Topaz - Leon Uris [87]
“I am sending Mr. McKittrick as my personal representative to inform President La Croix, and the British Prime Minister. We ask you keep the matter secret until he reaches Paris.”
D’Arcy said he would comply.
“One more thing,” McKittrick said. “Because of André Devereaux’s intimate involvement in the missile business, I would like to have him present in Paris. There is also an additional matter regarding Intelligence affairs that requires his presence.”
“Yes, you may have Devereaux.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. I’ll be leaving by Air Force jet from Andrews in about two hours,” McKittrick said.
As Marshall McKittrick and André Devereaux boarded the plane, great armed forces lumbered into position, poising along the eastern coast of the United States, and the fleet swung out into the Atlantic to cut off the sea lanes to Cuba. In the air, the bombers of the Strategic Air Command circled in readiness to unleash their atomic warheads, and in their earthen silos the awesome arsenal of missiles was alerted, with preselected targets in the Soviet Union, all prepared to unleash the most terrible catastrophe ever known to man.
16
THE AIR FORCE COURIER jet streaked past land’s end. Marshall McKittrick showed André the letter he was to deliver to Pierre La Croix. André read it and passed it back without comment.
Drinks and snacks were served, then a card table was set up. With a crewman as his partner, André gave McKittrick and the steward a sound thrashing in a rubber of bridge.
“Where the hell did you learn to play like that?” McKittrick asked.
“Once I used to play for a living, or at least to survive. On a good night we usually took in enough to buy bread and wine for a dozen comrades. Sometimes we could afford an extra pair of shoes,” André answered.
“Where was that?”
“When I was interned in Spain. As a matter of fact, I met Nicole then,” he said with a catch, for he realized he was heading toward her. “It’s a long, long story, Marsh.”
They were pensive for a time, neither of them broaching the gnawing thoughts, the implications of the trickery unearthed by Kuznetov’s story.
“I’ve never carried on my work in vengeance,” André said at last, “but for this, someone is going to pay. I’ll find him and expose him if it’s my last act on this earth.”
“Watch out for yourself,” McKittrick answered and went across the aisle to his own seat. He opened his attaché case, sealed the letter to Pierre La Croix, and placed it among his papers.
André warmed himself on cognac and became caught up watching the jet plunge into night. It was that time of transformation in an airplane when the liquor and the altitude and the sense of detachment have dulled and mellowed one enough to plunge him into a sense of timelessness.
Since learning of the Topaz conspiracy, André Devereaux’s nights had been spent in restless fits of semisleep and angry pacing, in torment over the treachery of his countrymen. His own years of devotion and pain, born of love for France, had been vomited upon by men who would destroy her out of ignorance or sinister choice.
What nest of serpents would he have to do battle with now in Paris? Soon the trap would close on Henri Jarré, but there was another, above him ... Columbine. Come heaven or hell, he was determined to flush out the supreme traitor.
The name of one man turned over and over in his mind, that of Colonel Gabriel Brune, a Vice Administrator of SDECE. With the revelation of Disinformation and how it had been used at Suez, the behavior of Colonel Brune had to make him the leading suspect.
André glanced over to Marsh McKittrick, who was dozing. How strange, he thought. It was seven years ago, almost to the day, that he and McKittrick had played out an almost identical drama during the Suez crisis.
The Israelis had poured into the Sinai Peninsula toward the Canal. André was in Paris at the time on other affairs. Because of his intimate relations with the Americans he was brought into the picture. After his briefing, they sought his counsel. André knew that Marshall McKittrick was in Rome on Presidential