Tsing-Boum (20 page)

Van der Valk stood heavily planted on the pavement of the Rue Saint-Dominique and looked about without joy. Impressive but wearisome part of Paris, the Faubourg. Overwhelming houses; humbling in their immeasurable wealth and pride. He supposed there were still some
hôtels particuliers
, last bastions of privilege, with enormous gardens, cavernous salons, hordes of servants: very nice too and he was all for it; he hated nothing more than mediocrity. Most were the seats of the mighty in the administrative sense; ministries and sub-ministries, bureaux for this and for that – very dull, jostling the dukes and the marshals in their Jockey Club entrenchments and making an agreeable meeting place with ancient wealth where the First Minister perched luxuriantly in the Matignon Palace on the Rue de Varenne.

Some houses were divided into apartments just as in less god-begotten quarters, and behind these windows looking down on him there might even be poor: heartening thought. But the whole quarter stank of self-assured wealth from the puffed ministry on the Quai d'Orsay, staring arrogantly across the river, to the Ecole Militaire asphyxiated with rage at the sight of the Eiffel Tower, and at the centre was the Temple of Generals, Saint Louis des Invalides. Hereabouts, what generals said – that went.

Beastly quarter too, where there were no comforting little cafés. Where did the chauffeurs sneak off to? Surely they did not sit all day rigidly at attention behind the wheel of those huge glossy autos with flags flying from their wings. What was a poor policeman to do? Trudge an eternity back down to the Raspail crossing – or hunt around up by the Invalides; there was something there on the boulevard for sure, but one couldn't hang about here; be arrested for loitering and suspected bomb-thoughts as soon as winking. Oh well, he might as well
trail off to that horrible air terminus; he had his case parked there in the luggage office. He crossed the Rue de Bourgogne with a sagging tread, like a worn-out mule in the stony Pyrenees, and was thoroughly cross with DST. Useless lot. Here if anywhere they should be swarming like busy bees. Here in this quarter where their honey burst and bulged from every stately window there should surely be hundreds of them to come swarming up – offering him a nice glass of champagne first – and tell him obligingly whom he should see next.

What! They had been busy enough already in Holland! In Marseilles they had been zinging with ambitious energy, in Clermont-Ferrand eager hawkeyes had even got their feet wet running through the snow, and here, right in the centre of the Seventh Arrondissement, there wasn't a peep out of them. What did they do nowadays, when there was no longer a marvellous nest of spies out in Fontainebleau, so that they could spend happy weeks grilling talkative colonels from Standing Group suspected of fraternizing with Americans? Crossly, he used a public telephone in the Invalides bus station.

‘Monsieur Borza please.' For the brown man had given him a name and number, professedly most interested in what the general would have to say, for some obscure reason of his own.

The voice at the other end was young and cheerful.

‘Sorry, Monsieur Borza isn't in the office. Ring you back?'

‘Yes, the bus station; he'll be thrilled. All aboard for Le Bourget, next stop Glasgow, thank God to be home.'

‘The gentleman from Holland?'

‘Yes, Comrade.'

‘Where are you staying?'

‘I haven't the least idea.'

‘Oh that won't do at all; must have somewhere to put your feet up. We have a ducky place where we keep friends, just round the corner so don't bother with a taxi. I'll ring them for you, shall I? Saint George and Saint James – we call it the English Martyrs. By-bye now.'

It was perhaps not such a bad idea. He could do with a cup of tea.

Typical secret-service place; almost impossible to find. No vulgar notice boards on the street, but a dark little passage between
the two windows of a flower shop, with chaste grey velvet curtains and a card printed in gothic lettering saying
‘Complet'
to discourage the importunate. Inside was a mahogany cavern and an elderly page in a striped waistcoat.

‘I'm afraid we have no rooms.'

‘A kind friend was going to make a phone call?'

‘The Dutch gentleman – I am so sorry.' He wasn't asked to fill in a form!

His spirits rose rapidly at sight of the lift, which lived behind rococo spirals of gilded wrought-iron flowers and whose doors opened with large polished brass knobs. Inside there was a large brass handle connecting one with the engine room; one rang for Slow Astern and behold one went astern, slow but splendidly reliable and in Edwardian comfort; it was like a very tiny 1910 Cunarder. He was shown into a small chocolate-box where even the telephone had been salvaged from the
Titanic
. The window had a view of the Palais Bourbon: aha, this was where those Third Republic Deputies had kept their mistresses. Plumbing like a Wedgwood Ivy tea service got under way with loud clanks; the water was pale rust-colour and deliciously boiling, and there were three colossal towels. This was the life – join DST and Get Aboard the Atomic Age. Wrapped in all three bathtowels he picked up the telephone and said, ‘I'd very much like some tea.' And it arrived, in massive pot-de-chambre porcelain with little roses on it and ‘Worcester' written in gold on the bottom. The chambermaid who brought it had an elderly musky perfume and a bunch of huge shiny steel keys.

‘We thought you might like the paper. And would you be wanting a suit pressed?'

It was the London
Evening Standard –
he felt as though three large whiskies in quick succession were lifting the top of his head ten metres or so gently heavenwards. The tea was thick and dark and probably Fortnum and Mason's Darjeeling; he folded the paper to see how his shares were doing on the Stock Exchange.

The phone was wrong; it made a brief Parisian bleat.

‘Aloo-allo.'

‘Comfy?' The voice, barely recognizable through his opiumeater's
trance, was that of a bright young man with a leather raincoat who had ‘come from the Embassy' in another continent.

‘Very. I am now going to have a little nap. Send me up the menu and a few mistresses about eight.'

‘Just tell me very briefly about the Rue Saint-Dominique.'

‘Confirmation. You heard about Marseilles?'

‘Yes, we were given a sudden injection of interest as you gathered. Blowing dust off files, and generally doing our little exercises. Consensus of opinion last night was that it should be my baby, so I've been Beneluxing like crazy ever since.'

‘I'm feeling too bloody Beneluxurious just now for mental activity. What does all that mean?'

‘It means that after frenzied activity in all that flat boggy country the gamekeeper thinks there must be a rabbit around somewhere. Thing is to find the hole. One of the peasants thought he'd seen a shy little white tail.'

‘Yes,' said Van der Valk alarmed, ‘but I don't want the rabbit chased with loud shouts and bangs – I haven't got my gun. I want this one tamed with lettuce leaves.'

‘Quite all right,' soothingly. ‘We haven't the slightest interest in the fur coat industry. For us this is a question mark that's been pencilled in the margin and left there quite a few years. Our one very small interest is to take our little indiarubber and rub out the pencil mark. Now I may have something for you tonight, arriving on the evening plane from Brussels. Don't get nervous; it pays its own expenses because it thinks there's a quick profit to be made. It doesn't belong to us. Clear?'

‘Clear.'

‘It flatters itself that it is deeply in our confidence because occasionally we have given it a penny in its sweaty little palm. It is for you to handle as you see fit; I hope it may prove useful. Enjoy yourself – enjoy Paris. Why don't you have dinner at Lapérouse – they have those nice creamy potatoes. Sleep well.'

Van der Valk put the phone down, got underneath a magenta satin counterpane, and went peacefully to sleep after the porter had politely agreed with him that Lapérouse was a nice peaceful place where he would certainly be happy.

He got a table by the window, and pink lampshades and the kind of steak that sticks to one's insides and those nice creamy potatoes and the kind of Burgundy that comes straight from a Renoir girl's big luscious breasts and there was even a bit left over to go with the Roquefort. The coffee was nice too. And he had a view of the autumn night across the Seine to the Quai des Orfèvres and the Palace of Justice and the Préfecture de Police, which gave him a nice homy feeling. Back in Amsterdam the local pub on the Prinsengracht had been nothing like this. It was a pity that this man had to come and spoil it, and worse still to waste the brandy on him. One had to be in something really squalid like DST to appreciate such people. He felt grateful for the two hours of delicious cocooned sleep before the chambermaid called him with his suit sponged and pressed, and for the really solid dinner that removed that lamentable clueless feeling.

Still, it had been well-timed, no doubt of that. He had been dallying over his second cup of coffee and had a cigar going, an Upmann that could have been made of tightly-rolled hundred-franc notes, the price the Ministry of Justice in The Hague had to pay for it. Well, he had saved them the price of a train ticket from Clermont-Ferrand to Paris/Austerlitz, hadn't he?

The man was smoking a cigar too, a tough dark cheroot from Holland by way of Sumatra, Brazil, and lord knew what other small unimportant places, and he was smoking it in a peculiarly horrible way. He put the well-wetted cheroot in the middle of his mouth, sucked a great gobful of smoke, spat it out and caught it again in two obscene serpents up his nose, and from there it came out of his ears as far as Van de Valk was concerned because he could not bear to look.

The man was big, as big as himself and fatter, but he moved
quickly and softly on his feet and seemed agile. He had a head full of distinguished silver hair, very thick and healthy and expensively cut and arranged, and a pale grey suit open over a cream silk shirt. No overcoat unless he had left it downstairs. No pullover. Toughy. Swifty, He might have been fifty years old and again he might not. He was talking to the waiter and as Van der Valk watched idly he came catfooting down the plummy carpet and leaned over with easy familiarity.

‘Thought I'd catch you here – friends gave me the word. No, I had dinner at Orly but I'd like an ice-cream.' The waiter was standing there with his fingertips tapping negligently on a menu.

‘With pineapple, and kirsch, and cream.'

‘Brandy, Mr …?'

‘McLintock's the name, Joe McLintock from the Far North. Don't suppose they've got any Glenlivet, but the brandy sounds good.' ‘Two.' The waiter bowed.

‘Glad to meet a friend,' said Mr McLintock stretching luxuriantly. He had a chest like a barrel under that silk shirt. One could have taken him for an ex-heavyweight champion, or the manager of a very prosperous football team. He spoke a fluent thick French but had trouble getting his mouth round diphthongs. He could be from the Far North all right, thought Van der Valk, though himself he thought McLintock a poorish choice unless the man was fronting as a fur salesman for the Hudson Bay Company. ‘I just got in from Brussels – looks like I timed it. Say, that looks good.' His voice was soft, low, and creamy, suitable for expensive restaurants and going well with the pineapple ice-cream he now began to eat happily. A scent of kirsch floated across; Van der Valk blew a fan of smoke. Brandy arrived. Not a football team – an ice-hockey team. ‘The friends have the word you're anxious to meet a fellow.' His language too was something that Van der Valk could take a dislike to without any effort at all. It seemed to be culled from espionage fiction, and enlivened with catchwords learned from disc-jockeys.

‘I'm looking for a man called Laforêt.'

‘Ah you spika de English too. Great, great. You say it, I'll follow it – Spanish, Norwegian, anything you like. Terrific
linguist, McLintock. Well now, a chap called Laforêt … Yes, sir, I heard a little whisper about that this morning in Brussels, and I made a tiny teeny phone call because I reckoned this was where McLintock might make a tiny teeny deal. How teeny would that be, according to your catalogue?'

‘Just for the address?'

‘That's what we're dealing in right now or have I got out in Atlanta instead of in Memphis? Don't let me hustle you, natch – I haven't got this address right here on a bit of paper. But I can find it, yes man, I can find that bit of paper. Twenty-four hours?'

‘Twenty-four hours from now – one thousand francs.' The big man was very busy cleaning out the ice-cream coupe and licking the spoon with a large pink tongue. Van der Valk sipped his brandy. ‘Swiss,' he added negligently.

There was a loud affected sigh.

‘Holy cow, that sure tasted good. Just can't resist being lazy even if it does me an injury. 'Tisn't ezzactly a heavy rate for twenny-four hours' hard slogging, but in these handsome surroundings it's kind of cruel to be horsetrading.' Certainly not American. As good as certainly not Canadian. Scots was out of the question.

‘Now whereabouts?'

‘The tables on the gallery in the Saint-Germain drugstore,' said Van der Valk, rather pleased with himself. ‘They have good ice-cream there.'

‘Between eight and nine in the p.m. – I don't like making promises, Mister, but I'll see what I can do.' He lit another of his phallic symbols. ‘I'd like to have a little insurance. This party – he's wanted? By the way I guess I never introduced myself properly – Joe McLintock's in the commercial aviation business, but he likes to steer clear of politics.'

‘Balthasar – Arthur Balthasar. I'm in the legal business, Mr McLintock. I don't have any interest in politics myself; in fact I'm a bit of a pacifist. But you know what they call us Swiss – the bankers of Europe. And why are we the bankers of Europe? Because people trust us. They bring us money, and they bring us secrets, and we have friends in the most unexpected directions, and we are trustworthy because we don't
mix ourselves up in politics and fancy adventures. We like sober careful investments that aren't too insecure. Cinema companies, treasure-hunters, speculators – they don't come to us for underwriting. And we don't ever pay in advance. But on delivery – then we pay on the nail, Mr McLintock, and it smells just as good as gold.'