why wouldn't the Americans listen to him.
Naturally, the theater's attendants pulled him away as the doorman escorted the ambassador to his limousine. He explained that the old drunken tramp was unbalanced, an obsessed fan who hung around the theaters where you were playing."
"I never saw him. Why is that?"
"Also explained be the doorman. Whenever you appeared at the stage door, he ran away."
"That doesn't make sense!" said Giselle firmly.
"I'm afraid it does, my dear," countered Jean-Pierre,
looking sadly at his wife.
"At least according to what I learned tonight.. .. So, monsieur," continued the actor, "because of that odd yet not unusual event, my name was included in the-how do you say it?-your non classified intelligence files?"
"Only as part of a behavior pattern, not taken seriously."
"But you took it seriously, nest-ce pas?"
"Please understand me, sir," said Latham, leaning forward in the chair.
"Five weeks and four days ago my brother was to make contact with his Munich runner. It was a specific arrangement, not an estimate, every logistic was narrowed down to a time frame of twelve hours. Three years of a high-risk, deep-cover operation were finished, the end in sight, his secure transportation to the States arranged. When a week passed and there was no word from him, I flew back to Washington and pored over everything we had, everything there was, on Harry's operation-that's my brother, Harry Latham.. .. For one reason or another, probably because it was an odd reference, the Lyceum Theater episode struck me, stayed with me. As you implied, why was it even there? Famous actors and actresses are frequently bothered by fans who are obsessed with them. We read about that sort of thing all the time."
"I believe I said as much," interrupted Villier.
"It's an occupational sickness and, for the most part, quite harmless."
"That's what I thought, sir. Why was it there?"
"Did you find an answer?"
"Not really, but enough to convince me to try and find jodelle.
Since I came back to Paris two weeks ago, I've looked everywhere, in all the back alleys of Montparnasse, in all the run-down sections of the city."
"Why?" asked Giselle.
"What partial answer did you find? Why was my husband's name forwarded to Washington in the first place?"
"I asked myself the same question, Mrs. Villier. So while I was in Washington I looked up the former ambassador-from the last administration-and asked him. You see, the information could not have been forwarded to the intelligence community unless he authorized it."
"What did my old friend the ambassador say?" Bressard broke in, his tone unmistakably critical.
"It was his wife-"
"Ah," said the Quai d'Orsay official, "then one should listen. She should have been the ambassadeur. So much more intelligent, so much more knowledgeable. She's a physician, you know."
"Yes, I spoke with her. She's also an avid theatergoer. She always insists on sitting in the first three rows."
"Hardly the best seats," said the actor softly.
"One loses the perspective for the immediate. Forgive me, go on. What did she say?"
"It was your eyes, Mr. Villier. And those of Jodelle when he stopped them on the pavement and shouted hysterically.
"Both their eyes were so intensely blue," she said, tyet the color was extraordinarily light, extremely unusual for blue-eyed people." So she thought, delusions or not, that there might be substance to the old man's ravings because the similarity of such unusual eyes could only be genetically transmitted. She admitted it was a speculative call, but one she couldn't overlook. And, as Henri mentioned, she is a doctor."
"So your suspicions proved to be accurate," said Jean Pierre nodding his head reflectively.
"When the news came over the television that an unidentified old man had shot himself in the theater after screaming that you were his son-well, I knew I'd found Jodelle."
"But you didn't, Drew Lathaim. You found the son, not the father he never knew. So where are you now? There's little I can add that you don't already know, and that much I myself just found out tonight from the only parents I've ever known. They tell me Jodelle was a Resistance fighter, a baritone at the Paris Opera, found out by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp from which he supposedly never returned. Obviously he did, and apparently the poor soul recognized his infirmities and never revealed himself" The actor paused, then added sadly, pensively, "He gave me a privileged life and rejected any worthwhile life for himself."
"He must have loved you very much, my darling," said Giselle.
"But what sorrow, what torment he had to live with."
"They