The Ways of the World Read online

  He fastened his shoes decisively, donned his hat and coat and set out.

  It was not until the train from Epsom reached Waterloo and Sam stepped out on to the platform that he decided to go through with it. Even then, absolute certainty only descended on him as he threaded his way through the surging mass of homebound commuters filling the concourse. He retrieved the bag he had deposited earlier in the day at the left-luggage office and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had not packed it in vain. He would head for Westminster Bridge when he left the station and reach Victoria in time for a bite to eat before the Paris sleeper was due to depart. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound, Sam,’ he murmured to himself as he went on his way. ‘You’re better off chewing croissants than baking buns.’ Already, he felt better for knowing that he was not going home.

  Just as it had for the bustling commuters at Waterloo, so the working day had ended for Corinne Dombreux. She was confident Spataro had spoken to Zamaron by now, but until she had some confirmation of that she would remain anxious and fretful. Urging calm upon herself, she walked slowly home by her normal route.

  The black Citroën parked by the kerb outside 8 Rue du Verger had no police markings, but was familiar to her as a model used by the higher echelons of the préfecture. This, it seemed to her, could only indicate that Spataro had indeed said his piece.

  As she neared the car, the passenger door opened and Commissioner Zamaron stepped out. He looked sombre and serious, as well he might, considering the coach and horses Spataro’s change of heart had driven through his absurd explanation for Sir Henry’s death. Corinne lengthened her stride and looked hopefully towards him.

  MAX TRIED HIS level best not to look at the clock too often as he waited for Monsieur Buisson in the Café Sans Souci. The establishment was only a short walk from Gare d’Auteuil. Many of its customers were on their way home from wherever they worked. There was a high degree of coming and going. By lingering as long as he already had over his coffee and hair-of-the-dog cognac, Max felt he had made himself more conspicuous than was wise. And his perusal of the copy of Le Figaro he had brought with him for camouflage was beginning to feel unsustainable.

  Every time the door of the café opened – which was frequently – Max glanced across at the newcomer. Ireton had told him Buisson would be carrying a cardboard map-tube. He would join Max at his table long enough to down a coffee, then leave – without the tube. A few minutes later, Max would also leave – with the tube. It really was exceedingly simple. All Max had to say to Buisson was ‘Monsieur Ireton vous prie d’accepter ses excuses.’ Buisson, in all likelihood, would say nothing.

  But the clock told Max, when he succumbed to temptation and looked at it, that Buisson was nearly a quarter of an hour late. Much longer and the delay would assume ominous proportions. Max sighed and decided to light another cigarette.

  Just as he took out his cigarette-case, the door hinge gave a now familiar squeak. He glanced across the café. And there was Buisson, a portly, middle-aged man with flushed jowls and small eyes peering anxiously from beneath the brim of his hat. He held a briefcase and furled umbrella in one hand. The map-tube was thrust under his other arm like a swollen swagger-stick. Max rubbed his brow with his left hand, the signal Ireton had instructed him to use. Buisson nodded and moved in his direction.

  He sat down with a sigh reminiscent of a slowly deflating bicycle tyre and laid the map-tube on the vacant chair between them. ‘Bonsoir,’ he murmured, slipping off his hat to reveal a head of pomaded hair. Max noticed two symmetrical rivulets of sweat working their way down his temples. The sight was nether edifying nor reassuring.

  ‘Bonsoir,’ said Max. ‘Monsieur Ireton vous prie d’accepter ses excuses.’

  ‘Ses excuses,’ echoed Buisson. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed his moist upper lip. ‘Bien entendu.’ He cast Max a skittering, panicky glance. Then, suddenly, without waiting to order the coffee that would have given his presence in the café a semblance of normality, he stood up, grabbed his hat, briefcase and umbrella and made for the door.

  A second later, he was through it and gone. The waiter who had been bearing down on their table shrugged and retreated. Max went ahead and lit his cigarette with studied calmness. He glanced down at the map-tube. There it was, left as agreed. But Buisson’s discomposure could hardly have been less in keeping with the supposed simplicity of its delivery. Something was wrong, something to which the pointer, he sensed, was Buisson’s reaction to Ireton’s absence: ‘Bien entendu.’ He understood, apparently. But Max did not.

  He finished his cigarette, inspected the bill and laid down enough coins to cover it. Then, taking the map-tube with him, he rose and walked casually across to the coat hooks at the rear of the café. He balanced the tube on one of the hooks while he put on his coat and hat, then retrieved it. He was ready to leave.

  But Max had no intention of leaving by the front door. He had already reconnoitred an emergency exit and, though he could not be sure whether the emergency was real or imagined, he had decided to use it.

  He slipped through the door leading to the toilets, but ignored the steps leading down to them and pressed on through another door marked DEFENSE D’ENTRER into a decrepit storage room and out of that via a dank and dripping stairwell into a rear courtyard.

  There was no lighting. He trod cautiously on the slimy cobbles and reached the corner of the building where an alley led to the street. No one was visible. A car drove slowly past as he watched, the engine labouring. He saw no cause for alarm and moved into the alley.

  As he did so, a caped and uniformed policeman stepped into the mouth of the alley and looked straight at him. ‘Ici,’ he shouted.

  Max turned and ran. He heard the shrill blast of the policeman’s whistle behind him and a percussion of footfalls. The rendezvous at the café had been a trap. He had not walked directly into it, but he was scarcely out of it either.

  There was a glimmer of light ahead on the far side of the courtyard. A street lamp he could not see dimly illuminated the exposed flank of a half-demolished building. There was a scalable wall ahead of him and a void beyond it that promised escape. He ran towards it, unable to see what might be in his path, and collided blindly with a cart stowed in the corner of the yard.

  Ignoring the sharp pain in his knee where he had struck the cart, he glanced back and saw several milling figures in the alley. He had only seconds to elude his pursuers. He stuffed the map-tube inside his coat, jumped up on to the cart and launched himself at the top of the wall.

  It was all that remained of an originally higher wall. The surface was jagged and crumbling. Max found a clawing hand-and-foot-hold and virtually fell over it, descending into a rubble-strewn demolition site. His hat fell off in the process. He could not see it in the darkness and had no time to look for it. He hobbled through an invisible chaos of toppled bricks and other debris to a narrow street where there was at least some light, chanced his arm on a right turn and broke into a jog, suppressing the desire to run headlong for fear of the noise his shoes would make on the cobbles. There were shouts behind him that sounded promisingly confused, but no sound of actual pursuit. He jogged on, favouring the more shadowy side of the street.

  He could see a junction with a wider street about fifty yards further on, but fifty yards was a long way. Sure enough, the police had negotiated the wall and the demolition site before he had covered the distance. There were loud shouts behind him. Torch beams flashed. Whistles shrieked. They had spotted him.

  As he reached the junction, a dark saloon car appeared, bursting out of the night from nowhere, headlamps blazing. It swerved across the road and skidded to a halt at the kerbside next to him. Through an open window, a familiar voice addressed him. ‘Get in.’ It was Schools Morahan.

  For a second, Max hesitated, then wrenched the rear door of the car open and threw himself in.

  The car started away with a squeal of tyres and a surge of acceleration, pushing Max back against the seat. />
  ‘Where … where did you come from?’ he panted.

  ‘The right place at the right time. There’s nothing I could have done for you if you’d walked out the front door of the café. You’re smarter than you look. And I see you got the package.’

  The map-tube was protruding from Max’s coat. He pulled it out and dropped it on to the seat beside him, then nearly fell on to it when Morahan took a sharp left, followed shortly by a right and another right along quiet, poorly lit side-streets.

  ‘What’s in the tube?’ Max demanded.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. Ask Travis.’

  ‘Did he know he was sending me into a trap?’

  ‘He had doubts about Buisson’s reliability. Seems he was right.’

  ‘So, to hell with me?’

  ‘Not quite. I came to get you, didn’t I?’

  ‘They could easily have caught me.’

  ‘But they didn’t.’

  Another abrupt left turn took them on to a broad road running alongside a railway viaduct. Morahan seemed to relax. The road was straight and clear ahead, but he slowed slightly and blithely lit a cigarette.

  ‘No one’s following us. The flics who were chasing you were on foot and they won’t have been able to get a car on our tail. You can relax.’

  ‘Thanks so much.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Are you taking me to meet Travis?’

  ‘No. I reckon back to your hotel’s best. See Travis in the morning. You won’t feel so hard done by then.’

  ‘You want to bet?’

  ‘If you like.’

  It was hard to sustain the anger Max felt for the way he had been manipulated in the face of Morahan’s cool-nerved off-handedness. And, though he would not have admitted as much, he had actually rather enjoyed himself. It was good to be back in action – albeit a very different kind of action from his days in the RFC. He sighed and rubbed his throbbing knee. ‘Who is Buisson?’

  ‘Something middle-ranking at the conference printing works.’

  ‘What does he supply – secret documents?’

  ‘Ask Travis.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll just keep the tube and see for myself what it contains.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that.’ Morahan glanced at Max over his shoulder, the shadows inside the car rendering his expression indecipherable. ‘And we don’t want the evening going sour on you, do we?’

  MAX WAS ROUSED the following morning not by the alarm clock but by the telephone. Looking at the clock, he saw it was only just gone seven. The merest trickle of daylight was edging round the curtains. After the evening he had had, it was an awakening he would have preferred to be postponed indefinitely. But the hope instantly seized him that the call related to Spataro, news of whose recantation was overdue. He grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that you, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Sam here, sir.’

  Good God, it was Sam Twentyman. Max sought in vain for a plausible explanation. Surely he could not be calling from London. ‘What? Where are you?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘You’re here? In Paris?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Arrived on the sleeper a couple of hours ago. Not too early for you, am I?’

  Max stumbled down to the lobby with his thoughts whirling. He was still bemusingly exhilarated by his close shave in Auteuil, but he was well aware that the incident illustrated just how duplicitous Ireton could be. He was also troubled by the continuing silence where Spataro was concerned. Sam’s sudden appearance was a complication he would have preferred to avoid. He had not expected his friend to run him to earth, though he knew why he had. The sad truth was that Sam would soon discover he had had a wasted journey. Max supposed he should have spared him that.

  There was a surprise in store for Max, however. He realized when he reached the lobby and caught sight of Sam, travel-weary and tousled but smiling the same old dependable Twentyman smile, that he was damnably pleased to see him. He piloted him out to the café he had taken Corinne to the previous morning and stood him a breakfast he looked in sore need of.

  Max contented himself with coffee and cigarettes and listened with mounting concern to Sam’s account of the difficult, not to say expensive, week he had had. In Sam’s mind, the flying school was clearly still a viable proposition, notwithstanding Ashley’s ominous utterances. Max had not appreciated just how heavily he was relying on it. Allowing him to continue relying on it was unconscionable.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ he said at last. ‘You should understand that Surrey Wings is almost certainly a non-starter.’

  ‘A non-starter?’ It was obvious from his tone that Sam did not want to believe it. ‘Why?’

  And so Max set out the reasons. They hinged on the whole question of his father’s death. Another surprising realization came to him as he explained why he was certain Sir Henry had been murdered and how he had so antagonized Ashley by maintaining as much that there was no possibility of Gresscombe land being used for their flying school. The realization was not a new one. Max had simply forgotten the bond of trust that he had established with Sam during the war. The plain fact was that Sam Twentyman had probably saved his life a dozen times in a dozen different ways by his assiduousness and ingenuity. He had never once let Max down. And there was no one else of whom that was true.

  ‘I have to stay in Paris until I get to the bottom of this, Sam. You can see that, can’t you?’

  Sam nodded. ‘I see it, right enough. That brother of yours, sir, if you don’t mind me saying, is—’

  ‘A first-class shit. I know. But he’s cock of the walk now. And you were lucky. You didn’t meet my sister-in-law. She pulls the strings. And she doesn’t like me one little bit.’

  ‘Sisters-in-law can be like that.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to abandon our plans. I’m sorry, but there it is.’

  ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t say that, sir.’

  ‘I know. Look, Sam, why don’t you stay at the Mazarin tonight and see a bit of gay Paree before you head back? We can paint the town red tonight. I’ll pay for your accommodation and you’ll be home in time to reclaim the deposit on those blessed planes.’

  ‘Ah, home.’ Sam looked wistful. ‘Not sure I’ve properly got one of those any more.’

  ‘Maybe there’s some other pilot you served with who’d be interested in starting a flying school.’

  ‘None I’d trust further than they could fly without an engine.’

  ‘It’s a bugger, Sam, I know.’ Max spread his hand sorrowfully. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘I appreciate that, sir. And I appreciate the offer of a night in Paris. It’s handsome of you. I’ll take you up on it.’

  ‘Capital. Let’s get you booked in, then I must run.’

  ‘This Ireton, sir …’

  ‘You’re going to tell me he sounds like a wrong ’un.’

  ‘Well, if the scrape you got into last night is anything to go by …’

  ‘I’ll be on my guard, don’t worry. I won’t let him pull a stunt like that again.’

  ‘Seems to me you need as much looking after here as you did at the Front.’

  ‘Possibly. But, fortunately for you, looking after me is no longer your job. Whatever trouble I may get into, I’ll have to get myself out of it.’

  After securing Sam a room at the Mazarin, and wishing him a pleasant day’s sightseeing, Max took a cab to 33 Rue des Pyramides, where Malory, dressed this morning in a fractionally lighter shade of tweed, informed him that he was expected (as well he might be, Max thought) and should go straight into Ireton’s office.

  ‘Morning, Max.’ Ireton greeted him with a broad smile and an expansive gesture that raised loose lassos of smoke from his cigarette. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I think sore would capture it in your vernacular.’

  ‘Ah. Schools said you seemed to be limping when he left you last night. But you�
��ve bounded in here in sprightly fashion, so I guess you’re nursing nothing worse than a few bruises.’

  ‘No thanks to you.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair. I chose a meeting-place with a rear exit, didn’t I?’

  ‘But you didn’t tell me I’d need to use it.’

  ‘Call it an initiative test.’

  ‘I call it being set up like a decoy duck.’

  ‘You sound angrier than you look. More fun than you’d have expected, was it, Max? Maybe it stirred a few happy memories of dogfights over no man’s land.’

  ‘You lied to me, Travis.’

  ‘Not at all. It should and could have gone as simply as I said. But obviously they rumbled Buisson and he told them everything.’

  ‘And what’s everything?’

  ‘I’ve been paying him to supply me with copies of the proofs of Supreme Council minutes and consultative papers so that my clients can have advance notice of how the great and not necessarily good plan to carve up their nations. It’s his word against mine as far as that goes, of course, since I didn’t walk obligingly into the trap last night and the person who did got clean away. So, all’s well that ends well. Or as well as it can be, considering the documents Buisson gave you are certain to be fakes and now I have to recruit someone to replace him, which won’t be easy. Rumour has it they’re going to limit the decision-making from here on to a new Council of Four – Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando, Wilson – because there have been too many leaks.’ Ireton grinned. ‘You could say I’m a victim of my own success.’

  ‘My heart bleeds for you.’

  ‘Don’t take it like that. Sit down, Max. I’m a man of my word. You deliver for me; I deliver for you.’

  With a show of reluctance, Max sat down. ‘Do you know who killed my father?’

  ‘No. But I might know why he was killed. Ever heard of Fritz Lemmer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Lemmer would be disappointed if you had. He was the Kaiser’s spymaster. Well, maybe he still is, in a sense. A former naval officer turned intelligence-gatherer. A shadowy figure, by choice and need. Thirty years in the game, apparently.’