She felt Piers’s stomach muscles tighten, and she felt his fingers come into her hair, run through it, entwine with it.
It was different for a poule, who had to be with almost any man who had the price of it. Those women, the ones who complained so much, they should have a little foutre with some of the mecs she had been with. It would teach them how different it was to give to a man who loved you. And she believed that Piers did love her, in his way.
She felt his fingers tighten slightly in her hair, and a small smile formed on her lips. She wondered if she loved him. She had told herself she did, then had forced the idea away, had told herself not to be a fool. But the feeling had returned again and again.
He was a man of power, she could tell it was so. And so young. She had been with others like that. Meme and Antoine were such men. But they just took what she had as their due, and she never felt the need in them. Piers—what a strange name, she thought again. With him there was so much need, so much surprise, that she wanted to make him happy. At first she had thought he would be just another mec the Pisanis had forced on her. And she had wanted to steal from him, even though she knew it would be dangerous to do so. She liked to steal from her mecs. But with him it had been different almost from the start.
The way he had stood in the kitchen, talking to her. He had been like a young boy waiting for the right moment to ask for a date for the first time. And even after they had been together, he had taken her to lunch and talked to her about her life in Lyon, and about his own life, and about the things he had done as a boy and as a young man. He had not talked about what he did to earn his bread—still did not talk about it—but she understood that. Some men could not talk about such things. And he was gentle with her. And tender. And she wondered if it meant he was a tender man. She did not know. But she knew he did not treat her like a poule, and that, more than anything else, made her want him.
His breath was coming faster now, and she reached for him, took him in her hand, and began to stroke him. It was so pleasurable to touch him there. He was so hard and yet so soft and smooth at the same time, and she could feel his long, slender piqûre jump in her hand with a will of its own.
She was so wet now, so very wet, and she wanted him inside her. But she would wait. First she would take him in her mouth, and then she would let him do the same to her, if he wanted. The faint trace of a smile returned. But he always wanted that. He knew it drove her to a frenzy. But she wanted it too. And then she would have what she wanted most of all.
“Do you love me?” she whispered.
“I love everything about France,” Piers said. “Especially you.”
CHAPTER
24
Two hundred men and women and children gathered in front of the labor exchange, carrying banners and placards demanding higher wages and more jobs and lower prices for food. They were only a fraction of the eighty thousand on strike throughout the city, but their numbers were duplicated many times in many places. But it was this time and this place the Pisani brothers had chosen to let some blood.
The strikers had chosen this new tactic—the presence of women and children—to stop the attacks that had come randomly every day, reasoning that the thugs would not risk the public outcry of having French women and children beaten in their own streets.
But the Pisanis had chosen this group for just that reason. It was an escalation of terror; it forced the strikers to recognize there would be no safety, no sanctuary; no person, or place, or situation that could shield them from inevitable violence.
The Pisani men—some forty strong—had gathered out of sight a block north of the demonstrators, armed with clubs and lead pipes and blackjacks and brass knuckles, weapons designed to maim but not to kill if wielded by experts. And if the Pisani men were nothing else, they were experts at dispensing mayhem and pain.
A large contingent of police were to move in first, ostensibly to set up barricades, but also to strip the strikers of any obvious weapons. The police would then withdraw several blocks to the south and await the Pisani attack. When the demonstrators were driven toward them, they would use it as an excuse to strike out at a mob rampaging through the streets, using their own clubs to beat them down. It left the demonstrators trapped between assailants and would-be protectors with no hope of escape.
Piers Moran watched from a rooftop several blocks to the north. He felt like a general in Napoleonic times, viewing his troops from a nearby hilltop, waiting to see how the battle would go, and to make adjustments to any unanticipated moves by the enemy. But there would be no unanticipated moves. This was a battle between lambs and wolves, and the outcome was predestined. Piers thought he should be sitting atop a horse—a large white one—just to make the illusion complete.
The Pisani men moved in mass, slowly, casually, almost like a group of young men on their way to a sporting event. When the strikers saw them they were momentarily defiant, taking heart in their greater numbers. They moved the women and children to the rear and prepared to fight. But when the first blows were struck and the first line of strikers crumbled to the ground, it was obvious their numbers meant nothing. Within minutes of the attack the strikers were beaten, and they broke and ran, fighting only to shield the women and children from the pursuing thugs.
The children were spared—the Pisanis, ever conscious of their image, had so instructed their men—but not so the women. It was regarded as a further defeat, a further humiliation, that the workers were not even able to protect their wives and girlfriends from harm.
From the rooftop, through a pair of field glasses, Piers watched a young woman stumble and fall. She looked about the same age as Colette, he thought, and he could tell that she was quite beautiful. She started to rise, but a club came out of nowhere and smashed into her face. She fell back unconscious, her features covered with blood.
Piers winced at the sight, then raised the glasses to follow the crowd. He watched the Pisani men stop about a block before the police line, then slowly begin to disperse. But the strikers continued rushing toward the safety of the police cordon. Then the police charged, wielding their clubs with equal viciousness, and the crowd’s retreat turned into a rout with people scattering in every direction, knowing now that safety would be found only in continued flight.
Piers lowered the glasses, his face expressionless. These were beaten people, he told himself. They had been beaten down by the Nazis, and then the Nazis had been driven away and they had rediscovered their balls. But they had had a savior then. Now they were being beaten by their own people. And there was no savior in sight. It would only be a matter of time, and a matter of escalation. There was no question of the outcome.
Days after the beatings in front of the labor exchange, the strikers changed their tactics. They abandoned their use of smaller groups of demonstrators spread throughout the city, opting instead for larger shows of force. Demonstrations that numbered in the thousands were called for, but the violence had already taken its toll on the minds and hearts of the strikers, and fifteen hundred was the largest crowd the organizers were able to muster at one time. And women and children were told to remain at home.
But the Pisanis changed their tactics as well. Their men attacked not with clubs and pipes and blackjacks, but with pistols and sawed-off shotguns, firing at the legs of the demonstrators, still trying to maim rather than kill. But some were killed, the few hapless souls who fell to the ground and into the murderous line of fire.
Again Piers watched from a nearby rooftop, and again he saw these larger crowds routed. He was convinced more than ever the strike was drawing to a close.
But the murders produced an unexpected backlash, and the number of demonstrators suddenly grew. Piers was stymied. He could not order wholesale slaughter, and even the Pisanis and the police combined didn’t have the strength needed to overcome demonstrations that had suddenly grown to three and four thousand people.
He decided on another approach. And that would require seeking the
help of the French government in Paris, something he had hoped to avoid.
Upon his return from Paris, Piers strolled through Marseilles’s old quarter, listening with interest as Meme recited some of its more recent history. All about them the buildings were scarred and battered, with huge chunks torn away, and workmen busied themselves on scaffolds, making long-awaited repairs.
“The people of the quarter rose up against the Nazis in 1943,” Meme explained. “The Germans found the entire area uncontrollable, so they simply turned out the forty thousand who lived here, then trained their heavy guns on the area and blasted it to ruin.” He nudged Piers lightly in the ribs. “Not much different from what you have arranged,” he said.
Piers had heard from Paris that morning that the minister had agreed to his plan. “Except my plan is only bluff and bluster,” he said.
“That is why it was accepted so quickly in Paris,” Meme said. “They understand bluff and bluster there. They thrive on it. It is like their mother’s tit to them.”
Piers smiled inwardly. “And to think I almost didn’t go to Paris,” he said.
“Why?” Meme asked.
“No one in Washington cares to do business with the de Gaulle government, or have anything to do with Le Grand Charles. Oddly enough, it turns out he and his minions are just as terrified of the communists as our people in Washington are.”
Meme gave him a sidelong glance. “And you,” he asked, “are you terrified of this communist menace? Now that you have seen it?”
“The communists don’t have the chance of a snowball in hell of taking over this country,” Piers said. “But those who hold the power in Washington believe they have. And to tell them otherwise would be very foolish for a man of ambition.”
“You certainly will never be accused of lacking ambition,” Meme said, slapping his friend on the shoulder.
Piers laughed. The powers in Washington would soon see how great that ambition was. The thought kept a smile on his lips. He was feeling almost lightheaded with his impending success. Tomorrow’s newspapers would announce the decision of the French government to mobilize two hundred thousand troops and eighty thousand reservists to force an end to the strike, and the following day Gaston Defferre’s newspaper would break the news of Piers’s own part of the plan. It was December 7, the anniversary of “the day that would live in infamy,” and Piers was about to launch his own sneak attack against the workers of Marseilles.
“Why is it that Parisians and the people of Marseilles hold each other in such disregard?” Piers asked, still smiling to himself.
“It is a conflict of the spirit,” Meme said. “Paris is a city of monuments, and those who live there view themselves as monumental.” He waved his arm in a grand gesture. “Marseilles is a city of people.”
Piers laughed again. He was truly beginning to enjoy Meme and Antoine, and he had begun to value their friendship, and to recognize what it could mean to him in the years to come.
“I think your plan will work,” Meme said at length as they continued along the narrow street.
“I’m certain it will,” Piers said.
“But you must be careful about how you make it work,” Meme warned.
“How so?”
“Well, it is all right to turn a man into a beggar,” Meme said. “But when you do it, you must be able to point the finger at another villain.”
“I intend to,” Piers said. “Or, rather, Gaston Defferre will do it for me.”
“Are you sure you can trust him?” Meme asked. “He’s a politician, and they tend to look to their own interests first.”
Piers grinned almost boyishly. “It is in his interests. I’m sure my masters wouldn’t want me to tell you this, but I would have anyway. Just in case Gaston plans to shake you down for political contributions.” His smile widened. “Washington has decided that Gaston should be mayor, and that his Socialist party should be dominant here in Marseilles. So they’ve given him a million dollars, with the promise of more to come each year. Providing he plays by the agenda we set.”
“Mon dieu,” Meme said. The sum was staggering. He nodded. “It will be nice leverage for us to have when he does come begging. Or if he decides to do other things that might offend us.”
“Leverage is always nice to have,” Piers said.
On December 9, with the city already fearful of the impending assault by French troops, Gaston Defferre’s Socialist newspaper, Le Provençal, announced that the American government was preparing to ship sixty-five thousand sacks of flour, intended to ease the city’s hunger, back to the United States, unless dock workers began to unload them immediately. In a front-page editorial, the paper also accused the Communists of leading the workers into a bloodbath, followed by starvation.
The specter of violence and hunger was too great, and that same day the Communist-led labor coalition called for an end to the strike, and workers immediately returned to work. Piers Moran had his victory, and it proved as sweet as he had hoped.
Christmas Eve, 1947
The party was held in the afternoon, hosted by the Pisanis in Club Paradise, and was attended not only by members of the milieu but by politicians of every stripe, save the Communists. It was a men-only affair, and the Pisanis had emptied their brothels of prostitutes to serve as companions for the evening.
Piers Moran was a special guest of honor, and he found that fact, and the overall environment, more than a little amusing. He had never spent Christmas Eve in the company of hookers and gangsters, and it made him feel like a time traveler who had been transported back to a Roaring Twenties party hosted by Al Capone. He wondered if he would ever be able to tell his wife about it.
Colette clung to Piers’s arm, watching the other poules work the crowd, offering their favors, as instructed, to any mec who sought them. But she was special. She would be only with Piers, and she knew the others were deeply envious of her unique treatment.
And she knew Piers was special too. She had finally learned what all the meetings were about, all the violence that had engulfed the city for almost a month. Piers had crushed the insane strike, and he had used the Pisanis to do it. He had done it for his government, had been sent here to do that specific job. And now he was feeding the entire city. He was, without question, she told herself, the most powerful man in Marseilles.
And that power had also fallen to the Pisanis as well. There was no question they were now the most powerful faction in the milieu. They had the support of the Americans. And the Americans were the only power that mattered now.
She had seen it earlier, when Marcel Francisci, the Pisanis’ most powerful rival in the milieu, had come, hat in hand, to the party, a gesture of respect that also acknowledged he was now subservient to them. Colette realized how ideal her position was. She worked for the Pisanis, and she was Piers’s mistress. Even more important, she had accepted the fact that she loved him. And, even if he chose to remain married to his wife, it did not matter. She would be his mistress as long as he wanted her.
Piers had also noticed the arrival of Marcel Francisci. He knew who the man was, had even made plans to turn to him if the Pisanis had failed. But that was now moot. Meme and Antoine had done everything asked of them, and would continue to do so. There would be more work ahead, and more problems. Marseilles—France itself—was politically volatile and would remain so until economic reconstruction was complete.
Piers had been placed in charge of the south of France, and it was only a question of time before he would run all CIA operations throughout the country. Then it would take only a few more successes, perhaps over as short a time as the next decade, and he would find himself back in Washington, well on his way up the administrative ladder.
Marcel Francisci came to Piers before leaving. He was of the same generation as Meme and Antoine, and somewhere in between the physical differences that separated the two brothers. He was of average size but trim and well built, and he dressed impeccably but casually, favoring an open-necked
shirt under a tailored suit. Like all Corsican gangsters, Francisci wore expensive, highly polished shoes—something Antoine had explained as the product of youthful impoverishment, when lack of shoes was often the rule—and he looked very much like what he was. From his receding hairline to his crooked boxer’s nose and square, solid chin, Marcel Francisci was a hoodlum. And he obviously resented being out of the running for toughest kid on the block.
“Monsieur Moran,” he began, taking Piers’s hand. “My congratulations. Your success has been an inspiration.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Francisci.”
“My only regret is that I did not have the opportunity to dip my beak into that success,” Francisci added. He shrugged. “But such is life.”
“Perhaps there will be time another day,” Piers said.
“I certainly hope so,” Francisci said. “It would be an honor to be of service to you and your country.”
Piers only smiled in response.
When Francisci had left, Meme made his way across the room. “What did that scum Francisci want?” he asked.
“He wanted your job, of course,” Piers said.
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