by Lex Lander
* * *
The view from the balcony of the sixth-floor penthouse apartment was of a plain of water so flat and still as to appear iced over. The French shoreline on the far side of Lac Leman was duplicated as a mirror image and indistinguishable from the real thing.
A small motorboat arrowed out from the Swiss side, pushing an inverted V before it, and the mirror illusion was lost, the image shimmering then dispersing.
Lux flipped a cigarette butt far out beyond the balcony and turned to the woman he loved: she was in an outdoor lounge chair, watching him, her chin resting on her knuckled hand. Her eyes were big and fathomless.
‘Anything wrong?’ he said.
A tiny shake of her head, a smile that flickered like a candle flame caught in a draught. She was dressed in jeans and a skimpy white top that made it hard for him to focus on anything but her breasts.
‘I was just looking at you. I like to look at you.’
‘You might have to go on looking at me for a long time,’ he said and went to sit in the empty chair next to her. They held hands, a natural union of the flesh, a shared desire for tactile contact.
‘Do you own this place?’ she asked.
‘Not me. It’s Eddie’s.’
‘Eddie?’
‘Keating. The guy with the boat.’
‘I see.’ Ghislaine mulled this over but saw no reason to pursue it. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened yesterday? Why we had to leave in such haste, in such mystery?’
Lux was in no hurry to come clean. He had heartsearched at length how much truth she could take and still not be repelled. To his astonishment and rising unease the media had not yet reported Chirac’s death. Upside, this made it easier to hold off telling. The longer they were together, consolidating their relationship, the higher his chances of keeping her.
‘For now you’ll just have to trust me,’ he said. But the entreaty sounded stale, past its sell-by date. He had used it before, maybe this was once too often.
‘I trust you to love me and not to hurt me,’ she affirmed, her phrasing carefully chosen. ‘But we must share everything, even our darkest secrets, otherwise the trust is one-sided, n’est pas?’
‘At least I haven’t lied.’
The statement carried an undertone that she immediately pounced upon.
‘Are you suggesting I have?
‘I know you have. For one thing, you’re not married, you’re divorced. For another, you’re not a journalist, you’re a civil servant. Why didn’t you share those secrets with me?’
Her faced paled but she was not cowed. She kept her chin up, lacing her fingers with his.
‘How do you know this?’
He had half-hoped she would deny it. ‘It’s true then.’
‘Yes. It is true.’
He let go her hand, looked away. The boat was distant now, its buzzing motor no more obtrusive than the bombination of a fly in the clutches of a cobweb.
‘If you will allow me, I will explain and then perhaps you will explain because you too have lied, in spite of what you say.’
Lux wondered how much she knew and how much would be guesswork. He masked his consternation behind the lighting of a cigarette and was satisfied to note the lack of tremor in the famously steady hand.
‘Before I tell you,’ she went on, ‘there is one thing above all that you must hold in your mind - I love you. So long as I love you and you love me, here, now, without reservation, all else that came before is of less consequence than the fall of a leaf from a tree.’
Lux expelled smoke to sully the seemingly pure Swiss air.
‘I do love you,’ he said, though the avowal didn’t trip from his tongue with quite the usual spontaneity. ‘Now - tell.’
‘Very well. I work … worked, past tense … for the RG.’
Not being a Frenchman, Lux’s perception of the structure of the justice department was meagre.
‘So what? Who cares who you worked for? History is history.’
He tossed a wandering lock of hair from his forehead and leaned towards her to kiss her. For once her response was lacklustre.
‘I don’t think you’re listening.’ Her voice hardened. ‘I worked for the RG. The Renseignements Généraux. The Government.’ And when Lux still looked blank, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dennis, it’s a police department!’
He sat forward, digesting, disseminating.
‘Why tell me now? You say “worked”, past tense. So you used to be some sort of cop, now you’re not. Now you’re with me, knowing I’m a criminal of some sort. It doesn’t change anything. It’s still history, if you say it is.’
Now she too was leaning forward. Her face was troubled.
‘You still don’t understand completely. I worked for the RG until two days ago. I was working for them when I met you. Our meeting was engineered.’ She pounded the chair arm with her clenched fist. ‘I was planted on you!’
Even spelled out, the implications were slow to seep into his brain.
‘If you were planted on me,’ he said, speaking slowly and a shade unsteadily, ‘you must know why I was there, at the Crillon place. And if you know why I was there you must also know or can guess what I did yesterday. So how come you’re here with me? To arrest me?’
She shook her head violently, causing her hair to swirl across her face, veiling it completely.
‘I love you, my darling. Unconditionally. I love you so much I don’t care about anything but being with you. I quit the RG to be with you. I have turned a blind eye to your crime which, in any case, must have failed. Not only that but I have become your accomplice. If it is in my power to help you escape justice I will do it. Whatever is necessary, I will do.’
‘When did you make this decision?’ he said with a hint of harshness. Her fine professions of love and loyalty were not enough to ameliorate the hurt and the sense of treachery.
‘I did not decide to love you, crétin.’ She reached for him tentatively but he shied away like a naughty child fearing a blow. ‘When we met at the Crillon estate, of course I was there to entrap you. You can thank Barail’s loose tongue for that; it was due to him we were able to predict where you would be. At any rate, for some weeks after that our affair was for me no more than a job. I kept track of you when I could, though it was out of my hands when you were away. It did not make my job very easy.’ A shaky laugh. ‘Not that you should care. Well, anyway, I began to like you a little bit, then quite a lot … I was a little mixed up. It was around the time you stayed with me in my apartment … was it only last week? It was then when my feelings for you became stronger than liking. From there it was but a short step to loving you.’ She laughed again, only now it had a bitter timbre. ‘Ironic, is it not, that the role I acted out has now become real life? You could say it serves me right.’
She fell to her knees at his feet, her features crumpling, her eyes glistening with the tears that somehow he was certain would never be shed.
‘Do you want me to beg forgiveness? It was not a noble thing I did, though it was for the right cause. And if I was ignoble, so were you, in what you did … tried to do. So we cancel out each other’s ignobility. What matters is that I love you and you love me.’
To Lux it was akin to the final denouement in a banal Hollywood melodrama. He could almost believe he was watching this up on the big screen instead of participating.
In the street directly below tyres squealed as someone braked too late, an unusual occurrence in stolid Switzerland. No crunch of metal ensued. It served though to jolt Lux from his trancelike state, to liberate his vocal chords.
‘No, sweetheart. You don’t have to beg anything. I wish we had met some other way but it’s nobody’s fault.’
‘That’s not all,’ she said.
‘Christ.’ His tone was soft but the sentiment behind it was full of feeling. ‘What else?’
She swallowed. ‘All that we said and did was recorded.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Are you telling me you w
ere wired?’
It was standard police procedure in entrapment cases, so he should not have been surprised. Inside though, he squirmed a little to think that it was all on record to be sniggered over in the corridors of law and order: every endearment, every rutting grunt, every twang of overstressed bedsprings.
‘Hold me, darling,’ Ghislaine said, opening her arms to him. ‘Tell me none of it matters because yesterday is not today and truth is better than lies, however much it may hurt.’
So he held her, rocking her as he spoke, and in the warm closeness of her he discovered that she was right. It did not matter in the least how they had come together. Looked at from another angle, it she had not been a policewoman and he not a hired killer, they would never have met at all and this woman - this intelligent, beautiful, courageous, exciting woman - would not be here in his arms. Far from feeling injured he should be grateful.
Yet it was a lot to digest, especially for a man who was seldom prey to his emotions.
‘I need a drink,’ he said.
‘Let me get it,’ she said, jumping up, in her relief some of her customary joie de vivre restored. ‘I think I will join you.’
‘Make mine a stiff one.’
* * *
Le Renard had given him the task of co-ordinating the round-up of Lux and Simonelli. It was not CRS work or even CRS business, but by sticking his neck out he had qualified for a place on the team, vice-captain to Le Renard’s captain.
Where to start? Lux’s Menton home had already been searched to the point of demolition without yielding up a single incriminating speck of evidence. As for Simonelli, he might never have been. The only trace at the comte’s chateau in Venoy was an empty pack of Disque Bleue in a waste bin in the room he had occupied. It provided a first class set of fingerprints that they didn’t need.
No, there remained but a single tenuous link, the most gossamer of threads - Agent 411. Except that she was incommunicado. Only once, out of a score or more of attempts, had he got through on her cellphone and even then she cut him off without speaking. Thereafter it had remained stubbornly switched off. Whether a willing or reluctant confederate she was with Lux, of that he had no doubt. Hence, she had it within her means to deliver up the American.
His head ached from pummelling it for solutions. Hundreds, thousands, of policemen were out there asking questions and getting nowhere. More than likely the couple had left France within hours of the assassination attempt. By now they could be in … in … Mazé tried to think which country was farthest away on the globe. But of course, dolt - New Zealand! Among the Greens, that was where they would seek refuge.
He would have smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand had that not been a tendency of Barail’s. His former boss was now a pariah in the service and any imitation of his mannerisms, subconscious or not, was best avoided.
He reached for the telephone to set in motion another string of enquiries on the other side of the world.
* * *
In his austere office on the floor above, Le Renard was about to tap into the international old pals’ network.
The telephone number Barail had been tricked into providing began with the area code 0171. Inner London. Easy enough to match a UK number to an address if you had connections in Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, as Le Renard did.
In less than a minute he was making his request in mangled but fluent English to John Gough, Detective Chief Superintendent and an ardent Francophile. Sussing out an address, even for an ex-directory number, was routine for policemen on both sides of the Channel. Gough promised to transmit it via Le Renard’s direct fax line by no later than five o’clock local time.
For favours such as this there is always a quid pro quo. Before the week was out a case of valuable 1978 Châteauneuf du Pape would be delivered to the Gough residence just outside Surrey’s stockbroker belt.
* * *
Summer had come to London literally overnight. Temperatures were up in the mid-eighties by noon when Sheryl Glister and Gary Rosenbrand sallied forth from their penthouse eyrie for what should have been a five-minute walk to the Benihana Japanese Restaurant. It was not destined to last even a minute. They crossed Finchley Road, dodging the endless flux of metal. As they reached the kerb on the other side a Ford Scorpio drew up beside them. Sheryl was preoccupied with detaching her shorts from the crease of her bottom and paid it no heed; even Rosenbrand, who was not in dispute with his shorts and was nearer the kerbside, barely glanced at it. A beat too late he realised what was about to happen.
‘Sheryl …!’ He intended to add the injunction ‘Run!’ but the blackjack that connected with the back of his skull removed the power of speech not to mention motion, and he sagged into the arms of his assailant.
A black man in a kaftan who was coming along the street, fingers clicking to the music from the Walkman headphones clamped to his skull, shouted ‘Hey!’ All four men from the Scorpio froze and simultaneously looked towards him, as synchronised as a stage act. Seeing that he was outnumbered four to one, the black man had second thoughts, did an about-face, and retraced his steps at the double.
While this was in progress Sheryl was indeed running - without any encouragement from her colleague. She bumped into a startled postman, scattering letters left and right, before plunging into the open doorway of a florist shop. A woman behind the counter squealed as Sheryl blundered through, two jean-clad men in pursuit just short of grabbing range. Without slowing to ask directions Sheryl continued at a lick through another open door at the back of the shop. It led to a corridor just wide enough for two people to pass. At the far end the oblong of another doorway and beyond it some sort of loading zone by the look of it. As she passed into the corridor she flung the door shut behind her, the thud of wood connecting with flesh and bone a small triumph.
It bought her a slim respite. Just long enough to scrabble the Mace spray from her pocket and adopt a defensive stance. The door was hurled open and the first of her pursuers came hurtling into the corridor.
A single squirt from the spray was enough. A green-hued vapour jetted viciously from the nozzle, dousing the man’s face.
‘Mes yeux!’ he shrieked, covering his eyes after the damage was done. The CRS gas had blinded him and he would stay that way the best part of an hour. For good measure, as he crashed against the wall, Sheryl brought up her knee and crushed his balls flat. A second shriek, even louder than the first, and he was down, thrashing and squirming at her feet. His companion, pulling up beyond the range of the spray, whipped out a compact automatic and snarled at her in French.
Sheryl snarled back in ripe Anglo-Saxon and took off for the exit, gambling that he wouldn’t dare gun her down in public. Sure enough, no shot followed her, not even as a warning.
Bursting from the doorway into the loading zone, she almost tripped over an empty carton. She staggered but stayed on her feet. Opposite her, a row of garages with up-and-over doors. No haven there. To the left was a brick wall too high to scale. She turned right and, thankful to be wearing sneakers, sprinted towards a steeply-inclined street at right angles to the loading zone. A scruffy fat man unloading a large carton from a white van gawked at Sheryl as she flew past. He was still gawking when the gun-brandishing Frenchman popped out of the same doorway, yelling ‘Stop or I shoot!’ in what the fat man later described to the police as ‘a funny accent’.
A rickety removal van grinding up the incline in low gear proved to be Sheryl’s salvation. She ran right up to it then alongside, pacing it while grabbing the handle of the passenger door. A young black man in a ragged once-white T-shirt gave her a startled look as she wrenched the door open.
‘ ’Ere, ’ang on a minute,’ he spluttered.
‘Help me,’ she panted, hauling herself up into the cab without invitation. ‘A French bloke is chasing me.’
Nothing is calculated to arouse an Englishman’s Galahadian instincts more than a distressed damsel - especially one wearing tight shorts and no bra - fleeing
from a Frenchman.
Now it was the driver’s turn to protest as his companion slid along the bench seat to make room for their guest. Sheryl slammed the door and depressed the locking plunger while frantically winding up the window. There came a bang on the side of the van. Then the Frenchman’s face bobbed up beside her, hammering on the glass with his fist. He shouted at her in his mother tongue. Sheryl poked her tongue at him and reinforced it with a stiff middle finger. At least he wasn’t waving the gun any more.
‘Piss off, Froggy!’ her young saviour bawled; and to the driver, ‘Give ’er some stick, Don.’ And Don, middle aged with glasses, obligingly coaxed another mph out of the protesting pantechnicon.
‘Thanks both of you,’ Sheryl said, flashing the young guy a breathless smile of gratitude.
‘Don’t mensh.’ He stuck out a hand. ‘I’m Duane.’
‘I’m Sheryl,’ she said and laughed wildly at the craziness of it all.
In the door mirror she saw the Frenchman drop back, throwing up his hands in admission of defeat. As the removal van came to an intersection and slowed, he jogged away off the edge of the mirror, presumably to report his failure.
Or partial failure. They still had Gary, Sheryl reminded herself.
‘Nah then, what was all that about,’ Duane said as she flopped back in the seat, blowing strands of hair from her sweaty forehead.
He was wearing cut-off jeans and she became aware that his thigh was pressing up against hers, flesh to flesh. Admittedly space was at a premium, but she guessed it was good old-fashioned male lust at work, notwithstanding the minimum ten year age discrepancy. Well, a thigh-to-thigh snuggle was the very least he deserved.
‘What’s it about?’ she said back to him. ‘If I told you, you’d never believe it.’
Don, the driver, nodded understandingly, as they crested the incline. ‘Fuckin’ French. Can’t fuckin’ trust ’em.’
‘Where do you want us to drop you?’ Duane asked as they swayed and bounced downhill with little semblance of control.
Not back at the apartment, that was for sure. Not yet. She had her wallet containing credit cards and some cash, so had the wherewithal to get off the streets. She needed to figure out what to do about Gary (if he wasn’t beyond anyone’s reach), to contact Barail, to get out of England, or London at any rate …
