 mph again, and the Ferrari behind almost stalled.
'The playing cards were made in Germany, too,' Loomis said. 'You could win at anything with those cards. Naughty.' He drove on, then added: 'We never found Brodski. He's done a bunk.' More driving, while he scowled at the Ferrari, now visible again in his rear-view mirror.
'Think he killed Driver?' Loomis asked.
'Brodski? For a dud twenty-dollar bill?'
'It could be just for that,' said Loomis.
'Brodski chased Driver for one bad debt— chased him and killed him?'
'Not quite,' Loomis said. 'The way I see it, Driver was chasing Brodski—only he got too close.'
'You think Driver had something on Brodski? And the twenty-dollar bill was a way of letting him know?'
'Didn't you say he'd lost money just before he went to Brodski's club, and two days later he paid up?'
'That's right,' said Craig. 'So Driver double-crossed his bosses.'
'Ah,' said Loomis. 'I wonder if his bosses were Krauts?'
'It's possible,' said Craig.
'It is indeed,' said Loomis dreamily. 'It's even possible he belongs to the West German Defense of Constitution.'
'Driver was an agent?'
'Not a very good one,' said Loomis. 'He died.'
Craig had met operators from the Defense of Constitution before. They did counterintelligence work, and did it well. Hard, arrogant, efficient as Deutschmarks, all four hundred of them. Mostly they stayed in West Germany and hunted foreign spies, particularly Russians. Sometimes they went further afield. Driver had gone too far.
'Where do they come in?' asked Craig. 'Those Defense of Constitution boys don't like to get too far from home. They play too rough.'
'They got one sacred symbol, you see,' Loomis said. 'Like a cow to a Brahmin, like Mecca to an Arab, that's the Deutschmark to a West German.'
'Money,' said Craig. 'This case is all money. Dollars and Deutschmarks.'
'At least they've chosen the good stuff,' said Loomis.
They parked in the VIP car area, and boarded their Comet with minutes to spare. Loomis had insisted on traveling first class, and finished the champagne lunch to the last crumb and the last drop. His passport declared him to be a business executive. He talked all the way of golf, electrical appliances, and the total absence of good tea in Paris. Craig, also a business executive, confined himself to agreement. He knew that he was junior to Loomis. They landed at Orly Airport to find a warm spring day and a pale-blue Citroen. The English driver came over to them, shook hands with them, and took them at once to the car. Inside it, on the back seat, were two parcels: one squat, square and heavy, the other flexible and shapeless. The driver immediately pulled away and got onto the highway to Paris, and Loomis fretted about how the rest of the world drives on the wrong side of the road. Craig put the two parcels into his raincoat pockets; soon they stopped at a cafe. Craig went at once to the toilet, locked the door of his stall, and removed his raincoat and jacket, then quickly untied his parcels. The flexible one was a holster of black leather, the hard one a Smith and Wesson Chiefs Special with a two-inch barrel—the right gun for the job, not all that accurate over too great a distance but a stopper. If you got hit with that you didn't get up. Craig put his jacket and coat back on, stuck the wrapping paper in the gun's box and then the box in his pocket, flushed the toilet, and went out, cutting short the clamors of the woman at the door with a half-franc borrowed from the driver. He drank the coffee Loomis ordered for him, and they drove on into springtime Paris, with the chestnut trees and the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe, the Invalides, and the biggest traffic jams in Europe. But at last they reached the Madeleine, walked around the corner to the Thomas Cook offices, and bought two tickets to Versailles.
They went there in a bus, a big Facel Vega with a sunshine roof and its full complement of tourists. Loomis chose a seat in the middle and put Craig next to the window, then peered past him dutifully as the guide called out the place names all had paid so much to see. At last, when even the television center had been passed and there was nothing more to look at, Loomis spoke softly to Craig.
'He asked for Versailles,' Loomis said. 'Bloody culture snob. Could have had a nice bit of lunch at the Tour d'Argent. God knows he can afford it.'
'Who?' asked Craig.
'Chelichev,' said Loomis.
Chelichev was head of the Executive Division of the KGB—the Committee for State Security. Before Beria's death he had headed the GRU, which is Army Intelligence, but after that colossal shakeup he had been transferred, and now he was the only military man in a nonmilitary organization. He held the rank of lieutenant-general. 'He rarely leaves Russia.' Craig said so.
'He goes when he has to,' said Loomis. 'Like me. We got something he wants, so he comes to France.'
'Not England?'
'He doesn't want it that bad,' said Loomis.
'Anyway, he's probably got a deal on with the Frenchies as well.'
'What about?' Craig asked.
'Morocco,' said Loomis. He would say no more.
They drove on to Versailles, and listened while the guide reeled off facts and figures, lagging behind as the group trudged through stateroom after stateroom; they wondered what it must have been like before the mob smashed its way in and took the gold away. By the time they reached the Hall of Mirrors, they were alone, and Chelichev was waiting for them.
He was a tall man with silvery hair and blue eyes, dressed in light, elegant tweeds like a Frenchman's idea of an officer in the guards. The briefcase he carried was like the extension of his hand. His face was leathery, handsome, and very masculine. To the inexpert, he might have been a male model who specialized in whisky ads; to Craig, he was an expert who specialized in death. With him he had one man, tall, thick-muscled, with cautious eyes and hands conspicuously displayed in front of him, as Craig's were. Craig knew all about that man as soon as he saw him. He was looking at himself.
The moves that followed were as formal as a ballet. The two pairs of men advanced from opposite ends of the great room, and after ten paces Craig and the thick-muscled man turned and walked to the windows in the embrasures that overlooked the canal, turned again and, each unseen by the other, watched their principals meet, fall in side by side and patrol the room, Loomis with his tall, square bowler rammed down hard on his head, Chelichev swinging his briefcase. Chelichev seemed to do most of the talking. From time to time Loomis spoke. Usually it was a monosyllable, and he seemed to be enjoying it. The Russian's face was impassive, but his arguments never stopped. At last Loomis seemed to agree, and Chelichev's arguments ceased. The two men
