Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

through the dining room into the kitchen, where I waved to the surprised cooks before proceeding out the back door, where Carlo was waiting for me in the narrow driveway used by delivery trucks.

At ten minutes to eight, Carlo was pulling the limousine up to the curb in front of Gerard Patreaux's modest stone house in a modest neighborhood just outside the Geneva city limits. Although Carlo insisted he had already eaten a large lunch earlier in the day, I knew he had not. I tried to get him to take some money to go and buy himself something to eat, but he refused. Gerard Patreaux suddenly appeared in the doorway of his home and solved the problem by inviting Carlo to come in and have a meal in the kitchen. This offer Carlo accepted. With my chauffeur ensconced in the kitchen and being served by a cook, Patreaux and I proceeded into his small study for drinks.

The Swiss was a slight man, five feet six or seven, with a gentle, caring face and expressive, light blue eyes. He poured himself a glass of wine, while I asked for a Scotch on the rocks. We chatted for a few minutes in the book-lined study, and I seized the first pause in the conversation to get to the reason for my surreptitious journey.

'Mr. Patreaux,' I said carefully, setting my drink down on a stone coaster on the stone table next to me, 'I have a reason for being here that I didn't want to mention over the phone. As a matter of fact, I could use your help.'

He smiled, shrugged. 'But of course. How may I be of service to you?'

'I need to talk to you about John Sinclair.'

It seemed to me that the question startled him for just a moment. He set his drink down, patted his mouth with a paper cocktail napkin, then stared at me quizzically. 'You mean John Sinclair the terrorist?'

'The same.'

He continued to stare at me, his face revealing nothing more than puzzlement. 'I'm afraid I don't understand,' he said at last.

'I was told by a friend of mine that you might have vital information about Sinclair that I could use. It's very important to me.'

Gerard Patreaux shook his head. 'Who is this friend?'

'His name's Veil Kendry.'

He thought about it, said, 'I don't believe I know a Veil Kendry. It's an unusual name. I would remember.'

'He said you didn't know him.'

'Then why should he think I would know anything about John Sinclair that could not be found in the newspapers?'

'Mr. Patreaux, I don't have the slightest idea.'

'Are you certain he meant me?'

'He definitely meant you.'

The Amnesty International official thought about it some more, then raised his arms in an elegant gesture of helplessness. He was beginning to look slightly pained, and I was beginning to feel more than a little foolish. My anger toward Veil was beginning to build again.

'Did this friend of yours give any indication of what it was that he thought I could tell you?'

'No, sir.' And he damn well should have.

'Perhaps he was playing a joke on you?'

'No,' I said, my renewed anger at Veil now blending with frustration at the thought that I was probably wasting my time in addition to risking arrest and incarceration for violating the ban on my traveling outside Zurich.

'May I ask why gathering information about John Sinclair is important to you?'

I proceeded to fill Gerard Patreaux in on the sequence of events that had occurred since I had acquiesced to Emmet P. Neuberger's plea that I come to Switzerland to check on the investigation into the theft of his foundation's money. Then I told him about the death I was leaving in my wake. I had rather hoped that my narrative might jog his memory, but the only emotions apparent on the man's face were pain and pity when I described the bullet-ripped bodies of the people at the hotel who had taken the bullets fired at me. He had been sitting very straight as I spoke, his eyes cast down. After I had finished, he sighed heavily, then looked up into my eyes.

'Dr. Frederickson,' he said softly, 'I can appreciate the grave circumstances which brought you here, and your present state of mind. The events are. . so recent. You must be in a state of great shock. I deeply regret that your friend was misinformed.'

It was my turn to shrug. 'Yeah, well, that's not your fault.'

'But you will still share a meal with me?'

There was a sour taste in my mouth and a knot in my stomach the liquor had done nothing to ease. I wasn't hungry. The fact of the matter was that I wanted nothing more than to go back to my hotel and go to bed. However, I was unwilling to offend the kind and gracious man who was my host, and so I resolved to try to be a gracious guest. I said that of course we would share a meal, and we rose and went into his dining room.

The fine dinner was built around thick Veal chops, and I found I had more appetite than I'd thought. Soon we were on a first-name basis, and I was glad I had come, despite my disappointment at not getting what I'd come for. I enjoyed the company of this man, and the meal and conversation provided a welcome respite from the tension and vivid memories of violent death that waited for me back in Zurich. Throughout dinner, as we chatted about the work of Amnesty International and other things, I thought I caught the other man watching me with an intensity that was incongruous with the relative lightness of our conversation, as if he were gauging, perhaps judging, me.

'Mongo,' Patreaux said to me as he poured coffee for both of us, then lit a French cigarette of aromatic black tobacco, 'if I may say so, I still don't quite understand why you are so intent on investigating Sinclair. This is clearly a police matter, and I'm told that Interpol, the Zurich police, and even the Swiss Army are pursuing the man with utmost vigor. What do you expect to accomplish that those combined forces can't?'

'They just want to catch him. I. . have something else in mind.'

Patreaux dragged deeply on his cigarette, then blew a thin stream of smoke out the side of his mouth as he raised his eyebrows slightly. 'Ah,' he said in a curiously neutral tone, as if he did not wish to insult me by pointing out how ridiculous I must have sounded. 'But how can you ever hope to find him in order to accomplish this 'something else' you have in mind?'

'Gerard, at the moment I don't have the foggiest notion. But the fact is that I'm highly motivated, since he seems to want to kill me. I don't know why, but I have the feeling that the key to understanding everything that's happening is in his past. If I can find out more about that past, it may give me the answer to the question of why he wants to kill me, and it may also give me some insight into how and where he may be vulnerable. It's a pretty faint hope, but it's the only one I have. I don't much care for playing the role of passive target, so I'm trying to find some way of going on the offensive. Poking around in his past is the only means of attack I have right now. If I can understand more about him, maybe I can find a way to defeat him.'

'I see,' Patreaux said distantly as he gazed over my head, as if there were something or someone behind me. He drew in another lungful of smoke, then abruptly stubbed out his cigarette, looked up at me, and smiled brightly. 'Well, then, perhaps you would care for some brandy?'

'Thank you, Gerard,' I said, rising from the table, 'but I'm going to pass on the brandy. I think it's time I went home. You've been a wonderful host, it was a lovely meal, and I thank you.'

I turned and started toward the kitchen to get Carlo, stopped when Patreaux said, 'It's occurred to me just now that I may know what it was your friend was referring to when he said I might be able to tell you something about Chant Sinclair.'

'Really?' I said, turning back to face the other man. The dinner, liquor, and talk had mellowed me, but now the tightness in my stomach had returned; but it was the kind of tension that hope can sometimes bring, and it was not unwelcome. 'And what would that be?'

'You will have some brandy, then?'

'Sure,' I replied in a neutral tone as I returned to my chair and sat down, watching him now as carefully as I thought he had been watching me all evening. 'I'm not driving.'