killed.!"
oreau, his chief aide Jacques Bergeron, and Latham converged on [email protected] within moments of each M other. Together they walked fifty yards west of the south entrance, where the Deuxieme chief held up his hand; the area was less crowded, the shabby tents on the right used for the employees' toilets and dressing rooms.
"We can talk here," said Moreau, looking at the driver.
"Mon Dieu, my friend, such misfortune! Your wife and children!"
"I shall have to invent a very convincing explanation."
"The children won't speak to you for a week, Frangois," said Jacques, grinning sheepishly.
"You know that, don't you?"
"We have other things to discuss," Franqois broke in defensively.
"I overheard two women, too harridans talking.. .." The driver described the conversation he had surreptitiously listened to, ending with the words "She's in there, in the management's office."
"Jacques," said Moreau.
"Scout the building in your most professional manner. I'd suggest the inebriated mode; remove your jacket and tie, we'll hold them."
"I'll be back in three or four minutes." The agent took off his coat and tie, pulled out a section of his shirt, letting it hang over his belt, and started weaving back and forth toward the south entrance and beyond.
"Jacques does this very well," observed Moreau, looking at his subordinate admiringly.
"Especially for a man who never touches whisky and can barely tolerate a glass of wine."
"Maybe he tolerated too much of both before," said Drew.
"No," said the head of the [email protected] Bureau, "it's his stomach.
Something to do with acidity. He can be very embarrassing when we dine with the ministers of the Chamber of Deputies, who control our purse strings. They think he's a prissy bureaucrat."
"What are we going to do if Courtland's wife stays inside?"
asked Latham.
"I'm not sure," replied Moreau.
"On the one hand, we know she's come here, which validates your assumption that this is a Briiderschaft contact, yet on the other, do we want whoever they are to know that we know it? Is it better to be patient and keep this place, this poor excuse for an office, under constant surveillance and learn who goes where, or do we force the issue by assaulting it?"
"I go for the second," answered Latham.
"We're wasting time if we don't. Pull the bitch out and take her contacts. "
"A tempting shortcut, Drew, but a dangerous one, and conceivably counterproductive. If, as we both now believe, this crude shambles of an amusement park is a vital link to the Brotherhood, do we take it out, leaving a shocking void, or do we let it stand and learn more?"
"I say we take it out."
"Sending alarms to the neo-Nazis throughout Europe? There are other ways, my friend. We can tap into their phones, their fax machines, their ultrahigh-frequency radio transmissions, if they exist. We could be giving up a golden prize for a stuffeddonke-yCourtlancVs wife -can be watched, this park kept under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. We must think about our actions very carefully."
"You're so goddamned French! .. . Youtalk too much."
"Fortunately or unfortunately, it is my heritage, our Gallic skepticism."
4 4And you're probably right. I just wish you weren't.
I'm impatient."
"You had a brother most brutally murdered, Drew. I did not.
Were I in your place, I'd feel the same way."
"I wonder if Harry would."
"That's an odd thing to say." Moreau studied Latham's face, noting the distant, briefly unfocused look in the American's eyes.
"De sang-fro id said Drew softly.
"I beg your pardon."
"Nothing, nothing at all." Latham blinked several times, the reality of the moment returned.
"What do you think Jacques will find?"
"The ambassador's wife, if he can," replied Franqois, the wild driver.
"I hope he does, for the sooner I get home, the better. My daughters were crying their eyes out when they left with Yvonne.. Sorry, Monsieur Director, I don't mean to allow personal matters to interfere-which, of course, they will not. in truth, they are inconsequential."
"No need to apologize, Franqois. A man who has no life outside the Deuxi&me is a man lacking in perspective, in itself a dangerous condition."
"Alors!" said the driver, looking up the dirt thoroughfare.
"What is it?" asked Moreau.
"That fellow in the funny costume, the orange stockings and the blue shirt!"
"What about him?" said Drew.
"He's looking for someone. He keeps running back and forth he coming this way, past the entrance."
"Separate!" ordered the chief of the Deuxi&me.
The three men peeled off in different directions as the young, bearded man in the orange tights raced by, intermittently stopping and glancing around. Franqois walked between two of the employees' tents, his back to the path. A minute