The Venetian Affair by Helen Macinnes
“All right,” she said, capitulating. “Now,” she added, watching the crowded hotel entrance as the boat eased broadside against the floating landing stage, “we smile, and smile and smile.” Oh, God!
The assistant manager was just about to leave. He looked at the two sun-reddened faces and the damp swimsuits. “Did you have a pleasant day?” he began politely, wondering what had brought this handsome couple to his office.
“Marvellous,” the lady said. Mrs. Langley, that was her name; a widow. And so young, so beautiful. Life was sad.
“It’s about our rooms,” the tall American said.
The assistant manager stopped looking at his clock. “Is something wrong?” And he must not be late, he thought worriedly. This evening he was entertaining his bank manager at his house.
“Not wrong. But not exactly right, either.”
“Please?”
“There must have been a mistake.”
“How—a mistake.”
“About Mr. York telephoning—”
“His secretary telephoned me. This morning. From Zurich.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure he did. But he didn’t telephone you about us. There must have been some mistakes in the names. I’m afraid we have these rooms on false pretences.”
The assistant manager’s English failed him. “Prego?”
“We don’t know Mr. York. When you spoke to us this morning, I assumed he was a friend of Mrs. Langley’s. She thought he must be one of mine. It was only when we were on our way to the Lido that we discovered neither of us knew Mr. York.”
The assistant manager relaxed. He could even glance at the clock again. He said gaily, starting to shepherd them to the door of his office, “Ah, it is all a little comedy of errors? But if you like the rooms—”
“They are excellent.” The American was standing his ground.
“In that case, what is there to worry about?”
“Two things. First, Mr. York’s friends will expect to have these rooms when they arrive.”
The assistant manager’s dark eyes drooped tactfully. There had been no mistake about the names, he told himself. What was behind all this? “And secondly?” he asked.
The American lowered his voice, spoke with considerable embarrassment. “I’m afraid these rooms will be too expensive for me. I did, you know, book two rooms from Paris yesterday afternoon. I think they’ll suit my expense account.”
The assistant manager’s eyes opened wide. So there was the true explanation. Film stars were lordly and impulsive creatures, but they forgot that their friends’ expense accounts rarely measured up to theirs. “In that case,” he said, “let me see if your original rooms are still available. One second, please.” He picked up his telephone and made contact with the reception desk. There was a sharp volley of rapid Italian. The assistant manager was the winner. He replaced the telephone, eyeing the clock, and said, “If you will go to the desk, Mr. Fenner, they will be able to help you, I think.”
“Thank you,” the American said briefly as they left. But then, to be embarrassed, in this way, in front of the beautiful Mrs. Langley, did not help any man to be voluble in his expression of gratitude. The assistant manager followed them at a tactful distance, in a thoroughly good humour: so there were some Americans who had to worry about money, too.
“Neat,” Claire said, after Fenner had arranged the transfer of rooms at the desk, and they were on their way to remove their possessions from the terrace view.
“Easy,” he told her. “All I did was to lose face.” It was little enough, he thought grimly. That ought to make them believe our story, even if nothing else does. How much is believed, by this time: all the story we have so carefully built up around ourselves, half of it, none of it? Are all our precautions quite useless? If so, we are in a completely comic situation bound for a tragic ending. We shall have as small a chance as poor old Neill Carlson.
“I’m coming in while you pack,” he said as they reached her room. She’s going to break down again, he thought worriedly, she’s really going to let down every guard this time. He closed the door behind him. “Claire!” She was standing at the French windows, looking out on the terrace, seeing, hearing nothing. “Claire,” he said, coming over to her. She turned to him blindly, and he put his arms around her, holding her closely. He could feel the silent sobs racking through her body. He held her like that, saying nothing, letting the seconds slip away while he kept his arms tightly around her.
She took a deep, steadying breath. “It’s my fault.” She tried to wipe away the tears with the back of her hand. “He is dead. It’s my fault.”
“No.”
“But it is,” she cried out. His assignment in Paris was over, she thought in anguish. He was going back to Germany. “He didn’t have to come to Venice. He wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t been here. He wouldn’t—”
“He would have,” Fenner insisted. He glanced around him worriedly, wondering if some visitor to Tarns’s room this afternoon had been able to come in here and plant another of those hellish contraptions to trap their words. So he didn’t risk speaking what he wanted her to hear: Neill Carlson had known what was at stake; he had come to Venice for the same reason that Chris Holland was here. More was involved than a letter, or Sandra’s escape. Much more. “Believe me, Claire!” he said. “Please believe me.”
Claire saw his glance, his worried eyes. She heard the intensity of his voice. And she left her private world of regret and remorse, and came back to reality. She nodded. “I believe you,” she said at last. “I’ll start packing.” Her eyes, too, searched the room quickly. And then they met Fenner’s. “All right,” she said, “let’s get this job finished.”
“We’ll finish it,” he said quietly.
19
Two men sat in a darkened room. Outside was the shadowed stillness of a narrow canal threading its cold, black way between the high walls and barred windows of quiet houses toward the warm glow of sunset on the broad and bustling Rialto. But here, in this room, the drawn shutters cut off the distant sounds of life. Here, behind locked doors, Venice was forgotten.
The two men were on board the Simplon Express. They listened to the rattle of its wheels, to the voices of a man and a woman talking happily, clearly audible except when the brakes screeched to give warning of a curve ahead on the railroad track. They might have been sitting in a neighbouring room of the sleeping car, with a connecting door left ajar to let them overhear Claire Langley and William Fenner discussing themselves in between filling out details in Customs declarations.
They listened intently. They were both men in their middle forties, obviously affluent by their excellent clothes and careful grooming. One was Fernand Lenoir, dark-haired, tall, thin, with the diplomatic manner, now permanently established even if it was far from natural, of a government official whose career depended on politeness to his equals and deference to his superiors. The other was shorter, more heavily built. His brow was heightened by thinning reddish hair, which had receded in an even line; his face, blunt-featured and broad, was sallow and coarse-skinned, unprepossessing from a close front view—the eyes were small, closely set, clever-quick; the mouth was wide, thin-lipped, determined—but in profile, with the expression lost and only the strong bone structure showing, it could be called handsome. He was a man of many names, many interests, and one ambition. For the last fifteen years he had been known to most people as Robert Wahl.
Robert Wahl... Naturalised Frenchman, a clever writer turned subsidised business-man, with money made in publishing and in radio, and, in recent years, a small but valuable reputation as an original in the film world. His real name? Alexei Kalganov, a name that existed more in top-secret files than on people’s tongues. His face had appeared only twice in print. The first time was in a photograph taken at a May Day celebration in Moscow when Kalganov had stood third from the left behind Stalin, and the foreign experts on Soviet affairs had wondered for four days—until another international crisis had sent
Even Fernand Lenoir, who had been working under his direction as far back as 1944 when Vaugiroud had been marked for liquidation—an intransigent bourgeois intellectual who would always rally to any resistance, a potential leader who must be eliminated with the Nazi retreat—never mentioned the name of Kalganov. Or addressed him as Kalganov. It was an identity he guarded, like the Neolithic men who hunted and fought and died as Running Wolf, Sitting Bear, Bird-in-the-Grass, but whose real names were kept hidden to give them secret strength, to protect them from their enemies. Kalganov would have been the first to scoff at religious superstition, but he clung to the practice of supersecrecy as the first law of self-preservation; and in this he was not far removed from those he sneered at. Only in the form of his self-perpetuation did he differ from those who aimed, by their deeds at a Happy Hunting Ground, a paradise beyond this life: his deeds if successful, would be the shaping of history, and that was something which could never be undone. He would have his own kind of immortality.
Lenoir rose impatiently. They were coming to the end of the recorded conversation. “Good night, Claire,” the American’s voice was saying, “Mes hommages.” After that, there would only be the interminable sounds of a train, its passengers silenced by sleep, climbing its way up toward Switzerland. Lenoir moved to turn off the machine. “That’s all,” he said.
“Leave it!”
Lenoir’s hand hesitated and stopped. He didn’t show his annoyance. He lit a cigarette, and walked around the room, stretching his shoulders. Gold and cream and faded green—the room’s elegance was a piece of the past, like the dust-smeared candelabra and the chipped teardrops of the crystal lamps; a place only fit to be rented to some antique-crazy American who had replaced the English as upholders of what was finished and over. Still, it was a strongly built house, well silenced, remote from the busy little streets and square behind it, yet central enough to be useful.
“Keep quiet!” Wahl commanded, and listened intently to a sound track recording the nothings of an empty night journey.
He is always thorough, too thorough, Lenoir thought. A virtue, of course. But does he never become bored with his virtues? Lenoir studied Wahl’s expressionless face. Never, he decided. He moved with his crisp step toward the room’s communicating door, heavily ornate with late Renaissance panels and tarnished, silver handles. He unlocked it quietly and slipped through into the adjoining library, where Sandra was at work. He closed the door gently behind him.
She was sitting at the large writing table, transformed—with a portable typewriter, a bright light, scattered sheets of paper, inks and pens—into an island of efficiency in a sea of high-backed chairs, dim lamps, and ornamented bookcases that reached the painted ceiling. She looked, as she glanced toward him, a little tired. She pushed her glasses up on to her brow. In her plain black dress, sleeves rolled up, bracelets and rings and earrings in a discarded heap near an overfull ashtray, her hair twisted behind her ears, a cardigan over her shoulders to protect her from the damp chill in the air, a pair of white cotton gloves on her hands, she was far removed from the elegant hostess in Dessès chiffon of only three nights ago. Now she was the efficient and most private secretary, completing the final piece of top-secret work. The last, in every way. Perhaps he should be glad that Wahl had turned up in Venice: let him break the news of her recall. “You look cold. Why don’t you light the fire?”
“I have tried. It smoked. Why don’t we have the furnace turned on? Or does it smoke, too?”
“Heating in September? You have still kept some of your American habits, Sandra.”
“In July, this place could feel like November. Oh well, I’ll soon be finished here—just checking the copies of the letter. You wanted seven in all?” And if he counts them, how am I going to explain the eight copies I’ve made? But he didn’t, and she talked on to distract his attention. “Five for the men you meet today, and two for your pet neutralists. When do you see them?”
“Tomorrow. Is this the original letter?” He stretched out his hand to pick it up.
“Careful!” She lifted it with her gloved fingers. “I’ll hold it, while you read.”
“It looks very good,” he said with real pleasure. “You notice I placed the main emphasis on the Americans, making the English more of a go-between. The style is just right, don’t you think?”
“It could be the wine merchant himself. How do you like his signature?”
“Most authentic. You would have made an excellent forger, Sandra.”
You’ve given me enough practice, she thought.
He had a criticism, of course. “The type jumps a little.”
“It’s Trouin’s own typewriter, isn’t it? If it jumps, it jumps.”
“So typical of him to tolerate the imperfect.”
“I hope he hasn’t discovered it’s missing.” Carefully, she laid the perfectly faked original on the desk before her.
“No more than he noticed the missing sheets of his writing paper. He was too busy preparing to leave for Switzerland.”
“How did you borrow the typewriter? Bribe or make love to his secretary? Or was it stolen by a cleaning woman?”
He joined in her laughter, without much humour. “You must not pry out all my little secrets. Actually—it was very simple.”
“You’re too modest, Fernand.” That pleased him and brought real warmth to his face. “It’s a brilliant idea. I just hope this sheet of Trouin’s writing paper has at least one sample of his fingerprints.”
“I can assure you it has. You’ve been very careful with it?”
“Didn’t take off the gloves once. Let’s finish this job. I’d like to see the original safely in its envelope, just in case anyone is forgetful enough to pick it up without gloves. If it’s spoiled, we are out of luck. Completely.”
“I gave you three sheets of his writing paper,” he said sharply.
“I had to destroy two. The signature wasn’t good enough,” she lied most innocently. “I don’t think much of the type of nib that our wine merchant likes to use. It’s too soft.”
“Typical,” Lenoir said. He was still annoyed.
“When does he commit suicide?”
Lenoir stared at her, forgetting nibs and two wasted sheets of paper. “You know, Sandra, you really are indiscreet at times.”
“Only with you, darling.” Her blue eyes were large and sad. “You used to enjoy my little jokes.”
“This is hardly the time for any joke.”
“Especially when it hits on the truth.”
“Sandra!” he said quietly, warningly. He glanced at the door to the sitting-room.
“Oh, forget it,” she said wearily. She pulled her glasses back in place, not caring how she looked. “Shall I fold the original in three, or does Trouin usually quarter his letters?” She had lifted the letter again, studying Trouin’s embossed letterhead across its top. She noticed Lenoir’s second glance at the connecting door. “This is your department, Fernand. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. But Wahl will insist on seeing the letter.”
“Did he bring gloves?” She was half-laughing.
Lenoir made a gesture of impatience.
“Too bad. He will just have to read one of the copies. You don’t supervise his work. Why should you let him interfere with yours?”
Lenoir looked at her quickly. Her face was as expressionless as her voice.
“What’s he doing now?” she asked.
“Oh!” She shrugged. “How shall I fold this letter? In three? Or four.”
“In three.” That was Trouin’s custom. He watched her fold the sheet most carefully, and search for the two envelopes she had addressed, one long, one square in shape.
She chose the long one. It looked as if it had been handled, crushed in a pocket. “I managed to get plenty of finger marks on this, all untraceable, I hope. You’d better destroy the other one, Fernand. You’ll find matches over on the table by that red velvet chair.”
“You are remarkably thorough,” he told her, taking the discarded envelope over to the fireplace. He studied its typed address: Major Christopher Holland, Paris 6e, Boulevard Ras-pail, Hotel Saint-Denis. “Yes, we’d better get rid of this.”
She talked on in the same light voice. Adroitly, she slipped the original under a box of carbon paper, picked up one of the copies and folded it silently, inserting it into the long envelope. “I suppose you can explain why there was no postmark? That may be the one weak point.”
“Not so weak. The letter was intercepted before it could be mailed.” He cursed quietly. “The matches are damp.”
They ought to be, she thought grimly. She said, “Oh, everything is damp around here. I don’t know how these books survive.” Her fingers trembled on the long envelope she had just sealed. “Try my lighter.” She reached for her handbag, placing it beside the box of carbon paper. She opened it, searched inside with one hand. With the other, she slipped the original out of its hiding place into her bag. She snapped it shut.
“These matches are useless!” Lenoir exploded as the third one flared and died.
“Here’s the lighter,” she said, bringing it to him.
I really shall miss her, he thought. I have to depend on her a great deal. That wasn’t good, of course. That could be the reason she was being recalled. “It’s all right,” he said, striking another match. Yes, he was being disciplined more than she was. It was Wahl’s way of reminding him who held the power. The idea displeased him. He frowned angrily.