‘I thought you might like some coffee,’ said Jacqueline, coming out of the house with a tray. ‘I’m just sorry that I can’t serve it in Paul Revere’s jug.’
She took the tray to a small garden table with two spindly metal chairs, tucked into a sunny corner among the rose bushes.
‘I think you ought to know what’s going on, or at least what I think may be happening,’ he said. ‘Somebody in the French government is worried that the Americans want to unleash a scandal just ahead of the election. There is some suspicion that Jack Crimson is involved – I presume you know his background?’
Jacqueline nodded. ‘And they think my research is somehow involved, is that what you mean? But it all happened so long ago. Anybody involved in that business with the slush funds and the Resistance money is almost certainly dead.’
‘You mentioned that you were working on something else, about the French nuclear deterrent not being truly independent.’
Yes, she told him, and explained how it started with Nixon’s summit with President Pompidou in 1970 and that by 1973 the French were being given assistance in developing their missiles, their multiple warheads, and even shown how to set up underground testing sites for nuclear weapons. They were also helped on missile guidance systems. She had a Pentagon document that recorded the French saying they didn’t need their missiles to be accurate enough to hit Soviet missile silos, they just wanted to be able to take out cities.
‘When you say you have a document, you had it here?’
She nodded. She had a whole file of documents, memos of talks between Nixon and Pompidou, between Kissinger and the French defence minister, Robert Galley. The cooperation had gone a lot further under Presidents Carter and Giscard d’Estaing. Most of the material was marked Top Secret, but she had managed to get some of it declassified. There was a whole lot more in the archives of the Nixon Library.
‘So this material is now publicly available?’
‘Only if you know where to look. Some of it’s quite funny. There’s a memo of a discussion between Kissinger and Defence Secretary Schlesinger when they say the French have, and I quote, “the worst nuclear program in the world”, unquote. Because of US laws against the transfer of nuclear secrets they set up a system called negative guidance, under which the French nuclear technicians would say they were thinking of doing it this way and the Americans would shake their heads. They’d go on through the design until the Americans didn’t shake their heads and that’s how they built the triggers for the French nuclear explosions. I had fun writing the chapter with all that stuff.’
‘Why would the Americans do this?’
‘Kissinger makes it quite clear that the purpose was to ensure that the French were dependent on American technology and stressed that “the real quid pro quo is the basic orientation of French policy”. Once De Gaulle was out of power, Kissinger could use the nuclear bait to turn the French into good little allies again, on the American leash just like the British.’
‘Are these documents still in your files?’
‘I photocopied them, turned them into pdf files and have them all stored on the cloud. Get me a computer and a printer and I’ll print them out for you.’
‘Have you told the Mayor all this?’
‘Not in such detail, no. I told him the funny stuff. He was the one who said my book would make quite a stir. But I’ve given seminars on this material at the National Defense College and at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. I have a couple of graduate students who’ll get their doctorates out of this.’
‘Is your book finished?’
‘The text is finished and I’m just about done with the footnotes. I expect I’ll be sending it to Yale University Press by the end of the month. My editor there has already seen most of it.’
‘This is the English version you’re talking about. What about the French edition, when will that be ready?’
‘I’ll translate it myself and I’m aiming to have it done by the end of the summer vacation, which would mean publishing it sometime next year.’
Bruno was thinking how this would play in French public opinion if extracts from the book or even a summary of its highlights turned up on the front page of Le Monde, a week or so before the election. Nuclear independence had been one of the cardinal principles of French governments for the last half-century and to learn that it was all a sham would come as a national shock. He could envisage a row in the Assemblée Nationale, public inquiries, denunciations and even fist-fights on TV talk shows.
‘I can see why people might want this kept quiet,’ he said.
‘But it’s our history, Bruno, yours and mine and that of every other French voter and taxpayer. Why shouldn’t they know about it?’
Why not indeed, he thought. But the timing would be important, the timing and the way the information was released. Was it all that wicked for the Brigadier and his political masters to delay the information for a few weeks until the election was over? Would it not even be a huge distortion of the political process to have the final days of the election campaign dominated by an angry public debate over France’s nuclear status?
Bruno shook his head, suddenly angry at himself. He was thinking like the Brigadier or like a politician. These were not decisions to be taken by agents of the state, thinking of the French electorate as so many children to be protected from monsters in the dark. This was a free country, a cradle of modern democracy and the home of the Rights of Man. This was for the French people to decide, not a handful of politicians who wanted to cling to power by suppressing the truth.
‘You look like a man who’s just made his mind up about something,’ said Jacqueline. ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
‘First, you’re invited to dinner tonight with me and some friends in Sarlat, and if you agree I’d like to share this with them,’ he replied. In the distance, he could hear the familiar sound of a police siren. The Gendarmes were on their way. ‘One’s a magistrate and another is a journalist with Paris Match. I trust them and I’m confident that you can, and this may be the only way that you can control how this story is released and presented.’
‘Rather than suppressed by the kinds of people who burgled my house and bugged my home,’ she said. ‘That’s fine with me. I wonder, can the Mayor come, too? I was going to make dinner for him but I think he’d enjoy this.’
17
His shoes polished and his uniform jacket and cap brushed, Bruno presented himself at the Gendarmerie at one minute before five, shook hands with Sergeant Jules and was shown into the Commandant’s office. The Brigadier was standing beside the desk, studying a series of framed photographs on the wall of Yveline playing hockey. On top of the computer sat a small stuffed toy in red cloth. As Bruno came to attention before the desk he could see it was a monkey and was surprised that the Brigadier had not tossed it into a waste-paper bin. He braced himself for an encounter of the kind he had learned in the army was best handled by saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and as little else as possible.
‘How are you, Bruno? Sit down, take your hat off and have a seat.’ The Brigadier sat down at Yveline’s desk, pulled a bottle of Balvenie scotch from his briefcase, poured generous slugs into two water glasses and added a couple of splashes of Evian. He pushed one across the desk to Bruno, who stared at it suspiciously.
‘Well done on the burglary. Crimson is delighted and so am I.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied, trying to keep the surprise from his face.
‘You’re no fool, so you’ll have worked out why I was curt with you at Crimson’s house.’
‘Yes, sir.’ It could only be because the Brigadier wanted to mislead Crimson. He had no idea why.
‘I can’t enjoy my drink until you do, so take a sip and stop playing the old soldier.’
Bruno obeyed, but hardly tasted the whisky as he watched the Brigadier pull a slim file from his briefcase.
‘You won’t be surprised to learn that Crimson is someone we keep a friendl
y eye on, but we’re also interested in this Jacqueline Morgan and how they know one another. Just over a year ago she was invited to give a faculty seminar at the Wilson Center in Washington on her research into Europe–American relations in the Cold War. Crimson was her guest, invited along to give a commentary from the British point of view. Since it covered some very sensitive aspects of French nuclear policy, we were fortunate that a visiting French academic was in the seminar room and could tip us off.’
He fixed Bruno with a piercing look and asked: ‘Why did you not tell Isabelle that you’d been to a party at Crimson’s house last year with the pair of them?’
‘I told Isabelle I’d been to parties at his house but I didn’t know her. I didn’t meet Jacqueline Morgan until the day before I met Isabelle at Crimson’s house, and I called on her as a historian who knew a lot about Resistance finance. She was in work clothes; no make-up, her hair a mess. Having previously only seen her dressed up for a cocktail party I wouldn’t have recognized her.’
‘How well do you know Crimson? He seemed very fond of you this morning.’ The Brigadier refilled their glasses.
Bruno recounted the tennis games, the drinks at the club bar, the garden party and the dinner. ‘Until Isabelle told me his background I’d assumed he was just another retired civil servant.’
‘You understand that it’s him we’re really concerned with rather than her. He’s always been very close to the Americans and it was interesting that it was after meeting him that she got those documents declassified. I doubt whether the Americans give a shit who is the next president of France. But the British certainly do.’
‘I’d have thought they’d be happier with the devil they know.’
‘You could be right, I wouldn’t know. But even if the Brits don’t want to interfere in our elections, they may think it useful for us to know that they could upset our apple-cart if they chose to. There are things London wants from us – protecting their precious financiers in the City, concessions on European affairs. A little leverage is always good.’
‘This is all way above my head,’ Bruno said. That drink was looking very attractive but he restrained himself.
‘In that case let’s talk about Jacqueline.’
‘She strikes me as an interesting woman,’ said Bruno.
‘You are known to have a soft spot for women, Bruno, a sentiment that in general I applaud. But it can lead to misapprehension.’
He pulled out another file from his briefcase and began reading phrases at random. ‘Arrested in Paris, May 1968, at a barricade on the Rue St Jacques while a student at the Sorbonne … arrested again August 1968 at the Democratic party convention in Chicago, received a broken jaw from a police baton … September of that year she takes up an exchange scholarship at University of California, Berkeley … December 1969, a delegate to the final convention of Students for a Democratic Society in Flint, Michigan, voted to wind up the SDS and reform into the Worker Student Alliance, a group closely associated with the violent extremists known as the Weathermen … Arrested again in May 1971 during a march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam war.’
The Brigadier paused in his reading, looked up and took a sip at his drink. ‘Quite the little activist, this Jacqueline Morgan. A member of Redstockings, a radical women’s collective, and a contributor to a collective book titled Our Bodies, Ourselves. And she never gave up. Arrested again in 1985, this time in Britain, when she was staying at the women’s camp against American missiles at the Greenham Common airbase. She was arrested again that year during a demonstration over the miners’ strike but was released without charge. She was supposedly a visiting professor at the University of London at the time. I suspect this is when she came up on Crimson’s radar screen. Most recently she attended our own Green Party’s summer university last year, where she spoke as a member of the advisory board of Greenpeace in the United States. I have to hand it to her, she never stops.’
He tossed the file onto his desk. ‘And now the radical Professor Morgan is connected to a British spymaster. If this were the Cold War, I’d suspect a honey trap and start looking for a Moscow connection. These days, who the hell knows?’
‘You know she was burgled today?’ Bruno asked. ‘Her laptop and documents were taken, along with some silver and jewellery to make it look genuine.’
‘It wasn’t us, but I hope you’ll understand that I can’t answer for all the less public arms of the French state, however much I may disapprove of what they do in the name of national security.’
Bruno sipped at his drink, wondering what the Brigadier’s real agenda might be, but mainly thinking of the epic of Jacqueline’s life: May ’68, Vietnam, feminism, nuclear disarmament, Greenpeace. She’d plunged into the history of her time, and also made a distinguished career by writing some of that history. He did not feel surprised, rather a touch of admiration.
‘Why not say what it is you want to do?’ Bruno asked. ‘Are you trying to suppress her work or do you just hope to delay it until after the election?’
‘Why on earth would I want to do that? This is our history. The French public is entitled to know it.’
Bruno sat back in his chair, completely baffled. He reached for his scotch, took a long sip and then looked thoughtfully at the portrait photograph of the President of the Republic that hung on the wall by the door.
‘You want him to lose the election,’ he said. The Brigadier shrugged, poured himself another drink and waved the bottle towards Bruno, who put his hand over his glass.
‘I couldn’t care less who wins the election, they’re all pretty much the same,’ the Brigadier replied. ‘But there’s something rotten in the entrails of the state, some of it in my own Ministry. You know what I’m talking about because I’m told you said much the same thing to Isabelle. Phone-tapping journalists and opposition leaders, burglaries, suitcases full of secret campaign funds, crooked deals, planted evidence, enemies lists and worse. That’s what I’m sick of. To save France from that requires a change of government.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It means we need a free press and a fair election.’ Bruno pushed the half-full glass of scotch back across the table, picked up his hat and walked out.
*
Bruno could see from the gate a spray of droplets raining on the young tomato plants, signalling that the Mayor had returned from hospital and was engaged in that most restful of chores, watering his garden. He turned at the sound of Bruno’s footsteps, offered him a friendly nod and then raised his eyebrows.
‘You look cross,’ he said, over the patter of spray on leaves. ‘Jacqueline called to tell me about the burglary. She also told me about dinner with your friends in Sarlat. It will be a pleasant change to go there without going to the hospital. She’ll be here shortly. We can have a drink before we head over there.’
Bruno took a deep breath and asked: ‘How’s Cécile?’
‘Asleep in a morphine dream. Her hand twitched when I held it. We grew these plants from seedlings, and now she won’t live to eat them. I’ve accepted that. What’s the matter with you?’
Bruno recounted his conversation with the Brigadier.
‘I wish I could identify for you one election when nobody in the state apparatus tried to put his thumb on the scales,’ the Mayor said. ‘It’s what they do, part of the price we have to pay for the existence of an intelligence service. We expect them to keep us safe from terrorists, but we’ve never been very good at defining the lines they should not cross.’
The Mayor walked back to the tap on the side of the house, turned it off and wound the hose into neat loops. ‘You know what I mean, Bruno, you cross a few lines yourself from time to time and so do I. It’s an imperfect world so it comes down to personal judgement. I let you get away with a few things because on the whole I trust your instincts and your motives. It’s for you to decide how far you trust the Brigadier.’
‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can do,’ Bruno said. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing
in advising Jacqueline to release a summary of her work, so at least she keeps control of it and it doesn’t get suppressed. But now it turns out that’s what the Brigadier wanted all along.’
‘Not quite. The Brigadier wants it released. So do you and so does Jacqueline. But if you’re worried that the Brigadier wants a wave of heated headlines to emerge like a bombshell in the final days of the campaign, you don’t have to let him get away with that. Ah, there she is now.’
The white BMW pulled into the drive and Jacqueline stepped out. She was wearing high heels again and a silk dress in pale green. She kissed the Mayor on the lips and hugged him briefly before turning to Bruno and offering her cheek.
‘I took your advice,’ she said to Bruno, and pulled two folded pages of typescript from her bag. ‘Here’s a first draft of an article I’m thinking of sending to Le Monde.’
Bruno read out loud. ‘Recently declassified documents from American archives suggest that US-European nuclear cooperation went further than has been hitherto believed and that like Britain, France’s development of missiles and nuclear weapons benefited from the discreet sharing of US technology …’
‘It reads like Le Monde,’ he said, handing it to the Mayor, who skimmed it quickly.
‘Those who know will understand the significance of this, and those who don’t will probably not get past the first paragraph,’ the Mayor said. ‘Perfect; it’s all there but not sensationalized.’ He gestured to the table on the terrace where a bowl of olives and another of nuts awaited, and invited his guests to sit before he went into the kitchen and returned with a tray bearing three champagne flutes and a half-bottle of champagne.
The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6) Page 15