The Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes Page A

him. Then, two weeks ago, he walked into a café to meet a very odd group of men. It’s a small restaurant not far from here, just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where I lunch each day. He did not recognise me, for two reasons: I have changed a great deal, physically; and I was supposed to have died under Gestapo examination. That was one rumour I have allowed to live.”
    “And he never knew your real name, or your background?”
    “Just as I never knew his. It was a security measure that allour units shared. It was supposed to mean some safety for our families.” He looked at the photograph on his desk. “Life also plays cruel tricks. She was arrested because she was the wife of Professor Pierre Vaugiroud, who was believed to be working with the Free French in London. She never told them that—” he broke off. His face became as lifeless as his voice.
    Fenner searched desperately for another question. “What happened to the three others who were captured with you?” he asked sympathetically, drawing Vaugiroud away from that blank stare of grim memory.
    “Two died. One stayed barely alive, as I did. The Americans freed us. And a year later—when we were fit enough—we came back to our own identities, Henri Roussin and Pierre Vaugiroud. We both had the same purpose: find Jacques. But he had dropped out of sight long before we were released from the hospital. I began to think that the Communists had transferred him to another city, another country. Or perhaps he was dead. Until two weeks ago—” Vaugiroud began to smile “—when Jacques walked into the Café Racine, which Henri Roussin owns. Jacques is now affluent, handsomely dressed, very confident in manner; a man of position, most respectable, restrained. But he is recognisable. He has aged normally, unlike Henri and myself.” Vaugiroud paused. “How old would you say I am, Mr. Fenner? Frankly?”
    Fenner hedged. “About sixty-five or so, I guess.”
    “You are being too polite. Even so, you add eleven years to my age.”
    Fenner was shocked into silence.
    “So,” Vaugiroud said, “once we found Jacques, it was easy to discover his present name. It was a double shock for me, Imust admit, when that same name was given to me a few days ago as the source from which all rumours flowed.”
    “He is the propagandist you spoke of?”
    “Yes. And the three men whom he joined for luncheon in the highly respectable Café Racine are the terrorists.”
    Fenner was startled. A highly respectable restaurant?
    Vaugiroud did not hide his amusement. “They have been meeting twice a week since the beginning of August. My friend Henri makes a point of knowing his patrons. Most of them are regular visitors—lawyers, professors, judges. These three terrorists seemed very much the same type, well dressed, circumspect, interested in good food. One was a wine merchant, another a retired industrialist, and a third a film producer. But after Jacques met them, we naturally took a closer interest in them.”
    “Three rather unlikely terrorists.” Were they really that? Fenner couldn’t help wondering. The word had such supercharged emotion attached to it. Vaugiroud was really floating off the beam there. Why did good men who uncovered twisted politics seem to develop some twist of their own?
    “Unlikely? They have money, brains, international contacts, intense convictions, ruthless ambition. The wine merchant is a staunch sympathiser with the Secret Army Organisation. The industrialist subsidises an activist group of right-wing nationalists. And the man who is now a film producer, a propagandist for Communist causes, a naturalised Frenchman, was previously—to my own knowledge, eighteen years ago—an organiser of Communist militants. His work was most secret, and so important that Comrade Jacques took abnormal risks to help smuggling him out of France back to Russia. I saw him only once, briefly, by accident. I didn’t remember himuntil Jacques came into the