Belbo, plainly, was theman with the suitcase. But the suitcase had contained Aglie'sbooks. He called Aglie. There was no answer.
It was already late inthe evening. He didn't dare leave the house, so he took a pill toget some sleep. The next morning, he called Aglie again. Silence.He went out to buy the papers. Luckily the front page was stilloccupied by the funeral; the story about the train and the copy ofthe police sketch must be somewhere inside. He skulked back to hisapartment, his collar turned up, then realized he was still wearingthe blazer. At least he didn't have on the maroon tie.
While he was trying oncemore to sort out what had happened, he received a call. A strangeforeign voice, a slightly Balkan accent, mellifluous: a completelydisinterested party acting out of pure kindness of heart. PoorSignor Belbo, the voice said, finding yourself compromised by suchan unpleasant business. You should never agree to act as someoneelse's courier without first checking the contents of the package.How awful it would be if someone were to inform the police thatSignor Belbo was the unidentified occupant of seat number45.
Of course, that extremestep could be avoided, if Belbo would only agree to cooperate. Ifhe were to say, for example, where the Templars' map was. And sinceMilan had become hot, because everyone knew the Intercity terroristhad boarded the train there, it would be prudent to deal with thematter in neutral territory: for example, Paris. Why not arrange tomeet at the Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de la Manticore, in a week'stime? But perhaps Belbo would be better advised to set off at once,before anybody identified him. Librairie Sloane, 3 rue de laManticore. At noon on Wednesday, June 20, he would find there afamiliar face, that bearded gentleman with whom he had conversed socordially on the train. The bearded gentleman would tell Belbowhere to find other friends, and then, gradually, in good company,in time for the summer solstice, Belbo would tell what he knew, andthe business would be concluded without any trauma. Rue de laManticore, number 3: easy to remember.
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Saint-Germain... verypolished and witty... said he possessed every kind of secret....Heoften employed, for his apparitions, that famous magic mirror ofhis...and through its catoptric effects summoned up the usual,well-known shades. His contact with the other world wasunquestioned.
¡XLe Coulteux deCanteleu, Les sectes et les societes secretes, Paris, Didier, 1863,pp. 170-171
Belbo was devastated.Everything was clear. Aglie believed his story, he wanted the map,he had set a trap for him, and now Belbo was in the man's power.Either Belbo went to Paris, to reveal what he didn't know (but hewas the only one who knew he didn't know it, since I had gone offwithout leaving an address, and Diotallevi was dying), or all thepolice forces of Italy would be after him.
But was it reallypossible that Aglie had stooped to such a sordid trick? Belboshould take that old lunatic by the collar and drag him to thepolice station; that was the only way to get out of thismess.
He hailed a taxi andwent to the little house near Piazza Piola. Windows closed; on thegate, a real estate agency's sign, FOR RENT. This was insane. Agliewas living here just last week; Belbo had telephoned him. He rangthe bell of the house next door. "Oh, that gentleman? He moved outyesterday. I have no idea where he's gone, I knew him only bysight, he was such a reserved person. Always traveling, Isuppose."
The only thing left wasto inquire at the agency. They had never heard of Aglie. The househad been rented by a French firm. The rent was paid regularlythrough a bank. The lease was canceled overnight; the firmforfeited the deposit. All their communications, by letter, hadbeen with a certain M. Ragotgky. That was all they knew.
It was impossible.Rakosky or Ragotgky, the colonel's mysterious visitor, wanted by DeAngelis and by Interpol, and here he was going around rentinghouses. In our story, Ardenti's Rakosky was a reincarnation ofRachkovsky of the Okhrana, in other words, the inevitableSaint-Germain. What did he have to do with Aglie?
Belbo went to theoffice, sneaking upstairs like a thief, and locked himself in hisroom. He had to try to think things through.
It was enough to drive aman crazy, and Belbo suspected he had finally gone mad. There wasno one he could confide in. While he was wiping the sweat from hisface, and mechanically¡Xwithout thinking¡Xleafing through somemanuscripts that had come in the day before, at the top of a pagehe suddenly saw Aglie's name.
He looked at the title.A little work by some run-of-the-mill Diabolical, The True Story ofthe Comte de Saint-Germain. He read the page again. QuotingCharcornac's biography, it said that Claude-Louis de Saint-Germainhad gone variously by the names of Monsieur de Surmont, CountSoltikoff, Mr. Welldone, Marchese di Belmar, Rackoczi or Ragozki,and so on, but the real family names were Saint-Martin and Marquisof Aglie, the latter from an ancestral estate inPiedmont.
Good. Belbo could resteasy. Not only was he wanted for terrorism, not only was the Plantrue, not only had Aglie disappeared in the space of two days, but,into the bargain, the count was no mythomane but the true andimmortal Saint-Germain. And he had never done anything to concealthat fact. But no, the only true thing, in this growing whirlwindof falsehoods, was his name. No, even his name was false. Agliewasn't Aglie. But it didn't matter who he really was, because hewas acting, had been acting for years, like a character in thestory we were to invent only later.
There was nothing Belbocould do. With the disappearance of Aglie, he couldn't prove to thepolice that Aglie had given him the suitcase. And even if thepolice believed him, it would come out that he had received it froma man wanted for murder, a man he had been employing as aconsultant for at least two years. Great alibi.
To grasp this wholestory¡Xmelodramatic to begin with¡Xand to make the police swallowit, another story had to be assumed, even more outlandish. Namely,that the Plan, which we had invented, corresponded in every detail,including the
