“Collateral damage! That’s my parents he’s talking about. What a depressingly grotesque idea …”
Mazarelle took a deep breath, and his whole body seemed to sigh in resignation at the sadness of things. He too found it overwhelmingly depressing, if true, that all the other Taziac deaths might have been merely gratuitous. An
ad valorem
death tax added to the cost of doing business. Mazarelle supposed that all CIA agents were trained to think in that cold-blooded way. Such jargon wasn’t called
la
langue
de
bois
for nothing.
“But, Inspector, if Bennett is right, who was behind this and why did they want to do away with Phillips?”
“Bennett claims that it could have been a ‘back-channel operation’ originating somewhere in the stratosphere of Matignon or the Quai d’Orsay. Someone at or near the top casually letting it be known that it would be nice if something were done. Little more than that. A vague wish, a scarcely audible aside to ensure plausible deniability, and all the messy little details left to others.”
Molly shivered. She didn’t want to believe it, but she could imagine it. The seemingly innocuous “If only …” The subordinates who took the hint. The hired gun who carried it out. The hideous results. And most monstrous of all was the power of those who could set such forces in motion and believe they could get away with murder scot-free.
“Does any of that make sense to you, Inspector?”
“To me, mademoiselle, it sounds far-fetched. On the other hand, I don’t think Bennett was being open with me. Perhaps with you—an American—he’ll be more forthcoming. Ask him tomorrow. You’ll have time on the plane to Paris. And bon voyage home.”
As they were about to part, they hugged each other and Mazarelle was impressed that in spite of all she’d been through, she was still a very strong young woman.
“You know,
ma
chère
Molly, you’re not the only one. I’m leaving Taziac too.”
She was obviously surprised.
“Yes, I’ve made up my mind to go back to Paris.”
“Now?”
“No, no. A few days. I’ve some business here to take care of first. My report. They don’t let you get away quite so easily in the
police
nationale
. Fortunately,” he added, his tone adobe dry, “it’s not every day that you shoot somebody.”
Molly smiled in sympathy. “Are you planning to retire?”
It was a serious question and the inspector had given it serious thought. “I’ve considered retiring, but what would I do? Play
pétanque
? Work on my tan? Homicide is my life.” Glancing down and contemplating his worn shoes, his stained and wrinkled pants, he read the braille of his scarred forehead with his fingertips and said wistfully, “Such as it is. Besides”—he winked at her—“I’m much too young to retire,
n’est-ce pas
?”
On his way back to the commissariat, Mazarelle munched on the
myrtille
tart he’d picked up on the way out. He was glad Molly was finally going home. Above all, he was glad she was going home in one piece.
50
PARIS: RUE DE BERRI
V
ite,
Hubert!
Vite!
Come in here. Hurry! He’s just landed.”
On the edge of the white brocade couch in the living room, Émile Pellerin leaned forward and watched the giant Airbus roll into view and stop before the red carpet. The door in the side of the plane popped open and out strode President Chirac, who, despite the long trip, looked fresher that Botticelli’s Venus, his hair sleeked back and gleaming. Waving and smiling at the official reception committee awaiting him, he descended the portable stairs.
Hubert rushed in and, seeing what his friend was watching on the television screen, sank down heavily on the couch beside him.
“He looks glad to be there,” noted Hubert.
“Of course he’s glad. Look at that.”
At the bottom of the stairs waiting for him with open arms was the president of China, Jiang Zemin. The two leaders—one tall and the other short, bespectacled, moon-faced—awkwardly embraced each other with broad smiles as the band struck up the French national anthem. After Jiang had welcomed him warmly, Chirac spoke of France’s strong and inviolable ties to China. Then side by side, they inspected the rows of Chinese military honor guards standing straight as spears, their white gloves holding glistening, bayonet-tipped rifles, the white braid on their uniforms looped through the epaulettes on their left shoulders.
“After the
bombardement,
it’s hard to believe that he’s actually there,” said Blond.
Pellerin nodded. It
was
hard to believe that the Chinese had forgotten
the NATO bombs that turned their Belgrade embassy into splinters. But the plan he and Hubert devised had worked perfectly. The large wooden crates from Tornade, stenciled High-Speed Train Wheels and addressed to the Société de Chemin de Fer du Tchad, had stopped in Africa only long enough to be recrated and redirected. Shipped from Chad to Tianjin, the new advanced NATO trainer, the T-9AX, had arrived in time and changed everything.
The Chinese must have been astonished that Chirac could get them such an unexpected gift. Without it, they’d need years to develop the avionics themselves. Émile loved the irony. If NATO’s bombing had, in effect, ruined Chirac’s plans for trade talks with China, then, as fortune would have it, the NATO trainer had succeeded in unrolling the red carpet for him.
The CNN reporter announced that in about an hour Mr. Jiang, along with more than one hundred important Chinese Communist Party members, would host a formal banquet in the Great Hall in honor of the occasion, a grand affair for the visiting French trade delegation, which included twenty-one CEOs of leading French corporations such as Total Fina, Airbus, Thomson, and Michelin.
“Can you imagine what that will be like?” Pellerin wondered aloud. “The toasts, the applause. The ten or twelve courses, each more mouth-watering than the one before—succulent chiu yim squid or perhaps king prawns for appetizers followed by winter melon soup and then Lake Tungting striped bass supreme, plus soft ‘celebration’ noodles, and paper-thin, double-crisp celestial roasted duck. Then topping it all off—sweet almond pudding with sliced dates for dessert. And enough exquisite teas and wines to float a cruise ship. Oh lovely!” he gushed, hugging his friend.
“Look.” Blond brushed him aside. Among the crowd of dignitaries, he’d spotted their friend Simone Nortier, the foreign minister’s deputy. “There’s Simone with her minister.”
Tomorrow, according to the voice of the offscreen CNN reporter, the two leaders would go behind closed doors for one-on-one talks on trade and human rights issues, and the French president was expected to extend an invitation to President Jiang to visit France next spring.
Blond said, “She seems to be having a good time.”
“She deserves it. She’s earned this trip. If it hadn’t been for Simone suggesting us to her boss, he wouldn’t be there either.”
Blond thought that was a good point. “Of course,” he added, “we deserve some of the credit too. After all, we were the ones who found Reiner for her.”
“Simone hasn’t forgotten. But do you remember what she called him when she phoned to tell us their trip to Beijing was on?”
Blond tried to recall but couldn’t.
“A mixed blessing,” said Pellerin. “So we don’t want to claim too much under the circumstances. We wouldn’t want to be too pushy.”
Blond’s slow smile of recognition was met by Pellerin’s wink of approval. “The one thing I hope she does remember,” Blond said, “is to bring us back some fortune cookies.” The two friends were laughing and congratulating each other on Simone’s good luck when the doorbell rang.
Pellerin unlocked the dead bolt, opened the door a crack. Their visitor was a complete surprise, though not an unwelcome one. It was merely that it had been so long since they’d last seen him—more than eight, perhaps almost nine years since the Southern Triangle. He threw open the door and drew their visitor in, delighted, pumping his hand.
“Look who’s here, Hubert. It’s Bennett. Dwight Bennett. Where have you been keeping yourself,
mon
ami
? Let me look at you. It’s been ages. And still as young and handsome as ever.”
Blond came forward and stiffly shook Bennett’s hand. Actually, he liked the American. It was his friend Émile, the flirt, he didn’t care for at the moment.
Bennett glanced at the two suitcases in front of the hallway closet. “Going somewhere?”
Pellerin seemed not to have noticed the suitcases were there. “I see we still haven’t put them away. A wonderful vacation! We went camping in the New World.”
“Canada?”
Blond turned to his friend and asked, “How did he know that?”
“The baggage tags, Hubert.”
Pellerin had once estimated that there were as many as eighty
American agents in France, with thirty of them clandestines. More agents—after 1991 and the Soviet breakup—than from any other country. And the youthful-looking Bennett was probably the most important of the lot.
Émile Pellerin took their visitor’s arm. “Our Dwight is as quick as ever, I see. Come along,” he said, leading him like royalty into the living room, which was high-ceilinged and white with marble-topped tables. Bennett would have liked a large, spacious apartment just like theirs, but on the other side of the Seine. As they chatted, the retired agent described the joys of fishing for arctic char in the chill, teeming waters north of Montreal.
“I envy you two. Especially those great tans.”
“You think so?”
Pellerin went over to the gilt-framed mirror on the wall. Lifting his chin, he ran his fingers over his neck, his face, and smiled at the color of his skin. “I’m afraid mine is already beginning to fade.”
Bennett turned to Pellerin’s beefy friend. “It’s good to see you again, Hubert.”
“What can I get you to drink?”
“It’s a little too early for me.”
“Nonsense,” Pellerin said, going over and turning off the television set. “Especially today when there’s reason to celebrate.”
“Reason?”
“It’s not every day we have a visit from our old friend.”
Blond glided silently in his sandals over the waxed parquet, and a cold bottle of Rosette from Monbazillac materialized on the coffee table. Bennett sipped the wine but it was much too sweet for him. This was, after all, a business call. But before he could get down to business, his friends invited him to stay for lunch.
“Believe me, you won’t regret it. Let me show you.” Pellerin went inside to the kitchen and returned with a large shipping box he placed on the table. It was addressed to Hubert from Élysée Palace.
“I see you two still have friends in high places.”
Blond grinned with pleasure.
Nesting inside the large box was another, smaller one, like a
matrioshka,
and printed on the lid was
Trésors de Périgord
. Opening
it, Pellerin disclosed a trove of mushrooms, truffles, and other gourmet delicacies from the Dordogne region. He held up one of the grayish-brown mushrooms, sniffed its bosky aroma, and declared it
“parfait!”
For lunch Hubert was going to make them cèpes à la périgourdine, and Pellerin, sphinxlike, having discovered among the cèpes a few choice amanitas—known to connoisseurs everywhere as “the queen of mushrooms”—promised their visitor nothing less than a culinary revelation.
Bennett was curious about the enclosed card. “What are the congratulations for?” he asked Blond.
Hubert couldn’t seem to remember. He glanced helplessly at Émile.
“Stop joking, you big ox. That’s what we’ve been saving your mushrooms for. It’s Hubert’s birthday. An old schoolboy friend of ours from ENA never forgets a birthday.”
Bennett suggested, “That’s probably why he now works at Élysée.”
Pellerin raised his glass. “To dear Hubert.
Joyeux
anniversaire,
dear heart.”
“Another year. No wonder I didn’t remember.”
It wasn’t until their American visitor was standing at the window and Pellerin was pointing out to him the tiny swatch of the Boulevard Haussmann in the distance that Bennett mentioned their recent stay at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin.
“But how did you know we were there?” Pellerin asked.
“Word gets around.”
“We love to travel. It’s one of the joys of retirement.”
Bennett assumed that they’d been doing a lot of traveling that summer. He knew that it was when they’d returned to their rue de Berri apartment that Pellerin had made his call to German Interpol.
“I was told you were in Berlin on business.”
“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Blond demanded. “We’re retired now.”
“Well almost,” his friend corrected him, “but not quite.” Pellerin went over to the elegant small desk near the window and handed Bennett one of their new cards. It read P&B CONSULTING. There was a phone number.
“Ah, I see. What exactly do you do?”
“A little of this, a little of that. No heavy lifting. Hardly anything too strenuous anymore. And there’s nothing like being your own boss. Right, Hubert?”
Bennett wasn’t interested in their routine. Especially after Molly’s persistent questions on the flight back to Paris. Questions about the assassin and who had hired him and why, questions to which he was certain they held the answers. And he wasn’t inclined to beat around the bush. “So then, who is this Klaus Reiner?”
Blond looked as if he’d been zapped by lightning.
“Klaus Reiner?” Pellerin repeated the name as if he’d never heard it before. “I’ve no idea. Perhaps you can tell us what this is all about.”
Bennett fully expected Pellerin’s response and knew that he’d have to wing it. He didn’t need to mention the passport found in Taziac with the
Ossi
’s name. He was happy, rather, to refresh their memory about Suite 501 at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin. Their meeting and hiring of a man called Klaus Reiner. His job: to kill the American CEO of the multinational corporation Tornade, Schuyler Phillips, vacationing with friends in the French village of Taziac in the Dordogne.