Chain of Chance Part 6

I could have gone on listening to him, but just then Lapidus insisted on introducing me to a group of doctors and biologists. All were of the same opinion: not enough data. The consensus was that one should start with the hypothesis that the deaths were caused by a congenitally determined reaction to certain unknown elements in the microbiosphere. Two groups should be singled out for study-forty in each, all men in their fifties, all having an athletic or a pyknic build, all randomly selected-and made to undergo a steady program of sulfur baths, sunbathing, body ma.s.sages, sudorifics, ultraviolet lamps, horror films, and some t.i.tillating p.o.r.nography, until one of them showed signs of cracking. A genealogical study would then have to be made of their hereditary backgrounds for any sudden or unexplained deaths, which is where the computer would come in handy. They had gone on to discuss the chemical composition of the bathing water and the air, the subject of adrenochromes, the possibility of a chemogenic schizophrenia of metabolic origin-when Dr. Barth came to my rescue and began introducing me to the legal experts on the team. Some of the lawyers argued in favor of the Mafia, others in favor of some new and hitherto undisclosed organization that was in no hurry to claim responsibility for the mysterious deaths. Their motive? But, then, what motive did that j.a.panese have for slaughtering all those Serbs, Dutchmen, and Germans in Rome? And had I seen today's papers? A New Zealand tourist had tried to protest the kidnapping of an Australian diplomat in Bolivia by hijacking a charter plane in Helsinki that was carrying pilgrims bound for the Vatican. That principle of Roman law which said "id fecit cul prodest" was no longer valid. No, it had to be the Mafia, since any one of the Italians could have been a mafioso: the street vendor, the hotel porter, the bath attendant, the taxicab driver. . . . And the acute psychosis would suggest the presence of hallucinogens; although slipping someone a hallucinogen in a restaurant might have been tricky, where else would a person be apt to gulp down a cool, refreshing drink if not in a health spa after a hot and sweaty bath? The lawyers were then surrounded by the doctors, whose company I had just left, and an argument broke out on the subject of baldness, but without resolving anything. The whole scene was rather comical. Around one o'clock the smaller groups began merging to form a fairly animated crowd, and while champagne was being served the subject of s.e.x came up. All were convinced that the list of drugs and medications found on the victims was incomplete. Why was that? Because it didn't include any of the latest s.e.x stimulants or aphrodisiacs, and you could be sure the older men were using them. Topcraft, Bios 6, Dulong, Antipraec.o.x, Orkasfluid, s.e.x Tonic.u.m, Samirex Erecta, Elixire d'Egypte, Erectovite, Topform, Action Cream-the market was flooded with them. I was overwhelmed by this display of erudition, and also a little embarra.s.sed, since they'd managed to reveal a flaw in the investigation: at no time had anyone bothered to investigate the psychotropic effects of such medications. I was advised to look into it. You mean to say that not one of these medications was found on the victims? That in itself was suspicious. A younger man wouldn't make any bones about it, but then we all know how older men are apt to be secretive, prudish, and self-conscious when it comes to such matters. They had probably used the stuff and got rid of the wrappers. . . .

The party was getting noisy; windows were thrown open; cork went flying; a smiling Barth kept popping in and out of different doorways; Spanish girls made the rounds with trays; a platium blonde-Lapidus's wife, I guessed-not bad-looking in the dark, said I reminded her of an ex-boyfriend. . . . The party was a grand success. And yet I was in such a blue, melancholic mood, mellowed by the champagne: I felt cheated. Not one of these rather amiable hotshots had any of that flair, that special flash of illumination which in art went by the name of inspiration, that ability to sniff out what's relevant from a pile of facts. They didn't care about finding a solution to the problem; they only wanted to complicate it by inventing new ones. Randy had the gift but was short on the sort of erudition of which the Barth house was chock full-full but unfired.

I stuck around till the very end, joined my hosts in seeing off the last of the guests, watched as car after car went down the driveway till it was empty, gazed up at the house ablaze with lights, then went upstairs feeling defeated and disaffected. More with myself than with anyone else. Outside, a refulgent Paris loomed beyond the dark stretch of gardens and suburban clutter, but its refulgence was not enough to eclipse the planet Mars, now radiantly ascendant above the horizon: a yellow sphere someone had put there as the final dot.

There are friends with whom we share neither interests nor any particular experiences, friends with whom we never correspond, whom we seldom meet and then only by chance, but whose existence nonetheless has for us a special if uncanny meaning. For me the Eiffel Tower is just such a friend, and not merely because it happens to be the symbol of a city, for Paris leaves me neither hot nor cold. I first became aware of this attachment of mine when reading in the paper about plans for its demolition, the mere thought of which filled me with alarm.

Whenever I'm in Paris I make a point of going to see it. To look and see, that's all. Toward the end of my visit I like to step under its foundation, to station myself between its four iron pylons and gaze up at its interlacing arches, the intricate trusswork outlined against the sky, and the grand, old-fashioned wheels used to propel the elevator. The day after the get-together at Barth's was no exception. Though it was now completely hemmed in by high-rise boxes, the tower was just as impressive as ever.

It was a bright and sunny day. Sitting on a bench, I thought about how I might back out of the whole affair -I'd already made up my mind the moment I woke up that morning. After all that effort, the mission now seemed to me so phony and irrelevant and misguided. Especially misguided was my enthusiasm. It was like a moment of self-revelation: behind all the major decisions in my life I saw the same impulsiveness, the same infantile thinking. On impulse I had enlisted in the commandos as an eighteen-year-old and wound up a spectator of the Normandy invasion-from a stretcher, that is; my glider, after taking enemy flak, had crash-landed off target, with me and a crew of thirty on board, right on top of some German bunkers, and the next day I found myself in an English field hospital with a broken tailbone. Mars was just a repeat performance. Even if I'd made it up there and back I couldn't have gone on reminiscing about it forever; otherwise I might have gone the route of that astronaut who wound up contemplating suicide because everything else seemed so anticlimactic by comparison, including offers to sit on the board of directors of several large corporations. One of my fellow astronauts had been made managing director of a Florida beer-distributing company; and now, every time I reach for a can of beer, I always see him stepping into the elevator in his angel-white s.p.a.cesuit That's why I'd joined the Naples mission: I had no intention of following in their footsteps.

Now, as I stood looking up at the Eiffel Tower, it all seemed so clear to me. It was a frustrating profession, so tempting with its promise of that "big step for mankind" which was, at the same time, in Armstrong's words, a "small step for man"; but in reality it was a high point, an apogee (and not only in the astronomical sense); a position in danger of being lost, a symbolic image of human life in which the l.u.s.t for the unattainable consumes all of man's powers and hopes. Only up there hours take the place of years, and a man's best years at that. Aldrin knew that the prints left by his s.p.a.ce boots would survive not only the Apollo program but mankind as well, that they would be eroded only when the sun expanded into the earth's...o...b..t one and a half billion years from now. So how could a man who'd been so close to eternity settle for a beer distributor's job? To know that from then on it was all downhill, and to have experienced it in such an intense and irrevocable manner, that's more than a letdown; that's a mockery. As I sat there admiring this iron monument erected to the last century by a master engineer, I wondered even more at my own fanaticism, at my own stubborn persistence, and it was now only a feeling of shame that kept me from racing back to Garges and packing my things on the sly. Shame and a sense of loyalty.

That afternoon Barth dropped by my guestroom in the attic. He seemed a little on edge. News. Inspector Pingaud, the Surete's liaison with the Barth team, had invited of us to his office. To brief us about a past investigation headed by one of Pingaud's colleagues, Superintendent Leclerc. Pingaud felt that the case merited our attention. Naturally I agreed to the interview, and we drove off to Paris together.

Pingaud was expecting us. The moment I saw him I recognized him as the quiet, gray-haired man I'd seen at Barth's side the night before, though he was much older than I'd taken him to be. He greeted us in a little side room, and as he stood up I noticed a tape recorder lying on his desk. Dispensing with any preliminaries, he told us the superintendent had been to see him the day before yesterday-though retired, the superintendent was in the habit of dropping in on old friends. During their conversation Leclerc had made reference to a case that he couldn't brief me on personally but that the inspector persuaded him to record on tape. Because it was a rather lengthy story, he invited us to make ourselves comfortable, then left us alone in the room. He did this seemingly as a matter of courtesy, not wishing to disturb us perhaps, but the whole thing struck me as fishy.

I wasn't accustomed to police hospitality, much less from the French police. Then again, maybe it was too little. Not that I detected any outright discrepancies in Pingaud's version; I had no reason to believe it was a fake investigation or that the superintendent wasn't really retired. Still, nothing would have been easier than to set up a private meeting somewhere. I could understand it if they were reluctant to drag out the files-the files being something sacrosanct for these people-but the tape recorder alone implied they were anxious to avoid any sort of discussion. The briefing was to take place without commentary: you can't very well pump a tape recorder. But why the elaborate cover? Barth was either thrown just as far off balance as I, or else he wanted-was obliged?-to keep any doubts he may have had to himself. My mind was still mulling over such thoughts when a rather low, self-a.s.sured, asthmatic voice came on the tape recorder.

"Monsieur, just so there won't be any misunderstandings-I will tell you as much of the story as discretion will allow. Inspector Pingaud has vouched for you; still, there are certain matters that are better left undiscussed. The dossier you brought with you to Paris is something I've known about for a long time, longer than you, and I'll give you my honest opinion: this case doesn't warrant an investigation. Don't take me wrong. It's just that I have no professional interest in anything that doesn't come under the penal code. The world's full of mind-baffling things-flying saucers, exorcisms, guys on TV who can bend forks from a distance-but none of that means anything to me as a policeman. Oh, when I read about such things in France-Soir, I can scratch my head and say, 'Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!' I may be wrong in saying the Italian affair doesn't call for an investigation; then again, I've put in a good thirty years on the force. You may disagree with me; that's your privilege. Inspector Pingaud had asked me to brief you on a case I handled a couple of years ago. When I'm finished you'll see why it was never publicized. At the risk of being rude, I must warn you that if you ever try to publish any of this material I shall categorically deny everything. You'll see why. It's a question of raison d'etat, and I am, after all, a member of the French police force. Please don't take it personally; it's a matter of professional loyalty. What I'm telling you is standard procedure.

"The case has now been shelved, though at one time the police, the Surete, and even French counterintelligence were all in on it. Well, to start with, the subject's name was Dieudonne Proque. Proque is not really a French name; originally it was Procke. He was a German Jew who, as a young boy, emigrated to France with his parents during the Hitler regime, in 1937. His parents belonged to the middle cla.s.s, thought of themselves-till the time of the n.a.z.is, that is-as German patriots, and had distant relatives in Strasbourg whose ancestors had settled in France in the eighteenth century. I'm going so far back in time because this was one of those cases calling for a through background investigation. The tougher the case, the more widely the net has to be thrown.

"His father left him nothing when he died, and Proque later became an optician. He spent the occupation years in Ma.r.s.eilles, in the unoccupied zone, where he stayed with relatives. Except for the war years, he lived the whole time in Paris, in my arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, where he ran a little optical shop out of his apartment on Rue Amelie. Since he didn't have the resources to compete with the more established firms, business was bad, and he barely made ends meet. He made very little from sales, mostly from repairs-replacing lenses, fixing broken toys, that sort of thing. An optician for the poor. He lived with his mother, a woman going on ninety. A bachelor, he was sixty-one at the time in question. His record was clean: not one court conviction, though we knew the photo lab he'd fixed up at the back of the shop was far from being the innocent little hobby he said it was. There are people who specialize in risque pictures-not necessarily p.o.r.nography-but who are unable or unwilling to do their own developing, in which case they need someone else to handle it, someone reliable who won't make extra prints for himself. Within limits, there's not even anything illegal about it. Then there are those who lure people into tricky situations and take pictures for blackmail We keep most of the blackmailers on file, and it's not advisable for them to have their own darkroom or camera equipment or to hire a photographer who's already had a conviction. Proque was running that kind of racket, but only as a sideline. We knew that he was developing pictures and that he usually did it when he was hard pressed financially. But that was still no reason to move in on him. And frankly, these aren't the only things that get by the police nowadays. Not enough full-time staff, not enough funds, and not enough manpower. Besides, we knew Proque wasn't making a bundle on the deal. He didn't have the nerve to use extortion against any of his clients. He was the cautious type, a coward by nature, completely dominated by his mother. Every July they'd make the same trip to Normandy; they lived always in the same cluttered apartment above the shop, in the same building, with the same neighbors they'd known since before the war. A brief physical description of the man, since that's important for you: short, thin, prematurely stooped, with a tic in his left eye and a constantly drooping eyelid. To those who didn't know him, and especially in the afternoon hours, he gave the impression of being hard of hearing and a bit of a crank. But he was completely in his right mind, except for periodic drowsy spells-usually in the afternoon- caused by low blood pressure. That's why he always kept a Thermos of coffee on his workbench, to help keep him awake on the job. As the years went by, these spells grew worse, to the point where he was constantly yawning and on the verge of fainting or collapsing. Finally his mother made him go to see a doctor. He saw two doctors, both of whom prescribed harmless stimulants, which actually helped for a while.

"What I'm telling you isn't a secret; every tenant in the building knew about it. People even knew about his shady business deals in the darkroom. The guy was so easy to see through. And in the end these pictures were nothing compared to your bread-and-b.u.t.ter sort of stuff. The fact is, I'm in Homicide; morals offenses are not my department. Anyway, what happened later had nothing to do with morals offenses. What else should I tell you to complete the picture? He was a collector of old postcards, used to grumble a lot about having hypersensitive skin-too much exposure to the sun made him break out all over, though he didn't seem like the sort of man who'd go out of his way to get a suntan. But that fall his complexion started to change, became sort of coppery, the way it does when it's been exposed to a sun lamp, and some of his regular customers, friends of his, started saying, Tch, tch, Monsieur Proque, don't tell me you've been going to a sunroom?!' And, blushing like a little girl, he'd explain that he had a bad case of boils-in the most sensitive spot, he said-so bad that his doctor had prescribed radiation plus vitamins and a special skin ointment. Apparently the treatment worked.

"That October was especially cold and rainy. Fall was also the time of year the optician was most susceptible to attacks of dizziness and fainting spells, so again he went to see the doctor, and again the doctor prescribed some pep pills. Around the end of the month, while he and his mother were eating dinner one night, he became very excited and began telling her about how he stood to make a killing on a big order for developing and enlarging lots of prints, in color and in large format. He figured on netting sixteen hundred francs on the deal, a small fortune for a man like Proque. At seven that evening he lowered the shutter and, after telling his mother he wouldn't be back till late, shut himself up in his darkroom. Around one in the morning his mother was awakened by a noise coming from her son's room. She found him sitting on the floor and crying 'worse than any man has ever cried before,' to quote the transcript. In a sobbing voice he kept screaming that he'd wasted his whole life and that suicide was the only way out, started ripping up his favorite postcards, knocking over the furniture . . . and there was nothing his mother could do to stop him. Though normally obedient, he completely ignored her. It was like some cheap melodrama. She kept trailing him around the room and yanking at his clothes; he kept looking for some rope, ripped off the curtain cord but was so weak his mother had no trouble getting it away from him; he went for a knife in the kitchen, and as a last resort threatened to go down to the darkroom, where he always kept a supply of lethal chemical on hand. But then he suddenly went limp, slumped to the floor, and before long was snoring and whining in his sleep. His mother wasn't strong enough to lift him into bed, so she slipped a pillow under his head and let him sleep like that through the night.

"The next morning he was his normal self again, though extremely demoralized. He complained of a bad headache, said he felt as if he'd been drinking the whole night, though in fact all he'd had to drink was a quarter of a bottle of wine at lunch, and a weak table wine at that. After taking a couple of aspirin tablets, he went down to the shop, where he spent a routine day. He had very few customers as an optician, and since he spent most of his time in the back polishing lenses or in the darkroom developing photos, the shop was usually empty. That afternoon he waited on a total of four customers. He kept a record of every order, even the most minor repair job done on the spot. If the customer was a stranger, he'd merely jot down the order. Needless to say, he didn't keep a record of his photographic work.

"The next two days were also uneventful. On the third day he got an advance for the enlargements and prints, though of course he was shrewd enough not to enter this amount in the cash receipts. That night he and his mother ate more extravagantly than usual, at least by their standards: an elegant wine, a special fish dish-oh, I can't remember all the dishes any more, though there was a time when I knew all of them by heart, even what kind of cheeses they ate for dessert. The following day he received another batch of undeveloped film, from the same client. During lunch he was in an excellent mood, telling his mother all about his plans for building a house; then, in the evening, he shut himself up in his darkroom again. Around midnight his mother heard a terrible commotion, went downstairs, stood in the hallway, and knocked on the back door of the darkroom. Through the plywood part.i.tion she listened to him ranting and raving, breaking things, turning the place upside down. . . . Panic-stricken, she ran to get her neighbor, an engraver whose workshop was just down the street. The neighbor, an easygoing old widower, used a chisel to pry open the bolt on the part.i.tion door.

"It was dark inside, hardly any noise. They found Proque lying on the floor; scattered all around him were the partially developed and still sticky negatives of p.o.r.nographic photos. They were everywhere, many of them torn and others still glued together. The linoleum floor was covered with chemicals, all the reagent bottles had been smashed to smithereens, the enlarger lay damaged on the floor, there were acid burns on Proque's hands and holes in his clothes, the faucet was running full blast, and he was soaked from head to foot apparently after trying to revive himself by sticking his head under the faucet. From the looks of it, he'd tried to poison himself, by mistake grabbed some bromide instead of cyanide, and went into a narcotic stupor. He put up no resistance when his neighbor practically carried him back to his apartment. His mother testified that after the neighbor left, Proque tried to go on another rampage but was too worn out physically. The scene that followed was again straight out of some second-rate comedy: he flopped around in his bed, tried to rip up his top sheet to hang himself, stuffed his pillowcase into his mouth, and all the time kept shrieking, crying, swearing. As soon as he tried to get to his feet he collapsed and fell asleep on the floor, as he had the time before.

"He woke up the next day feeling miserable as h.e.l.l. The sight of all the damage he'd caused only made him feel guiltier and more despondent, so he spent the whole morning picking up the pieces, rinsing things off, trying to salvage what was left of the negatives, and mopping up the mess. When he was finished cleaning up the darkroom, he took his cane-he was having another one of his dizzy spells-and went out to stock up on a new supply of chemicals. That evening he complained about having some sort of mental illness, asked his mother if she knew of any cases of insanity in the family, and refused to believe her when she said she didn't. The very fact that he could accuse her of lying convinced her that he wasn't fully recovered yet, since in the past he wouldn't have dared even to raise his voice to her. Never before had he acted so aggressively, but then she could understand how a person might lose his self-control after two consecutive attacks of hysteria, which would've been enough to make anybody think he was going insane. He promised his mother that if it ever happened again he'd go straight to a psychiatrist. It wasn't like him to make such rash decisions; it had taken him weeks to go see a dermatologist, and then not until his boils were really killing him. Not because he was tightfisted-he had no need to be, since he was medically insured-but because he couldn't put up with the slightest change in his routine.

"Not long after that he had a falling out with his client because several of the pictures turned up missing. We still don't know what transpired between them; it's the only major dark spot in the whole affair.

"The following week pa.s.sed quietly, Proque became more subdued and never brought up the subject of his mental illness again. That Sunday he and his mother went to see a movie. Then on Monday he went completely berserk. It happened like this. Around eleven in the morning he walked out of the shop without bothering to close the door behind him. Nor did he bother to return his friend's greeting-an Italian who ran a little candy store on the corner-when the man called out to him from in front of the shop. The Italian later testified that Proque looked 'somehow funny.' Proque went straight inside the shop, bought some candy, said he'd pay for it on his way back-which wasn't like him at all-because by then he'd be 'rolling in dough,' climbed into a taxi even though it was a good ten years since he'd last taken one, and told the driver to take him to Avenue de 1'Opera. There he made the driver wait and came back fifteen minutes later yelling and waving an envelope full of cash, gave holy h.e.l.l to some street tramp who tried to make off with the money, climbed back into the taxi, and told the driver this time to take him to Notre Dame. When he reached the island, he paid the fare with a hundred-franc note-the cabby said he saw only hundred-franc notes inside the envelope-and before the cab had even pulled away from the curb, started to climb over the bridge railing. A pa.s.ser-by grabbed hold of his leg, there was a scuffle, the cabby jumped out of the car, but not even the two of them could handle him. A gendarme showed up, and together they managed to shove him into the taxi, leaving the hundred-franc notes lying on the sidewalk. When Proque wouldn't stop being hysterical, the gendarme handcuffed him, and they headed straight for the hospital. On the way there, Proque pulled a fast one. After the car drove off he collapsed on the seat, went completely limp, then suddenly lunged forward, and before the gendarme could stop him-they were driving in heavy traffic now- grabbed hold of the steering wheel. The cab rammed straight into a Citroen's front door, pinning the driver's arm between the steering wheel and the door. The gendarme managed to get Proque to the hospital in another taxi. At first the hospital didn't treat his case too seriously, since all he did was stand there in a daze, whimper a little, and refuse to answer any questions. Finally he was admitted for observation, but later, when the chief physician was making his rounds, Proque turned up missing. He was found under the bed, wrapped in a blanket pulled out from under his sheet, and huddled up so close to the wall that it was a while before he was even noticed. He was unconscious from loss of blood, having slashed both wrists with a razor blade smuggled from his clothes into his hospital gown. It took three blood transfusions, but they pulled him through, though he later developed complications due to his poor heart condition.

"I was a.s.signed to the case the day after the incident on the Ile St-Louis. Though there was nothing to warrant an investigation by the Surete, the lawyer representing the owner of the Citroen, figuring this was a good chance to milk the police, came up with a version charging the police official on duty with criminal negligence. Having in his custody a deranged criminal, the lawyer claimed, the policeman was responsible for allowing the taxicab to collide with his client's car, causing bodily and property damage as well as severe psychological shock to his client. Since the police were criminally liable, any compensation for damages would have to come out of government funds.

"Hoping to gain an advantage, the lawyer leaked his version to the press, which had the effect of escalating the whole affair, since now it was the prestige of the Police Judiciaire that was at stake. It was at this point that I was called in to make an investigation.

"The preliminary medical report indicated Proque had suffered an acute psychosis caused by a delayed attack of schizophrenia, but the longer he was kept under observation after his suicide attempt, the less this diagnosis seemed to hold up. In the s.p.a.ce of just six days he had become a thoroughly broken and wasted old man, but he was completely sane in all other respects. On the seventh day of his stay in the hospital he made a deposition. He testified that instead of paying him the sixteen hundred francs they had agreed upon, his client had paid him less than one hundred fifty, for failing to deliver all the prints. That Monday, while he was grinding some lenses for a new fitting, he suddenly became so furious he dropped everything and left the shop, 'to get what he had coming to him.' He had no recollection of going into the candy store or of anything that happened on the bridge, only that his client had come up with the balance of the money after Proque went to his apartment and made a stink. Later that night, after making his deposition, Proque suddenly took a turn for the worse. He died early the next morning of heart failure. The doctors were unanimous in ascribing it to a reactive psychosis.

"Though Proque's death was only indirectly related to Monday's attack, the case was becoming more serious. Nothing like having a corpse for a trump card. The day before he died, I had gone to pay Proque's mother a visit. For a woman her age she turned out to be very cooperative and obliging. On my way out to Rue Ame1ie I picked up a man from Narcotics to examine the darkroom and the photo-lab chemicals. I was tied up for quite a while with Madame Proque, because once she got started on something there was nothing I could do but sit and listen patiently. Near the end of my visit, I thought I heard the shop's doorbell ring through a crack in the window. I found my helper behind the counter going through the work ledger.

"Find anything?' I asked.

" 'Nothing to speak of.'

"His voice betrayed uncertainty.

" 'Did someone come in?'

" 'Yes. How did you know?'

"He then told me what had happened. When the bell rang, he had been standing on a chair searching an electrical cable box, so it was a few seconds before he was able to enter the shop. The customer heard him tinkering around in the back and, thinking it was Proque, called out in a loud voice, 'How are you feeling today, Dieudonne?'

"Just then my a.s.sistant came into the shop and spotted a bareheaded, middle-aged man who, the moment he saw him, instinctively made a move for the door. The reason was purely accidental. Normally the Narcotics Squad wore civilian clothes on the job, but that afternoon they were obliged to appear in full uniform for a small decoration ceremony being held in honor of one of their superiors. Since it wasn't scheduled to begin until four, my a.s.sistant had decided to wear his uniform to work so he wouldn't have to go home again to change clothes.

"It was obviously the sight of the uniform that had startled the intruder. He said he had come for his gla.s.ses and showed the agent his repair tag. The agent explained that the owner of the shop had been incapacitated and that therefore he would have to wait for his gla.s.ses. It looked as if there was nothing left to be said, but the stranger refused to leave. Then he asked in a low voice if Proque had suddenly been taken ill. The agent said he had.

" 'Seriously ill?'

" 'Fairly seriously, yes.'

'"I ... desperately need those gla.s.ses,' the stranger said quite unexpectedly, apparently unable to ask the question uppermost in his mind.

" 'Is he . . . is he still alive?' he blurted out suddenly.

"By now my a.s.sistant was getting suspicious. Without giving a reply, he placed his hand on the counter top's hinged lid with the idea of checking the man's identification, but just then the man spun around and left the shop. By the time the agent lifted the counter top and ran outside, the stranger was gone. It was the start of the four o'clock rush hour, a light drizzle was falling, and the sidewalks were packed.

"I was upset that he'd let him get away, but I postponed giving him a reprimand. Besides, we now had the optician's work ledger. I asked the agent whether he could recall the number on the man's repair tag, but it had escaped his notice. The ledger included a number of recent entries, but only the customers' initials were given, which didn't look too promising. Our only other lead was the missing stranger, who knew Proque well enough to call him by his first name. I jotted down the most recent entries, though I wasn't very optimistic. Was the repair tag a pretext or cover? I wondered. But any drugs that well hidden would have meant it was the work of professionals. I didn't know what to make of Proque any more. But even if I'd misjudged the man and his shop was being used as a drop, it seemed pretty absurd to think Proque would have helped himself to a dose, much less taken an overdose. The stuff could have been counterfeit, which was often the case, but it was unusual for dealers and middlemen to use narcotics themselves: they're too well acquainted with the aftereffects to be tempted. I was nearly at the end of my wits when my a.s.sistant suddenly recalled that, even though it had been raining, the stranger had been without an umbrella or a hat, and that his mohair coat was almost completely dry. We knew he couldn't have come by car, because the street had been blocked off for repairs, so chances were that he lived somewhere in the neighborhood. It took us five days to track him down. How did we find him? Very simple. Based on the agent's description a composite sketch was made of the missing man and circulated among all the concierges on Rue Amelie. The man identified was a prominent scientist, a doctor of chemistry by the name of Dunant. Jerome Dunant. While going through the ledger I'd noticed something unusual: the initials J. D. were listed on each of the three days preceding Proque's attacks. The doctor lived a few doors down the street, so early one afternoon I went to call on him. When he met me at the door, I recognized him at once from the sketch.

" 'Oh, yes,' he said. 'Come right in.'

" 'It looks as if you were expecting me,' I said as I followed him inside.

" 'I was. Is Proque still alive?'

" 'I beg your pardon, but it was I who wanted to ask you a few questions, not vice versa. What makes you think Proque might not be alive?'

" 'Now it's my turn not to answer. You see, inspector, it's absolutely essential there be no publicity about this. It must be kept out of the press. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous.'

" 'Disastrous for whom? For yourself?'

"For France.'

"I ignored this last comment but couldn't get any more out of him.

" I'm sorry,' he said, 'but any statement I make will have to be to the head of the Surete", and then not before I have special clearance from my superiors.'

"He volunteered no other information, afraid I might be one of those policemen who like to pa.s.s on sensational news stories to the media. That I found out only afterward. He gave us quite a hard time, but in the end he got his way. My superior got in touch with his superior, and two ministries had to approve before he was allowed to testify.

"It's a well-known fact that every nation loves peace and makes plans for war. France is no exception. Chemical warfare is always treated with moral indignation, but still the research goes on. It just so happened that Dr. Dunant was working on a project aimed at developing chemical compounds known as psychotropic depressants, which in pill or gas form would be capable of paralyzing the enemy's will and morale. Under the seal of secrecy we were told that for over four years Dr. Dunant had been trying to synthesize such a depressant. By working with a certain chemical compound, he had obtained a number of derivatives, one of which proved to be capable of producing the desired effect on the brain but only when administered in ma.s.sive doses. Only when taken by the spoonful did it produce the symptomatic effects of syperexcitability and aggression, followed by depression, and culminating in an acute suicidal mania. Finding the right compound is very often a matter of luck, arrived at by subst.i.tuting various chemical groups in the original compound and then a.n.a.lyzing the derivatives for their pharmacological properties. Sometimes it can take years of research to find the right combination; other times one can achieve instantaneous results, the latter being of course the exception, rather than the rule.

"Since he was extremely nearsighted, Dr. Dunant was forced to wear his gla.s.ses at all times. For the past several years he had been a steady customer of Proque's. Since he was severely handicapped without his gla.s.ses, he made it a point always to keep three pairs on hand. He would wear one pair, carry the second pair around with him as a spare, and keep the third pair at home. He'd begun taking these precautions after breaking a pair of gla.s.ses in the lab and having to interrupt his work as a result. And just before his last visit to the shop-three weeks before, to be exact-he had had another accident. Dunant worked in a maximum-security laboratory. Before entering the lab he would have to change into a new set of clothes, including special shoes and underwear, and deposit all his personal items in a changing room separated from the work area by a pressure chamber. While he worked he was required to wear a transparent plastic hood equipped with its own air supply system. At no time was his body or gla.s.ses allowed to come into contact with any of the chemical substances under investigation. To avoid any further possible inconvenience, he had got into the habit of putting his extra pair of gla.s.ses on one of the reagent shelves before going to work. One day, as he was reaching for a reagent, he accidentally knocked them to the floor, shattering one lens and damaging the frame by stepping on it with his foot. He immediately took them to Proque for repair, but two days later, when he went to pick them up, he hardly recognized the optician, who had the tired and haggard look of someone who's just recovered from a serious illness. Proque told him he suspected having been poisoned, because the night before he'd been overcome by a strange attack that for some reason made him feel like crying even now.

"Dunant quickly forgot about Proque and his troubles, but he was far from satisfied with the repair job: not only did one of the stems pinch, but also one of the newly fitted lenses came loose from its plastic frame and finally popped out and broke on the laboratory's tiled flood. Dunant brought the gla.s.ses back a second time, but when he stopped by for them the following day Proque seemed to have aged overnight. Casually he began inquiring about the details of this latest 'attack.' Proque's description sounded like an acute depression caused by a chemically induced psychosis, very similar, in fact, to the symptoms produced by the compound X he had been working on. But since it would have taken a hefty dose of at least ten grams in pure form to provoke such a violent reaction, he failed to see what connection this could have with the gla.s.ses. Twice he had brought for repair the pair that usually lay on the reagent shelf located above the Bunsen burner. Then he began wondering whether the chemical fumes might have traveled through the air and settled on the gla.s.ses in microscopic amounts. He decided to run a test on them. By subjecting the gla.s.ses to a chemical a.n.a.lysis, he established that traces of the compound were indeed present on the lenses and frame stems, but in amounts measurable in gammas-in other words, in micrograms. The story of how LSD was discovered is a familiar one among chemists. Like everyone else at the time, the chemist experimenting with it was completely unaware of its hallucinogenic effects. But after returning home from work one night, he started experiencing all the symptoms of a 'trip'-visions, psychic manifestations; and the like-though before leaving the lab he had washed his hands as thoroughly as he always did. But the infinitesimal amount lodged under his fingernails had been enough to induce the symptoms while he was making dinner.

"Dunant began thinking how an optician goes about installing a new set of lenses and adjusting the stems. He recalled that the synthetically made stems are pa.s.sed quickly back and forth over a gas flame. Could the heat have altered the chemical composition of the compound, in a way that it made its effect a million times more potent? Taking samples of the compound, Dunant tried heating them by every means possible-with burners, spirit lamps, candle flame-but with no results. At that point he decided to perform the experimentum crucis. He deliberately bent one of the stems and bathed it with a thin enough solution of compound X so that a residue amounting to one-millionth of a gram remained on the frame after the solvent had evaporated. He then brought the gla.s.ses back to the optician for the third time. This was the pair he had come to pick up when he saw the agent behind the counter.

"There you have the whole story, monsieur, a story without a solution or an end. Dr. Dunant theorized that the chemical alteration was caused by something in the optician's workshop and that the resulting catalytic reaction made the chemical's effect a million times more powerful. But since nothing was found to corroborate his theory, we decided to drop the case: if you have to chase after atoms instead of people, then it's time to call off the investigation. No crime was committed, since the amount smeared by Dr. Dunant on the gla.s.ses was barely enough to kill a fly, much less the optician. I later heard that Dunant-or someone acting on his behalf-acquired the contents of the darkroom from Madame Proque and tested all the reagents for their effect on compound X, but without any results.

"Madame Proque died before Christmas that same year. In the department it was rumored that after her death Dunant spent the whole winter in the abandoned shop and during that time took samples of everything- the plywood part.i.tion, the grinding stone, the varnish on the wall, the dust on the floor-but found nothing. It was Inspector Pingaud who insisted I tell you the whole story. I suspect your Naples case falls into the same category. Now that the world has reached a state of scientific perfection, such things are bound to happen. That's all I have to say."

Because of the traffic, it took us nearly an hour to drive back to Garges. Neither of us said very much along the way. The story of Proque's gradual insanity was as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. All that was missing was the hallucination phase, but, then, who knows what sort of visions the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d might have had. Funny, all along I'd been treating the other victims like the pieces of a puzzle, but Proque was different. I felt sorry for him. Thanks to Dunant. Oh, I could understand that mice weren't enough. Mice couldn't be driven to suicide. For that he needed a human being. He wasn't taking any risks, either: the moment he saw a cop at the door, he could always use France as an alibi. Even that I could understand. But what made me so furious was that "How are you feeling today, Dieudonne?" of his. If that j.a.panese a.s.sa.s.sin in Rome was a criminal, then what was Dunant? I bet Dunant wasn't even his real name. Why had the inspector let me listen to the story? I wondered. Not out of sympathy, that's for sure. And what was the real story behind all this? The ending could have been faked, too. If that was the case, then the whole thing could have been staged as a harmless pretext for relaying information to the Pentagon about a new type of chemical weapon.

The more I thought about it, the more plausible this seemed. They'd shown their hand so well that if worst came to worst, they could always deny everything. Even they had said they came away empty-handed, and how the h.e.l.l was I to tell whether they were telling the truth. If I'd been your ordinary private detective, you can be sure they wouldn't have bothered with such a show; but an astronaut, even a second-string one, has ties with NASA, and NASA has ties with the Pentagon. If the whole thing was planned by the higher-ups, then Pingand was merely carrying out orders, and Barth's confusion wasn't to be taken at face value, either. Barth was in a far trickier situation than I. He, too, must have detected an element of big-league politics in this unexpected "generosity" of theirs, but he didn't feel it was worth telling me about because it must have taken him by surprise. I was sure he hadn't been tipped off in advance; I knew enough about the rules of the game to know that. They couldn't very well take him aside and say, "OK, all we have to do is show that Yank one of our high cards and he's bound to pa.s.s it on." That's just not the way it's done. And it would have looked funny as h.e.l.l if they'd clued me in and not Barth, especially when they knew he'd already promised me the use of his team. No, they could afford neither to leave him out nor to bring him in, so they did the next most sensible thing: they let him hear exactly what I heard and then left him to worry about the implications on his own. I would have bet he was sorry he ever offered me his help. Then I started meditating on what all this meant in terms of the investigation. It didn't present a very rosy picture. From the Italian series we'd deduced a number of qualifying factors: the mineral baths, men past the age of fifty, st.u.r.dy physique, bachelors, sun, allergy, and here was someone well over sixty, skinny, not allergic to anything, living with his mother, who never took sulfur baths, never got a tan, and hardly ever left the house! In fact, he couldn't have been a more dissimilar type. In a fit of magnanimity I suggested to Barth that each of us digest this latest bit of news on his own, to avoid influencing the other, and compare notes later on that evening. He was all for it.

Around three I went into the garden, where little Pierre was waiting for me. This meeting was our very own secret. He showed me the parts of his rocket. The first stage was a washtub. No one is more sensitive than a child, so I did not mention that a washtub wasn't exactly cut out to be a booster rocket, and I drew for him on the sand the various stages of a Saturn V and IX.

At five I went to keep my appointment with Barth in the library. He took me somewhat by surprise when he led off by saying that since France was doing research on factor X, it was safe to a.s.sume that other countries were engaged in similar research. Such work, he said, was always carried out on a parallel basis, in which case even the Italians might have . . . Maybe it was time to re-examine the whole affair. The compound wouldn't have had to come from a government lab; it could also have originated in a private company. It might have been developed by a chemist connected with the extremists, or, as seemed more likely, some of it might have been pirated. Perhaps the people in charge of administering it did not know how to exploit it to its maximal effect, and so they decided to conduct some experiments. But, then, why were the victims all foreigners, all in the same age group, all rheumatics, and so on?

He had an answer for that as well.

"Put yourself in the place of the group's leader. You've heard about the chemical's powerful reaction, but you're not exactly sure what kind of effect it has. Since you're a man without any moral scruples, you decide to try it out on various people. But which people? You can't very well test it out on your own members. So who? On just anyone? That would mean an Italian, with a family. But since the initial symptoms would be interpreted as a personality change, an Italian would very soon wind up under a doctor's care or as a patient in a clinic. A single man, however, can do just about anything before anyone will take notice, especially in hotels, where every sort of whim is indulged. And the better the hotel, the greater the isolation. At a third-cla.s.s boardinghouse, the landlady is likely to keep a watchful eye on her tenants' every move, whereas at the Hilton you can walk around on your hands and still not attract any attention. Neither the management nor the employees will bat an eyelash as long as it doesn't involve a criminal offense. Speaking a foreign language is another isolating factor. So far so good?"

"What about the other factors-age, allergy, rheumatism, the sulfur treatments?"

"The greater the difference in behavior before and after the chemical agent has been administered, the more meaningful the test results, A young man is always on the go; one day he's in Naples, the next day he's in Sicily. An older man makes an ideal subject, especially if he's a patient at a health spa, where all his movements-from the doctor's office to the baths, from the sunroom to the hotel-are likely to be according to schedule, in which case the drug's effects will be more noticeable. . . ."

"What about the s.e.x factor?"

"It wasn't a coincidence that all the victims were men. Why? Because they were out to get only men in the first place. This seems crucial to me, because it would seem to point to an underlying political motive. If it's high-ranking politicians you're after, then it's only logical for you to choose men. . . . What do you think?"

"You might have something there . . ." I admitted, suddenly awed by the prospect. "So you think they might have had people planted in the hotels and selected a certain type of guest matching in age those politicians they were planning to a.s.sa.s.sinate as part of a coup d'etat? Is that what you had in mind?"

"I'm not one for jumping to conclusions. It's better not to limit the scope of the inquiry. . . . Well now, fifteen or twenty years ago such an idea would have smacked of a gimmicky potboiler or thriller, but today. . . . You see what I mean?"

I saw what he meant, and sighed: I didn't enjoy the prospect of reopening the investigation. I quickly weighed the pros and cons.

"I have to admit I'm speechless. . . . But there are still quite a few things to be explained. Why only people with allergies? And what about the baldness? Or the time of year-the end of May, beginning of June? Have you got an explanation for these as well?"

"No. At least not an immediate one. In my opinion one should start from the other end, by cla.s.sifying not the 'experimental' victims but the real victims, the ones actually intended. That would mean going down the list of Italy's political elite. If it turned out that there were a few with allergy problems. . . . "

"I see! In other words, you're sending me back to Rome. And I'm afraid I'll have to go; this could be the hottest lead so far. . ."

"There's no need for you to leave right away, is there?"

"Tomorrow or the next day at the latest. These are things that can't be handled over the phone."

We left it at that. The more I thought over Barth's theory in my room, the more ingenious I found it. Not only had he put forward a plausible hypothesis, but he'd also managed to get himself off the hook by referring the matter to Rome and side-stepped the whole issue of France's involvement with compound X. This way it no longer mattered whether Dunant actually succeeded in reconstructing the chemical in the darkroom on Rue Ame1ie. The more I thought about it, the more positive I became that Barth's version was right on target. Compound X not only existed but also worked. I was sure of it, just as I was sure that such a method for political a.s.sa.s.sination couldn't help but have a tremendous impact-and not only in Italy-an impact even greater than that of a "cla.s.sic" coup d'etat.

I now began to view the case of the eleven with an antipathy bordering on disgust. What was once an inscrutable mystery had now been turned into a struggle for power as cra.s.s as it was b.l.o.o.d.y. Behind all the bizarre appearances was something as trite as political murder.

The next day I headed straight for Rue Ame1ie. I don't really know why. But around eleven there I was, walking down the sidewalk and browsing in the shop-windows, though even as I was leaving Garges I was still debating whether I shouldn't reconsider and go by way of the Eiffel Tower to bid farewell to Paris. But once I reached the boulevards it was too late for that. I didn't know my way around this part of Paris, so I had trouble finding the street, and it took me a while to find a parking place. I recognized Proque's apartment even before I could make out the number. It looked more or less as I'd imagined it would, an old apartment building with closed shutters and that old-fashioned trim around the gables with which architects of the last century used to lend their buildings a touch of individuality. The optician's shop was defunct, the shutter lowered and padlocked. On my way back I stopped in front of a toy store. It was time to shop around for some souvenirs, because I had no intention of taking part in a new investigation; I'd pa.s.s on all the information to Randy and then head back to the States. My mind made up, I went inside to buy something for my sister's boys-as a way of justifying this latest lark of mine. On the shelves our whole civilization was gaudily arrayed in miniature. I looked around for toys I remembered from childhood but found only electronic gadgets, rocket launchers, and miniature supermen shown in judo or karate attack positions. You dope, I told myself, who are the toys for, anyway?

I decided on a couple of plumed parade helmets- the kind worn by the French Guard-and a Marianne puppet, because these were toys you couldn't get in Detroit. As I was heading back to the car with my packages, I spotted a candy store with white curtains on the corner. In the display window was a bronze-colored Vesuvius covered with roasted almonds; I was reminded of the almond peddler I used to pa.s.s on my way from the hotel to the beach. I wasn't sure the boys would like the bitter-tasting almonds, but I went in and bought a couple of bags anyway. How strange, I thought, that of all places Naples should be saying good-bye to me here. Grudgingly I made my way back to the car, as if I still hadn't given up-given what up? I didn't know; maybe it was the purity that all along I'd unconsciously attached to the mystery. I threw the packages down on the back seat and, standing there with one hand on the open car door, said good-bye to Rue Amelie. Was there any more reason to doubt Leclerc's words or Barth's hypothesis? All my wildest, most private conjectures vanished. But had I ever really believed I would make some startling discovery, that I would splice together all the details in a way no one had ever done before and by some stroke of genius arrive at the hitherto undisclosed truth? Here and there vestiges of the old Paris were still to be seen, but they were destined to be obliterated, wiped out by that army of Molochs at Defense. I had lost all desire to visit the Eiffel Tower, By now Dr. Dunant would already be at work in his porcelain and nickel-plated labs. I had visions of him wrapped in his synthetic turban, eyes aglitter over the distilling apparatus, the coiled air hose trailing behind his plastic coc.o.o.n. I was more than familiar with that world: in Houston I had seen the most exquisite labs, the sterile church naves of rocket domes.

I no longer felt like taking in the scenery as I used to do before takeoff, moments before everything collapsed below me. I had such a bad feeling that I jumped behind the wheel, but before I had a chance to start the car my nose began tickling. Angrily I held my breath for a moment; then the sneezing started. Thunder rumbled across the rooftops, the sky was turning darker, and a cloudburst hung overhead. I blew my nose and went on sneezing, but now I was laughing at myself. The blooming season was catching up with me in Paris, and the worst time was always just before a storm. I reached into the glove compartment, but the Plimasine got stuck in my throat and fell apart into bitter-tasting pieces. For lack of anything better, I tore open the bag of almonds and munched on them all the way back to Garges.

I like driving in the rain, so I took my time. On the highway the steam given off by the rain was turned a dirty shade of silver by the headlights. It was a fierce but short storm, so that by the time I climbed out of the car in front of the house, the rain had stopped. I wasn't meant to leave town that day, I guess, because on my way down to the dining room I slipped on the stairs-they'd just been freshly polished by the Spanish maid-leaving me doubled up and with an aching tail bone. At the dinner table I tried to play it down and chatted with the old lady, who was sure I'd injured a disc and said that there was no better cure for that than flowers of sulfur, the universal remedy for every sort of rheumatic ailment, and that all I had to do was to sprinkle it under my shirt. I thanked her for the sulfur powder and, realizing it was impossible for me to fly to Rome in this condition, willingly accepted Barth's offer to take me to a famous Parisian chiropractor.

Accompanied by expressions of sympathy, I dragged myself upstairs and crawled into bed like a cripple. I managed to fall asleep after finding the least painful position, but later woke up sneezing, having inhaled some sort of acrid power coming from underneath my pillow. I jumped out of bed and let out a howl: I had forgotten about my back. At first I thought the Spanish maid, in an excess of zeal, had sprinkled the sheets with an insecticide, but it turned out to be that infallible remedy for rheumatism that good old Pierre had secretly administered while I was at the dinner table. I shook lie yellow dust out of the sheet, pulled the cover over my head, and dozed off to the steady patter of raindrops pounding on the roof.

At breakfast time, I descended the stairs as if lowering myself down an icy rope ladder on a whaler caught in an arctic storm: a belated precaution. The chiropractor recommended by Barth turned out to be an American black; after taking X-rays and hanging the films on a viewer above the examining table, he went to work on me with hands like paddles. I experienced a sharp but fleeting pain, crawled down from the table under my own power, and discovered that I really did feel a lot better. I had to lie on my back in the office for another half hour, but after that I headed for the nearest Air France office and booked an evening flight. I tried to reach Randy by phone, but he wasn't in his hotel, so I left a message for him.

Back at Barth's house it occurred to me that I had nothing for Pierre, so I promised to send him my s.p.a.ce helmet from the States, said good-bye to the whole family, then left for Orly. There I went straight to a Fleurop shop, ordered some flowers for Mrs. Barth, and settled down in a waiting room filled with American newspapers. I sat and sat, but still there was no boarding announcement. I now looked on the case as if it were a thing of the past. Still undecided about the future, I tried-but without success-to glamorise this indecision of mine. Meanwhile our departure time pa.s.sed, and a steady but indistinct stream of apologies came over the loudspeaker. Then a stewardess stepped out of an office and regretfully announced that Rome was no longer taking any incoming flights.

There was a lot of running around and a flurry of phone calls until it was finally confirmed that in fact Rome was accepting only American planes, Alitalia, and BEA, whereas Swissair, SAS, and my Air France were canceling all departures until further notice. It seems a selective strike had been called by ground personnel, though the reason for the strike was lost in the stampede to exchange tickets and reservations for those airlines that had been given landing clearance. Before I could even fight my way through to the ticket counter, all the seats had been s.n.a.t.c.hed up by the more enlightened pa.s.sengers. The next available flight was on BEA, scheduled to leave the following day at a G.o.dawful time--at 5:40 A.M. I had little choice: I had my ticket rewritten for the BEA flight, loaded my bags onto a cart, and headed for the Hotel Air France, where I'd spent the first night after my arrival from Rome. There I was in for another surprise. The hotel was filled to capacity with pa.s.sengers stranded in the same way I was. I was now faced with the prospect of spending the night in Paris and getting up at four o'clock in the morning to make my 5:40 flight. There was no point in going back to Garges, either, since it was situated to the north of Paris and Orly to the south. I shoved my way through the crowd of disappointed pa.s.sengers, reached the exit, and debated my next move. I could always postpone my departure a day, but that was the last thing I felt like doing: there's nothing worse than a long delay.

I was still deliberating what to do when a man carrying a stack of magazines stepped out of a kiosk and began arranging them on the newsstand. My attention was caught by the latest edition of Paris-Match. Staring at me from the black front cover was a man shown suspended in midair like a gymnast executing a side vault. He was wearing suspenders and holding against his chest a child with streaming hair whose head was tilted back in the manner of a trapeze artist. Not believing my own eyes, I walked up to the newsstand. It was a picture taken of Annabella and me. I bought a copy of the magazine, which automatically flipped open to the page featuring the exclusive cover story. Stretched across the entire page in bold letters above a picture of the demolished and body-strewn escalator was the following headline: WE'D RATHER DIE FACING FORWARD. I skimmed through the report. They'd tracked down Annabella, and on the next page was a picture of her with her family-but nowhere was my name mentioned. The photos came from the video tape used by the airport to photograph all those pa.s.sing through the Labyrinth. I hadn't counted on the publicity. I was relying on their promises of strict confidentiality. I ran through the text again; it was accompanied by a sketch of the escalator and the detonation tank, with arrows indicating the path of my escape, and an enlarged detail from the cover photo showing a checkered sleeve situated between my pant legs and the landing. The caption underneath described it as the arm of the a.s.sa.s.sin blown off by the explosion. What I'd have given to b.u.t.tonhole the author of that article! What was stopping him from mentioning me by name? Oh, I figured in it, all right-as "the astronaut." But Annabella's name was there, that "lovely teen-aged girl" who was still waiting for a letter from her rescuer. Though it wasn't made explicit, there were sly insinuations that the airport disaster had given rise to a love affair. A cold fury took hold of me; I wheeled around, elbowed my way through the crowd in the lobby, and barged into the manager's office, where people were all talking at the same time. Cashing in on my recent heroism, I threw the Paris-Match down on the manager's desk and started outshouting everyone. I still blush with shame whenever I think back on that scene, but I got my way. The manager, unaccustomed to dealing with heroic astronauts, finally broke down and gave me his last vacancy, swearing up and down that it really was his last when the other pa.s.sengers suddenly pounced on him like a pack of hounds let off their leashes.

I started to go for my bags but was told the room wouldn't be ready till eleven o'clock; it was still only eight. I left my luggage at the reception desk and found myself in command of three hours' leisure. I regretted having made a spectacle of myself, and since there could have been serious repercussions if a member of the press had happened to be present, I decided to keep a safe distance from the hotel till eleven. I wasn't in the mood for going to a movie or eating out, so on a whim I decided to do something I'd once thought of doing in Quebec when my plane was grounded by a blizzard. I headed for the other end of the terminal, strolled into a barbershop, and ordered the works. The barber was a Gascon, so much of what he said was lost on me, but, sticking to my decision, I agreed to all the frills in order not to risk being hustled out of the chair. After a fairly routine haircut and shampoo, he shifted into high gear. Tuning in