Century Rain Part 21

read the papers these days, but people are always getting beaten up."

"We both know it was the same kid, so why pretend otherwise?"

"We went over this last night. If you'd tried to do anything, they'd have cut you up."

"The old me might have tried."

"The old you would have had more sense."

"You're just trying to make me feel better about it." Floyd looked up at the ceiling, picturing the

bedroom he had just visited, the ordered placement of its furniture and the stillness of its occupant. "She might not have much of a grip on the time of year, but she knows how things are going."

"Maybe it's not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world's going to ruin. It's their job."

"Maybe they're right," Floyd replied.

Greta bent down to pick up the bread she had just thrown at the pigeon. "Perhaps they are. And maybe that's as good a reason as any to think about leaving Paris."

"Nice segue."

"I don't suppose you've given any more thought to what we talked about?"

"I mentioned it to Custine," Floyd said.

"How did he take it?"

"He took it well. The same way he takes everything."

"Andre's a good man," Greta said. "I'm sure he'd do a fine job of running the agency."

"He'd probably have Paris eating out of his hand within the year."

"So why not give him the chance?"

"I've been here twenty years," Floyd said. "If I leave now, am I saying that the last twenty years of my

life were a mistake?"

"Only if you want to think of them that way."

"I'm not sure there's any other way."

"It's not the same city you arrived in," Greta said. "Things have changed, and not many of them for the

better. It wouldn't be an admission of defeat. How old are you now, Floyd? Thirty-nine? Forty? It's not so old. Not if you don't want it to be."

"Have you had a chance to look at the papers in that box?"

"Nice segue yourself," she said, allowing him a tolerant smile. "All right. We'll talk about it later. Yes, I have looked in the box."

"Anything you can tell me?"

"Can we talk about it somewhere else?" Greta asked. "This place is getting to me. Sophie's here for the rest of the morning. I could really use some fresh air."

Floyd reached for his fedora. "Then let's go for a stroll."

Floyd found a place to park the Mathis on rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre. The rain had given up for now, although the clouds on the edge of the city had the inky look of thunder about them. But it was pleasant enough on the Right Bank, with the sun doing its utmost to dry the pavements and provide some late-season business for the ice-cream vendors. It was one of those autumn days that Floyd never took for granted, knowing that there might not be another like it before winter stole slyly in.

"Well," he said, feeling his mood improve. "What's it going to be: culture or a stroll in the Tuileries?"

"Culture? You wouldn't know culture if it bit you on the nose. Anyway, I said I wanted some fresh air. The paintings can wait. They've been there long enough."

"Suits me. More than half an hour in any public inst.i.tution and I start feeling like one of the exhibits."

Greta took the biscuit tin with her, tucking it under one arm as they walked. The Tuileries Gardens ran between the museum and place de la Concorde, stretching in an elegant formal ribbon along the Right Bank. They had been part of the city since the time of Catherine de Medici, four hundred years earlier. It always amazed Floyd to think of these geometric green s.p.a.ces enduring through all the changes that had overtaken Paris in that time. The gardens were one of Floyd's favourite places in the city, especially on a quiet morning in the middle of the week.

Deckchairs had been positioned around the large octagonal basin at the western end of the gardens. Greta and Floyd found themselves a pair of adjacent chairs and started scattering the sc.r.a.ps of stale bread she had rescued from the kitchen.

"I don't know what you want me to make of this," Greta said, tapping the tin. "I mean, if you go looking for something odd or unusual, you're almost bound to find it."

"Tell me what you have. I'll worry about making sense of it."

"What was the name of the woman again? Susan something? I have her Christian name on the postcard, that's all."

"Susan White," Floyd said. "If that was her real name."

"You're really convinced she was up to something?"

"More than I was yesterday. Custine's still trying to make sense of what she did to the wireless set in her room."

"Well," Greta said, "I don't mind admitting that this is as good a way as any to take my mind off my aunt."

"Whatever helps." Floyd tore off a chunk of stale crust and tossed it to a gathering of anxious, squabbling male ducks. "Come on, then, what have you got for me?"

"I can't help you with the maps and sketches, but I might be able to shed some light on this." She fished in the tin until she found the letter printed on headed paper.

"That's the one from the steelworks in Berlin?" Floyd asked.

"Kaspar Metals, yes."

"So what's it all about?"

"All I have to go on is this one letter," Greta said, "so there's necessarily some guesswork involved. But

it looks to me as if Susan White got wind of a contract that Kaspar Metals was handling."

"Not one she had a role in herself?"

"No. Definitely looks as if there's a third party involved. Judging from the letter, White must have

already dug up some information about this contract, enough that she wouldn't look like a complete

outsider."

A small, formal party approached the duck pond. There were eight or nine suited men, all wearing trilbies, surrounding an elderly man in a wheelchair who was being pushed along by a st.u.r.dy nurse.

"Tell me about the contract," Floyd said.

"Well, it doesn't go into any great detail-that must have been covered in an earlier letter-but it looks

as if the firm was being asked to cast a big, solid chunk of aluminium. Three big chunks, actually-and the quote talks about additional costs for machining to the desired spherical shape." Floyd watched the old man in the wheelchair throw bread into the pond with trembling hands, drawing the ducks away. "There was a diagram in the tin," he said. "Something round. Must have been part of the same caboodle."

"You look disappointed," she remarked.

"Only because I thought we might be on to something, that maybe the plan was for a bomb. But if the casting is solid..." He shrugged.

"There's some talk about the objects forming part of an artistic installation, but that could be a cover." "None of this makes any sense," Floyd said. "If she was an American spy, why would she have needed a German firm to make those things, no matter what they're meant for? There must be a hundred American firms that could have done the same work."

"Look," Greta said, "just suppose for a minute that she was a spy. What do they do, apart from spying?

They also keep tabs on the activities of other spies."

"Agreed," Floyd said. "But-"

"What if she was put here to keep her eye on another operation? White finds out something about the Berlin contract. She doesn't necessarily know all the details, but she knows she has to find out more about it. So she writes to Kaspar Metals, posing as someone connected to the organisation that arranged the initial order."

"Possible," Floyd allowed.

Greta tossed some more bread into the duck pond. "Actually, there is another thing I should mention."

"Go on."

"The letter also covers costs for transportation and delivery of the finished goods. Now, this is the interesting part: it was broken down into three separate billing items. Somewhere in Berlin, somewhere in Paris and somewhere in Milan."

"I don't remember seeing addresses in that letter."

"You didn't. The man who wrote the letter must have a.s.sumed that both parties already had that information."

Floyd had been wondering where the Milan connection would come in. "Except we don't have that information," he said. "All we have is a couple of lines on a map of Europe." He remembered the L-shaped figure, with the neatly marked distances between the three cities. "I still don't know what the markings on that map mean, but they obviously relate to the work being done by that factory in some way."

"One last thing," Greta said. "That train ticket. It was for the overnight express to Berlin, and it hasn't been used."

"Is there a date on the ticket?"

"Issued on September fifteenth for travel from Gare du Nord on the twenty-first. She'd reserved a sleeping compartment."

"She died on the twentieth," Floyd said, recalling the details in his notebook. "Blanchard said that she gave him the tin on the fifteenth or sixteenth-he couldn't be sure which. She must just have booked the ticket and never used it."