“Arthur,” he could hear Dominique saying, “please don’t think that I’m being impolite and don’t want your company, but I met this absolutely fabulous man and stayed out much later than I should have, and I’ve a terrible head on top of it all. Please be a dear and cease these elaborate courtesies and tell me why Johnny sent you. Then I could go back to bed for a week or so and you could go and do … well whatever you do, Arthur.”

  She was right, Nick thought. She was born for the stage.

  “You velly funee girl, Mamlazelle Dominique,” Arthur’s voice came drifting back. “Johnny not know where you go after big leception last night. Big flacas, Johnny plenty woree.”

  “Personally, I left before any fracas got started and where I went—just between you and me and the gatepost, Arthur—is none of Johnny Wu’s damn business.”

  With this Arthur appeared so taken that his reply was lost in the cackling of his laughter.

  “While we’re giving Johnny Wu the good word, Arthur,” Dominique went on, “You might also tell him I’m through doing favors for him. I learn from my American colleague the photograph I had circulated among the airport reporters was of an intelligence chap and has nothing to do with his personal business. Tell him I want nothing to do with being suckered into l’espionnage. I’m strictly a good-time girl and I like living.”

  “Johnny want you to come see him at chateau,” Arthur said flatly.

  “Tell Johnny some other time. Tell him I’m busy. Tell him I think I’m in love.”

  Arthur’s tone took on the reprimanding note of a fussy old maid.

  “Johnny want to see you leal bad, Mamlazelle Dominique. You know how Johnny get. Make velly bad.”

  “Tell him Dominique is sorry about that. Meantime, do drop in again the next time you’re in the neighborhood.”

  “Johnny say, Arthur, you tell Mamlazelle Dominique if she come, by chateau for dinner tonight he give her prenty big exclusive flom China, no other leporter, lire service get. Prentee big sloop.”

  “Scoop,” Dominique said, “but I see what you mean.” Suddenly she emitted a hideous shriek that nearly brought Nick in, his gun blazing. “My God, Arthur, my coffee’s boiling over. I’ll be right back.”

  She came dashing around by the back door and raised her eyebrows to see if Nick understood. He nodded and gave her the go sign. She shook it off the first time but assented when he insisted.

  She came back into the living room.

  “Excuse me, Arthur. Quel mess. All right. Tell Johnny it’s a deal but I’m not feeling very friendly right now. It’d better be good, and if he fouls me up on this, tell him I’ll spill some of the raunchier details of his private life to the columnists so fast his head will spin.”

  “Johnny say biggest sloop of your life, you no leglet it.” There was a brief silence. Arthur gave no indications of leaving. Nick began to get worried.

  “Arthur, dear,” Nick could hear Dominique say in her silkiest tones. “Do me a great favor and stop staring at me like that. Many of the girls have remarked in the powder room that your stare adds a distinctly unpleasant note to your otherwise classic features. On your way now and tell Johnny Wu to have the cocktails cold about eight.”

  Arthur’s high giggle filled the room again. He sounded as if he were departing. Nick relaxed and waited for Dominique to come back and tell him the coast was clear. Of course, there was no telling what she might whisper to Arthur as he left, but it was hard for Nick to believe that she could be working with, the Chicoms.

  Last night had been clean and fine. From now on he was going to be using her. The fact that the stakes were the lives of literally millions of people didn’t make him feel any better. It wasn’t one of the nicer parts of serving the government.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a gruff voice behind him. Nick spun quickly trying to conceal the Luger. The voice that hailed him belonged to one of the most frizzled, blood-shot-eyed old tramps he had ever laid his eyes upon, the old clochard was sitting on a neighboring barge and swigging periodically from a bottle of poisonous-looking Algerian wine.

  “I said, do you have a cigarette, mate?” the voice croaked in French. Nick couldn’t help laughing.

  “Do I look as if I have a cigarette?”

  The figure gazed back at him owlishly.

  “All right, all right,” he growled. “No need to get rude about it, mate. Are you going to kill someone with that great Boche gun of yours? Perhaps you will slay your mistress? for very little grisbi, I will keep my mouth shut to the cops.”

  “I’ll let you know when I decide to,” Nick said. “Then you can be my character witness.”

  “That will cost you extra,” the old one said calmly and went back to his juice. At that moment Dominique appeared in the door.

  “Who or what is that?” Nick asked indicating the old tramp.

  Dominique stuck her head around the door, smiled brightly and waved.

  “Bonjour, Henri. How goes it today?”

  “As bad at least as yesterday and better in all probability than tomorrow, cherie,” the old one replied waving back. Dominique drew Nick inside.

  “That’s Henri, the clochard, which is what you call in English a bum. I tell the police that he is my handyman when they try to pick him up for vagrancy. Of course he does no work at all unless he is truly starving. It is lucky I have no reputation to lose or I would be ruined. He is a terrible gossip.”

  “He can’t be too much of a buddy,” Nick said. “He thought I was going to shoot you and offered to sell me his silence.”

  Dominique looked at him and smiled fondly.

  “He is loyal but not stupid. He would have taken your money then warned me. And now, monsieur,” she said letting the kimono fall to reveal the ever-enticing curves beneath, “let us return to bed. If you are especially good to me, I will listen carefully to your instructions about what to do when I get to Johnny Wu’s chateau.”

  Nick had other things in mind but nothing that couldn’t wait They returned to the bedroom at once, and it was some time before they lay again, side by side, smoking and talking.

  His instructions were simple enough. They were simply for Dominique to keep the appointment with Johnny Wu, give every appearance of cooperation and return to Nick with whatever information she could acquire concerning Chicom operations in regard to Kathy Lin.

  “You have no way of finding Kathy Lin before she arrives at that cafe tomorrow night?” Dominique asked.

  Nick shook his head. “The CIA has agents working on it but they don’t expect to come up with much. In the only picture of her we have, she’s in the baekground and her face is partially obscured. And at the same time the Chicoms must have dozens.”

  “Merde,” the French girl said, “I wish I had taken her picture when I interviewed her. I hate to see the poor kid walk into a trap.”

  “We’ll see what we can do about that,” Nick said stretching lazily.

  “Ah ha, yes,” Dominique smiled. “It will be wonderful. That wretched Johnny Wu will not have a chance. You will take the girl like that,” she snapped her fingers crisply. Then she wriggled across the bed toward Nick, her arms outstretched, inviting him toward the voluptuous comfort of her body. Nick felt himself stirring at the sight of her. He wrestled her down on the bed and sprang to his feet with a great show of energy, grinning broadly.

  “Places to go, people to see, baby. I could not love thee half so much …”

  “Cochon, pig,” she spat at him and followed up with a string of idiomatic obscenities too occult for Nick to catch more than half of them.

  “Believe me it hurts me more than it does you,” Nick said with huge good humor. “How about getting your buddy Henri to have a look topside and see if there are any sinister Orientals or strangers of any kind lurking in the neighborhood.”

  He walked briskly toward the bathroom, studiously ignoring the seductive movements of her body on the bed. “I’ll be cleansing myself of the sins of the night and the morning too if anybody wants me.”

  “Good,” Dominique shouted happily. “I’ll help. I once interviewed a Japanese hostess…”

  Nick rejected the offer firmly and locked the door as a precaution. As he closed the door Dominique was replacing her kimono with a philosophical expression on her face, and sauntering toward the back door.

  Nick spent some minutes under a steaming hot shower that left him a parboiled red, then switched to cold and came out feeling fine. He examined himself in the mirror and was satisfied. The knife cut he had sustained in last night’s street fight was a mere scratch and healing nicely. He couldn’t find an extra ounce of fat on his body. He had finished his daily immolation in the pure discipline of yoga by the time Dominique returned to shout through the door that Henri said that the coast was clear. By that time Nick wasn’t feeling anywhere near so full of himself and had his mind strictly on business.

  He had a fast cup of coffee with a quiet Dominique who sensed that his mood had changed. He made arrangements to meet her when she returned from Wu’s chateau. Then he went lightly up the stairs to where the Jag was parked.

  His shirt was a total loss and, in any case, it was necessary to change his clothes, so he stopped briefly at his hotel. He was not surprised to find that it had been discreetly searched. Since he had naturally not been stupid enough to leave the old Gladstone bag in which he carried a great many of the more revealing tools of his trade in the room, he was missing nothing.

  He gave Rusty Donovan a call, kidded him gently about his misadventure of the night before and told him to be at a certain restaurant noted for its cuisine and wines in an hour and a half. If I’m blown, Nick reasoned, I might as well enjoy it. Too often his contacts had to be made in the dreariest of greasy spoons. He then took a ride in the Jag down to the AXE depot and got on the picture-phone to Hawk.

  Hawk looked a little tired. Nick told him so.

  “This is getting more complicated every minute, Nick. I hear rumblings out of China. I may. have to pull you out of Paris and send you in to get Dr. Lin in a hurry. The Chicoms are getting frustrated trying to find that girl. If they do get her back, I know he’ll never leave. If they don’t get her, they may do something nasty to save themselves the huge propaganda loss of Dr. Lin’s defection. Let’s have what you’ve got.”

  Nick told him clearly what had happened since he last talked with him. Hawk listened attentively, not interrupting, and appeared satisfied.

  “Of course,” he said ruminatively, “if this St. Martin woman turns out to be a double you’re … er . . up the creek, aren’t you, son?”

  “To a certain extent, yes,” Nick said, “but it can’t be helped. She’s proven pretty valuable already, sir.”

  “As a morale builder?” Hawk remarked. Nick studied his cuffs and out of the corner of his eye caught the trace of a smile on Hawk’s tight old lips.

  “You might be interested to learn, Nick, that her family had heavy investments in a North Vietnamese rubber plantation. That could be used to bring pressure on her.”

  “I’ll find out about that right away, sir,” Nick said. Quickly he outlined a certain plan he had in mind. Hawk nodded affirmatively as he listened.

  “I think that should do it, Nick. Just one last thing. When you find the Lin girl, get hold of the signet ring she wears. It was her mother’s and will prove to Dr. Lin that we actually have his daughter safe and sound. It’s important.”

  “Check,” Nick said. “I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can after the rendezvous.”

  Hawk was already on another phone as the screen went blank.

  Nick then stepped into one of the outer offices and requisitioned some very special equipment.

  Chapter 8

  HENRI’S FERRY

  THE SQUARE, with its old stone church, cobbled streets and awninged cafe was right out of Utrillo. But the neighborhood had grown up and grown dingier since Utrillo’s day and the church and the cafe were dwarfed by ramshackle industrial buildings that surrounded them. Heavy traffic crawled along the broad streets and heavy housewives walked from shop to shop with their ever-present string shopping bags with golden-crusted breads extending from them.

  A newsboy walked through the cafe with his tabloids which were selling well on that particular day. The headlines were attractive. They read: Chinese Trade Envoys Slain at Society Party. One of the men at the bar purchased a tabloid and smiled slightly as he read the lead story. Since he was a particularly grubby and unwholesome specimen even for this neighborhood, nobody noticed. Presently he was joined by an equally villainous-looking companion and the two left the bar together.

  Shortly thereafter they mounted to the cab of a parked feed van, the larger of the two men nipping from time to time on a bottle of cheap wine and permitting dead Gauloises to hang from his lower lip at the same time—a trick worthy of the great Jean Paul Belmondo himself.

  The old van found its way through the immediate suburbs, then struck off across open country for several miles. The men stopped their truck at roadside cafes, here and there, and bolted a shot of cognac without speaking to any of the other working men or farmers, then proceeded on their way again.

  Shortly before dark they made a final stop and lingered at the bar until the sun hung just above the edge of the trees. They were too dirty and obviously foul-tempered for anyone to be interested in striking up a conversation—which was just fine with them. After they left they turned off the main road and bounced along a little-used backway for a couple of miles. At one point the bigger man signaled the driver to stop and pointed off into the spring green woods at a dirt road that led to a wooden gate.

  “That’s where I want you to wait,” the large one said. “Just before you get to the gate, there’ll be a good-sized clearing that can’t be seen from the road. Park there facing out. It’s a little under a mile from the chateau. And, Rusty,” the big one said laying a hand on the driver’s arm, “don’t get trigger happy. This has got to be clandestine and I mean it.”

  “Don’t worry, N3,” the driver said, “I can wait to pay the Chicoms back for last night. What I want to know is how you knew the clearing was there.”

  “They ought to teach aerial photographic interpretation in the grade schools nowadays, the way things are going,” N3 grinned. “And if you step out of character for a second from here on in, I’ll brain you.”

  The truck moved on and Nick crouched down on the floor out of sight. It stopped once at the main gate to question the guard on the best road to the stables. They knew of course. The point was to establish the illusion that there was only one man in the truck, because it was coming out that way.

  Both men sat up in the cab, as the van rolled down the long drive toward the stables which wound through a column of graceful, budding trees which serpentined across the lush, green lawns. In front of the long, freshly painted stables, both men dismounted and began to hurl bags of feed furiously to the ground. A man in a leather apron advanced slowly, horseshoeing hammer in hand, and stared at them.

  “Hey,” shouted the smaller of the two villainous-looking Vanmen, “who do I get to sign for this here feed?”

  The man in the apron scratched his head.

  “I didn’t know any feed was ordered. The trainer isn’t around right now.”

  “This is a special mixture. They wanted it for this afternoon,” the vanman growled. “Are you going to sign for it or not?”

  The stableman looked doubtful.

  “I don’t know if I should. The owner himself is out riding and should be back soon. Perhaps he’ll know what to do.”

  The vanman sputtered a long string of obscenities ending in the statement that he couldn’t wait around all night until the stable personnel got organized.

  “Never mind,” he finished up, “I’ll put it back on the truck but don’t call us with any more rush orders. I don’t care if your nag drops dead from, starvation at the starting post.”

  “All right,” the stableman sighed, “I’ll sign.” He scrawled his signature over the false invoice and the sullen vanman went back to the truck without so much as a bonsoir.

  “We’d better get the hell out of here,” he muttered to his companion. “Wu is out riding and due back any minute.”

  “Okay,” Nick said, “let’s roll. When you get to the turn-around, I’ll tell you where to drop me. You’ll have to go out by the main gate but just tell the guard you got lost. He’ll let you out”

  As they drove away, Nick kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror. He saw Wu ride Up to the stables, dismount and talk briefly with the aproned stableman. In a moment the Chinese spymaster shrugged and turned away. Nick had no time to see anything more. They had passed into the woods. Rusty stopped the truck on his signal. Nick dropped lightly from the cab and went to the rear of the van. There he removed a long aluminum polelike device mounted on a wire shoulder piece, like a burp gun and a portable power pack.

  “Allez-vous en,” he called softly to the CIA man, “take off,” and the truck rolled off through the woods. Nick waited by the edge of the trees. Within two minutes the sun went down. His timing had been nearly perfect. It was now dark in the woods although the sky was Still lit by afterglow.

  Stealthily, Nick moved through the woods, finding his way to his objective as surely as if he had been born on the estate. In five minutes he was at the edge of the lawn and could see the last light of day reflected from the old stones of the chateau.

  A car was coming up the long drive. Nick smiled. Dominique was driving a considerably more conservative Sedan. He wondered how she had explained the loss of the Mercedes to her family. Knowing her, it must have been something good. He saw her stop at the stone bridge over the moat and go in.

  Softly Nick ran from tree to tree down the long line of oaks until he reached the tree that he wanted. The first branch was twenty feet above him. From-over his shoulder, he took a light-weighted nylon mountain climber’s cord and threw it up over the limb catching the weight coming down. Then he slung his equipment over his shoulder and slithered up the rope in short overhand pulls, caught the limb above and dropped onto the big branch as lightly as a cat. He pulled the rope up after him and settled down to work with his equipment.

 

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