So Leon’s arrest was a subject of conversation around here. Of course that wasn’t so surprising, particularly not after the attention the TEF had attracted. Once this Chen business was over, I’d find out who was responsible for that. Probably some young rookie who liked to talk big – ‘Hey, let’s try out our super new jalopy!’
I tipped the espresso and Calvados down my throat. I felt a pang every time I thought of Leon. What terrible timing! If only I’d found out about Chen’s links with terrorism a week earlier, I’d never have grassed on Leon. What did catching one little potential drug dealer mean compared to unmasking Chen? And I certainly wouldn’t have been the first Ashcroft agent to stop a friend doing something stupid with a few quiet words of warning.
Well, there was no way I could change things now. But that made it all the more important to catch Chen. Obviously that wasn’t a logical train of thought, really just more of a feeling that nabbing Chen was, in a way, a kind of apology for turning Leon in. Or at least Leon’s arrest could be seen in a wider, more important context than just an unsuccessful artist looking for a way out of his financial difficulties, and an unsuccessful Ashcroft agent needing to up his success rate. Maybe Leon’s arrest, leaving me under great emotional and mental pressure, was what I needed to help me see through Chen?
I looked at the glass door to the courtyard, and when I heard Alexi hacking away I poured myself another Calvados.
Or was there something else at work inside me, something quite different? A strange, unjust, unfathomable secret feeling that I didn’t want to know about? A feeling that scared even me? So much so that I didn’t dare to think it out clearly?
I emptied the cup of Calvados in a single draught.
If so, then my feeling was unjust! Couldn’t that happen to anyone? Wasn’t I a human being? Wasn’t I allowed to have feelings? And were feelings always just? What’s more, whether or not I had such a feeling, it didn’t alter anything for anyone. It was simply there, inside me. And there inside me it said: Chen must pay for Leon’s arrest! Or in other words: if Leon was in jail, and it was my doing, I couldn’t let a man like Chen run around free!
I stopped my thoughts short, then suddenly smiled with relief, and next moment I shook my head. Tormenting myself like this! Over nothing but an understandable if childish wish to make up for something done wrong by doing something right.
What a little bleeding heart I was! Chen would have laughed himself silly at me – and then gone back to strapping explosives to suicide bombers.
Soon afterwards the butcher delivered fresh black pudding and liver sausage. A little later Ravelli the head chef and Maurice the kitchen assistant arrived. I discussed the lunch menu with Ravelli – a dozen raw mussels as a starter, then the two kinds of sausage served with sauerkraut and new potatoes, a lavender cream for dessert – and I invented an appointment which was going to keep me away from the restaurant all afternoon and probably all evening too.
‘On the trail, boss?’ asked Ravelli, grinning. ‘The fox hunting chickens again?’
‘Hmhm,’ I said, putting on my knowing smile that said a gentleman kisses but never tells. And I left the kitchen.
Sometimes I wondered whether my staff laughed at me behind my back. But I couldn’t really imagine it. They were all nice lads, and they were well off working for me. And who’d risk getting on the wrong side of his boss for the sake of a joke? They probably really did think I was a bit of a playboy, and to be honest I liked the idea of that a lot better than if they’d shown that they were concerned about my private life, or even pitied me.
By now there was a large heap of hacked-off ivy in the middle of the courtyard, and Alexi had almost cleared two of the four walls.
‘It was worth buying that axe,’ I called from the doorway.
Alexi turned, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and said appreciatively, ‘That’s one hell of a tool! You could split a cow with it!’
Split a cow? What on earth made him think of that?
‘Well, mind you don’t hurt yourself. And when you’re through, leave the axe…’ I thought for a moment. ‘You’d better leave it over there behind the barbecue. Not that anyone’s going to find it and do something silly with it.’
‘What kind of something silly, boss?’
‘Well…’ The questions that lad asked! ‘Well, you said yourself you could split a cow with it. Suppose a customer’s had too much to drink – anyway, I don’t want the axe simply lying around, understand?’
‘Sure, boss. I’ll leave it behind the barbecue.’
I cast a brief glance around the dining room. The kitchen assistant had laid the tables now, everything was as it should be, and I wished Ravelli and the boy good luck for lunchtime.
When I had gone out into the stairwell through the back door, I stood still for a moment, breathing deeply. This was it. Everything inside me said that I was going to bring Chen down today.
6
My apartment was right above Chez Max. I’d negotiated the whole set-up over fifteen years ago when the Ashcroft recruiting officers approached me. After countless spells as a waiter, snack-bar manager and chef, I wanted my own restaurant, plus an apartment, and I already knew the very place for it. How often I’d sat under the plane trees in the quiet park on the Rue du Général Guilhem during my free time, looking up at the well-maintained, attractively decorated old building, thinking: what a wonderful place for an elegant restaurant, slightly out of the way, and how good it would be to live right above it. Max Schwarzwald’s own little kingdom.
I signed on for life with the Ashcroft agency, and two weeks later renovation work began on the rooms of the former laundry on the ground floor.
Now, as I closed the door of the apartment behind me, I thought briefly of the feelings that had buoyed me up back then. My professional dream was well on the way to fulfilment. I had a first-class apartment in an excellent part of town, and I was doing society a valuable service. All of a sudden I wasn’t just a successful man, I was a good man too. The Ashcroft agency had given higher meaning to my life. I wasn’t just chasing around after money, success and sex any more like everyone else, I was one of those who put their best efforts into providing peace and security for mankind.
Of course that feeling faded over the years, everyday life caught up with me, new worries came along – that’s the way it goes. But at this moment I suddenly felt something of the old idealism and euphoria of my first weeks again. I could hardly wait to put myself to the service of society once more. At the same time, I wasn’t kidding myself: in this case the interests of society coincided directly with my own. But wasn’t it always like that for an Ashcroft agent? Wasn’t my own good a part of the general good, and vice versa? Wasn’t a good man on a mission always on a mission for everyone else too?
I hung my jacket on the coat-stand and set to work.
I packed a toolbox with various bugging devices, a movement detector, a Set Day & Night mini-camera, a jemmy and KO gas. Then I put on a blue overall, big boots and an orange cap, the sort worn by electricity workers. A disguise I’d never used before.
After that I went over to my office. The sexomat shooter was still lying on the desk. The sight of it, and remembering that last night I really had used it only to check up on Natalia’s identity, nothing more, filled me with pride for a moment.
The check hadn’t come up with much: Natalia was single, worked in publicity for a sportswear business, lived in a three-room apartment in the eighth arrondissement. I found no crimes or suspicions of potential crime in her Ashcroft file. She had never been in conflict with the law, and the only connection she had with the other side of the Fence was the family of an uncle three times removed living somewhere in Mongolia. Very likely she knew nothing at all about him. Apart from that, she was good at her job, played tennis in her leisure time, liked to go dancing in the evenings, had a cat, and usually spent her holidays by the Black Sea. Her family came from Odessa.
I don’t know why, but s
omewhere at the back of my head I’d been expecting something more exciting from Chen.
I picked up the shooter, went into the living-room and put it away with the suit and the other sexomat accessories in the hiding-place behind the sofa. Then I sat down at the desk and called the number of the Ashcroft Localization Office. Asking for someone to be located for the second time within twenty-four hours was rather tricky, but I had no other option. Anyway, if Chen’s phone hadn’t been working yesterday, why wouldn’t it simply be broken?
‘Ashcroft Localization Office, my name is Rosental,’ said a chirpy young female voice, like the evening before – maybe, I thought, I ought to pay the Localization Office a visit in person some time. ‘May I have your voice identification, please?’
I said, ‘Liberté, égalité, sécurité’. A few seconds passed. ‘Monsieur Schwarzwald, good morning, how may I help you?’
‘Good morning. I’m looking for my partner Chen Wu, eleventh arrondissement.’
‘Would you give your reasons, please?’
‘I called you yesterday evening – this is still about a group of illegals in a building in our area of operations. The problem is, Wu’s telephone is out of order. He was going to get it repaired this morning but… well, you know how it goes. Anyway, something has just occurred in connection with those illegals, and I need to speak to him as a matter of urgency.’
‘I must inform you that your reasons are being recorded for the files.’
‘Of course.’
Another few seconds passed. ‘Oh, Monsieur Schwarzwald…’
‘Yes?’
‘We don’t need any reasons. I’ve just seen that your partner took a look at his localization records this morning, and gave us permission to tell you his whereabouts at any time.’
‘But what…?’
‘Well, I suppose that’s because he’s having his phone checked, just like you thought. However, I must ask both of you not to use our office for making contact except in really urgent cases. Why don’t you simply borrow a phone from somewhere?’
‘Because I… well, sure… please tell me where Wu is at this moment. It really is a matter of…’
I was finding it hard to speak clearly. My gums suddenly felt as if they were made of an egg-box.
‘Very well, Monsieur Schwarzwald, but do please think of getting a substitute telephone. We are really not responsible for your present situation. Well… do you have a pen there?’
‘Tell me the address, please.’ She told me the address, establishing the precise point where Chen now was with reference to a north-south system and metrical data, and added, ‘Oh, and I almost forgot. He’s on the first floor.’
She didn’t need to tell me so. At that very moment a voice behind me said, ‘Here I am, you arsehole.’
For several seconds I felt as if everything was going black before my eyes, and then somehow I managed to press the key to end the connection and put my phone down on the desk. Then I slowly turned in my chair. Chen was leaning in the doorway, hands casually dug into his trouser pockets, smiling that innocently friendly Chen smile of his, the one that he generally used to underline particularly exquisite flights of bad language.
‘Oh,’ I said, and tried to get some saliva into my dry mouth. ‘I was just… well, what a coincidence. But what are you doing here? And how did you get in?’
‘Through the door.’
‘I… ah… er…’
‘We learn that kind of thing in our job, right? Or most of us do,’ said Chen, with a slightly friendlier smile. ‘Although there are some who’d rather lurk behind dustbins down at street level and hope for something to happen.’
‘Behind dustbins…’ I was trying to sound amused.
‘Exactly,’ he said, pausing and looking at me curiously. I was experiencing some difficulty in breathing.
Then, as if he were honestly interested in the answer, he added, ‘What did you think when I threw those pebbles at you? Nothing at all? Sometimes people do go throwing stones around the place? Or maybe: oh Lord, there goes Chen fucking about again?’
‘I… I really don’t know what…’ ‘My girlfriend thought there was some pervert following us. But I’d already seen my good friend Max passing us in such a brilliantly inconspicuous way in the park. Did you learn that at some Ashcroft training course? Look away from the subject you’re shadowing as if you were suddenly struck with paralysis? And then go and sit in a brightly lit café and try to stare the subject down?’
He looked at me expectantly. ‘Well, what were you thinking about?’
‘Please, Chen…’ All at once I felt so weak that I would have liked just to close my eyes and go limp. ‘Honestly I can explain it…’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Well, for a start…’ I looked at the floor. I had to pull myself together, I had to concentrate, think… My God, this was all going wrong!
‘I wasn’t shadowing you – at least, not hoping to catch you out at something, I simply… Well, I wanted to be sure you weren’t going to do anything stupid…’
‘Fancy that!’
I nodded, without looking up from the floor. ‘You have no idea… I mean…’
And suddenly, as if under all that pressure a curtain had been drawn aside or a door had swung open, I saw the way out. Or rather, I saw how things were. Or how they could have been. Because how could he have guessed that I’d known the truth about him since yesterday, that the Hallsund story had put me on his trail? Outwardly, everything was just fine. I hadn’t said a word to give myself away. I just had to keep calm and find my way out of this fix.
Raising my head, I said in a reasonably firm voice, ‘The TFSP got in touch with me directly after our conversation yesterday. It turned out that they were shadowing the illegals mainly because of you, kind of on behalf of Self- Protection. Self-Protection wants to know about some kind of offence that can be pinned on you, so they’ll have leverage against you.’
‘Oh yes? What kind of offence?’
‘Well… they don’t seem to know precisely what themselves. But I think they suspect you of letting illegals go now and then. Or maybe even of something more serious.’
‘Something more serious?’
‘Well, perhaps of hiding the Iranians yourself. I mean…’ I paused for a moment, and felt that I was getting myself better under control all the time. ‘Remember, what you say about the state of the world is known in-house, and of course Self-Protection know about it too. That’s why they want something that they can hold against you. To make sure you keep quiet in future. For instance, when you said in the canteen the other day that the TFSP posted firing squads by the Fence – that upset certain people quite a lot.’
Chen shrugged his shoulders. As he did so, I registered the fact that his smile had disappeared. He was even looking thoughtful. For the first time since he’d turned up I felt my tension relax a little, and simultaneously I had to work hard to hide the hatred rising in me. This must be something like the way the Border officials had felt about Hallsund when, in spite of knowing that he was fooling them and in spite of the names he called them, they had no option but to keep a civil tongue in their heads and crawl to him.
‘At least it’s not too far-fetched to suppose, in that connection, that you sometimes follow up your words with deeds.’
‘Hmhm. Why did you call the Localization Office?’
‘Well, I thought if they were after you, they’d probably be bugging your phone.’ I had been expecting that question, and secretly I felt a little triumphant. ‘Really, Chen, you must believe me. Yesterday evening I just wanted to make sure there was nothing in the TFSP’s suspicions. And of course there wasn’t. I saw you walking home with your girlfriend. If you were really involved with hiding the illegals, then…’ I let the sentence trail off, unfinished.
‘You mean I’d have chased off in panic to do something?’
‘Well… after you’d heard about the surveillance from me, that would have been the obvious reac
tion.’
Chen frowned, then pushed himself away from the doorframe and began slowly walking up and down the room. As he did so he looked around attentively, noticing what was on my desk, looking at the shelves, reading the titles of books and the labelling of files, leafing through papers, even bending down to look in the bottom compartments of the shelving unit.
I made an effort to appear mildly annoyed by this invasion of my private space. But I was thinking: he doesn’t know what to do next! He’s just putting on an investigator’s usual show. That’s the only thing he can think of now.
Finally he stopped in the middle of the room, hands back in his trouser pockets – although the pose didn’t look so casual now, it was more as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands – turned to me and said, ‘There’s something wrong there.’
I looked attentive and injected sympathy into my voice. ‘But Chen – please don’t worry. It must have occurred to you that you’re a thorn in Self-Protection’s side. Well?’ I leaned towards him. ‘We’ll get this sorted out between us. After all, I’m the best witness that there’s no substance in such suspicions. On the contrary: you did the one right and proper thing – just as we’d expect from Super-Chen. You kept watch on the illegals in their hideout so that you could find the people-smugglers who got them in – full stop. And even if you had intended to let the illegals go… well, it’s an open secret that you sometimes turn a blind eye to those who can be regarded as social misfits rather than criminals. And let me tell you something: above all, there’s your high reputation at the Ashcroft agency. Imagine if you were only Chen the criminal-catching machine! No, you still have a heart in spite of all your success, that’s what people admire in you – and if I may say so, it’s what I in particular admire in you.’
I heaved a small sigh and looked at him with deep emotion, as if I hoped with all my heart that I had lifted a little of the burden of anxiety from his shoulders.
Chez Max Page 11