As they came aboard, they saluted her respectfully and then barely glanced at her red diplomatic passport. They took a little longer with Peter’s blue and gold British passport, and Magda murmured to Peter with a trace of a smile.
“I must get you a little red book. It’s so much easier.” Then to the officials. “It is a cold morning, gentlemen, I hope you will take a glass.” And her white-jacketed steward was hovering already. They left the two Frenchmen removing their kepis and pistol belts, settling down comfortably in the leather armchairs to make a leisurely selection of the cigars and cognac that the steward had produced for their approval.
There were three cars waiting for them, parked in the back of the hangar with drivers and guards. Peter’s lip curled as he saw the Maserati.
“I told you not to drive that thing,” he said gruffly. “It’s like having your name in neon lights.” They had argued about this vehicle while Peter was reorganizing her personal Security, for the Maserati was an electric silver-grey, one of her favourite colours, a shimmering dart of metal. She swayed against him with that husky little chuckle of hers.
“Oh, that is so very nice to have a man being masterful again. It makes me feel like a woman.”
“I have other ways of making you feel like that.” know, he agreed, with a wicked flash of green eyes.
“And I like those even better, but not now please! What in the world would my staff think!” Then seriously, “You take the Maserati, I ordered it for you, anyway. Somebody may as well enjoy it. And please do not be late this evening.
I have especially made it free for us. Try and be at La Pierre Benite by eight o’clock will you please?” By the time Peter had to slow for the traffic along the Pont Neuilly entrance to Paris, he had accustomed himself to the surging power and acceleration of the Maserati, and, as she had suggested, he was enjoying himself. Even in the mad Parisian traffic he used the slick gear box to knife through the merest suspicion of an opening, hulling out of trouble or overtaking with the omnipotent sense of power that control of the magnificent machine bestowed upon its driver.
He knew then why Magda loved it so dearly, and when he parked it at last in the underground garage on the Champs-Elyses side of Concorde he grinned at himself in the mirror.
“Bloody cowboy!” he said, and glanced at his Rolex. He had an hour before his first appointment, and as a sudden thought unclipped the holster of the Cobra and, with the pistol still in it, locked it in the glove compartment of the Maserati. He grinned again as he pondered the in advisability of marching into French Naval Headquarters armed to the teeth.
The drizzle had cleared, and the chestnut trees in the Elys& gardens were popping their first green birds as he came out into Concorde. He used one of the call boxes in the Concorde Metro station to make a call to the British Embassy. He spoke to the Military Attach for two minutes, and when he hung up, he knew the ball was probably already in play. If Caliph had penetrated the Atlas Command eeply enough to know him personally as the commander of Thor then it would not be too long before he knew that the former commander had picked up the spoor. The Military Attache at the Paris Embassy had other more clandestine duties than kissing the ladies” hands at diplomatic cocktail parties.
Peter reached the main gates of the Marine Headquarters on the corner of the rue Royale with a few minutes to spare, but already there was a secretary waiting for him below the billowing Tricolour. He smoothed Peter’s way past the sentries, and led him to the armaments committee room on the third floor overlooking a misty grey view of the Seine and the gilded arches of the Pont Neuf. Two of Peter’s assistants from Narmco were there ahead of him with their briefcases Unpacked and the contents spread upon the polished walnut table.
The French Flag captain had been in Brussels, and on one unforgettable evening he had conducted Peter on a magic carpet tour of the brothels of that city. He greeted him now with cries of Gallic pleasure and addressed him as Itu” and “tai” which all boded very well for the meeting ahead.
At noon precisely, the French captain moved that the meeting adjourn across the street to a private room on the first floor of Maxim’s, blissful in the certainty that Narmco would pick up the tab, if they were really serious about selling the Kestrel rocket motors to the French Navy.
It required all Peter’s tact not to make it obvious that he was taking less than his share of the Clos de Vougeot or of the Rmy Martin, and more than once he found that he had missed part of the discussion which was being conducted at a steadily increasing volume. He found that he was thinking of emerald eyes and small pert bosoms.
From Maxim’s back to the Ministry of Marine, and later it required another major act of diplomacy on Peter’s part when the captain smoothed his mustache and cocked a knowing eye at Peter. “There is a charming little club, very close and wonderfully friendly.” By six o’clock Peter had disentangled himself from the Frenchman’s company, with protestations of friendship and promises to meet again in ten days” time. An hour later Peter left his two sales assistants at the hotel Meurice after a quick but thorough summation of the day’s achievements.
They were, all three, agreed that it was a beginning but a long, long road lay ahead to the ending.
He walked back along Rivoli; despite the frowsiness of a long day of endless talk and the necessity for quick thinking in a language which was still strange on the tongue, despite a slight ache behind the eyes from the wine and cognac and despite the taste of cigar and cigarette smoke he had breathed, he was buoyed by a tingling sense of anticipation, for Magda was waiting, and he stepped out briskly.
As he paused for traffic lights, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in a shop window. He was smiling without realizing it.
While he waited on the ramp of the parking garage for his turn to pay and enter the traffic stream, with the Maserati engine whispering impatiently, he glanced in the rear view mirror. He had acquired the habit long ago when one of the captured Provo death lists had begun with his name; since then he had learned to look over his shoulder.
He noticed the Citron two back in the line of vehicles because the windshield was cracked and there was a scrape which had dented the mudguard and exposed a bright strip of bare metal.
He noticed the same black Citron still two back as he waited for pedestrian: lights in the Champs-Elys6es, and when he ducked his head slightly to try and get a look at the driver, the headlights switched on as though to frustrate him and at that moment the lights changed and he had to drive on.
Going around the ttoile, the Citroen had fallen back four places in the grey drizzling dusk of early autumn, but he spotted it once again when he was halfway down the Avenue de la Grande Armee, for by now he was actively searching for it. This time it changed lanes and slipped off the main thoroughfare to the left. It was immediately lost in the maze of side streets and Peter should have been able to forget it and concentrate on the pleasure of controlling the Maserati, but there lingered a sense of foreboding and even after he had shot the complicated junction of roads that got him onto the periphery route and eventually out on the road to Versailles and Chartres, he found himself changing lanes and speed while he scanned the road behind in the mirror.
Only when he left Versailles and was on the Rambouillet road did he have a clear view back a mile down the straight avenue of plane trees, and he was certain there was no other vehicle on the road. He relaxed completely and began to prepare himself for the final turn off that would bring him at last to La Pierre BMite.
The shiny wet black python of road uncoiled ahead of him and then humped abruptly. Peter came over the rise at 150 kilometres an hour and instantly started to dance lightly on brake and clutch, avoiding the temptation of tramping down hard and losing adhesion on the slippery uneven tarmac. Ahead of him there was a gendarme in a shiny white plastic cape, wet with rain, brandishing a torch with a red lens; there were reflective warning triangles bright as rubies, a Peugeot in the ditch beside the road with headlights glaring at the sky, a dark blue police Kombi van half blocking the road, and in the stage lit by the Kombi’s headlights two bodies were laid out neatly, and all of it hazed by the soft insistent mantle of falling rain. - a typical roadside accident scene.
Peter had the Maserati well in hand, bringing her neatly down through the gears to a crawl, and as he was lowering the side window, the electric motor whining softly and the icy gust of night air into the heated interior, the gendarme gestured with the flashlight for him to pull over into the narrow gap between hedge and the parked Kombi, and at that moment the unexpected movement caught Peter’s eye.
It was one of the bodies lying in the roadway under the headlights. The movement was the slight arch of the back that a man makes before rising from the prone position.
Peter watched him lift his arm, not more than a few inches, but it was just enough for Peter to realize he had been holding an object concealed down the outside of his thigh, and even in the rain and the night Peter’s trained eye recognized the perforated air-cooled sleeve enclosing the short barrel of a fold-down machine pistol.
