by Lex Lander
The guard was no longer humming but chanting a horribly off-key version of ‘Osez, Josephine,’ a pop song that hit the charts a few years ago. At mouth level a cigarette glowed. The dog was making intermittent whining noises as if trying to imitate him. Or maybe it was telling him to shut up. There was no wind to carry Lux’s scent, though dogs could smell intruder or owner at great distances. Lux tensed, waiting. He dared not risk any movement, not even to reach for his gun, though if the dog went for him he would need it in one hell of a hurry. As the pair passed his tree, he turned his head to keep them in sight without moving his body. The dog stopped abruptly, sniffing the air and whining more sharply, almost a yelp.
The guard slowed and did a lazy U-turn. ‘Quelque chose va pas?’ he demanded. Something wrong? He stood by the dog, swaying a little. Lux realised then that he was the worse for drink.
‘Bon, va faire ton pi-pi,’ the guard said, cuffing the dog indulgently.
It let loose a yip of protest and scampered on to the far side of the semicircle. There beside a flowering bush it did its business, while the guard waited, still within spitting distance of Lux. Lux took advantage of the diversion to draw his gun.
The dog was inclined to forage after finishing its ablutions but a whistle from the guard brought it to heel. It received a pat on the head and went off down the driveway, its master steering a wandering course behind it. A smouldering cigarette stub curled away into the night.
Blessed with infinite patience, Lux waited. Silence had been resumed, the guard’s footsteps having faded to nothing. Still he made no move. Not until he heard the far off slam of a door did he take off, first checking his watch. Now came the real practice - the ascent.
The lights at his back illuminated the first thirty or so metres, then he was on his own in the dark, relying on his sense of direction and his feet. Though his speed was a little better than on the descent, he did not hurry. He counted every stride and strove to keep them of roughly equal length. The rain intensified, drooling from the front of his hood onto his face. He pounded doggedly on, skidding now and again on the wet grass, tripping once and, as he neared the copse, disturbing a bird that lifted off vertically almost beneath him, chirping in alarm and making him back-pedal several steps, heart bumping.
He stood still, as the bird’s trilling receded into the darkness. Listening for other sounds, human or canine. He didn’t think anyone was out and about but making sure cost nothing bar a minute or two of his time. As his heart settled back to its normal rhythm he continued his climb. Counting past seven hundred he became aware of a darker patch against the sky, up ahead and to his left. The copse! He ploughed on, swerving left a little. At the eight hundred mark he slowed, sensing more than seeing an obstacle ahead. A couple of paces later he almost walked into a tree. Right on target.
The last short stretch, from the copse to the perimeter, was a breeze. He scrambled over the wall, falling awkwardly. Rolling with the fall saved him from a sprained ankle but bruised his thigh when it came into unsympathetic contact with a large rock. He cursed mildly, at the pain, at the weather, at nothing in particular. Getting to his feet he hurried on, limping slightly, back to where he had left his car.
* * *
Ordure !
Excrement. The word occupied most of one side of the plain postcard that Lux had slid unsuspectingly from the envelope, addressed in the same hand to M. Hull. Less complimentary sobriquets had been hurled at him in the past, notably by his wife. Easy to guess who was the author. Lux didn’t blame her being pissed at him.
Having handed Lux the missive, the porter had turned away to unhook the key for another guest. When he was free Lux asked him if Monsieur and Madame Beauregard were in.
The man shook his head, jowls flapping like an old bloodhound’s. He was a good seventy, probably employed for his cheapness.
‘They have checked out, monsieur.’
‘Checked out?’ Lux echoed, slow to register it. ‘Did they leave a forwarding address?’
Again the sombre headshake. ‘Non, monsieur. I have an impression they were returning home.’
Home was Paris, that much Lux had gleaned during their all too few stolen hours together.
Lux thanked him, crumpled the card and envelope in his fist and disposed of it in a trash container by the counter. He plodded up the stairs to his room, which he had forgotten to cancel. There, he stretched out on the bed, thoroughly depressed.
Was this all it was destined to be - a one day madness? Love today, gone tomorrow? Surely not. Or not for him, at any rate. Love was not a state he assumed lightly, nor often. Nor so instantaneously. He couldn’t let it lie. Then it struck him: she didn’t intend that he should. The card carried an unwritten message as well as the expletive. If the affair was meant to be closed she would never have left it. It said au revoir, not goodbye. It said come and get me if you really want me. Real goodbyes were unwritten, unspoken. Only no message at all would have meant that.
But she wasn’t going to come to him on a platter. He would have to hunt her down. He would have to woo her. That was the test she had set, to determine the strength of his love. Was it potent enough to send him to Paris, to tear him from his commitments?
It was. Though that didn’t preclude him from combining business with pleasure. He picked up the phone and dialled the current cellphone number for Commissaire Barail.
The Commissiare answered in person, a rare event. Usually it was switched to his voicemail. He sounded surprised when Lux proposed to meet him in Paris rather than Auxerre until he explained that he had to be there on another matter. He went on to forewarn Barail that he required a special document that was not obtainable through his usual channels. Furthermore, he was owed another document, signed by a Minister of State, exonerating him from the consequences of his crimes. Had it slipped the Commissaire’s mind?
Barail assured him that was not the case, that all was in hand.
‘It so happens,’ he went on to say in his punctilious English, ‘that I was thinking of summoning you to a progress review anyway. So your call is opportune.’
They arranged to convene under the Eiffel Tower at three o’clock in the afternoon, the day after tomorrow, which was Friday.
* * *
During his one hour flight from Nice to Paris Lux sat with his seat reclined and his eyes shut, refining his escape plan. He made no incriminating notes. He had no need. His memory was excellent and as vast as a Pentium computer’s. It was not a perfect plan. It did not guarantee his escape scot-free. It called for nerve and depended on a certain laissez faire in the attitude of the CRS and gendarmes who would be patrolling the grounds of the house. If he were given to assessing the odds he would have put his prospects of success at seven-to-three on. Not bad, but not all that good either. Ordinarily he would not have gone ahead with such a modest margin in his favour. But this was no ordinary contract. It was the last, the grand slam, his swansong.
And if he were caught, Barail’s new regime, whatever its political persuasion, would likely as not set him free. But even without that insurance Lux would have gone ahead just the same and not just for the money. Since yesterday he wanted to do it for the hell of it.
* * *
April in Paris, goes the song. The day Lux rose and went out on the balcony of his room at the Meurice Hotel, opposite the Jardin des Tuileries in the Rue Rivoli, it was indeed an April morning worthy of dedication. Traffic? Yes, there was traffic all right, loud and smelly, but that was all part of it. Up here he could look upon it philosophically. Soon he would be in amongst it, placing his life in the hands of a Parisian taxi driver. Well, he was used to living dangerously.
Chilled, he went back inside and took a shower, hot then cold. In the first floor dining room he enjoyed a leisurely cooked breakfast, scanning the Telegraph, luxuriating in being thoroughly pampered (and they do pamper you at the Meurice, even more so than at its great rival, the Ritz).
Later, ablutions performed, he sauntered throu
gh the Jardin, crossed the Place de la Concorde, and continued on up the tree-bordered Avenue Champs Elysées.
Contrary to widespread assumption the Presidential building, officially entitled Palais de l’Elysée, is not on the Avenue Champs Elysées, albeit that the original gardens - the Elysian Fields - do straddle it. No, the main entrance to the Palace is from the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré which runs parallel to the Avenue and is also the address of the British Embassy. Lux had no business to transact either at the Palais or the Embassy; he was merely curious. Although his visits to Paris were frequent and he had driven past the Palace on countless occasions, he had no more than glimpsed it. Viewing it now from a professional perspective, he noted the heavily-armed palace guards, a mixture of gendarmerie and CRS, plus the plainclothes men, three of whom he spotted in the vicinity, their aimless loitering giving them away.
From the Champs Elysées Lux drifted in the warm hazy sunshine in search of a Post Office, came across one next door to the Chamber of Commerce for Industry. Inside he sat down at a vacant Minitel, the electronic telephone information service unique to France. It consisted of a small VDU with a built-in keyboard. You connected with the enquiry service and simply tapped out the name or business category you sought. No charge.
Lux composed the name Beauregard followed by Paris then 75, the postal code for the city centre. This yielded a multitude of Beauregards, of which two were Michels. He went on to scan the outlying departments of the région Parisienne, codes 91 to 95 inclusive, and for good measure threw in 77 (Seine et Marne, a mostly industrial area to the east), and 78 (Yvelines, where many British expats live). He finished up with six leads, including the two in Paris centre.
From the Minitel to a telephone booth was a simple matter of crossing to the counter and requesting ‘une cabine, s’il vous plaît’. The advantage of the booths within the post offices used to be that you didn’t need a ton of change; nowadays money was of little use inside Paris since most telephone boxes in the city centre had been converted to accept credit card only.
Lux’s two city numbers didn’t answer. Of the rest three answered but none was the Beauregard of his acquaintance. He hung up finally, dispirited and frustrated. Okay, so it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, this tracking down of his one-day lover. He still had three numbers to try. If he drew blanks there too it would begin to look as if they were unlisted. In that case, the task would be infinitely tougher.
For the next few hours he killed time with a light lunch at a bistro across from the Opéra. Afterwards, he taxied to his rendezvous under the Eiffel Tower.
He arrived early under that great iron edifice, now past its centenary and its best, yet as popular as ever. In some ways it is more impressive viewed from ground level, dead centre of the four legs, than from the top platform. Looking up through its hollow interior its massiveness is much more apparent, so too is the amount of steel used and the sweated labour that must have gone into its construction.
Barail came upon Lux while the American was in crick-necked contemplation, still visualising the workers swarming about the latticework of girders more than a century ago, high above the ground and probably without safety hats or nets. His tap on Lux’s shoulder was tentative. The President’s chief bodyguard had a lot of respect for those who lived by the gun, as he himself once had.
‘Bonjour,’ was his simple greeting.
The obligatory handshake, unsmiling, each appraising the other with that ingrained mistrust that hallmarks relationships between fellow-conspirators.
They walked down towards the Military School. Barail wore a sober suit and sported a walking stick, a direct sartorial contrast to Lux’s chinos, lightweight sports coat and open-neck Cardin shirt. Lux supposed he was dressed for the ‘office’.
‘Of what do you wish to speak?’ Barail said in English, deceptively offhand, swinging his stick, a crutch he clearly did not need.
‘My official immunity, first of all. You have it?’
‘Naturally. Since we agreed to provide it and you requested it.’ He patted his breast pocket. ‘It’s here, close to my heart. But before I hand it over I would like to hear about your state of preparedness. Also, you mentioned some, ah, special requirements?’ His voice lifted, making it a query.
‘Nothing that will tax your resources or your ingenuity,’ Lux said, patting the other on the back. ‘As to my state of preparedness .... I’ve solved the bigger of the two main problems.’
‘You have decided how you will do it?’ he interrupted, clutching Lux’s arm above the elbow. His face was flushed.
‘That’s the easy part,’ Lux said, earning an incredulous look. ‘No, Commissaire, I’m talking about the getaway. You haven’t forgotten, have you, that unless my escape can be guaranteed there won’t be any assassination? Not by me.’
Barail released his arm, nodding. ‘I had forgotten or perhaps taken it for granted.’ A low laugh. ‘You will forgive my lack of concern for what must be your highest priority. The issues at stake are large ones. The big picture is what concerns me, the tools we use are ... in the main ... expendable.’
Lux’s eyes narrowed.
‘Don’t confuse this tool with others you’ve used in the past, Barail. As far as I’m concerned it’s your big picture that’s expendable.’
They overtook a sauntering teenage couple, oblivious of all but each other, the youth’s hand exploring the girl’s pert bottom. Barail flicked them a glance of what might have been envy.
‘Let’s speak of your requirements,’ he said, now holding his stick upright, resting on his shoulder like a rifle at the slope. ‘Nothing too out of the ordinary, I trust.’
‘Depends on what you see as ordinary. How does my recruitment into the police grab you?’
It didn’t grab him at all. He looked blank, totally devoid of comprehension.
‘I want you to appoint me to a post in one of the security services,’ Lux elaborated. ‘And provide me with the necessary ID. Just a common officer or whatever the French equivalent.’
Barail cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple jerking. ‘I see. To what end?’
Lux explained.
Barail protested: it couldn’t possibly work. When Lux asked why not all he could do was splutter. Lux elaborated further. Barail listened and finally he nodded assent.
‘There will be difficulties,’ he said, rubbing his shadowed chin and looking worried, ‘but they are not insurmountable.’
‘That’s not all, I’m afraid, amigo. I will also want a second passe-partout for a colleague. Make him a sergeant. Plus a false passport, Canadian for preference.’
They had come to the road that bisects the park. At the kerb, as they waited for an opening in the stream of vehicles, Barail turned towards Lux.
‘I shall of course require photographs. Presumably the documents will carry false names. What will the names be?’
‘Not yet.’ Lux decided it was better to be mysterious rather than admit he didn’t have anyone in mind. ‘All vital statistics will come with the photo.’
‘Just as long as you allow sufficient time - at least a week, preferably ten days.’
Dodging the mêlée of traffic, they gained the far side of the road and the vehicle-free sanctuary of the middle section of the park. They walked on in silence for a minute or two before Barail said, ‘If I may speak frankly, I am surprised you see fit to enlist our aid in this matter. Also, why do you require a false passport? Do you plan to leave France afterwards, and if so why not use your own passport? You will be free as a bird.’
‘Because, buddy - if you really don’t know why - we have to plan for possible failure, and if I fail I will want to put a lot of distance between me and a certain location in the Var pronto. I’ll only be free as a bird if you gain control, remember? In the other eventuality I’ll be a very wanted man.’
‘As I have already explained,’ Barail said, a weary note in his voice, ‘when the President dies the reins of Government will become ours. As for failu
re on your part ... we selected you because your record carried a one hundred per cent success rate, because you are acknowledged to be the best.’
‘Ah,’ Lux said softly. ‘Then it wasn’t just because you have a hold on me.’
‘A secondary consideration.’ Barail indicated a bench seat. ‘Shall we sit. I would like to smoke and prefer to be seated.’
They sat and Barail smoked. It was warm bordering on hot for late April. Lux removed his jacket and folded it on the bench seat beside him. A small boy came up from nowhere and lingered to gaze solemnly at the two men with soulful brown eyes.
Lux grinned at him, and Barail said: ‘Salut, jeune homme. Have you lost your mother?’
‘Alain!’ Authority calling. ‘Laisses-tranquil les messieurs.’ Leave the gentlemen alone.
Young Alain was hauled away by a pretty girl probably too young to be his mother. He went without protest but with his head screwed backwards, his saucer eyes not leaving the two men until the flow of pedestrians absorbed him.
‘My grandson is about his age,’ Barail remarked.
‘You have a grandson? Funny, I don’t see you with the trappings of domesticity and normality.’
‘There is a lot about me you do not see,’ Barail droned, his expression cold. ‘I prefer to keep my personal life private.’
‘Good idea. So let’s get back on track. I’m flattered by your confidence, but I always prepare for the worst eventuality. Here are the details.’ Lux proffered an envelope in which were vital statistics of the phoney Canadian personage, together with some mug shots taken in an automatic booth. The shots were of the real Lux, no embellishments other than a pair of glasses.
Barail accepted it with an expression of repugnance as if it were a used condom. ‘Very well. If you insist.’
‘Your turn now.’ Lux stuck out his hand, palm upwards. ‘How would you like to cross it with an official declaration of immunity.’
The envelope Barail passed across was cream in colour, had the feel of vellum but was probably imitation. It was not sealed. Lux opened it up: it bore the inscription Ministère de l’Intérieure et Décentralisation at its head. The text was larded with flowery expressions such as ‘absolute exemption’, ‘ irrevocable’, and ‘unconditional’, and the whole caboodle was rounded off with an official ministry stamp, over which presided the surprisingly legible signature of Jean-Louis Debre, the Minister himself. Expert advice would be required to vouch for its veracity. Lux hoped to have such confirmation within forty-eight hours via a Swiss lawyer friend, whose bureaux were less than a mile from where he and Barail sat.