was inside. He stood still for a moment, listening. He heard nothing.
Then something caught his eye: something subtle, imperceptible to anyone else. It was the gleam on the top of his mahogany credenza, the sun reflecting off the burnished surface.
There had been a fine layer of dust there this morning no, it was yesterday morning already. The Provencal woman who came in to clean twice a week wasn't due in until tomorrow, and in this old apartment dust tended to settle quickly. Metcalfe hadn't polished it, of course. Someone had wiped it down, no doubt in order to eliminate any traces of a search. Someone had been here, he now knew for certain.
But why? The Nazis didn't break into apartments in Paris, as a rule. Furtive entry was not their modus operandi. When they conducted their house-to-house searches for criminals, for British servicemen in hiding, it was almost always in the middle of the night, yes, but always in the open. And always with a pretense of legality. Papers were produced, signatures waved about.
Who, then, had been here?
And: Was it possible that the intruder was still here?
Metcalfe had never killed anyone. He was entirely comfortable with the use of a gun, going back to his boyhood days on the estancia in las pampas. At the training farm in Virginia, he had been trained in the lethal techniques. But he had never had the opportunity to shoot a man to death, and it was an opportunity he was not looking forward to.
Still, if he had to, he would.
But he would have to be extraordinarily careful. Even if there was an interloper in his apartment, he could not fire unless his life was threatened. Far too many questions would arise. If he killed a German, the questions would not stop. His cover would be blown for sure.
His bedroom door was closed, and that was another thing. He always left it open. He lived alone, and when he was not there, there was no reason to close his bedroom door. The little things, the tiny unnoticed habits. They made up a scrim of normalcy, a mosaic of everyday life. And now that mosaic had been disturbed.
Approaching the bedroom door, he stood still and listened for a minute. Listened for the creak of footsteps, the movements of a stranger who did not know which floorboards squeaked. But nothing: not a sound.
Standing to one side of the doorway in a sniper stance, he turned the knob and pulled the door open slowly, let it swing open. His heart hammering, he stared into the living room, waiting for a minute shift in the light, a movement in the shadows, expecting it.
Now he shifted his gaze, sweeping the room, pausing at the places where someone might try to hide, assuring himself that no one was there. He reached for his gun, withdrew it from the holster.
Suddenly he stepped into the room, gun extended, and said, "Arret!"
Whipping his body from one side to the other, he thumbed the safety, cocked the hammer by pulling back the slide, and prepared to fire.
The room was empty.
No one was there. He was fairly certain of it. He did not sense the presence of an intruder. Still, keeping the weapon pointed, he swiveled from side to side, advancing along the wall until he reached the door to the small library.
The door was open, as he had left it. The library really just another, smaller sitting room furnished with a desk and chair and lined with books was empty. He could see every inch of the room; there were no hidden corners.
But he would take no chances. He raced to the kitchen, pushed open the double doors, entered with his weapon extended. The kitchen was empty, too.
He searched the potential hiding places that remained the dining room, the pantry, his large clothes closet, a broom closet and satisfied himself that they were all empty.
He relaxed his vigilance a bit. No one was here. He felt a little foolish, but he knew he couldn't take chances.
Returning to the living room, he noticed another tiny change. It was his bottle of Delamain Reserve de la Famille Grande Champagne Cognac on the bar. The label normally faced out; now it faced in. The bottle had been moved.
He opened his ebony cigarette box and saw that the double layer of cigarettes had been shifted as well. The gap in the row of cigarettes had been third from the end; now it was fifth from the end. Someone