‘Don’t keep me in suspense.’
‘Your sarcasm is out of place, my boy.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Champion has promised to sell them the only thing their money cannot buy.’
‘Eternal happiness?’
‘A nuclear device. A French nuclear device.’
There was a silence broken only by my heavy breathing. ‘How can you know that, Serge?’
Serge stared at me, but did not answer.
‘And if he delivers?’
‘Two hundred million pounds was mentioned.’
I smiled. ‘You are taking a chance on me … suppose I went back to the house and told Champion …’
‘Then either he would give up the plan – which would delight me – or he’d continue with it.’ He shrugged.
‘He might change the plan,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t imagine that alternative plans spring readily to mind for such a venture.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I suppose you are right.’ I reached into my pocket, found my cigarettes and matches and took my time about lighting a cigarette. I offered them to Serge.
He waved them away. ‘You haven’t told me your reaction,’ he said.
‘I’m trying to decide whether to laugh or cry,’ I told him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve been overworking, Serge. Your worries about the Arab–Israeli war, the oil crisis, your business, perhaps … you think that they form a pattern. You have invented a nightmare, and cast Champion as the archfiend.’
‘And I’m right,’ said Serge, but as soon as he said it, he realized that it would confirm my diagnosis. He was a lonely old man, without wife, child or very close friends. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to calm his fears. ‘If Champion can steal an atomic bomb he deserves whatever it was you said he’d get.’
‘Two hundred million pounds was mentioned,’ said Serge, repeating the exact words he’d used before as if it was a few frames of a film loop that never stopped running through his mind.
‘Why a French atomic bomb?’ I said. ‘Why not an American or a British or a Russian atomic bomb?’
I wished I’d not asked him, for he’d obviously worked out the answer to that one long ago. ‘A French nuclear device,’ he corrected me. ‘The technology is simpler. The French made their bomb unaided, it’s a far simpler device, and probably less well guarded.’ Serge Frankel got to his feet with all the care and concentration of the arthritic. He steadied himself by touching the windowsill where there was a brass inkstand and a carriage clock that always stood at four minutes past one o’clock. I wondered if the hands had become entangled. But Serge was looking not at the cluttered sill but through the window, and down into the street below.
The word ‘probably’ left me an opening. ‘Now, you don’t really believe that the French leave their goodies less well guarded than anyone else in the world. Now, do you, Serge?’
‘I take back the less well guarded,’ he said over his shoulder. From his window there was a view of the market in Cours Saleya. I went over to where he was standing, to see what he was staring at. He said, ‘Any one of them could be working for Champion.’
I realized he was talking about the dark-skinned North Africans, so evident among both the sellers and the customers.
‘That’s right.’
‘Don’t humour me,’ he said. ‘Champion’s bringing Arab cut-throats into the country by the dozen. Algerians don’t even need immigration papers. It was all part of de Gaulle’s sell-out to them.’
‘I’d better get going,’ I said.
He didn’t answer. When I left he was still staring down through the window, seeing God knows what terrible scene of carnage.
As I started to descend the stone steps, I heard someone hurrying behind me from the floor above. The metal-tipped shoes echoed against the bare walls and I moved aside cautiously as he came closer.
‘Vos papiers!’ It was the age-old demand of every French policeman. I turned to see his face, and that was my undoing. He struck my shoulder, from behind. There was enough force in it to topple me and I lost my balance on the last few steps of the flight.
I didn’t fall on to the landing. Two men caught me and had me pinioned against the landing window, with no breath left in my body.
‘Let’s have a look at him.’ He gave me a sudden push to flatten me against the wall.
‘Wait a minute,’ said the second voice, and they searched me with the sort of precision cops achieve in towns where the favourite weapon is a small folding-knife.
‘Let him go! I know who it is,’ said a third voice. I recognized it as that of Claude l’avocat. They turned me round very slowly, as a vet might handle a fierce animal. There were four of them: three coloured men and Claude, all in plain clothes.
‘It was you who phoned Frankel, was it?’ I said.
‘Was it so obvious?’
‘Serge went into a long explanation about stamp collectors’ widows.’
Claude raised his arms and let them slap against his legs. ‘Serge!’ he said. ‘Someone must look after him, eh?’
‘Is that what you’re doing?’
‘He has acquired a lot of enemies, Charles.’
‘Or thinks he has.’
Claude looked at the French plainclothes men. ‘Thank you. We’ll be all right now.’ He looked at me. ‘We will, won’t we?’
‘You assaulted me! Remember? What are you waiting for, an apology?’
‘You’re right,’ said Charles. He held up his hand in a gesture of appeasement. Then he indicated the way through the lobby to the street. The Nice cops had given him one of their stickers and now his white BMW was askew on the pavement under a ‘No Parking’ sign. ‘I’ll give you a lift somewhere.’
‘No thanks.’
‘We should talk, I think.’
‘Another time.’
‘Why put me to all the trouble of making it official?’
I said nothing, but I got into the passenger seat of his car. The anger, despair and humiliation of Claude’s wartime betrayals boiled up inside me again.
We sat in the car for a moment in silence. Claude fussed around to find his cheroots and put on his spectacles, and dabbed at his natty gent’s suiting. I wondered whether he’d spoken with any of the others and whether they’d told him that I wasn’t likely to congratulate him about earning his medal and his pension.
He smiled. Claude smiled too often, I’d always thought so.
‘We said you’d never last,’ said Claude. ‘When you first appeared on the scene, we had bets that you wouldn’t last out.’
‘In the war?’
‘Of course, in the war. You had us fooled, Charles.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘Touché.’ He smiled again. ‘We thought you were too headstrong then, too direct, trop simple.’
‘And now?’
‘We soon learned that you are anything but direct, my friend. It’s unusual to find a man so ready to let the world think him a clumsy unschooled peasant, while all the time his mind is processing every possible permutation for every possible situation. Headstrong! How could we have ever thought that.’
‘It’s your story,’ I said.
‘But in one respect our first impressions were correct,’ said Claude. ‘You are a worrier. After the event, you worry. If it wasn’t for that you would have been the greatest of the great.’
‘The Muhammed Ali of espionage,’ I said. ‘It’s an attractive idea. Serge just told me he feels like the Muhammed Ali of stamps, except that he called him Cassius Clay.’
‘I know you’re here for your government. I’m here for the German government. We’re both after Champion. We might as well co-operate.’
He looked at me, but I said nothing. He looked away from me, to where the figs, apricots and new potatoes from Morocco were on sale alongside the oranges from Jaffa. A man stole a bean and walked on chewing it. Claude looked round at me to see if I’d n
oticed the larceny. His reaction was too studied. It was all too studied. I doubted whether Claude had been told anything about me – he just wanted to see me at close quarters. Perhaps he reasoned that if I was still in government service, I’d have to deny it hotly, while if I now worked for Champion, I’d want Claude to think I was still official.
What he decided about me I don’t know. I opened the car door, and began to get out. I said, ‘I’ve no inclination for all this play-acting, late-night TV spy stuff. If you, and that old man up there want to re-live the great days of your youth, very well, but leave me out of it.’
‘Your youth, too,’ said Claude.
‘My childhood,’ I said. ‘And that’s why I don’t want to repeat it.’
‘Close the door,’ said Claude. ‘Get back in, and close the door!’
I did so. I wanted to know what Claude was going to say next, because if he really had been tipped off by his office in Bonn, this would be the time to throw the details in my face and watch it dribble down my chin.
I had to know, because if Claude knew … it was only a matter of time before Champion found out.
But Claude was silent.
It was lunchtime. We both watched the stall-holders folding up their stands and stacking away the unsold fruit. As each space was cleared, the motor-cars – which had been circling the Cours for the last half-hour – dashed in to park. More than once there was a bitter argument between drivers. It was a famous local amusement. Claude’s strong-arm men were still standing on the far side of the market. They had bought slices of hot pizza, and were eating them while watching both Claude’s car and Frankel’s window.
‘Are they really cops?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, they are cops all right. Harkis – auxiliaries who worked for the French in Algeria. They can’t go home and the French don’t like them.’
‘You realize that Frankel is terrified of the Arabs. If you have these jokers hanging around to protect him, you are probably giving him his nightmares.’
‘They keep out of sight. And are you sure Frankel is terrified of the Arabs?’
‘You don’t know much if you don’t know that,’ I said. ‘Frankel, the onetime exponent of Marxism and the brotherhood of man, now comes on like … Goebbels.’
‘A Fascist, you mean, comes on like a Fascist. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Yes, we’re all fighting a new war: the battle-lines have been drawn afresh. Frankel is a racist, I’ve become a champion of parliamentary government, you are working to defeat the Communists you once fought alongside, and Champion has become an active anti-Semite.’
‘Has he?’
‘You don’t do your homework very thoroughly, Charles. He’s working for the Egyptians. Are you getting too old for this business?’ He smiled, and touched the hair that was carefully arranged over his almost-bald head. ‘You are a strange race, you English,’ he said. He searched my face, as if he might find some answer there. ‘I work in security in Bonn. We turned out our files, to keep London fully informed of what we are doing. We sent the usual notification to French security before I came down here to take a closer look at Champion. The French have been very good. I have an office with the police here in town. They keep me informed, and they’ve let me have those Harkis to help me. But you English are so arrogant! You’ll never be a part of Europe. You don’t reply to our correspondence. Your people come here without proper clearance with the French. And now, when I put my cards on the table and suggest some cooperation, you adopt the superiority of manner that we’ve learned to expect from the English.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong, Claude,’ I told him. ‘I don’t work for British security. I don’t work for any kind of security. I’m not concerned in your problems with London. And I’m not interested in your simplistic generalizations about the British character.’
‘Champion has bribed German government officials and senior officers of the Bundeswehr, and he threatened a police officer. He has conspired to import arms into the Federal Republic, and forged official documents. Within a week or ten days he’ll be arrested, and there will be no point in his running away because, with the charges we’re bringing, we’ll extradite him from any country of Western Europe or the USA.’ A car took the corner a little too widely. The driver hooted angrily before he saw Claude’s police sticker and steered away. ‘Have I made myself clear?’ Claude asked me.
‘You’ve made yourself clear, all right,’ I said. ‘You mean you want Champion to run, or else you’ll have to start putting some real evidence together. If that happens, some of those bribed officials might get angry while they’re still in a position to fight back. And, in that case, you and some of your colleagues will be out of a job.’
‘You’re protecting Champion!’ he said.
‘He doesn’t need any protection, Claude. You found that out in the war, when you took him down to the Rock and removed the tips of his fingers without getting a squeak out of him.’
For a moment Claude looked as if he was going to argue, but he swallowed his anger. He said, ‘Champion still has that same charm, doesn’t he? He had us all eating out of his hand in the war, and now he’s still got you in his pocket.’
‘There’s something you should know, Claude,’ I said sarcastically. ‘I work for Champion. He pays me every month; and I work for him. Have you got that? Now write it down in your notebook and send a carbon to your office in Bonn, so they can file it in their secret archives. And make sure you put your address on it, in case they want to send you another Iron Cross.’
I fiddled with the door catch, which was designed to baffle foolhardy children. This time I opened the door and got out.
‘Frankel will make an attempt on Champion’s life,’ said Claude. ‘You tell your boss that.’
I rested one hand on the roof of the car, and leaned down to talk to Claude. He wound the window down hurriedly. ‘Do you believe everything that Frankel tells you?’ I asked. ‘Or do you just pick out the bits you like?’
‘I’m looking after the old man,’ said Claude.
‘Just where does your concern end, and where does house-arrest start?’ I said. ‘You have men outside his door – dark-skinned men who terrify him – you tap his phone, and you rough-up his visitors.’ I waited for Claude to deny it; but he didn’t deny it.
Claude didn’t want to discuss Frankel; he was interested only in Champion. He said, ‘Champion is an Arab terrorist, and no matter how many times you tell me which side he fought on during the war, he’ll be treated like an Arab terrorist. And he can’t even claim to be some perverted form of idealist – he’s in it just for the money.’
‘We’re all in whatever we’re in for the money, Claude. I forget the last time I met an unpaid volunteer.’
I’d got as far as this without realizing that Claude had the same bitter contempt for me that I had for him. But now, as he bit his lip, I could see that Claude had not escaped the war unscathed. His wounds had come after the surrender, as he co-operated with his conquerors and learned the apartheid of crime that all German policemen had to learn during the Allied occupation, but his wounds were none the less crippling for that. ‘At first I’m a Fascist, and now I’m a mercenary. And I’ve got to smile, and take it all the time, have I?’ He brought a clenched fist down upon the car’s steering wheel with enough force to break it, except that German cars were so well made and safe to drive in. ‘Well, I was never a Nazi – never! I hated those people. But I am a German, and I did my duty then as I do it now.’
‘And if you’d been living just a few miles farther east, you’d be doing your duty on behalf of the Communists, I suppose.’
Claude smiled. ‘I can remember a few nights during the war when you were telling us all how much you favoured theoretical Communism.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, almost everyone’s in favour of theoretical Communism. Maybe even those bastards in the Kremlin.’
18
An atlas might show Marseille and Nice as two identical
dots on the map. But Marseille is a sprawling Sodom-on-Sea, complete with bidonville and race riots, a city of medieval confusion, where the only thing properly organized is crime.
Nice, on the other hand, is prim and neat, its size regulated by the niche in the hills into which it nestles. Its cops nod politely to the local madams, and Queen Victoria shakes a stone fist at the sea.
Friday’s sky was blue, and the first foolhardy yachtsmen were beating their way up the coast against a chilly wind.
I went through the usual contact procedure. I phoned the sleazy little office near Nice railway station, but I would have been surprised to find Schlegel there. In his present role, I knew he’d stay well away from a small place like Nice. And well before the secretary told me that Schlegel wanted to see me urgently, I guessed he was staying with Ercole out at the restaurant – ‘vue panoramique, tranquillité, et cuisine mémorable’ – because it was the one place I did not want to go.
Old Ercole would greet me with a bear-hug, and a kiss on both cheeks, and he’d talk about the old days, and look up to the wall behind the bar where his citation hung. And where a silver-framed Ercole was frozen in an endless handshake with a stern-faced General de Gaulle.
There was nothing perspicacious about that guess. It was a natural place for Schlegel to hole-up. There’d be no resident guests there at this time of year, apart from the occasional use of a private room, booked with a wink and paid for with a leer. Ercole still had top security clearance with the department, and it was not only secluded but it was as luxurious a place as Schlegel would find anywhere along this coast. Had I been a computer, I would have put Schlegel there. But I’m not a computer, and try as I may, I could never get to like old Ercole, and never get to trust him either.
It all went as I knew it would. Even the fast drive along the high Corniche – that dramatic mountain road you see behind the titles of TV documentaries about the French Miracle, just before they cut to an economist standing in front of the frozen food cabinet – even that was the same.
All of these hill villages depress me. Either they have been taken over by souvenir shops and tarted-up restaurants with the menu in German, or, like this village, they are dying a slow lingering death.