John Lescroart - Son of Holmes

When he finished his little speech, he had none of the habits one would expect from one so young, neither the slight embarrassment nor the brash defiance that often punctuates the speech of the insecure. Rather, he reached for his beer and drank.

“It’s clear,” said Marcel, “that you wish to stand alone.”

“Only a dullard would not.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

Finally, Marcel spoke. “But surely you don’t mean that.”

Lupa nodded. “If I hadn’t meant it, I wouldn’t have said it.”

“What of our men at the front, then? They don’t stand alone. In fact, all our hope resides in their fighting together, in the assumption that there are goals that must take precedence over individuality. Are all our soldiers dullards?” “Probably most. It’s always rather meaningless to generalize. Joffre certainly is.”

“Then you wouldn’t fight?” Marcel was getting angry.

Lupa took a breath. “Fortunately, I’m a citizen of the United States, and we are presently neutral. I’m afforded the luxury of not fighting.”

“But would you?”

“I wouldn’t like to be mere cannon fodder.”

“Because you wish to stand alone.”

“Exactly.” He drank some beer. “But I see you’re getting upset with me. I don’t mean to say that I don’t believe in causes, or that everyone should have individuality. I applaud our troops at the front. I only refer to men of adequate intelligence, and they are not so commonplace as is generally believed, who attain eminence in a field and then prove themselves incompetent because they lack imagination, individuality, call it what you will. Joffre can execute all the textbook moves. What he cannot do is adapt. Luckily for France, the Germans are even more stupid, or they would have taken Paris months ago.” He paused and drank again.

“The key then . . .” said Marcel.

“Is innovation,” Lupa continued. “I don’t mean to slur those who follow others’ examples, or those who learn a trade and become proficient at a skill. No. We need them. I simply bemoan the lack of creative leadership by people who are, nominally, our leaders.”

“I quite agree,” I put in.

“Perhaps I misunderstood,” said Marcel. “Then you are here as a head chef to learn to innovate?”

Lupa smiled. “One doesn’t learn how to innovate. One simply acts, and learns from his actions. But yes, I am here to become a chef. I am already a cook.”

It seemed that Marcel was on the verge of questioning him directly about his real work. He leaned toward the younger man with a gleam in his eyes. A slight breeze came into the arbor, though, and Lupa, rubbing his hands together, stood.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have very much enjoyed the day, but I must now attend to other matters. I’m becoming more and more a creature of habit, and my habits won’t brook much flexibility. I’m afraid I must go.”

“Well, if you must, you must,” I said, “but would you consider coming back this evening? Once a week, I host a gathering of the men I had earlier mentioned to you, and I’m always happy to find another discerning beer lover.”

He bowed slightly. “I’d be delighted, though it would have to be after the dinner hour.”

“Around ten, then.”

We remained seated and watched him until he entered the house. He walked very lightly for a man of his size.

“Well?” asked my friend.

I shrugged. “What do you think of him?”

“He’s very polite.”

We laughed, and I rose to get some more beer. When I had come back and sat down, Marcel was still smiling.

“He doesn’t seem to be in as much a hurry to enlist our aid as we are to enlist his, does he?”

“Hardly. And I must admit that after all this time, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been put out to pasture, that there’s nothing happening in Valence, and I’ve been sent here to sit out the war with my cook and my beer. Have you heard of anything at all?”

“I heard from Paris late last week; it must have been after last Wednesday’s gathering, and they told us to sit tight, that whatever would happen here obviously was in the planning stage, and the longer the wait, the greater the odds that it’s really something big.” He took a long drink of beer. “The damn thing is, there’s no one worth assassinating here, and no one scheduled to come, and not a clue of planning in progress . . .” He trailed off. “Nothing.”

“Is it possible,” I asked, “that this time it won’t be an assassination? Suppose, for example, it’s sabotage, or kidnapping, or . . .”

“No, I doubt it,” he said. “Our man directs killers, and if we could just think of . . . my God!” He’d put down the glass and was staring so intently into the trees behind us that I turned around.

“What is it?”

“He is here to assassinate.”

“Impossible,” I said. “There’s not a man in this region of any strategic importance, and no one will be . . .”

“There’s one,” he said, his eyes shining.

“Who’s that?”

“Auguste Lupa.”

We sat for a moment or two in silence, while I thought of objections to what he’d said. In the first place, Lupa had arrived on the trail of our man, but that of course could be a way to have Lupa where he wanted him. Come to Valence so that Lupa would come here, so that he could kill him here? That was far-fetched, and I said so. Why Valence?

“Possibly because Lupa has an embarrassing connection here, and killing him in sordid surroundings would not only be good propaganda but would rid Germany of the agent they most feared.” Marcel was warming now to his own suggestion.

“But there would be no propaganda, since the public has never heard of Lupa, since Lupa wasn’t even his name a few months ago. Finally, Marcel, he would never have waited so long to move. If he had known who Lupa was and where he would find him, he would have acted and cleared out months ago.”

“You’re probably right,” he conceded, “but he’s here for something, and we don’t have any idea of who he is, what he wants, or why he’s here. We must ask Lupa what he has on him, and tonight.”

“It will be difficult at the gathering,” I said.

“Then later.”

“We’ll see, but I can’t shake the feeling that the man is here for sabotage.”

“To sabotage what? There’s nothing here in Valence.”

“No, not in Valence itself. But there is the arms factory in St. Etienne, surely close enough to warrant investigation. You know as well as I that all our major defense research is going on there. Our man would also know. Otherwise, why would Lupa be here? It’s got to be something damned important. If that factory is blown . . . well, it’ll set us back over a year.”

He looked down at the ground and picked up his beer. “It’s guarded, of course.”

“It’s impregnable.”

“Well, there you are.”

“No. What bothers me is its seeming invulnerability. There are enough troops guarding the place, all right, but in a sense that is really not the point. It can’t be directly assaulted, which is of course why they’d have to send a man here—to break it, to find a way in.”

“How is security?”

“I tell you, Marcel, that’s what puzzles me so much about it. Everything is as it should be. It is completely impossible. It can’t be entered by anyone who hasn’t been thoroughly checked out. Everyone who works inside has been cleared and cleared again. There are troops all over St. Etienne with 75s ready to shoot down any aeroplanes . . .”

“Aeroplanes?”

“Probably not, I agree, but one can’t be too careful.”

“Well, then, it seems as if it’s all covered.”

“It is, and that’s what bothers me. The level of security may have created a degree of complacency. I’m growing more and more certain that we should direct our attentions there. It would also explain why our man has stayed around so long without acting. He couldn’t very well break their security in too short a time.”

“If at all.”

I looked across at my friend. Years of service still hadn’t forced him to develop an imagination. He was steady and loyal, always ready for action, and totally without fear, but he could never foresee an event before its occurrence. The times I had worked with him before, he’d been invaluable, but as an active force, rather more like another weapon. And so I’d developed a protective attitude toward him. Not that he needed protection from any known danger—once it was identified, he was in his element. Too often, however, he suspected nothing and would have walked into traps totally unprepared. I don’t know how he was with other agents. Perhaps we had been friends for so long that he didn’t feel with me that he had to be so much the professional, that our personal relations overlapped. I didn’t share his feeling, but he was my closest friend. Now, as I discussed possibilities with him, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that perhaps it was approaching the time for him to get out of espionage. He would perhaps be more valuable as a strategist, directing troops from a defensible position against a visible enemy.

“Time will tell,” I answered him.

“Yes.”

We got up and started to cross over to the house. A breeze was blowing steadily now, and it felt as if rain was in the air. I put my arm around my friend’s shoulder.

“Let’s find something,” I said. “I’m getting very bored.”

He laughed. “Better to be bored than dead. There’s a lot of that going around these days.”

“Yes,” I said, keeping my thoughts to myself. Overhead, the sky had begun to darken.

3

It had rained before the first of the guests arrived, and now the clouds hung low over the land, spent and yet threatening. Occasionally there was a low roar of thunder—the first thunderstorm of the season—but the clouds obscured the lightning.

Georges Lavoie and Henri Pulis arrived first, a little after eight o’clock, and we sat by the front window looking out over the field that lay between my home and the road, some seventy-five meters away. Through some fluke the oaks that surrounded the house did not mar the view out of this window, though with the wind and the swirling branches the scene was neatly translated from the pastoral to the Gothic. From time to time one of the lower branches would sweep across the window like a hand. Twice the wind was strong enough to throw a hail of acorns into the glass, sounding for all the world like the tapping knuckles of that passing hand.

It was, I suppose, a rather strange collection of guests that came every week to my house and shared my beer. We were not confreres by occupation or age; indeed, we had almost nothing in common except a love of beer and companionship. I was by far the eldest, except for Marcel, and the only one of us with any wealth. Usually, we would drink and talk, often playing cards, until midnight. Sometimes Paul Anser would read something he’d just written, horribly translated. He was a great joker and kept the nights far from being dull. Now, with the war, we never ran out of news to discuss, though some nights we still would just sit and read, as in an English men’s club, with of course the notable exception of Tania.

Henri Pulis looked like what he was—one of the hard-working bourgeoisie. Though he was some fifteen years younger than I, his hair was nevertheless starting to streak with gray, and his face was set in creases punctuated by a large, drooping black mustache. He always sat slumped over, and this made him look even shorter than he was. Now he sat, nervously yet methodically wiping the foam from his mustache with his left hand, holding the beer in his right.

He’d come to Valence as a young man, perhaps ten years ago, after working for a time as a ship’s mate. It was even rumored that he’d deserted from the Greek navy when his ship had docked at Marseilles, and he had moved north, lying low for some months until he decided it was safe to appear. After two or three years, he’d saved enough to open his own shop. We had met because he sold the supplies I needed for the beer, and though he was not as witty as the others, he was no less popular. He often seemed uncomfortable until he’d had a few beers; then he would relax and entertain us with crude jokes that we were all secretly ashamed of enjoying. He had originally come when I’d asked him, he said, to get away from his wife and six children, and though by now we were all friends, I was still not completely convinced that he so much treasured our company as that he considered it a respite from his family’s.

Georges Lavoie normally came with Henri. They were friends who often dined together during the weeks when both were free. Georges was thirty-five or thereabouts, a traveling salesman who was often on the road but who made a point of returning by Wednesday, when we all gathered. He was kept from the service by a severe limp—his right leg was shorter than his left. But this didn’t hamper him from somehow seeming the most urbane member of our fellowship. His father had been a banker in Brussels, in Lille, even in Coblentz, before he finally settled in Metz, and undoubtedly the company of bankers had instilled in him a certain conservatism of dress and deference in mannerism. Nevertheless, he had a ready tongue and a stock of stories which were the more amusing for their incongruity. He, along with Tania and myself, never drank to excess, while the other three often left the house a bit affected. When the war broke out, he had left his native Alsace-Lorraine and fled south. He worked now out of Valence, selling and delivering his wares to factories, hospitals, and arsenals in the towns along the Rhone. He was the latest of our number, except for Lupa.

Henri shuddered, crossing one leg over the other and reaching for his bottle. “Good night to get drunk,” he said.

“It’s a good night for something,” Georges agreed philosophically.

I raised my glass. “To something,” I said, and we drank the toast.

Fritz brought in three more beers and left the room, shaking his head sadly. He did not like beer at all.

By now it had gotten dark. The lamps were lit, and the fire stoked, and we had moved to more comfortable seats. We always remained in the big sitting room for these evenings. With its large front window reflecting the lights back in on us, the warm rug, and the variety of furniture, it was ideal for a small gathering of friends. Last spring, before I was sent north, we’d met in the arbor several times, but somehow, after dark, this room was much more comfortable.

Georges and Henri sat on either side of the large fireplace, which commanded one corner of the room, next to the entrance to the dining area and, behind that, the kitchen. I sat on the divan under the window, looking out for the others’ arrival. In the far corner, away from me, were two other stuffed chairs, with a coffee table in front, then the door leading in from the foyer. Just to my left was a china closet and, to my right, bookshelves that lined the wall from the corner to the fireplace. Two other tables held our beer and some magazines, one directly in front of me, the other between Henri and Georges.