In Their Footsteps / Stolen: In Their Footsteps / Stolen

“There were many owners. Before me, it was a M. Rosenthal. And before him, a M. Dudoit.”

“At the time of the murder,” said Richard, “the landlord was a man named Jacques Rideau. Did you know him?”

“I am sorry, I do not. That would have been many years ago.”

“Twenty.”

“Then I would not have met him.” Mr. Zamir turned to the door. “I will leave you alone. If you have questions, I will be down in number three for a while.”

Beryl heard the man’s footsteps creak down the stairs. She looked at Richard and saw that he was standing off in a corner, frowning at the floor. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“About Inspector Broussard. How he kept trying to point at that photo. The spot he was pointing to would be somewhere around here. Just to the left of the door.”

“There’s nothing to look at. And there was nothing in the photo, either.”

“That’s what bothers me. He seemed so troubled by it. And there was something about a briefcase…”

“The NATO file,” she said softly.

He looked at her. “How much have you been told about Delphi?”

“I know it wasn’t Mum or Dad. They would never have gone to the other side.”

“People go over for different reasons.”

“But not them. They certainly didn’t need the money.”

“Communist sympathies?”

“Not the Tavistocks!”

He moved toward her. With every step he took, her pulse seemed to leap faster. He came close enough to make her feel threatened. And tempted. Quietly he said, “There’s always blackmail.”

“Meaning they had secrets to hide?”

“Everyone does.”

“Not everyone turns traitor.”

“It depends on the secret, doesn’t it? And how much one stands to lose because of it.”

In silence they gazed at each other, and she found herself wondering how much he really did know about her parents. How much he wasn’t admitting to. She sensed he knew a lot more than he was letting on, and that suspicion loomed like a barrier between them. Those secrets again. Those unspoken truths. She had grown up in a household where certain conversational doors were always kept locked. I refuse to live my life that way. Ever again.

She turned away. “They had no reason to be vulnerable to blackmail.”

“You were just a child, eight years old. Away at boarding school in England. What did you really know about them? About their marriage, their secrets? What if it was your mother who rented this flat? Met her lover here?”

“I don’t believe it. I won’t.”

“Is it so difficult to accept? That she was human, that she might have had a lover?” He took her by the shoulders, willing her to meet his gaze. “She was a beautiful woman, Beryl. If she’d wanted to, she could have had any number of lovers.”

“You’re making her out to be a tramp!”

“I’m considering all the possibilities.”

“That she sold out Queen and country? To keep some vile little secret from surfacing?” Angrily she wrenched away from him. “Sorry, Richard, but my faith runs a little deeper than that. And if you’d known them, really known them, you’d never consider such a thing.” She pivoted away and walked to the door.

“I did know them,” he said. “I knew them rather well.”

She stopped, turned to face him. “What do you mean by ‘rather well’?”

“We…moved in the same circles. Not the same team, exactly. But we worked at similar purposes.”

“You never told me.”

“I didn’t know how much I should tell you. How much you should know.” He began to slowly circle the room, carefully considering each word before he spoke. “It was my first assignment. I’d just completed my training at Langley—”

“CIA?”

He nodded. “I was recruited straight out of the university. Not exactly my first career choice. But somehow they’d gotten hold of my master’s thesis, an analysis of Libyan arms capabilities. It turned out to be amazingly close to the mark. They knew I was fluent in a few languages. And that I had taken out quite a large sum in student loans. That was the carrot, you see—the loan payoff. The foreign travel. And, I have to admit, the idea intrigued me, the chance to work as an Intelligence analyst…”

“Is that how you met my parents?”

He nodded. “NATO knew it had a security leak, originating in Paris. Somehow weapons data were slipping through to the East Germans. I’d just arrived in Paris, so there was no question that I was clean. They assigned me to work with Claude Daumier at French Intelligence. I was asked to compose a dummy weapons report, something close to, but not quite, the truth. It was encoded and transmitted to a few select embassy officials in Paris. The idea was to pinpoint the possible source of the leak.”

“How were my parents involved?”

“They were attached to the British embassy. Bernard in Communications, Madeline in Protocol. Both were really working for MI6. Bernard was one of a few who had access to classified files.”

“So he was a suspect?”

Richard nodded. “Everyone was. British, American, French. Right up to ambassadorial level.” Again he began to pace, carefully measuring his words. “So the dummy file went out to the embassies. And we waited to see if it would turn up, like the others, in East German hands. It didn’t. It ended up here, in a briefcase. In this very room.” He stopped and looked at her. “With your parents.”

“And that closed the file on Delphi,” she said. Bitterly she added, “How neat and easy. You had your culprit. Lucky for you he was dead and unable to defend himself.”

“I didn’t believe it.”

“Yet you dropped the matter.”

“We had no choice.”

“You didn’t care enough to learn the truth!”

“No, Beryl. We didn’t have the choice. We were instructed to call off the investigation.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “By whom?”

“My orders came straight from Washington. Claude’s from the French prime minister. The matter was dropped.”