LACKING VIRTUES (8 page)

In a little anteroom just inside the restaurant, he received a thorough going over. The maître d’ gave him another rigorous exam but finally, if not enthusiastically, decided to let him in. He shelled out a large tip and managed to get a table by the window, separated from the Minister and his daughter by nothing more than a party of three security agents.

The view from the window was breathtaking. The ground on which the restaurant had been built was higher than the village wall, so you could see over it and down the mountainside. At the bottom of the precipice lights snaked gracefully along the jagged coastline. Out beyond the lights, the Mediterranean stretched to the horizon, vast and calm beneath a low crescent moon.

Inside the restaurant Steven had less to look at, as the backs of the agents, and then the even broader back of Michelet, blocked his view of Nicole, who sat facing him. At least it wasn’t a total eclipse, he thought. He could see a tanned, slender arm when she reached for something on the table, a sheath of lustrous black hair when she tilted her head to the side, an occasional bare shoulder when she moved one way and her father the other.

After many courses, consumed, from what he could tell, in near silence, Michelet excused himself. Two agents accompanied him, the third stood and stretched. Steven at last had an unobstructed view of the girl.

Nicole stared out the window, toying with her necklace. Then, as if the view weren’t enough to hold her attention, she brought her eyes around to him.

He was quick, decisive and confident. He spoke to her across the vacant table as if they were guests at the same party. He made innocuous small talk about the lovely village and the cuisine and how glad he was to have come to the south of France. He did it in a way that spared her having to respond.

She smiled at something he said, a dazzling smile he hadn’t seen before.

Michelet returned, paid the bill and hustled Nicole out. She smiled at Steven again as she passed his table.

He sat back, stretched and ordered a five-star cognac. This was an expense he didn’t think Sophie would mind.

Chapter Nine

Claussen got off the train at the Friedrichsstraße station, once the heart of East Berlin’s rail system. He joined the stream of workers heading for the huge ailing factories along the Spree.

Glancing at his watch, he ducked into a sidewalk bar for a roll, coffee and schnapps. He stood at a round table while he ate and read the three newspapers he had bought at the station kiosk:
France-Soir, Le Monde
and the
Daily Telegraph
.

He was disappointed. Like the rest of the subject matter he had covered since he had received the go-ahead from Delors – some privileged, some not – today’s news shed no light on the mystery of who, in addition to Delors, was paying his fee.

It was high time he solved that mystery, he thought. If he left Europe in the dark as to the identity of Delors’ backers, it would not auger well for his life expectancy. With a secret as ugly as theirs on their conscience, and the blood of thousands of innocent travelers on their hands, these men would want him gone forever the moment he completed his mission. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if they had already started planning for his elimination.

Claussen did not despise his backers for behaving the way he assumed: he would have done the same in their position. But he had to take care of himself. He was a realist. He knew he must have a device for offsetting their present advantage, a checkmate he could rely on.

He drained his schnapps. His concerns were still a little premature. Today was the day Maria was supposed to come to the island. She had been there when he and Delors had spoken, hidden in the overgrown boathouse, deadly as usual with her Leica. She had also monitored the receiver for the tiny bug he had installed under the dock. As a result of his preparations and Maria’s help, he had a taped record of Delors’ visit to complement the photos.

This was a good start, but it was only a start. Delors had no family. He would prefer death to revealing his backers. He was the real thing, a zealot who put the interests of his country ahead of his own well-being. He was blackmail-proof. To checkmate the others, whoever they were, Claussen had no choice but to uncloak them on his own.

Which was why he’d sent Maria to France the week after Delors had come to see him. She went armed with her knowledge of what Delors looked like and not much more. Claussen instructed her to try to spot him outside the Piscine, the Paris headquarters of the SDECE, and, if she did, to follow him wherever he went.

Claussen was guessing that the Deputy Director of the SDECE would embark on a fund raising drive when he returned to France. The task of finding that much money outside of official channels wouldn’t be easy. If Delors was able to rouse sufficient interest in the Airbus agenda, Claussen knew there would be several meetings before any agreement was reached. Hence his instructions to Maria to look for a series of meetings involving the same people, and to monitor the participants’ comings and goings for up to a month if she found something.

Claussen knew it was a long shot and did not give her a great chance of success. But as a tracker and recorder, she was a pro. He had learned a few years ago not to count her out. He had also learned that in his business long shots were not to be despised.

Claussen had come to Berlin to forge the documents he would need for his trip to the States. After availing himself of the KGB facilities he had set up in a rented warehouse after the Collapse, he caught the train to Neubrandenburg. He traveled second-class through the sandy pine forests of his youth, feeling reinvigorated. A tough mission always had that effect on him.

He got off the train at noon. From the station vendor he bought a bockwurst and roll, washed them down with a half-liter of pilsner and mounted his old bicycle for the 20 kilometer trip home.

In a village along the way, he picked up a fresh round black bread, a kilo of butter and a sack of brown farm eggs. When he arrived at his farmhouse in the early afternoon, his geese were hungry and cantankerous. He fed them ten kilos of the meat-laced dog food pellets that seemed to keep them more aggressive. Then he went inside to fetch his swimming bag.

He walked at a brisk pace down the familiar path to the river, enjoying the warmth of the July sun. When he reached the water’s edge he took the row boat instead of swimming to the island. He would have his swim when he got there, he decided, and return home warm and dry. He was respectful of the weather. The pale blue sky strewn with patches of dimpled white clouds told him rain was near.

Maria wasn’t there when he arrived. Claussen tied off the boat, stepped agilely on to the dock and traded his street clothes for swim trunks. He made seven brisk laps around the island, then climbed back up on the dock and stretched out in the last of the afternoon warmth to dry. He had dozed off when he felt Maria’s strong hands kneading the backs of his thighs.

“Walter,” she said, “your body only improves with age. Do you know how often I dreamt of finding you here like this. The entire time I was in France shooting your pictures, my fantasies obsessed me. Nothing I did to myself could sate my hunger for you.”

“That’s very flattering, Maria, but I’m much too old for you. If I’m what you want, you’ll have to live with deprivation. Were you able to bring me something useful?”

“Yes, Walter. Everything you asked for and more.”

“I’m pleased.”

Claussen lifted himself to a sitting position. He saw that Maria was wearing a string bikini. “My God, child, go for a swim.”

She stood, pretended to pout and dove in. Soon she was back beside the dock, holding her wet hair up with both hands while she treaded water with her feet. Claussen could not help admire her full breasts, thin muscular arms and high Slavic cheekbones. She was a beautiful woman, she was available. But in his long career he had never mixed work with pleasure. He did not intend to start now.

“The photos are in the boathouse, Walter,” she said. “Go on and have a peek if you want. I’d like to swim a few more minutes before it gets too chilly.” 

The boathouse was completely overgrown with tangled vines. From the dock it looked like nothing more than a clump of foliage. Claussen picked up his bag with his street clothes in it, ducked through a tunnel of vines and rushes and stepped inside. On the rough-hewn table lay Maria’s backpack and a fat manila folder. An unopened bottle of Armagnac stood beside them.

The first photos Claussen looked at were of an old country manor on the edge of a densely wooded hillside. The second set included five perfectly focused shots of Paul Delors. He was in front of the house, speaking with the driver of an unmarked van. Two workmen seemed to be preparing to conduct a security check of the premises.

The third set of photographs had been shot at night with an infra-red lens. Delors again. He stood in front of the entrance with a big slightly overweight man roughly his own age. The man had thick black hair and an irritable look on his face. They were greeting another man, who was short, stout and bald, and carried a slender attaché case.

The final set of photos was shot as the bald man prepared to leave. The quality was excellent. Dawn had come, making the use of the infrared lens unnecessary.

Delors stood near the doorway again. The large dark-haired man stood beside him, the same irritable expression on his face. The photographs left no doubt as to the men’s identities.

Claussen smiled to himself. If they had been planning to kill him when the job was done, they were going to have to revise their plans.

Maria came in shivering. He looked away while she stepped out of her bikini, dried off and dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. “Prussian summer,” she said.

Claussen smiled. “These are good. Excellent. You’ve done another piece of fine work, Maria, up to the standards we maintained in the old days.”

“Thank you, Walter. I brought a bottle of Armagnac back from France to celebrate.”

“I noticed.”

“Want a taste?”

“Go ahead. I’ll wait until later.”

“Are we going to your house, Walter?”

“Perhaps.”

Maria smiled with her broad, seductive mouth. “And you still plan to resist me?”

Claussen did not answer.

Maria took two glasses from the travel bag she’d brought along in her rowboat, set them on the table and filled one of them. “To us,” she said, drinking.

Claussen ignored her. He was leafing through the first set of photographs, lost in thought. “What’s the date on these, Maria?”

“The fifth of July, several days after I arrived. I suppose I got lucky. I was camped out across the street from the Piscine with the scope, pretending to photograph pigeons. Delors showed up for work in his own car around eight thirty. Ten minutes later he left the compound in an agency car with that truck you see in the photograph following him. The traffic was heavy in Paris, and also on the
autoroute
. It was a simple matter to join the convoy along with a thousand other cars.

“When they turned off, they ended up on a hilly, curvy country road. I hung back out of view, but I could see them ahead whenever they crested a hill. At the top of one of the hills, they turned into a long gravel drive. I went on past, parked my car and hiked in. There was an old barn about three hundred meters from the spot where they had parked. From the upper hayloft I had a perfect bead on the manor.”

“I believe the photographs show the forest of Fontainebleau.”

“Yes, Walter, a lovely place.”

“What about the other photos? When were they shot?”