The Venetian Affair (3 page)

The Frenchman pointed to a gendarme who was patrolling the background in quiet boredom. “He will show you.” And then, to Mr. Goldsmith, “Would you like to rest? Please sit down over there.” He turned to a woman whose bracelets jangled as she searched for her keys half-heartedly, hoping her sweet smile would save her trouble. “Open everything, madame.”

“No,” Mr. Goldsmith said angrily. “No, I am first.” And indeed, he had his suitcase unlocked.

At that moment, three short and violent explosions burst savagely into the quiet room. Everyone jumped. Two of the officials ducked automatically. The woman with the bracelets screamed. Fenner spilled the water he was carrying. Mr. Goldsmith, after a violent start, stood rigid. The gendarme, the least perturbed—either he had been the first to realise the explosions were outside on the street or he had become accustomed to such disturbances—noticed Fenner’s accident. Quietly, he himself brought another cup of water for the man who stood at the counter. “
Le voici!
” he said crisply, tapping the man’s shoulder to draw his attention.

Mr. Goldsmith’s head made a slow half-turn. Suddenly, the ridges of agony on his face were no longer controlled. He moaned and slipped to the ground, his eyes staring with incredulity at the ceiling.

“We shall take care of him. Please continue!” the gendarme told Fenner and the woman, and signalled to the nearest porter to help him lift Mr. Goldsmith away from the counter. Fenner obeyed: the order made good sense; those who had been cleared were to move out; those still to be examined were to stay where they were, under the official eye. A little commotion like this one would be made to order for any smuggling. So he looked around for another porter.

The Customs official was repeating “Everything to be opened, madame!” The woman recovered herself sufficiently, bracelets jangling with haste, but first, as her gesture of sympathy to the poor man who had collapsed almost at her feet, she lifted his raincoat from the floor and placed it neatly on the counter beside some luggage.

Mr. Goldsmith’s eyes watched her. He tried to speak. He
shivered. He managed the word “coat”.

“His coat!” the gendarme said to one of his helpers. “He wants his coat over him.” The porter moved quickly to the counter—the woman was anxiously explaining the contents of several plastic jars; the Customs official was opening them carefully—and seized a coat lying near the sick man’s suitcase, bringing it quickly back to throw over the inert legs. Mr. Goldsmith was quite helpless now, his eyes closed, one hand feebly clutching the edge of his raincoat as if it comforted him.

Fenner had found a young and agile porter. “Over there,” he said, pointing. “A brown suitcase, a brown bag, and a raincoat. That’s all.” The porter darted ahead of him, toward the counter. There, the Customs official was looking dubiously at the contents of a jar, trying to reason out why one woman could need so much face cream for a two weeks’ stay in a city that had practically invented cosmetics. The woman was saying anxiously, “It’s
only
night cream, the kind I
like.
I didn’t
know
if I could get the same brand—” She paused helplessly, watching a penknife gingerly testing the opaque, heavy mess. She paid no attention to the porter, who collected two pieces of luggage and a raincoat with great efficiency and speed.

Mr. Goldsmith was being placed on a stretcher. A doctor, a nurse, an attendant surrounded him. The gendarme, back on normal duty, saw Fenner hesitate and look in the direction of the little group. “Please proceed,” he told Fenner, pointing toward the exit. The porter was already there, glancing around impatiently, hurrying on as Fenner started after him into the giant entrance hall, glass and more glass, people and people, arriving, leaving, waiting, searching, talking, looking.

“Want a lift?” a voice asked at his elbow, and laughed.

Fenner swung around. Mike Ballard? Yes, Mike Ballard. Fenner recovered slowly from his several surprises. First, he hadn’t expected anyone to meet him, and most certainly not Ballard, whom he had known only slightly in New York before Ballard had come over to work under Keir in the
Chronicle
’s Paris Bureau. That was four, if not five, years ago. Secondly, Ballard had changed. He had added a bulge to his waistline, a jowl to his square-shaped face, and removed a couple of inches from his thatch of dense-black hair. His dark eyes were satisfied, his mouth was soft-lipped and relaxed, he smiled readily. An easy-going type was Mike Ballard, who—judging from his clothes, and they were the third surprise—had come to appreciate the finer arts of dressing as well as the food and wines of France. The fourth surprise was simply that Ballard was not the type to drive all the way out to an airport to meet an early-morning arrival unless something pretty special was involved. For Ballard, since Keir’s heart attack last spring, was now acting head of the
Chronicle
’s Paris Bureau. Also, Ballard liked his comforts. “Expecting someone important?” Fenner asked with a grin.

“You,” Ballard said, administering the fifth surprise. “What kept you so long in there? Come on, this way. Where’s your porter?”

“He guessed the wrong direction, I think. He’s over there, just beyond that character in the yellow tie.”

Ballard waved his arms, but the porter didn’t notice. Fenner started briskly after the man, gave a whistle that stopped the porter in his tracks. It also made several other people look around sharply. Only the man with the yellow tie paid no attention; he didn’t even halt his steady pacing. The porter,
quick to cover his miscalculation, headed back towards Ballard, whose arm was still signalling. “There’s a hired cab waiting in the parking lot across the road,” Ballard told him. To Fenner, as he returned, he added, “Seemed easier than bringing my car. I don’t drive so well at this time of the morning—not after last night’s party.”

“You’re taking too much trouble,” Fenner said. It was the usual polite formula, but he meant it. For the last hour he had been looking forward to arriving in Paris. By himself. He didn’t need a conducted tour. All he wanted was to drive, alone to his favourite hotel on the Left Bank, with a guaranteed view of the Seine from the balcony of his old room. And there he had planned to bathe leisurely (unless a shower had been added since his last visit), shave, and enjoy a second breakfast with the morning sunlight on the trees outside for company. Now he would have to invite Ballard for breakfast, and listen, and talk. He would be lucky if he didn’t find his whole day arranged for him.

“No trouble,” Ballard lied gallantly. “Besides, someone had to steer you to the right hotel.”

“I’ve got a hotel.”

“Not any more. It was bombed yesterday.”

“What?”

“Secret Army stuff. Oh, it was bound to spread to Paris. We have had bombs and machine-gunning in the provinces all summer. It was bound to spread. I got you a room at the Crillon.”

“Thanks. But isn’t that a bit rich for a drama critic’s blood?” Certainly too steep for his pocketbook.

“Not after I got a ’phone call from the old man yesterday, telling me you were coming over.”

“From Penneyman?” Fenner gave up counting surprises, this morning.

“Well—he was on the ’phone about something else. But he mentioned you. Told us to let you have free run of our files if you needed them.” There was a look of speculation in Ballard’s side glance. “So I figured your expense account was good. Also, I hadn’t the time to go shopping around for hotels last night.”

Fenner felt churlish. “Sorry I gave you so much trouble.” He still couldn’t find a reason for it though. “Thanks a lot.”

“My pleasure.” They had crossed the broad, handsome road. “There’s my driver, willing and waiting.” And the porter was already stacking Fenner’s possessions in the front seat, eager for his tip, impatient for another job. (Ballard had the money out, brushing aside Fenner’s arm reaching into his pocket.) “Besides,” Ballard said as they settled themselves in the small taxi and were off, “someone had to come out here and identify the pieces.”

“What pieces?” Fenner asked absent-mindedly. He was marvelling at the speed with which they were negotiating the clover-leaf that led them on to the expressway.

“Yours. There was a bomb threat against Orly this morning. Didn’t they tell you? No, I don’t suppose they would. I bet they searched the baggage pretty thoroughly though. They always do that when they’re jumpy.”

“There was a moment when we all jumped,” Fenner said with a smile.

“The three explosions? Just a truck expressing its opinion. A plastic bomb has a real bang to it.” He shook his head, and his grin faded. “It was bound to spread,” he said. “The damn fools.”

Once they entered the new expressway to Paris, the journey promised to be quick and direct until the immediate approaches to the city were reached. But Ballard’s conversation, even if it was headed in one direction as determinedly as this
autoroute
, had as many crossways and detours as any old-fashioned road. It was loaded with questions, asked and unasked. Fenner resigned himself to the inevitable and roused himself from his pleasant after-arrival lethargy. Ballard, after several hours of sleep in a comfortable bed, was expansive. He always had been a compulsive talker: silence worried him.

“How long are you staying?” he asked suddenly.

“In Paris? Probably only a few days, at first. I’ll return by mid-September for a couple of weeks.”

“That’s wise. Not much theatre to see in Paris right now. What are your plans?”

Fenner answered as briefly as possible. He had had to
explain all this so often in the last few weeks—vacation plus research, plus articles, plus future visits to other countries, plus other articles—that it had become a standard routine. It now embarrassed him to listen to himself.

Ballard was smiling, but not so easily as he usually did. “Come off it, Bill. You don’t have to tell old Mike all that theatre stuff.”

“Theatre stuff,” Fenner said, “is my business.”

“You were a newspaperman long before you were a critic.”

“Meaning?”

“What story are you after? This Secret Army Organisation? Doesn’t old Penneyman trust me to handle it?” Ballard was smiling broadly.

Fenner’s astonishment gave way to perception. Was this the reason why he had been met at Orly? “I’m after no story. All I’m interested in is a book. Eventually.”

“Wish I had time to write a book.”

“Yes, that’s all it takes.”

Ballard glanced at him quickly.

Fenner was studying the invasion of suburban houses, glimpsed briefly before the expressway burrowed more deeply between its high banks. “Am I wrong, or didn’t there use to be a lot of woods around here?” That would turn the conversation nicely, he thought.

“There are still plenty of forests around Paris,” Ballard said defensively. “We’ve rented a place out on the Bois. You must come and visit us when Eva and the kids get back from Brittany.”

“How many do you have?”

“Three. Four in December.”

“Busy man.”

“Too busy to take a vacation this year—there’s a lot to handle at the office, with Keir sick.”

“How is he?”

Ballard shook his head, pursed his lips. “Old Penneyman had better stop hoping.” He hesitated. Then, “Keir has been off the job since April. When is Penneyman going to admit that Keir is never going to get back on it?”

“When Keir admits it, probably. Heart attacks aren’t always the end of a man’s career. Relax, Mike. You’re in line for the job when it’s declared vacant. By the way, there was a case of heart attack, or something pretty close to it, at Orly this morning. Fellow just folded up—”

“In line for the job—” Ballard laughed briefly, bitterly.

Fenner kept his eyes on the cars they were passing.

“Or perhaps he just likes to keep me dangling,” Ballard added, but genial again, as if to sweeten his criticism of Walter Penneyman.

Fenner moved a cramped leg. “He likes Keir a lot,” he said uncomfortably. “Keir isn’t old. If he makes a good recovery, he could go on for another fifteen years at least. If he were ditched now, he’d probably be dead in six months.”

“Sure, sure,” Ballard said. He lapsed into unusual silence. When they reached the Porte d’Italie and the beginning of the city proper, he came to life. “Cut left as soon as you can,” he told the driver, “and get on to the Boulevard Raspail.” But the driver had his own ideas of a quick route. Ballard didn’t argue. He laughed and shook his head. “We’ll take almost as long to reach the Place de la Concorde as we took to get here,” he predicted. “By the way, did you see Walt Penneyman before you left?”

“Yes.”

Ballard’s gloom returned.

Fenner said, “But he didn’t talk about Keir. Or the Paris office. He is making a speech next week in Washington, and that’s filling his mind.” But as he spoke he began to wonder why Mike Ballard had not been given the job of visiting Professor Vaugiroud. Or perhaps it wasn’t an important-enough assignment. “I have a professor to visit—”

“I’ve told my secretary to give you all help with the addresses of people you have to see. I’ll be out of Paris for the week-end.”

“Belgrade?”

Ballard shook his head. “I’ve got a man there covering that neutralists’ conference. Nothing important is going to happen anyway. It will be a nice long week-end with not one screaming headline in sight.” The prospect pleased him. He slapped Fenner’s knee. “Even the acting head of the Paris Bureau has to get off the chain now and again. Right?”

Perhaps... and perhaps not. It depended on how much the acting head wanted to be head.

“So old Penneyman is giving another speech in Washington. What’s his subject this time? Don’t tell me—I can guess.” Ballard struck a pose of upward and onward. “The freedom of the Press depends on its integrity!”

“Something like that.”

“He never gives up, does he? He was harping on that back in April, when he flew over here for two days. Two days—imagine that—for Paris! I thought he was going to give all of us heart attacks. I’m just getting the office back into shape now.”

“I’m not following you.”

“He didn’t tell you?” There was a look of relief in Ballard’s
eyes. “Oh, you know—the Great Rumour of April. CIA urging French generals to revolt in Algiers. Remember?”