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left him early this
morning, and I believe Hauptsturmführer Boch’s
interrogators can speak to the truthfulness of the
cabdriver.”
    Boch nodded, knowing that his interrogation
techniques were not widely approved of.
“The Louvre and Notre Dame are right across
the river, the Institut de France dominates the skyline
on this side, and on the hundreds of streets are
small hotels and restaurants, cafés, various retail
outlets, apartment buildings, and so forth and so
on. It is a catacomb of possibilities, entirely too immense
for a dragnet or a mass cordon and search
effort.
    â€œInstead, each of you will patrol a block or so.
You are on the lookout for a man of medium
height, reddish to brownish hair, squarish face.
More recognizably, he is a man of what one might
call charisma. Not beauty per se, but a kind of
inner glow that attracts people to him, allowing
him to manipulate them. He speaks French perfectly,
possibly German as well. He may be in any
wardrobe, from shabby French clerk to priest, even
to a woman’s dress. If confronted he will offer wellthought-
out words, be charming, agreeable, and
slippery. His papers don’t mean much. He seems
to have a sneak thief ’s skills at picking pockets, so
he may have traded off several identities by the
time you get to him. The best tip I can give you is,
if you see a man and think what a great friend he’d
be, he’s probably the spy. His charm is his armor
and his principle weapon. He is very clever, very
dedicated, very intent on his mission. Probably
armed and dangerous as well, but please be forewarned.
Taken alive, he will be a treasure trove.
Dead, he’s just another Brit body.”
    â€œSir, are we to check hotels for new registrations?”
    â€œNo. Uniformed officers have that task. This fellow,
however, is way too clever for that. He’ll go to
ground in some anonymous way, and we’ll never
find him by knocking on hotel room doors. Our
best chance is when he is out on the street. Tomorrow
will be better, as a courier is bringing the real
Monsieur Piens’s photo up from Bricquebec and
our artist will remove the moustache and thin the
face, so we should have a fair likeness. At the same
time, I and all my detectives will work our phone
contacts and listen for any gossip, rumors, and reports
of minor incidents that might reveal the fellow’s
presence. We will have radio cars stationed
every few blocks, so you can run to them and reach
us if necessary and thus we can get reinforcements
to you quickly if that need develops. We can do no
more. We are the cat, he is the mouse. He must
come out for his cheese.”
    â€œIf I may speak,” said Hauptsturmführer Boch.
    Who could stop him?
    And thus he delivered a thirty-minute tirade
that seemed modeled after Hitler’s speech at
Nuremberg, full of threats and exotic metaphors
and fueled by pulsing anger at the world for its injustices,
perhaps mainly in not recognizing the genius
of Boch, all of it well punctuated by the
regrettable fact that those who gave him evidence
of shirking or laziness could easily end up on that
cold antitank gun in Russia, facing the Mongol
hordes.
    It was not well received.
    Of course Basil was too foxy to bumble into a
hotel. Instead, his first act on being deposited on
the Left Bank well after midnight was to retreat to
the alleyways of more prosperous blocks and look
for padlocked doors to the garages. It was his belief
that if a garage was padlocked, it meant the owners
of the house had fled for more hospitable climes
and he could safely use such a place for his hideout.
He did this rather easily, picking the padlock and
slipping into a large vault of a room occupied by a
Rolls-Royce Phantom on blocks, clear evidence
that its wealthy owners were now rusticating safely
in Beverly Hills in the United States. His first order
of the day was rest: he had, after all, been going full
steam for forty-eight hours now, including