They turned onto Rue de Rome, the main route out of Marseilles to the south-east. Max had no particular destination in mind, but quitting the city appealed to his instincts. Meanwhile, there was information to be extracted from Meadows.
‘What did Nadia want with Count Tomura?’
‘I don’t know. I just drove her to the hotel, as instructed.’
‘You’re going to have to do better than that. Where’s Lemmer?’
‘I don’t know that either. He’s not in Marseilles, though. Nadia said he and Anna Schmidt would be arriving tomorrow morning.’
‘Are they leaving for Japan with the Tomuras?’
‘I haven’t been told.’
‘
Guess
.’
‘Then, yes, I think they are.’
‘Why?’
‘It’d have to be another guess.’
‘Fine.’
‘Lemmer’s going to sell his network to the Japanese. He tried to make some kind of deal with them during the war. Now he’s trying again. Spies in every Western capital? It should be too good for them to refuse.’
‘How do you feel about it?’
‘Resigned. It’s a new world now the war’s over. We have to live by its rules.’
‘Or die by them.’
‘That’s you, Max, not me. You won’t kill me as long as I do whatever you tell me to do.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘You’re too much of a gentleman to be an executioner. You shot down all those German pilots in fair combat, didn’t you? And you did for Grattan and Hughes on the same terms. I’m a prisoner of war. The Geneva Convention applies.’
‘Not to traitors.’
‘You still won’t kill me in cold blood. I’m going to outlive you, Max, I guarantee it.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
‘No.
I’ll
see. Dead men are blind. And that’s what you are: dead. You just don’t know it yet.’
Max could not have said whether his contempt for Meadows was greater than Meadows’ contempt for him. The wretched man was right in one fundamental: Max had killed a lot of people. But he had never murdered anyone. And he was not about to start.
Still, the gun gave him the upper hand. Meadows had more or less admitted he would not resist. They drove on out of the city, climbing into hilly country through scattered hamlets as the sun sank behind them and the air cooled.
Eventually, Max ordered Meadows to pull off the road. They came to a halt on a stony verge beneath a steep shoulder of wooded land.
‘Keep the engine running,’ said Max. ‘Empty your gun and drop it on the floor. Then empty your pockets as well.’
Meadows obeyed without venturing any comment.
‘Get out of the car and walk away from it.’
They emerged together. Meadows took half a dozen slow paces away from the car along the verge. At a word from Max, he stopped.
‘Turn round.’
Meadows turned. Max was already pointing the gun at him. ‘Tell me, how does a man like you live with himself?’
Meadows shrugged. ‘I manage somehow.’
‘Your treachery will catch up with you sooner or later.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
‘What does Lemmer have in mind for me?’
‘I don’t have conversations with him, Max. He doesn’t confide in me. But if you want my opinion, you pose a serious threat to Count Tomura. I don’t know why. Maybe you know. I reckon Tomura wants Lemmer to neutralize that threat. It’s probably a precondition for Tomura brokering Lemmer’s deal with his friends in high places in Japan. You’re got rid of. And Tomura has no part in it. His hands stay clean.’
Max had suspected as much from the conversation he had overheard. ‘
There must be nothing that can connect me – or my son – to this
,’ Tomura had said. ‘
It will be so
,’ Nadia had assured him. That was why she had said, ‘
This should not be settled here
.’ Because it was vital Count Tomura and Noburo Tomura should both be able to deny involvement in Max’s demise.
‘You want my advice as well as my opinion?’
‘No. But I’ll hear it anyway.’
‘Run. Get the hell away from here. Lemmer will be banking on you trying to defeat him. That’s a fool’s game. See sense. Run and hide. It’s your only hope.’
‘It’s a sure way to lose a fight.’
‘In the air, maybe. Not down here on the ground. Not this kind of fight.’
‘Lemmer didn’t corrupt you, did he, Meadows? He just recognized your corruption.’
‘Sticks and stones, old boy.’
Max raised the gun and trained it at Meadows’ chest.
‘You won’t do it. You’re just not cut out for it.’
‘No?’
Meadows shook his head. ‘No.’
‘You’re right. I can’t kill a defenceless opponent. But I can slow him down.’
Max lowered the gun, took aim and fired a bullet into Meadows’ right foot.
MAX LEFT MEADOWS
nursing a mangled foot by the roadside and drove on through the hills to the fishing village of Cassis, where he found a room for the night and contemplated his situation over
bouillabaisse
and rough red wine.
Meadows’ advice was sound enough. He was a marked man. Flight
was
the sane recourse. But his appointment with Dombreux, though it might well be a trap set for him by Lemmer, might also be a heaven-sent opportunity to arm himself against Lemmer. The ‘
great secret
’ could be his grand chance.
Besides, sane or not, flight was ruled out by the pledge he had given Appleby and C. Lemmer had to be stopped. And Max was going to stop him. Or die in the attempt.
He headed out before dawn the following morning. Daylight stole after him on the road back to Marseilles. The country was clear before him. The sky was unbroken blue. It was the day.
He reached the sea again at the racecourse by Prado beach and drove along the shore road past empty bathing stations and deserted promenades. The Corniche led him towards Malmousque, with the Iles du Frioul basking in pale gold early sunlight out in the bay. The Château d’If looked improbably small from where he was, almost a toy castle compared with the vast fortress he had imagined as a boy. Experience had altered the scale of things. It made what he was about to do seem both rational and reasonable. The war had returned to him.
The entrance to the Villa Orseis was on the Corniche as Dombreux had said, but the building itself was shielded from view by a high boundary wall, tall trees and another villa closer to the road.
The gate was closed and padlocked. Through its bars, Max could see only parts of the villa’s terracotta-tiled roof and cream-washed walls. He scaled the gate, using one of the orb-topped side pillars as a foothold, before clambering down on the other side.
An avenue of plane trees led to the house through a forest of shrubs and bushes long left to run riot. There was no clue as to whether anyone was at home or not. The drive was free of wheel ruts. Birds were singing, but he could hear no human voices. No doors slammed as he approached. No stoutly shod feet crunched on gravel.
The villa was vast, though cramped somehow by its overgrown setting. The roof rose in three tiers, with tall, idiosyncratically shaped chimneys. Beside the pillared porch, a wisteria-swagged pergola ran the length of a lower-storeyed wing. Most of the windows were high and arched, though some on the top floor were square or circular. Max neither saw nor sensed any movement within. An air of melancholy and desertion possessed the place.
He walked up the steps to the front door. He heard the inner latch rise as he turned the handle. The door opened. He went in.
A galleried landing ran round the wide, marble-floored entrance hall. The roof high above was beamed. From it, on a rope thick enough to hold a liner at her mooring, hung an enormous chandelier, shrouded in muslin. The furniture was dust-sheeted. Whatever lives had been led there were now suspended.
Max moved through open double doors into some kind of music-room. Beneath more dust-sheets stood a grand piano and a harp. Fine curtains reduced the light from the vast windows to a grey suffusion. The stillness was tangible.
Then, at last, came a sound that told him he was not alone. A door opened. Footsteps rang on marble. He drew his gun. Another door opened, into the room where he was standing.
‘Don’t shoot,’ said Pierre Dombreux. He walked slowly in, his hands theatrically raised. ‘I’m unarmed.’
Any doubt that Dombreux was still alive vanished. Max recognized him at once from the photograph Corinne carried with her, though his appearance was no longer as healthy and carefree. He looked haggard and wary, slightly stooped, his dark hair flecked with grey at the sides. The suit he was wearing had also seen better days. It was rumpled and threadbare.
‘Hello, Max.’ Dombreux advanced across the room, his hand outstretched. ‘It is good to meet you at last.’
Max lowered the gun, but made no move to shake Dombreux’s hand. They eyed each other, suspiciously on Max’s part, ironically on Dombreux’s, to judge by his lopsided smile.
‘Thank you for coming.’
‘You must have known I would.’
‘There is no certainty in the prediction of other people’s actions.’
‘What’s your connection with this house?’
‘A good friend of mine inherited it. But he was killed during the last weeks of the war. I believe his cousins are disputing ownership. Meanwhile, I have a set of keys – and my late friend’s consent to make use of it.’
‘If the authorities knew you were alive . . .’
‘They would ensure I did not remain so. But you will not give me up, Max, will you? And nor will Corinne. Where is she?’
‘On her way back to Nantes.’
‘Good. I am glad. I should have left her in peace. I will now.’
Dombreux threw back a dust-sheet from one end of a low sofa and sat down. He gestured for Max to take one of the nearby armchairs. Max did so cautiously, without removing the covering sheet.
‘Won’t you put your gun down? You’re not in danger here.’
‘How can I be sure of that?’
‘You can’t, of course. But I am unarmed.’ Dombreux took off the jacket of his suit with a flourish and tossed it down beside him. It was hard to see how any weapon could be concealed about him. Max laid his gun on the shrouded arm of the chair. ‘There is no one else here. You have my word. Though I do understand you may not think I can reasonably expect to be taken at my word.’
‘Who died in your place in Petrograd?’
‘I don’t know. There are few luxuries in Russia under the Bolsheviks. But at least unidentified corpses are readily available.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘Myself, of course. From time to time, I’ve hired out my talents to the Russians and the Germans. Even to the Japanese. And to
la belle France, naturellement
. But none of them owns me.’
‘That’s a fancy way of admitting you’re a traitor to your country.’
‘Perhaps I am. But I am not a traitor to your father’s memory.’
‘Pa never mentioned you to me.’
‘Ah, but then there were many things he never mentioned to you, no?’ Dombreux flapped his hand apologetically. ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to offend you. Your father was a fine man. From what I hear, you are a credit to him.’
‘Who have you heard that from?’
‘Do the details of how I have survived – who has helped me, who has not – really matter? We are here because of Lemmer and Tomura, Max. We are here because they killed your father and now they have killed Kuroda. Next it will be you. Unless you strike at them first. Unless I give you the
means
to strike at them first.’
‘You promised in your letter you’d tell me everything.’
Dombreux nodded. ‘I will.’
‘According to Corinne you imparted a great secret to Pa while you were in prison in Petrograd.’
‘Yes. I did. He did not believe me. He did not want to believe me. I do not blame him. I would not have wanted to in his place. When he learnt in Paris that what I had said was true, he acted as I would have expected him to act: the only way a man of honour could act.’
‘What is the secret?’
‘I have a letter you should see. Read that first. Then I will tell you the rest. It is from Jack Farngold, sent to your father in Petrograd a year and a half ago. Your father never received it. Lemmer ordered me to intercept it. At that time, I took his orders. That is, I took some of them. I made sure he never obtained the letter himself. Though he knew what it contained, of course. That is certain. Come. Let me show you.’
Dombreux rose and led the way back out through the door he had entered by. Max stood up and followed him.
They crossed a corridor and entered a study. There was a bookcase along one wall, draped with a dust-sheet, but a broad desk with a buttoned-leather chair behind it were uncovered. There were several cardboard boxes stacked beside the desk, beyond which French windows gave onto a terrace, where the flagstones were sharply divided between sunlight and shadow. In front of the windows was a dust-sheeted object on a triangular stand. Max did not know what it was: a telescope, perhaps.
‘The letter is in the file.’ Dombreux pointed to a folder lying in the middle of the desk. ‘Please sit down and read it.’ He stood back to let Max pass.
Max rounded the desk and flipped the folder open as he lowered himself into the chair. The first thing he saw inside was a frayed manila envelope, addressed to
Sir Henry Maxted, British Embassy, Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya, Petrograd, Soviet Russia
. It bore a muddy green stamp, illegibly franked, and jottings in different hands in both Japanese and Russian, as well as a single word in Russian rubber-stamped in red.
Beneath the envelope, still folded to fit into it, was the letter itself. Max opened it out. There was no address at the top, though there was a scrawled date:
6.X.17
.
Sir Henry
, it began,
you and I have never met, although I have
—
Max felt a sudden stabbing pain in the back of his neck just above his collar. In the fraction of a second it took him to realize Dombreux had moved out of his sight while he was concentrating on the letter and was now behind him, all his energy seemed to drain from him like water from an emptying basin. He managed a half-turn, sufficient for him to glimpse the syringe in Dombreux’s hand. Then he slumped back in the chair and began to slide helplessly out of it.