Topaz - Leon Uris [25]
“Perhaps you could get someone to attend for you,” Brigitte said.
“The honor of France requires my presence,” André mocked. “You may go, Madame Camus.”
She hedged.
“It’s quite all right. I’m fine now.”
She started for the code room. “Monsieur Devereaux, when will you take a rest?”
“In heaven. I’m looking forward to my first good night’s sleep there in twenty-five years.”
She was about to sob.
“Don’t, please don’t,” he said.
André departed immediately from the Chancellery and drove down Massachusetts Avenue lined with the embassies, legations, and consulates that made it a political artery of the world.
He parked in the lot near Union Station, entered its cavernous confines, and made for a random phone booth, closed the door behind him, unwrapped the rolls of coins, stacked them like poker chips, and opened shop by depositing a dime and dialing the operator.
“Operator. May I help you?”
“Thank you. I want Miami. Area 305. Person to person with Mr. Pepe Vimont at number 374-1299.”
He repeated his instructions indulgently to her questions. She thanked him. A rain of quarters clanged into the coin box with the sound of a muted church bell.
“Pepe’s bar.”
“I have a long distance call for a Mr. Pepe Vimont.”
“This is Pepe Vimont.”
“Here is your party, sir.”
“Hello, Pepe. This is Joseph. I called to wish you a happy birthday.”
Pepe Vimont’s pulse quickened upon hearing the voice of the man he knew only as Joseph. “I think we have a bad connection,” Pepe said quickly, answering the code. “Can you call me back in ten minutes at Eva’s number?”
“Yes, very well.”
Pepe set the receiver down, untied his apron and tapped the other bartender on the shoulder.
“I’ve got to go out for half an hour.”
Always when the rush is on, the bartender thought, but said nothing. He wasn’t really too unhappy about it because it would give him a chance to pocket a few bucks.
Pepe left his bar on Southwest Eighth Street in the heart of Miami’s Cuban refugee district and walked a block and a half up the Tamiami Trail, then crossed to where a violent neon display shouted out “Tropicburger” in four colors. At the outdoor stand of the drive-in, Cubans in gleaming white shirts nipped down cafecitos and talked in their loud, quick voices.
Over the parking lot stood the phone booth coded as Eva. Pepe entered and waited.
During this time, in Washington André Devereaux left Union Station, crossed the avenue to the Commodore Hotel, where he took up position in a new phone booth and watched the lobby clock tick off. He placed a call to Eva’s number.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Is this Pepe?”
“Yes.”
“Joseph. You will go to the National ticket counter at the airport tomorrow. There will be round-trip tickets to New York in your name. It will be a short trip. No more than overnight at most.”
Thank God, Pepe thought.
“Bring your Tessina camera and several rolls of film.”
“Yes, go on.”
André carefully detailed the movements that Pepe was to make in New York and how his contact would link up with him.
He repeated the instructions to perfection.
“Good luck,” André said and hung up. He left the Commodore Hotel and plunged into the endless round of African cocktail parties.
5
PEPE VIMONT, BORN JOSE Lefebvre, was the son of the foreman of the Vimont plantation on Guadeloupe in the French Antilles.
When his parents passed away, the elder Vimont, who was without a son, took young Pepe as his own and gave him his name.
He was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris when the Second World War fell upon France. Choosing to ignore the safe route and return to Guadeloupe, he retreated first into Vichy France, where