He paused, shaking a little, while Duxelles scowled into the bowl of his pipe. The Frenchman lifted his head and his lips turned down into a mean little smile: ‘You must be a very stupid man, Monsieur Ingleby.’
Neil flushed and stiffened: epitaph on a bright young pundit who, at the tap of a typewriter, could make politicians writhe over their Sunday breakfasts or snigger in the bar of the House of Commons. He had done what he believed to be right, in keeping with his liberal principles, only to be insulted in a hot stinking room by a member of the French secret police.
‘You should leave that sort of work to the professionals,’ Duxelles added, taking out Neil’s passport and a typewritten document. ‘This is your expulsion order. You have until midnight tonight to get out of the country.’
Neil looked at the document. It was stamped by the Department for External Affairs, the Department for Internal Security, the Bureau for the Ministry of the Interior, and bore the seal of the Garde Républicaine de Sécurité. Neil decided it would look rather impressive framed in his flat. He said to Duxelles, ‘How do I get out of the country?’
‘The airport should be reopening later today.’
‘Do you guarantee that?’
‘I guarantee nothing,’ said Duxelles. ‘It is up to the airport authorities. What I can guarantee is that if you’re still in the country after midnight you will live to regret it. That is, if you live at all!’ He gave Neil a sharp narrow look over his pipe, which he sucked slowly with a crackling of spittle.
‘Will you give me an escort to the airport?’ said Neil.
Duxelles shrugged: ‘I don’t have any men to spare. One of our cars will take you back to the hotel. You can get a taxi from there to the airport. And I advise you to spend as little time in the hotel as possible.’ He stood up, nodded to both of them, stuck his pipe back in his mouth and strutted out.
Neil turned to Pol: ‘You’ve got to help me. That man has no interest whatever in whether I get killed or not.’
‘He’d prefer you killed,’ said Pol evenly. ‘You’re a very dangerous witness to what happened this morning — and a journalist on top of it.’
‘Will he try to get me killed?’ The cold lumpy feeling came back; and Neil stood there with a sense of nightmarish unreality: he under sentence of death and Pol with his damaged coccyx, drinking whisky together surrounded by the stink of lavatories and memories of white telephones and green figs in Athens. And Neil heard Pol saying, ‘Commandant Duxelles is too subtle to have you killed. He relies on someone of the Arab Front or the Secret Army doing it for him.’
‘Then you must help me,’ said Neil again, now desperate. ‘You got me into all this — now get me out of it! I want an escort to the airport and a safe-conduct on to a plane.’
‘The airport’s still closed,’ Pol muttered. ‘My dear Ingleby, I can do nothing. I am in a very bad odour here.’
‘Can’t you persuade them to give me protection in this place?’
‘I’m sorry, but you heard what Duxelles said. They want you out of the country.’
‘But supposing I can’t get out of the country!’
Pol’s eyes closed with pain. ‘Give me another whisky,’ he murmured.
Neil splashed some more into his glass and said, ‘I helped you in Athens — you must help me now.’
‘Things have changed. My own position’ — he waved his hand round the grim concrete room — ‘has become very delicate. I haven’t any influence left.’
‘You must have some influence!’ Neil cried. ‘Surely they’re not just going to leave me here to be killed, are they? Can’t you contact Paris and get them to do something?’
Pol cleared his throat and spat on to the linoleum close to Neil’s foot. ‘The only thing you can do,’ he said, ‘is go to your Consulate. Perhaps they can bring pressure to bear. I can’t do anything.’
‘You did plenty earlier this morning!’
Pol nodded, sipping whisky.
‘I suppose you planned it all back in Athens — using me as bait?’
Pol looked up at him, and for a moment Neil thought he saw tears forming in his eyes. He realized that the man was in considerable pain. ‘Yes, I got the idea in Athens,’ Pol said feebly, ‘I thought it might work. The situation was getting desperate. We had to catch Guérin somehow, and I wasn’t particularly concerned about who did it. I’m not like these policemen — I don’t mind who gets the credit.’
‘Or who gets killed!’ said Neil, glaring at him as he lay there propped on his elbow, with the hibiscus drooping like a soiled napkin from his lapel. ‘You great fat lout!’ he snarled. ‘If you weren’t so fat, and could walk, I’d kick you down those eleven flights of stairs!’
‘Ah, you have an unkind tongue, Monsieur Ingleby!’ said Pol miserably, in pain.
‘I’m not feeling in a kind mood,’ said Neil. It was becoming like some preposterous lovers’ quarrel. ‘It’s a pity Peter Van Loon didn’t let Jadot kill you on the boat,’ he added, and Pol’s eyes rolled upwards, sad and swimming with tears: ‘Ah, don’t talk like that! I didn’t want to see you in danger, but you did ask for it.’
‘Ask for it!’ Neil yelled; ‘what the hell do you mean?’ He clenched his fists and took a step forward.
Pol flinched slightly, took a gulp of whisky, and said. ‘This morning you told Guérin that I was waiting for him, didn’t you?’
Neil stopped and gaped
