“I don’t suppose you much envisaged working with them this time.”
“How very true.” He walked for a few paces, before adding, “One thing I’ll say about Jack Redford, he really knew how to disappear.”
Dan nodded, again thinking of his own future, and of the day when he might need to do the same. For all he knew, that day was today, and with that thought he walked on with Patrick White, back into the snow and shadows.
Chapter Forty-four
Dan had expected to find Geneva similarly blanketed with snow, but though it was cold, the streets were dry and the sky was clear and blue. He called Tom Crossley first, speaking to a woman who told him he was expected, then headed over there.
It was a modern apartment building, in the middle of the city. The same woman answered the door, a woman who looked Southeast Asian, though he couldn’t be sure of the country. She smiled and showed him in to a sitting room where Crossley was playing with a very young child and a wooden train set on the floor.
It sent a wave of sadness through him, but he packed it away again and took in the view through the windows—despite being in the middle of quite a built-up area they had a great view over toward the lake and the mountains beyond. It was a nice place too, spacious, tidy, lots of clean lines.
Crossley glanced up, a guy in his fifties and looking it, his face lined, but also still looking incredibly fit, his arm and chest muscles still neatly defined under his T-shirt, his shaved head giving no indication of whether he was grey or bald. He smiled, and said, “Dan Hendricks?”
“That’s me. Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Crossley.”
“Tom, and I’m glad you came.” He jumped up in one fluid motion and said, “You’ve met Patty.” He looked at her then and said, “We’ll go in the study.”
“Drinks?”
He looked questioningly at Dan and Dan said, “I’m fine thanks.”
“We’ll be okay. Thanks, Patty.”
Patty nodded, and went and took Tom’s place with the child, talking in her own language—Vietnamese, he thought, now that he heard her speak.
As they walked through to the study, a more cluttered space, full of military and travel memorabilia, books and journals, cuttings from papers, Tom said, “So you saw Eliot Carter—who put you on to him?”
“Georges Florian, from DGSE.”
Tom gestured to a chair, but stopped short of sitting down himself, saying, “Georges Florian? Was he in the Foreign Legion years ago?”
“That’s the guy.”
“Jeez. I thought he was dead.” He sat down now, and said, “And how’s that old queen, Carter? Still shacked up with his Arab boys?”
“Yeah, his apartment was very much a Little Morocco.”
Tom laughed and said, “God love him. And let me tell you, in our line of work, that guy is worth his weight in gold.”
Dan wondered how much Tom knew about his own career, or if he was just assuming they were in the same kind of business.
“Are you still active, Tom?”
“Not really. But you know how it is.” He reached into a drawer and searched around for a few seconds before pulling out an aged-looking envelope.
He held it up then and said, “It’s funny, I was only looking at this the day before Eliot called to say you were coming. I was relieved when he told me. See, when he disappeared, Jack sent me this key for a safety deposit box in Paris—the details are in there with it. He said he’d pick it up himself one day or that someone would come for it. Well, I guess you’re that someone.”
He leaned over and put the envelope on the desk next to Dan.
Dan was about to object, to explain that he had no right to act as Redford’s representative, but he didn’t. At first he told himself that Patrick would probably make use of whatever was in that box, but he knew the real truth, that he just wanted all the details he could find about Jack Redford and why he’d run.
“Thanks. Do you want it back?” Tom shrugged, shaking his head as if to ask why he’d want it back when he’d only just managed to pass it on. “On the subject of letters, Eliot told me Jack had received a letter not long before he disappeared, someone from Beirut, that it had unsettled him.”
Tom looked doubtful and said, “Not a letter, not that I’m aware of, anyway. I sent him an email and I know that upset him. A friend of ours, someone who’d been in Beirut with us, he was killed in a hit and run.”
Dan immediately thought of Mike Naismith in Baltimore, and said, “Suspicious?”
“Who can tell? Jack thought it might be. It upset him, I know that much. So chances are that’s what Eliot meant when he talked about a letter.”
That was disappointing, and apart from the promise of the key to the box, Dan felt he’d slightly wasted Tom Crossley’s time by coming here.