we stop the elevator?"
"Non. Les directeurs-forgive me, the directors and their deputies have emergency codes that put the lifts into express cycles. No stops until they reach their floors."
"Can we prevent him from leaving the building?"
"On what authority, sit? He is the director of the [email protected] Bureau."
"II est un Nazi d'Allemand!cried the lieutenant.
The receptionist stared at Anthony.
"I will try, Major." The woman reached for the telephone on her desk and pressed three numbers.
"There is an emergency, have you seen the director?" she asked in French. Merci She depressed the lever, dialed again, and spoke, repeating the same question.
"Merci." The receptionist hung up and looked at Drew and the commando.
"I first called the parking area where Monsieur Bergeron keeps his sports car. He did not go through the gate. I then reached our first-floor counter.
The guard said the new director just left in a great hurry. I'm sorry."
"Thank you for trying," said Gerald Anthony, holding his bleeding right arm.
"If I may," asked Latham, "why did you try We're Americans, not French."
"Director Moreau held you in extremely high regard, monsieur.
He said as much to me when you came to see him."
"That was enough?"
"No.. .. Jacques Bergeron was all smiles and courtesy when in the company of Monsieur Moreau, but by himself he was an arrogant pig. I prefer to believe your explanation, and, after all, he shot your very charming Major."
They were back in Ambassador Courtland's private quarters at the embassy, Drew, Karin with her wounded shoulder strapped, and Stanley Witkowski, who had flown in from London. The two commandos, the lieutenant's arm attended to and in a sting, were at the hotel, alternately resting and placing generous orders for room service.
"He's disappeared," said Daniel Courtland, sitting in a chair near the colonel and opposite Drew and Karin on the couch.
"Every police and intelligence agency in France is looking for Jacques Bergeron and nothing's turned, up. Every public and private airport and customs checkpoint in Europe has his photograph with a dozen computerized composites of what he may be disguised as-not bing
Chapter Forty-Four
He's no doubt safely back in Germany among his own, wherever they are."
"We have to find out where that is, Mr. Ambassador," said Latham.
"This Water Lightning failed, but what's next, and will it fail? Their long-range plans may be on hold, but the Nazi movement isn't stopped. Somewhere there are records and we have to find them. Those bastards are all over our world, and they're not calling off their act. just yesterday a synagogue in Los Angeles and a black church in Mississippi were burned to the ground. Several senators and congressmen who rose to denounce those incidents were accused of covering up their own sympathies. It's all a goddamn mess!"
"I know, Drew, we all know. Here in Paris, in the predominantly Jewish arrondissements, shopkeepers' windows were smashed, the word Kristalinacht spray-painted on the walls. It's becoming a very ugly world. Very ugly."
"When I left London this morning," said Witkowski quietly, "the papers were filled with the slaughter of several West Indian children, their faces hacked off with bayonets-their faces. The German "Neger' was written in colored crayons around the corpses."
"In God's name, when will it stop!" exclaimed Karin.
"When we find out who they are and where they are," replied Drew.
The telephone rang on the ambassador's antique table that he used as a desk.
"Shall I answer it, sit?" asked the colonel.
"No, thanks, I'll get it," said Courtland, getting out of the chair and crossing to the table.
"Yes? .. . It's for you, Latham, someone called Franqois."
"He's the last person I ever expected to hear from again," said Drew, rising and walking quickly to the table. He took the phone from the ambassador.
"Franqois .. . ?"
"Monsieur Lat'am, we must meet somewhere privately."
"There's nothing more private than this telephone, believe me.
You just spoke to the American ambassador, and his phone is as sterile as any can be."
"I believe you, for you have kept your word. I am interrogated, but only for everything I know, not for what I was."
"You were in a lousy, untenable position, and as long as you cooperate to the fullest, you can go home to your family."
"My gratitude is beyond words, monsieur, as is my wife's. We have discussed everything-I withheld nothing from her-and together we decided I must make this call, for what it may be worth to you."
"What is it?"
"I must take you back to the night old Jodelle killed himself in the theater where the actor Jean-Pierre Villier was performing. Do you recall?"
"I'll