by Lex Lander
‘Anything else?’ Barail asked.
‘Just a couple of small items. Do you know what type of helicopter the President will be using, to fly to the house?’
‘Most likely an Armée de l’Air Ecureuil, but I can check easily enough.’
‘Will you do that and let me have either manufacturer’s drawings or an exploded diagram of the type.’
Barail was about to ask why, then decided against it. He didn’t need to know and sometimes it was best not to.
‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘And the other item?’
‘Transport. To be specific a gendarmerie car to be parked in the Crillon grounds on the night before I hit him. The key to be sent to me.’
That Barail didn’t like the idea overmuch showed in the hardening of his features.
‘For getaway purposes, I imagine. Why a gendarmerie car?’
‘You’ll have to work it out for yourself. My advice is to see no evil and just do it.’
For Barail, whose profession had taught him to see evil everywhere, Lux’s suggestion was meaningless. The car, though, he could and would provide.
‘You ask a lot,’ he complained. ‘Perhaps you would like me to do the job for you.’
Lux didn’t rise to the taunt, even had sympathy for the man’s resentment. After some huffing and puffing Barail promised to have the two IDs ‘in a matter of days’ from receipt of the CV of Lux’s accomplice, and the passport and helicopter drawings the week after next. Time enough. The first week June was still five weeks away.
‘You can wait until the passport’s ready and deliver the whole package in one,’ Lux told him.
‘Bien,’ Barail said with a nod. ‘As for the key, it will not be possible to select the car until a day or two before. It will be better if the car is simply left unlocked and the key placed under the driver’s seat, for instance.’
This made sense to Lux and he readily agreed.
‘Do you not care to confide in me a little?’ Barail subconsciously adopted a wheedling tone. ‘Tell me how you will solve the matter of getting into the estate and getting out again with the car I will so obligingly supply.’
‘Look, pal,’ Lux said, ‘you want me to murder the President of France.’ The word ‘murder’ in juxtaposition to ‘President of France’ made Barail cringe. ‘I’m going to do it. Let that be enough. Don’t harass me.’
Barail stood, drew himself up. Seen from Lux’s seated position he made a commanding figure. The upper half of the Eiffel Tower appeared to be growing from his cranium.
‘Let us understand each other, Lux: in this matter I am your master but I am not my own. Others, wielding greater authority than me, seek assurances. You demand a great deal of money. It puts you under obligation to be open about your intentions.’
‘Sorry, Commissaire.’
‘Suppose we were prepared to pay more.’
‘Forget it. Ten million bucks and immunity from arrest is enough for me. Now, before you go, there is the small matter of a further forty per cent of my fee, now that the date and place have been set. As a matter of fact, payment is overdue. Settle up and we can part company the best of friends.’
Barail stuck out his redoubtable chin. ‘It is in the course of being arranged.’
‘According to my instructions?’
‘Exactly. I spoke to Simonelli before I left the office. Four million US dollars, by irrevocable Letter of Credit drawn on your Swiss Account, will be wired on Monday next. A further twenty-five per cent on the day itself; the balance within eight days, by the same method, to the same account. You have my absolute assurance.’
‘And do you have Simonelli’s assurance, and does he have Miss Walker’s assurance?’
‘Miss …? Ah, Jill, yes, of course.’
Lux allowed himself a wry smile. ‘I figured that wasn’t her real name. Not that it matters. If that four million hasn’t been credited to my account by close of business on 30th, you’ll have to find yourself another boy.’
‘It will be there,’ Barail said stiffly.
* * *
At the hotel that evening, before dining, Lux reviewed his meeting with Barail. Reviewed and wondered if the Frenchman had any inkling at all that, while seeming to place trust in him, Lux’s every act was instigated by the fear of a double-cross. He hoped his fears were without foundation. But if they were not, he would be as prepared as anyone could be.
He had come to accept that the death of the President would result in government devolving upon Barail’s principals. No other explanation for the killing made sense. Why the money was coming from abroad and from whom, why the mysterious and sexually aggressive ‘Jill Walker’ was in charge of the purse strings, were riddles he was unlikely to solve. The prognosis was: one dead president, one new government, and one pardoned assassin back home in Menton, free and richer by ten million dollars. Forget the rest.
So far then, so wonderful. Lux had every reason to look forward to a wealthy and happy-ever-after retirement, hopefully to play house with Ghislaine. The only flaw in this fairy tale reasoning was how the new masters of France would treat him. To them he would represent a potential leak, and leaks, as everyone knew, must be plugged, otherwise they get bigger and bigger and eventually the ship goes down.
A paranoid view, perhaps. But his insurance scheme was already well advanced: a phoney British passport in the name of Paul Hollis, of Dunsford, near Exeter in Devon, was already ordered. In a tiny village in what used to be called Pembrokeshire a man called Freddie would skilfully produce a passport that, being derived from the real thing, would be infallible. This was the passport Lux would carry if he had to flee France. Not a Canadian passport, undoubtedly its equal in pedigree, but whose only purpose was to dupe Barail and/or the authorities into chasing a red herring.
By such devious means had Lux avoided paying the penalty for his crimes for the best part of a decade.
Twenty
* * *
The Beauregards were unlisted. This much Lux had ascertained by Sunday afternoon, when the sixth on his list finally answered his call. Having also failed to track them down under a professional heading in the Pages Jaunes, he whiled away what remained of Sunday in a frustrated brain racking about where to go from here in his search for Ghislaine Beauregard/Fougère, whose very untraceability served only to stoke the flames of his longing for her.
Giving up his quest was an option he did not consider. Ghislaine had become his Holy Grail, the cup of desire from which he must drink, if only for one last time - should that be his fate.
On Monday, when everyone was back at work, perhaps he would try calling all the newspapers and magazines. Only when he looked up the classification in the Pages Jaunes did he realise how prodigious was the task.
* * *
Having drawn a blank with his first twenty or so calls, Lux went to lunch in the Montmartre where, over a croque monsieur, an inspiration came to him. Michel Beauregard had been working on a project for the Tourist Office of the Var. Surely that office would have a contact number or address.
The nearest Minitel came up with a number for the office in less than a minute, and a telephone call from a PTT booth yielded a succession of obliging but ultimately unhelpful personnel. The booth grew hot and claustrophobic while Lux repeated his request over and over, his temper wearing thinner and thinner. Only when he had worked his way up to the Directeur du Bureau did he strike a seam: yes, certainly he was currently employing a M. Beauregard, was the somewhat guarded response. May one ask why he wished to know?
Lux explained that he had met Beauregard socially, that the photographer had shown him some of his work, and that he, Lux, was a partner in a holiday business and would simply like to hire him. Ah, then in that case, monsieur, I shall be only too happy to recommended him. Here is his business address and telephone number ...
More trusting than he had a right to be.
Beauregard operated under the trade name FOTOSCAN, out of a Neuilly address. Lux was to
o impatient to go there, it was a good half-hour by taxi. Though it was odds against her answering his call - she was not part of the business - he dialled the number. Even to speak to her husband was better than no contact at all. He had even prepared an excuse for contacting him.
It rang just once.
‘Fotoscan,’ said a woman’s voice.
It was her.
‘Ghislaine?’ he said.
An intake of breath, almost a cry. Then nothing except the sound of her breathing very fast. Lux pressed the receiver hard into his ear.
‘Are you still there?’ he said, knowing full well she was.
A small ‘Yes’, instantly reiterated, more firmly, more decisively. ‘I have been waiting for your call. What took you so long?’
‘You didn’t leave many clues.’
Her laugh was happy. Lux joined in, laughing from the sheer delight of talking to her, from the knowledge that she was close to him, that he would certainly see her within the hour.
As if reading his mind, she blurted, ‘Come now - at once!’
‘To the office?’
‘Merde - non! What am I thinking of?’
They arranged a rendezvous in the Bois de Boulogne, which reminded Lux of his car ride to Barail’s house that crisp February evening, and thence of Barail and the shadowy side of his life. God forbid she should ever learn of it.
* * *
‘Oh, I love you,’ she gasped even as they fell into each other’s arms. ‘How I love you!’
‘It’s the same for me ...’ Lux began.
‘I know, I know! You don’t even have to say it. You would never have searched so diligently for me unless you loved me.’ She giggled, girlish, flushed with excitement. ‘But yes, say it anyway ... say it, say it! You must never stop saying it.’ She was shaking him and laughing at the same time. A fat woman pushing a pram glowered at them as she waddled by, in malice born of envy Lux didn’t wonder.
He said it. He told her he loved her, even that he would always love her, though he had ever regarded love as a transient, capricious state, the durability of its foundations non-proven.
‘I love you,’ he said yet again and her perfect lips opened in the joy of hearing it, displaying perfect teeth and a perfect tongue. In his eyes she was perfection.
The Bois de Boulogne is a place where lovers roam and even, by night, make love. But its leafy paths were not for Lux and Ghislaine this day. They found a small but clean hotel on the banks of the Seine, rented a room.
‘Where’s Michel?’ he asked her as he locked the door.
‘Oh ... working, in Strasbourg. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything ...’ She hugged him, pressing her face into his neck, breathing him in, savouring him, ‘except you.’
The vague sense of guilt was again taking the edge off the pleasure of anticipation. Stealing another man’s wife, destroying a marriage, was not a deed to be lightly or cynically done.
‘Won’t you have to fetch your son soon?’
‘He boards at school, comes home every weekend.’
Which took care of matrimonial and maternal obligations. She was making it so easy for him to embark on this affair.
He let himself succumb to the tug of desire. Already she had got rid of her belted jacket and was jerking her high-necked red sweater from her waistband. Her eyes, sparkling with animation, remained on him. She removed her bra - white and lacy - before her skirt, and breasts that were his to look at, to inspect, to stroke and squeeze.
‘They’re yours,’ she murmured, offering them like so much fruit to be tested for ripeness. ‘Do with them what you will.’
They were pendulous, heavy yet not large, with dark brown nipples as big as thimbles. He covered them with his hands and she quivered, as if an electric current had been passed through her. Her head lolled back, her mouth fell open to release a low groan.
‘Darling ... darling ...’ The endearment alone was sustenance to his passions.
He drew away, began to undress. Panting, her complexion feverish, she unzipped her slim black skirt and pushed it down over her thighs. Her legs were bare of nylon and from the knees down speckled with fine dark hair. Unbecoming, some would carp. Not Lux. He preferred the human form to be left as nature intended.
Her panties were of the same frothy material as her bra, darkened in the V by the bush of her pubic hair, moulded to her mound of Venus, accentuating it.
‘You do it,’ she invited. ‘Take them off.’
He discarded his shirt, sank before her on one knee. Gently and very slowly he worked the scrap of material down her thighs. The odour of her sex swirled around him like an early morning mist.
‘Do it now,’ she commanded as his tongue flicked at her. ‘I can’t wait any longer! Fuck me, darling!’
He was still half-dressed, but that no longer mattered. In their frenzy they didn’t even use the bed, simply collapsing onto the thin fluffy rug and letting their bodies take charge, lashing up a sexual storm of such force that all they could do was ride it out, let it run its course to extinction, finally to slip into the ensuing calm, exhausted, satiated, fulfilled, to await the inevitable resurgence.
* * *
They dined and danced at the Ritz that night. Krug Champagne and Canard Apicius, as befitted a celebration of the beginning of a love affair. No extravagance was too great.
Her evening dress was black and slinky, open to the waist at the front and back, though the front was held secured by a silvered clasp across her cleavage. Underneath the dress she was stark naked. He had guessed and she had confirmed it. Plenty of men eyed her and Lux smiled smugly to himself because she was his.
As much the haunt of foreign businessmen as of Paris high society the Ritz restaurant hummed with life. Every table was taken, yet no would-be diner was kept waiting.
‘Which is why the Ritz is the haut de la gamme,’ Ghislaine remarked, having confessed that this was only her second visit here and that the first had been financed by a magazine for which she had written an award-winning article.
‘What was the article about?’ he asked, conscious of how little he knew of her.
‘Corruption in Government,’ she said, polishing off her third glass of Krug.
‘Hot stuff.’
‘They threatened me ... threatened to hurt Michel and Marc if I sold the article to the magazine.’
‘Who threatened?’
She traced an elegant fingertip around the rim of the glass, making it squeal. ‘People. I am not allowed to say. I daren’t say.’ She shot him a defiant look. ‘It’s not myself I’m afraid for.’
He leaned across the table, took her hand. ‘It’s kinda funny, but you don’t need to tell me that.’ Her aura of dedication and purpose had impressed him from the start. Locating her Achilles’ heel would be no mean task. Her son and her husband in that order, and perhaps her parents, were probably the sum total.
‘Are you anti-Government? Or just anti-establishment?’
‘Both of those and more,’ she replied as a waiter came and swept away the dessert dishes. ‘Anti-authority would be a more generic way of describing my crusade.’
‘Authority in practice or in principle?’
‘In practice, my darling,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m no anarchist, of that you may be sure.’ Her smile dissolved into a kissing motion across the table. ‘I love you.’
Before he could respond in kind she had pushed back her chair and extended her arms towards him. ‘Let us dance - please.’
It was a waltz. Undemanding enough, which was all to the good for he was rusty. She danced like a dream, light of foot, sinuous of body, titillating with thighs and breasts.
‘Tell me more about your politics,’ he urged as they glided among other twirling couples. ‘I’m intrigued.’
‘Not now. Now I want to talk about us and what we are to do.’
It hadn’t occurred to him that decisions were required. Not so soon. He was content just to enjoy her company and her closenes
s. Temporarily all other cares were driven from his mind. The assassination and how it was to be performed, his subsequent getaway, his various subterfuges ... all were consigned to a nether world under the magic of the spell his new love was weaving around him.
‘What do you think we should do?’ he said lightly, sweeping her across the floor to the refrain of the ‘Waltz of the Toreadors’.
Surprise widened her brown eyes.
‘Must I tell you? Why, we must run away together, of course. To your house in Menton perhaps. I don’t really care where we go, so long as we go together.’
‘Fine,’ he said, though it wasn’t as fine as all that, considering his present obligations. Running away with Ghislaine might be interpreted by Barail as a different kind of running away. In which eventuality the togetherness she craved was likely to be of short duration. ‘What,’ he went on, ‘will you do about your son?’
She arched her back to study him. ‘Naturally, he will join me ... us. I will make arrangements tomorrow but I must know where we are to live.’
Setting up house together was, notwithstanding the depth of his feelings for her, more a middle-term than short-term project. Yet to establish her in Menton made a sort of sense to him, in that she would be tolerably far from the scene of his forthcoming crime and leave him unencumbered to concentrate on earning his freedom - not to mention ten million dollars. Would she stand for it, waiting out the month-long countdown to the killing?
‘Something is wrong.’ She stiffened against him. ‘You prefer that my son does not stay with us, is that it?’
‘Not in the slightest.’ He hesitated. To be convincing was no trial, it was the employment of duplicity so early in their relationship that bothered him. ‘It’s only that I’ll have to leave you within a day or two ... a job ... a very big job. It will make me a great deal of money but even more importantly it will create other opportunities that are beyond price.’ He felt her relax slightly, soften against him. ‘I’m explaining this badly, just trust me for now. I won’t let you down.’
