Hopscotch

Yaskov brooded toward the enormous monolith of the Radiodiffusion which cowed the right bank beneath it. “Well it was an intriguing idea to me. I did hope you would take an interest.”

“You’d better forget it. I’d be no good to you—I’d put my foot in it anyway.”

“Certainly you would if the work didn’t excite you. I won’t press you again but you might bear in mind that I won’t have closed the offer.”

It meant only that the idea of recruiting him had been Yaskov’s own. Probably he hadn’t cleared it with his superiors. Therefore its failure would not reflect on Yaskov. It meant Kendig was in no danger from them; there’d be no retribution. Somehow the realization angered him.

Yaskov stood up and prodded the cement with his cane. “You were one of the very best. I feel quite sad.” Then he walked away.

He sat on the bench without stirring. Pigeons flocked around, then drifted away in disappointment when he had nothing to feed them. Yaskov’s high narrow figure dwindled along the quay and was absorbed. Traffic was a muted whirring hum on the pont; a thin haze drifted across the sky and Kendig stared among the trees with empty eyes. Recollections drifted through his mind. Lorraine—a dreadful woman with a dreadful name. The caper along the Danube when they’d brought Rozhse

But it had no appeal. There was no challenge; it was too passive. He didn’t want to be dead: he was already dead. Yaskov had strummed a chord there. To be alive might be the goal. But it was harder to find, all the time. He’d done everything to provoke his jaded sensibilities. High risks: the motor racing, skiing, flying lessons, the gambling which had been satisfying until his own capacities had defeated its purpose: he’d always been professional at whatever he did and his skills were the sort that took the risk out of it after a while. He’d bent the bank at Biarritz a month ago and since then he’d lost all interest in it. And he’d long since given up the athletic challenges. They’d all got to looking the same way—the way bowling had looked when he’d been a college freshman. As soon as he’d discovered that the object of bowling was to learn how to do exactly the same thing every time, he’d lost interest.

He thought part of it was the fact that there was no human antagonist. There was no “other side” with which to compete. He had a quarter century of playing the ru

At one time he had tried to get reinstated.

They’d sent him into the Balkans on a very chancy mission but the objective had some meaning so he’d volunteered for it. He’d accomplished the job but he’d been injured badly—it had been critical for a while—and his cover had been blown. After he’d convalesced he’d done some office work and then they’d put him out to pasture on early retirement. Eighteen months later he’d asked for reactivation but he was too old, they told him, too old and too hot. And in any case Cutter had taken his place and wasn’t about to relinquish it. They didn’t want any part of him. They’d offered him a sop—a time-filler desk over at NSA with a fair GS rank and salary, punching decodes through computers. A bloody file clerk’s job.

When the sun tipped over it got chilly and he left the islet. Snatches of things ran through his mind in a jumbled sort of order and he made a desultory game of tracing the pattern they made. They came without chronology from the retentive cells. The suicide note left by the screen actor George Sanders: “I am leaving because I am bored.” Fragmentarily a poem by Stephen Crane which he hadn’t read since he was a sophomore; he was sure he didn’t have it right: “A man said to the Universe, ‘Sir, I exist!’ ‘Yes,’ replied the Universe, ‘but that fact does not create in me a sense of obligation.’” At any rate something like that.… I wish to bring you back to life.… The resurrection of Miles Kendig.… My dear Miles, I’m offering to put you back in the game. Back into action. Isn’t it what you want? The hunting way of life is the only one natural to man. I offer to return it to you.

Well it was something Yaskov didn’t have it in his power to restore.

But it was the first time in months he’d felt things churning and he kept toying with them while he slouched up the rue Lecourbe toward Montparnasse. It was the first time his dialogue with himself hadn’t taken the flavor of a talk with a stranger in the adjacent seat of an airliner: an exchange of meaningless monologues, half of them self-serving lies, the other half mechanical responses and none of it designed to be remembered beyond the debarkation ramp.

He ate something in a café and had two Remy Martins and walked all the way back to the hotel. There were no personal things in sight although he had resided in the suite for nearly two months; its occupant had kept himself hidden from it.

The telephone.

“M’sieur—a gentleman wishes to see you.”

“Who is he?”

“I do not know, M’sieur.”

“I’ll be down. Ask him to wait.” He wasn’t about to invite to his room any man who wouldn’t give his name.

The rickety cage discharged him into the dusky lobby and he saw Gle

It made Kendig wince. Follett pumped his hand enthusiastically and reared back: tipped his head to one side and tucked his jowly chin in, contriving to look affectionate and conspiratorial at once. “My goodness you do look well.” He said it in the voice of a man telling a polite lie. “Life of luxury in retirement, hey?”

“What do you want, Gle

Follett waved his arms around. He was utterly incapable of talking without the accompaniment of vast gestures. “What do you say we have a drink or two?”

“I’ve already had a drink. We can talk here.”

Follett shot a glance toward the concierge behind the desk. That was twenty feet across the lobby. Kendig said, “He’s a little deaf and he’s only got about forty words, of English. Stop looking around—the lamps aren’t bugged.”

“Well if you say so, sure. Hell. Well then let’s have a seat, hey?” Follett led the way back into the alcove and Kendig trailed along reluctantly. Follett sat down with his elbows on his knees so he could flap his hands when he talked. “Damn good to see you again. I mean that.”

“Come off it.”

“Well Christ Kendig, it has been a long time, and here we are both living in the same town. I mean it’s good for old friends to get together—we ought to do it more often, you know?”

Kendig said, “You had a tail on Yaskov today, didn’t you.”

Follett gri

“All right. Get it off your chest. I haven’t got all night.”

“The hell you haven’t. What have you got, Kendig—a vital business meeting? A hard-breathing tryst? Don’t give me no bullfeathers. You haven’t got a Goddamned thing to do except go upstairs to your little ten-by-twelve room and stare at the walls. I’d think you’d welcome some company from an old officemate.”