by Lex Lander
The Minister flicked his intercom switch.
‘Oui, monsieur,’ his male secretary responded.
‘Send for Commissaire Barail, will you please.’
* * *
Simonelli mashed a bony fist down on the desk causing most of the bric-a-brac that sat atop it to rise a couple of centimetres into the air.
‘You dare accuse me of a lapse of security!’ he thundered. ‘What was I supposed to do - eat the photographs and convert them into fertiliser?’
Barail moved restlessly in his high-backed leather chair. ‘I do not question the security of your safe, merely your laxness in leaving your house in the charge of a ...’ His mouth twisted, ‘a poule.’
Simonelli scowled ferociously. He was all too aware that his over-fondness for women of dubious repute was the indirect cause of the photographs falling into the possession of the authorities.
‘Must a man live like a monk?’ he grumbled.
Barail, whose own morals were scarcely less lax, opened a brass cigarette case, the only item too heavy to have shifted position under Simonelli’s assault. While he rummaged within, Simonelli sat and watched him under lowered brows.
‘Until the job is done, yes, perhaps a man should live like a monk. There is too much at stake.’
‘Pious bastard,’ Simonelli muttered.
‘I only said perhaps.’
From the window of Barail’s first floor study the view was of the treetops of the Bois de Boulogne and the edge of the spectator stand of the Longchamps racecourse. Beyond, the skyscrapers of La Défense pierced the sky, one-dimensional against its pale expanse.
‘We are fortunate,’ Barail said, as Simonelli continued to smoulder, ‘that the President regards all reports of a plot to assassinate him as exaggerated. Whether or not any changes are made to the security arrangements at the house is left to the Minister, who in turn has dumped the problem in my lap.’
‘Then what is there to worry about?’ Simonelli said snappishly. ‘Simply do nothing.’
Barail sighed. There were times when he privately questioned the IQ of his fellow conspirator. But then the entire Corsican race was composed of semi-literate peasants, so what was one to expect?
‘You must realise it is not so straightforward as that. Knowledge of the incident cannot possibly be restricted to the President, the Minister and me. My superiors in the CRS and others in the Cabinet have to know, have already been informed in fact. If they were not, and it came out through some other channel - the Police Commissioner in Ajaccio who reported the photographs for instance - suspicion would fall on the Minister and I. Our whole project would be endangered. Even to you ...’ The insult was studied, deliberate, ‘that much should be apparent.’
Simonelli looked sulky, drummed impatient fingers on his knees.
‘Action is expected to safeguard the President,’ Barail stated flatly. ‘I shall have to go through the motions.’
‘Then go through them,’ Simonelli said with a dismissive shrug. ‘So long as they are only motions. On the day, Lux is not obstructed.’
‘Do I need you to tell me this? But that may be precisely my difficulty. The Corps is now on yellow alert. This is not yet a matter for serious concern, but it may be upgraded at any time if developments suggest that the President’s life is endangered. Additional defensive precautions may be taken that could make Lux’s task impossible.’
Now Simonelli relaxed. Barail’s ‘difficulty’ was purely hypothetical.
‘No cause for panic, cher ami. I am sure you will oil any troubled waters, as befits your fee of twenty-five million francs.’
Barail glared but reined back his ire. Much as he disliked the Corsican he was stuck with him and no purpose would be served by engaging in a slanging skirmish.
A fine rain began to patter at the window, blotting out the skyscrapers completely. Barail frowned at it. Every Thursday afternoon he went riding with a friend from his schooldays, and every Thursday afternoon for the past four weeks it had rained.
A deferential tap came at the door. Barail made an urgent signal to Simonelli who rose and swiftly crossed to the far side of the room to stand before the window as if admiring the view, his back presented to anyone entering the door.
‘Come in,’ Barail called.
The man who entered was in his mid-to-late thirties with a complexion that bordered on swarthy, though his forebears were of pure Gallic stock. He was Barail’s number two, holding the middling CRS rank of Commandant de Police, and vested of ruthless ambition if somewhat crumpled of dress. Under his armpit he bore a slim plastic folder.
‘Sorry for the intrusion, Commissaire.’ His tone was respectful without being servile.
‘What is it, Mazé?’
Mazé took a brisk step forward. ‘You asked for the dossier on the security dispositions for the President’s holidays.’
‘So I did. Thank you.’ Barail relieved his number two of the folder.
‘Will there be anything else, Commissaire?’
‘No. Thank you.’
In turning from Barail’s desk Mazé caught sight of Simonelli. He had been aware that Barail had a visitor whose presence here was hush-hush - so much so that he had been spirited in via a back door to which only Barail had a key. In truth curiosity was partly the reason for his intrusion, for he was as enquiring of mind as Sherlock Holmes and resentful of the extent to which Barail kept him in ignorance of many matters concerning state security and in particular the protection of the head of that state.
The back of Barail’s visitor’s head was uninformative. But the policeman in Mazé was not readily deterred.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ he called to the stranger.
If he expected the stranger to turn and respond in accordance with convention, he was disappointed. A nominal sideways movement and nod was all the reward his temerity earned; that and a near-reprimand from his chief.
‘Mazé! That will be all.’
Mazé made a small bow of apology-cum-obeisance and left. Closing the soundproof door behind him he leaned against it, his brow creased in the effort of remembrance. Why did that sleek narrow head seem so familiar? Did he know the man? A member of the Cabinet, a high level Civil Servant, perhaps? No, it was no one in the political or administrative sphere, he was sure of that.
After a minute or so of brain-bashing, he gave up and returned along the bleak corridor to his office. Given time it would come to him. Perhaps his morning coffee would stimulate the memory cells, especially if laced with a little cognac ...
* * *
Philippe Mazé’s broad Gascon face was much given to frowning, notably when the brain behind it was tackling some inordinately complex question. Today especially he had reason and more to frown, for he had discovered that his chief was consorting with a man once suspected of terrorist activities. A man whose presence on the mainland would be of extreme interest to every security department in Metropolitan France.
Mazé was puzzled. His chief might well have some special motive for entertaining the likes of Rafael Simonelli - to do with some concession on Corsican autonomy, for instance, though Simonelli had no official political standing, indeed stood as a pariah among the official ‘separatists’. Maybe he was engaged on some underground mission for the Government. In which case, as Commissaire Barail’s deputy, Mazé should have been informed.
What must he do? Must he do anything? It was a dilemma that was confronted by many a trustworthy lieutenant when confronted with his superior’s possible duplicity and he must weigh between conscience, loyalty, and a natural ambition - the prospect of stepping into the shoes of the dethroned overlord.
His cramped office in the house at the edge of Bois de Boulogne was somewhat removed from the mainstream bustle and this had been his choice. It was actually at the northwest corner and thus had two walls and two narrow windows with louvered shutters. At the moment these windows were open, letting in the buzz of traffic along the Périphérique and the clatter of the motor
mower in the grounds on the other side of the building near Barail’s office. Mazé was a man of letters, of books and dusty document files: his walls were lined with them, shelves sagged under them, his desk and a stout oaken table by the window were heaped with them. Books on law and on criminal cases and trials, dossiers on men wanted for the commission of a crime, dossiers on men suspected of same, dossiers on undesirables. For Mazé was a criminologist by compulsion as well as by profession. That he now prevented and solved crimes against the State rather than against the Law, was due to his wife’s cultivation of Barail’s ex-wife, following their meeting at a presentation of police awards, and the instant liking they had taken to each other. Which in turn led to heavy socialising, etc., etc. The result being that Mazé, at the relatively youthful age of thirty-eight, was now poised for elevation to head of one of the divisions of the country’s internal and external security network, an elite position since there were less than ten such bureaux. Question was, did he attempt to accelerate the natural processes by denouncing his chief, always assuming there was anything to denounce, or did he write off Barail’s liaison with Simonelli as having official blessing.
Had he not accidentally learned of the discovery of the incriminating photographs at Simonelli’s burned down house, Mazé would have gone for the softer option and trusted in his chief’s loyalty to the regime. But this new intelligence, kept from him by Barail, altered everything.
Knowledge of the photographs had come about when a file was delivered to him for signature just a few minutes before mid-day. He was speaking on the telephone when the clerk deposited the MOST SECRET box in his action tray, otherwise he would have opened it at once to initial the receipt, in accordance with regulations. The presence of the grey plastic wallet marked CD’s EYES ONLY would then have been spotted. The clerk, no doubt horrified by this laxness on somebody’s part, would have whisked the wallet away and that would have been the end of it. Chance had also played a part in it. Had twelve noon not come up a bare minute after the delivery of the file, the clerk would have returned for it after completing his round of deliveries. As it was, he went off on the stroke of twelve for his two hour lunch break.
With the soft May sunshine playing on his crinkly coiffure and to the slam of car doors in the courtyard and street as nineteen out of twenty Parisians departed homeward or restaurant-ward, Mazé replaced the receiver and opened the box according to regulations, which stipulated instant receipting of all classified material. It was then that he made his find.
In the ordinary way he would never have contemplated examining its contents. It was from a Minister’s office, closed by a padlocked zip; only two keys would open it - the Minister’s and Barail’s. Two keys, that is, and a thread of wire in skilled hands.
Mazé’s hands were sufficiently skilled. His vague unease over his chief’s secret assignation with Simonelli provided the motivation. The combination of these two tipped him off the fence of professional rectitude.
Picking the lock was not child’s play. It was a matter of sweat and tears and oaths. Of jackets off and shirtsleeves up. When at last the hook of the lock snapped open it was after one o’clock and Mazé’s stomach was rumbling, unaccustomed to the lack of mid-day sustenance. He blew on sore fingertips and dragged the lock away, committed now, his actions confident and unhesitating.
Inside the wallet were a number of photographs, all partially blackened by fire. They had been treated with a special fluid to make them less brittle, but even at that a shower of black celluloid crumbs cascaded from the wallet along with the prints.
Mazé did not immediately draw conclusions from the diverse photographs featuring the presidential car outside a restaurant in the Place Opéra, clearly shot through a telephoto lens. After all, the Press pursued presidents everywhere in droves in the hope of happening on an indiscretion worthy of the front page. He was however intrigued by the hand-written note on plain pale blue paper that accompanied the photographs. It read:
Julien - Je te rends ci-joint les photos. Le chef est de l’avis que nous ne devons pas prendre de panique. C’est sympa, n’est pas? Et bien co-opératif!
Amicalement
The signature was a single character, either ‘R’ or ‘N’ or at a stretch, ‘P’. The identity of the department from whence it came was not stated in the little box provided for that purpose, so there were no other clues as to the writer.
So who had taken the photographs? For what purpose? And why were they burnt? A storm of questions assailed him and no answers came forth.
Above all, what of the cryptic note? That ‘bien co-opératif,’ for instance, implying that the President’s co-operation in taking no panic measures (against what?) suited sender and recipient both.
First things first. Mazé glanced at his digital watch: 13:28. He had half an hour maximum to copy the note and a selection of the photographs and deliver the originals to Barail in the wallet. The Commissaire, as always when in residence, was lunching at the exotic Comte de Gascoigne Restaurant, in Boulogne-Billancourt.
The building was all but deserted. Mazé made his copies unobserved on the Canon machine in the office of the secretariat. Having locked them in the safe in his office, he went down to the ground floor. A clerk in the despatch office was drowsing over Paris Match. If he noticed Mazé’s phantasmal transit he managed not to let it disturb him. In the adjoining larger distribution office, whose desks were unoccupied, Mazé removed the topmost documents box from a stack of seven or eight, barely interrupting his stride. On through the far door and back upstairs to his own office by a different, more circuitous trail. An advantage of old buildings such as this was the diversity of routes they offered for getting from A to B.
As 14:00 tripped onto the rectangular dial of Mazé’s watch, he slipped into Barail’s office. It took only seconds to place the box, now with the re-locked wallet inside, in Barail’s ACTION tray and beat a soundless retreat, back down the corridor to his own paper-strewn cranny.
The appearance of the documents box would create some puzzlement, but not sufficient to merit a witch-hunt. Its recipient would have no reason to suspect the wallet had been tampered with.
Barail did not return until after four, having lunched with his opposite number in the Service Extérieure and two high class poules. Not, as Mazé supposed, at the Comte de Gascogne restaurant but at a private house set aside for such trysts. Mazé did not see or hear his chief come in. By four o’clock he was in a taxi on the merry-go-round of the Place Charles de Gaulle, the Arc de Triomphe, that tribute to the sacrifice of the flower of French manhood, looming over him, a fat envelope on the seat beside him.
And ahead of him a hard-won rendezvous with the Contrôleur Général of the personal security arm of the CRS.
Fifteen
* * *
The real name of the Contrôleur Général was not known to the public and the press. To government ministers and officials he was Monsieur Renard. Within the Service he was referred to as ‘Le Renard’, the Fox, or, less respectfully, ‘Le vieux Renard’. And indeed, he was a man of great cunning, if small imagination.
He was not entirely surprised to hear from Mazé that Commissaire Barail was consorting with a known terrorist and hoodlum. It didn’t automatically follow that he was up to no good. In the furtherance of state affairs officers were often called upon to hobnob with the criminal fraternity. The scrawled note on the other hand did make his eyebrows wriggle.
‘Who signed this?’ he barked.
Mazé shook his head. ‘It could be almost anybody whose name or first name begins with r or n or p, Monsieur le Contrôleur.’
Le Renard humphed. ‘But it must be an insider - a minister or a secretary or a fonctionnaire. Somebody within the body of government, no?’
‘Evidemment.’ Obviously.
A tiny vertical crease sprang up from the bridge of the magnificent nose at the implication that the question was superfluous. Above all Le Renard did not take kindly to subordinates, especi
ally one as lowly as Mazé, giving themselves airs at his expense.
‘Commissaire Barail doesn’t know you have seen this?’
Another ‘evidemment’ was on the tip of Mazé’s tongue but he decided not to stretch his luck. Le Renard, though close to retirement age, still wielded a hefty club of influence within the Ministry of the Interior, maybe even in the Palais itself.
‘And this business with Simonelli.’ Le Renard smoothed non-existent hair atop his slightly pointed cranium. It reminded Mazé, a one-time artillery officer, of the business end of a howitzer shell. ‘You believe this points to skulduggery on Barail’s part?’
‘It seems barely credible, I know,’ he said, almost apologetically, ‘but at worst it could mean that Commissaire Barail is implicated in a plot to assassinate the President.’
‘Not so hasty, Mazé. Commissaire Barail has been in the Service for over twenty years. His loyalty and integrity have never been in question. Why would he do such a thing?’
‘Money, perhaps?’ Mazé was a simple man. He saw life through a monochrome filter: black and white, good and evil, rich and poor. The middle ground between the two poles did not engage him.
‘Is there a warrant out for Simonelli?’
‘Since we received the photographs from Ajaccio. Only for questioning, at this time. It is not illegal to take pictures of the presidential car.’
‘Thank you for enlightening me on that point of law,’ Le Renard said drily, tipping back in his worn leather chair. ‘As for the Commissaire, it seems to me we have two alternatives: we haul him in for interrogation or we put him under surveillance. He may talk under pressure, he may not. If we put a tail on him though, sooner or later he will lead us to the other members of his club, or his employers, as the case may be.’
‘I agree,’ Mazé announced, though his concurrence had not been sought. ‘Better still though,’ he went on after a few seconds’ pause, ‘let us infiltrate his organisation. Get him to condemn himself through his own lips.’
