by Lex Lander
‘Who’s there?’ she challenged, and her voice seemed to be right by his ear. ‘Come on out, you piece of shit, I can see you.’
He stepped sideways and confronted her. She was close enough to touch.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, mustering a smile.
She took a pace back, caution not fear, not yet. Something told him she was about to run for it, which he couldn’t afford to happen. He darted forward, grabbing for her. Belatedly she turned to flee, her ankles becoming entangled, stumbling …
As he caught up with her he tripped and they hit the ground together hard, his weight pinning her down. She cried out. Instinctively he clamped a hand over her mouth.
‘Don’t yell!’ he commanded in his best French. ‘There are two guys in a mobile home down there and you’re trespassing.’
She wriggled, tried to heave him off, but at least she kept her mouth shut.
‘If I take my hand away will you keep quiet?’ he growled in her ear, his lips touching a pearl earring.
She did not immediately react. Finally came a solitary frosty nod.
He still didn’t entirely trust her but released her anyway, sat back on his haunches.
‘I mean you no harm,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘You’re a reporter, aren’t you? Me too. If those guys down there see you, you’ll be in serious trouble.’
She came up on one knee. ‘You hurt me,’ she accused, brushing a web of hair from her face while rubbing her hip as if to prove it.
Now that he had an opportunity to study her he was struck by her looks. She had a heart-shaped face with a strong jaw; pale almost pallid skin. Dark brown eyes below thick eyebrows like commas, hair a rich chestnut colour rather than the black he had supposed it to be. The yellow band was fetchingly askew and under his scrutiny she straightened it, tucking in the odd wayward strand. Her camera strap had become wound round her neck and this too she rearranged.
‘What are you staring at?’ she demanded.
Lux shrugged an apology. ‘Let’s get away from here.’ He extended a hand.
She drew back, eyes flashing.
‘Don’t be dumb,’ he snapped. ‘You can been seen miles away in that outfit. You may not mind being caught, but I do.’
That much at least made sense to her and when he trudged off deeper into the copse she tagged along in his footsteps, grudgingly at first, then caught up and stayed close until they reached the other side of the trees. There, judging them to be out of immediate danger, he turned to her, his concocted story ready should it be needed.
‘I suppose I should thank you,’ she said, her manner subdued.
‘That kind of depends on whether you feel grateful.’
‘I do.’ She thrust out a hand: a ring with a fat diamond adorned her middle finger.
‘Ghislaine Fougère.’
‘Enchanté,’ Lux said as they clasped. Her grip was firm, genuine. He introduced himself as Dennis Hull.
‘English or American?’
‘American.’
‘You speak French quite well.’
He absorbed the compliment. ‘Thanks for the flattery. Actually I’ve lived here for the last few years.’
‘That explains it. French speakers are rare among you Anglo-Saxons.’ The sound of an approaching helicopter dragged her eyes from Lux to the sky. The machine was not yet in sight but by tacit accord they retreated a few yards into the shadows anyway.
A muffled trilling sound startled Lux. The woman threw him a rueful smile and rummaged under her waterproof.
‘Allo, j’écoute,’ she said into the cellphone, in a tone of long-suffering.
While she listened, her head turned away from Lux, he regarded her profile critically: high forehead, high cheekbones, a short straight nose. You couldn’t fault any of it. He now found himself thinking about her as a woman rather than a threat. The option of silencing her permanently receded.
‘Oui, patron,’ she said to her caller. A moment later, ‘Oui, monsieur,’ only the ‘monsieur’ was tongue-in-cheek.
She said an abrupt goodbye and shut the cellphone off. ‘Sorry about that. My editor. My boss.’
‘Tool of the trade, I imagine.’
‘The cellphone? Indispensable … unfortunately.’ She returned the handset to its home under the anorak and rummaged around. Her hand emerged clutching a crushed pack of Stuyvesant cigarettes. ‘Well now, Monsieur ’Ull, if it’s not being too nosy, what exactly are you doing here?’
‘Thanks,’ Lux said when she proffered the pack. He lit up for them both, then went on to feed her a yarn about being a freelance reporter.
‘So am I, freelance, I mean.’ More rummaging in her pockets, then she flipped a business card at him. ‘What a coincidence, our being here at the same time, for the same purpose.’
The words carried more than a trace of sarcasm. He didn’t ask what that purpose was. She was regarding him through a haze of cigarette smoke with a faintly jeering air.
‘Well, there it is,’ he said. ‘It’s been nice meeting you, Miss Fougère ...’
‘Ghislaine,’ she corrected in a brook-no-nonsense tone. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘In Rayol.’ He tried to remember the name of the big hotel right by the beach.
‘At the Bailli de Suffren, I imagine,’ she said obligingly. ‘I, too, have booked a room there tonight. No doubt we shall bump into each other.’
If it was meant as an invitation he didn’t rise to it.
‘I suppose I ought to call it a day,’ she said then, with a glance southwards. She tapped the camera. ‘The light is going. I shall have to come back tomorrow. Can I offer you a lift?’
He stared. ‘You came up by car?’
‘Not all the way,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘I am not quite so indiscreet as that. It is parked on the road, out of sight from prying security guards and helicopters. Speaking of which, it seems to have gone now.’
He kept his relief contained. This girl could foul up the works but good. If she really had ideas about a return visit he might have to discourage her. Any prowlers spotted by the two guards were sure to be reported to the police, which in turn might spark off an investigation and a tightening of security measures or even cancellation of Chirac’s sabbatical.
‘I think I’ll stay on here a while,’ he said. ‘If you will be dining at the hotel tonight, perhaps ...?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, coy now. ‘Perhaps.’
And she was gone. A girl medium height, neatly packaged, with small high breasts, a sleek swathe of hair that descended to her waist; bordering on lovely. Available too, by the sound of it.
* * *
He stayed on only long enough for her to get clear and to make sure the helicopter didn’t return. By then the sun was down behind the hills and he could travel with impunity among the long shadows.
In the cool of the evening he set a fast pace and was back in Rayol by seven-thirty just as the street lights came on. His luck was in at the Hotel Bailli de Suffren, they had a couple of rooms available, even for a man as seriously underdressed as Lux. At this hour there was no prospect of finding a clothes shop open, but the male receptionist directed him to a Casino hypermarket on the edge of Le Lavandou, where he bought chinos, a shirt, and a jacket of sorts. Not quite five-star hotel apparel, but it would do to gain admission to the dining room.
At this juncture he had no more in view than to meet up - ostensibly by chance - with Mlle Ghislaine Fougère and somehow deflect her from any more forays into presidential territory. Only if friendly advice failed to produce a result would he consider a more terminal solution.
It was well after nine when he descended to the restaurant, a long narrow room with chandeliers and stucco walls and terracotta tiled flooring. Being early in the season it was by no means crowded and the Maitre d’ found him a small corner table next to a window with an uninterrupted view towards the lights on top of Cap Negre. The window was open, letting in the tang of the sea and a breeze that was just the
right side of chilly.
No sign of Mlle. Fougère. He was disappointed. Professional needs apart, he could have stood her company for an evening. Sophisticated, agreeable to the eye, obviously intelligent - she was Lux’s idea of the perfect dining-out companion.
He ordered a kir and browsed the menu. It was predictably heavy on seafood, which ordinarily he couldn’t get enough of. Tonight, though, he was in the mood for a fat, crispy, sizzling steak. The waiter tried without success to push the chef’s special of the day, fricassée d’homard aux mousserons. It sounded mouth-watering but Lux was set on red meat.
The kir, chilled to perfection, refreshed him. He was draining the last dregs from the glass when Mlle. Fougère showed up. She spotted him the instant she drifted through the door in a pale pink ankle-length cloud of chiffon with a matching broad headband, like the one she had been wearing when they met.
Their eyes made contact. It was as if a high-voltage electric current leapt across the space between them. In that instant Lux wanted this girl - woman - more than any he had ever known, including his ex-wife. It was far more than just a physical wanting. He wanted, unequivocally, to possess her, to make her his own.
As if she sensed the turmoil inside him she had come to a standstill and was staring at him across the room, her mouth slightly parted, her eyes big and dark and mysterious. He got up, stiff as an arthritic. So unforeseen and unprecedented were the mixed passions that bloomed within him that his usual self-assurance had evaporated.
Reality returned in the form of a man in his early thirties, hair blond like Lux’s but cut shorter, a bit above average height. Not bad-looking. A fitting companion for such beauty as Ghislaine Fougère’s. He came up behind her, touched her arm. Seeming startled, she turned her head away from Lux, slowly, her eyes staying on him until she was forced to drag them away. Her lips smiled at the man, mechanically so it seemed to Lux. Then he said something that made her smile more broadly and naturally.
Lux was still standing, rigid as a dummy in a shop window, clutching his napkin in his left hand, his empty glass in his right. Ghislaine spoke into the ear of her companion, at which he flicked a glance toward Lux. Lux nodded, forcing a friendly expression on his face. He hoped they would come over. To be in her presence even for a minute, even with her boyfriend in tow, was better than nothing at all.
The Maitre d’ bustled over to them. Ghislaine’s companion indicated Lux. He stepped deferentially aside. ‘Je vous en prie, m’sieu-dame,’ Lux heard him say.
Ghislaine and her escort moved towards Lux, she with her arm slipped through his, he smiling as befits a good looking man with a lovely girl. Lux ground his teeth, envied him, and in his mind consigned him to purgatory.
‘Good evening, Miss Fougère,’ Lux said, hand extended, a benevolent rictus hoisted in place.
‘I told you - Ghislaine.’ And in those few words she made it clear there were no secrets between her and her companion. That they had the rare kind of relationship that transcends petty jealousy.
She introduced Lux as ‘the English gentleman who saved me from prison,’ a calculated exaggeration.
‘I am very ’appy to meet you,’ her companion said in English. ‘Sank you very much for saving my wife.’
His wife. The shock was a punch under the heart, robbing him momentarily of the power to think, let alone to speak. Somehow he kept his expression neutral and his hands off the man’s throat.
‘Anyone would have done it,’ he managed to murmur modestly.
Ghislaine begged to differ. ‘But you were the one,’ and gave him a look under her eyelashes that set him aflame. It told him that his feelings for her were not totally one-sided.
‘May we join you?’ she said with surprising boldness. Until Lux remembered that sophisticated Frenchwomen often take the initiative. Despite the look she had given him it was yet another demonstration of the rapport between her and her husband, of mutual trust.
His name was Michel Beauregard (Lux learned later in the evening that Ghislaine used her maiden name, again like many of her class), and he was either complaisant or complacent, Lux couldn’t decide which. Two more places were speedily set and aperitifs summoned. Ghislaine sat opposite Lux and generally kept her gaze averted. It was as well she did so for Beauregard could hardly have failed to get the message had Lux once fixed those marvellous deep-set eyes with his.
The meal progressed as meals do, the discourse with it. Free of incident. Unless her leg brushing Lux’s during the dessert, accidentally or otherwise, counted as an incident. The effect was such that he choked on a mouthful of fig, causing concern to his fellow diners. In Ghislaine’s case the concern soon succumbed to a roguish grin. Lux began to suspect then that her seduction act was no more than a tease and that he had as much chance of making it with her as he had of discovering the secret of alchemy.
‘In the morning, if the light is good, I must go again to the house,’ she said a little while later as, cognacs before them, they chatted companionably like old friends. The restaurant was emptying, only a couple of other tables still occupied and the staff were setting places for tomorrow’s diners.
It was as Lux had feared, though his expression was unchanged as he said, ‘What exactly are you trying to achieve up there? What’s the story?’
‘I might ask you the same,’ she retorted, tossing her head.
‘Yes, but I asked first.’
‘Oh, all right,’ she said and drained the last of her Cointreau. ‘It is about Chirac. I suppose you know he is taking a vacation there a few weeks from now. They say.’
‘They say? Isn’t it true then?’
She moved her head a few inches closer to Lux’s. ‘There is a rumour from a reliable source that he is there to meet the German Chancellor for talks on a transfer of nuclear know-how to the Germans.’
‘Why would France give the Germans that kind of knowledge?’ Lux said, mystified. ‘I thought you were supposed to be scared stiff of Germany making nuclear weapons.’
‘This is what I said,’ Beauregard cut in, tapping his dessert spoon on the edge of his dish. ‘It is inconceivable.’
Ghislaine was not put out by the scepticism. ‘Not at all. It is part of a mutual defence pact. You see they have no confidence in the EU or Nato to defend their countries against new Russian aggression and they do not believe the Russians are now our bosom friends.’ She lit a cigarette, sucked in the smoke, let it trickle from her nostrils. ‘If ever they do decide to move against the West, Germany will be in the front line. They accept this but they want nuclear weapons and the know-how from the French tests in the Pacific last year would be of enormous value to them.’
Non-political, and an ignoramus on the subject of European politics, Lux was not prepared to argue the point.
‘So if the rumour turns out to be fact, you want photographs of Chirac meeting Kohl.’
‘Video film … and recordings. I am to place microphones in the house. The evidence of the two combined will be beyond dispute. Chirac will fall. Phffft.’ She made a gesture with her fingers, to signify an explosion. ‘The Left will triumph.’ Her eyes moved over Lux’s face like a caress. ‘I am of the left, not a communist, but very close. I am also a member of Greenpeace, and there are not many of us in France. Since Chirac played with nuclear weapons at Mururoa I have counted the days to his downfall and wished I would be able to play a part in it.’
‘If the meeting takes place,’ Lux said, ‘it looks like you’ll get your wish.’
‘Will you come with me tomorrow?’ The question was aimed at neither Lux nor her husband, rather it was projected into space, as if up for grabs. Lux left the response to Beauregard. Eventually, as though he had likewise been waiting for Lux, he said, covering her hand with his, ‘You know I cannot, ma chêrie. I have to work all day here.’
Over the meal he had explained to Lux that, like his wife, he was a professional photographer. He was here at the behest of the Tourist Office for the département of the Var, doing s
cenic photography for a promotional leaflet.
‘What about you, Dennis?’ Ghislaine tilted back her head to exhale, the lights burnishing her hair, enhancing its natural lustre.
Now his professional instincts were creakily reawakened. She was going back, into the valley, exposing herself to the risk of arrest. And if she were to be caught ... In his fascination with her as a woman he had lost sight of the professional priorities.
‘Do you think it’s smart to go there again?’ he said ultra-casually, as much to Beauregard as to her. Maybe her husband would overrule her.
‘Smart?’ She cocked her head sideways as if she didn’t understand the word.
Beauregard laughed heartily while lighting his umpteenth cigarette of the evening; he had smoked between courses as do many French.
‘If you knew my wife a little better, monsieur, you would not bother with such advice. The more hazardous the undertaking, the more likely she is to do it. Compared with some of the risks she has taken, filming the President’s retreat is du gâteau.’
A piece of cake. Lux thought he was probably right. Maybe she didn’t mind paying a fine or spending a week in the jug. None of that was his affair. His only motive was to keep her from making the natives restless, and his job thereby doubly difficult if not impossible.
‘Who’s commissioned you?’ he asked, trying a different approach.
‘Paris Match,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘They pay well.’
‘A videocassette of the house can’t be such a big deal. Suppose I let you have a copy of mine? Save you the trouble ... you can spend all day on the beach.’
She frowned then. Beauregard too looked faintly puzzled.
‘Why do you want to keep me away? Why were you there today?’
Sharp and shrewd. Just as Lux had expected.
‘Fact is ... I’m not just being chivalrous, but surely you can see that if you get caught it will make it impossible for me. My commission calls for shots of the Chiracs at play. But do you imagine they’ll still come here if police catch you snooping around?’
