with a little forethought, they could get them for nothing? The cassettes weren't the only negotiable items either; both the CIA and the FBI would like to lay their hands on him. Patterson supposed he could walk away, forget the whole deal and be safe, but there was a cool half million at stake and nobody ever got rich without taking a few chances along the way.
Patterson stopped at the first bookstall, scanned the crowded shelves as though looking for a specific title among the secondhand books and old magazines on display, then moved on to the next kiosk. In no apparent hurry, he drifted from vending stall to vending stall, checking every now and again to make sure no one was following him. Approaching E. J. Vannier et Fils as casually as he had the other curbside traders, he searched the shelves for the book he'd been told to buy. Spotting it between old copies of Paris Match , Patterson asked the elderly woman behind the counter for the only copy she had of Jean Moulin's Premier Combat . The purchase made, he then crossed the Pont de l'Arche Vêche, turned into the Esplanade Notre Dame and sat down on a park bench.
The paperback, published by Les Editions de Minute, was a factual account of the Resistance Movement in Chartres during World War II, with a preface by Charles de Gaulle. According to the inscription on the flyleaf, the book at one time had belonged to a Denise Rousell of 116 Avenue de la Liberation in Nice. The telephone number of the contact in London was disguised in the postal code.
Patterson thought there could only be two reasons why the contact number had been passed to him in such a complicated fashion. Either the KGB had wanted Denise Rousell to have a good look at him before they eventually met in London, or else one of their photographers had been quietly taking his picture from among the crowd of tourists aiming their cameras at Notre Dame. The latter possibility was certainly ominous, but he doubted if Moscow would sell him out before the video tapes were in their possession. Nevertheless, it was better to be safe than sorry. He had traveled to Paris on a Canadian passport under the name of Pearce, and the hotel registration slip he'd completed on arrival would now have been collected by the local police and lodged in the Pantheon. To cover his tracks, he would catch the first available flight to Munich, collect one of the duplicates from the deed box he'd deposited with the Dresdener Bank and return to England as Herr Otto Prole, sales representative for I. G. Farben.
The conference was held in Franklin's office on the eighth floor. It was chaired by the deputy assistant commissioner (crime), but apart from introducing Detective Chief Superintendent Tucker from the Regional Crime Squad, he left it to Charlie Franklin to go through the agenda.
Rowntree, the burly Yorkshireman from S District, led off and gave a lucid account of the Leese investigation to date which, it transpired, had made some progress. The postmortem had placed the time of death between eleven A.M. and five P.M. on Wednesday, the thirtieth of June, approximately twenty-four hours after Karen Whitfield had been murdered. The pathologist had found two entry wounds but only one exit, which accounted for the fact that only the fragments of one soft-nose bullet impacted on the floor had been recovered from the scene of the crime. The second bullet had been deflected into the lower jaw and was lodged behind the left incisor. Although its shape had been distorted, Ballistics had identified it as a .22 caliber rimfire. Finally, British Airways had confirmed that Leese had been a passenger on Flight 228 from Amsterdam arriving Heathrow at nine A.M. on the day in question, and one of the neighbors in Brompton Mews had supplied a vague description of a man who'd been seen leaving the mews flat at approximately eleven-thirty.
"It would take Leese the best part of an hour to get to his flat from Heathrow." Tucker sucked his teeth, then
Patterson stopped at the first bookstall, scanned the crowded shelves as though looking for a specific title among the secondhand books and old magazines on display, then moved on to the next kiosk. In no apparent hurry, he drifted from vending stall to vending stall, checking every now and again to make sure no one was following him. Approaching E. J. Vannier et Fils as casually as he had the other curbside traders, he searched the shelves for the book he'd been told to buy. Spotting it between old copies of Paris Match , Patterson asked the elderly woman behind the counter for the only copy she had of Jean Moulin's Premier Combat . The purchase made, he then crossed the Pont de l'Arche Vêche, turned into the Esplanade Notre Dame and sat down on a park bench.
The paperback, published by Les Editions de Minute, was a factual account of the Resistance Movement in Chartres during World War II, with a preface by Charles de Gaulle. According to the inscription on the flyleaf, the book at one time had belonged to a Denise Rousell of 116 Avenue de la Liberation in Nice. The telephone number of the contact in London was disguised in the postal code.
Patterson thought there could only be two reasons why the contact number had been passed to him in such a complicated fashion. Either the KGB had wanted Denise Rousell to have a good look at him before they eventually met in London, or else one of their photographers had been quietly taking his picture from among the crowd of tourists aiming their cameras at Notre Dame. The latter possibility was certainly ominous, but he doubted if Moscow would sell him out before the video tapes were in their possession. Nevertheless, it was better to be safe than sorry. He had traveled to Paris on a Canadian passport under the name of Pearce, and the hotel registration slip he'd completed on arrival would now have been collected by the local police and lodged in the Pantheon. To cover his tracks, he would catch the first available flight to Munich, collect one of the duplicates from the deed box he'd deposited with the Dresdener Bank and return to England as Herr Otto Prole, sales representative for I. G. Farben.
The conference was held in Franklin's office on the eighth floor. It was chaired by the deputy assistant commissioner (crime), but apart from introducing Detective Chief Superintendent Tucker from the Regional Crime Squad, he left it to Charlie Franklin to go through the agenda.
Rowntree, the burly Yorkshireman from S District, led off and gave a lucid account of the Leese investigation to date which, it transpired, had made some progress. The postmortem had placed the time of death between eleven A.M. and five P.M. on Wednesday, the thirtieth of June, approximately twenty-four hours after Karen Whitfield had been murdered. The pathologist had found two entry wounds but only one exit, which accounted for the fact that only the fragments of one soft-nose bullet impacted on the floor had been recovered from the scene of the crime. The second bullet had been deflected into the lower jaw and was lodged behind the left incisor. Although its shape had been distorted, Ballistics had identified it as a .22 caliber rimfire. Finally, British Airways had confirmed that Leese had been a passenger on Flight 228 from Amsterdam arriving Heathrow at nine A.M. on the day in question, and one of the neighbors in Brompton Mews had supplied a vague description of a man who'd been seen leaving the mews flat at approximately eleven-thirty.
"It would take Leese the best part of an hour to get to his flat from Heathrow." Tucker sucked his teeth, then
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