“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.
