The Big Kahuna sat his considerable bulk down on the thin bench in the tiny gazebo, looking like a sumo wrestler at a child's tea party. "You are off this detail as of now. Get your things together, 'cause you'll be coming back with me."
"They are covering something," said Burke. "This Denard. No way you're gonna tell me this guy's straight. He fucking reeks of spook! I know it and you know it! He's . . . he's dirty, goddamn it! He's dirty and his wife's dirty, and the two of them, they're all over my witness like a school of lampreys!"
"Of course they're covering something," said the Big Kahuna, using a singsong, condescending tone, "of course they're covering something, genius." He was hissing now. "They called. They laid out the facts for the AG. Some mogul out at Langley made the trip over to have a nice talk with him. The AG calls the USA. The USA calls me. You know what he says? Can you guess? He says, 'Shut this line of inquiry down now.'
"This Denard . . . this Denard you're so hot and bothered about . . . did it ever occur to you that maybe you're right? That maybe, just maybe a person like this comes in contact with some interesting people, with other persons . . . persons of interest. Nobody said anything to me exactly. They didn't have to. But, speculating for a moment, is it possible that he belongs to somebody? For fuck's sake, you've seen the guy's service records. He makes GI Joe look like a fag! The guy has a rabbi over there at the Fool Factory. At the Pentagon . . . at the Pentagon they want to deny even hearing about him. They don't want some fucking sad-sack marshal sticking his nose in, then blabbing the guy's name across every desk in Washington. Can you see that?
"You got a lot of people worried. A lot of people pissed off. Your own career, well, that's in the shitter . . . and for what} The guy's on the board of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals! He's a war hero! He's a goddamn Rotarian, for chrissakes! He could run for office. Shit! I'd vote for him!"
"He's dirty," pronounced Burke, sticking to his guns. "He knows our witness. He pretends he doesn't, but he does. The wife too."
"You've seen your last file on the Denards," said the Big Kahuna. "I can promise you. You're out. They're sending another guy down to replace you tomorrow. And you better change your attitude on the way back, because you are in serious jeopardy of becoming everybody's least favorite person of the fucking year. I'd forget about all of this shit or you'll be chasing bail jumpers in Dakota somewhere. You want that? Now hurry up and pack. The flight leaves in an hour and a half. The movie's Harry and the Hendersons - you'll love it."
31
It was the sound of Trung, snapping to attention, heels actually clicking together, that alerted Monsieur Ribiere to his old mentor's presence. The old man was suddenly, just, there - an apparition in the doorway of Le Jardin Indochine.
"Mon Colonel," blurted Trung.
"Dai Uy," murmured the old man, addressing Trung by his old ARVN rank of captain and returning the salute with the barest approximation of a bow. Trung beamed at the acknowledgment.
The old man was in his eighties now, Monsieur Ribiere guessed. Innumerable bouts of malaria, liver fluke, dengue fever, and God knew what other tropical afflictions had left his leathery, wrinkled skin a permanently jaundiced yellow. His skull seemed too large for his frail body, the discolored flesh stretched across the prominent forehead like an African drum.
He had retired, they said, from the service years ago, during one of the bad times at La Piscine, when the old Gaullists were being purged. Even the old man's long, and chillingly effective, service to a succession of presidents became, in the end, an embarrassment to the incoming Socialists, a reminder of something nasty and unclean.
To his peers, of course, he remained a legend. Even now, in every intelligence service in the world, people told stories of his exploits. In the emerging nations of Africa and Asia, if a prime minister choked to death on a fish bone, there were people who would still talk, who would wink knowingly and mention the old man's name. Long after he had ceased to operate, electoral upsets, plane crashes, coups, assassinations, and every sort of political anomaly were attributed to the man's Mephistophelian influence.
He limped. He'd limped when he came out of the camps after Dien Bien Phu, and his withered legs never improved. He wore a shabby gray linen jacket that might once have been white, the rosette of the Resistance pinned to his lapel. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, was smoking one now; it dangled from the corner of his mouth, the smoke curling around his eyes. Monsieur Ribiere stood up to greet him, wondering what possible reason he could have for being here.
As he extended his hand, Monsieur Ribiere knocked over a bottle of nuoc mam. Trung's young cousin, the busboy, made a move to come pick it up, but a sharp gesture from Trung stopped him in his tracks. He disappeared into the kitchen.
"I know what you're thinking," said the old man, sitting down with difficulty. "And you're right."
"I thought you'd retired, Chef," said Monsieur Ribiere.
"I have. I have. Of course I have, old friend," said the old man. "That is why they chose me to come. When you want to piss on an ally, it is better to do it from a distance."
"This is official?"
"Don't be absurd," said the old man, primly laying a napkin across the spilled fish sauce. "Oh . . . that smell . . . It still . . ." He paused to look around the empty dining room, doing so without moving his head. "I am here to pass along only a flavor, a sentiment, a new feeling in some quarters of which . . . of which I have become aware. A change in attitude, if you will."
"Can I order you some food?" asked Monsieur Ribiere, alarmed by how the old man looked, nearly mummified, how he'd shrunk.
"No, no. I don't have long. Listen. The Americans" - he sighed, crushing the ash of his cigarette between two fingers - "yesterday, we love them. Today . . . today we love them a little less." He paused to reach a bony hand across the table to Monsieur Ribiere's plate and snatch a rice ball with his nailless fingers. The Gestapo had taken those in '44, Ribiere remembered. The old man chewed slowly, swallowing before he continued. "This ridiculous affair with the American witness—"
"Yes?" blurted Monsieur Ribiere, without thinking.
"Certain . . . certain exalted personages," began the old man, with obvious distaste, "I am led to believe . . . that these guardians of the republic . . . would not be terribly unhappy, not unhappy at all, in fact, if the Americans were to suffer an embarrassing occurrence . . . on French soil."
He reached over again, snatching a spring roll from Monsieur Ribiere's plate this time.
"What am I . . . what is expected of me?" said Monsieur Ribiere, realizing that he was sitting bolt upright in his chair like an undergraduate. "Am I to do something?"
"Oh, no," said the old man, chewing. "Do nothing. Do nothing at all." He licked his fingers, wiped them on the tablecloth, and then handed Monsieur Ribiere a grainy surveillance photograph. Monsieur Ribiere recognized the photo as one of Trung's, taken at Juliana Airport. It depicted one Kevin Aloysius Coonan and a Peter Schiavone, walking across the parking lot. Ribiere was startled and impressed that they had gone so far as to give the old man access to such current intelligence. His mind reeled with the implications.
"These two gentlemen, for instance," said the old man. "It is felt back home that they look like fine, upstanding fellows . . . of no interest to anyone. Wouldn't you agree?"
Monsieur Ribiere felt a roiling in his stomach. He sat mute, waiting for the rest.
"You see how it is, yes?" said the old man. "You are to do nothing. Say nothing. Let the Americans make their own mess. If, as it appears, disaster is inevitable, they will need no help to cover themselves in the shit."
"And then?"
"Ah!" said the old man, smiling, the sight of his yellow, tobacco-and-betel-nut-stained dentures distinctly unappetizing. "Well, as good friends and valued allies, we will be right there to help them wipe it off. What else are friends for?"
"You sure you won't have some lunch?" said Monsieur Ribiere as the old man plucked another rice
ball off his plate, "The chef . . . I believe you know . . ."
"Yes . . . Trung's brother-in-law is it? Uncle? Another naughty boy . . . No. I must return immediately. I will continue my retirement. This . . . this was just a favor to a friend." He stood up and shook hands before limping to the door. "Go well, my friend," he said, his back to Ribiere. As he passed Trung at the door, already frozen in full parade-ground salute, he gave a limp wag of the wrist. Then he was gone.
Monsieur Ribiere sat silently at his table for a long time, turning things over in his mind. Trung kept looking at him expectantly, like a dog with a full bladder. For Trung, seeing the old man was like hearing the familiar jingle of keys, watching the leash come out, and he fully expected to be let out to play.
He would be disappointed. After reflecting long and hard, Monsieur Ribiere curtly dismissed him for the day. When Trung was long gone, Ribiere left through the back and walked slowly down the beach, looking occasionally over his shoulder, once stopping and kneeling, as if to tie his shoe. Near the end of the beach, he turned and hurried up an alley, doubled back toward the restaurant, turned onto a side street, and, joining a crowd of tourists, moved along with them until he came to the post office.
The third pay phone from the end was unoccupied, and Monsieur Ribiere stepped inside and dialed a number.
"Yes?" said the voice on the other end, in English.
"Pardon," said Monsieur Ribiere. "Je suis en erreur." Then he hung up, opened the phone book under the metal shelf, and next to a name chosen seemingly at random, he drew a tiny clock face.
This time the man came dressed as an American tourist. They called it "natural cover."
When he found him on the beach out front of La Samanna, sweating over a John Grisham paperback in a beach chair, there was a zaftig, fortyish woman in a one-piece bathing suit on the blanket next to him and he wondered if she was the man's wife. Her hair was unnaturally blond, and like the man, she looked as if she drank too much. The man saw Monsieur Ribiere and strolled casually down to the water's edge, belly hanging over his cotton shorts, to meet him.
"Is that your wife?" Monsieur Ribiere asked.
"Good God, no," said the man. "You think my wife's going to hop on a plane, middle of the night, two hours' notice, and jet off to some island? Vick's a sport, but not that sporting. No . . . that's Heather, my secretary. To her, this sort of thing is appealing. Fake passport, meeting a source, palm trees, the whole bit. She's in heaven. She jumped at the chance, playing spy for a day. Reads too many spy novels, you ask me. They all do up there, if you want to know. Anyway" - the man glanced at his watch - "so what is it? You never used the emergency number before. I'm all atwitter."
"New orders," said Monsieur Ribiere, unhappily. He disliked betraying the old man's trust. "Through a very unusual, very unofficial channel."
"Yeah. I heard you had a distinguished visitor."
"You heard?" said Monsieur Ribiere, amazed.
"Oh, yeah," said the man, reaching down to skip a flat stone across the water. "You kidding me? That guy gets on a plane, there's people want to know. Back at the shop, they figured he came down 'cause one of your people is gonna get the chop. That's what he's known for, isn't it?"
"No, no . . . nothing like that. He's retired."
"Yeah, right," said the man. "There's sort of a betting pool going, you know, who's it gonna be? I'd hoped, frankly, meeting you, I might hear something, give me a little edge. They're so impressed, I can't tell you how impressed back home, if you know something like that's going to happen before it happens. Ah well . . . So what is it?"
Feeling silly in his bathing suit, Monsieur Ribiere waded a little farther into the water. "There appears to have been a change of heart, at the Palace. About the marshals . . . the witness . . . about helping."
"So?" said the man, irritably. "So what?"
"Well, we think something is going to happen. Soon. Already there are people here. There's a potential for violence . . . for exposure."
"For who?" said the man. "For us? Let me get this straight. You're saying somebody's gonna take a shot at that ginzo they got holed up here, right?"
"I thought it would create some problems."
"For Justice maybe. For the Marshals Service. Who gives a shit? That's what I say."
"My orders—" Monsieur Ribiere paused to rephrase. "The suggestion, you understand, is that I do nothing to prevent it."
The man laughed, surprising Monsieur Ribiere. "That's all? That's what this is all about?"
"We have current information that something . . . that an incident is imminent."
"You want to know what all this crap is about? I'll tell you. Paris is having a fit of pique over this Mustafa whatsisname they just let run back to his buddies in Lebanon. Our president, in his infinite wisdom, was rather blunt in his disapproval. What did he call it? . . . 'The cavalier attitude towards international terrorism.'. . . He must have offended . . . Personally, I thought his comments to the press unwise. We all assumed, of course, that your bunch had managed to turn the nice Mister Mustafa around during his stay with you. The president, God bless him, doesn't think the way we do. Immediate expression of righteous indignation was the course decided on. That always plays better on the six o'clocks."
"There are some hurt feelings, then."
"Apparently."
"So. Will you pass this on?"
"I don't think so," said the man, wiping his face with his hand, his nose already glowing pink from the sun. "No . . . I don't think so. One of those apes from the Marshals Service has been circulating some very unkind memos around town. Accusing us of all sorts of nefarious doings . . . No, they trip over their knuckles down here, nobody will be too unhappy about it where I work. We'll be able to say T told you so' in fact. Operating outside the country and all. We love it when we can say that. I can't see any exposure, can you?"
"My friend . . ."
"This Denard fellow? Don't bother about that at all. As a subject of official curiosity, he's done, permanently. Not to worry."
"How?"
The man chuckled, pleased with his own ingenuity. "Actually, I just implied that he was one of ours. Keeping an eye on the froggies for the greater good. Worked out great, too. Anytime we run somebody against an ally, it makes people very, very nervous. Everybody is suddenly in a hurry to not know about it. Course it helps that the NSC is pissed off at you guys. Best of everything. They're delighted about something they don't want to know anything about. Perfect."
Monsieur Ribiere squinted into the reflected glare. "So, I do as they ask. Nothing."
"Yep. I've got to agree with the old goat. I mean, what happens there's a big blowup? A few red faces at Justice? Just serves in the end to point up the value of good liaison. When nobody's talking to each other, a good, solid back channel, the value goes way up. Our respective employers will find new reasons to cherish us all the more."
Ribiere didn't respond.
"Marvelous hotel," said the man, referring to the elegant spread of white stucco bungalows and royal palms behind them. "I'd love to have you up for a drink by the pool, but . . ."
"No, no, that's alright. I've stayed too long already. I'm sorry, sorry if I got you down here for nothing."
"Not at all. It's lovely here," said the man. "And between you and me" - he winked lewdly, indicating the somewhat dumpy woman on his blanket - "that old girl there can suck a casaba melon through a garden hose."
32
The four of them had gone drinking the night before - a prolonged bar crawl from one side of the island to the other, winding up at Henry and Frances's hotel, where they did tequila shots in the empty bar and went skinny-dipping in the rain in the teardrop-shaped pool. Tommy's last memory was of throwing up into a hibiscus bush before Henry, Frances, and Cheryl loaded him into the rear end of his pickup and drove him back to Charlie's house.
"I want to die," he muttered now, sweating alcohol in the early afternoon sun. "I can't believe you do this all the time.
"
"Have a beer," said Frances from the chaise lounge next to him, stubbing out a cigarette in a half-eaten croissant. "You'll feel better."
They'd gone for what Henry and Frances called the hangover cure at the Grand Case Beach Club: rented chaises, Bloody Marys, and fat joints of Henry's hydroponic weed on a beach crowded with young Frenchmen. French waitresses brought them food and drinks and adjusted their beach umbrellas to keep their heads in the shade. Frances even arranged for massages, administered under a tamarind tree near the bar by a breasty Afrikaner who hummed along with French pop songs from a portable radio while she worked.
Henry tucked into a plate of stuffed crab backs with both hands, looking completely unbothered by the vast amounts of liquor Tommy had seen him consume the night before. It was twelve-fifteen in the afternoon, and he was already, by Tommy's count, into his fourth beer - this after a Bloody Mary and two joints. Frances, too, looked no worse for wear. She was on her third beer after a hearty breakfast, and unlike Cheryl, who was collapsed into her chaise, a wet towel over her forehead, she was fairly animated, petting a scraggly-looking dog with a limp who'd wandered down the beach and had seemed to recognize her and speculating on the private lives of the swimmers.
"Who's the fat guy with the girl from La Ronda?" she wondered out loud, noticing a balding, barrel-chested American embracing a thick, dark-skinned woman in the shallow water.
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