Affairs of State Read online

  ‘This is a reputable establishment, you know. Ask Inspector Santoni, he often eats here.’

  Santoni, macho, fat belly and apparently well connected in the neighbourhood. That’s all she needs.

  ‘Would you like a drink, a little Suze maybe?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ve come to see you regarding your complaints about the firecrackers …’

  ‘We lodged a complaint too,’ chorus the others.

  ‘It’s not just the firecrackers. Ill-bred little hooligans, they come from the housing estates down below and cause havoc up here.’

  ‘They play football in the street late at night, with their radios turned up full blast, playing that jungle music.’

  ‘Would you be able to recognise them?’

  ‘They’re all the same, these Arabs …’ Madame Aurillac trails off in mid-sentence, gazing at Noria, bemused. ‘That’s not what I meant …’

  ‘I don’t quite understand what you did mean.’

  ‘Do you think you can stop these goings-on?’

  ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

  She rises.

  ‘Are you sure, not even a little drop?’

  Outside, she takes a deep breath to steady herself. A report by this evening … On what? The gang of pimping grannies? Santoni’s leisure activities? Frankly I’d have preferred the disappearing lacquered ducks.

  I’ll go and check out the housing estate down there. Just opposite is a shop selling toys, games, stationery and books, run by a hunched, smiling elderly couple wearing white dust jackets.

  ‘Police,’ says Noria. They exchange looks, the woman slips behind the man. ‘Routine enquiry. Do you sell firecrackers?’

  ‘Of course. Especially at this time of year with it being nearly the 14th of July. Like all toy shops. Isn’t that right, missus?’ he says, turning to his wife.

  She nods.

  ‘Firecrackers with a slow-burning fuse?’

  ‘Those too, yes.’

  He hesitates. He knows about the exploding dog shit, obviously. But as for calling the police …

  ‘And your customers are …’

  ‘Here they come,’ says the little old woman. ‘As always when it’s a sunny lunchtime.’

  Two kids, aged ten to twelve, wearing jogging suits, arrogant little machos. Noria takes them by the hand and leads them over to a bench, opposite the shop.

  ‘Noria Ghozali, police officer.’

  ‘Nasser,’ says the taller of the two.

  The introductions are now over.

  ‘The firecrackers in the dog shit up on the hill, is that you?’

  ‘What’s the problem? We’re not the first, and we’re not the only ones …’

  ‘But you’re the last. You stop, you tell your friends to stop, we’ll forget all about it. I’m sure you’ll find something else. You have to be flexible.’

  Back to HQ. Noria crosses the duty room, greeting the uniformed officers, starts going up the stairs to the offices on the first floor and stops. Pinned to the wall are three little photocopied posters: ‘No Arab scum in the French police’, and a target on a shape that resembles her. She stands rooted to the step. Alone. Don’t give in. It’s not about you. She makes her way slowly to the toilet, her body rigid, and locks herself in. She washes her hands thoroughly, then her face, staring at herself in the mirror and straightens her bun. Then she goes back to her office and writes her report. Authors of the attacks identified. Problem sorted.

  At the end of the day, she goes back down the stairs, her stomach in a knot. The posters are gone. She crosses the duty room, walking past the uniformed officers in silence.

  Thursday 28 November

  A plane leaves a trail in an intense blue sky very high above a range of bare, snow-covered mountains and an opaque green lake. A standard ad for a budget airline company. And then the plane bursts into flames, explodes, and breaks up into a dozen huge fireballs shooting out stars before spinning down towards the earth amid a shower of burning debris. The noise of the explosion reverberates in the mountains, echoing endlessly.

  A comfortable sitting room in shades of beige and chestnut: two leather sofas, a few deep armchairs, a glass and steel coffee table, thick white wool carpeting, two large windows blocked out by heavy velvet curtains. On the wall, a mildly saucy earth-red chalk drawing by Boucher, lit by a spotlight, depicts a plump young nude being gracefully humped by a young man whose clothing is barely loosened. Men aged between forty and sixty, in deeply conventional dark suits and ties, chat and drink champagne, whisky and cocktails served by women aged between twenty and thirty moving from one to the other, smiling and attentive. They all look superb in their revealing, beautifully cut, figure-hugging dresses in dark colours with discreetly plunging necklines and tasteful jewellery, smiling all the time.

  The men have just closed a deal to sell arms to Iran, a thousand missiles. The sale is illegal, since the country is under an embargo, so naturally tensions are running high. Especially since the delivery date had had to be postponed for a few days at the last minute. Luga Airport in Malta, through which the cargo was to transit, had just been the scene of a pitched battle between Egypt’s special forces and a group of Palestinians who had taken the passengers and crew of an Egyptian aircraft hostage. Several dozen dead later, the airport was finally cleared, flights resumed yesterday, and this morning, the Boeing 747 cargo laden with missiles took off from Brussels-Zavantem heading for Tehran, via Valetta, Malta. It should already have landed in Tehran. And now, the deal done, it’s time to celebrate.

  Bornand plays the host. Tall, very slim, an attractive sixty-year-old with thick, wavy hair, more pepper than salt, and a long face whose features are emphasised by a network of vertical furrows and a thick, neatly trimmed, completely white moustache. His light grey tailored suit, cut to a neat fit, emphasises his slimness as he moves from group to group saying a few words, touching a shoulder, filling a glass.

  Flandin, the boss of the SEA,3 the applied electronics company which sold the missiles to the Iranians, his left hand on a girl’s buttocks, holding a glass of champagne in his right, is in conversation with a tall, fat Lebanese banker who’s giving an animated description of a camel race in the desert, organised by a Saudi prince. Flandin laughs, and when Bornand comes over, he raises his glass:

  ‘To our host, gentlemen, who pulled out all the stops to ensure the success of this deal.’

  Bornand responds to the toast. Flandin. I picked the right man. An excellent electronics engineer, but a somewhat limited company boss, always short of capital, and chasing business. The perfect supplier, still under our control. And now, he’s here, thrilled to be hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, with the added excitement of being part of an illegal operation at no risk to himself.

  ‘And to all the deals to come,’ adds the Lebanese banker.

  ‘We’d better believe it,’ answers Bornand, smiling.

  Karim, a friend for over a decade, with whom he went into partnership to found the IBL, International Bank of Lebanon,4 a key broker in all Middle Eastern arms deals, of which there are many.

  The banker leans over to the girl being groped by Flandin, pops a breast out of her dress and slowly trickles champagne over her curvaceous quivering flesh until it runs down to her nipple, when he then drinks it avidly.

  Bornand pours himself a glass of champagne. Restore the balance of French policy in the Middle East, resume relations with Iran. This is where realpolitik is decided, in the drawing room of a brothel, and I am the chief architect.

  An Iranian officer, sprawled in an armchair, his eyes half closed, a blissful look on his face, is smoking a cigarette which Katryn has just rolled for him, to which she has added a pinch of heroin. Katryn, a real slave. She is sitting on the arm of the chair. A helmet of black hair, pallid complexion, red lips. She leans towards him; he follows her with his gaze, fascinated, an iridescent pearl, hanging from an invisible thread around her neck, quivering in the hollow of her throat at her every movemen
t, bobbing when she speaks, a pearly counterpoint to the whiteness of her face. She listens attentively and knowingly. The officer, wallowing in nostalgia, tells her of the past splendours of the Shah’s court, snipe-hunting in the terraced paddy fields on the slopes of Mount Elbrus, and the descent through the orange groves to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Bornand mentally flashes back, picturing the snipes’ lively, erratic flight against a sky of the deepest blue. She prompts him when he tails off, as if she had been a part of these excursions since childhood: hard work this, keeping him talking rather than fucking.

  Bornand leans towards her, takes her hand, brushes it with his lips, his moustache tickles, and walks off.

  A discreet buzzing, the intercom. Bornand goes behind the bar in the corner of the room, and picks up the receiver.

  ‘François, a phone call for you. I took the risk of disturbing you, it sounds very urgent.’

  ‘Coming.’

  In the lobby, Mado, the mistress of the house, is waiting for him and points to a booth. He picks up the phone.

  ‘François? Pontault here. I hope you’re enjoying your little party …’

  ‘You’re not calling me just to say that?’

  ‘… because it’s not going to last long. Turkey has just announced that a Boeing 747 cargo plane has vanished from its airspace …’

  Bornand convulsively clenches the glass he’s holding in his left hand. It smashes, cutting through to the bone at the base of his thumb. Shards of glass, blood on his hand, his shirt, his trousers, the carpet, the walls of the phone booth.

  ‘… Above Lake Van to be exact, coming in from Malta …’

  Bornand frantically tries to staunch the bleeding with his shirt tails.

  ‘We don’t know what happened yet, but there’s no doubt it’s our plane. François, are you there? Now what do we do?’

  The bleeding is more or less under control.

  ‘Like all true gamblers, we double the stakes. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.’

  Friday 29 November

  The telephone rings, early on this particular morning. Bornand surfaces slowly from a heavily drugged sleep and gropes around. A shooting pain in his left hand, a brutal reminder of the evening at Mado’s, the vanished plane, blood spurting everywhere. He picks up the telephone blindly.

  ‘Morning, François. André Bestégui here. Am I waking you up?’

  A long sigh:

  ‘How did you guess? What do you want at this hour?’

  ‘To see you. Very soon, and to talk.’

  ‘About what? At least give me a clue.’

  ‘About the plane that disappeared yesterday over Turkey.’

  ‘Later, over lunch, one o’clock at the Carré des Feuillants?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  He replaces the receiver. Bestégui. Bornand had first come across him way back in 1960, during the Algerian War of Independence, at the offices of his import-export company, avenue de la Grande-Armée. He’d been a slightly self-conscious young student in a modern décor of electric blue carpeting and steel furniture, with a painting by Nicolas de Staël on a white wall. There was a stunning receptionist who had no objections to working overtime entertaining important clients. Easy to dazzle, easy to seduce. Bornand had no hesitation in doing both, just in case, and he’d been right to cultivate Bestégui. Nowadays, Bestégui represents the type of French investigative journalism that Bornand most abhors, but it’s always useful to have friends in the right places. Look after Bestégui.

  He is awake now, contemplating the orange, red and brown bedspread. Things are looking clearer. Not an accident, an attack. A sudden attack. The plane disappeared yesterday, the press hears about it the same day. In a way, good. He’s going to have to be very effective. Aim: find out who, exactly, was behind the strike.

  It’s going to be a busy day. He’s up. In the burgundy and white tiled bathroom, he takes a freezing cold shower, as is customary on important days and grooms himself meticulously with a series of rapid, efficient movements. He has no particular liking for his long, skinny body with protruding rounded shoulders and skin that sags in places. Nor for his heavy, bony face and too pale blue eyes. But he’s as obsessive about his appearance as a professional lothario. He shaves, carefully trims his moustache, splashes on aftershave, styles his hair with gel and applies cologne before getting dressed. It’s the season for closely tailored cashmere and silk suits in every shade of grey. And today he selects a red and grey Hermès tie.

  The day begins, as always, with his morning stroll with the President.

  It’s a dull day with icy rain falling in huge heavy drops, at times it feels like sleet. They walk through the streets side by side, two silhouettes in woollen coats, scarves and felt hats, heading towards the Élysée. Bornand, in his long, tailored coat and pearl-grey fedora, looks like a 1920s dandy. He leans slightly towards the President, who is stockier. The two old friends chat idly of this and that.

  Earlier their paths had crossed several times, one a lawyer, the other his client. No more. Then came 1958 and De Gaulle’s accession to power, and Mitterrand emerged among the French political elite as one of the few opponents of the General who wasn’t a member of the Communist Party. Long conversations between him and Bornand. They found they shared a faith in the Atlantic Alliance, and the same visceral anti-Gaullism, the same anti-Communism mediated by their understanding of the Party. Going further still, they touched on possible shared sympathies during the war, without probing deeper. Bornand developed a profound admiration for Mitterrand’s subtlety and skilful political manoeuvring. He found himself on the fringes of the political power machine, excluded from political circles, ostracised in a way since the end of the war. Condemned to low-level pro-American conspiracies and wheeling and dealing that was lucrative but gave him no status, Bornand saw this budding friendship as his chance to enter the worthy sphere of French politics at last. He offered Mitterrand his services, and that was the beginning of a lasting association during which Bornand played a shadowy role in the President’s entourage, which suits him perfectly, until he became his advisor at the Élysée in 1981, and one of Mitterrand’s chosen companions on his Parisian walks.

  ‘The latest news from Gabon … President Omar Bongo has put on weight recently …’

  A hint of anxiety in the deep voice. The President is joking already. Bornand takes his time.

  ‘… I heard it from Akihito, his regular tailor. Ten centimetres around the waist in two months.’ A pause. ‘At the Franco-African summit in La Baule, he’ll be wearing long, double-breasted jackets.’

  ‘In that case, if I were him, I’d change tailor.’

  ‘So would I. But Akihito has other qualities. He sent five gorgeous blondes to deliver the suits. Whom he had a bit of trouble recruiting, incidentally.’

  ‘I don’t believe it …’

  ‘There are rumours about Bongo’s health …’

  The President and Bornand stop in front of a luxury couturier’s window. Two young sales assistants observe them from inside the shop, and smile. The President waves at them before resuming his walk.

  ‘The little brunette’s a stunner.’

  Bornand takes note, then takes the plunge:

  ‘A plane crashed yesterday in Turkey …’ The President gives him a sidelong glance. ‘There’s a rumour in the Parisian press that the plane was carrying French arms to Iran.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to start talking to me about arms deals too, it seems to be all the rage at the moment … and to Iran what’s more! A country under international embargo … If people are stupid enough to go in for that kind of deal, let them pay the price.’ A few steps in silence. ‘You know very well that I’m very much against selling arms to warmongering countries as a matter of principle.’

  ‘It’s a rule that can be bent a little when it comes to Iraq. Only two days ago the Tehran Times accused us of having delivered to Iraq five Super-Étendard fighters, twenty-four Mirage F1s, and the ultra-moder
n missiles that are destroying Iranian oil installations. And they weren’t wrong …’

  The President quickens his pace.

  ‘Don’t spoil this beautiful walk in the rain. I don’t want to hear any more talk of arms sales to Iraq.’ He turns to Bornand. ‘And you know it. Talk to the ministers concerned.’

  They walk on in silence for a moment.

  ‘I’m not talking to you about arms sales, but about France’s role in the Middle East …’

  ‘France is not Iran’s enemy …’

  ‘That won’t be sufficient.’

  ‘… but in the Middle East, the age-old balance between Arabs and Persians must be maintained.’

  A gesture of irritation:

  ‘Let’s look at this another way. Instead of talking about arms, let’s talk about elections. We have four French hostages who’ve been held in Lebanon for between seven and nine months. The ministers concerned, to use your expression, are playing the Syria card, and after all this time they haven’t even managed – I won’t even say to enter into negotiations with the hostage-takers – but simply to find out who they are and what they want. I can tell you the key to the hostage affair lies in Tehran, as everyone knows, and I am capable of securing their release.’

  ‘The hostages’ release is one of the government’s ongoing preoccupations, and it is continually working towards a solution, which I approve of.’ A silence. Then the President adds: ‘Of course, anything you can do to assist in Tehran will be welcome, as I’ve already told you.’

  ‘But unofficially. Officially, we have broken off relations with Iran. At least give my contacts a clear signal. Otherwise, there’ll be no progress on the hostages before the general election, and March ’86 is just around the corner.’

  After a few more paces in silence, the President embarks on a monologue on Saint-John Perse. Bornand switches off and massages the palm of his left hand. Shooting pains. How to find out who ordered the disappearance of the plane?