WIN CHAMBERS WAS PLEASED that the sun was shining at the Feru airport. After two weeks of intermittent Paris rain, he’d almost forgotten what sunshine looked like. Martha had prepared him for more of the same at Feru, and he’d been expecting a week of running between cab and theatre, dodging under umbrellas and sitting in the uncomfortable dark with soggy shoes and socks.
But the sun was shining in Feru. Even Martha looked better in the brightness, as she ran across the concrete to meet him. Better and younger than he remembered her just three days earlier in Paris. “You brought the sunshine with you,” she said.
“Thank God for that. Remember Venice last year?”
“How could I forget?”
“Schedule ready yet?”
“Here.” She handed him a slickly printed folder done in three colours and four languages. “I’ve got you a suite at the best hotel in town.”
“Not the Ferubonne again!”
“Did you ever stay there before?”
He nodded, shifting his briefcase so he could light a cigarette. “Five, six years ago, when I first came over here. There was some talk of a film festival then, too, but nothing came of it. When’s our baby showing?”
Martha flipped a page and consulted the list. “In competition they’re showing in alphabetical order, for some crazy reason. With a title like Wild Yearling, that puts us last.”
He grinned a bit at her concern. “Say the word, Martha gal, and I’ll change it to Another Wild Yearling. The last shall be first. Seriously, I don’t think being last is too bad. Where’s the car, anyway?”
“Over here. The Russians arrived a half-hour before you, and your old friend Baine is in from Hollywood, too.”
“He’s no friend of mine. I figured he’d be here, though, with his picture being shown—even if it is out of competition.”
The journey downtown took only ten minutes in the sleek little sports car Martha had brought down with her. For an English girl, born and bred within sight of Westminster Abbey, she showed an amazing liking for French cars. “Oh, and there’s a Mister Falconi waiting to see you, too. He’s called the hotel twice.”
“I don’t know any Falconi.”
“Probably some Italian producer. You’re getting famous over here.”
“Sure I am. How about our stars? Will they make it on time?”
She swung the car into the paved hotel driveway. “I was saving the bad news for last. Georges broke his leg skiing. I got the wire just this morning.”
“Skiing!” He ground out the cigarette in disgust. “Who in hell skis the last week in April?”
“Georges does, apparently. Cheer up, Win. You don’t need him to win the top prize.”
“I know. It’s just—oh, hell, it’s just that I wanted to give them the full treatment.”
Win Chambers had made a career out of giving people the full treatment. Back in the States he’d been the boy wonder of Hollywood, until an unhappy love affair, coupled with an ever-increasing tax bite on his earnings and his disappointment at not winning an Academy Award, had driven him to Paris in near-despair. Oddly enough, the picture the American critics had scorned—Swamp King—made him famous overnight in Paris. He’d rented an old studio in the suburbs, hired Martha Myers as his secretary, and started producing and directing a number of low-budget films with promising young unknowns in their casts. One of them, Intrepide, had come close at last year’s Venice Film Festival, so he’d been especially anxious that Wild Yearling be chosen as the official French entry at the new Feru Film Festival. The competition came from England, and Hollywood, and Russia, and Italy. It would not be easy, but he had hopes. If it happened, if he won, then perhaps he could go back to America with Martha on his arm and spit in their eyes—the Academy, the studio bosses, the tax people, and especially a girl named Betty. He wanted to go back as the conquering hero. He wanted to go back and give them the full treatment.
Up in the room, the telephone was ringing. “If that’s Baine or any of the Hollywood crowd, I’m in a conference,” he told Martha.
“You think they’d believe that?” She answered the phone and quickly covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Mister Falconi again. You want to see him?”
Win sighed and glanced at his watch. “I should be down at the theatre. Find out who he is, what he wants.”
Martha spoke a few quiet words into the phone, then turned again to Win. “It’s business of a personal nature. But he says it’s most important.”
“All right, I’ll change my shirt and go down for a drink. Tell him if it’s so important I’ll be downstairs in the lounge in maybe ten minutes.”
He took time to shave, and it was closer to twenty minutes before he made it downstairs. By that time he’d momentarily forgotten the man named Falconi. He was thinking only of a quick drink to boost his spirits for the crowd of reporters certain to be waiting at the theatre. Then, just after it arrived, a shortish man in grey slipped into the chair opposite him.
“Mr. Chambers? Winston Chambers?” No one had called him Winston in years, except sometimes Martha when she was fooling with him.
“Yes? Oh, you must be Falconi.”
The grey man gave a smiling nod. Win decided he looked a little like a doctor. Certainly not at all like a movie producer. “Correct. John Falconi. I’m from New York.”
“Oh? I thought perhaps you wished to see me on behalf of the Italian film industry.”
The grey man smiled. “No, no, nothing like that. I have, actually, an odd sort of request to make. I only approach you because I know you are well acquainted with many of the people attending the festival.”
“I know them. You meet the same people pretty much at Venice and Cannes. Are you a reporter or something?”
This brought another smile to the grey man’s face. “Actually, I’m the American representative of a film manufacturer who’s thinking of establishing a plant in West Germany. I am, of course, interested in meeting the money people at a festival such as this.”
“Does your company make colour film?”
“Of course.”
“And black-and-white?”
“No, only colour.”
“Then this is an odd place to come, Mr. Falconi. The Feru Film Festival has the unique distinction of barring all colour films. Only black-and-white motion pictures are entered.”
This information took Falconi a bit by surprise, but he quickly recovered his composure. “Certainly, though, these producers are not adverse to working with colour. Some of the best recent motion pictures, including this year’s Academy Award winner….” His voice trailed off for a moment and then resumed. “Of course I know you yourself don’t feel too kindly towards the Awards.”
“You know a lot about me, Mr. Falconi. Suppose you drop this talking in circles and get to the point. I’m a busy man.”
The grey man smiled again. It seemed to be his favourite expression. “Very well, I am prepared to offer you a sum of money to accomplish a slight mission for me. You know the Russian actress Tonia Dudorov? She arrived here this morning. At the formal events of the Feru Festival she will surely be wearing her newly acquired Lenin Arts Award.”
Win remembered reading something about Tonia winning the prize, presented each year to a leading exponent of the arts in Russia. “Wearing it?”
“The award consists of a scroll and a small red metal star to be worn on the left chest. It’s the star we want.”
“You want? What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Please keep your voice down, Mr. Chambers.” He reached a hand into his pocket and came out with a small velvet box. Inside was a small red star. “You will simply substitute this star for the one she is wearing.”
“Look, who are you, anyway? What is all this?”
“I can understand your concern, but I’m not at liberty to reveal any further details. If you will substitute the stars for us, and deliver the new star to me, a large sum of money will be deposited to your account in a New York bank.”
“Just how much is a large sum?”
“Enough to settle your tax difficulties with Uncle Sam. You could return to America any time you wanted.”
“It’s not just tax troubles that are keeping me away.”
“We know,” John Falconi said, implying for the first time that there were others in this obscure plot. “But that would be a step. We checked up on you quite a lot back in the States. You might be interested in knowing that Betty Ainsley is married now, and has a child.”
“You checked up, all right.” The news, even after so many years, hit him like a blow in the stomach. He tried to imagine Betty married, but his mind could not somehow grasp the fact. It was not so much at the moment of intercourse that he could not picture. Rather it was the act of childbirth that seemed still so completely foreign to this girl he’d once loved.
“We know you can be trusted,” Falconi said.
“Trusted by whom?”
The grey man shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Uncle Sam, shall we say?”
“I haven’t been back to America in five years. It means nothing to me.”
“It’s still your country.”
Win finished his drink and tossed some bills on the marble-topped table between them. “Look, I don’t know what you want. But I don’t intend to become a spy or anything like that, for the United States or anyone else. I’m a movie producer, and that’s all.”
“Think about it,” Falconi said quietly. “I’ll call you again tonight.”
“Don’t bother.” Win got up carefully from the table and walked away. God, wait till he told Martha about this guy!
But on the way to the theatre he remembered what Falconi had said about Betty, and that memory depressed him….
The reporters and columnists were waiting, as they always were at these affairs. While the photographers chased up and down the beaches in search of some well-equipped starlet who might pose for a picture while losing her bathing suit or being rescued from the surf, Win Chambers sat at bay in a smoky lounge of the theatre, answering a variety of questions from reporters who sometimes only barely understood the workings of the English language.
“Would you classify yourself as a runaway producer, Mr. Chambers?”
“I left Hollywood a good many years before this exodus began, and since I don’t any longer consider myself an American producer making films abroad for the American market, I could hardly be classed with the runaways. In my own mind, I’d be running away if I returned to the States now.”
“Mr. Chambers, your first big success in France was last year’s Intrepide, which was filmed in the French language. Now you have filmed Wild Yearling in American. Why?”
“First off, my first big success in France was an American picture, Swamp King, and not Intrepide. But to answer your question, Wild Yearling is in English—not American—and I see nothing wrong with this. Perhaps these last five years I’ve come to think more like an Englishman than either an American or a Frenchman. The picture was partly financed with British money, and I think the story it tells can better be told originally in the English tongue.”
“But it is the French entry.”
“A fact that makes me very proud. There will be a one world of films within our lifetime, and with it perhaps a one world of diplomats.”
There was a stir towards the back of the lounge as some others entered. Win recognized the Russian actress, Tonia Dudorov, and he suddenly remembered the strange meeting with Falconi. Tonia was a lovely girl who seemed more French than Russian, and who carried herself with an unmistakable air of superiority. In a nation only beginning to match the strides of the rest of the world in the field of the motion picture, Tonia Dudorov was already supreme.
He stood up to greet her and someone snapped a picture. “Hello, Tonia. Welcome to Feru.”
“Win, Win darling! It has been so long.”
“Last year at Venice.” He’d gotten mildly drunk with her at one of the round of parties, and he knew then as now that he could have slept with her almost at will.
“So long! Look, I have a new addition since last we met.” She fingered the tiny red star pinned to her dress. It was about the size of a button, and it seemed to Win’s eyes to be identical with the one Falconi had shown him.
“The Lenin Award. I heard you’d won it.”
“In my country, a very great honor.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Win said, and then because the newsmen pressed on all sides of them they parted. He saw her again when they went out of the screening of the first picture, but she was sitting on the other side of the auditorium in the company of the rest of the Russian party. He gave himself over entirely to the enjoyment of the movie, an Italian entry dealing with the always sensitive subject of the army’s cowardice during World War I. It was a well-made, well-acted job, and he felt the power of it gripping the judges.
When the lights went up at the end, he saw Baine and a group of other Americans heading towards his seat. He switched on the automatic smile and rose to greet them. Once a year he could act like an American. More than that would have been an effort….
“Hello? Hello? Winston Chambers?”
He recognized immediately the voice of the grey man, John Falconi. “It’s past midnight, for God’s sake! I’m getting ready for bed.”
The telephone crackled foreignly. Win had never gotten used to foreign phones. “Mr. Chambers, I must see you again. Tonight. The matter has become extremely urgent.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve said all I care to.”
“Your life may be in danger, Mr. Chambers.”
“Listen, I’m going to come over there and pop you in the nose! Maybe then you’ll stop bothering me with your spy games.”
“As long as you come.”
“Where are you?”
“I have an apartment. 85 Rivage.”
“All right,” Win hung up and put his tie back on, cursing himself for even coming back to the hotel. Well, he’d finish with this Falconi once and for all tonight. Then there’d be no more phone calls.
The address proved to be only a few blocks distant, within walking distance. As the street name implied, the place overlooked the harbour area, where a narrow wandering river finally found its home in the sea. John Falconi lived on the second floor, in a building that must have been ancient when Win was born. He came to the door in answer to the knock and hurriedly closed it after Win had entered.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
“Look, either you stop bothering me, or….”
“Were you followed?”
“How the hell should I know if I was followed? I told you I was a movie producer!”
“Will you give me five minutes to speak to you? Over a drink?”
Win sighed unhappily. “All right. Five minutes and no more.”
While the grey man mixed the drinks Win looked around the apartment, seeing the ordered neatness so unusual in bachelor living. There were bookshelves, filled to capacity with classics and bestsellers, all in American editions. He took out an illustrated edition of The Red Badge of Courage and glanced through it, thinking it might still make a good movie in spite of a previous Hollywood attempt.
“Here we are. Is scotch all right?”
“Fine. Two of your minutes are up already.”
Falconi smiled. “Then I’ll come to the point.”
“I thought you did that this afternoon.”
“I could not be completely frank until I got the okay from higher up.”
“J. Edgar Hoover?”
“You’ve been away. This sort of thing is handled by other people now.”
“I’ve heard of the C.I.A.”
Falconi only smiled. “Let’s just say the American taxpayers are paying the bills.”
“Fine. You’ve got about ninety seconds left.”
“You saw Tonia Dudorov today.”
“I saw a lot of people today. I shook hands so much my right one feels like it might fall off.”
“She was wearing the Lenin Award.”
“Yes. Your sources of information are quite good.”
“Not really. Your pictures are in the newspaper.”
“Oh.” Oddly enough. Win was beginning to like the man. He stopped looking at his watch and sipped the scotch.
“Listen, Mr. Chambers, it would be quite simple for you to get that pin for us, to substitute this one for it.”
“Maybe it would, but why should I? Didn’t I make it clear that I owe nothing to the United States?”
“Except some back taxes,” Falconi reminded.
“Yes, except those. But the C.I.A. hardly makes a practice of recruiting tax dodgers as spies, does it?”
Falconi spread his hands. “Your background has been cleared by Washington, and you’re the only man in a position to accomplish the mission.”
“And just what is the mission? Why is Washington so anxious to steal a medal from a Russian film star?”
“I can tell you now. I saw my immediate superior this evening and cleared it with him.”
“You people have quite an outpost here. I suppose it’s a nice vacation spot, though.”
The grey man smiled. “My superior is only visiting. But temporarily you might say we are birds of a feather here in Feru. It is a wonderful little city.” He chuckled to himself at some private joke and then went on. “The Russians have a nice little habit in recent years of developing high-test metal alloys, mainly for use in missiles and jet bombers. Of course the exact chemical composition of these alloys is a closely guarded secret, but we find they occasionally use the metals for other purposes. The alloy in question is being used in the nose cone of their newest missile. It is able to withstand the great re-entry temperatures generated by air friction, and it just might be better than anything we have for the same purpose. We know the Russians, praising this metal alloy highly, are using it also for their new Lenin Award stars.”
“And it’s easier to steal a star off Tonia’s dress than a whole missile nose cone, right?”
“Correct, Mr. Chambers. Quite correct.”
“I don’t believe it.” Win sat back and lit a cigarette.
“What?”
“I don’t believe the Russians, or anybody else, possessing a secret alloy like that, would risk passing it out, even to heroes and movie stars.”
“You are a doubting man, Mr. Chambers. Just a few years ago the Russians used remelted metal shavings from a jet bomber’s wing to make coat hangers, of all things. We obtained one of the coat hangers, ran a spectroanalysis and chemical test on it, and were able to determine not only operational range for the plane, but its bomb load as well. Actually, one of the big American missile manufacturers did something similar just last year. They named a girl employee Miss Missile and adorned her with a pendant made from beryllium, a missile metal lighter than aluminum. Of course, beryllium is not exactly top secret.”
“And if I delivered Tonia’s star to you?”
“I would pass it on to my superior. It would be in Washington by the end of the week.”
Win ground out his cigarette and lit a fresh one, as he always did when he was thinking. He’d always been a great one for experience, but he’d never before acted as a spy. Somehow the years of Hollywood life had accustomed him to thinking of spies as shadowy men in dark alleys who waited with knives to strike down the State Department courier and steal the secret code. Could one actually become a spy by simply stealing a tiny red star off a girl’s dress and substituting another bit of metal for it?
“What’s this star of yours made of?” he asked Falconi.
“An alloy which we hope approximates the weight of the Lenin Arts Award. Fortunately, the red lacquer hides any difference in colouring of the metal. With luck the lady will never realize the substitution. We worked directly from photographs in the Moscow press at the time of the award. But of course the knowledge of the Award’s physical make-up reached us through another source.”
“Well,” Win admitted, “you’ve convinced me it’s true, anyway.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I didn’t say that. Let me have your star, and I’ll see what can be done. It won’t cost you a cent, in any event. Just sort of a gift from me to old Uncle Sam.”
“The government will find a way of repaying you.”
“You said on the phone my life was in danger.”
“Well it might be. The other side has men here, too. They may have discovered I am a so-called ‘black’ agent.”
“Black?”
“As contrasted with ‘white,’ the office workers back in Washington, who admit to their employment. But I’m talking too much, Mr. Chambers. In my line talkative persons don’t last too long. Good luck and be careful. If you see anyone following you or suspect you’re being watched, call me at once. Otherwise, I will expect you—when?”
“I’ll be seeing her tomorrow. It depends on how difficult it is.”
“Very well. I’ll be here tomorrow after eight. Just in case your luck runs good.”
They shook hands and Win Chambers went downstairs quickly to the street, feeling for all the world like a lover slipping away by darkness after some midnight assignation. Tomorrow, he knew, would be an interesting day….
Win breakfasted early with Martha, and listened with half an ear as she read over the crowded schedule for the second day of the Festival. This was the Russians’ day, and there would be a dinner following the screening in the afternoon. Though the picture was shown again in the evening for the general public, at Feru the judges, officials, and studio representatives always attended the afternoon performance.
“You’ve got something on your mind, Win,” Martha commented as they were finishing coffee.
“Not really. Just the excitement of it all.”
“Hear any more from that Falconi?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I thought he might have brought you more news about Betty Ainsley’s marriage.”
“That sounds like a bit of jealousy to me.”
“Not at all! I just worry when you’re so quiet.”
“I’m conserving my energy for this afternoon.”
Someone slapped him on the back and boomed out a greeting. He turned to see Ed Baine and a press agent named Wren just coming in for breakfast. “How’s it goin’, boy?” Baine asked him. “Miss Hollywood yet?”
“Haven’t missed it in five years.”
Baine and Wren sat down uninvited and ordered toast and coffee from the English-speaking waitress. “You should come back. Tell him he should come back, Miss Myers.”
Martha stayed pleasingly silent, with her best Anglo-American smile frozen to her lips. Baine was being his most American this morning, and even the press agent was looking distasteful. He cleared his throat and shifted subjects. “Where are your stars, Mr. Chambers? I expected you’d do big things with that pic of yours.”
“Martha, this is Sam Wren, in case you didn’t meet him yesterday. New York press agent type.”
“Thanks for nothing!” Wren ate a piece of toast.
“To answer your question, my girl is shooting a film back in Paris. Couldn’t get away. And Georges broke his leg skiing. The life of a producer, I guess. Tell him how it is, Baine.”
Ed Baine nodded. “He knows how it is. Goin’ to the Reds’ party tonight?”
“Why not?”
“I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it, at something like this. I passed up one at Cannes a couple years back and the State Department was on my neck.” He downed his coffee without a pause. “Come on, we’ll give you a ride over.”
The afternoon’s activities went about as planned. The Russian film, a sombre affair about a collective farm worker dreaming of the horrors of a Third World War, was more propagandistic and thus less successful than a number of fine Soviet films Win had seen the previous year. He was certain at this point that the judges favoured the previous day’s Italian entry.
At the dinner which followed, Win found it easy to place himself next to Tonia Dudorov. She wore the Lenin Award proudly on her bosom, and talked gaily of the old days before the war as if she were a woman of middle age. “Are you going to the British affair later?” she asked Win as the dinner neared its end.
“What’s that? I lost my schedule.”
“I thought your secretary kept you up on such things. They are showing a two-reel short subject out of competition, and this will be followed by cocktails. Will you be my date, Win?”
“If you don’t mind being seen with a thirty-six-year-old man.”
“In Moscow I am sometimes seen with men twice your age. Politics, you know.”
Her invitation simplified the rest of Win’s plan. He knew she couldn’t be seen at two gatherings in the same dress, and as he expected she invited him up to her hotel room while she changed. When she stepped into the bathroom for a moment, he opened the bedroom door, walked quickly to the bed, and removed the small red star from her dress. The duplicate went on quickly in its place. It was so easy he couldn’t quite believe the thing had been done. All of Falconi’s talking and planning had gone towards this—five seconds in Tonia’s hotel room. Somehow he didn’t yet feel like a spy.
Later, after the screening of the British short subject. Win found an opportunity to slip away from Tonia’s watchful eyes. While she chatted with Baine and some of the other Americans, he asked Martha to cover for him and went out into the darkened garden. A grilled gate in the wall led from there to a quiet side street, which he knew was only a few blocks from Falconi’s apartment. He could be there and back in twenty minutes, not much longer than a slow trip to the men’s room.
He walked quickly, feeling the warm breeze from the sea on his face, feeling too the hardness of the Lenin Arts Award in his pocket. For a reason he couldn’t quite explain, he kept it clutched in his hand during the brief journey, as if its physical presence there in his pants pocket were the only reality about this whole mad day. He hadn’t yet attempted to work into his mind an exact explanation of the motives that had compelled him to agree to Falconi’s urging. It was not, he felt sure, any deep loyalty to the country he’d left behind five years ago. Nor was it any sense of guilt that needed rectification. Rather it was, if anything, only a sort of liking for Falconi, an odd man making his way through a too-dark world. This, and a middle-aged urge to do something the least bit out of the ordinary.
So he climbed the dim steps to John Falconi’s apartment, still clutching the priceless lump of metal alloy in his pocket. Perhaps this visit would save a million lives—or take them—at some distant point in time that none of them could see. Or perhaps the mysterious alloy would end up only as a footnote to a lengthy report gathering dust in some Pentagon file.
Win knocked at the door and waited. When no answer came, an instinct born of a thousand movies and a hundred half-remembered dreams drove him to turn the knob and push open the unlocked door. He saw John Falconi at once. The grey man was slumped in his chair behind the little desk, and he seemed somehow especially small among his books and the neatness of his life.
Win knew at once that he was dead, that the game was now for real, that the enemy lurked just beyond any shadow. John Falconi had been a spy who talked too much….
He’d been shot through the right temple, and apparently he’d died peacefully, not expecting the final blow of bullet against flesh. Everything was as neat as Win remembered it; there’d been no attempt to fake a robbery or a crime of passion. The local police could puzzle it out if they wanted, while in the meantime the killer stepped quietly aboard a plane or train to carry him across a boundary or an ocean.
All right, John Falconi. All right.
Win’s inexperienced eyes scanned quickly over the desk and bookshelves, searching for something, anything, out of place. But the ashtrays were clean, and he knew there’d be no fingerprints. The killer might have been a man from Mars appearing in this room just long enough to pull or squeeze the trigger of a gun. A silenced gun, of course, because no one had been attracted by a shot.
Something.
One of the books, The Red Badge of Courage, seemed not quite right to his eye. He pulled it out of its accustomed space on the shelf, aware now that the thing which had bothered him was the title stamped in gold on the book’s spine. It now ran from bottom to top instead of from top to bottom. Someone had returned the volume to the shelf upside-down. He remembered examining this particular book yesterday, and he knew it had been neatly correct then. He knew he had not reversed it. Then who? Hardly the carefully exact Falconi. But very possibly the only other person known to have been there—the killer.
He flipped through the pages of the book, half expecting some coded letter or message in invisible ink to fall to the floor. But there was nothing to catch his eye, nothing that spelled out s-p-y to the untrained observer. He returned the book to its proper space, right side up.
He next debated for several seconds on the advisability of calling the police and decided against it. The thing to do was to wipe off any of his fingerprints and return to the party. Perhaps he would not be missed, and if he was—if the police connected him somehow with the crime—well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. As for the tiny bit of alloy in his pocket, he could only hope to make contact with Falconi’s superior and pass it along to him.
The streets were deserted going back, and he saw only a few wandering romantics at a distance. A youth in the uniform of the French navy sent Win’s thoughts off on another tangent. Was there still a French navy these days, when all you ever heard about were the paratroops? France itself was now little more than a pawn, placed conveniently between Russia and America, a stamping ground for spies to meet and exchange their wares. The world was contracting somehow, catching little people and second-rate nations in its squeeze, and who was to say that the contraction was not the beginning of a final death throe?
Back at the party, he saw at once that Tonia had missed him. She found a path through the chattering groups, conversing over their drinks in a dozen languages, and headed for him. He searched the room for Martha, but she wasn’t in sight. “Win, where have you been?”
“Just out for some air, Tonia.”
“You want a cocktail?”
“These English! It’s too late in the evening for cocktails, but I’ll have some Scotch.” They worked their way to the elaborate makeshift bar and ordered two drinks. The bored bartenders might almost have been imported for the occasion. Certainly they were strangers to the usual nightlife of Feru.
“Win?”
“What?” He was having difficulty focusing his thoughts. The memories of Falconi’s corpse were too near the surface of his mind.
“Win,” she said, speaking softly, close to his ear so he could hear her over the babble of voices. “While you were gone, two of my people came looking for you.”
“Who?” At first he didn’t understand her words.
“Two of my people. They want you for something. You may be in danger, Win.”
He sipped the Scotch casually, giving not a hint of the quickened heartbeat within him. “Why should I be in danger from the Russians?”
“I don’t know. Win, but I have seen them operate before. One of them, in Paris, broke a man’s arm, while I watched. They are dangerous people.”
“And they were looking for me?”
Tonia nodded. “They asked me where you were. They will be back.”
He felt again the bit of metal in his pocket, the cause of it all. Certainly they wouldn’t harm him, an American, and yet he knew the danger was not entirely imaginary. He remembered that Falconi too had been an American.
He spotted Martha across the room and excused himself. “Thank you for the information, Tonia. I hate to be a cad, but could your party see you back to the hotel? It might be better if I wasn’t seen with you.”
“Of course, Win! Be careful. I’ll see you again before I leave.”
He rescued Martha from the clutches of a drooling Englishman who’d just about decided he could make her, and headed for the door. “Come on,” he said briefly. “I’m in a jam.”
“What kind?”
“Remember that guy Falconi?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody killed him. And I may be next on the list.”
“Win! What are you talking about? What have you been drinking?”
“Not enough, believe me. Look, I have to find someone here in Feru.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who. A friend of Falconi’s, but I don’t know his name.”
“Win, you’re talking in riddles.”
“Did you tell me back in Paris that the hotels were filled up here?”
“Yes, with people for the festival. Feru isn’t that big a place.”
“Look, Martha, I want you to get the register of everyone attending the festival—press, judges, producers, everyone. Understand?”
“No, but I’ll get it.”
“You’re a doll, Martha. I’ll see you back at the hotel room.”
“Mine or yours?” she asked with a wicked grin.
At any other time he would have had an answer for that, but he only smiled and started quickly down the steps to his car. Then, on second thought, he said, “You’d better take the car. I’ll get a taxi back to the hotel.” He knew she’d have to drive across town to the hotel that served as registration office for the festival.
There was no taxi in sight, and he went back inside to call one. “Monsieur Chambers!” someone called, and he saw one of the French party, a minor government representative, bearing down on him. “Monsieur Chambers, the American, Monsieur Baine just called for you. He is at the theatre and wants you to join him at once.”
“Oh?” It sounded strange. He tried to remember if he had seen Baine inside. Certainly the American producer would have no reason for summoning him to the deserted theatre in the middle of the night. “Thanks for the message. I’ll see him.”
The theatre was not far from the hotel where he was staying, and Win decided to skip the cab and walk the distance. He’d seen too many movies of kidnappings in taxicabs. He remembered back seats without doorknobs, gas jets through the floor, and various other refinements. These were no longer the fantasies of his youth. Now they seemed a part of a very real game, a game of life and death.
The theatre was dark when he reached it, but the side door was unlocked. He knew Baine would not be waiting there. Only death would be waiting, probably in the person of the two Russians that Tonia had mentioned. He turned away from the door, and saw too late that he’d miscalculated one point. They’d been waiting outside the theatre for his arrival.
Two bulky, broad-shouldered shapes in the night, cutting diagonally across the street to intercept him on his route! There was no escape, unless he went through the theatre door where anything might lurk. No, he’d wait in the street for them, hoping that a passing car or two might save his life.
“Mister Chambers,” one of them said thickly. There was no mistaking that these were the Russians.
He broke into a trot, heading towards the hotel. Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw one of the men reach into his coat, but the other put out a restraining hand. They wouldn’t shoot, not while they didn’t have the star.
But they followed. He reached the hotel lobby panting for breath, seeing them across the street. Then up in the elevator, without a plan, without much of a hope. He had the terrifying thought that they might grab Martha when she arrived, and then what would he do? He felt suddenly so small and helpless, without a friend he could trust, in a foreign city where the shadows grew steadily darker.
Then he was unlocking his door, falling inside, snapping on the light to confront a tall middle-aged man he’d never seen before. The man rose smiling as he entered, extending his hand. “Didn’t mean to startle you, Mr. Chambers. My name is Tweller. I was a friend of John Falconi….”
Tweller was an Englishman, with a moustache and hair that reminded Win of Sir Anthony Eden. He carried himself like a businessman or even a politician—anything but a secret agent. Win supposed this was what made him good at his profession.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said. “Couple of Russians down in the street.”
Tweller stepped quickly to the window. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll attend to them. You’ve been playing a dangerous game.”
“Not of my liking, believe me. Falconi roped me into it with his smooth talking.”
Tweller smiled. “Yes, he was a one for that. We’ll miss him. Did you accomplish your little mission on our behalf?”
“Didn’t Falconi tell you? Didn’t you see him today?”
The Englishman shook his head. “No. I only know you went to see him tonight.”
Something stirred in Win’s mind, a vague forming of thought. He watched the Englishman strolling aimlessly, nervously, about the room, picking up objects here and there. “I gave him the thing,” Win said, on an impulse. “The Russians must have gotten it back.”
Tweller turned in the act of opening a book—a guide of some sort that was in all the rooms. “What? The Russians didn’t get it back. You didn’t visit Falconi’s room until after he was dead.”
Win felt his heart beating fast again. “How could you know that? How could you know when he died?”
The Englishman blinked. “Give me that star, Chambers, or I’ll have you arrested for treason.”
“You could know if you were there,” Win said, hurrying on. “You could know I didn’t give Falconi the star if you were there and you killed him. One of the books on his shelf was upside down. The stamping ran from bottom to top, as it does on the spines of English books. An Englishman like you might have been wandering around, looking at Falconi’s books while you talked to him. Holding the closed book in your hand, you might have replaced it upside down so that the title read in the English style. Certainly a neat man like Falconi would never have done it, nor left it long like that if he noticed it. You’re no C.I.A. man, Tweller.”
The Englishman turned full around. His hand had come out from under his coat, and he held a short foreign pistol equipped with a silencer. “All right, the masquerade is over, Mr. Chambers. Please raise your hands above your head.”
“The very gun, I imagine.” For some reason he wasn’t frightened. Martha would come, would somehow bring help.
Tweller blinked his eyes and moved backwards a step to grasp the window blinds. He closed and opened them in some sort of signal. “Don’t move, Mr. Chambers, or your troubles will be over quite quickly.”
They waited a few moments in silence, until the hall door opened. The two Russians came in, followed by Martha. “God, Martha!” he gasped out. “Where’d they get you?”
She wasn’t smiling. Her face was hard and there were lines of sadness about her eyes. “They didn’t have to get me, Win. I’m one of them.”
Around him the world seemed to collapse. There’d been a night much like this back in the States, his last time with Betty, but somehow Martha had betrayed more than just him. “What do you mean?” Knowing too well what she meant.
“God, Win, I would have done anything to keep from betraying you. Please believe me! I report information to Tweller here, and I told him you met with John Falconi. That’s all I told him!”
“You told him I left the party to visit Falconi. You must have told him that, too.”
“Yes.”
“Enough of this talk,” Tweller said, motioning with the gun. “Will you produce the Award, Mr. Chambers?”
Win felt death was very close at this moment. It was in the eyes of the two waiting Russians, and it was in the tightening trigger finger of the Englishman named Tweller. The tiny medal still rested in his pocket, but he said, quite calmly, “I don’t have it.”
Tweller smiled thinly. “You have it. Falconi was a talker. He told me you had it before he died. He was quite a talker.”
“It cost him his life,” Win said. “He was in the wrong line of work.”
“Possibly,” the Englishman agreed. “But then, for which of us is this the right line of work? I was a schoolteacher outside London ten years ago. Martha will tell you—she was a pupil of mine.”
“You taught her well.”
Tweller sighed. “One hundred years from now man might have different values for right and wrong.”
“I doubt that.”
“But enough talk, Mr. Chambers. Falconi told me you had the Award, and Martha told me he was already dead when you reached him—which of course I knew anyway. My two Russian friends just missed you at the party. Since you didn’t give the Award to Falconi, you still have it.”
“Maybe I didn’t get it from Tonia. That ever occur to you?”
“If you didn’t get it, you’d have had no purpose in leaving the party to visit Falconi.”
“All right, I had it. But when I entered the hotel a while ago I gave it to someone for safekeeping. I hid it in the binding of a book and gave the book to someone.” He wondered if they would believe the lie without searching him.
“Who?”
“One of the Americans.” A long chance, but the only one.
“All right,” Tweller said. “I’m willing to accept your word. You have exactly five minutes to get the man up here with the book. After that I will shoot you. Then Moscow can find another way out of their foolishness.”
“I’ll phone him.”
Tweller blinked his eyes. “Martha will phone him. His name?”
“Sam Wren. He’s a press agent.”
A questioning look to Martha. “What about it? Is it a trick?” Tweller asked.
She shrugged. “He barely knows Sam Wren. They met at breakfast downstairs.”
“All right, call him. Ask him to bring the book up.”
Martha asked the operator to ring Sam Wren’s room. After a few seconds’ waiting, she said, “Mr. Wren, this is Martha Myers, Win Chambers’ secretary. He’d like you to bring that book back for a few minutes, if you could…. The one he gave you tonight … That’s right, thank you.” She hung up.
“What did he say?”
“He seemed puzzled at first, but then he said he’d bring it right up.”
Tweller blinked at Win. “If it’s a trick, he dies with you.”
“It’s no trick.”
They waited then, in silence growing more tense by the minute. “I didn’t get the list for you, Win,” Martha said, almost apologetic.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
Tweller moved around in position to watch the door. He motioned to one of the Russians who drew a snub-nosed revolver, then placed his right hand behind his back, effectively hiding the silenced gun from anyone who entered the apartment. “You were clever to notice that misplaced book, Mr. Chambers. But the French print their book titles in the same manner. The visitor to Falconi’s apartment could just as well have been a Frenchman.”
“But it’s doubtful if a Frenchman would have that taste in American literature. An Englishman would, though, and especially an ex-teacher.”
There was a knocking at the door. Win felt his whole body go tense, knowing that he might be only seconds away from death. “Come in,” he called out.
Sam Wren entered, clutching a small briefcase under his right arm. He seemed puzzled and a bit uncertain. “Oh! I didn’t realize you had guests, Mr. Chambers.”
“That’s all right, Sam. Come on in.”
Tweller stepped forward. “Do you have the book?”
Wren hesitated. “Uh, yes. It’s right in here.” Behind him, the Russian with the gun pushed the door closed.
Tweller smiled and brought his right arm around. The silenced gun came up almost slowly, until it was level with Wren’s stomach. “We’ll relieve you of it, then.”
Sam Wren’s hand came out of the briefcase, but it didn’t hold a book. Instead it held a large ugly gun of an unfamiliar type. Tweller’s eyes widened, and the soft puff of his silenced weapon was lost in a thundering chatter as the ugly gun jumped and spat in Sam Wren’s fist. Tweller staggered back against the wall, desperately trying to fire again, trying to piece together his torn chest!
And almost in the same deadly motion Wren whirled, his gun still spitting. The Russian at the door fired a wild shot into the floor and died on his feet, toppling slowly. The second Russian screamed something and backed against the far wall, clawing for his gun. Wren’s bullets cut a path along the wall, finding him, blotting out his face in a final spurt of blood.
At Win’s side Martha was screaming uncontrollably. Sam Wren looked at her quizzically as he slipped the weapon back into his briefcase. Then he walked over to where Tweller sat dying and kicked the silenced pistol away from his still clutching fingers. “Shut her up, Chambers,” he said flatly. Win slapped her twice, hard, and her scream quieted to a whimper.
Win watched Wren zipping his briefcase shut. “As easy as that,” he said, somehow still not believing what had happened.
Sam Wren nodded. Already someone was pounding on the hall door. “German machine-pistol. Tremendous weapon at close range. That one was foolish to be using a silencer. The gases take several seconds to escape and you can never get your second shot off when it’s needed. Tell that fool at the door to call the police, will you?”
“You want that?”
“No way to prevent it. These three had a fight and killed each other.”
“They’ll never swallow it.”
“They will with a few million francs to wash it down. The American Congress allows us a certain leeway in our expenditures. Now go answer that door before he knocks it clear through….”
Sometime later, in the dimness of a downstairs hallway, Win Chambers passed a tiny red metal star to Sam Wren’s waiting hand. “They’ll be happy to see this in Washington,” Wren said. “Those Reds’ll never learn.”
Win was still shaky. “I’m glad I was right. It was an awful spot to put you in.”
“I figured you were in trouble. But how did you know I was your man? Did Falconi babble that, too?”
“Not exactly. He said his superior was in town on a visit, and with all the hotels filled I figured you were one of the American party here for the festival. Then Falconi made a sort of joke—said you two were birds of a feather. I thought you might have a bird’s name, too—Falcon and Wren—but I didn’t get a chance to check the festival list for any other bird names. I had to take a gamble on Sam Wren being the man.”
Wren nodded. “Good gamble. What do you want done with the girl?”
“Martha?” Win had tried not to think about her. “I don’t know. I suppose she’ll tell what really happened.”
“Not if she doesn’t want to implicate herself. But we can spirit her away if you want. Hold her prisoner for a month or two and then release her.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Win decided. “I have to know why she did it, why a girl like that would become a spy. Why do you think she did it?”
Sam Wren lit a cigarette, and by the flare of the match his face seemed suddenly bleak. “I don’t know, Chambers,” he answered quietly. “Why did you do it …?”