Peril Is My Pay Page 9

  He bowed slightly before our table. “Such a hot day, pan,” he said. Fresh stains that looked like wine spotted the loud floral pattern of his tie. Too much drinking or the too-heavy double-breasted suit, or both, made him sweat.

  “I forget the lovely lady’s name,” he said, thick-tongued.

  “Lois Hackett,” Lois said.

  “May I join you both?” Hodza asked stiffly.

  “Pull up a chair,” I said, and raised a hand for the waiter. “Whatever the gentleman wants,” I told him.

  Hodza wanted red wine, any kind. The waiter brought him a carafe and a stem glass. Hodza gulped the wine, slopping some on his lapel. His hand shook.

  He was silent for a while, then all of a sudden he said, “I beg you, pan. Hilda Henlein. If you know where she hides, if you are hiding her … I beg you, pan.” Sweat gleamed on his fat face. Sweat stains darkened the armpits of his jacket. “Love. I did not know they were in love. That changes it for them to be in love, I wish them happiness, pan, but the Russians … today they see me.… If you know where Hilda Henlein … You must understand that a man in a delicate position like mine … to be a Czech official when the Russians … in Prague they say …” He became increasingly incoherent, fuddled by wine and self-pity. He said something in Czech, smiled vapidly down at his stem glass, filled it and spilled it. He brushed a pudgy hand at his lap. Droplets of wine flew.

  A pair of tall, broad-shouldered guys stomped up behind him. They wore identical gray lightweight suits. One of them smiled at me with just his lips. The other one smiled at Lois the same way. Their smiles changed to condescending smirks as their eyes fastened on the back of Emil Hodza’s head.

  Hodza craned his neck and saw them. He did a take. He turned slowly. One of them held the chair out for him. He said something in a Slavic language, either Russian or Czech. The other one took Hodza’s arm, high up near the shoulder, in what looked like a friendly grip. Hodza’s face blanched as he climbed to his feet.

  I started to get up. Hodza waved his free hand. “Please. My friends. My American friends,” he slurred, “meet please my Russian friends.”

  Each of the Russians nodded his head about a half inch. They turned, and Hodza turned with them. They marched to the curb. A car was waiting there, a black Fiat 1100. They got in. The Fiat rasped away toward the Pinciana Gate.

  “That poor man,” Lois said. “Will they do anything to him?”

  “Not if he finds Hilda Henlein.”

  Hodza’s friends left a pall behind them. We had another drink and very little talk, and walked the block to Lois’ hotel.

  Lois got her key from the concièrge in the lobby of the Flora. “Ah, Miss Hackett,” he said. “There was a call for you. Long distance.”

  “Uh-oh.” Lois looked at me. “That would be Mr. Roberts in Washington.”

  The concièrge shook his head. “Not from America, Miss Hackett.” He pulled a slip out of a cubbyhole and read it. “From Quimper.”

  Lois frowned. “Where in the world is Quimper?”

  “Why, it is the capital of Brittany, Miss Hackett. In France. You are to call Operator Five in Quimper, France. Shall I attempt—”

  “Right away,” Lois said. “We’ll be upstairs.”

  In the elevator she told me: “It’s got to be them. It’s got to. Who else could be calling from France?”

  I felt the tension mounting in me. Lois was right. It had to be them.

  The trunk lines to Paris were busy. It took almost an hour to get the call through. I paced back and forth in Lois’ room, chain-smoking. Lois never strayed a foot from the phone.

  “What’s taking them so long? I never should have gone out. I never should have—”

  The ringing phone cut Lois off in mid-sentence. I got behind her as she picked it up. She held the receiver a couple of inches away from her ear so we both could hear it.

  “Hotel L’Epée, Quimper,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Miss Henlein,” Lois blurted. “I want to speak to Miss Henlein or Mr.—”

  “A moment please, madam,” the woman’s voice said in English. Then: “But we have no Miss Henlein registered at the Epée.”

  “You’ve got to. She …” Lois’ voice broke.

  I took the phone and said: “I’m with Miss Lois Hackett in Rome. She got a call from Quimper. We’re returning it.”

  “Ah, of course, m’sieu. That would be Mrs. Kyle Ryder. A moment, m’sieu.”

  “I—I’m all right now,” Lois told me. “Are they married?”

  “Must be.” I gave Lois the phone and listened with my ear next to hers.

  “Miss Hackett, is that you?”

  “Yes! Yes, Hilda!”

  “Please, I must talk fast. Kyle is coming back soon. There is nowhere, I have nowhere else to turn.”

  “What is it?”

  “Once before in Oslo you helped us. I do not know what to do. Kyle is furious. Pericles Andros claims he is my …”

  “Andros?” Lois cut her off. “Andros is in Quimper?” I wanted to use the phone myself but was afraid Hilda might hang up on me. “Hilda?” Lois said. “Listen to me. Pericles Andros is an international criminal wanted by the police of almost every country in Europe.”

  Hilda didn’t answer her. I heard a banging sound, then Hilda’s voice away from the phone: “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

  Then another bang, and silence. “Hello!” Lois shouted. “Hello? Hilda! Hello!”

  “This is the switchboard operator at the Hotel L’Epée, madam. They have disconnected.”

  “Try them again, please. It’s urgent.”

  After a few moments: “Room 217 does not answer.”

  “Send someone to their room,” I said into the phone.

  We waited five minutes.

  “They have gone out, m’sieu.”

  “My name is Drum. I’m with Interpol, the International Organization of Criminal Police,” I improvised. “Someone entered Mrs. Ryder’s room while we were talking. I want you to tell me who.”

  “But I don’t know who, m’sieu.”

  “Did you see him?”

  She was silent for a moment. Then: “A man and a woman. The woman was dark and quite lovely, m’sieu. The man very big, with blond hair worn too long. They asked for Mr. and Mrs. Ryder. I said the room was in use. The man said it did not matter, they were expected.”

  “He speak English?”

  “As you speak it. An American.”

  I cupped the phone and told Lois, “Kenny Farmer and Simonetta.” I told the woman in Quimper: “Listen carefully. You are to look around the hotel for Mrs. Ryder. If you find her, call me back. The Hotel Flora in Rome. Ask for Miss Hackett and reverse the charges. You understand?”

  “Yes, m’sieu.” She sounded excited. I had conveyed some of my own urgency to her. That was good.

  “If you find her and get no answer here, please take this down. You are to call Colonel Talese at the Guardia Finanza in Rome. He’ll expect your call, or someone there will. But if you don’t find Mrs. Ryder in the next few minutes, call the local police in Quimper and tell them an American woman staying at your hotel has been kidnaped.”

  “Kidnaped, m’sieu?”

  “Kidnaped. You understand everything?”

  She said she did. I hung up. Lois clutched my arm. “You sounded so positive. What makes you think—”

  “Hilda called you for advice. She didn’t expect trouble from Andros. Whatever he wanted was still in the talking stages. Then Farmer and Simonetta busted in on her.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know why. I don’t know what Andros wants, either. But I know this: Mozzoni was killed when he came to meet you at Doney’s. If what Andros wants from Hilda is still something they can talk about, then Andros didn’t kill Mozzoni or have him killed. Which leaves Farmer and Simonetta.”

  “But Andros tried to kill us on the Spanish Steps.”

  “That was different. Until Fassolino made his deathbed co
nfession it wasn’t common knowledge Andros was still alive, but I’d spotted him. That’s why he tried to kill us. But Farmer and Simonetta, they’re something else. If they had Mozzoni run down to keep Kyle and Hilda apart—”

  “Or maybe to keep Andros from meeting Hilda.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Lois clutched at my lapels suddenly. “God, Chet. Now I’m really scared. They’re so far away. And Hilda—I never heard her like that before. She was always so poised. She sounded so frantic, as if she didn’t know what to do. I got them into this. If I hadn’t tried to help, hadn’t arranged for her and Kyle to meet, they’d be here in Rome waiting for the Olympiad to begin.” Lois blinked. Her green eyes filled with tears. “It’s my fault. Whatever happens, it’s all my fault.”

  That wasn’t going to get us anywhere. “All right,” I said gently, drawing Lois’ hands down to her sides. “Take it easy.”

  She clung to me, vulnerable, defenseless, needing the assurance of physical contact. My lips brushed her red hair. All of a sudden she jerked her head up, and my lips slid down her brow.

  “Hold me,” she said. “Please hold me. I’ll be okay in a minute.” Her mouth moved against the side of my face. She swayed limply against me. I felt the heavy beating of her heart and the firm contours of her breasts. We kissed then. What I had in mind was a brief brotherly kiss, without passion. Chester Drum, reassurer of desperate women.

  I don’t know what Lois had in mind. But it got out of control. Lois broke away finally. Her eyelids looked heavy, her lips swollen. “I didn’t mean to do that,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “It didn’t mean anything you didn’t want it to mean.”

  “I’d like a cigarette, please.”

  I gave her one and lit it. Her lips were trembling. She took a deep drag and went to the window and looked down on the Via Veneto. I stayed where I was.

  “You practically said it yourself,” Lois told me after a long time. Her back was turned. I wanted to touch the smooth curve where her waist flared into the abundant hips. I looked at the creamy smoothness of her bare back, where the eggshell dress swooped low. I stayed put.

  “I practically said what myself?”

  “If Kenny Farmer and Simonetta killed once they may kill again. What are we going to do?”

  “I’m going to do the only thing I can do. Call Talese. Then fly to Quimper.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I WAS WEARING MY .44 Magnum in the shoulder rig when we stepped off the Pan-Am DC-7 at Le Bourget airport in Paris.

  There’d been no problem about the Magnum in Italy. I’d cleared it with the authorities before leaving the States, an easy thing to do when you have a friend who is Assistant Chief of Protocol at the State Department.

  Here in France it was different. We’d caught the Wednesday night flight from Rome, and I had as much business wearing a Magnum as I’d have had smuggling a kilo of raw heroin into Paris. But when I’d needed the gun in Rome it had been back in my room at the Eliseo in my B-4 bag. From now on it would go everywhere I went. I had a hunch I would need it before we left France.

  We checked through douane control after picking up our luggage. No one noticed the slight bulge under my lapel. I gave my B-4 bag and Lois’ suitcase to a porter, and we headed for the information desk.

  Lois said: “Don’t look so grumpy, Chet. You won’t regret taking me with you.”

  “I’m not grumpy. I’m wondering if we can get a flight to Quimper.”

  A charwoman in a black smock was mopping the tile floor near the information desk. “I’ve never been to France before,” Lois said. “Have you?” The flight had changed her. She seemed eager for what lay ahead now, not scared or bewildered.

  “Once,” I said.

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Business.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “No.” It occurred to me then that on my other trip to France I’d been seeking Pericles Andros too.

  “There, you see?” Lois said triumphantly, using the sort of female logic a mere male will never understand.

  I hadn’t wanted to take her with me, but Pan-Am’s wasn’t the only flight to Paris. “Look, it’s final, I’m going with you,” she had argued in her room at the Flora in Rome. “Or I’m going myself if you don’t take me. Wouldn’t you rather be able to keep an eye on me?” I’d admitted that. “I won’t get in the way, Chet. I promise. But Hilda called me because she needed me. I’m going. Don’t argue with me.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. You’re arguing with yourself. Go on and pack your bag.”

  While she’d done that, I’d called the Guardia Finanza. Colonel Talese had flown to Domodossola to close the net on Carnuvale’s smuggling contacts there. I left a message containing what knowledge we had of the situation in Quimper. I said Talese could find me at the Hotel L’Epée.

  Now at Le Bourget Airport in Paris I asked the information clerk: “When’s the next plane to Quimper?”

  His answer surprised me. “Three daily, m’sieu. At seven, at noon, at five in the afternoon. You may secure a reservation at the Air France desk.”

  I looked at my watch. It was half-past one in the morning. We’d be on our way to Quimper in five and a half hours.

  Lois nudged me. “Three flights a day? That’s wonderful. Until today I never even heard of Quimper. If we leave on the seven o’clock—”

  The information clerk looked dismayed. “You do not know of the Grandes Fêtes de Cornouaille, the famous folklore festival?” He shook his head. “Everyone goes to Quimper this week.” His headshaking became disdainful. “Unless of course they have a weakness for the sport and fly to Rome for the Olympic Games. You will be lucky if you get a reservation for the day after tomorrow.”

  The Air France reservations agent confirmed his pessimism. “The seven o’clock flight? Impossible.” He consulted a chart. “I have just one seat, tomorrow night at five.”

  “Can you put us on stand-by for the early flight?”

  “I can of course do as you say, but it is hopeless.” He gave me a tight, apologetic smile to show how hopeless it was. He waited for me to drop the inevitable coin in the inevitable box. After all this was France in summer, and France in summer was where and when American tourists went to get milked.

  “But if m’sieu has some urgent reason why he must leave on the seven o’clock, I would naturally do what I can, should a cancellation occur.” He glanced to his left. No one stood there. He glanced to his right. He stared at the charwoman on her knees across the rotunda.

  I said: “I’ll bet you ten dollars you can’t get us on that flight.”

  His face lit up. “M’sieu is a sporting man? But that is different.”

  We showed him our passports. He took down the information he needed and returned them. “Perhaps there is hope for one,” he said.

  “Two,” I said. The ten dollars exchanged hands.

  “Assure yourself I will do what I can.”

  We had something to eat in the airport buffet, then I called Quimper. A sleepy night porter answered the phone. All he could tell me was that Room 217 did not answer when he rang it. When I asked him if the local police had been contacted, he didn’t know what I was talking about, or pretended not to know.

  After I hung up, we sweated out the night in the buffet. Through its plate-glass window wall you could see the blue of the runway lights and the big planes coming in. Several times the buffet filled with new arrivals, tourists from the States mostly.

  I checked with my betting friend at the reservations desk twice. Nothing had changed, he said. At six A.M. he went off duty. A lean-faced, hatchet-jawed woman in a starched blue uniform replaced him. She looked as approachable as the Abominable Snowman.

  At six-fifteen they put up the sign for the Quimper flight. Tourists with their baggage began to line up at the weigh-in desk. We went over there.

  The lean-faced woman said: “Mr
. Drum and Miss Hackett, yes. Certainly, let us see.” She studied her chart, then the hatchet jaw made a pass at air. “You have great luck, m’sieu et dame. One seat on the seven o’clock. And one at five this afternoon.”

  “We wanted to go together,” Lois protested.

  “But you are fortunate. Some people who wanted to go will not go at all.” She gave me a meaningful look: the same inevitable coin-dropping in the same inevitable box.

  I didn’t hold my hands out for the jackpot. I wasn’t wearing the Magnum to keep it warm. I expected trouble in Quimper, after the way the phone connection with Hilda had been cut, and the lean-faced morning agent’s expectation of another wager would give me a full day in Quimper without Lois. I suddenly wanted it that way.

  Lois elbowed me. Her look said: you know what to do.

  We weren’t alone this time. Other tourists waited near the counter. I leered and said, much too loud, “There’s a ten-dollar bill in it for you if you get my friend on the seven o’clock with me.”

  Heads jerked towards us. Hatchet-face’s lips clamped. “First to come, first to go,” she said crisply. “We do not accept bribes. We never accept bribes.”

  She’d had no choice. I hadn’t wanted to give her any choice.

  In grim silence she wrote out a ticket for me. They weighed my B-4 bag and sent it out on the conveyor belt.

  Lois said: “But I thought—”

  “Go into Paris and get some rest at a hotel,” I said. “You’ll take off at five. I’ll meet you at the Epée tonight.”

  Lois gave me a withering look. “Chester Drum, you wanted that to happen.”

  I didn’t say anything. Lois walked stiffly to the gate with me. I went through. She called:

  “Chet!”

  I turned around. There was a wry resigned smile on Lois’ face. She held one hand up, then let it fall. “Be careful,” she said.