Fortunately Peter knew more about his family history than he did about oenology. He said, “It is the cadet branch. From Alexandre de Clissac—” and was soon deep in one of those genealogical discussions dear to the French upper classes.
When he could get away he made for the turret bedroom which had, once again, been allotted to him. He found it being dusted and tidied by Laure Gobard. Laure was sixteen and was a junior member of the family which comprised most of the château staff. Her father, Michel-Ange and her uncle Hervé were gardeners by day and guards, in turn, by night. Her other uncle, Georges, operated a fishing-boat and ferry service from the Port de Goulée, half a mile from the château, where the Chenal de Guy ran out to the Gironde. Her grandmother, the matriarch of the family, known to all as Gran’mère Marthe, ran the kitchen and master-minded the meals for which the château was famous.
On his previous visit Peter had passed some of his most relaxed hours in the kitchen with the Gobard family. He now sat down on the bed, told Laure to stop fussing round and sit down beside him, which she did with no reluctance at all. He said, “You can give me all the gossip.”
Her father and her uncle, she said, were doing less and less gardening and more and more guarding. This was because of all the stories in the press about the picture.
“Which picture?” said Peter. “There are lots of pictures here.”
“It is the big one in the salon. The one that the patron has said he will sell to America for billions of francs. There has been much trouble about that; letters to the papers—”
“If you’re talking about the Madonna of the Swans I can understand that there would indeed be trouble.”
“There have been men from the newspapers all over the place. Not just our local papers. Men from Paris. From other countries, too. They even questioned me, but since I knew nothing there was nothing I could tell them.”
“Frustrating.”
“The only one who is enjoying the excitement is darling Bruno. He is on patrol every night and is given extra meat and dog biscuits to sustain him. One evening he caught a newspaper reporter and ate his camera.”
“An omnivorous beast,” said Peter.
The member of the family who seemed to have been least disturbed by these excitements was ‘Gran’mère’. The dinner that evening was a salute to classic French cookery. Barquettes a La Normande, followed by a Coulibiac of fresh salmon, followed by a magnificent Poularde à La Derby, a fat pullet which had passed a life of tranquillity and good feeding and now graced the table roasted and stuffed with foie gras and truffles. Peter’s small appetite was soon defeated, but the official guests dealt manfully with the heaped plates placed before them. To drink they were given a Lambrécie of the great 1961 vintage; but Peter noticed that, when other wines were offered to supplement it, their host had avoided the premiers crus and had tabled Château Frombrauge and Château Batailley, neither of them calculated to diminish his own product.
Owing to the predominance of men at table he was seated next to the Commissaire, who congratulated him on his grasp of French. “Your accent is perfect,” he said. “Metropolitan, of course, not provincial. It is only your choice of certain words which indicates that you learned French young. When you wished to indicate that something was sensational you said ‘fantastique’. That is a schoolboy expression. A young man nowadays would almost certainly say ‘épique’. It is only in minor matters that one detects that your adult life has been passed in England.”
“You are too kind,” said Peter. “Let us talk about crime.”
“Not a topic for such a gathering. But if you would care to visit me at my headquarters. It is on the Quai de La Monnaie. You will know it by the tricolour outside.”
“There is nothing I should like more,” said Peter truthfully.
“The day after tomorrow then. The early afternoon will be the best time.”
When the ladies had withdrawn the conversation turned, inevitably, to the Titian Madonna of the Swans. “Its fame comes partly from its provenance,” explained Mr. Wellborn. “As you no doubt know it is one of a trio of pictures painted by Titian when he was in Venice. There is the Madonna of the Quarries in the Uffizi and the Madonna of Victory in the Louvre. Some critics maintain that this one is the finest of the three.”
The Mayor said, “Then the price you have been offered by this American gallery – fifty million francs according to the press – may be an under payment.”
“It is not solely a question of money. I inherited all my important paintings from my father and he from his father, who made his collection in France. It has come to be considered part of the French national heritage.”
“Correctly so,” said the Mayor. “If I might presume to say so.”
“On the other hand,” said the Professor judgmentally, “fifty million francs is a considerable sum of money.”
“There is much I could do with the money here,” agreed Mr. Wellborn. “A picture as celebrated as this one is an expensive thing to house. When an insurance company was asked to cover it, they demanded an annual premium which would quickly have bankrupted me. So I am forced to protect it myself. I have installed the most up-to-date alarm system. Whilst it is in operation I would defy any intruder to set foot in the house without being detected. You will appreciate that such a system is not cheap. Also my vineyard badly needs clearing and replanting. The existing root-stocks are old and becoming feeble. If I do so, it will be – how long would you say, Professor?”
“Three years, perhaps four, before the new grapes started to approach their prime. You could make a wine of sorts before that time, but you might not care to market it under the label of your château.”
“Exactly. I should not attempt to do so. And that would mean that during that time I should be forced to live on the income produced by this new capital.”
The tones in which he said this incited general sympathy, but Peter was able to withhold his. He could not help reflecting that he would be very happy to live for a year or two on the income produced by five million pounds.
The room which Peter was shown into on the Wednesday afternoon did not look like his idea of the office of the senior detective officer of the City of Bordeaux and the Department of the Gironde. It was no more than fifteen feet square and was painted in olive-green and drab brown, the accepted colours of French bureaucracy. The only hint of officialdom was the long row of filing cabinets against the northern wall. The Commissaire’s modest desk stood with its back to the windows and was faced by two chairs, one padded and easy, one hard and upright.
“You observe the distinction,” said Meurice. “One is for people I wish to cajole, the other for people I wish to cross- examine.”
“And which of them would you like me to sit on?” said Peter. He had not supposed that a busy policeman would have invited an unimportant foreigner to his office to gossip.
“Oh, the easy one, please. You are not a suspected criminal.” This was accompanied by a warm smile which wrinkled up the eyes. “But it is true that you might be able to help us.” Then, after a brief pause, “And we might be able to help you. Let me explain. Some years ago you were involved, though not closely, with two men at Sassencourt. You recollect it? Yes, but I perceive that you are surprised that I should know about it.”
“I am, rather.”
“Because you arrived at your hotel that night too late to sign the register and left it somewhat precipitately the following evening, without having corrected this small irregularity.”
“When I thought about it afterwards I was very glad that had happened. I would not have wished either of those two men to know my name or my address in England.”
“Understandably. The information, however, came to me quite simply. The officer who drove you to the ship – he has been commended for his initiative – slipped back on board when you were, I believe, purchasing something to eat. Yes? Since it was a French ship he was able to persuade the Passport Officer to make a note of all Engli
sh travellers. There were not more than a dozen. From the information given to him, he had no difficulty in identifying you. He had then only to question his sister at the hotel, add what you had told her to the account you had given him in the car and we had a clear picture of what had occurred.”
“He didn’t seem very interested in what I had to tell him,” said Peter. The recollection still rankled.
“He was exercising professional discretion. This did not stop him from using his brains and submitting a report - which came to me as I was at that time in charge of our Normandy office. He concluded his report by pointing out that the activities of this pair of Iranians must have been motivated by a fear that you were in a position to identify them. Shall we see if they were right?”
The Commissaire opened one of the folders on his desk, extracted two photographs and slid them across. Peter looked at them and said, in a choked voice, “That one, yes. I came face to face with him in a good light. The other I hardly saw. I only heard his voice. But it seemed to me, from the way he spoke, that he was the leader.”
“You may be right. In my view there is little to choose between them. The one you saw is Mahmoud Rasim. The other is Nasser Goraji. Both are Iranian and both started their careers as police-officers under the late Shah.”
“Under the Shah?”
“Indeed. Very zealous officers. Their speciality was obtaining confessions. So highly did he think of them that he sent them on a special mission to France, to track down and deal appropriately with his enemies here. By which he meant the adherents of the Ayatollah Khomeni then resident near Paris. One must suppose that they kept their ears very close to the ground, since they had switched their allegiance even before the Shah was deposed. They started working for Agazadeh Zaman, who is a remarkable man. The Ayatollah’s chancellor of the exchequer in exile, you might call him. A very different character to those two apes. Just as hard, just as ruthless, but infinitely more dangerous because he is a dreamer and an idealist. When the Ayatollah’s regime was first set up in Iran he could have had any post in the new government that he chose to demand. He refused such promotion. He realised that he was more valuable to his master if he stopped here, in France.”
“Valuable in what way?”
“Oh, in many ways. He had obtained some influence in political circles and had friends among the senior bureaucrats who, in our country, really run the government.”
“In ours also,” said Peter sadly.
“But his main function was as a collector of money. You may be assured that any Iranian working in this country pays a regular contribution. Such money is channelled through Zaman. But the big money comes from other sources. Much of it from the arms firms. Iran needed ground-to-air missiles, air-defence radar, heavy artillery shells, yes. But the arms salesmen needed the orders and they are in cut-throat competition. Nobel Kemi in Sweden, Muiden Chemie in Holland, Forcit and Kemira in Finland, Rio Tinto in Italy, our own SNPE and your Nobel company. The final decision as to who gets any particular order rests with Zaman. When you consider the stupendous profits these firms make you can imagine the sums they are prepared to pay to be at the head of the queue. And when I say stupendous, please do not imagine that I am exaggerating. Before our recent elections one of our companies, Luchaire, shipped more than a hundred million dollars’ worth of artillery shells to Iran on faked end-user certificates which alleged that they were going to Brazil and Thailand. There’s nothing confidential about what I’m telling you. It was, naturally, featured in all the opposition papers. What wasn’t featured quite so prominently was the fact that after the election an attempted investigation into these transactions was quietly buried by the new Defence Minister.”
As Peter listened he realised, more from the tone of voice than the words, that what Meurice was telling him was distasteful to him; that he was a policeman first, but also a patriot.
He said, in a tone of voice that was deliberately provocative, “Are you telling me then, that the reason France has been buttering up Iran lately is not – as we all thought – because she wants to save herself from trouble by terrorists like Georges Abdullah, but simply because she wanted to keep the Gulf War going and make a lot of money out of it?”
Meurice, who was too experienced to be provoked, said, with a smile, “Oh, both reasons, no doubt. Two motives, the same result.” He added, “You may have asked yourself – I have seen you asking yourself – why I should have invited you down here to give you a politico-economic lecture. The reason, as I indicated, is that we may, at some point, need your help. The farmer, André Renouf, who was unlucky enough to intercept Rasim and Goraji was in hospital for three months before he died. The doctors who attended him have stated without qualification that his death was the direct result of the injuries he had received. They are prepared to give evidence to this effect when – as I hope may be the case – these men are put on trial. It will not now be a charge of assault or even of theft. It will be a charge of murder and it will be your testimony that links them to the affair. You saw one of them outside the church. You heard the other discussing it with the curé.”
Peter listened to this with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He said, “You mean that I should have to stand up in court here and put the finger on these two apes?”
“You sound alarmed. It would not be as dangerous as you are thinking. No doubt the money that Zaman handles would enable him to hire and pay thugs in any country in Europe, but his main organisation is here, in France. Once you had given your evidence and were safely back in England why should he mount a personal vendetta against you? There would be no profit in it for him. He might even be glad to be rid of these two heavy-handed subordinates. Such men outlive their usefulness.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Peter.
“I would, however, suggest that if this situation should arise you should avoid visiting this country for a year or so. Memories are short. Other interests intervene. Meanwhile my advice to you is to stay clear of all these people. They are professionals. You are an amateur. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Amateurs play games for fun. Professionals play only to win. You understand what I am saying?”
“Yes,” said Peter unhappily. “I do understand exactly what you are saying.”
Part Three
THE KILLING GROUNDS
The young are attracted by violence. They see in it an instrument of liberation and progress. And it is true that violence is a form of strength and that one can try to employ it. But it contains the seeds of corruption. It affects all who use it and it degrades the objective which you are seeking to attain. There is no possible argument about this. It is sufficient merely to stand here and listen, in your mind, to the cry uttered by a man or woman at the moment when they were no more than a step away from the door of the extermination chamber and you will be turned away, for ever, from the idea of finding in violence the least spark of light or the least element of justice.
(From an address given by Giscard d’Estaing at the site of the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald)
1
On the day after Peter’s visit to Commissaire Paul Meurice in Bordeaux, Stewart set out to discover something about Pikorx Ltd. The name was so repulsive that he felt it must conceal secrets worth investigation.
Ron, who had paid a preliminary visit, had reported, “It’s a dump. Just one room, upstairs, in Poynters Alley. That’s a dirty little street between Mincing Lane and Mark Lane. There are quite a few sale-rooms thereabouts, but this is definitely not a high-class outfit. When I was there, around midday, the door was padlocked and there was a notice ‘Auctions 3 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays’. If you looked in on one of those you might find out something useful. It seems a long shot to me.”
It seemed a long shot to Stewart, but he was feeling restless. Starfax, he realised, had nearly run its course. As a novelty it had made him a surprising amount of money, but the graph of its profits was sinking. There had been a
number of sardonic comments in the press from well-established astrological rivals. It would be sense to get out while the going was good. In fact, closing down would be surprisingly easy. There were none of the complications which arose when a normal business folded. Staff to pay off, premises to dispose of, debts and redundancy payments. None of that in his case. He would have to do something about Peter, but his part-time assistants would expect no more than a handsome parting bonus. Tax payments were up-to-date and the company’s account was in very comfortable credit. If he did decide to stop – all he would have to do was to sign off existing clients and decline to take on any more. Inside a month Starfax could fold its tents and steal away as quietly as any of Longfellow’s Arabs. The thought was a pleasing one. Stewart was by nature peripatetic.
He was thinking about this as he made his way to Fenchurch Street station and descended one of the alleys which led down to the river. It was after half-past two when he arrived at the premises of Pikorx. There were signs of life. Quite a few people had arrived and were sauntering round the room examining the paintings. There were some forty of these, hanging from pieces of back-boarding nailed to two of the walls. He noticed a fair-haired youth who was accompanied as he moved by a little court of admirers. Max Berry, someone whispered to him. There was a man with a red beard whom he thought he recognised as a kerbstone artist who had obtained a temporary celebrity status by holding a private exhibition on the pavement of Chelsea Embankment. Most of the paintings, he thought, were by amateurs and he guessed that their perpetrators were among the crowd, hoping to sell them to their friends. Three of the pictures were different. They were antiques. Two of them were of stations of the cross, the flogging and the crown of thorns, done in the unemotional, almost anatomical manner of the eighteenth century. The third was the picture of a man wearing the red biretta of a Cardinal Bishop. Stewart got the impression that the original of this picture might have been larger and have been cut down to show only the head and shoulders. He wondered if this had been done to remove some legend by which it could be identified.
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