3 Nov 76—PARIS
“Café au lait et pain et beurre,” Devereaux said. The waiter brought the milky coffee and the buttered pieces of bread and left a saucer with a printed bill.
Rain again.
The dirty streets around the station were choked with traffic and the fumes of Gauloises mixed with diesel exhaust.
He had been at the station every morning since the first meeting with Pendleton. They had made no further contact. Pendleton had put him up at a nice hotel on the Champs-Elysées; he had moved out within three hours of registration and found a bare room in a one-star hotel near the station. On the second afternoon in Paris, he had purchased a 9-millimeters automatic from a fence in the rue de Verneuil on the Left Bank, a man he had used before on his first assignment. Three days after that, Devereaux made a signal to Hanley in Washington. It was a locator signal, nothing more, and it told Hanley only that Devereaux was still alive and still in the field and still in deepest black. Nothing more. He didn’t want to use the safe phone in the rue de Scribe at Section offices. He didn’t want to deal with Pendleton at all.
Devereaux sat in a different café near the station every morning. He sat by the window and he watched the pedestrians and loiterers, the clochards with their rags and sense of proprieties eyeing the other citizens like marks waiting to be scored. He watched for people who might be watching him.
On the third morning, he had spotted the watcher in the shadow of the entrance of the ornate Gare de l’Est. The watcher had followed him down the platform to meet the Zurich train. The girl had not been on the train. Pendleton had said she would wear a blue melton coat and there were always girls getting off the train and there were women in blue coats but Devereaux was sure that Ruth Sauer had not arrived in Paris. He was sure about the watcher as well; the man was following him.
So Devereaux had let the watcher follow him down a tangle of narrow streets away from his hotel. When he found the street he wanted, Devereaux slipped into a shadowed entrance and waited. When the watcher came abreast of him, Devereaux put the muzzle of the automatic against his forehead. Just that suddenly and painlessly.
“Jesus Christ,” the watcher said.
“Who do you work for?”
“You know,” the watcher said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Not Jesus Christ,” Devereaux said.
“Pendleton.”
“Is that true? The best thing is to finish you and not guess about whether you’re telling the truth.”
“I’m Section, Section.” Rain glistened on his forehead; maybe it was sweat as well.
“Tell him to leave me alone,” Devereaux said.
“You checked out of the hotel—”
“And tell him I have a gun and tell him to stay out of my way,” Devereaux said. “And don’t ever go to the Gare de l’Est again.”
“I won’t,” the watcher said.
“Good.”
“Can I go?”
“Yes.”
The watcher had scurried away, looking behind him once or twice, but by then Devereaux had slipped out of the shadowed door and into another street.
The girl came on November 3.
She truly was a girl. She was slim and the coat seemed bulky on her body. She carried a single bag. Her hair was brown, cut short. She had large brown eyes.
Devereaux kissed her on the platform. They embraced as friends or lovers. She let the kiss linger. It was a kiss of greeting and sign of recognition: I am who you think I am. But what else was there in the kiss? Devereaux let the kiss linger also and he was puzzled by the urgency of her slim body. Who was this girl really? Was any of this true?
“I’m sorry I made you wait so long,” she said. Her voice was very deep for one so young and slight. There was softness in it and the trace of an accent. “My brother is so careful.”
“I’m careful, too.”
“What is your name?”
“November,” he said.
“Yes. That’s the name,” she said. “Are you sure of me?” A rare smile then; not at all shy.
He had to smile. “You’re the only pretty girl in a blue coat. I’m sure of that.”
“Did they say I was pretty?”
“Perhaps,” Devereaux said. He felt awkward. She was very young and he felt attracted to her—by the force of that kiss, by the press of that young body against him—and he felt ashamed of himself. And, for that moment, he had lost the sense of danger. That frightened him most of all.
He resumed his frown. “Let’s go. I’ll take your bag.”
“Is it far?”
“Not very far.”
“Is it a nice hotel?”
“Not very nice.”
“I always thought of Paris. And coming here to a beautiful hotel and eating beautiful food.”
“We can get the food at least.”
“Not now.” She hugged at his arm as he led her down the platform to the concourse. Birds flew back and forth from ledge to ledge across the ceiling. The doors to the street were open. Traffic pounded against the rain-swept streets, creating chaotic noises. She held his arm very tight and stopped. She looked at the Paris she had dreamed about over storybooks; it was gray, rather shabby, very loud. Disappointment colored her eyes a deeper brown and Devereaux saw it all in that instant and pitied her.
“The sun shines, too,” Devereaux said.
She gave him that smile. “And the food is good,” she said.
“Very good.”
“I ate on the train. It wasn’t very good. I felt sick from the train,” she said. Again, the voice was deep, melting, too experienced to come from that youthful face and those lips. “I’d like to lie down.”
“The room has a single bed,” he said.
She looked at him. “I don’t care,” she said.
Again, the sense of danger left him. He tried to drag it back. He felt the weight of her arms wrapped around his arm. What did he expect her to be anyway?
The Hotel du Monde had a glass door and a century of stained stones piled to a height of six stories. He led her past the concierge’s desk. The concierge was a fat man with a waxed mustache who read the racing news all day. He looked up, saw the girl, glanced at Devereaux, then made a shrug and turned to the results from l’Auteil.
The carpeted stairs creaked. The fourth level was a narrow corridor that led into an adjoining building. The room was at the end. The door was flimsy and did not set exactly against the jambs. Devereaux turned the key in the lock and opened it. He led her into their room.
The wallpaper was covered with brown flowers that might have once been other colors. The bed was made up, wide and with a sag in the middle. The room had a washstand with thin towels on a metal rod and a bidet. There was a set of window doors opened to the noise of the street, and the rain.
“Do you want me to close the windows?”
“I like to hear the rain,” she said. “I’m tired but it’s just a little tiredness from the train. Just let me take a little sleep, November.”
“A little sleep,” Devereaux repeated, staring at her. She had shrugged off her coat. Her dress was also covered with dull flowers, faded from another time. It was a woman’s dress on a girl’s body.
“I’m eighteen years old,” she said. “My brother trusts me to be his eyes for him. To see if it is safe.”
“I don’t know if it’s safe.”
“Who does know?”
“No one,” Devereaux said.
“That is very honest of you,” she said. She stood still, letting him watch her. Neither moved. Thunder bowled down narrow streets and rattled the tall window doors. “What we do is we take a train. And we just go to some place where Kurt can see that we are not followed.”
“Who is following Kurt?”
“He is in great danger always,” she said.
“And he puts you in harm’s way.”
“No. We have no danger, you and I.” Again, she let the teasing smile linger. Then she took a step toward him. She touched his sleeve.
“Are you afraid of anything?” Ruth said.
“Everything.”
“Then why do you do this?”
“It’s what I do.”
“Don’t you have comfort? Your wife? Or lover?”
“There are lovers,” he said. Why was he answering her questions? But he knew. The weight of her light touch was a thousand pounds. In a moment, the tension would have to be broken, one way or another. The door was closed, the windows open, and the room was empty of witnesses, time, or even place.
“I want a little sleep,” she said. She kissed him then, with the same wet force she had greeted him with on the platform. So unexpected. She reached her arms around him and pulled his head down into the kiss so that he would not have escaped it even if he had wanted to. “Can you bring me bread? A little of the French bread and cheese?”
She pulled away.
Devereaux again tried to drag back the sense of danger but danger had fled the earth. What the hell did it matter now?
“All right,” he said.
He turned to the door. “Don’t answer any knock,” he said, turning to her.
“There’s no danger.”
He stared at her. She had confirmed it. There was no danger anymore in the world as long as they stayed together in this room on this rainy day.