Blood Oath Part 16

"Yesterday we meant to call you," Houston said. "I guess you know we didn't stay in town that night."

"Imagine my surprise." He stepped forward, his shoes clicking on the checkered floor. "At first I worried, but I went to the morgue, and when I didn't find you, I decided you were being careful. Anyway, if you were dead, there wasn't much I could do to help you." His eyes gleamed with amus.e.m.e.nt. "I have questions."

"So do we. You lied to us," Houston said.

"Oh? How's that?"

"You told us you were stationed here. You're not. You came from Paris just to see us."

"Fascinating. And you know this for a fact?"

"We asked this policeman. He told us."

Fascination drained from Bellay's face. His eyes went dark. He scowled at the cop, who, cursing, struggled to type forms in triplicate. Bellay spoke curtly in what seemed to Houston gutter French.

The cop peered up. His face went red. He made a fist and twisted it obscenely.

Bellay gaped. The cop resumed his struggle with the carbon paper. Bellay laughed. He turned to Houston. "No respect."

"No secrets either."

"True, my friend. Except for you. Oh, you kept secrets, didn't you? I asked for information, and you told me tiny lies."

"No more than you did. Cut the s.h.i.+t! What's going on?"

For an instant Bellay's composure lapsed. Abruptly he stood straighter, and his eyes appeared amused again. "We'll trade," he said. "What I know for what you know. If you're ready to cooperate."

"Verlaine."

"That settles it. We talk." Bellay gestured toward the open doorway.

They went out, Simone following. The hall was gray. It needed painting. Two policemen left an office heading toward another. A detective went inside the men's room.

Bellay led them down the hall. He knocked on a frosted-gla.s.s door and, when he heard a voice, went in. He said three sentences in French. A man with weary eyes and sagging cheeks came out. He glanced at Houston, lingered on Simone.

Reluctantly he left.

"They rushed me here," Bellay told Houston. "But they didn't make arrangements for an office. Never mind. This place will do." With elegance, he motioned them inside.

Houston smelled the must of boxes, records, forms. A storage room. There was a table in the middle.

Bellay shut the door. The hallway sounds were m.u.f.fled. "Have a chair please.

This could take a while."

Simone obeyed.

But Houston didn't move. "Verlaine," he said. "Get on with it."

"No, that's not how this works. If you intend to swap, first you tell me."

"Okay, I'm leaving." Houston reached for the doork.n.o.b.

Bellay didn't try to stop him.

Houston stared down at his hand. He sighed and sat before the table. "Well, no harm in trying."

"No, indeed. But evidently you're more curious than I am." Bellay watched him.

Then he seemed to make a choice and, imitating Houston, sighed. "In honesty," he admitted, "I'm so curious that I'd sell my mother's soul. Begin, please. Tell me everything that's happened to you. Leave out nothing. You don't know what might be important."

Houston lit a cigarette. He began, omitting no details, telling everything.

"Verlaine," he concluded. "It all points to Verlaine."

"And St. Laurent, although I told the truth the name is unfamiliar to me."

Bellay paused and turned to Simone. "Do you have anything to add?"

"No. Peter's covered it all."

Bellay s.h.i.+fted his attention back to Houston. "Then your father may be still alive, involved in this. Or if he did die, nonetheless he was involved."

"In what? It's your turn. Keep your bargain."

"I'm not sure I can. Oh, I can tell you what I know. But I don't understand, so why should you?"

"For Christ's sake "

"Listen carefully. I've worked on this too long. I've lost my objectivity. From your perspective, maybe you can see the pattern."

Houston waited.

Bellay tapped his fingers on the table and began.

Chapter 29.

"I'm no policeman," Bellay told them. "I work for the government. Intelligence.

What you would call a spy, though I prefer a less dramatic word."

Simone leaned forward. Houston was only vaguely conscious of her.

"I won't name the agency I work for. It prefers to be anonymous, and anyway the name would have no meaning for you. Its mandate is essentially defensive not to interfere with foreign governments and not to ferret out their secrets. Quite the opposite. Our purpose is to stop a foreign government from interfering with our own. We are protectors. We defend. We seek out hostile foreign agents and discourage them."

"Is that a synonym for kill?"

"I keep forgetting you're a novelist."

"How did you know?"

Bellay smiled. "We're efficient. Your own emba.s.sy is equally efficient. While you waited at Emergency, your file was being put together. And Simone's, of course. Don't be offended. These are necessary measures, and we keep that information confidential."

"I've done nothing shameful," she said proudly.

"Yes, I know. I read your file."

She looked embarra.s.sed, violated.

"Mr. Houston has no shameful secrets either. I'm convinced that your connection with Verlaine is inadvertent, innocent. You have become involved, though, and the question now is how to deal with that."

"You're telling me Verlaine's a front for foreign agents?"

Bellay studied him. "America is not the only country with a cancer at its soul.

Drugs, crime, moral impotence. The evil is pervasive. France and England, Italy and Germany and I don't need to give a list. The roster is endless. We are slowly dying, each of us, each nation."

Sermons? Houston thought. I ask for information, and he answers with a moral tract? "That isn't your concern," he said. "You're not a cop."

"Correct."

"Then "

"Verlaine Enterprises is a front for drugs and fences, prost.i.tution, gambling, hit men, loan sharks, counterfeiters. It owns buildings like the one in which you nearly died. It buys up failing businesses and uses them to hide illegal profits, making dirty money clean to satisfy the tax authorities. The lesson of your Al Capone was learned in France as well as in America. He didn't go to jail for murder but for tax evasion. You'll be amused that Verlaine, having no doubt blown that building up, is now demanding its insurance money."

"Jesus."

"In a way, I find their gall impressive. As you say, those crimes are not my business. But I do have other business with Verlaine. A year ago, policemen started hearing street talk. Not substantial. Rumors mostly. Not in Roncevaux, but in Paris and Ma.r.s.eilles. Large s.h.i.+pments of narcotics smuggled in without detection. I mean large amounts, ten times what normally comes in. Then twenty times. Then thirty. If these rumors were correct, that kind of traffic couldn't be achieved without wide payoffs, through organized corruption of officials.

That alone made the rumors suspect.

Such corruption surely wasn't possible. What's more, the rumors made no sense.

Such ma.s.sive s.h.i.+pments of narcotics would so glut the market that the price would be driven down. Why would gangsters want to damage profits? Why the ma.s.sive s.h.i.+pments?" Houston felt a surge of anger. "If you've set us up ... If there's no answer ..."

"There's an answer. Other rumors, not from street talk, but from reliable deep covers. It's no secret that detente has failed. Your president has made that clear. Your State Department treats the Soviets as if the Cold War never ended.

The invasion of Afghanistan was proof of what the Soviets were planning. Poland, Cuba, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, of course. The pattern is consistent. But they know that there are many ways to conquer. From without and from within." "What you said before "

"You see now my connection with this matter. We can't prove, but we suspect that, losing patience finally, the Soviets are hastening the process of our dissolution. Verlaine Enterprises. It's a front for gangsters. But suppose the gangsters were a front as well. Suppose the Soviets controlled them as a silent hidden partner, keeping their involvement from the men whom they were using.

Dirty money. Buy legitimate clean businesses. Control them from a distance.

Bribe and gouge, corrupt and pander. Take advantage of the evils in our system.

Cultivate those evils. Let the weeds spread. When at last we're so debased that we care only for our satisfactions, when the chaos overwhelms us, then the Soviets step in with ease."

"The Soviets control the mob?"

"And its equivalent in Italy, in England, in America. Use criminals to be unwitting foreign agents. Who would ever think it? But the rumors, Mr. Houston, they persist, and there are many of them. For the past nine months I've been investigating. I can't prove the link between the Soviets and Verlaine Enterprises. But the ma.s.sive drug supplies, the drop in price it makes no sense unless the object is to undermine this country's strength, to cause confusion."

Pete's anger did not lessen. "All I want to do is find Jan's murderer. I want to stop whoever wants to kill the two of us. / want to live a normal life again. If you know anything to help us, tell me. What's this got to do with us?"

"You tried to find your father's grave. In turn, you looked for St. Laurent.

That led you to Verlaine. Beyond all that, we now must deal with nineteen forty-four. A missing squad of soldiers. St. Laurent's own disappearance.

Something happened back then, and its repercussions continue. If we solve that mystery, we'll solve the others."

"And my father's at the center of them," Houston said. His stomach dropped.

"Dear G.o.d, what kind of person was he? What was he involved in?"

"Is," Simone said.

"What?"

"Not was but is. It hasn't ended."

Houston felt the room appear to darken.

Bellay nodded grimly.

"Tell me what to do," Houston said.

"There's nothing "

"With you or without you, I intend to find him. Teach me," Houston said. "I want to learn about Verlaine."

Chapter 30.

Single-s.p.a.ced, the list of Verlaine's holdings filled three pages. Businesses of every size and type. From laundries and importers and distributors and cinemas, to restaurants and office buildings and computers. Finance companies, conglomerates. Houston was appalled. He glanced up from the doc.u.ments.

Bellay explained. "On paper, Verlaine seems as innocent as Christ's apostles.

Everything looks legal, organized by skillful lawyers. It pays taxes. It donates to charities. It issues stocks. It pays a dividend to its investors. Everything it does seems so correct, so doc.u.mented that we need our own lawyers to decipher all the paperwork. Beyond the labyrinth of facts and figures, though, it's vague as h.e.l.l. If we investigate its princ.i.p.al investors, we find other corporations, which in turn are owned by other corporations, and the people who are listed as directors of those corporations don't exist. Their names are phony. In the end, we're not sure who supplies the money. That's on one side. On the other side, the businesses that Verlaine owns aren't strong enough to justify the profits they report."