Darkness and Blood

Chapter 3: More Check and Double-Check

Chapter 3

MORE CHECK AND DOUBLE-CHECKStuart turned back to Pablo. "I called on some trustworthy London Eastenders I've used in past operations in case there's trouble, and don't ask what kind because I don't know. We caught the last flight out of Heathrow for Avignon,” he continued. “I thought you might be able to shed some light on Maurice's death.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

“You were tight with him, weren't you?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Maurice must have felt some responsibility for what happened to you in Vienna. He might have hashed it over with you, maybe talked about other things, as well. Things that troubled him.”

But Pablo heard only Vienna. “He didn’t set me up there. George and his section did.”

“I know that. But he still blamed himself for being unwittingly involved in the Billy Foster snatch.”

“Snatch, what the hell you talking about? A terrorist with secrets needlessly shot dead. A failed ops, that’s—” He caught his bitterness. Four years and still raw over the botched kidnapping. Over assassinating a fleeing Foster, when George's snatch team didn't show. Over fleeing Vienna afterwards, fearing the police and Foster’s terrorist thugs would get him. Fearing house arrest by George's men so they could work up an alibi to cover themselves at Langley. He shook his head in disgust; rage still ground in his gut.

The driver glanced at Pablo as though he might hit Stuart. "Easy, mate."

Stuart, unruffled by Pablo's outburst, merely nodded. “You stay in touch with Maurice after Vienna?”

“Just the occasional letter. No visits. I didn't want him involved with me anymore. He deserved some hard won peace."

"What about calling?"

"Almost never. He'd write a coded note to me, addressed to an assumed name at a certain café-bar in a nearby village. I’d decipher what time he'd call there, bike over, and wait."

“Who took the call?”

“Usually le patron. Occasionally his wife.”

"What about Maurice, how'd he place his call?"

Stuart was being his usual thorough professional self, Pablo saw. But being subjected to a near grilling at that early hour was too much. "I haven’t the foggiest. From his bathtub for all I know. Look, I never asked. He did work for decades in MI5. A top researcher, who was security smart. You know that."

“What about emails?”

“Come on, get real."

"I know they're easily traced. If it's a dumb question, it's a dumb question. But I got to be careful, Pablo."

"No emails. Ever. He liked the personal touch of letter writing. So did I.”

“How’d he seem when he dropped you a line?”

“Last time I got a letter, upbeat. That was about a month ago. He mentioned he was doing a rewrite of A Gathering of Years.”

“He send you any rough drafts of his autobiography?”

“From time to time for my comments. What I have is in a Paris safety deposit box.” He caught his friend's puzzled look. His fear of any night threat seemed for the moment forgotten.

"Why not a box in Lyon," Stuart asked. "A lot closer distance-wise for you."

"Paris is farther from me than Lyon, and I wanted the old man out of the way

in case the Brits or the CIA monitored him for my whereabouts. He would mail his letters to a Parisian dealer in French stamps, who also ran an under-the-table accommodation address service on the side. My sister-in-law would collect them from him and drive back here from Paris.”

"You’re sure no one followed her?"

Pablo patted Stuart's hand for reassurance. His friend's skin was damp, though the night was chilly. Fear, he thought. "I was absolutely careful," he replied, hoping to reassure. “Besides I used her only twice.”

"If she was tracked, Pablo, some people, whoever they are, might get pretty nasty. They might be on to you. That might mess up, getting to the bottom of Maurice’s death."

"Stuart, I said I was careful."

"Let's hope so for our sake."

"Amen," the driver said over his shoulder at them.

"After I read his letters, she’d take them back to her Paris safety deposit box. But she had her hands full trying to get my brother out of prison and had to drop out. Then Gabriella came into my life and offered to help. She became Maurice's granddaughter."

"What was the story there?"

"Estranged granddaughter wrote a letter, reconnecting with grandfather after some long ago family quarrel."

"And who started up that correspondence?"

"Gabriella did, after claiming to have found Maurice's address in an Internet search. From then on, Maurice wrote care of her parents' address in the capital. She'd take the TGV to Paris, visit family, pick up my mail at their home—"

"In what arrondissement?"

"The 16th."

"A respectable address for cover. Okay, go on."

"She'd pick up my mail at their home, return to Avignon on the TGV, and drive back here. After I'd read them, she’d take another high speed train back to Paris, deposit his letters or whatever in her safety deposit box, not my sister-in-law’s."

“I get the set up. Elaborate, but effective.”

“It better be,” the driver muttered.

Stuart leaned close to him. “I said effective."

"If you say so."

"I know so. He worked for me once. He's good. End of discussion.” Then to Pablo. “Okay, no trace of your address in his out bound letters. No trace of him in your farmhouse. But what about the letters you wrote?”

“I guess he kept them somewhere. He was that kind of guy. Sentimental. Why all these questions about letters and autobiography and stuff?”

“Something happened to him in the last thirty days to turn him from upbeat to jittery. We need to reconstruct that period.”

The front passenger door was yanked open. The bodyguard slouched inside, slightly depressing the Peugeot's suspension.

"Well?" Stuart asked. "Anything?"

"It must have been a rabbit or something." Not looking that convinced, the bodyguard rested his gun in his lap. The driver did the same, his on his lap.

“So we reconstruct that period," Pablo noted to Stuart. "That may help explain Maurice's death?”

“There might be a connection between his becoming edgy and his odd death, you got it.”

Pablo wanted to tell him he had to look after Gabriella. He wanted to say he didn’t want to be out in the open, risking exposure. But he knew he couldn't. Stuart was right. There were too many troubling indications about the old man's odd, sudden passing. “All right," he said, sighing, fearing what was surely to come. "Let me break the news to Gabriella.”

He made his way back to his farmhouse, but at the front door hesitated before entering, apprehensive. As if you haven't done enough for me already, Gabriella. Now I need your understanding, which wouldn't be easy, he realized. Hell had no fury like a Frenchwoman ignored.

Later, mumbling curses about Stuart, he kicked aside some shards of pottery, yanked open the front door to his farmhouse, and with a goodbye look at Gabriella, but with no parting words, kicked it shut. Gripping a valise tightly in anger in one hand, a thermos clutched in the other, he made his way back to the Peugeot.

"So how'd it go?" Stuart stepped out of the Peugeot.

Pablo pitched his suitcase and thermos into the backseat of the car. "I told her I have to go over the estate of a friend who's died."

“And she threw things at you? We could hear the racket from here.”

“That was her Catalan Spanish temper speaking." Pablo slid in. "Give her some slack, Stuart. She’s having a rough go of it."

"She a fashion model or actress?" Stuart pulled shut his car door.

"Don't make me laugh. A human rights attorney and paid the price for it. Threats from government-backed gangs, soldiers, police dogs, tear gas, water cannons, the whole nine yards going up against authority. But never any rough stuff. Not so with her husband. One black eye, and she called the marriage off. She needs me now more than ever. If this urgency involved some dead Joe Blow I'd say screw it." In no mood for this man who had interrupted his life, Pablo turned away from him and gazed out his passenger window. If you hate me the rest of your life for lying to you, Gabriella, I won't blame you.

As the driver started the engine, he looked out to the darkened farmhouse. He felt a sense of foreboding that replaced his sadness leaving her. It was as if the bodyguard-chauffeur with the turn of a key had sounded the end of a tranquil, anonymous life and the beginning of a dangerous journey into the unknown.