“Do you think someone hired him at the pub?” asked the detective.
“The pub? No. He got odd jobs sometimes in the morning.”
“Would he have gotten paid in advance for an odd job?”
“Not usually.”
“Which pub?” asked Dean.
The woman looked at him, surprised by Dean’s accent.
“I’m an observer from America. Learning,” he added.
“Kind of old to learn,” she said.
“Never too old to learn something useful,” said Dean.
“It was the Golden Goose, around the corner and down the block.”
“Would you happen to have a photo of him?” asked the detective.
The woman’s lower lip began quivering again as she got up from the table. The picture showed Kensworth — in life, Gordon Pierce — ten years before, hair already white, face well lined.
“It might be good if you could come over to the station with me,” Lang told her.
She nodded once, then burst into tears.
22
Deidre Clancy had begun to feel foolish the moment her father said he had succeeded in getting “Mr. Karr” as her escort back to Paris. She’d mentioned him as a joke — completely and totally and utterly a joke — but her father tended to be literal minded, and once he set his course it was impossible to get him to deviate.
Which didn’t mean that she didn’t want to see the handsome man who’d retrieved her purse, just that she wanted to see him under some circumstance other than as her minder.
Now she bristled as she waited for him in the car, torn in all different directions. They had tickets on the Eurostar and had been instructed to show up an hour before departure. They were running very late; depending on traffic they might not make the train at all. Deidre hated to be late; it was a trait she shared with her father.
Finally Karr materialized, strolling from the doorway with a casual air, a backpack over his shoulder. He turned back and yelled something to one of the people inside, waved, and laughed. The driver held the rear door for him; Karr bowed his head as if it were all a joke and slid in.
“Hey there,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“We’re running a little late,” she said.
“You don’t think they’ll hold the train for you?”
Clearly he thought she was a spoiled brat — or even worse. As the car wended its way through traffic, Deidre watched out the window, annoyed at the entire situation. Meanwhile, Karr leaned back in his seat and seemed to doze. Then about halfway to the station he sprang to life as they bogged down in traffic.
“OK, let’s go,” he said, opening the door.
“What?” she asked.
“Pop the trunk.”
Before she or the driver could say anything else, Karr had jumped from the car and was at the trunk. He grabbed her bag as it sprang open, then swung around to her side. She got out.
“This way, quick,” he said.
She headed toward the curb, hesitating as she reached it because she’d forgotten to close her door.
“Come on, let’s go,” said Karr, looming over her. He gave her a gentle push and she started running, unsure what was going on.
“Left,” he told her, walking behind at a pace that wasn’t quite a trot. “Into the tube.”
She stepped to the side at the doorway. He slid a ticket into her hand as he passed, walking quickly through the gate and then onto the escalators. He kept up the same brisk pace and they arrived on the platform just as a train was pulling in. They hopped in.
“Two stops,” he said.
“Are we being followed?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. The train was crowded; they had to stand near the door. Deidre squeezed toward him as the train stopped to take on more passengers. She reached toward her carry-on bag, but he shook his head.
It wasn’t until the train stopped that she realized that they were at Paddington train station. He was out of the car so quickly that she had trouble keeping up; not until they made it upstairs did she point out that the Eurostar train for Paris left from Waterloo.
“Really?” Karr grinned and didn’t stop walking.
“We’re going to the airport?” she said when she saw the sign for the shuttle over to Heathrow.
“Very possibly,” said Karr. “But we’ll have to see how it plays.”
They made the shuttle just as the doors were closing. Karr produced two tickets for the conductor.
“Are we being followed?” Deidre asked finally.
“Not that I know of.”
“Why are we going by airplane instead of taking the train?”
“I like to fly,” said Karr.
“I don’t like this.”
“Which?”
“I don’t like being kept in the dark like this. What’s up? Why are we changing plans?”
“For one thing, you bought the ticket in your own name, and you did it a few weeks back,” said Karr. “So anyone interested in you had plenty of time to figure out where you’d be.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t being followed.”
“You’re not,” he told her. “But I am.”
LaFoote had nearly lost the American agent at the embassy; he’d had to circle on the bicycle at a distance until the car finally left. Luckily, he’d guessed not only that the man would be in the car but also that at some point he would abandon the vehicle, for either a second one or the tube. The retired French agent had spent nearly fifty pounds on the secondhand bicycle and felt a twinge of regret as he tossed it to the side before entering the tube station. But at least he’d made the train, getting in a car behind the American and the girl.
Given that some sort of mistake he had made had allowed his meeting to be compromised, LaFoote felt vindicated that he had at least managed to guess correctly that the government agent would return to the U.S. embassy. He hadn’t managed to get onto the shuttle for the airport. He considered hiring a car but decided instead to fall back on a second plan — he’d go to London Airport instead, where he knew he could catch a flight to Paris. He might not beat the Americans — there were three flights over that they could take before he’d land — but he had a friend who worked for Air France who could watch the terminal for him. LaFoote called her from London and described the pair to her.
“Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,” said his friend, who like LaFoote had worked as a spy some decades before.
“If Fred Astaire had blond hair and was over two meters tall, yes,” LaFoote told her.
“I think you’re getting paranoid,” said the runner in Karr’s ear when he finally made it to the restroom at the back of the airbus en route to Paris.
“Paranoia is healthy,” Karr told him. “It’s an old guy. He was on a bike.”
“I really think you’re hallucinating,” said Johnson.
“Could be. You have my rentals ready?”
“I scrounged up two stiffs from the embassy in Paris,” said Johnson.
“Good. Talk to you then.”
Out in the cabin, the pilot was flashing the Buckle Up sign and preparing to descend.
