L'Assassin Read online

  They stopped at a crossroads, and a band of chattering children climbed on. The children showed the driver their passes and rushed past Louis, pushing and jostling to find seats. The bus followed a curving highway over small hills, stopping at various crossroads to take on more children, until it was rocked with shouts and laughter. Finally they stopped in front of a school, and all the children spilled out into the playground, as though someone had pulled the cork out of a bottle, and it was silent again.

  By the time they reached the last stop, Louis was the only passenger. He got off and found himself standing at the edge of a gravel parking lot facing the black-and-white lighthouse at the Pointe du Raz. Beyond the light lay the vast gray ocean. Louis walked along a stony path until he could go no further. The rocky coast fell away in front of him, and the gray surf crashed against it, sending up clouds of spray. Gulls rose on the wind and darted about above him. The salt air stung his eyes. He squinted hard across the sea, as though he might actually be able to see the silhouette of the American continent on the horizon.

  Then he turned and began walking southeast along the cliffs. Louis had a surprisingly long and confident stride for someone his age—he was sixty-seven—and he walked with great energy and purpose, as though he were on an urgent errand, which, in a sense, he was. It looked like he was being held back by an invisible hand and as if he might broaden his step even further and go even faster if only he were allowed to do so.

  Farm fields and pastures came right up to the trail at the edge of the cliff, and cows raised their heads and gazed after him as he passed. They strained against their fences, as though they might like to join him. Larks fluttered up from the grass and hovered high above, calling out their lovely alarm. The ocean drove against the cliffs, and Louis puffed out his cheeks and then took deep breaths as he walked, in order to take in the briny smell. The churning water went from gray to blue and back to gray again as an endless procession of small clouds moved swiftly across the sun.

  Thirty years earlier, the first time Louis came to France, it had been to cross the country on foot like a medieval penitent, even though he did not quite know the reason for his penitence. That was when he had spent that solstice night in Saint Leon. And since that time, walking had become his refuge. It was the best way he knew to manage things that could not actually be managed, like his disintegrating marriage and career back then, like Hugh Bowes’s enmity, like Solesme’s illness now. He had discovered that, in the course of putting one foot in front of the other day after day, he was able to sort things out and find their meaning. And if not their meaning, then their undeniable reality. Things—the difficult and even the impossible—settled into place and became part of life’s landscape.

  Louis followed the coastal trail past whitewashed cottages, along snug, walled fields, through villages, and around little harbors where boats bobbed and creaked, their loose rigging clattering against their masts. Gulls wheeled and dove above each harbor, their cries urgently announcing his arrival. After several hours he stopped and sat on a bluff above a horseshoe-shaped harbor. The tide was retreating and boats sat on the ground while gulls picked through great mounds of seaweed. Louis cut slices of Mimolette onto pieces of baguette. He took a bite of the bread and cheese and then a bite from a tart apple. He grew restless, and after a short time he set off again.

  Toward the end of that first day of walking, the cliffs gave way to beaches. Louis took a front room at the Hôtel des Voyageurs, which sat directly on the beach facing a broad, sandy bay. After a hot bath he sat on the terrace and gazed at the sea, or rather at the sand flats where the sea had been. The sun dropped behind a bank of blue clouds, and the day ended with the light being sucked from the sky. The proprietor turned on the strings of little lights that hung every which way above the terrace. He brought a pitcher of cider and a platter of galettes—buckwheat crepes—still steaming and awash with tiny scallops and clams in garlic butter. Louis was hungry, and he ate until there was nothing left on his plate. Then he mopped up the last drops of sauce with a piece of bread.

  The evening grew cooler, and Louis pulled his jacket more tightly around him. He took two wedges of cheese from the platter, and then ordered a crème caramel, which he pronounced delicious.

  “Merci, monsieur,” said the proprietor, who was also the chef. “It is my speciality.”

  Louis left the window in his room wide open, and the chilly night air poured in, bringing with it the smell and sounds of the sea. The moon rose in front of him, climbed straight up the center of the window, and disappeared above him, leaving behind bright blocks of light on the floor. The curtains swayed and rustled. The surf grew quieter as the tide receded.

  Louis lay with his hands behind his head. The cold air on his arms felt good. His book lay unopened beside him. He fell asleep to the mournful melody of the distant surf. He had a dream in which dark, massive heads with slit-eyes bobbed about in a murky ocean. He awoke with a start, but the world was dark and silent.

  The next day, Wednesday, broke sunny and warm. The tide was in, crashing noisily on the sand a hundred meters from the hotel terrace. Louis ate a quick breakfast and set out on his way. He was impatient. He walked all day, leaving one beach, climbing dunes and bluffs, descending to the next beach, crossing it, then climbing again, walking as though he had no choice, as though geography were destiny. He peered out at the sea, waiting for something to arrive, but nothing did. He sat in the shade of a tree and ate the last of the Mimolette and an apple. The day was hot, and he drank two bottles of water. He stopped for the night at another small hotel, this one a slight distance inland.

  Celtic dance music was playing on the kitchen radio while Louis waited for dinner. A small three-legged dog hobbled in and out of the dining room, as if to check on him. The dog did not beg for food, but rather sat with his back to Louis and faced in the direction of the sea. “He used to go fishing with me,” explained the proprietor. “He misses it.” Louis patted the dog’s head and the dog leaned his small body against him.

  On Thursday morning Louis stepped onto the vast beach that runs in one continuous eighteen-kilometer swath all the way from Kerdor to Saint Guénache. He stood atop the tall, grassy dunes and looked out onto the great expanse spread before him like a gigantic amphitheater. The beach beckoned and then disappeared into the distant haze. The roar of the distant ocean was all but swallowed up by the huge openness of the place. The sky was clear and pale blue above him and went to white where it met the water. Puffy clouds receded into the distance.

  During the Second World War the German high command had believed that the Allies would try to land on the broad, flat beaches of the Finistère, and most particularly on this beach by Saint Guénache. In anticipation of the invasion, the Germans had built great defensive fortresses along the shore. You could still see the ruins of their railroads and their sprawling concrete weapons depots and fortifications behind the dunes. And all along the beach, in front of the dunes at indeterminate intervals, there stood round concrete bunkers. The huge bunkers tilted this way and that, as a result of repeated efforts to dismantle them, and sixty years of buffeting by powerful tides and weather and shifting sand. But they remained in place, like gigantic old men, disquieting, slightly menacing even, the heads in Louis’s dream, staring out to sea through their slits, and waiting for the invasion that would never come.

  Far to the south Louis could see a solitary figure. The man—Louis thought it must be a man—appeared to be walking in his direction, although he was too far away for Louis to be sure. The tide was out; the beach sloped imperceptibly toward the distant water. If you wanted to swim here—and Louis was suddenly overtaken with the desire to do so—it would take a good while, even walking as briskly as Louis did, to reach the water’s edge, then a while longer of wading to reach water that was deep enough to swim in.

  Because of these distances and the extremes of the tides, these were dangerous waters. When the tide turned and started coming in, the ocean ru
shed across the flat beach, consuming it in great gulps, two, five, even ten meters at a time. The beach rose but then fell also as it approached shore, and when the water found one of these dips, a great, apparently flat expanse of beach could fill with surging water in just moments. If you were unfamiliar with the tides of this corner of the Finistère, as most visitors were, you might easily find yourself running toward the dunes with the entire ocean in full pursuit.

  By the time the tide was at its highest point, ponds and inlets had formed, even behind the dunes, and the entire beach had disappeared beneath churning water. The ocean swirled and foamed, as though an enormous dam had given way.

  Of course Louis had consulted the tide tables—they were posted in every hotel along with warning notices—and he had set out this morning in plenty of time so that he could safely pass the ponds and inlets and bogs while the tide was out. He checked his watch and found that there was time to spare. The tide was still on its way out. The beach was glorious, and the water sparkled in the distance.

  It took a good fifteen minutes for Louis to walk to the water’s edge. He took off his pack. His back was wet with sweat. He peeled off his clothes and walked into the cold water. He waded across the fine sand for a few hundred meters until the water was above his knees, deep enough, that is, for him to lie down on his back and float. Looking back toward the dunes, Louis could only just see the small bundle of clothes he had left behind. The dunes themselves were more than a thousand meters away.

  Louis lowered himself into the shallow water and turned onto his back. The surf rocked him gently. His feet dragged lazily on the sand beneath him. “I could never float,” he said aloud. His ears were beneath the surface of the water, so that he heard his own voice strangely distorted and resonating in his head. He heard the great whispering hum of the ocean and felt the light slap of the waves on his arms and thighs. And yet, in what he had hoped would be a moment of great tranquillity and sublime forgetfulness, fear rose inside him like a huge, dark sea creature. A premonition that had been gathering inside his brain struck him with near physical force. “My God!” he said. “Hugh Bowes means to kill me.”

  Louis dropped his feet to the sand and stood up so quickly that he almost fell over. Hugh Bowes means to kill me. The thought was preposterous and entirely unexpected, and yet it seemed to Louis to become more certain with each repetition. How could I have been so foolish as to think otherwise? He has always meant to kill me. This was true. Hugh’s hatred of Louis was as profound and undeniable as it was unfathomable and absurd.

  Louis hurried to his clothes. The solitary person he had seen earlier had disappeared. Where could he have gone? Louis dressed quickly, fearing his own nakedness, fearing the fact that he was entirely alone on this immense beach.

  Louis leaned into the wind and hurried toward the dunes. Hugh Bowes had twice tried to destroy Louis’s life. There had never been any apparent motive or reason. Bowes’s enmity had been like a force of nature, like wind or tide or whatever other destructive force you could think of. How, Louis wondered, could I have let myself believe it was over? Someone of Bowes’s power and temperament, a driven man like him, doesn’t give up. Why would he? Why should he? He’s a malignant human being with almost limitless power. And the means—he has the means. And time is on his side. Everything is on his side.

  “My God,” said Louis, stopping in his tracks. “It was the burglary! It was the burglary! Of course! How could I have missed it?” Hearing his own voice startled him, and yet its sound was lost in the vast emptiness around him.

  Hugh’s most recent effort, the episode of just a few years back, had happened this way. Hugh had murdered a man in France, or rather he had arranged for it to be done, and had then, as a sinister prank, arranged for the dead man’s body to be deposited on Louis’s doorstep. He had meant to intimidate Louis, then to toy with him, and then, perhaps, eventually to do away with him. But to Hugh’s surprise and chagrin, Louis had, in defending himself, come perilously close to exposing him and had even managed to make a tape recording of Hugh—Secretary of State Hugh Bowes—incriminating himself. And so Hugh had been forced to withdraw from the battle, held in check, or so Louis had allowed himself to hope. How could I have? He walked even faster.

  Louis found a pay telephone outside the post office in the first village he came to. Renard could hear seagulls in the background. “Hugh Bowes,” said Louis. “I don’t know how I could have missed it. The burglary was orchestrated by Hugh Bowes.”

  “Hugh Bowes? What burglary?” the policeman wanted to know. “That burglary? You said so yourself back then: it was a small thing and the thief was a moron.”

  “He was too inept,” said Louis. “His ineptitude was on purpose. He was supposed to get caught. It was Hugh Bowes setting things up, setting things in motion. I don’t know how I missed it.”

  “What a ridiculous idea,” said Renard.

  “I know,” said Louis. “That is part of what makes it so beguiling.”

  “If you start to think that way …,” said Renard. But he sighed and left the thought unfinished. “We have Bowes on tape threatening you …”

  “The tape. My God, the tape!” said Louis.

  “What about the tape?” said Renard, but Louis had already hung up the phone.

  II

  Louis left the car in his driveway and ran straight to the bedroom. The tape was still at the back of the dresser drawer where he kept his sweaters. He put it in the cassette player and pressed the PLAY button, but he heard only the whirring sound of the machine. He pressed the FAST-FORWARD button, then STOP, then PLAY and again there was only the sound of the machine. The angry voice of Hugh Bowes was missing. The evidence of his malignant plot was gone. There was nothing recorded on this tape.

  “The thief is not such a moron after all,” said Louis. He was sitting with Renard on the terrace in front of the Hôtel de France. “I’m the moron. He even wore my sweater to taunt me, to flaunt what he had done. What’s his name again?”

  “To taunt you?” said Renard, looking amazed.

  “It’s where I hid the tape. With the sweaters. What’s his name?”

  Renard shook his head. He paused to decide how much he could tell Louis. Finally he said, “His name is Lefort, Pierre. He’s a career criminal. Small stuff. Burglary, some drugs. He’s been in and out of jail a lot. And you think this ‘master criminal’ was working for Bowes? That the burglary was a search for the tape?”

  The sun shone brilliantly and Louis had pulled his straw hat down so far that his face was all but invisible to the policeman. A chilly wind rattled the colorful umbrella, rocking it back and forth on its stand. Louis cupped his hands so Renard could light his cigarette. “And why—I have to ask you this,” Renard said, blowing out a cloud of smoke, “why did you keep the tape in your dresser drawer, when it was the only evidence you have against Bowes, where even a moron like Lefort would find it? You the ‘master spy’?”

  “Former master spy,” said Louis without smiling.

  “That was not brilliant. You have to admit that much.”

  Louis admitted nothing. “There are other copies,” he said. “You have one. I have several.”

  “But now,” said Renard, “he knows what’s on the tape. Or rather he knows what’s not on the tape. And, as I recall, there’s not much on the tape.”

  “That is unfortunate,” said Louis. “That he knows, I mean.” Then: “Can I get in to speak to him? What’s the procedure to do that? Can you help me get in to see him?” Louis took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair.

  Renard stared at his friend. Louis is an old man, he thought. Which means I will soon be an old man. “To speak to …?”

  “Lefort,” said Louis. “You know who I mean.”

  “No,” said Renard. “You cannot get in to see him. And even if I could help you get in to see him, I wouldn’t do it.”

  Louis shrugged and put his hat back on his head. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll have to m
anage on my own.” Now he smiled.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” said Renard. “If you’re right, which is …” Once again he did not finish the thought. In the world of espionage and intrigue that Louis had once inhabited, marvelous schemes were regularly hatched, fantastic crimes were routinely committed, and the preposterous—the word Renard had almost spoken—was thought to be entirely normal. As young men, Louis and Hugh Bowes had engaged in … who knew what? Louis had somehow mortally offended Bowes, and it had cost him his career and more. Renard could not imagine half of what went on in that world, and he had decided long ago it was better not to try.

  “And yet,” said Renard, “Hugh Bowes is the American secretary of state.”

  “Was,” said Louis. In fact, Louis’s unmasking of Hugh’s murderous intentions had been instrumental in Hugh’s decision to retire. “His high office means nothing, except that he feels above questions of right and wrong, and above the law.”

  Renard found Louis’s cynicism frightening. But sometimes he tried to think like Louis did, stacking suspicion upon suspicion, and question upon question, until the entire hypothetical construction seemed in imminent danger of collapsing in on itself. “If you talk to the guy, to Lefort, then you would be telling Bowes that you know what he knows, wouldn’t you?”

  Louis smiled at Renard. “I’ll be telling him what I know,” he said. “But there’s also the chance that I will be telling him that I know something which in fact I don’t know. And besides,” he added quickly, realizing that he was on thin hypothetical ice, “I might actually learn something from this Lefort.”