Rocard looked up. “You have the advantage of me, Monsieur . . . ?”
“Dillon—Sean Dillon, he who was supposed to be dead in Washington, but it’s the third day, and you know what that means.”
“My God!” Rocard said.
“This, by the way, is a gentleman named Blake Johnson, here on behalf of the President of the United States, who is rather understandably desperate for news of his daughter.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rocard tried to stand and Dillon shoved him down and took out his Walther. “Silenced, so if I want to, I can kill you without a sound and put you over the rail.”
“What do you want?” Rocard looked sick.
“Oh, conversation, cabbages, and kings, Judas Maccabeus, poor old Paul Berger, but most of all Marie de Brissac. Now where is she?”
“Before God, I don’t know,” Michael Rocard said.
THIRTEEN
The boat moved forward into the mist. Blake said, “I find that difficult to believe.”
“It’s true.”
“Look, the game’s up,” Dillon told him. “We know about Judas and his Maccabees. You wouldn’t deny you’re one of them?”
“That’s true, but I’ve never met Judas personally.”
“Then how were you recruited?”
Rocard thought for a long moment, then shrugged, resigned. “All right, I’ll tell you. I’m sick of the whole thing, anyway. It’s gone too far. I was at a reunion of survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. I was at Auschwitz as a boy with my family. Those Vichy swine handed us over to the Nazis. It’s where I met my wife.”
“So?” Blake said.
“We all stood up and made testament about what had happened to us. I had a mother, a father, and a sister. We were sent to Auschwitz Two, the extermination center at Birkenau. A million Jews died there. Can you gentlemen conceive of that? One million? I was the only member of my family to survive because a homosexual SS guard took a fancy to me and had me transferred to Auschwitz Three to work in the I. G. Farben plant.”
“I know about that place,” Blake Johnson said.
“The girl who became my wife, and her mother, were transferred by the same man as a favor.” His face was full of pain. “We survived, returned to France, and picked up the threads of our lives. I became a lawyer, her mother died, we married.” He shrugged. “She was never well, always ailing, she died years ago.”
“So where did Judas come into it?”
“I was approached by a man at the Auschwitz reunion and offered the chance to help to secure the future of Israel. I couldn’t resist. It seemed”—he spread his hands in a very French gesture—“so worthwhile.”
“And you served the de Brissac family?” Dillon said.
“I was their lawyer for years.”
“And betrayed the fact that Marie’s father was really the American President to Judas?” Blake accused.
“I didn’t mean it to turn out as it has. Before he died, the general signed a deed acknowledging that he was Marie’s titular father under the Code Napoléon to ensure she inherited the title. When I asked for an explanation, he refused.”
“So how did you find out?” Dillon asked.
“In such an ordinary way. When the countess was dying of cancer, she was sitting with Marie on the patio one day enjoying the sun. I’d arrived with papers for the countess to sign. They didn’t hear my approach, but they were discussing the situation. I heard the countess say: ‘But what will your father think?’ but of course to me, her father was dead.”
“So you listened?” Blake said.
“Yes, and heard all I needed to know. The name of her real father.”
“And you told Judas.”
“Yes,” Rocard said reluctantly. “Look, I deal with many important people, politicians, high-ranking generals. One of my briefs is to keep Judas informed of anything interesting.”
“And you told him Marie de Brissac’s secret?” Blake said.
“I didn’t realize what he would do with the information, I swear it.”
“You poor fool,” Dillon said. “In over your head, and it all seemed so romantic. Berger was exactly the same.”
Rocard stiffened. “You knew Paul?” His eyes widened. “You killed him?”