‘And what’s your name?’
No answer. We eyed each other, then glanced at the surrounding area, both of us waiting. How does she know that? I thought. Where has she been hiding to find out who I am and what I’ve been doing?
‘I’d like to propose an exchange,’ she said now.
‘Meaning what?’
‘We can talk on the way,’ she said, and started walking. We passed Olivier, who had come out of the hotel. I murmured to him that I’d be right back. He pointed at the woman and gave me a meaningful look.
It’s her.
Thanks, I’d already realized that.
I hurried to catch up.
‘Do you know where Patrick is?’ I asked.
The woman glanced at me, her expression devoid of all emotion.
‘You should have gone back home to New York,’ she said.
‘I don’t give a shit who you are,’ I said. ‘I just want to know what’s happened to him.’
‘You can call me Nedjma,’ she said.
I stopped abruptly. I’d heard that name before. It took a few seconds before I remembered the connection. Sarah Rachid had mentioned Nedjma the night before. The woman Arnaud was seeing. A garbage truck braked, and the rattling of metal cans reverberated between the brick walls. My head was spinning. Had Arnaud told her everything? Why did she want me to leave Paris? What did she have to do with Josef K?
I saw her blue coat turn at the street corner, and I had to jog to keep her in sight as the crowds swelled.
‘So it was Arnaud Rachid who told you about me.’ I was breathing hard as I caught up with her at the intersection.
Nedjma gave me a crooked smile.
‘Arnaud is naïve,’ she said, crossing the street. ‘He thinks that everything will be fine as long as you’re nice to other people.’
‘Whose side are you on, anyway?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer as she headed towards a park at the end of the street. People passed by me. Faces that were only a blur. I had to step aside to avoid running into a baby buggy. If there’s no baby in the buggy, what could there be? That’s what I used to think about. A doll? A puppy? Explosives?
‘Why did you want me to go back to New York?’ I asked.
‘It was for your own good.’ She walked through the tall gates, and the park closed around us with its lush vegetation. The leaves were turning yellow on the edges. There were statues among the trees. Nedjma stopped and looked at me.
‘It was Patrick who contacted me. One day he phoned and wanted to talk about Josef K. Where did he get my number?’
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’
‘Cornwall refused to divulge his source. But you’re not a journalist, even though that’s what you’re pretending to be.’
I was thinking frantically. If the purse vendor ended up getting in hot water, that really wasn’t my problem.
‘A guy named Luc who sells purses at the market in Saint-Ouen,’ I told her. ‘He was paid to give Patrick the number.’
‘Merde,’ she said. She frowned and stared at the trees for a moment.
‘It must have been a trap,’ she said at last.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s sit down over there.’ She pointed to chairs near a big pond where colourful little sailboats were bobbing in the water.
‘What do you know about Josef K?’ asked Nedjma, sitting down on one of the rickety chairs.
I sat down next to her.
‘He’s a human trafficker from the east,’ I said. ‘Apparently he decided to jump ship, and now he’s hiding from his old cohorts.’
‘Everybody has a weak spot,’ said Nedjma, staring at some children using sticks to steer their toy boats. ‘Josef K had a god-daughter who meant everything to him. She was his princess. Then she grew up and became a big girl. A year ago she travelled to the west to become a model, but she disappeared.’
I studied her profile as she told me how Josef K had gone mad with worry. He’d searched for the girl for months, in Amsterdam, London, Paris. All over Europe. Finally he’d discovered that his own network had lured her away.
‘Not anyone who was close to him, of course. It was a branch that was operating alongside his own, using Bratislava as its base. That’s how these kinds of organizations function. Like a bunch of islands that appear to be independent.’
Nedjma picked up a stick that one of the kids had left behind and drew a picture in the sand. A group of islands separated from each other.
‘If the police seize one of them, the others aren’t at risk. This group had no idea they’d sold the god-daughter of one of the bosses to a bordello in Cologne.’
‘So that’s when he suddenly became a good boy?’ I said. ‘He wanted to speak out in the press and be forgiven, or what?’
Nedjma gave me an annoyed look.
‘Two human traffickers from Bratislava died a short time later, killed in an especially vicious way. Then Josef K went to the top boss and threatened to expose the whole operation if he wasn’t given his god-daughter back.’
‘And who is the top boss?’
She turned to look in all directions before answering.
‘His name is Alain Thery,’ she said in a low voice. ‘A Frenchman who runs a successful consulting business, but it’s just a front. His real business is carried out in the shadows. That’s where the money comes from.’
I shivered at the memory of that deserted office.
‘It’s the perfect cover,’ said Nedjma. ‘No one reacts if the consultant invoices a million a week for nothing but air.’
She paused and looked at me.
‘It was actually your husband who worked out how the whole thing was organized.’
‘Tell me how he did it.’ A bewildering sense of joy came over me in the midst of all this. It made me happy to hear that Patrick had done a good job. That was more important to him than anything else.
Patrick had followed people, she told me. He’d gone poking around. A construction company with undocumented workers who received no wages claimed to have hired the manpower from an employment agency. Patrick threatened to go to the police, and finally forced them to show him the account books.
‘Lugus,’ I said.
Nedjma nodded. She pointed the stick at the middle of the circle she’d drawn.
‘This is where the money is,’ she said. ‘Imagine the profits from thousands of people working day after day, year after year, if you don’t have to pay any wages or insurance.’
It struck me that the drawing in the sand looked like a flow chart for any modern enterprise. I recalled Patrick’s articles about the new economy. It was the same structure, or lack of structure, that he had outlined. Companies were broken up and arranged around smaller islands, organized as project groups or normal small businesses. By all appearances they were free and independent entities, but they were actually governed from the centre by a new form of iron fist. Assignments were handed out with clear directives. Any group that didn’t live up to the demands and deliver was simply cut away. None was irreplaceable.
‘Human trafficking is an attractive type of crime,’ said Nedjma, ‘because it’s so profitable, and is almost risk-free. There are always people looking for work at any price. The higher the walls are built, the greater the chance they’ll keep quiet. Everyone wants cheap labour, but nobody wants to know where it comes from. And the traffickers never get caught because they have friends everywhere. Influential friends.’
‘Guy de Barreau,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Patrick suspected that Alain Thery is among those who finance his organization.’ She fixed her gaze on an older couple doing t’ai chi together, moving in unison in a soundless dance.
She ran her boot over the circle she’d drawn, rubbing it out.
‘Give me what Patrick sent you,’ she said. ‘We had a deal.’
‘Only if you tell me where he went.’
Nedjma held out her hand. I took the notebook out of my bag
. And the envelope with the photographs. Silently she looked through the material.
‘Is this all?’ she said. And then came the words that made everything stand still. ‘Didn’t he send you anything from Lisbon?’
Slowly I turned towards her. Lisbon? Had Patrick gone to Lisbon? Tears welled up in my eyes. Why hadn’t anyone told me about that? Here I’d been, searching and searching all over Paris, and almost a whole week had passed.
‘He went to Lisbon?’ When I finally managed to speak, anger surged inside me, and I gave her a withering glare. Back in high school I’d learned how to reduce people like her to pulp with one look. ‘And all of you have known this the whole time? You fucking bastards! Why the hell couldn’t your lover-boy have given me a heads-up?’
She merely raised an eyebrow.
‘Arnaud wasn’t aware of this information,’ she said.
‘Oh. Right. In that case, at least he was telling the truth.’
Nedjma tossed the notebook back to me.
‘I have no use for that,’ she said, and then continued to study the photos of Alain Thery with Guy de Barreau. ‘But I’m going to keep these,’ she said, stuffing the pictures into her coat pocket.
‘Tell me about Lisbon,’ I said, swallowing hard.
She got out a little silver case and shook out a cigarette.
‘That’s where we hid Josef K. His network has no connections in that city.’ She lit her cigarette and blew smoke up into the air. ‘In the past Josef K was a meticulous KGB agent, and he continued to document everything — transactions, names, addresses. He’d kept records on all his friends, down to the smallest detail.’
‘So Patrick went to Lisbon to interview him?’
Nedjma nodded.
It was true that Patrick had phoned her on Monday, two weeks ago. From Arnaud she knew that he was a journalist. She and Arnaud had known each other for a long time, but politically they’d gone in different directions. Arnaud wanted to help people as best he could, but Nedjma talked about blowing up the system from the inside. That was where Josef K came into the picture — and Patrick.
They had reached an agreement.
Patrick would get an exclusive interview. In return, he would compile Josef K’s testimony and make the documents public. When everything was ready, Josef K would be given a ticket to Brazil. Together with Patrick’s photographs and Salif’s testimony, a magnificent info bomb would be detonated inside the judicial system and the media, blowing the network apart and causing so much damage to the political powers that change would be possible.
Her eyes blazed as she talked about explosions that would reverberate even inside the European parliament.
‘So where is Patrick now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nedjma, looking away. ‘I haven’t heard from him since he left.’
I froze.
‘But that was two weeks ago,’ I said. ‘Something must have happened. Surely you can see that.’
Nedjma tossed away her cigarette butt. It lay smouldering in the sand.
‘Tell me what the hell happened in Lisbon!’ I cried. A little boy standing near the pond looked up in fright. His sailboat scudded away, out of control.
‘We don’t know,’ said Nedjma. ‘We don’t know what happened in Lisbon.’
I stared at her.
‘But at least you must be in contact with your wonderful defector. Is he still there?’
‘Josef K is dead,’ said Nedjma.
‘What?’ Something began wailing inside my head, a siren coming out of nowhere. ‘When? How did he die?’
‘Wednesday, two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘He fell from the terrace of a viewpoint. The police think it was suicide.’ She raised her eyebrows to show what she thought of that theory. I looked at her in confusion, unable to say a word. That was the day after Patrick had gone to Lisbon.
‘His old friends must have found out I was hiding him,’ said Nedjma. ‘And then they passed on the information to Patrick, so he’d lead them to Josef K. They probably counted on the fact that I’d trust an American journalist.’ She got up, took a good look around, and then started walking, heading for the railings that surrounded the park. ‘I haven’t heard from him since he left Paris. Cornwall knew what he was getting into. He went there of his own free will.’
I strode to catch up and reached out to grab her coat. ‘And you just decided to forget all about him? Is that it, you bitch?’
‘So you’ve lost your husband,’ she said quietly. ‘People die every day in this business, and yet it’s only your loss that matters. Why is that? Because you’re a better person?’
She removed my hands from her coat.
‘Don’t you want to know what happened to the princess? He finally got her back. Two months later. In a coffin.’
I shivered and pulled my jacket closer around me.
‘I need to go to Lisbon,’ I said.
‘You’re booked on the morning flight, leaving at 6.25 from Charles de Gaulle,’ she said. ‘Someone will leave an envelope with your itinerary at the front desk of your hotel. You have a reservation at the same hotel in Lisbon where Cornwall stayed.’ She leaned closer. ‘There’s also a poste restante address you can use for sending the documents, if you find them. I assume that you will honour the agreement.’
Then she turned on her heel and walked away. A patch of blue that swiftly disappeared among the trees.
‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘We don’t have an agreement, damn it!’
I ran after her and saw her go down some steps near a café. The sign said the stairs led to public toilets.
It was surprisingly neat and clean down there, with potted flowers set along the stairs. I waited five minutes, but Nedjma didn’t come out, so I went over to the woman attendant who sat outside the doors. She was small and plump, with a black scarf wrapped around her head and a bowl of coins in front of her.
I dredged my memory for the words and finally managed to put together a sentence in French.
‘Excuse me. I’m looking for a woman in a blue coat. Is she inside?’ Excuse-moi je cherche une femme …
The toilet attendant shrugged. I placed a two-euro coin in the bowl and repeated my question.
No answer.
‘Is there another exit?’ I asked. Une autre sortie?
The woman shook her head.
‘Not understand French,’ she said.
The police tape was gone and everything seemed to have returned to normal outside the entrance on rue Charlot.
Not a trace of the man who had lain there in the morning, dead and abused. I wondered whether Salif’s family would ever find out what had happened to him, whether he’d be identified.
Arnaud Rachid opened the door. I had phoned to say I was on my way over, so he was prepared.
‘She told me not to say anything. What could I do? It was out of my control.’
I looked daggers at him and then went up the stairs with Arnaud contritely slinking behind me.
The receipt for my electronic plane ticket had been waiting for me at the front desk, as promised, along with the confirmation of my hotel reservation for two nights. Coming to see Arnaud was the last thing I wanted to take care of before leaving Paris for good.
‘And by the way, you could have told me that you’re married to Patrick Cornwall. How was I supposed to guess that?’
I stopped on the landing and turned to face him.
‘You could have told me that it was your girlfriend who lured him to Lisbon.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ said Arnaud.
Once we reached the cluttered office area, he sank down onto his desk chair.
‘And I didn’t know he’d gone to Lisbon.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘She doesn’t tell me everything. I’ve told her I don’t want to know.’
‘So who is she, really?’ I asked.
Arnaud smiled, though a shadow passed over his face.
‘A woman who is loved by many men, but none of them can have her,’ he
said slowly. ‘She comes and goes, like the seasons of the year.’
‘Spare me the poetry,’ I said.
‘It’s a quote from Nedjma, a great Algerian novel. Nedjma is the heroine, but the name is also symbolic. It means “star”.’
I perched on the edge of his desk, pushing aside a stack of newspapers, which crashed to the floor. I didn’t care.
‘So she’s from Algeria too?’
‘No, no. That’s just the name she chose. An alias.’ Arnaud fidgeted with a pen, tapping it on the desk. ‘She grew up in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Do you know it? The former president lives there.’ He smiled. ‘But unlike him, Nedjma has graduated from Sciences-Po. Her father forced her to attend, and she says the only thing she learned was to hate everything that world stands for.’
‘What’s her real name?’
‘It’s better if you don’t know. She has cut all ties. She never uses her real name. Lately she’s gone underground. I don’t even know where she’s living any more.’
‘Because of what happened in Lisbon?’ I asked.
‘The only thing I know is that she was hiding Josef K, and now he’s dead. Somebody leaked information about her.’ Arnaud looked around, his expression nervous and desperate. He lowered his voice. ‘It’s the same people who got Salif. They’ll come and get her in the end too.’
‘How do you know she’s not playing both sides with you?’
‘I don’t agree with all of her methods, but I know who she is when no one is looking, when it’s just her …’ He met my eye. ‘She’s the most honest person I’ve ever met.’
‘Was she the one you were with on the night of the fire?’
Arnaud looked unhappy. I wondered if it tormented him because he was in the wrong place that night, or whether what pained him most was loving a woman like Nedjma.
‘Being with her,’ he said, ‘is like hovering on the border between heaven and hell. It’s a place that most people will never know.’
I felt a burning in my chest. I looked away. I didn’t want to hear any more about his love life, or about anyone’s damned love life. All of a sudden it occurred to me that the place where Sylvie usually sat was empty. Maybe she wasn’t feeling so involved any more. She’d probably given up on Arnaud. There was obviously too much competition for his affections.
The Forgotten Dead Page 20
