Affairs of State

by Dominique Manotti

  Martenot turns around, Bornand’s slim figure has just entered the room. He’s sporting a beige polo-neck sweater with leather elbow patches, brown velvet trousers and worn tawny leather moccasins. He walks over to Nicolas, puts his arm around his shoulders and hugs him briefly. There’s a great deal of affection in his gesture. Then he turns to the manservant:

  ‘Bring us some coffee, Antoine, and then you may leave.’

  A fine porcelain tray bearing pastries and chocolates. Relaxed, Bornand pours the coffee then sinks into an armchair.

  ‘When did you get back from Tehran?’

  ‘Last night, at around ten.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s not good news.’

  ‘As I feared.’

  ‘My trip was timed to coincide with the first missile deliveries. The disappearance of the plane caused mayhem.’ Bornand listens closely but says nothing. ‘I met our friends, separately, then all together. They’re unanimous: there’s nothing left to negotiate. You’ve been aware of their demands in return for freeing the hostages for nearly a year, and still nothing. They’re beginning to doubt that you’re in a position to break the deadlock in Paris. Especially as the RPR right-wing opposition party sent an envoy to Tehran, a certain Antonelli, do you know him?’ Bornand nods. ‘I haven’t met him, obviously, but I’ve kept a close eye on him. He’s offering the Iranians better loan repayment conditions and arms deals after the RPR wins the March election, providing they refuse to negotiate with us now.’

  ‘The Iranians aren’t stupid. They’re only too aware that the Gaullists have always had a special relationship with Iraq, that they negotiated major arms deals and the contract to build Iraq’s nuclear power station. They can’t rely on pre-election promises.’

  ‘They see the sabotage of the plane as the result of French political infighting …’

  ‘They’re not wrong.’

  ‘… and to be honest, they’ve had enough. In a nutshell, they’re giving you two weeks to progress their demands in a visible and public way, otherwise, they’ll break off all contact until the much heralded election of March ’86. And bye-bye hostages.’

  ‘An ultimatum?’

  ‘Exactly. Can you meet it?’

  Bornand thinks long and hard, his eyes half closed, rubbing the palm of his left hand. A sharp, stimulating pain. Nicolas watches him carefully.

  ‘Well, François?’

  Bornand sits up.

  ‘Two weeks isn’t long.’

  ‘But why, why? You know as well as I do that Iraq is on its last legs and will never pay for the arms we supply. Iran is winning the war financially. There’s a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Tehran, and the Saudis want a war with no winner and no loser. Why the delay? Not to mention the Americans. Or rather yes, let’s mention them. In Tehran, I met Green. His room was next to mine …’

  ‘That can’t be a coincidence …’

  ‘We played poker all night, and he won.’

  ‘A bad sign.’

  ‘They’re going to be stepping up their deliveries of arms to Iran, with the blessing of Saudi Arabia and Israel.’

  ‘But not of the American Congress.’

  Martenot smiles.

  ‘As you can imagine, it didn’t seem to worry Green. And what about us? Why can’t we simply review our policy on Iran? That’s the President’s intention.’

  ‘I know, I know. But political life is becoming paralysed in the run-up to the election.’

  ‘A rather feeble explanation, and you know it.’

  ‘True … Well let’s say there’s a clan-based power system here in France, and a President who is no longer able to arbitrate, to decide, when issues are as complicated as they are in the Middle East …’

  ‘And when there are such huge financial interests at stake. The French arms dealers who’ve invested billions in Iraq know full well that they’ll never be paid if Baghdad loses the war.’

  ‘Naturally, that’s another factor. In other words, it’s hard to get things moving, but I’ll manage it, and that’s a promise. I’m simply saying that two weeks isn’t long enough.’

  Martenot rises.

  ‘It feels like the writing’s on the wall for this government.’

  Bornand smiles.

  ‘There’s an element of that. Trust me.’ He sees Martenot to the door. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

  On the first floor, in the green and white bedroom of Bornand’s mistress, Françoise Michel, Nicolas is reclining naked on the vast white duvet covering the bed. In the centre of the room is the chaise longue, and to the right, the dressing table beneath a giant mirror. Françoise comes in, wearing a green silk tea-gown, tied at the waist, her long, almost straight blonde hair cascading down to her hips. She sashays over to the chaise longue, stops, unties her dress and, turning slowly around, with a languid, deliberate gesture, lets it slide to the floor in a pool of colour and gathers up her hair and twists it into a knot at the base of her neck. She’s the focus of every pair of eyes, in charge, sovereign. The curtains have been drawn across the windows, two uplighters illuminate the ceiling. Nicolas gazes at her sinuous white body in this shadowless light, he loves this exaggerated mise en scène. Bornand’s mistress, stolen, shared. He has a hard-on. She turns to him and stretches out her leg. He kneels before her, removes one white mule and then the other, traces the shape of her foot with his hand, and then her leg, with a precise movement, up to her knee where he places his lips. Her skin is cool and gives off a fragrance of sweet almond. I’m hunting on his ground. His hand moves up to her thigh and he buries his face in her blonde pubic hair, seeks her crotch, finds it soft, alive, a powerful, intense taste. His preserve. He’s gripped by a violent desire. Françoise, present and remote, opens her thighs or pushes him away, grips him, eludes him, derives pleasure from toying with his feelings, she who prides herself in having none, and letting him know it. Only the almost abstract thrill at the spectacle she’s putting on for Bornand, standing behind the two-way mirror. Perhaps.

  And suddenly desire wells up in her belly, completely overwhelms her, submerges her, taking her right out of herself. She wants to scream, bites her lip and draws blood. She grabs Nicolas’s head, jerks him out of her cunt, thrusts his shoulders back, pinning him to the ground, and beats her fists against him, her face masked by her hair that has come loose. She crushes him under her weight, straddles him, moves up and down with fury and hatred, until he comes, trembling and groaning. Then she spits in his face, steps over him, gathers up her green gown and leaves him alone, lying on the floor, breathless, adrift, under the gaze of Bornand, helpless. Nicolas gives a seismic shudder.

  Françoise locks herself in her bathroom. A chill in her bones, her lip swollen, her cunt, her belly painful and throbbing, her heart racing. Was Bornand there, behind the mirror? A growing doubt which spreads outward through sharp stabbing pains in her belly. Guilty. Her heart thumps, blood rushes to her temples. Go back, submit to his dry, authoritarian hand. Her head’s swimming. She runs a hot bath, with lots of foam, slides into it, lights a joint, inhales deeply, her eyes closed, and slowly regains her equilibrium. Above all, don’t try to understand. Forget. Shut out Bornand. At least for the time being. Let your mind go blank. Look forward to a long weekend with the family.

  Wait until tomorrow.

  Noria turns into avenue Jean-Jaurès and heads for the police station, walking very slowly. An unknown woman, not easy to identify. If she’s not identified, it won’t be possible to carry out an inquest. She wasn’t killed on the spot. It’s one hell of a gamble, dumping a body in an open-air public parking lot with a building site nearby. Even after dark, there might be people around. Premise: the murderer acted in a hurry. A body on his hands, nothing planned, got to get rid of it. Premise: in that case, you don’t drive all the way across Paris to throw a body onto the La Villette parking lot. You dump it as nearby as possible. So, it’s [highly?] likely that the woman was killed locally. If she was killed locally, it’s [fair
ly?] likely that she lives or works in the neighbourhood. And in that case, it’s [just?] likely that someone local knows her and might recognise her. She fingers the leather card wallet in her pocket in which she’d tucked the photo of the dead woman next to her cop ID. This is my patch. If that person’s out there, I can find them.

  The 19th arrondissement police headquarters is almost deserted at this hour. No one says a word to her and that suits her fine. Bonfils has already gone home, leaving her a copy of his report. She adds a few lines, looks out a large-scale map of the area, folds it, puts it in her pocket and walks home.

  Rue Piat, halfway down rue de Belleville, is deserted in this freezing weather. The narrow street, its pavements spattered with dirty slush from the melting snow, glistens with a dampness that permeates your lungs. Set back on the left, is a huge social housing block, at least ten storeys high, with a flat, uniform façade, the very worst of urban architecture, typical of the unbridled renovation of the Belleville district begun back in the 1970s. Noria enters the staircase C lobby with its chipped concrete, graffiti and pungent smells. She’s perfectly at home, this is the backdrop to her childhood. She closes her eyes and lets her mind go blank as she crosses the lobby.

  She takes the lift to the eighth floor and opens the door to her studio flat with a sigh of contentment, removes her anorak and boots and walks barefoot over the floorboards to the window. A stunning view over the city spread out below and changing like the sea. Today it is a dull, monotonous grey, bounded to the west by the dark outline of the Meudon forest and Mont Valérien, with Montmartre rising up on the right, directly facing the geometric concrete mass of La Défense. The sky is still light, night slowly envelops the streets and buildings, all’s well with the world.

  She unpins her chignon with a swift movement, letting her glossy black hair tumble over her shoulders. She shakes her head and relishes a wonderful relaxing sensation. She feels almost rested already. Her place, with a mattress on the floor for a bed, covered by heavy burgundy-coloured blanket, a few paperbacks on a metal shelf, her bathtub, a real one, a luxury, and her tiny kitchen. Nobody to monopolise the bathroom, block up the toilet or stop her from reading or lazing around. Or even breathing.

  She removes her clothes, dropping them haphazardly onto the floor, pulls on a shapeless knee-length T-shirt, grabs a packet of biscuits and lies on her stomach on her mattress, pencil in hand with the map of the area spread out on the floor in front of her. This map is alive, Noria has roamed every one of its streets, watching people passing by, keen to catch a look, an expression, a movement, inventing amazing stories for each of them, conducting imaginary conversations, sometimes following them, sometimes recognising them, taming this piece of the city where she works, no longer the solitary outsider. She locates the nerve centres, those intersections where shops, cafés, tobacconists, newspaper kiosks and metro entrances are concentrated, on which the inhabitants of the surrounding streets converge daily along set routes. She traces the catchment area around each of them, the dividing lines whose boundaries are hazy. Rue de Belleville, near where she lives, divided between place des Fêtes, Jourdain and lower Belleville … Barely an hour’s work, recalling her endless walks almost step by step. And now, this is her opportunity. She mustn’t let it slip.

  She stares at her map, daydreams a little. Where to begin? Tomorrow’s Sunday, there’ll be crowds of people at the markets and in the streets where the food shops are concentrated. She pictures the body again. A slim woman, with elaborately manicured hands, despite her grazes, very simple but classy clothes, especially the long, well-cut, cream-coloured raincoat of expensive fabric, and the large pearl, an unusual piece of jewellery. Don’t look in the more working-class parts of the neighbourhood, rather in the upmarket area, around the Buttes Chaumont park. I’ll start in the market on rue de Meaux, and I’ll come back up to the Buttes via Laumière. She feels a sort of elation.

  Françoise has locked herself in upstairs, incommunicado. Bornand, in his drawing room on the ground floor, pours himself a whisky, selects a hash cigarette with a few pinches of angel dust and ensconces himself in his armchair by the log fire. Dreamily he contemplates the statuette of the serpent goddess on the mantelpiece, as her contours become blurred. All he’s aware of are her inlaid eyes and her menacing energy.

  The doorbell clangs and Bornand jumps. He must have dozed off. Antoine has left. He rises and opens the door to Moricet and shows him into the lounge. The same as ever, tall, square, his hair very short, jutting jaw and thin lips, a laid-back street-fighter. He walks over to one of the French windows and glances out at the Eiffel Tower, then warms himself at the fire.

  ‘How was Beirut this morning?’

  ‘Beautiful weather, not as wet as here, and quiet, incredibly quiet since yesterday. Not a shot. It’s surprising.’

  ‘Would you like something to eat or drink?’

  ‘I’d love something, whatever you’ve got to hand. Airline food’s not exactly …’

  Bornand wanders into the kitchen and comes back with smoked salmon sandwiches and vodka, which he sets down on the low table.

  ‘I need you, Jean-Pierre.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  Bornand reflects for a moment, kneading the palm of his left hand which twinges, as if to keep himself awake. Moricet sits on the sofa and bites into a sandwich.

  ‘A plane vanished yesterday in mid-flight over Turkey. It was carrying arms to Iran. A delivery in which I’m implicated and which was financed by the IBL.’ Moricet patiently waits for the rest to follow. ‘I want to know who was behind it.’

  ‘Can’t you guess? Off the top of my head I’d say – and I’m pretty sure I’m right – the Iraqis and their supplier friends in France. Unless I’m mistaken, Thomson, Dassault, Matra, the Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale, practically the entire French arms industry. What do you expect, it’s war. Write it off as a loss.’

  ‘It’s not just a matter of competition between arms dealers. There’s political capital to be made out of this affair here in France. There’s a dossier circulating among the Parisian newspaper editors with evidence of clandestine arms deals with Iran, and I believe that the aim is to destabilise the Socialists before the March election.’

  Moricet gazes at him over his sandwich.

  ‘And you’re likely to lose face as well as money.’

  ‘And I’m going to lose face.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘If I find out exactly who’s behind this campaign, and pin down names, facts, I can try and stop it, or at least negotiate as far as possible, conduct a damage limitation exercise.’

  ‘And what do you want from me?’

  ‘I need to check the reliability of a company in Beirut.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Camoc is based in the Halat airfield district. They carry out repairs and maintenance on all sorts of weapons.’

  ‘I know them.’

  ‘We commissioned them to adapt the American aircraft equipment the Iranians bought from us.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Initial contact in April, implementation two weeks ago, not much more. I’d like to know if the leak could have come from Camoc, and I want the names of those who’ve profited from it.’

  ‘Is it the only possible source?’

  ‘No, of course not. There are people in the know in Paris, at the Defence Ministry, and at the SEA, the electronic equipment firm that acts as a cover for the entire operation. But Camoc’s name is mentioned in the dossier that’s doing the rounds at the moment, whereas in Paris no one’s heard of them, apart from the boss of the SEA and myself.’

  ‘Which carrier did you use?’

  ‘Florida Security Airlines.’

  ‘A CIA company. I don’t know if that’s a security guarantee. But you’ve always liked to have dealings with the Yanks. Hopeless.’

  Bornand closes his eyes and hears Browder, his slightly rasping voice with a strong American accent
: ‘I’m a friend of your father-in-law, François, we need people like you.’ For Bornand, the meaning was clear: people who were there in Vichy, close to the Germans. After the Liberation, he’d had to keep a low profile, and this felt like a rehabilitation.’

  ‘That’s my generation, Jean-Pierre, not yours. I was twenty years old in ’45. The Americans came to save us from the Communists, and de Gaulle to boot. I’ve been working with them since 1947. A leopard doesn’t change its spots.’

  Moricet shrugs.

  ‘The fact remains that it’s still conceivable they could be the source of the leaks. They’re also targeting the Iranian market. I wouldn’t put it past them to resort to dirty tricks.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The CIA’s in trouble at the moment. Congress is undergoing a crisis of authority, McFarlane has just been booted off the Security Council. It has absolutely nothing to gain from drawing attention to its own clandestine Iranian arms-dealing networks.’

  ‘Possibly. You’re the boss.’

  A long silence.

  ‘We need to move fast, Jean-Pierre. I’ll take charge of the French side of things. That leaves Camoc. There’s no way information on it can be coming out of France.’

  ‘Fine.’ Moricet rises, stretches, goes round in a circle and sits down again, his elbows on his knees. ‘Fine, I’ll go and dig around. The usual rate?’

  Sunday 1 December

  Noria gingerly pats her police ID in her anorak pocket, like a talisman, and starts her beat at the bottom of rue de Meaux, a street lined with shops between Jaurès and Laumière, no more than a stone’s throw from porte de Pantin via avenue Jean-Jaurès, a narrow street where the shops are wedged together. The fine weather’s returned, bringing with it a dry, bracing cold. The whole street’s in a good mood. She starts off at a greengrocer’s, open onto the street, with colourful pyramids of fruit and vegetables reflected in a series of mirrors; the vendors keep up their cheery sales patter and greet their regulars, the customers crowd into the shop stretching the length of the pavement, carrying huge baskets on their arms, taking their time to choose. Today is Sunday.