Children of War

by Martin Walker

  ‘No, and I don’t know what you mean by de-tox.’

  ‘De-toxification, using Islam to persuade jihadists of the error of their ways.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘In some cases, but it’s slow,’ she said. ‘The fact is, we’re groping in this world, so we’ll try anything.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re groping with Sami. I mean, he’s doing his best to help.’

  ‘That’s why it’s so frustrating to sit around this place while the tribunal gives him Rorschach tests or whatever they do. I’ve got a whole lot more mugshots sent over that I can’t wait to try on him. As it is, I’m going stir-crazy here.’

  She stopped, let go of his arm and turned to face him. ‘You know this area. Where should we go for dinner? Your favourite place, my treat, or at least, Uncle Sam’s treat.’ Her face had that impish look again.

  ‘Well, there is one thing I was hoping to do this evening, if the Brigadier lets me out,’ said Bruno, smiling. ‘It might make it easier if I’m taking you. But it will be very noisy, very French, a lot of people, many of them good friends, and a lot of wine. It’s the vendange supper at the local vineyard, to celebrate the end of the harvest. And I should warn you that Gilles will probably be there, if he finishes writing in time. Have you ever eaten fresh-roasted wild boar?’

  19

  The smell of roasting meat grew stronger as Bruno and Nancy walked down the long avenue, already lined with parked cars, that led to the Domaine. Bruno had little choice but to leave his Land Rover by the entrance gate, a long stroll from the winery where the vendange party was being held. It gave him time to explain to Nancy how the vineyard had been saved from financial trouble by the Mayor’s plan to raise cash by selling shares to the citizens of St Denis. Since shareholders, who included Bruno, were given discount prices, they then from self-interest and loyalty became the best customers.

  ‘The party’s late this year, so the grapes will already have been pressed,’ he explained. ‘They had to rush the picking because of the weather. So you won’t be able to taste the fresh grape juice.’

  ‘And is the wine you make here good?’ she asked, turning her head to look at him as they talked, and sounding genuinely interested.

  She was looking splendid, with that easy style that comes from deep self-confidence. Nancy was wearing a red roll-neck sweater, a leather jacket and jeans tucked into knee-high brown boots. Her dark hair fell in natural curls, flattering her rather square jaw with its slightly prominent chin. Except for her generous lips and eyes that were lively with intelligence, Bruno would have thought it a face too strong for beauty. But there was something special about her, perhaps the proud way she carried her head or the way she took part so easily in the male world of politics and security. Whatever it was, he knew he’d remember this woman.

  ‘Tell me when you’ve tasted it,’ he answered her. ‘It will be last year’s wine and I think Julien usually does better with his whites, but it’s all very drinkable. It may not compare with the fine wines you drink on the diplomatic circuit in Paris.’

  ‘Some of the embassies, you’d be surprised,’ she said, grinning. ‘And if you knew what we used to drink in college, you’d be appalled.’

  ‘Do you know Bergerac wines?’ He raised his voice over the growing sounds of revelry as they approached the winery.

  ‘You bet,’ she said. ‘Isabelle made a point of serving them at her place. That was the first time I had foie gras with Monbazillac. And there was another, a red that she said was one of your favourites, named after some baron who was always drawing his glove to challenge people to duels.’

  ‘Château de Tiregand,’ Bruno said, smiling, and privately touched to think of Isabelle shopping around the wine caves of Paris to find wines to which he’d introduced her.

  They rounded the corner to see the golden stone of the inner courtyard turned into a rosy pink by the glow from the giant firepit on which the boars were roasting. When the twilight gave way to the dark of night, Bruno knew the whole scene would turn a rich red as the ashes smouldered. He felt the strange sensation stealing over him of time slipping, of the modern France of high-speed trains and computers giving way to a scene that was almost medieval or perhaps even older. The setting of stone and fire and meat roasting over an open fire could have taken place in this valley in days when men carried swords and wore chain mail and kept guard against English raiders, or millennia ago when they wore furs and painted prehistoric beasts on the walls of caves.

  ‘Wow, we could be back with the knights of the round table,’ said Nancy, squeezing his arm. ‘This is great. You ought to sell tickets.’

  He shook his head. ‘This is just for us locals. It’s all done by volunteers. For this to work, people need to know each other.’

  ‘Then I’m honoured,’ she replied. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’ She paused. ‘I just realized, there’s no music.’

  ‘Not now, when people are greeting and talking and tasting the wine. But there’ll be dancing later, after the food.’

  The courtyard was half-filled by four long rows of tables, lit by ranks of hurricane lamps and candles in glass jars. Places were set for thirty or forty people at each one and one large crowd was milling around a makeshift bar where big jugs were being filled from barrels of wine. A second crowd was standing back from the heat at the great fire as men with wet towels round their hands wrestled to lift one of the long metal spits. The weight of the wild boar bowed it slightly as they carried it to another set of tables where two men in white aprons were already carving the first of the roasted boar.

  ‘Where the hell have you been, Bruno?’ called Stéphane jovially, waving one of the big carving knives.

  Raoul clapped him on the shoulder, put a wet towel in his hand and barely giving him time to introduce Nancy to Stéphane, led the way to the third boar. Bruno helped lift the beast from the blasting heat to carry it, still dripping fat, to the carving tables. He apologized to his friends, saying duty had called him away. He was sorry to have missed the usual ritual of building the fire, stuffing the boar with thyme and sage, sewing up the belly and then sliding the beast onto the roasting spit. Usually it was Bruno who concocted the bucket of marinade, herbs, wine and honey. They applied it with long brushes made of thick branches of rosemary tied around a pole. It always reminded Bruno of a witch’s broom.

  ‘I was going to save you a wee dram, but they finished off the bottle,’ said Dougal, coming to give Bruno a welcoming hug. Dougal had launched St Denis’s new tradition of baptizing the beasts with a splash of whisky just before they were placed atop the fire. The men who had built the fire and dressed the boar then finished the bottle.

  Dougal took Bruno’s arm and turned him aside. ‘When can we get the insurance inspectors into Le Pavillon?’

  ‘Up to the Gendarmes,’ Bruno said. ‘Trust me, it will be taken care of.’

  Julien approached, bringing two large water glasses filled with wine. Bruno took them and turned to find Nancy and saw her standing with Fabiola and being introduced to Pamela, Florence and Annette, a young magistrate based in Sarlat. He was pleased to see that Yveline, the Gendarme officer, had joined them. Her unpopular predecessor, Capitaine Duroc, had seldom bothered to attend any of the civic festivities that meant so much in the life of St Denis. Bruno excused himself from his friends and went to join the women and hand Nancy her glass.

  ‘I’m celebrating,’ said Pamela, kissing him enthusiastically. ‘My brace is finally off and Fabiola says I can start riding again tomorrow. When do you get a day off to come and see the new horse I’m hoping to buy?’

  Nancy seized the cue and began an animated discussion about horses, but Bruno noted that as soon as Pamela spoke, Nancy withdrew a fraction, observing Pamela in the way cops were trained to do. Watchful more than curious, there was a cool detachment in Nancy’s gaze. Bruno thought Isabelle might have told her of Pamela as the Mad Englishwoman, that old nickname for her that the people of St Denis had first coine
d before they came to know her.

  Nancy and Isabelle must have been closer than he’d assumed, Bruno thought as he felt a friendly hand grip his arm to draw him to one side. Hubert de Montignac, whose local wine shop regularly made the Hachette list as one of the best caves in France, handed him a glass of red.

  ‘It’s the new one Julien and I started making last year, leaving the juice in the vat with the skins,’ Hubert said. Bruno had hoped the wine would benefit from Hubert’s expertise. ‘We kept it six months in a barrel. What do you think?’

  His eyes still on the unspoken interplay between the women, Bruno sniffed; the smell of fruit was stronger than usual but there was a deeper note in the scent, a hint of maturity. He sipped, and opened his eyes in surprise. It was markedly better than the reds Julien had made in the past.

  ‘That’s a good wine,’ Bruno said. ‘It can’t just be the barrel. There’s more Merlot in this.’

  ‘Half and half Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, plus about five per cent Cabernet Franc; it’s what we plan to make this year.’

  It had been a good harvest, Hubert went on. Having invested most of his savings in the town vineyard, Bruno was delighted to hear that St Denis was now producing a wine of which he could be proud. Bruno led Hubert back to the women, who were still talking enthusiastically about horses, and Hubert began pouring another bottle of his new red for them to try. Bruno excused himself to make a brief tour of the crowd, shaking hands and kissing cheeks and ducking questions about the explosion at Le Pavillon. He was looking for the Mayor. Finally he found him coming out of the door to the Domaine’s big kitchen, carrying a big pot filled with roast potatoes.

  ‘More pots to bring, Bruno,’ the Mayor called, and Bruno helped him take out the rest and then pulled him to one side.

  ‘Things are about to get busy,’ Bruno said quietly. ‘The news about Sami being here will break tonight and we’ll be flooded with media tomorrow.’

  ‘Not just media,’ the Mayor said. ‘We’re likely to get political demos, Front National, anti-war types, Islamic groups. I had a word with the Prefect about bringing in extra Gendarmes and putting the CRS on standby.’

  The Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité were the much-feared riot police, with helmets, shields and body armour that made them look like bodyguards for some alien species. Bruno understood the need for them but winced at the thought of their patrolling the streets of St Denis.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ the Mayor said when a figure slipped from the light of the kitchen. As she paused to blink into the darkness where the two men stood, Bruno saw the silhouette of a woman in a well-cut dress, wearing flat-heeled shoes, her grey hair flowing. He recognized the half-French, half-American historian who had become close to the Mayor after his wife died.

  ‘Jacqueline,’ Bruno said, embracing her with real affection and catching a hint of Chanel. ‘I thought you’d be back teaching in Paris.’

  ‘I am,’ she said, hugging him. ‘I came down for the weekend, for this. There’s a rumour going round that you have a new woman in tow, an American like me. You must introduce us.’

  ‘Gladly, but she’s hardly in tow, just a colleague. In fact, she’s talking horses with Pamela and Fabiola. She’s at the Embassy, a legal attaché.’

  ‘So I don’t need to ask what brings her here,’ Jacqueline replied, frowning. ‘I might have known you’d be involved with this poor devil they’re calling the Engineer. I presume your old friend the Brigadier has stashed him here.’

  Bruno glanced at the Mayor, who shrugged and then shook his head, as if to say he’d told Jacqueline nothing. Bruno knew her to be a formidable woman, as perceptive as she was curious and with a fierce intelligence. Jacqueline was even more passionate about politics than his Mayor, and Bruno always felt he should have read every word in Le Monde for a week before joining them for dinner.

  ‘He hasn’t been stashed anywhere,’ Bruno said, mildly. ‘His name is Sami and this is his home and he’s as French as I am, thanks to the Mayor, who signed his naturalization papers.’

  ‘Hmm, you could pay for that,’ Jacqueline said thoughtfully, glancing at the Mayor, ‘unless you lead the fight to stop his extradition.’ The sound of a handbell rang out over the chatter and Julien climbed onto a chair, still tolling his bell until it was quiet enough for him to say a brief word of welcome and invite them all to take their seats for dinner.

  Bruno found himself surrounded by women – Jacqueline and Florence, Yveline and Nancy, Pamela and Fabiola, who kept an empty chair beside her in case Gilles was able to join them. A generous slice of game pâté, with cornichons and cherry tomatoes, lay on each plate as a starter. A large dish, filled with thick slices of roast boar, dominated the table. It was flanked by a large bowl of salad and another of roast potatoes. Magnums of red and white wine stood beside jugs filled with a thick sauce of cèpe mushrooms.

  Bruno looked around the tables and pondered the menu with an almost professional eye, honed from many a rugby and tennis club dinner. The benches and tables and crockery had been borrowed from the clubs, he recognized. Hubert had probably provided the wine glasses; the clubs usually made do with water glasses and even recycled mustard and jam jars. Had Bruno been involved, he’d have tried to provide a soup as a starter, probably with the cèpes, since the woods would be full of them after the rain. Still, for a first effort at a vendange for this many people Julien had organized this well, he thought, as he poured wine and the Mayor began slicing a big round tourte of bread.

  And the white wine he had drunk had been more than decent, with some Semillon added to Julien’s usual Sauvignon Blanc grapes. The red wine being served was not up to the standard of the barrel-aged wine Hubert had poured, but it went well with the pâté and was sturdy enough for the boar.

  ‘Do you have this dinner every year?’ Nancy asked. She had been chatting with Annette about rally-driving, Annette’s passion. Bruno had a hair-raising memory of driving with the young magistrate headlong along a wooded track, convinced she was about to crash them head-first into a tree at every bend.

  ‘No, this is the first vendange since it became a town business,’ he told her. ‘Everyone here you see is a shareholder, getting a return on our investment. Some of them took part in picking the grapes, and I’d have joined them if this other business hadn’t come up.’

  ‘You mean Sami,’ said Yveline. ‘Fabiola told us all about it. And who is this guy Deutz?’

  ‘He’s with the medical tribunal trying to decide whether Sami is fit to stand trial,’ Nancy said, before Bruno could frame his answer. He’d been looking for Fabiola but her chair was empty. She must have slipped away.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Nancy went on.

  ‘He’s a lot more than that,’ Annette interrupted. ‘Fabiola froze when Yveline mentioned his name, like there’s something personal there.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Florence. ‘There’s something not right about this, Bruno. What do you know about him?’

  Before he could speak Nancy said, ‘Deutz freaked earlier today when Fabiola showed up.’

  Pamela caught Bruno’s eye and seemed about to speak when a cheerful shout of greeting interrupted them and Gilles appeared to slap Bruno on the shoulder, Fabiola looking happy with his arm around her. That was where she’d gone, Bruno realized. Gilles must have texted her that he was arriving. Gilles nodded amiably to Nancy and then darted around the table to kiss Florence and then Pamela.

  ‘I need a word,’ he said, coming back to Bruno and almost hauling him to his feet and then tugging him away from the courtyard. Bruno saw that Fabiola’s eyes followed Gilles fondly before she turned back to her friends. He wondered if that conversation would continue now that Fabiola had joined them.

  ‘My story is running on our wire and my tweet has gone viral,’ Gilles said and held up his phone. Messages were racing past on the screen. ‘That’s my Twitter account, people responding and tweeting it on. They’re coming in too fast to see, I’ve never seen an
ything like this.’

  ‘Do I congratulate you?’ Bruno asked. He knew little of Twitter and thought life was too short to spend more time than he had to looking at a phone or computer screen.

  ‘This is not about me, it’s the story. I’m late because I had to stop the car three times on the way here, doing phone interviews for France-Inter, the BBC and Agence France-Presse. We’ve got requests from al-Jazeera and CNN. Everybody wants some of this.’

  Bruno glanced back to the long tables in the courtyard where Nancy was climbing from her seat. She began walking toward them, her phone to her ear.

  ‘Not just you,’ Bruno replied to Gilles, but then something happened that rocked him.

  Nancy was advancing toward him in that graceful, assertive way she had, still listening to her phone but with her eyes fixed intently on his. Out of the blue he felt a jolt of sexual energy pass between them that was so powerful he felt suddenly out of breath. He saw her eyes widen and her mouth open and she stopped dead in her tracks, her shoulders back and her breasts thrusting forward. She was still staring at him and Bruno was suddenly certain that she felt this same intense rush of attraction.

  He felt like leaping to take her in his arms, but something kept him rooted to the spot. He found cautionary thoughts erupting in his mind. One of them seemed to say Pamela and another said Isabelle, a third said Nancy was an American official and a fourth said half the town was present here and yet another said there was no future in this intense surge of passion.

  Nancy swallowed, seemed to collect herself, dropped her eyes and half turned to concentrate on her phone call. Gilles’s phone was ringing again and then Bruno’s mobile began to vibrate. He felt drained, his mouth dry. Whatever this erotic rush had been he felt it passing. He took a deep breath, checked the screen and saw it was Philippe Delaron. Reluctantly, he answered.