CHAPTER 57 – 'GRAND PLANS'
Florentin Castelneau was only too glad to tell anyone and everyone what fools they were to interrupt his plans for transforming Europe into an enlightened sphere overseen by his benevolent and wise care.
He and Pamela had been moles, you see, in the old days, cleverly establishing themselves amongst people who needed to be brought down. They got tired of being moles. They had painstakingly moved themselves up to where they had real power, real influence – but anonymously, for all intents and purposes. But of course it was not in the grand plan to be anonymous forever.
It was acceptable – brilliant even, Castelneau claimed – to have worked his way up into such a high place with no recognition, but the time had come to assert his destiny. His name was to have been synonymous with the awakening of mankind. It still would be. Greatness could not be denied!
Various interrogators, British, then French, then British again, had their goes at the man. He told one and all that the world would be better off if he were set free to resume the grand arc he'd launched. He was sorry about Pamela. Pamela had been a great help. But, as it happened, great help could be found for great men, once they were unleashed enough to show the world how great they were, he said. He was not worried. There was still time. There was some urgency, of course. Men did not live forever, even spectacular specimens such as himself (although, he said, he had arranged to be frozen, and brought back when science had advanced enough).
The interrogators generally left shaking their heads. Some then went out to get drunk. Others detoured to the toilets to be sick. No one who listened to him any length of time was inclined to let Castelneau back on the streets, if it could be helped.
Richard Hugh was told he could get in line only if he agreed to not bring up the subject of Pamela Williams in general, or the manner of her death in particular. Castelneau didn't seem to understand who'd killed her or why, and the people in charge of the investigation said they wished to keep that close to their chests for now. Richard found it surprisingly hard to agree, but without a solemn vow to that effect they weren't letting him within a dozen kilometers of Castelneau – and, they warned him, mumbled vows with fingers crossed behind the back didn't count. They were serious. They had their reasons, they said. Steer clear, even if the detainee doesn't, they said.
Richard decided he could confess to the man later if he felt a need to, so promised to abide by their insane rules. He had questions he wanted asked, that he wasn't sure anyone else would bother to ask.
"Tell me something, Newcastle, how can anything be destined in an atheist society anyway?" he asked, to break the ice.
"Do not call me Newcastle. And if your brain has been rotted by Christianity, or even its less-tainted offshoots, there is no use talking to you. You could not possibly understand a higher sphere of reasoning."
In Richard's circle of friends and acquaintances, it was the Christians who tended to be able to think things through most clearly, but he opted to not say so, given the circumstances.
"What I understand is that you have no chance of walking if I don't say that you have a chance of walking," he said. "And I'd like to understand, really."
"The world is always rebuilding itself. If you are in the right place at the right time, it is your destiny to be in charge of the rebuilding. Is that so hard to understand?"
Well, yes, the concept of personal destiny in a world ruled by blind chance was rather hard to understand, Richard thought, but didn't say so. Nor did he point out that history showed that societies were more prone to die out than rebuild, especially once utopians took the helm. Instead, he said, "I guess the main difference between us in that respect is that I was taught that everybody counts, and we're all supposed to try to leave the world better than we found it."
"So you do understand a little. Everybody must play his part if it is to work."
"How about people like Hamid, the Arab boy who was murdered? How could he play his part if you had him killed?"
"I don't know who you are talking about."
"Hamid, aged seventeen, killed by associates of Jean Blondet on your orders."
"They have killed several Arab boys on my orders. I don't know their names. Why should I? They are Arabs."
Richard reminded himself that setting a man straight during an interrogation was only acceptable if you thought you could gain anything by it. He forced calm into his voice. "This was the one killed the same day that you assigned Durand to help Nason ferret out post-Marxist subversives, if that helps any. Durand and Nason found the boy's sister in need of rescue, and rescued her."
"Ah, that case. Jean is an idiot like his brother. The neighborhood gang was supposed to kill a kid or two to stir up trouble, and what does Jean do? He tries to stop the killing of the boy, and pays street urchins to take the sister away unharmed. He has a soft spot for children, and a distaste for killing on someone else's say-so. The imbecile."
"So the killing was just to stir up trouble in general?"
"Do I look like a nincompoop?" Castelneau asked.
Richard kept his face controlled only with effort. "Sorry. But I'm not sure what it was for."
"General bloodshed is for amateurs. When you are a professional, you have to plan these things for maximum effect and minimum chance of being found out. Not that it matters in the least that that case did not go quite right. It was mostly an experiment, a long shot, in any event. If Jean Blondet had been out of the area like he was supposed to be, it would have gone off like clockwork, I am sure of it."
"What would his associates have done if he hadn't stopped them?"
"Why – just what I told them. Lure a couple of Arab brats to near the hotel where I was, and kill one and maim the other when Durand and Nason were to come out. Durand and Nason are just the sort of men who involve themselves in such things, you understand. I hoped that they would, you see. Then the Arabs would have killed them in retaliation, and everything would have been solved."
"Retaliation for what?"
"Are you kidding? Anyone who gets near a killing of an Arab in Europe is blamed somehow for something. Those people do not have proper discrimination. That is why they will never be civilized like the French," Castelneau said.
Richard had a few choice and apt retorts to that, but he bit them back. Better to get information than indulge emotion, after all, and in this case he may never have another shot at the fellow. "Sounds like the sort of thing that had to backfire, really," he said, after a few seconds spent furiously thinking.
"How could it? I have wanted to get rid of that filthy, religion-steeped Durand since I came on board. But I had to be careful, of course, because the senior agents, they all look out for each other, you see, no matter what their personal differences. The fools. How glad I'll be when they all retire or drop dead, I cannot tell you. And Nason, the tadpole, he was turning into a danger, too. If he'd been willing to listen to modern thought, I would have liked to have him on my team. He is a sniper of uncommon ability and accuracy, is Nason, and likes challenges of all kinds. But he is one of those incorrigible sorts, you know? Religion! Bah! It makes a man think there are things he cannot properly do. Such idiocy! It only gets in the way, you know. So here it fell out that the chance to eliminate both of them falls into my lap. I take them to a hotel near an Arab quarter. I talk to them long enough for things to be set up. I line up loyalists to try to shoot them if the Arabs don't – if circumstances allow for it, you understand – but all the time I am laying the groundwork for the Arab community to be blamed for everything. Brilliant, no? My enemies will be killed by others of my enemies, and maybe the Arabs will be pushed back into the sea in the storm of protest which was sure to follow. Everyone wins, you see."
"I have my own doubts about allowing an overwhelming influx of foreigners, but I'm willing to solve matters peaceably," Richard said.
"But you have to admit it was a brilliant bit of thinking on short notice, no?"
"No."
"You are stuck i
n old thinking. The old morality was illusion. The new morality is to do whatever moves things forward. That is the highest good. To move things forward."
"Whatever the cost?"
"Well, of course you have to protect your leaders, but of course everything else is expendable in the name of progress."
"And leaders who go astray are generally considered expendable, aren't they? It seems that way to me, having studied communism a bit."
"Leaders who go astray are no longer leaders. They are traitors. Traitors have to be taken out of the way."
"Because they get in the way of moving things forward?"
"Precisely!"
"Consider yourself officially categorized as a stray leader in my book," Richard said. "And aren't you lucky that we're civilized even if you're not?" On that note, he left.
Guards hauled an indignant Castelneau back to his cell.
-
In a neat little room, with one-way glass, that sat guard on the interrogation room, Brett Hastings fixed an eye on Castelneau's head keeper. "I give up," Hastings said.
"That'll be the day," the keeper said.
"Do let a fellow finish his statement, there's a good chap," Hastings said. "I give up. Why in the world are we not letting Castelneau know how his wife died?"
"He hasn't asked," the keeper said.
"He hasn't asked?"
"You heard me."
"Yeah, and now maybe I don't have to ask the real question I had."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Ask away. Just so we're not playing at assumptions, or whatever you're up to today."
Hastings laughed. "All right. I'm being a smart mouth. I'm sorry. It's a bad habit. But I came in here wondering why you were steering Richard Hugh off from it. He's a decent guy, and steady. He'd have felt better confessing, I'll bet anything. It would have been agony in the short term, but he's not the sort to spend the rest of his life obsessing on things."
"Call me old-fashioned, but if I'd killed a woman, even in self-defense, I hardly think I'd know how to cope with being thanked for it. Especially by the woman's husband."
"Uhhh. I thought Our Friend Florentin was at least paying lip service to being sorry that she was gone."
"Yesterday's news, old man. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks that she was starting to horn in on his potential glory. It seems to have been some sort of grand achievement treaty instead of your more common sort of marriage. When the utility was gone, the love, if ever there had been any, seems to have happily evaporated."
"Ouch," Hastings said. "If it were me in Hugh's shoes, and Castelneau told me I'd done him a service, I'm afraid I might strangle him before I caught myself."
"We did consider that possibility with Mr. Hugh," the keeper said, dryly.
"So," said Hastings, "Tell me again why Williams killed Leonard Loomis."
"Can't."
"We're on the same side, you know," Hastings said.
"Yes, but I can't tell you again, since I'm relatively sure I haven't told you before."
"Picky, picky."
"Details matter."
"You have a point," Hastings said. He shifted in his chair. "The way we figure it over at the PM's, on my team, is that Loomis must have stumbled across something that threatened their operation, and Williams felt she had to swoop. But we're danged if we can figure out what he stumbled across."
"Maybe nothing. It's looking more and more like Castelneau was taking a fair amount of pre-emptive action before he launched his public campaign."
"In other words, the bastard was eliminating anybody he was afraid might turn into a threat later?"
"That's what it looks like."
"Admires Stalin, does he?"
"Despises Uncle Joe. Belongs to the past, you know. And besides, he wasn't sophisticated enough. Or successful enough in the long run, obviously. When you judge only by outcomes, such things matter. On the other hand, Castelneau greatly admires some of the techniques of the Soviets. Courts that rule based on revolutionary whims instead of law. Closed courtrooms. Predetermined sentences. Big sentences for counter-revolutionary thought. Triokas and other independent agencies that hand down sentences without pretending to be courts. And he positively loves Article 58. Can't figure out why Solzhenitsyn didn't understand the wisdom of it. No benevolent dictator should be without such a statute. Otherwise, how can he impose much-needed wisdom and change? After all, the common sort of person will fight for freedom and to enjoy the fruits of his labor and to protect his own wife and children, the ungrateful dogs."
"Castelneau wants his own gulag archipelago, does he?"
"Not by that name. Doesn't work for him, propaganda wise."
"Poor baby. How many did he get in his pre-emptive strikes?"
"We're still counting. We're sure of eleven so far. That's how many he's bragging about, with relevant details, in any case. Consider Loomis the tip of the iceberg, at any rate."
"Nice guy, Our Friend Florentin. I guess he must be steamed that Stolemaker's a tough old bird, eh?"
"He probably would be, except that trying to kill Stolemaker wasn't his idea, at least not that way, or at least not so soon. Stolemaker, being an old college chum, had potential for being jollied along and duped, Castelneau thought The best we can tell, Stolemaker being shot was more a matter of Williams flipping out. She hadn't but barely washed the blood off from killing Loomis, and got herself resettled in her office, when Stolemaker walked into that very office with two agents and hung around watching her out of the corner of his eye."
"Panicked, did she?"
"She apparently framed it to Castelneau as having had the presence of mind to move as quickly as situations warranted, without involving unnecessary people."
"Yikes."
"I'll second that. I'm headed for a drink or two. Care to join me?"
"I've got duties, darn it, or I might."
Hastings completed a few official errands, and then went home and made good use of barbells and other gym equipment until he felt more in control of himself (he avoided the punching bag – no sense feeding the fury). Still feeling a bit like he'd been walked on by something with slimy feet, he showered to finish the job.
He went to his sister's house, where he made a point of providing a good role model for his fatherless nephews without being too obvious about it. They were in danger of becoming undisciplined men. They needed to learn to wrestle without turning into barbarians.
-
Richard dropped proper hints to the authorities investigating Hamid's murder, but edited out the bit about it being a trap for Durand and Nason. If Castelneau was in the habit of calling hits on random Arabs, it likely didn't matter all that much what the scumbag had used as an excuse. Or that's how Richard put it to himself. Duty done, he went for a walk. A long walk. He walked until his knees ached, filling his mind with beauty and goodness: a mother playing tag with her son in the park, a particularly pleasing bit of jewelry in a shop window, a group of children singing with gusto. He played with a stray dog. He picked up litter to make the street look better. He enjoyed the spectacle of a father with his daughter on his shoulders playing at being horses, the man providing the canter and the girl providing neighs.
Only after he'd taken an extended wash in the humanity that existed outside of Castelneau's mind did he feel human enough, whole enough, to return to his friends and family.
Not Exactly Allies Page 58