by Denis Pitts
“I see.”
“Can I take a message?”
He paused. Yes, he thought, tell her I’m aching with love and I’m in my ninety-third hotel room this year and I love her so much that in a minute I’m going to weep from the misery of being without her.
“No, no message,” he said. “I’m sorry to have troubled you. Please give her my love.”
He left the hotel and walked along the Rue Cannebière, seeing little through the shadows of his loneliness. Jostled by shoppers, he nearly stepped in front of a fast-moving taxi. The city had changed little since he’d been there. It was busy, bustling and noisy and the scent of sea and fish and oriental food and poor sewers was everywhere.
He found himself on the Boulevard des Dames, and stood looking at the entrance to the little Rue Lucien, where he had lived as a fugitive. The fat Arab sat at the newspaper kiosk, as impassive and bored as ever.
Jean-Paul was still standing there when he felt a tug on his coat. He looked down and saw a small boy with a black, shaven head and huge, pleading brown eyes.
“M’sieu,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
The voice was pathetic, the eyes rolled and the boy clutched his belly.
“You’ve been trained well,” said Jean-Paul.
“Comment?”
He took a ten-franc note from his pocket and said on impulse: “You, you want money? All right, tell me, where I can find a big man called Blum?”
“Police?” The boy shied backward.
“No. He is a friend. I owe him some money.”
“Blum is sick. Give me the money. I give it to him.”
“I’ll give you five francs now and another five when I see my friend.”
“Okay,” said the boy.
He followed the child along the Rue Lucien and through the maze of streets that make up the old part of the city. Here again, little had changed. The Arabs dominated the quarter, street vendors wailed their wares and the surrounding smells became more and more Eastern. He had run through these streets as a child himself, like the one he followed now. Some of the traders jeered at him in Arabic. They assumed he was on his way to a brothel.
He followed the boy up several flights of stairs in a tenement house that reeked of stale food and urine.
The boy opened the door and said, “Blum, m’sieu, in there.”
He gave the boy more money and closed the door.
Blum lay on a mattress on the floor, a thin blanket over him. He did not turn. He could not turn. It was Blum, of that he was sure. But the big man was now a shrunken cadaver, the strong bones on his face almost breaking through the nearly translucent, parchmentlike skin. His eyes were opaque. He was breathing in heavy, gargling gasps.
“Blum, it’s me,” he said softly. “Jean-Paul.”
There was no response, no movement at all. The eyes seemed dead.
“Blum, it is your old friend. I have come to help you.” But he had never felt more helpless. Blum did not know he was there. He seemed very close to death.
Jean-Paul pulled the solitary blanket down and saw at once the mass of needle scabs and the heroin tracks on the dirty arms.
He shouted now, directly into the other man’s ear.
“Blum, wake up. It’s Jean-Paul.”
He moved away, appalled by the stench. Then there was a croaking sigh from the mattress.
“Jean-Paul? Is that you, Jean-Paul?”
He knelt again on the floor. “I’m sending for help for you.”
“The priests come every morning.” Blum’s voice was a gurgled whisper. “I kept your papers. They took the case. But I have your papers. In the drawer.”
“I’ll get help now.”
There was a faint smile on Blum’s lips. Jean-Paul walked across the room and pulled open a bureau drawer. There were a few clothes, most of them too filthy and tattered to be either sold or stolen. A crucifix lay on top of a shirt. He took it across to Blum and placed it in his hands. Then he went back to the drawer and lifted the clothes and saw the file Razziz had given him all those years before.
The papers had yellowed, but the numbers were still quite legible. He took them, wondering whether it was really worth the bother, and left.
An hour later, he had arranged for Blum to be moved to a hospital and for regular payments to keep him there. But when he called the hospital that evening, he was told that Blum could not possibly survive for more than a few days.
*
He was waiting in Paris for Jacques d’Isigny on the following evening.
“I want to work,” he said.
*
He married Claudine in a small church in the south of England, and they agreed with their parents to keep the wedding a secret for at least a year to avoid the gossip-loving Paris press. They honeymooned in Scotland, in a dreary, drafty hotel that demanded to see their wedding papers; and they were more happy than they imagined they ever could have been.
They moved into a small house in Passy and he went to and from the bank by Metro. On weekends they drove to Épernay, or the stables in Brittany, to be with their parents.
Six months after the wedding, on a high cliff overlooking the English Channel, Claudine pressed a wind-cooled cheek against her husband’s face and told him that she was pregnant.
He became the father of a son on his twenty-third birthday. That same day, he was appointed managing director of the Banque d’Isigny, and Jacques d’Isigny changed his will in favor of his adopted son — and of his grandson, who was to be christened Marcel.
Had Jean-Paul elected to become an engineer or a civil servant, or had he chosen to run the family’s racing stables, it would have made little difference to Jacques d’Isigny. There were, he reasoned, more than enough potential executives to run the bank quite adequately under the direction of the d’Isigny Trust, which had worked well for two centuries on the basis of maintaining at all times the integrity of the organization and keeping it, at all times, safe and free from financial scandal or political influence.
His son Marcel had shown little interest in the bank. On the contrary, he had demonstrated contempt for money and had teased his father about the frockcoats worn by the bank servants and the complex ledgers which were so diligently kept.
The d’Isigny bank had been the last in Europe to adopt the concept of computers; they had been allowed only when it became impossible to find the kind of clerical staff that could add and subtract in the old-fashioned way and produce statements in copperplate handwriting. The custom had been regarded as eccentric, but the statements were known to be invariably accurate.
Jacques d’Isigny had watched the installation of the first IBM with unconcealed regret. He sometimes almost rejoiced in the mistakes it made when wrongly programmed. Since he placed human values above those of machinery, his employees worshipped him and the bank, even though its outdated paternalism made them almost archaic among their colleagues in various bank-employee unions. They minded this not in the least, for they had been given help in the housing and welfare of their families, together with pensions far more generous than those of the opposition banks. It was d’Isigny’s pride that he knew every employee, their wives and the names of their children.
When he handed the executive position to Jean-Paul, Jacques d’Isigny was concerned that the young man might put into practice, too quickly, those lessons he’d learned in college. Resigned to the fact that change was inevitable, the elder d’Isigny anticipated greater demands for more machinery and fewer men. It was thus to his extreme delight that Jean-Paul’s first move as an officer of the bank was to announce that he was anxious for the Banque d’Isigny to remain in all respects the great quality bank of France — any change was to be so gradual that even the employees concerned would hardly notice it.
OVER ELBA, 2050
They had flown an erratic pattern over Europe — a near-supersonic Baedeker tour had taken them over the Scotland of Burns, the England of Shakespeare and Hardy, out over the mystic Celtic lands of Cor
nwall and Brittany, high over Chartres and sleepy Strasbourg, and then to Cologne, turning gently to pass over the picture-postcard lands of southern Germany.
They had eaten prepacked sandwiches and drunk coffee from cardboard containers. There was an easy atmosphere in the control room. The radio traffic had slackened off momentarily as the men and women on the ground, so far away and detached down there through the clouds, took up their final positions.
The digital clock clicked away steadily. 2050 ... 51 ... 52 ... 53. Seven minutes until the armies were to be on the start line.
*
In a hotel room in Wiltshire, England, General Appleyard watched his digital clock. Two minutes before the deadline, he lit his pipe and shrouded the computer terminal in scented smoke.
What a strange way to go to war, he thought. Just push three keys on this machine and a whole army goes into action.
One minute. Not at all like the charge of the Light Brigade, he mused, not at all. Now that was soldiering. Adventure, bravery and blood; not a trace of the stealth and surprise of this operation. He put his pipe down and leaned forward. With ten seconds to go, he said aloud: “Here goes the last of the Appleyards.” He pressed the keys and watched the automatic acknowledgments from the recipient machines.
Eighteen miles to the south, in the soft, rolling English countryside, a line of coaches moved, one at a time, from a quiet, little-used side road and entered the town of Tidworth. They drove through the silent town and turned into the main entrance to Tidworth Camp. Two of the coaches turned right toward the sergeants’ mess; two more stopped outside the main headquarters building; a further two drove directly to the main armory.
Their access to the biggest military establishment in Great Britain had been unchallenged. The men who had opened the barriers were all members of Standfast.
From the remaining four coaches came the 160 men who would form a perimeter guard. They moved silently, each knowing exactly what his position was to be.
Four infantrymen guarded the armory. Two of them patrolled the concrete building. The other two sat in the guardroom.
It took exactly fifteen seconds for a fast-moving team of Standfast men to overpower and truss them. No alarm was triggered.
Even as this was happening, the camp public-address systems were switched on, and a voice of authority commanded in brusque tones: “All personnel remaining on this station must report to the main gymnasium immediately.” There were fewer than a hundred men in camp that Saturday. Mostly trainees, they ran pell-mell across the parade ground at the urgent barking of the loudspeakers.
By nine-fifteen on that October evening, Standfast was in complete control of the biggest army garrison in England. It had also secured possession of forty-four thousand rifles, machine guns and other small arms.
*
A few miles away, in a vast and rambling stately home, the Tidworth Garrison was holding its annual regimental dance for officers and their wives. The commanding officer and his wife had just joined the party. The officers were resplendent and immaculate in their blue mess uniforms. The women were noisy and gay.
In the main ballroom, the more sedate members of the garrison danced formal waltzes and foxtrots to the music of the regimental band.
Below, in the winecellars, the younger officers had organized a discotheque with a deafening local pop group playing through badly balanced amplifiers.
On the stairway that led down to the cellar, a young subaltern said to a fellow officer filling a toothy girl’s glass with chablis: “Here, I say. I’ve just been out for a leak and guess what? This whole place is lousy with Standfast guards. Must be some sort of alert. The old man’s taking no chances.”
Standfast did not interrupt the dance. They waited for the officers to leave and stopped their cars at the main gates to the house. Officers were politely ordered from their cars and invited at gunpoint to enter the waiting coaches.
The two men who guarded them bore patiently with the cacophony of outrage, much of it aided by alcohol. As each coach filled, it was driven off to the officers’ mess.
The women, even more vocal than their men in protest, were driven to a large barn on an isolated farm. There they were offered tea and camp beds by women members of Standfast, whose sympathy was tempered by machine pistols slung from their shoulders.
The commanding general was driven in his own Rolls Royce Silver Cloud to a stuccoed Queen Anne house in the north of the county. There he found himself imprisoned in luxury with three other generals, twelve brigadiers, a sundry collection of air vice-marshals and other senior officers.
They greeted each other dolefully and admitted that they had been made to look bloody silly.
*
In a similar move, coinciding exactly in time and efficiency, the headquarters of the United Kingdom Land Forces in England, a bewildering complex of brick-built offices in a suburb of Salisbury, fifteen miles to the south of Tidworth, was occupied with ease by one hundred men in blue uniforms. The direct line to NATO headquarters in Brussels was severed. The red telephones in the general’s office were manned by civilians.
For several years, the Ministry of Defense in Whitehall, London, had been guarded exclusively by Standfast. Normally there were twenty men in the building at all times. On this night, the regular guard had been augmented by an extra forty men who sat quietly in the Ministry canteen.
The building was silent and almost deserted. A few clerks were on duty to take messages. The main control room, in the basement of the building, was dark and silent.
At precisely nine o’clock that evening, the clerks were informed that they were under arrest. The control room was opened and the lights switched on.
By nine-thirty, the men who manned the most secret switchboard in Britain had learned through the Ministry’s own communications network that every major army camp in Great Britain had been overpowered.
The fighting army in Northern Ireland passed various signals through on the Ministry Telex machines. These were acknowledged and dealt with. There was no indication that anything was untoward in the Ministry.
13
They had made love for a long time that morning. As they lay still, he moved his head to look at her and she chuckled, her face alight with happiness.
“Why do you laugh?”
“Because it is such a wonderful, magical business, being in love. All day long I am touched by love, so aware of love.”
“Two years next Wednesday,” he said. “Are you happy with our marriage?”
“Outrageously.”
“Will we always make love like this?”
“Can it get better?” She giggled. “What time is it?”
“Time stopped with that last one?”
“What one?”
“The orgasm.”
“Can’t we find a better word than orgasm? It reminds me of that awful instruction book Mama gave me.”
“What book?”
“A book that told me you have a sexual organ called a penis which swells and extends during sexual excitement, and I have a place which, if touched very nicely and gently, will make me aroused and my vagina will seek pleasure and you will insert your hardened penis into my vagina and we will have one of these orgasms and I shall not be frightened because it is very beautiful if two people are married and love each other, and then we will have a baby, which is God’s will.”
He stretched and laughed.
“I should read this book. There may be things I do not know.”
“There are things you know which they would never put in such a book.”
“Like?”
She leaned down and kissed his limp penis.
“Like that, which God frowns upon in the book.”
“When did you read it?”
“On the eve of our honeymoon while you were in the shower. It was hard to keep a straight face when you came into the bedroom. Mama said she read it on her honeymoon night. Imagine her reading it all to poor Papa in bed. And then m
aking love according to the Catholic Truth Society’s journal.”
“What rules did you use on our wedding night?” he asked.
“Some of the materials passed around the dormitories of exclusive French and Swiss girls’ schools have a high educational value,” she said. “Playboy and Forum and things like that. Plus a few ad-lib ideas I dreamed up in bed during our engagement.” She sighed deeply and turned the whole of her body toward his.
“Now give me more love according to our rules,” she said.
“I have to go to Stockholm,” he said.
“More love.”
Her arms went around him and held him very tightly.
“Please, more love.”
“I’ll miss the plane.”
“Miss it.”
“Come to Stockholm with me and we’ll make love under the midnight sun.”
“What about little Marcel?”
“Bring him. We can stay over. Anyway, all the Swedish branch of your family will want to see the baby.”
“I’d love to. But I have a hairdresser’s appointment and lunch with Amy Boussac, and Philomel is racing at Longchamps.”
“Cancel, cancel, cancel,” he said firmly. “I’ve scratched Philomel anyway. Too much horse cough about. Come on, get dressed. Get Michelle to organize the baby and get packed for all of you.”
Jean-Paul picked up the bedside telephone and dialed his office.
“Elaine, book three more seats on the Stockholm flight. Call the Christiansborg Hotel and tell them I want the bridal suite for madame and myself and an adjoining room for the baby.”
He put the telephone down and turned to his wife. His fingers traced a line from the tip of her nose across her mouth, over her throat and between her breasts. He stopped at her navel.
“By the light of the midnight sun,” he said. “Bring your book of instructions.”
*
The captain’s voice told them that they had reached a cruising height of thirty-three thousand feet, that they were crossing the Dutch coast and that the weather at their destination was fine and sunny.