Son of France

by Todd Babiak

“Who are we?”

  “And when we phoned, it was your office.”

  “When was this, Monsieur Gibenus?”

  “A few days ago. Do you have anyone with a German accent, a woman?”

  “We’ve been having trouble with our phones. We thought perhaps it was the volume of calls of condolence, but really there weren’t that many. For a day and a half we couldn’t call out or receive calls. We were using portables, borrowing other departments’ phones. Our security detail, ever the geniuses, took another two days to realize we had been hacked.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “The day and a half?” Lévy pulled a small organizer from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and put on his reading glasses. Kruse readied his own notebook, where he had written the time and date of Joseph’s call. They corresponded perfectly.

  “Your security detail. Did they discover who had done it?”

  “They’re retired army men. Very retired.”

  They were a few steps from the side door. Lévy looked at him. “What are you really doing here, Monsieur Gibenus?”

  “Someone killed your boss.”

  “Khalil al-Faruqi killed my boss. Now he’s dead. There is no reason to think further upon it. But then, you’re here.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ve never benefited financially from my position, apart from my not-so-fantastic salary. I’ve been a faithful husband, Monsieur Gibenus. This job, it requires some travel and some late nights, but I am as good a father as I can be.”

  “How about Mayor Cassin?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was he faithful? A good father? Did he benefit financially in any unsavoury ways?”

  “No politician is faithful. Pierre was not faithful, no. No politician is a good father, despite what he might tell himself. No politician who grew up the way he grew up can say no to money. It’s entirely contrary. But he was as good a man as he could be.”

  “Any trouble there?”

  “With money?” He shrugged. “No. It was all done slyly enough, impossible to trace. Affairs of the heart can be troublesome. Voters don’t care in this country, unlike yours. But a mistress does. Love is love. I can’t imagine what he might have told a couple of these women. But none of them were . . . Monsieur, when my assistant told me you’re with the Mayor’s Office I retrieved what I could. I don’t have much. You have everything. Everything I know. So if there’s anything else, anything you might think I know, please . . .” Lévy placed his half-eaten pastry on top of Kruse’s half-eaten pastry. Their left hands touched. His eyes went moist as he spoke. There was a small blob of chocolate on his chin. “Return to this moment, Monsieur Gibenus. I know nothing. I suspect no one. With me, there are no loose threads. It has all been cut. I am only a servant of my city and my republic.”

  “You think I came to hurt you?”

  “I am imagining the words Monsieur le Maire used, the euphemism. Research? Diplomacy?”

  “To shut you up.”

  “Why else? To examine me? To see what I know? Your mayor, he is not a man to cross. I know this, I do, and I will not.”

  Lévy was close enough so Kruse reached down, touched metal. It was, as he had suspected, a small handgun in the overcoat. “You were going to shoot me in the street.”

  “Only if you cornered me.”

  “Monsieur Lévy, who killed Pierre Cassin, and the others in that restaurant?”

  “You don’t know, Monsieur? You really don’t know?”

  Kruse shook his head.

  The chief of staff finished his pastry. He put his hand on the door, looked around to be sure no one was following them. Lévy would never be sure. “It’s in your dossier, that address and phone number. These men who called to threaten Pierre—they were not Arabs.”

  • • •

  At the end of the Grande-Rue there was an entry to a tunnel that looked, from a distance, like the medieval castle in a Bugs Bunny cartoon he had watched with Lily. There was a cross of Lorraine, the cross of the Crusades, to remind everyone, and below that a statue and the words “Porte de la Craffe, 1336.” Evelyn would have been pleased with his first thought: the tunnel had been built two hundred years before Shakespeare was born. His second thought was less impressive: what was a craffe?

  The varnish on the wooden door at number 94, Grande-Rue had been peeling for decades. It was between a real estate agency and an empty storefront that had once been a Turkish restaurant. A cracked intercom box affixed to the stone had three names for three suites. Kruse pressed number 2, the one on the address Lévy had given him, and waited. No one responded so he pressed 1 and 3, and an old-time buzz sounded.

  The steps had begun to rot long ago. It smelled of wet wood and cigarettes in the stairwell, and a fluorescent light flicked on the upper wall. A door was open on the landing and a tiny woman with dyed orange hair and grey roots, wearing a polyester dress and fluffy slippers, stood with her mouth open in anticipation, her hands out. It took her a moment to see Kruse, and then she shrank even further. “Oh.”

  “Bonjour, Madame.”

  “I thought you were my grandson, young man. Why did you press my button?”

  Suite 2 was across the landing from her door. “I am an investigator.”

  “You speak like you’re from New York. Are you an investigator from New York?”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “I always thought I would see New York. ‘When I’m a little older,’ I said. ‘When I’m a little older I’ll have more time. More money!’ Now I have plenty of time and no money and I’m too old for New York. I would just get in the way.”

  “You’re not too old.”

  “Bah.”

  “Madame. I am investigating suite number two, your neighbours.”

  “Have they done something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. That is what I am investigating.”

  “One of them is from Austria, I believe. But neither is from New York.”

  “May I come in, Madame?”

  “Of course. Of course, Monsieur. I will make coffee.” The woman, four and a half feet tall, led Kruse into her apartment. He closed the door. It was a three-room suite, clean but cluttered with photos and Catholic knick-knacks and too much furniture. She filled her kettle with water and Kruse took over. She sat at the tiny table along the window, in her narrow kitchen, and pushed some of the envelopes and papers away. Music played from her bedroom. He knew, from Evelyn’s teaching, that it was Vivaldi: cello, harpsichord, violin. “Just yesterday I bought some lovely raisin biscuits, if you want to pull them down from that shelf. No no, that one. I have heard, Monsieur, that Americans find us cold. Rude, even. It may be so in Paris, it may be. I doubt it. But one thing is certain. Here in Lorraine, our doors are open to foreigners who agree to work hard and contribute to France. I can see you aren’t a resquilleur, a freeloader. You’re wearing a good suit, and shoes, and you have nice clear blue eyes. That says a lot about a man.”

  The woman introduced herself as Françoise Flandrin, a lifelong Nancéiene who had lived here on Grande-Rue since the death of her husband in 1986. Soon, she understood, she would have to leave. Soon the stairs would be too much.

  “Do they help you, the men across the hall?”

  “You mean with groceries? If I press the buzzer and they are home, yes, of course, one of them will come down and help me up.”

  “Can you describe the men for me?” Kruse pulled out a small notebook. The water had not yet boiled. “You said one is Austrian. He looks Austrian?”

  “Well, it’s difficult to say how one can look Austrian. He does have a moustache, if that is what you mean, and his posture is very good.”

  “Light-coloured hair, or dark?”

  “Oh, light. And thinning, the poor dear. Men worry too much about that, if you ask me.”

  “So neither of these men are, say, ethnically North African? Not Arab?”

  Madame Flandrin looked at him as though he had de
clared her an Arab. “Of course not!” She chuckled. “Now, when I tell the boys you asked me that. It’s funny because neither of them is fond of foreigners. Not foreigners like you but as you say, Africans, Lebanese and the like, Jews.”

  “They don’t like Jews?”

  “Oh I don’t know. France for the French, that sort of thing. Though I suppose Karl is Austrian after all.”

  “So it’s Karl?”

  “Yes, he’ll be the Austrian. And Victor is from Besançon originally. I’ve never been there. You?”

  “No, Madame. I will have to visit.”

  She looked out her window, which had a view of a messy courtyard. A small tree was surrounded by bags of garbage and some children’s toys had been abandoned to the weather.

  “Might you have photographs of them?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Open that drawer. The one below. Below that. Yes, there. You will find, right on top, a packet of them.”

  The packet was not right on top, but he dug through and found it—plastered with Kodak, just as it might have been in Toronto. He handed it to her and she put her glasses on and flipped through them. Madame Flandrin was quick when she wanted to be. She slapped three photos down on her messy table and handed them to Kruse. “Voilà, Victor and Karl.”

  The balding one, the Austrian, had grown a modest, pointed beard. The other had dark hair, cut short. Kruse could not say he recognized him as the man who threw the grenades but it was possible. He was the right age. They smiled in all three photos. “Do Karl and Victor have jobs?”

  “Of course. They work at a Vigner.”

  Kruse had seen Vigner retail outlets in Paris and in Marseille: it was a chain of wine and beer stores that advertised on sandwich boards out front. It wasn’t about quality or rarefied selection or atmosphere: they competed on price. “Nearby?”

  “On the other side of the door.”

  “The door?”

  “La Porte de la Craffe.”

  Two of the photos were taken in her apartment. The third was clearly not, as the wall was almost bare of decorations. It was Madame Flandrin with the men on either side of her, all three of them with glasses of white wine. Kruse was just about to hand it back when he noticed something in the top right corner.

  “Is that a swastika? Your neighbours have a swastika on the wall?”

  Madame Flandrin rolled her eyes. “Those boys are crazy about them. And I asked, during my first visit, if they admired Hitler or the Nazis, Marshal Pétain the vile collaborator. Because that is something I could not abide in a friend. But it’s just a misunderstanding, you see. It’s an old Indian symbol. Hindu, I think they said. Did you know that? Even the word swastika comes from Sanskrit.”

  “So they have an interest in Indian symbology.”

  “Perhaps that is what they said. But I did tell them, Monsieur, it’s very easy to make the wrong assumptions about such a thing. The way it makes me feel, when I look at it! I lived here then. They were here, all around us, and if I close my eyes I’m there. I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night but I can remember the war perfectly. Certainly I’m not alone, feeling sensitive about such things. Maybe they could find a symbol of old India that doesn’t also mean ‘Hitler had some terrific ideas,’ which is what a Frenchwoman thinks first when she sees such a thing. I’m not sure if it’s the same in New York.”

  “Do you know their family names?”

  “Handke. Karl Handke and Victor Nodier. Victor says he descends from the author Nodier, also from Besançon, but I must say I don’t know so much about literature. Literature and symbols from Old India. It’s beyond me, I’m afraid.” She closed her eyes for a moment as the music from her bedroom seemed to rise in volume, and she briefly conducted the small orchestra. She was so tiny, in the kitchen chair, her feet did not touch the floor.

  “You rent this apartment?”

  “But of course not. I am a landowner. I own this entire neighbourhood.” She pointed at him, winked. “No, no, Monsieur. I rent it from the company that owns the wine stores, actually, the Vigner Group. They do own a lot of the property around here. In Paris too, I imagine. You could check into that, for your investigations.”

  “I could.”

  “The boys bring me wine from the store. I hope that’s not why you’re investigating them.”

  “No.”

  “If it helps, Monsieur, write this down: they are good boys. They help an old lady with her groceries, with wine, and with a leaky faucet.”

  “What time do they come home from work?”

  “Oh, normally in time for dinner, before seven o’clock. But they have been on holidays for a week and a half.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me, as it happens. But I’m no fool. I’m not so old. I imagine Karl and Victor were off somewhere naughty, like one of those beaches in the Caribbean where everyone is naked.”

  • • •

  He walked under a delicately carved triumphant stone arch southwest of Place Stanislas, stained by the weather and desperately in need of restoration. The city was newer on the other side of the arch, marked by an ugly rectangular 1960s glass office tower that looked as ridiculous in central Nancy as the Tour Montparnasse in Paris. Two men sat in front of it, huddled on a stained piece of cardboard with a magnum bottle of cheap wine between them.

  It had not taken much: Madame Flandrin had simply produced her phone book. Above the drunks and through the windows, Kruse recognized the simple, elegant sign in the lobby: Vigner, in white letters. There was a directory at the security desk, offices and floors: Real Estate, Wine and Spirits, Human Resources. The top floor, the seventeenth, was not listed. He had put on his new suit, and the tie was freshly knotted.

  The security guard, who wore military medals on his deep blue Vigner uniform, looked at Le Figaro. There he was on the editorial page: Étienne Bonnet’s name on the right-hand column. Its headline was a play on words Kruse did not catch: something about Islam and houseguests. The plan was to speak with the security guard, to announce his arrival, the arrival of an important American business partner, but the man did not look up from the newspaper. The name Khalil al-Faruqi was in the first paragraph.

  In the elevator, the button for the seventeenth floor would not work. He was about to press 16 when the woman next to him, who wore a business jacket and skirt, too much foundation, produced a key and inserted it in the panel. She pressed 17 for him, without making eye contact.

  “I saw you trying to get the guard’s attention.”

  “Thank you, Madame.”

  “You have a meeting with . . .”

  “The Acquisitions Department.” This was a trick Tzvi had taught him. No matter where she worked, legal or accounting, marketing, an acquisition would not reach her desk until the early negotiations were completed. “Just the beginning of a conversation.”

  “We’re having more and more of those. Mergers, acquisitions.”

  “Isn’t everyone, Madame?”

  “This is why I fear, one of these days, we will learn Monsieur Alibert has had a massive coronary. If one can die of heartbreak.”

  “One can die of heartbreak, Madame. I’m sure of it.”

  Now she looked at him. They were about the same age and her eyes held just as much fatigue. Her engagement ring carried a large but not obscene diamond. “Have you met him?”

  “Monsieur Alibert? No. But I do hope to on this visit.”

  “If he’s interested in your company, you’ll meet him. Fascinating guy.”

  “In what way?”

  The elevator stopped on her floor, the tenth. “You’ll see.”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  “How did you know?” The doors opened and she stepped out into a modern lobby decorated with light wood, lit with honey-coloured bulbs. Three years earlier, only Denmark had looked this way. Vigner, the same sign, shone behind the reception desk. There was no need to respond to the woman, who turned back for a fi
nal, flirtatious look just as the doors were closing.

  Alibert: he was pleased he had not asked about any Monsieur Vigner. If the company began as a wine retailer, the name was likely invented: a short form of vigneron. He rode alone to the seventeenth floor and the elevator doors opened into a much darker space. The reception area on the top floor had been designed like a British gentlemen’s club: dark wood, dimly lit spaces, comfortable upholstery, and portraits of white-haired men in suits on the wall. The receptionist was a man in his forties, in a three-piece suit. Butler was his first thought, or perhaps the overly solicitous purser in the business class of a European airline. He stood up and walked around the desk to greet Kruse, to shake his hand.

  “Welcome to Vigner Industries, Monsieur . . .”

  “Meisels.”

  “Ah, Monsieur Meisels, of course. I was just scanning our appointment book for the afternoon and I somehow missed your name. May I ask whom you have come to meet?”

  “Monsieur Alibert.”

  The butler looked genuinely confused. “Perhaps one of us is mistaken. I am confident Monsieur Alibert does not have another appointment today. May I ask what it is regarding?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Will you please take a seat while I speak to one of my superiors? Can I pour you a refreshment of any sort?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Just a moment, Monsieur Meisels. From . . .”

  “Direction de la Protection et de la Sécurité de la Défense.”

  The butler stepped back as though he were a demon and Kruse had brandished a cross. “Well. An intelligence agent. How exciting for us.” He held a key fob up to a box beside the door and exited without another word.

  It was a relatively small reception area, yet four teardrops hung from the ceiling: cameras. He was tempted to wave, certain they were watching him, making phone calls, unwrapping his lie.

  There were some magazines on a carved coffee table, none of them current but all of them featuring Henri Alibert—a bald man in his sixties who seemed, at least in the three glossy front-page photographs, to be a giant. Kruse picked up Le Monde Magazine and made it through the first five paragraphs before the butler returned. Henri Alibert was from a family of steel barons, had inherited his money, had trained at all the right schools, had played polo, and had used the phrase “protect my family’s empire and save my country” when the journalist had asked him to sum up his mission in life.