“I do. I won’t keep you very long.” Carter looked ready to dismiss the suggestion, but Dan added quickly, “I’m afraid the same people who were after Jack all those years ago are after me now.”
Carter responded to the seriousness of that statement by sitting up and plumping the cushions behind him. He looked to the door but the young guy had left them alone.
“Not even time for a drink?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
He produced a tired little laugh and said, “Jack was always the same, rushing off here or there, but, oh, he was such a decent man. A terrible shame the way it happened.” Dan’s heart sank as he took on board that Carter didn’t know about the most recent developments, that he probably still assumed Redford had died years before. “You want to know about the last job, of course.”
“Yes, did he tell you about it?”
“In passing. He needed some paper and needed it quickly.” With a flourish, he said, “I obliged, of course.”
“Did he tell you what the job was?”
“Well, naturally, given what he was asking of me, I knew it was DGSE headquarters—La piscine, they call it. I remember complimenting him on how audacious it was. But that’s about all I can tell, other than what I knew of him . . . what I mean is, what I knew of him instinctively. You see, he wasn’t quite himself, if I might put it like that. He was preoccupied.”
“Worried about the job?”
“Possibly. I believe he never had any fear in his life, but I suppose it’s conceivable he knew something wasn’t quite right about the job. Of course, it’s also entirely feasible that this is just me using hindsight to create a completely false impression. As I said, jobs never troubled him like that, and there were other things.”
Dan waited for him to continue, but Carter simply stared at him, eyebrows raised, inviting Dan to play his part.
Dan obliged, saying, “What do you mean by that, what other things?”
“He’d had a letter a little while before, someone he knew from Beirut—the previous year he’d spent six months there, relaxing, having fun. Whether the letter was a billet-doux or something else entirely, he wouldn’t say, but he did tell me he’d received it and that it was weighing on his mind in some way. You see, what I’m saying, Mr. Hendricks, is that the air of preoccupation might have been nothing to do with the job, it might have been the letter. Nobody sends letters anymore, do they? Such a shame.”
“You said he didn’t discuss its contents, but thinking back to Beirut, do you have any idea what it might have been?”
“I wasn’t in Beirut. Hassan!” He looked towards the door, and when the young guy appeared he smiled and said, “Would you bring my Rolodex and some paper and a pen? Thank you.” He turned back to Dan and said, “I’ll give you the address and number of Tom Crossley in Geneva. He was in Beirut, but they were old friends, in some army unit together. He may well have some idea.”
“Thanks. I have some other stuff to deal with first, but I’ll give him a visit.”
Carter looked thrilled and said, “And I do hope you’ll visit us again, for longer next time. Are you in Paris often?”
“Not as often as I’d like, but I’ll keep you to that invite.”
As for Tom Crossley, and finding out what had happened in Beirut, Dan knew it was hardly relevant. Finding out the secrets of Jacques Fillon had been geared to two specific ends, helping Patrick to rein in Brabham and, at the same time, getting Brabham off Dan’s back. The final pieces of the mystery would hardly make any difference to either of those.
Yet he wanted to know. He wanted to know exactly what had been on that tape, not just for his own security, but for the knowledge of it, for Sabine Merel, for her friends and family. And he wanted to know exactly why Jack Redford had run and become Jacques Fillon.
He’d visit this guy Tom Crossley once this was all done, if he was still in the position to visit anyone, because Redford’s story mattered to him now. It mattered most of all, perhaps, because it could so easily have been Dan’s story, and in some ways might still become it yet.
Chapter Twenty-eight
He had the cab drop him a few blocks from the Vergoncey and approached with a mixture of casual pace and complete vigilance, wanting to know exactly how much sand had slipped through the glass in the time he’d been away.
He saw the same two company men in their parked car, about a hundred yards this side of the hotel. But he noticed someone in a leather jacket squatting down and talking to them on the passenger side. He wasn’t CIA, and if they’d brought in the freelancers that could mean they were planning to take Dan down tonight.