by Lex Lander
‘Sure did.’ Lux had checked with the Schweitzer Kreditanstaltbank of Zurich that very morning. ‘One million bucks, less transaction charges. While we’re on the subject, don’t forget another forty per cent is due when I set a date and a place.’
‘Ah, yes, the date and place,’ Barail murmured, slumping lower in his armchair as if he were about to settle down with a good book. ‘Are you in a position to provide us with particulars, or least a ….’ he made convex curves in the air with his hands, ‘a global impression, an overview?’
‘The only overview I can give you is that the restaurant route is a possible, but I figure you already knew that. I just can’t see how the hell I would get out of there unless I hire a helicopter to lift me off the rooftops.’
‘A helicopter?’ Simonelli said, perking up. He hadn’t considered that. ‘Perhaps that is the answer.’
Barail rejected the concept right away. ‘It would not be able to land, which means it would have to hover and lower a ladder for him. A two-minute operation at the least. More than long enough for Chirac’s escort to pick him off, not to mention the helicopter pilot and even the helicopter itself.’
‘With pistols?’ Simonelli was scornful. ‘He would be fifty, sixty feet up, maybe more.’
‘My men are armed with submachine guns. Spray enough bullets around and you’re sure to hit something. Unless of course, our friend here is prepared to risk it.’
‘Not this friend,’ Lux said with a shake of his head.
‘Where does that leave us?’ Simonelli queried. ‘As we seem to have established that the task is beyond you, do we let you walk away with a million dollars?’
‘The task isn’t beyond me,’ Lux said with grit in his voice. ‘But it isn’t going to happen tomorrow either. Either you come up with a getaway clause or I do it the hard way and stake out your precious President until I have every mile and every minute of his routine properly sussed.’
‘That could take months, a year even,’ Simonelli said mournfully.
‘It could,’ Lux agreed. ‘But what’s the point in having a man on the inside - ‘ He directed a nod at Barail, ‘ - while you and I do it the hard way. You must know the President’s programme several weeks ahead or even longer, Commissaire.’
‘Certainly. In fact I have it here.’ Barail dipped into the attaché case that stood open beside his chair, drew forth a green plastic sleeve containing several sheets of paper. This he skimmed across to Lux. ‘Not that it will help you much but there you have Chirac’s movements until the end of May. Some dates are blank. On such dates he has no official engagements. Ordinarily most of these will be filled up in due course. It is rare for him to have more than the occasional free day, except for Sundays and during his vacations.’
Lux glanced up from the page he was studying. ‘Vacations? Is he due any?’
A shrug from Barail.
‘Unlikely before June. In August France shuts down, as you will know, and he may then take some time off. Remember, this is only his second year as President. A pattern has yet to be established.’ Now he smiled lopsidedly. ‘Exalted as I am, he does not confide in me, nor consult with me.’
Simonelli clicked his tongue petulantly. ‘Give me the schedule,’ he said, snapping his fingers at Lux. ‘From the research I have already done I will be able to eliminate most of them. For the rest, it will be quicker and easier for me to check it out and send you to inspect the likeliest places. If there are any.’
‘I agree,’ Barail said.
Lux remained silent. He was speculating on the prospect of being left in peace to spend the million dollars he had received so far, if it did become necessary to abort the contract. He was not optimistic.
* * *
The house high above the rocks was a beacon of white light. It was visible to passengers on the overnight ferry to Marseilles that ten minutes before had slipped from her berth in Ajaccio harbour. Deck promenaders, savouring the unseasonably balmy night air before turning in to their cabins, remarked on it.
From the source of light also came sound: a monotonous throbbing like a distant pulse beat. Music of the most raucous kind.
At Rafael Simonelli’s house a party was in progress. Simonelli was not hosting it, being presently in a taxi on the autoroute north of Paris Orly Airport. Indeed he was not even aware it was taking place and the only music he was privileged to enjoy was that issuing from the taxi’s speakers. Had he an inkling that his Madonna was not only entertaining the smart set of Ajaccio but also cheating on him, his retribution would have been terrible. Also known as Corsican style.
The party had been in full swing for less than an hour before couples (and sometimes three- or foursomes) began to forsake terrace and living room for sleeping quarters. Not that sleep was uppermost in their designs.
Angelica and her latest in a line of secret boyfriends, Jean-Luc, three years her junior at twenty, were the standard bearers of this exodus. Locking the door of the master bedroom behind them they undressed each other, practically ripping off their clothes in their frenzy. In a fusion of tanned flesh they fell across the vast bed, Jean-Luc already hard with the thrill of anticipation; Angelica enclosing his prick between her thighs, squeezing it.
They made love twice in very quick succession, then a third time after only a brief period for recovery. The music continued to pound, unheard by them. Laughter and squeals increasingly overlaid it. Even when a piece of furniture smashed and a squeal became a scream they paid no heed. These were the normal background acoustics to Angelica’s parties. The next day any broken items would be repaired or replaced, wounds would be licked, and no more would be said or heard about it.
This night was destined to be different. The scream was renewed, joined by others. Now men were shouting. Feet thudded on the wooden floor. Running feet.
Jean-Luc sat up finally, breaking free of Angelica’s possessive clinch. ‘What is happening?’ he said, as much to himself as to her. His nostrils twitched as an alien smell was drawn into them. ‘Do you smell smoke?’
Angelica, cuddling the pillow where normally rested the sleek, dark head of Simonelli, merely mumbled to herself.
‘Smoke,’ Jean-Luc repeated, positive now. ‘Angie, I smell smoke!’
He bounded athletically from the bed. Now he could see as well as smell smoke - it was creeping under the door, fine, wispy fingers of it. Outside the commotion was at a crescendo. The music stopped suddenly in a distorted wail, as if the stereo had fallen over.
Now Angelica was sitting up, her golden hair in disorder, alarm contorting her pretty features.
‘Jean-Luc!’ she squeaked, tugging the sheets up to her chin. ‘The house is on fire!’
Jean-Luc needed no telling. He also needed no telling that the only bedroom window was on a side of the house that fell away in a sheer drop of a hundred feet or more. Unfortunately, his education did not extend to having the sense to keep the door closed. As far as he was concerned the door was the only escape route.
He opened it. The fire, by then raging madly through most of the living room and hall, leapt towards this untapped source of oxygen. In its leap it consumed Jean-Luc. He died instantly, not even a last scream escaping him. The fire rolled over his charred remains. Angelica froze, transfixed, too terrified to register that her lover was no more. She cringed against the bedhead, still clutching the sheets to her as if they were fireproof, her mouth working.
‘Help!’ she screeched, finding her voice. ‘A seccorro!’
The furore of the flames and crack of blazing wood smothered her cries. In any case nobody was left within helping range and even if they had been, the screen of fire was impenetrable. Angelica, sobbing with terror, made a desperate rush for the window. Perhaps she could climb up onto the roof somehow. If not, even death on the black rocks below was preferable to death by immolation.
She nearly made it, would have made it if her legs hadn’t become entangled in the sheet. As it was, her fingers were scrabbling at the sill
when the flames flowed over her lower limbs like liquid gas, turning them from white to black in an instant and such was the shock of the pain that racked her - a pain beyond description - that her screams were cut off. The stench of her own cremated flesh dilated her nostrils. Her death was not so instant as that of her lover; she died slowly and horribly, a literal roasting alive.
The fire consumed the house, destroying all that was in it, even scorching the contents of the wall safe in Simonelli’s study, the only room to have been locked that night. Scorching but not making unrecognisable the folder full of photographs of the presidential limousine as it conveyed President Chirac from his place of work to the restaurant at the Opéra .
* * *
Commandant Philippe d’Amore left off cleaning his fingernails with the letter opener and scratched the bald spot on his crown with it. While doing this he contemplated the scuffed toe of his right shoe, propped, like his left, on the edge of the scarred, chipped desk.
On the other side of the desk, passively awaiting the outcome of his chief’s deliberations, Brigadier-Major Napoléon Bujoli stood as rigidly as the monument to a more celebrated Napoléon in the Place d’Austerlitz. A patient man, d’Amore, (which was just as well since the deliberating was a frequent occurrence and could be prolonged), he had nothing else pressing to attend to and was perfectly content to await the Commandant’s pleasure.
On this occasion, however, the pronouncement came sooner than usual.
‘Quel merdier,’ d’Amore growled, swinging his feet off the desk to crash on the bare floor; Bujoli winced. ‘What a crock of shit!’ Now there was real anger in the expletive. ‘Now I must decide whether to act on those.’ He gestured at the array of partly burned photographs that covered much of the surface of his desk, each individually sealed in a plastic sleeve, ‘or whether to destroy them.’
Bujoli, Corsican first and foremost and only French because his passport said so, was in no doubt what should be done with them. He hesitated to express a view until invited to, having made that mistake once in the past. And once had been enough.
So he stayed silent, his eyes screwed up a little, for the morning was bright and the window of Commandant d’Amore’s office looked eastward. Two floors below, in the street, traffic honked and shuffled noisily towards the junction with the Cours Napoléon, main artery of Ajaccio. A thin haze filmed the city, blurring the profiles of the stone buildings. In contrast, the edifice of the Préfecture opposite, being closer, was sharply defined.
D’Amore lit a cheroot, his third since breakfast though his wife was nagging him to cut down. ‘Why would a man like Monsieur Simonelli have in his possession photographs of the President’s car? Could it be that he was photographing the undoubtedly excellent architecture of our beloved capital city and the car simply happened to be there? H’mm?’ His head snapped round; Bujoli could have sworn the thick neck cracked. ‘Give me your opinion, Bujoli.’
Now at last the Brigadier-Major could air his thoughts, lowly though they may be. He brushed the trailing ends of his black wispy moustache from the corners of his mouth where they tended to get damp.
‘To assassinate him?’ he ventured, for he was a simple man, and as with most simple men his reasoning was direct and to the point.
D’Amore reared back. ‘Assassinate?’ His shock was pure theatre for he himself had reached the same conclusion the moment he tipped the photographs on to his desk. Then, seeming to branch off along a different trail, he said, ‘Has he been notified of the destruction of his property?’
‘Monsieur Simonelli? No, chief. I am waiting your instructions. The press has been told not to publish the story until we release it. Fortunately it broke too late to catch the morning editions.’
The Inspector made a rumbling sound at the back of his throat. ‘That won’t hold them for long, not without something official from the Préfet’s office. Meanwhile, what am I to do about these?’
It was on the tip of Bujoli’s tongue to offer to chuck them in the basement incinerator. Something made him hold back. Perhaps he felt out of his depth, as if for a mere Brigadier-Major to advise in what was clearly a matter for the highest authority on the island would appear presumptuous.
D’Amore was similarly inclined but the risks were frightful. A number of officers already knew of the existence and nature of the photographs.
‘All right, Brigadier-Major,’ he said, sighing. ‘I’ll deal with it from here on. Keep your trap shut and the lid on the press.’
‘Chef.’ Bujoli about-wheeled sloppily and shambled out.
On his own, d’Amore could think more clearly, more objectively. An assassination? Not necessarily, not even probably. Only possibly. Even though it would be madness to attempt it. He knew Simonelli personally, and was aware of his latent ambitions, his desire to free Corsica from the yoke of the Elysées Palace. Yet the word was that the terrorist in him had been expunged, long since subjugated to love of money. From the look of it, he was wrong, though quite how the elimination of President Chirac would help the island achieve independence was unclear.
Was a possible assassination enough to justify alerting his superiors? D’Amore knew it was, acknowledged that his own ambitions for his beloved Corse and his private antipathy towards all and every French Head of State were impairing his judgement. As an upholder of the law and a servant of the State, his duty was clear.
His sigh came from gut level this time. He clawed at the telephone, dragged it across the desk, ploughing through the cracked and discoloured photographs. The person he called was the Commissaire, two floors above. A man whose allegiance to Paris was so steadfast that a full-size drapeau tricolore permanently adorned his office wall, surmounted by framed head-and-shoulders portraits of that arch-traitor Charles de Gaulle and the President of the moment, before which he was reputed to genuflect first thing every morning.
Fourteen
* * *
The Ministère de l’Intérieure et Décentralisation is located in Place Beauvau, roughly opposite the Presidential Palace. Cynics say that the site was chosen because French presidents are notoriously nervous of coups d’état, and that to have the Headquarters of the police and security forces as neighbours makes them feel less vulnerable. This invulnerability is largely illusory since most of the hundreds of people employed there are clerical and administrative, and perform mundane functions that have no direct bearing on state security and never impinge on the protection of the person of the President in office.
Entry to the circular courtyard is via an ornate wrought-iron gateway over which the tricolour flutters or droops - according to the wind factor - from a short pole. Doric style columns flank the gate, as do two policemen. The building itself, which is constructed of sandstone, dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, and has no outstanding features.
On this overcast Monday morning in March, in a ground floor room at the corner of the ministry that overlooks the Rue des Saussaies, a man was seated behind a red leather-topped desk, speaking into the telephone. His name was Jean-Louis Debre. He was a well-built man with a full head of dark hair, his looks belying by a decade his fifty-two years. His suit was an immaculate midnight blue, his shirt pale blue silk, and his tie a vivid red in keeping with his politics. His tone was subdued, his words carefully chosen, for he was addressing the President, at that moment in his private study at the Palace, not four hundred metres away.
Unlike many of his predecessors the present incumbent to the presidency was not inclined to panic at the hint of a threat to his life. Several such threats had been made during his ten months in power. There had been that business at the Armistice Day anniversary when a man carrying a concealed rifle had been intercepted entering an apartment block across from the monument where the President was to lay a wreath. He denied any harmful intent but was rotting away in prison nevertheless. Naturally, this incident and others less serious had been hushed up. No reports ever featured in the press.
So, when the Minister of the I
nterior, reckoned to be among the President’s closest personal and professional confidants, spoke of photographs found at the house of a Corsican nationalist and activist terrorist, whose present whereabouts were unknown (an unforgivable slip-up on the part of the Police Commissioner for Corsica), the Head of State was unperturbed.
‘I am sure you will deal with it, my dear Jean-Louis,’ he said in that slightly gravelly tone. He employed the familiar ‘tu’, whereas to the Minister, except on social occasions, the President was always a respectful ‘vous’. ‘Do not, I beg you, turn it into a crisis. There may after all be some innocent explanation.’
Debre’s alarm was not allayed. In the ordinary way he would secretly double the bodyguard strength at the President’s home. Such precautions would have to be unobtrusive though: the President, and his wife even more so, were jealous of their privacy. Minders were at best tolerated as a consequence of leadership.
The conversation closed amicably. The Minister would do what he must and the President would bear it like the statesman he was.
Debre replaced the telephone, tilted his velour-upholstered chair backwards and rotated slowly through 360°. The beige distempering on the ceiling needed tarting up, he noticed. And he really must get rid of that old sepia photograph of the Ministry at the turn of the century. He disliked relics; he was a man ahead of his time, a 21st-century man. The past was irretrievable and some of it ignoble. Why perpetuate it?
He debated inwardly whether to call the Prime Minister.
Not yet, was his decision. No sense in stirring up the twittering dears at the Hôtel Matignon (not an hotel in the usual sense, but the Premier’s office); Prime Minister Juppé would take it in his stride, no worries about his nerve, but some of those close to him, his purportedly ardent supporters, were less than staunch.
All that was required in the immediate was to put the presidential bodyguard on yellow alert. In practice this meant the suspension of all leave until further notice and putting a few extra men on stand-by.
