by Brian Moore
‘South America?’
‘A long time ago, you spoke of Bolivia, sir. I assume we might be helped by the Vatican?’
‘That’s ancient history,’ the Commissaire said. ‘You’ll get no help from Rome nowadays. No, we’ll arrange the passport ourselves. You remember Inspector Pochon?’
‘Pochon? Yes, sir. You sent him to see me once.’
‘That’s right. And I’m sending him again. In fact, he’ll be arriving in Nice later today. I’ve asked him to call you and set up a meeting at a location he’ll pick. The meeting should take place tonight. And I don’t want you to mention it to anyone, not even to your friend Dom Olivier. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir. Sir, could I ask, what country are you thinking of sending me to?’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. Some place that’s not full of beurs and noirs.’
‘Well, you can discuss that with Pochon. We’ll have to work quickly. I want to get you out of the country within the week. In the meantime, except for your meeting tonight with Pochon, you’re not to go outside the door of the place you’re staying. The newspapers and television have plastered your mug up all over the place. That’s why your meeting should be after dark. When you go out tonight, make sure you’re not followed.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All right, then. Wait for a call from Pochon. And tell the priests there to put the call through to you as soon as it comes.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘Good luck,’ the Commissaire said. ‘Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right.’
When he heard the Commissaire hang up, he remembered that he had not asked him about the payments. They’ll keep on paying me, won’t they? I’ll ask Pochon about that.
37
Roux arrived in Nice at 3 p.m. and was met in the airport lounge by Daniel Dumesnil. Both officers were in uniform. They shook hands, smiling at each other, then went outside where a uniformed driver and jeep were waiting.
‘I’ve had four men over there since ten o’clock this morning,’ Dumesnil said. ‘I checked with them fifteen minutes ago. So far, no movement of any sort. We’re covering both exits to the priory as well as the front entrance on Avenue Jean Jaurès. I have a plainclothes man out front so as not to advertise ourselves.’
‘Good.’
The jeep left the airport and drove along the Nice promenade. ‘He may not be in the priory at the moment,’ Roux said. ‘He could be in town. But if he’s staying at the priory he’ll probably come back in by suppertime. After all, he’s seventy years old.’
‘But he still shoots straight,’ Dumesnil said, and laughed.
‘So, let’s fix a time,’ Roux said. ‘If your men don’t see any movement before 7 p.m., we’ll assume that he’s in the house. What time do you think they have supper?’
‘Monks rise early,’ Dumesnil said. ‘I’d say they’d eat by seven-thirty, at the latest.’
‘All right. We’ll go in at eight.’
‘And until then, what?’
‘Until then we sweat.’
38
The midday meal was a slice of the priory’s home-baked gros pain and a cup of what the priest on his left called fish stew. Grace was said by Dom Olivier himself, but he noticed that no food was placed in front of the Prior.
‘Is the Father Prior on a special diet?’ he asked the priest.
‘Dom Olivier is fasting,’ he was informed. ‘All of this week he eats only the morning collation.’
He looked at the greasy cup of dishwater in front of him. With food like this, fasting was not a penance. Normally, he could go off to a café and have a late lunch. But not today. He spooned a small piece of fish out of the cup but decided not to taste it.
‘Monsieur Pierre?’ It was Father Rozier. ‘If you will go upstairs I’ll put your call through.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. The name you mentioned.’
The bindery was dark. The opened shutter had been closed by someone since his earlier visit. He entered and saw a red light blinking on the telephone.
‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Monsieur Pierre here.’
‘Monsieur Pierre?’
‘Yes.’
‘You remember me, don’t you?’
‘Yes, very well. How do you do, sir?’
‘Tell me. Do you have much luggage?’
‘No, sir. None at all. I had to leave my bags behind in Villefranche. I didn’t think it wise to go back and reclaim them.’
‘I see. Well, that simplifies things. Whoever’s following you these days seems to be pretty good at tracking your movements. So, as a first step, we’re going to take you at once to somewhere entirely new. Now, listen carefully. When you leave tonight, tell your clerical friends that you are leaving. But nothing more.’
‘What about my car, sir?’
‘Don’t go near your car. Forget about your car. You won’t need it.’
‘You mean, just leave it behind?’
‘Yes, I mean just leave it behind! Do you realize the situation you’re in? You may be followed tonight. They may know where you are. It’s up to me to help you give them the slip. On no account must you leave the priory before our meeting. At 9 p.m. go out and take a taxi to this address. Do you have a pencil?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Café Corona, Rue René Clair, Number 7. I will be waiting for you there with a car and I’ll drive you to a safe house where we’ll keep you until the arrangements are completed.’
‘The arrangements, sir?’
‘The arrangements to get you out of France as quickly as possible. I hope to have them complete by the day after tomorrow.’
‘But, sir, may I ask where? I mean, what country?’
‘We’ll talk about that tonight. Just do as I say. Have you got that address?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s near the Château. You know where that is?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Good. I’ll expect to see you about nine-fifteen. Now, don’t worry. We’ll take care of you. You’ll be all right.’
‘Café Corona. Nine-fifteen. Thank you, sir.’
When he put down the receiver he stood for a moment in the darkened room, then went to the shutters and opened them. The sun beat down, a blinding, bronze fireball. There was no wind. Next door to the prieuré on a dusty roof terrace, a line of washing, women’s slips and men’s shirts, hung limp and ghostly in the noonday heat. Exile is like jail. I’m French, I’m pure French, I only speak French, it’s my France, my France. I don’t want to leave it.
A blonde girl came out on to the roof terrace, next door. She wore shorts but no top. He watched her as she bent over with a watering can, wetting down a long trough filled with flowers. He felt a slight erection as he studied her naked breasts. She straightened up, looked in his direction, then looked away. She didn’t see me. But he closed the shutter.
In the end it’s always the same . . . The Jews win. Remember what Dom Olivier said. The Jews’ lust for vengeance is the work of the Devil. He’s wrong but he’s right. The Devil isn’t someone with a cloven hoof and a forked tail. The Devil is the Jews.
39
Two official vehicles were waiting outside headquarters. Roux had ordered them up under cover of a raid on a factory employing illegal immigrants. No one, not even the men in the vehicles, knew where they were headed. Nice was as dangerous as Paris. There must be no possible leak. If the police here got wind of this, he could lose his man.
At five minutes past eight, the two vehicles arrived at the front entrance to the Prieuré St Donat. The plainclothes man on watch there joined them. By walkie-talkie the two men guarding the rear entrances were alerted that the raid was about to begin. When Roux pulled on the old-fashioned bell pull, a loud electric buzzer sounded within the building. He rang again. He expected them to be slow. He expected them to spirit Brossard out of sight. But in a surprisingly short time the door was opened by a middle-aged priest.
‘I’m Father Rozier, I’m the père hospitalier here. Who did you wish to see?’
‘I would like to see the Prior. I have a search warrant for these premises.’
‘The Prior? Dom Olivier is in the chapel at present. The rest of us are having our supper, but Dom Olivier is fasting as an act of special devotion. I’m sorry. You wouldn’t be interested in that. I was just trying to explain why we shouldn’t disturb him.’
‘We don’t have to disturb him,’ Roux said. ‘Here is the warrant. My men will start the search.’
Father Rozier put up his hands, refusing to take the warrant. ‘If you will come with me, Colonel, I think we had better speak to Dom Olivier.’
Roux turned to Sergeant Picot and the two corporals. ‘Wait here.’
As he followed Father Rozier down the corridor, they passed the refectory. Twelve priests sat at a long refectory table, with bowls of food in front of them. No one was eating. All stared at him as he followed Father Rozier into the small chapel. There, kneeling in the centre aisle, facing the tabernacle on the altar, Roux saw a tall, frail old man, his arms outstretched in the painful posture of cruciform devotion. Father Rozier went up the aisle, bent down and whispered in the old man’s ear. The old man made the sign of the cross, then rose, genuflected and came down the aisle towards Roux.
‘If you please?’ he said, in a halting voice. ‘I would prefer it if we went outside.’
His walk was uncertain, his hand trembled as he dipped it in the Holy Water font at the chapel exit. As a matter of politeness, Roux followed suit and made the sign of the cross before going out into the corridor. The Prior looked at the uniformed gendarmes waiting there.
‘What is this about?’ he asked.
‘We are looking for a man named Pierre Brossard. We have reason to believe that he may be here.’
‘Pierre Brossard,’ the Prior said. ‘I know him well. He has been a welcome guest here in the past. But, for his sake, I am glad that you are wasting your time. He is not in this house at present.’
‘Nevertheless, we must make a search,’ Roux said.
‘Of course you must,’ the Prior said. ‘You have to do your duty, as do we all. Now, if you will excuse me. Father Rozier, please help these gentlemen.’
He nodded and went back into the chapel.
‘All right,’ Roux told the men. ‘Start with the floor below.’ He turned to Father Rozier. ‘That’s the basement, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. This way. I’ll show you.’
The search began. But slowly Roux’s tension and excitement drained away. Something was wrong. Either they had a hiding place within this house which they felt sure he would not find or his hunch, which had seemed brilliant at 6 a.m., was false. But, if there was a hiding place, he must find it. In the next twenty minutes he and his team made a thorough, a total, search in every room, cupboard, corridor and crawl space within the building. They found nothing.
40
‘Are you all right?’ He was breathing so heavily that he couldn’t speak. He nodded. Yes.
‘Keep down.’
They were on the roof now. The young priest who had rushed him up here from the supper table went forward, crouching, peered over the parapet at the street below, then signalled him to come closer. Gasping, his back in agony from his crouching position, he advanced, crab-like, across the roof terrace. The priest was now dragging a long wooden plank across the roof as they moved towards the space between their building and the one next to it.
‘Hurry!’
The priest beckoned again, then rose up and slid the long wooden plank over the gap between the buildings. It wavered in mid-air, then settled with a thump on the gutter of the opposing building. Gasping, his heart pounding, he joined the young priest under the shelter of the parapet.
‘The janitor next door works as our janitor too,’ the young priest told him. ‘He’s helped us before. There’s a rear exit from his building. People think it’s blocked up, but it’s not. Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll have to cross on that plank. I’ve checked the street. The gendarmes are at both rear and front entrances. It’s a risk, but I don’t think they have someone in the alley. You’ll have to hurry. They could come up here at any moment.’
‘I know.’
He eased himself up and crawled on to the plank. He could not trust himself to stand up. He was afraid of heights, always had been, and now, dizzy, his heart thumping, short of breath, he peered down into the narrow alley below. There was no one there. As he began to crawl across the space between the buildings the plank swayed frighteningly. He paused, then went on. The plank swayed again and he shut his eyes, clinging to its edges, trembling. Please God, help me! Help me!
‘Go on. That’s good.’
The voice of the young priest, behind him, whispering. He crawled forward. He opened his eyes and saw that he had almost reached the other side.
‘Go on. Go on!’
He crawled forward once more and felt the stone of the other building’s parapet burn hot on the tips of his fingers. He pulled himself over the parapet and slid down on to the roof. At once he heard a slithering noise as the young priest began to haul the plank back to the priory’s roof. He got to his feet. The young priest paused in his hauling to wave to him and to point to a door on the roof terrace.
‘Hurry!’
Stumbling, half running, he approached the door. As he did it opened and a man looked out, a stout young man in jeans and a stained white T-shirt, his face wreathed in a huge moustache. The man beckoned urgently, bringing him inside. The room he entered was the living room of an apartment erected like a ramshackle shed on top of the building’s flat roof. Beyond this room he could see a bedroom, a small cooking area and, half hidden behind a beaded curtain, a toilet and bidet. The walls of the living room were plastered with old Riviera holiday posters and crude reproductions of paintings of Provençal scenes. The furniture was green rattan, sagging with age, and on the chaise-longue by the window a young woman lay, smoking a cigarette and staring at him with a curious mixture of contempt and indifference. She wore red shorts and a red halter. She was the girl whose bare breasts he had studied earlier that day. The moustachioed young man pointed to a chair.
‘Take a seat, Monsieur. Are you all right?’
He sat, gasping, nodding his head, yes, he was all right.
‘The Fathers have a bell signal, when they want to get in touch with me. That’s how I knew you were coming,’ the man said. ‘I do the furnace work in their building. You’re not the first they’ve sent over.’
‘It’s none of his business who they sent,’ the young woman said. ‘Anyway, can’t you see he’s ill? Get him a glass of water. Want a glass of water, grandpa?’
He nodded, yes. The young man went into the makeshift kitchen. The young woman eased herself off the chaise-longue, her shorts sliding up over her buttocks. She lit a new cigarette off the stub of her old one, then went outside.
‘Here you are, Monsieur.’
He took the glass. ‘Thanks. They said you have a way out of here?’
‘I do. But what’s your hurry? Wait till the flics have gone.’
He drank the water which tasted brackish. He did not have his pills. A searing pain cut like a sword into his chest, making him gasp. ‘What is this building?’ he asked. ‘Are there other tenants?’
‘No. It’s all offices. We’re the only ones who live here.’
The young woman came back in again. ‘Two flics just came up on the roof next door,’ she said. ‘I blew them a kiss. Gendarmes. They waved at me.’
‘Are they still there, Mademoiselle?’
‘No, no, they went back down. Don’t worry, grandpa. They’ll be gone soon.’
He leaned forward in the chair, putting the glass down at his feet. Pain came in waves. Fear came with it. My heart, is it my heart? No, no, I’ve had this before. It’s nerves. Calm down.
The young man w
ent over to the table near the cooking area and poured himself half a tumbler of red wine. ‘What are you going to do? Will you go back to the Fathers’ place?’
‘It’s none of your business what he’s going to do,’ the girl said.
‘I was just asking. You know. Conversation?’
‘No, I’m not going back,’ he said. ‘I’m going somewhere else. Can I get a taxi near here?’
‘When you come out from downstairs, you’ll be in an alley,’ the young man said. ‘Go to the end of the alley and you’re in Rue Recamier. There’s a taxi rank halfway down on the left.’
‘Thanks. Do you have an aspirin, by any chance?’
‘Cécile, do we have aspirin?’
‘Over the sink.’
The young man brought him the bottle. He took two, swallowing them down with a drink of the brackish water. He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty-seven. ‘Are you sure it will be safe?’ he said. ‘I mean, I can’t wait too long. I have to be somewhere at nine.’
‘It’s safe,’ the young man said. ‘Nobody knows you can get out that way. Nobody but us.’
‘Wait,’ the girl said. ‘I think I heard something.’
‘What? What?’ All of a sudden he was in a panic.
‘Hold your piss, grandpa,’ she said. She went outside. He watched her walk to the edge of the parapet and look down. She came back inside. ‘A colonel, no less,’ she said. ‘You must be important. Anyway, they’re leaving.’
He stood up. ‘So must I.’
The young man gulped down the rest of his wine. ‘All right, here we go.’
He followed the young man out of the door. As he was leaving he looked back at the girl. She smiled at him. ‘I’ve seen you before, you know,’ she said. ‘How did you like my tits?’
He pretended not to hear. The pain began to ebb as he followed the young man across the rooftop through a door and down a short staircase to the top floor of the building. It was dark here. The young man switched on a light and led him down a corridor to a service lift, pulling back the iron grille of the door and motioning him to get in. The lift went down four landings and stopped with a thump in the basement of the building. The young man then led him through a furnace room and into a second room filled with old propane gas tanks and empty wine bottles. He pulled aside a sheet of corrugated iron. Beyond, in the dying Provençal sunlight, he saw a narrow filthy alley, lined with dustbins. The young man turned to him, his lips opening in a wet smile under his huge curling moustache. ‘There you are, Monsieur. The road to freedom. Salut!’
