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Son of France

Page 12

by Todd Babiak


  His right side was getting quite wet, as Joseph talked with his hands and the umbrella did not remain in place. Monsieur Claude pulled up in the Mercedes, got out, and opened the door for them.

  Kruse was sure Réné Chatel had not done it himself. Why would a politician and tier-three media star hire someone to toss a couple of grenades into a restaurant? Communists in France weren’t typically racist. The legislative elections were finished. The mayor of Nancy had been popular and their patron was certainly powerful, but both men were instantly replaceable. To think eliminating one or both of them would harm or cripple Gaullism or even French conservatism seemed absurd.

  Monsieur Claude pulled up in front of the apartment on Avenue Bosquet. Kruse thanked him for going out of his way, and Monsieur Claude stated it was, as ever, an honour to have him in the car.

  “My friend.” Joseph squeezed his forearm. “It’s a time to celebrate.”

  Kruse had nothing to celebrate: Tzvi was in pain on the Atlantic coast of Spain and every time he tried to sleep he was haunted by the faces of the young men he had killed in the hacienda. “One thing, Joseph.”

  “Yes, my friend?”

  “I asked Zoé about Annette and Anouk. As you know, I didn’t do this for the money.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m a murderer. Tzvi lost his arm. So I wanted to know, is it over? Are they safe now?”

  “And what did she say?”

  “I expect you know what she said.”

  Joseph leaned back in the seat of the Mercedes. “She hires assassins but she wouldn’t think of threatening a woman and her daughter. Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, maybe you are finished. Maybe you aren’t. But I’d get that part straight with them.”

  “But they never said it. That’s what I realized.”

  “Said what?”

  “That Annette and Anouk were in danger if I didn’t take the job. It was you, Joseph. You said it.”

  Joseph prepared to answer and then turned away, as though his response were interrupted by something more important.

  “Who am I working for? This woman? The mayor? You? Someone else?”

  Joseph looked up at the rear-view mirror and Monsieur Claude understood it was time to exit the car. He walked around to open the door.

  Kruse went into the bakery, his bakery, which smelled almost like home, and bought a baguette. It was the middle of the afternoon. The woman in Voyages du Septième was staring out the window. Soon he would have business for her.

  NINE

  Rue du Louvre, Paris

  ONE OF MAGASECURE’S NEW YORK CLIENTS WAS A SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD architect whose life had transformed, overnight, when she designed a glass office tower in London. Her instant fame was not of the enviable sort. Londoners despised the tower so much she received forty imaginative death threats the week after it opened. She was so nervous all she could do in the fall of 1988 was walk around New York with Kruse, arm in arm, teaching him about architecture. Thanks to her, Kruse knew the offices of Le Figaro, in a prosperous quarter of the city north and east of the Palais-Royal, were art deco.

  Number 37, Rue du Louvre was thin, the colour of vanilla pudding, with scooters and motorcycles parked on either side. Kruse waited in the lobby for the editorialist to come down. Étienne Bonnet was ten minutes late. Most people in France were late, though of course they would say ten minutes late counted as early. If you threw a dinner party and wanted people to come at an appointed hour you would add “English Time” to your invitation.

  A tiny elevator opened eighteen minutes after English Time and Étienne greeted Kruse with a broad smile, called him jeune homme as though they had gone to college together. The editorialist was not alone. Men and women in dark business suits and dresses were watching. He briefly introduced his American friend Christophe Kruse and explained that the group with him had just met with the editorial board of Le Figaro: they were newly elected members of an exciting political party called the Union for French Democracy.

  “Congratulations.” Kruse softly shook their hands. He was learning the French grip: gentle, with all the masculine competitiveness buried in other gestures. “But I’m actually Canadian.”

  “With that accent?” said a beautiful woman whose eyes had been stretched into severity by plastic surgery.

  “Some of us in Canada grow up speaking English.”

  On their way out, the politicians enlightened one another with anecdotes about the difference between North America and America. Étienne led Kruse through a door and up a set of marble stairs. Now that they were alone, they stopped acting.

  “Fifteen minutes. That’s all, Christophe. I have a deadline.”

  “It’s all I need.”

  “And a social tip. You’re the only one in Europe who cares about the distinction between America and Canada. Just let it go.”

  “Thank you, Étienne.”

  “Did you shave with a machete?”

  Even on stairs, Étienne carried himself as though photographers were chronicling his adventures. His movements were majestic and unnecessary. He opened doors with a flourish, lifted his chin.

  The library was on the third floor of the old building, lit by a chandelier. Table lamps warmed the newsroom. The desks, the floor, and the shelves were a marriage of dark wood and gold. A man in an unfashionably tight-fitting suit slumped at a workstation with a computer, a microfiche reader, and a pile of foreign newspapers. The air about him smelled of corned beef.

  Étienne invited Kruse to sit by the window. “I assume this is about Annette.”

  “Actually—”

  “It’s been difficult to concentrate, I admit. I have been imagining, all morning, that you’ve finally schemed up a satisfying way to blackmail me. Let me tell you this, before you begin. You can tell her anything you like about me. It won’t matter. And here’s why, my naive American friend—”

  “It’s about Réné Chatel.”

  At first it seemed Étienne did not hear. Then as his mind processed what Kruse had said, his face mirrored doubt, confusion, revelation, skepticism, confusion again.

  “I would like to hear how Annette and Anouk are doing, of course.”

  Étienne spoke in a quiet monotone. “They’re fine, I think. Nothing to report. How do you . . . Christophe—what exactly do you do?”

  “I’m in the security business.”

  “This is what I thought. So why would you be interested in Réné Chatel? You do mean Chatel the communist.”

  “Yes.”

  “What, is he a client?” Étienne said client the way a Canadian would say communist. He did not have to work. His parents did not have to work. His grandfather had made enough money for several generations to coast on interest, as long as they had been somewhat careful about investments. He did work, in a job that paid much more in prestige and influence than in salary. It was almost honourable.

  Kruse did not like to speak to Étienne any more than he liked to break into his apartment. But he didn’t know many people in Paris outside his government clients, Joseph, and the people who sold him bread and coffee and salad. He had little choice.

  “I’m doing work for another client and Monsieur Chatel has come up.”

  “As what?”

  “Someone to investigate. I want to know more about him, that’s all. At the library, when I searched him, Le Figaro came up many times. I saw that you had written rather a bit about Monsieur Chatel.”

  “He’s a maniac.”

  Kruse looked down at his notepad. This was certainly information, though not useful enough to write down. “You’ve known him a long time.”

  “We went to school together. Our parents knew each other.”

  “He grew up wealthy?”

  “Like most devoted communists, yes, he grew up in a wealthy family. Then his father was taken in a Ponzi scheme based in London. We were in high school together when it all fell apart. They lost everything and more.”
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  “A good high school?”

  He smiled. “Lycée Janson de Sailly.”

  “The best.”

  “I would say so.”

  “This must have been humiliating for the Chatels.”

  “The family moved to Nantes. None of us heard from Réné until he showed up in the National Assembly—a communist! The first communist jansonien, I would think. And his undignified television interviews. He was always a clown but today I wonder if perhaps he has suffered a mental crisis.” Étienne paused long enough to blink a couple of times. “What is the nature of your investigation?”

  “Do you think Monsieur Chatel could be dangerous?”

  “To French politics? No. What did the communists get in the legislative elections? They’re as relevant as the Berlin Wall. Even they aren’t crazy enough to make Réné leader. Besides, he lost his seat.”

  “I don’t mean dangerous economic policies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could he hurt someone?”

  Étienne took in a long breath and exhaled thoughtfully, one of his tics. It was designed, Kruse thought, to hold his attention. “I remember saying to my editor-in-chief, after Réné and I had last spoken, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in our pages very soon, and not for his political observations.” Étienne spoke without any of the irony or grandeur he tended to carry with him. “The fall of the Soviet Union has been hard on him, I would say. And we’re already dealing with a fragile mind. So yes. I would even say I predicted it.”

  “When did you last speak?”

  “Two months ago, perhaps—just before the election. He wanted to have lunch. I don’t know why. He knows Le Figaro would never, in one hundred million years, publish a positive editorial about the Parti Communiste.”

  “Was he worried he’d lose his seat?”

  “He was resigned to it. Of course, there was a right-wing conspiracy against him. This is what he wanted me to write about, a systematic effort by the Office of the Mayor and by the Gaullists to destroy him.”

  “Just him?”

  “The party in general. But of course, he sees himself as the party. L’état, c’est lui.”

  “He mentioned the mayor. Anyone else in particular?”

  “The mayor wants to create a coalition of centrist and centre-right political parties, as I’m sure you know as a devoted reader of Le Figaro. But that isn’t enough, according to Réné. The mayor will not be satisfied until he and his people destroy the Left forever.”

  “Would you say he was obsessed with the mayor?”

  “I would say that.”

  “And at the end of this meeting you worried about him.”

  “For his sanity, yes.”

  Kruse sat back in his chair, looked down over the quiet street below. Two adolescent girls in school uniforms walked arm in arm. One of them carried a leash and a small dog pranced ahead. He could not stop playing his game: one of the girls, the one with the dog, was Lily. She had done so well in school that he had rewarded her with what she had wanted for years: a Yorkshire terrier.

  “Can I help you in some way, Christophe?”

  “You can help me find him.”

  “This is not . . . you’ve not been hired to harm Réné?”

  “No.”

  “If there’s a story here, you have to tell me first. If he’s done something. Yes?”

  “There’s no story.”

  Étienne stood up and walked past the researcher, who sighed loudly. On his way back Étienne whispered something to the man, which seemed to placate him. “We’re hiring interns from the provinces now, to ‘broaden our voice.’ This one’s from a ridiculous little town in Franche-Comté. It used to be enough that we ate their cheese. Now we have to endure their inbred sons and daughters.”

  As ever with Étienne, Kruse reached a point where all he wanted to do was throw him out the nearest window. The editorialist slid a business card across the table. It was Réné Chatel’s National Assembly card with a phone number, written in ink, across the top.

  “You didn’t get it from me. I wouldn’t call him a source, but I don’t want word getting around that I can’t be trusted.”

  “Oh I’m sure most people know that.”

  Étienne extended his hand for a shake. “Would you like another social tip?”

  “Let me guess. Stop breaking into your house.”

  They were still shaking hands. Étienne pulled his away and wiped it on his pants. “You lost her. I won. Look at yourself, Christophe. It isn’t just your latest wound. When did you last sleep? Perhaps you could stand in the sun from time to time, or smile, or simply work to make someone in your presence feel good.”

  If Kruse wanted to confide in Étienne he might say he was quite certain he had seen ghosts of the men he had killed in Spain walking across the floor of his bedroom last night. They did not speak. The dead men were confused, searching for something they had lost. Kruse was a man in his thirties hiding under his covers.

  • • •

  His first thought, when he saw the man in the atrium of Le Figaro, was that he was homeless. The receptionist was simply being kind, allowing him a respite from the rain. But it was not raining. The homeless man, in a wrinkled grey suit and what appeared to be a bunch of garbage bags stitched into an overcoat, stood up and waved.

  “Mr. Kruse, hello. I was hoping to introduce myself.” The man spoke English with an American accent: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. “Raymond Peach.”

  “Hello, Mr. Peach.”

  It was a different sort of handshake: unnecessarily strong, a return to the New World.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “You’re investigating folks. I’m investigating you. It’s a simple thing, really. And I figured, just now, instead of following you around and sniffing where you piss, maybe I’ll just come clean and introduce myself. I’m an employee of an organization called the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “I believe I’ve heard of it.”

  “Have you? Well.” Peach had a wild mess of grey-blond hair, whorled in a nest on the otherwise bald top of his head. “For the last couple of years I’ve been here in the hexagon, like you I think, Mr. Kruse, learning how to be French. My counterparts, the DGSE, gave me a little office to call my own. You familiar with them?”

  “Direction générale de la . . .”

  “Very good. All these goddamn French acronyms. De la sécurité extérieure. They’ve got me on Boulevard Mortier. There’s a lot of streets in Paris, and this one ain’t nowhere pretty. Way out by the ring road. I don’t understand what makes it a boulevard. Anyway, shit.”

  Kruse had dealt with the CIA in New York, in Washington, once in New Orleans. If MagaSecure work ever crossed into their territory, they would show up and ask them out for cocktails in a hotel bar and threaten them with hearty smiles on their faces. Tzvi, who had worked for so long in Mossad and knew the tricks, generally did all of the talking. All of the insulting. Agent Peach was a couple of inches taller than Kruse, and portly. He had the air of a slow-moving man who was briefly quick; in high school, perhaps, when he had played offensive tackle. One thing he had learned from Tzvi was to not initiate conversation.

  Raymond Peach smiled a dimple into his cheek. “Can I take you for a drink?”

  “I’m not much of a drinker, Agent Peach.”

  “Yes, I know that about you. But you’re willing to break that rule from time to time, aren’t you? Come on, just a quick one.”

  People in France didn’t do this: pressure each other to go for a drink. Non was no. And the agent was only pretending. Kruse had the choice, he could say no, but Agent Peach would make things difficult for him. He and Tzvi had never turned them down, but they had tried to learn more, in each of the meetings, than the CIA learned from them.

  “There’s a nice little brasserie at the end of the street.” Peach led him out the door. “The barmaid dresses like an actual barmaid. One of those poofy white shirts unbuttoned a
bit low, and a short black dress. It’ll be a scream.”

  The brasserie was a point on a busy intersection. All the way, jaywalking when they could, Peach talked about Canada. He had a sister in Edmonton who worked as an engineer—a lady engineer!—and absolutely loved hockey. “A girl from Mississippi who talks only of hockey. The Oilers lose and she’s goddamn distraught. Whoever could have figured that? But she couldn’t get away from home fast enough. It was tough, growing up the way we did, in that time. So many changes! I’m all for change now. This is my sixth foreign posting. But when you’re eleven and you see and feel and hear, right in front of you and in all the newspapers, that everything your parents taught you was wrong, or at least half wrong, boy, Mr. Kruse, it does something to you.”

  Agent Peach lacked the reserve of other CIA agents he had known. But Kruse had never met with the CIA after killing people. Maybe this was a technique, what they do before they arrest you.

  “Change doesn’t know it’s being cruel, does it? You lost a daughter. You lost a daughter and a wife, am I right, Mr. Kruse?”

  “Yes.”

  Peach opened the door of the brasserie. It was busy and smoky inside, in the middle of the morning. The bar chairs were taken by retired men drinking petit blanc. Only the rich could retire this young in Canada. Kruse nearly said so, to test the mood, as it was surely just as true in Mississippi. Peach had been right about the bartender. She dressed in what seemed to be historical clothes. Perhaps it was a theme bar. Would they arrest him in a theme bar? They sat at a booth against the cool window.

  “You must be wondering, why me?”

  Kruse shrugged.

  “We got a bit of a file on you and on your man Tzvi Meisels. A bit of a file! It’s our job to have files, of course. But your move to France. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, going through the information. What were you planning to do here?”

  “Bake bread. Make wine. Sell cheese.”

  “Seriously?”

  “My wife wanted me to change my life. Get out of security.”

  “That’s Evelyn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now: what happened to your beloved wife, Mr. Kruse?”

 

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