THEY BURIED NAPOLEON IN the small garden behind the house. The earth was soft from the rain, and the task easy enough. They worked in silence, side by side, and when it was over, Pascal said close to her ear, “Not here. Not here. Pack some clothes and come with me. We have three days left. It’s time to disappear.”
The journey was long and circuitous, though the distance traveled was short. They went first to a small hotel in St. James’s, where Pascal was known and a double room had been booked. Pascal said the manager, an old contact of his, would ensure the room appeared to be occupied. Telephone calls would be made, and food sent up.
“Our ghosts will occupy this room,” he said. “But we’ll be somewhere else. For a day, maybe two, this will help. Then, if necessary, we try something else.”
They moved on, traveling by tube, bus, and taxi, setting off in one direction, then doubling back. When Pascal was satisfied they were not followed, he led them to their destination. It proved to be a small cottage in Hampstead, near the summit of the heath. It was situated in a maze of narrow, cobbled alleyways inaccessible by car. It had three entrances. Pascal’s motorbike was already parked in a shed to its rear.
“I came here earlier and checked it,” he said. “It’s anonymous. It isn’t overlooked at front or back, and it has a number of other advantages, Gini. Look.”
He led her inside, and Gini went from room to room with mounting astonishment. The house was well furnished and equipped. The bed was made up. There was several days’ food in the refrigerator. The day’s newspapers were neatly stacked in its small sitting room. All the windows had thick wooden interior shutters. The exterior doors were reinforced with steel plates.
“Pascal,” she said. “Who lives here? What is this place?”
“It’s a safe house—and no one lives here as such. It belongs to a contact of mine. Once upon a time, she owned the most celebrated brothel in France. Then there was a little misunderstanding about tax. She retired to London, and invested the remains of her fortune in property. She’s over seventy now. An extraordinary woman. She lets this place to former clients of hers, people who need somewhere secure and private—and clean in the electronic sense.”
“Are there many such people?”
“Oh, yes. We can talk here, Gini. It has antielectronic surveillance equipment, and it’s regularly swept. It may not be one hundred percent secure, nowhere is, but it’s ninety-nine percent.”
He drew her toward him and took her hand. Her face was white, and still tear-stained. There were little bits of twig and leaves in her hair; her hands were still muddy. He kissed her brow gently.
“Now, listen, Gini,” he said. “Go upstairs. Unpack. Have a bath. No—do as I say. It will make you feel better. While you do that, I’ll make us something to eat. Then, later, when you feel stronger—we’ll go over all this, piece by piece. We’re close now, darling. I can feel it, I can sense it, it’s starting to make sense.”
Gini drew back from him; she looked up at his face. “You know you said you asked Jenkins to take me off the story. Why?”
Pascal smiled. “I didn’t know he’d already done so, obviously not.” His eyes met hers. “I don’t want anyone to know what we’re up to, Gini; not even him. I don’t trust him completely, I don’t trust anyone. Apart from you, of course.”
“But you didn’t mean what you said to him—Pascal, you promise me that?”
“No, I didn’t mean it.” He hesitated. “I’m afraid for you, yes. I’ll protect us any way I can. I won’t let what happened to Lorna Munro happen to you—” He broke off. Gini’s expression had become fixed. He told her, then, exactly what had happened, and how swiftly it had happened.
Gini gave a low cry. “We killed her, Pascal. We did that. We as good as wrote her death certificate.”
“Don’t.” He drew her close. “Gini, I thought that at first. But it isn’t true. It wasn’t hard to trace her. Anyone could have done so. They could have killed her anytime they liked. Don’t you see, Gini, they waited until she had spoken to me, until I could actually witness her death. It was another of their warnings, like Napoleon, like Venice. So”—his face hardened—“we pay attention to those warnings. We’re much more careful from now on. We stay together at all times. But we don’t give up—either of us, no matter what Jenkins believes, or anyone else. We work together on this, and we succeed.” He paused, his expression now both sad and determined. “What you said to me in Venice—you remember? Believe me: I heard what you said.”
When Gini came downstairs, she felt stronger and refreshed. A delicious smell of cooking emanated from the kitchen. She found that Pascal had set the table there, and she was touched by what she saw: two places, laid in the French manner, two lighted candles, a checked cloth, and a small plant in the center, removed from one of the rooms upstairs. Deep purple African violets. The candles were a little askew. Pascal gave this arrangement a proud look. He made a great play of opening oven doors and checking temperatures. He flourished dishcloths a lot. Gini suppressed a smile. She knew perfectly well that Pascal could not cook. From the oven he produced what turned out to be a very good boeuf Bourguignon, which, as they both knew, had come ready-cooked.
“Extraordinary,” he said with a smile as they ate. “It’s much easier than I realized, this cooking. You open the oven, put the thing in, and voilà.”
“It’s a little bit more complicated, Pascal, if you’re starting from scratch.”
“It is?” He regarded her with great seriousness. “Could you make this?”
“From scratch? Yes, I could. It’s not that difficult. …”
“Excellent. I have a few French prejudices. It’s nice if a woman can cook.”
“And if she can’t?”
“No problem. If I love her enough. If I love her very much, I take lessons myself. Or we eat in a different restaurant every night. Or order in pizza. Or starve. So long as I’m with her, it won’t matter in the least.” He rose to his feet. “So, now I shall make us coffee. Then we can talk. Begin at the beginning, Gini.”
And so Gini recounted to him, one by one, all the events of the past two days. She told him about Frank Romero, and the buttons on his jacket; about her meeting with Lise, and the things Mary had said; about the strange postcard signed “Jacob” from McMullen, and about the circumstances of that long and frightening Monday night.
Pascal listened intently and quietly, smoking a cigarette. When she came to the question of the telephone call, of that whispering obscene male voice, his face paled with anger. “You have that recording you made? Get it now.”
She left the room while he listened to it. When she returned, she had never seen him so coldly furious, she thought at first—and then she remembered; there had been another occasion, one other occasion: He had looked like this during that brief final interview with her and her father in the Hotel Ledoyen in Beirut. There was the same mixture of contained loathing and contempt in his eyes, and the same fury in his voice.
“Who is that man?” He slammed his hand down on the table. “Who is it? Is it Hawthorne? I can’t tell—can you recognize the voice?”
“No, I can’t. I don’t think it’s Hawthorne. I’m not sure….”
“You should never have discussed that telephone sex story with him—never. What were you thinking of! Why did you do that?”
“Pascal, he asked me what I was working on. I couldn’t say him, could I? I had to think fast. I just blurted it out. Then I thought it could be useful. To see how he’d react…”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He gave a gesture of despair, then controlled the anger. “Never mind, never mind. It’s too late to undo it. If it isn’t Hawthorne, then who is it? Romero? Could it be him?”
“I don’t know, Pascal. But I’m sure Romero is involved. He was on leave the weekend we went to Venice. He could have been there. I’m sure the buttons on his blazer were identical to the one you found. He’s worked for the Hawthorne family for years. He served under Hawthorne in Vietnam and—what’s the matter, Pascal?”
“Nothing. Wait. I’ll explain later.” His face took on an odd and closed expression. “Go on. Tell me what happened yesterday—up to and including the dinner for Hawthorne.”
Gini gave him her account of that day, of her conversation with McMullen’s former tutor, Dr. Anthony Knowles, of her discoveries at the escort agency, Jason Stein’s remarks, the presence of S. S. Hawthorne at the dinner, and his son’s speech.
“And he mentioned Vietnam, during that speech? Jenkins told me. What did he say exactly?”
Gini told him. She gave Pascal a puzzled look. “And so he said the reporting of that war helped to end it. He said it changed America…Pascal, what is this? Why are you harping on Vietnam? It’s twenty years since the war ended, it can’t have any relevance to this.”
“Maybe not.” Again his face took on that guarded expression. Gini did not prompt, but continued her story, stopping just short of her return to her apartment, and her discovery of Napoleon. She did not want to reexperience that.
“And so,” she said finally, “I’m sure it was McMullen in the park and in the museum. I think he had hoped to speak to me, but Frank Romero was there too. The number he gave me is an Oxford number. For a moment I thought it was the number I called for Dr. Knowles. But it wasn’t. I checked this evening. Two different digits. I wish I could understand these messages he’s been sending, the books, that postcard. But I can’t. Still—” She paused. “We can call that number tomorrow at noon. I’m sure we’re close to finding McMullen, Pascal—or he’s close to contacting us. That’s progress, at least.”
Pascal frowned. “Oh, you’ve made a lot of progress, I think. I’m beginning to see a pattern at last, in all this. Or perhaps two patterns, one the true one, and the other a reflection designed to trick us, mislead us perhaps.” He rose and looked down at her thoughtfully, then held out his hand. “Come upstairs,” he said. “Let’s sit by the fire there, and I’ll tell you my side of things. It won’t take long, and I don’t want it to take long. You look exhausted. But if there’s any chance that we really are close to McMullen at last—that we might actually get to speak to him, there’s some things you should know first.”
“He isn’t the man we took him for?”
Pascal shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “No, I think not. Some of the information Jenkins obtained may be misinformation—it’s hard to know. But one thing does seem clear. McMullen isn’t just Lise Hawthorne’s self-appointed protector. He lied to Jenkins—or lied by omission anyway. McMullen could be much more dangerous, and much more devious than we thought.”
Upstairs, Gini sat quietly and listened. Pascal spoke for several minutes. When he had finished, Gini gave a sigh.
“I begin to see,” she said. “That fool Jenkins. Why wasn’t he straight with us from the first?”
Pascal shrugged. “Come on, Gini. You know what he’s like. As a matter of fact, I revised my opinion of him this morning. I may not like him any more than I ever did, but he’s tough, and he’s not a fool either. Though I think he’d better watch his back.”
“All right, I was wrong. He’s not the lackey I thought he was. But even so, why the hell couldn’t he admit that it was Appleyard who first gave him the tip? I even asked him straight out, and he still went on denying it.”
“Well, in his view it wasn’t an outright lie.” Pascal gave a dry smile. “When he talked to Appleyard first, back in the fall of last year, all Appleyard had done was pick up on some of that Washington gossip. He’d heard Lise Hawthorne’s health might be cracking up. He’d gone snooping around her London doctors and got nowhere….”
“That isn’t all, Pascal,” Gini interrupted. “James McMullen had actually contacted Appleyard. It was Appleyard’s story. He was unwise enough to mention it to Jenkins, and Jenkins stole it. It was straightforward theft—”
“—Of the kind that goes on in newspapers all the time.” Pascal’s smile broadened. “Come on, Gini. You know that. Anyway, it wasn’t as simple as that. All McMullen had done was tell Appleyard that he should stop chasing Lise’s story and take a good hard look at her husband. He’d hinted at infidelities, no more than that.”
“Fine. Maybe I’m missing the point here. It still sounds like theft to me. Tell me again.”
“All right. This is the sequence. McMullen was playing Appleyard along. He must have heard about the inquiries to the doctors, so he hinted to Appleyard, but told him nothing specific. It’s the first indication we have that McMullen isn’t nearly as naive as Jenkins thought. Then, unfortunately for Appleyard, he decided to pass the tip to Jenkins. And he mentioned the name of his source.”
“At which point, Jenkins licked his lips. Because he actually knew this man. So he saw right away that he could get to the story without Appleyard’s help. In other words, he could cut Appleyard out.”
“True. But can you altogether blame him? Would you like to work on a really big story with Johnny Appleyard breathing down your neck?”
“No, I wouldn’t. Especially if I were Jenkins. Jenkins would want two things—first, he’d want an exclusive, and second, if the story was strong, he’d want to syndicate—worldwide. Meanwhile, Appleyard would be on the phone busily selling it everywhere from Sydney to Toronto. That’s how he worked. It made him rich.”
“Precisely. So Jenkins dispensed with his services. Apparently, it wasn’t difficult. McMullen and Appleyard had spoken several times by then, and McMullen hadn’t liked what he found. He was much happier to work with Jenkins, an Englishman, a former school friend. So McMullen stopped returning Appleyard’s calls—or so Jenkins thinks. We know differently. McMullen must have remained in touch with Appleyard. It was Appleyard who found Lorna Munro for him. And it was McMullen who organized the delivery of those first four parcels. So McMullen was playing some kind of double game from day one—” He paused. “What’s more, I suspect Lise Hawthorne helped him, and is continuing to help him. Even now.”
Gini frowned. “Now? That’s not what she said to me. She said she hadn’t spoken to him since he left London. She was in tears, Pascal. She was shaking. She said we had to find him, and she didn’t even know if he was still alive or dead. I had the strong impression—”
“Yes?”
“I thought she was afraid he’d been killed. And that Romero might have been used to kill him, that very weekend.”
“Then think about this.” Pascal leaned forward.
“Lise tells you she is not in contact with McMullen, yet she could have made a phone call from that wine bar, and she arranged to meet you this morning in Regent’s Park. She never showed, but McMullen did. Doesn’t that strike you as an odd coincidence? You think he’s been running in the park behind her house for the past three weeks? I certainly don’t. Come on, Gini. That meeting had to have been set up.”
“Not necessarily. She said she always used to meet him there, at that time. He might have gone there in the hope of seeing her….”
“All right. Maybe. Not proven. But I know what I think. There’s collusion here.”
“But we know that, Pascal—to some extent. We know Lise and McMullen are involved in this together. He’s trying to help her. You heard that first tape.”
“Yes. McMullen the knight-errant.” He gave her a cool glance. “So the man is in love with her, obsessed with her, determined to free her from that sadist husband of hers. Well, maybe. I’m prepared to believe that. Except McMullen has conducted a campaign against Hawthorne before. A long time ago. A very very long time ago.” He rose. “Do you have that postcard you were sent, Gini? The one signed Jacob? Let’s just compare the handwriting, shall we, with these photocopied letters I have here.”
“Letters? What letters?”
Pascal had picked up the large manila envelope Jenkins had given him earlier that day. From it, he took a thick sheaf of papers, some of which, Gini could see, were press clippings. He extracted three single sheets of paper and passed them across. Each was a copy of a neat, handwritten letter, sent from a London address. Gini stared at them. They were addressed to John Hawthorne, they were signed by James McMullen.
“The dates.” Gini looked up at him. “They’re 1969, 1970, 1972—that’s the year Hawthorne was first elected to Congress. Pascal, what is this?”
“You can see for yourself. They’re requests—markedly polite requests—for information about Hawthorne’s period of military service in Vietnam. It’s a matter of record anyway, and the letters were duly and politely replied to by one of Hawthorne’s secretaries. I have copies of their answers here too.”
“I don’t understand, where did Jenkins get this?”
“From Melrose’s security contact. Which means they could have come from anywhere—American security, British security, or even John Hawthorne himself. They could be forgeries, of course. But the match to the writing on your postcard is exact, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, it is.” Gini stared at the postcard, then at the letters. “But I don’t understand, Pascal. Why should he be making inquiries about that—and at that time? It’s—when? After he left Oxford—”
“And before he joined the army. Yes.”
“In that missing period you mentioned? How strange. But why? What possible connection can it have with this story now? Appointments with blond call girls and the Vietnam War! It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not to us, perhaps, but I think it makes sense to McMullen. Look at this, Gini.” He passed her another sheaf of papers. “Those are copies of letters McMullen sent to an American senator in 1971. A Senator Melville—he’s dead now. At the time, he was head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was a well-known opponent of the Vietnam War, a dove from way back. McMullen bombarded him with letters and evidence. The letters mention enclosures, and none of the enclosures are here. Just the letters. He’s trying to persuade the senator to launch an investigation into the conduct of the American military during the autumn of 1968, in particular to the events that took place in a small village—” Pascal hesitated, and again she saw that closed expression come into his face.
“The name of the village was My Nuc.”
“My Nuc?” Gini looked up and frowned. “That’s familiar, but I can’t remember why.”
“That’s not surprising, Gini. You were two years old in 1968. You were—what—seven or eight when the war ended? I was in my teens and when I saw this, the name meant nothing to me. But My Nuc was celebrated, briefly. It became one of the examples of American heroism. A platoon was cut off, and holed up under Vietcong fire, for nearly two weeks. One lieutenant particularly distinguished himself. He was decorated as a result of his actions there. His name was John Hawthorne.”
Again, Gini saw that closed expression come upon his face. She stared at him. When she saw the sympathy, and the hesitation in his eyes, she had a second’s foreboding.
“I don’t understand. How do you know all this, Pascal?”
“Because when McMullen started raising questions about what exactly had happened at My Nuc, when he started alleging that what actually happened there was very different from the official military accounts, the senator was able to give him a very straight and very dismissive answer. The letter he wrote is there, Gini, in front of you. You see? It’s an angry letter. No rape, no pillage, no murder—and how can the good senator be so sure?”
Pascal handed her a press clipping, a long article. “He can be sure that the military’s version was accurate because there was an independent witness, a journalist, who was with Hawthorne’s platoon the entire time. That journalist wrote up the events afterward. It wasn’t the best of his dispatches, nor one of his most famous ones, but along with many others written that year, it helped win him a Pulitzer Prize.”
Gini stared at the papers in front of her. She closed her eyes. For a second, she heard Hawthorne’s voice just a few nights before: Holed up in a foxhole together for three days; I drank the contents of his whisky flask, and he ate my rations. I’m not sure if it was courage or blind stupidity….
She looked up, white-faced, at Pascal. She watched this story loop, reshape, and close in on herself. She saw the concern and the anxiety in Pascal’s eyes. She threw the papers down on the floor.
“Then McMullen’s a liar,” she said. “I don’t give a damn what he alleged then—and I’m not sure I give a damn anymore what he’s alleging now. He’s suspect, Pascal. You said that yourself.”
“Darling, that isn’t exactly what I said….”
“You just listen to me.” She had risen, trembling with agitation. “If McMullen was suggesting my father would be party to any kind of cover-up in that war—he’s wrong, that’s all. I know you hate my father, I know what my father is. I don’t have any illusions. I know he drinks too much, and he boasts, and he got lazy later on. But when he was younger, even now…He would never lie, Pascal. He would never distort the truth.”
She hesitated. “He may not have been a very good husband to Mary, or a very good father to me, but he was a fine reporter. The best—he was the best!”
There was a silence. She turned away, and Pascal could see her fight to regain control. Quietly, he bent and replaced the papers in their envelope. Then he put his arms around her. The one thing he intended to avoid now, at all cost, was any conflict about her father. He had made that mistake once, twelve years before, and he did not intend to make it again.
“Fine,” he said quietly. “Then let’s take it from there. If McMullen was deluded all those years ago about Hawthorne—and how he even came to be interested in those events I can’t imagine—then he can be deluded again. Or deliberately smearing Hawthorne for some reason. Either way…”
“Yes?” She turned back to him with new hope in her face.
“Either way, it helps us when we finally meet him. Which I expect to do very soon.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I think so. Let’s wait and see. Gini—” He broke off and looked down into her face. “You do know how much I love you?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Then come to bed.”
At nine the next morning, Gini and Pascal were in the last of a sequence of taxicabs which they had used to transport themselves the short distance downhill from Hampstead to St. John’s Wood. At Pascal’s request, the taxi cruised first one way up a street near Avenue Road, then another. Several of the large houses in this street had To Let signs outside, to which Pascal paid close attention.
The taxi driver dropped them off some blocks farther on, near the Wellington army barracks. It was then nine-twenty. Minutes later, Pascal and Gini were in the company of a real estate agent, viewing one of the houses they had passed earlier. It was a miniature St. John’s Wood palace, fully furnished and in very bad taste. Pascal looked at Gini and repressed a smile. They had been upstairs, and were now back in the drawing room.
“Decision time, darling,” he said. “What do you think?”
Gini gave him a sidelong glance. She fingered the curtain ring on her wedding finger, crossed to the rear window, and looked out.
Beyond the ruched pink silk blinds she could see a terrace with bright white rococo garden chairs. There was a large built-in barbecue, a stretch of lawn, an unlikely white statue, and a fence. Beyond the fence, fifty feet away, were the white stucco walls, the gothic porch and windows of the assignation house to which Lise Hawthorne had directed them. It was, as Pascal had quietly pointed out to her before they set foot in the agent’s office, the perfect place for him to use that coming Sunday. The perfect place for photographs. From the rear windows here, the driveway and the gothic porch were clearly visible. From here, anyone entering or leaving Hawthorne’s house was in direct view.
“Darling, I’m not sure,” she replied in a dry voice. “It’s nice, but it’s a bit overlooked at the back.”
Pascal gave her a repressive glance. He turned back to the agent, who was not looking hopeful, and who was avoiding the moment when he would have to mention the rent. “I’m afraid my wife’s a bit hard to please,” Pascal said. “We must have looked at fifty houses this last week. This might be possible, but we’d have to clear up all the formalities quickly. I’d want to be in here by Saturday morning. It’s Thursday now. If that could be arranged…”
He left the sentence unfinished, and the agent blinked. This particular house had been vacant for eighteen months. The area was overloaded with better houses than this, at a much more realistic rent. He began to talk, and talk fast.
“Well, of course, I’m sure that could be arranged. As you can see”—he waved a vague hand at oceans of pink brocade—“the house comes very comprehensively equipped. Three months’ rent in advance, naturally, and we would have to check references, of course, but that’s just a formality. I can personally arrange for all the services to be switched back on, gas, electricity, telephone—”
“Banker’s draft,” Pascal said. “This morning. And I foresee no problem with references. What is the exact rent?”
The agent swallowed. He fixed his eyes on the pink blinds, and named the figure. He waited for the expostulations, the cries of disbelief. None came. Both husband and wife were now at the window, looking out at the yard at the back.
The agent studied this young couple who had arrived at his office on foot. The woman, whom he judged attractive, was casually dressed. Her husband was wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans. His hair was long by the agent’s standards. The agent gave a little sigh. Once upon a time he had been able to assess his clients’ income bracket from their dress. These days, as he had learned from bitter experience, it did not do to rely on such signals: The ones who looked like down-and-outs often turned out to work in movies or rock music, and to be annoyingly rich. Rock music, in this case, he decided. Too much money and no sense. They returned to his office, where a deal was swiftly struck. He ushered the couple to the door, all smiles. There, curious still, and a little envious, he asked, “Rock music, would it be? I feel I know the face….”
The Frenchman gave a modest gesture. He smiled. He said, “How did you guess?”
Half an hour later, the agent’s telephone rang. On picking it up, he heard a man’s voice, an American voice, inquire, “Is Mr. Lamartine still with you, by any chance?”
The agent explained that Mr. Lamartine had just left.
“Oh. I was hoping to reach him there. This is his assistant…. He said he’d call me if he decided to take the house so I could speed things up at the bank. I guess it slipped his mind. He has a stack of meetings all morning too….”
“Well, he has decided,” the agent replied. “I have the details here. I’m just processing the paperwork now.”
The assistant, who sounded efficient, then took all the rest of the details. “Thanks for your help,” the American said.
They were back in the safe Hampstead cottage by eleven.
“One hour to go, then we telephone,” Gini said.
Pascal nodded. Gini could see that he, too, was tense.
“I’ll make some coffee,” he said. “I need to think.”
“Can you not think without caffeine, Pascal?” She smiled.
“Sure I can. But I think a whole lot better with it. I’m going to make a list. Every actual fact we know about McMullen. No rumors, no suppositions, just the facts.”
He disappeared downstairs to the kitchen. Gini heard the whirr of the coffee grinder. She sat down at the table in the sitting room of the cottage, and made sure she had the telephone close. She took off her watch and put it next to the telephone; she watched the second hand sweep.
On the way back to this cottage, she had stopped off at a bookshop in Hampstead, hoping to find the same three books, if not the same editions, as she had seen in McMullen’s flat. She laid her purchases out on the table in front of her. She put her new copy of Paradise Lost next to the identical edition found in Venice; next to that she put Carson McCullers’s The Ballad of the Sad Café, and finally her last purchase. The Oxford Book of Modern Verse had not been in stock, but as an afterthought she had bought a large British road atlas. In the back of it was a section with street plans for thirty major cities, Oxford among them. She took out the piece of paper with those numbers, found inside the frame of Lise Hawthorne’s photograph, and the Uccello postcard from “Jacob.” There was no time now to consult Mary’s friend: She would make one last attempt at decoding this herself.
The page/word ploy did not seem to work, even with one component missing; one of the problems with this puzzle, she realized, was that there were so few numbers. The final message must be surely very short. She sat for a while with paper and pencil, making little headway. She flipped the pages of McMullen’s copy of Milton’s poem, until she found the place Pascal had said was marked. She could remember working on this poem at school. She could even remember, though vaguely, this particular passage. It came from Book One, and described the state of mind of Satan, after his fall from grace:
For now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him
Satan, by that point in the poem, had been expelled from paradise, and she could remember the description of his great fall. But this did not help her either. Feeling defeated, she bent over the road atlas and traced the lines of Oxford’s famous streets. Here was McMullen’s college, Christ Church; here was the High Street, and the Carfax intersection and St. Giles….And then she saw it, away to the south and west, on the edge of the central area of the city dominated by the colleges: Paradise Square, and Paradise Street.
Suddenly, she understood McMullen’s message: It did not refer to pages, but to book titles, and the reason it was brief was that it was an address, a brief address. Quickly she drew a page toward her and began to write. As Pascal returned to the room with the coffee, she held up the page triumphantly.
“I’ve done it,” she said. “Look, Pascal. He did leave a message for us in his apartment He did refer me back to it on that postcard. It was much simpler than I thought! The number three at the top refers to the three titles; the next line down, 6/2/6, refers to the number of words in each of the three titles. And the final line, 2/1/6, gives you the order of words to extract from the titles. Oxford—Paradise Café…you see?”
Pascal looked at the paper and frowned. “If you think that’s simple, I certainly don’t We don’t know there’s any such place anyway.”
“There’s a Paradise Square. There’s a Paradise Street. I’ll bet you anything you like that in one or the other there’s a Paradise Café as well. Watch…”
She picked up the telephone and dialed directory assistance. When she put the telephone down, she had a smile on her face.
“Don’t tell me. You’re right?”
“You bet I’m right. Paradise Café, on the corner of Paradise Square…”
“He doesn’t exactly believe in making things easy, does he?”
“If he made it easy,” Gini retorted, “then someone else could have gotten there before us. As it is, he’d obviously decided it didn’t work—hence the meeting in Regent’s Park, and the noon telephone call. …” She broke off and looked down at her watch. “Twenty minutes to go, Pascal. Did you write your list?”
“Yes. I did. I put down all the information I obtained on McMullen from the army, where he served, and when. Then I put down all the things that don, Anthony Knowles, told you. The fact that McMullen was one of his best history students, that his studies were assisted by his gift for languages—he spoke fluent French and Italian, wasn’t that what Knowles said?”
“That’s right. The Italian as a result of the time he spent there as a child, with his family. The French, from school, I guess. Plus McMullen spent part of the nine months before going to Oxford taking courses at the Sorbonne in Paris. Knowles mentioned that. He gave it as an example of how dedicated McMullen was.”
“Fine. So McMullen was a keen student. A hard worker.” He paused. “And the dates this took place?”
Gini shrugged. “You know the dates, Pascal. We’ve looked at them before. McMullen went up to Christ Church in the Michaelmas term of 1968, that’s the fall of 1968. He’d left school at the end of the previous year, after obtaining the scholarship to Oxford. He had a nine-month gap. He moved on to those courses at the Sorbonne…does this help, Pascal?” She glanced toward the telephone.
“Maybe. The spring of 1968—that was a very significant time for a young man to be taking courses at the Sorbonne. Les événements, Gini—the protests and the street fighting, that whole outburst of radicalism. That took place in May 1968. I wonder if McMullen was drawn into those events, that’s all. I’m trying to understand why a young man who leaves Oxford very suddenly the following year begins writing letters to American politicians about the Vietnam War. That war was a catalyst for his generation, sure. But it still seems so odd.”
He turned away, frowning, and began to pace the room. Gini drew the telephone toward her. It was now six minutes to twelve.
“I don’t think we should think about that now,” she said. “It’s taking us away from the central issue here—and that’s Hawthorne and the appointments with those blondes.”
Pascal gave her a quick glance. He knew why she said that, and he could tell she would resist any aspect of this story that curved back toward that war, and her own father’s past.
“Maybe,” he said in a thoughtful tone. “Maybe, Gini. But there’s a darkness here, right at the heart of this story. And I want to understand where that darkness begins.”
“Look, let’s just get to see McMullen and talk to him first.”
“Very well.”
Pascal moved away and sat down. He could sense the sudden tension between them, and it alarmed him. There was an issue between them, he knew; it had always been unresolved and remained unresolved still. It concerned her father’s behavior in Beirut, and Gini’s willingness to obey him then, the excuses she continued to make for him, even now. For an instant, Pascal saw the figure of Sam Hunter as a continuing barrier between them. Even now, he thought unhappily, he and Gini would never agree about the nature of that man.
And now, just when Pascal had believed him safely distanced, back in Washington, with little day-to-day influence over Gini’s life, Sam returned to haunt them. He emerged from the shadowy recesses of this story they were working on: Hawthorne, Romero, Hunter, McMullen. All their pasts intersected at one point: Vietnam. He passed his hand wearily across his brow. It was better to say nothing, to wait. Perhaps Gini was right, and that aspect of this story would prove marginal. He looked at his watch. The hands were moving to twelve.
“Now, Gini. Make the call,” he said.
Gini did so. It was answered on the first ring by a voice she recognized. She did not identify herself, and neither did he, but it was Dr. Anthony Knowles. He came straight to the point.
“Thank you for calling,” he said. “Jacob is eager to meet you and your friend. He asks whether you know a restaurant here that would be suitable. He says he’s entitled to ask. Do you know of one? Don’t mention the name.”
“I do know of one.” Gini thought quickly. McMullen’s clues had been more than a trail, she saw, they had also been an aptitude test.
“I selected it from a list of three,” she continued carefully. “It’s a rather heavenly place.”
“Fine.” Knowles sounded amused. “Be there at six this evening. Wait outside, not inside. If there are any difficulties, call this number at nine tonight. After that, it will not be operable. You understand?”
“I understand.”
Without further words, Knowles hung up the phone.
Pascal was watching her intently. “That was McMullen himself?”
“No. That ex-tutor of his, Knowles.”
“Interesting. So he has some kind of assistance. I thought so.” He paused. “The Paradise Café? What time?”
“Six. We wait outside.”
“Good.” Pascal moved swiftly away. He began checking his camera bag. He picked up his thick address book, and Gini could see that familiar return of energy, of speed. “I need to make a few phone calls first, then we leave. On my bike we can be there in under an hour.”
“On that bike? Sixty miles? Pascal, do we have to? The meeting’s not until six. We don’t need to leave yet.”
“Yes. We do.” Pascal gave her a sharp glance. “There are three things we know about McMullen for sure. One: he’s devious. Two: he’s clever. Three: he’s commando-trained. So I intend to check out the area before we meet him. I want to see this restaurant, and this Paradise Square, before it’s dark.”