Tsing-Boum (7 page)

He had known such little letters succeed before now, childish as they were. Official messages advanced upon their appointed ways, through the bland and anaesthetized digestive systems of official bureaux, and in due course produced bland tasteless replies. It was lunchtime; he went home.

‘I don't understand this message,' said the post-office clerk, worried.

‘Where does it say you should? Just count the number of words, son, and spare the intellectual effort.'

‘There is bouillabaisse,' said Ruth with open eyes; she had just learned the word and was pleased with the sound it made.

‘Good – I've been getting anti-French demonstrations the whole morning.'

‘I am delighted,' said Arlette, beaming.

‘I know how it's made – Arlette taught me.'

‘Very very good; we will exchange lessons. Words in ou make their plural with an s, except bijou caillou chou …'

‘Genou hibou joujou pou. May I tell you? One big onion, three tomatoes, six potatoes and six pieces of garlic.'

‘And a stone covered in seaweed,' said Arlette with a straight face. The week before, she had come upon a recipe in an English Sunday paper, and laughed till she cried.

‘Where do you go to school, Ruth?'

‘On the corner of the Van Lennepweg and the Oosterkade.'

‘Would you like to change? There is a school where there are children from several different countries, and they do things in other languages.'

‘Oh yes. But it's the middle of term.'

‘We will say you've just arrived from Madagascar.'

‘But then I'd be very cold and I wouldn't speak Dutch.'

‘There you are – just think – you have an enormous advantage.'

‘Aren't I going back then to the Van Lennepweg?'

‘If it's all right by you, no. You stay here with Arlette.'

‘And have bouillabaisse every day?'

‘Except Saturday, when there is cassoulet, because of the rugby players.'

‘Official?' asked Arlette.

‘No, not official – but from the horse's mouth.'

‘What horse?' asked Ruth, already alarmed by the rugby players, who sounded menacing.

‘Dinner, children. Ruth, take off your apron and wash your hands.'

Official channels being what they are he was surprised to have a telephone message before the office closed, giving him an answer to his inquiries. The answer had come on the telex,
was very brief, and not very enlightening. It said, ‘Our representative will call upon you tomorrow morning,' and was signed with a code number. Van der Valk studied this laconic phrase with interest. He felt as if he had thrown a fishing line into the Volga and come up with an enormous sturgeon, and got a colleague in the Hague on the phone.

‘I read you a code number.'

‘Aha.'

‘Am I right? – is this DST?'

‘It is. What have you been doing – joining the Secret Army?'

‘No no, I like the French.'

‘Be very quiet and very innocent,' advised the colleague, who had dealings now and then with the French police. ‘They're terrifyingly polite, like the General.'

The second message pleased him more, though it was equally laconic. It was a civilian telegram delivered by a bicycle-boy, and said ‘Stand by your phone Mazarel'.

Van der Valk was vague with the Press when they asked about progress.

‘Now let's see,' he said to Arlette when he got home again, ‘DST – that's counter-espionage, hm?'

‘No that's SDECE. DST is surveillance of territory, but I think it's a question of not letting your left hand know about the right. What interest have you in them?' She sounded a bit anxious.

‘I don't know at all. They seem to have an interest in me. They propose to call tomorrow disguised as a traveller in groceries. The password is “How do you stand for cornflakes?”'

‘Very funny.'

At five minutes to nine the telephone rang.

‘France is calling you.'

‘Put them on.' There were bangs and snaps, and the gabbling of exchange girls far away in the rugby players' country – the medieval guts of the French telephone system. Van der Valk suspected them of doing it on purpose. They could build a variable-geometry jet fighter in half the time it took the Americans, but were not going to allow the population to be
contaminated by advanced technology like telephones. Civilized of them, on the whole.

‘You're through,' quacked several ducks.

‘Through what?' said a male voice suddenly in his ear.

‘The Mont Blanc Tunnel probably,' he said politely.

‘Go on,' said a duck impatiently.

‘Come and give me lessons,' went the male voice. ‘Am I really talking to you?' in a voice without the sweet reasonable tone.

‘Myself, confrère, to my pleasure.'

‘Good. The champagne is a good idea.'

‘It's a promise – I have a feeling I'll be in your district shortly.'

‘I'm not going to talk on an open line, of course. This may not interest you, but I'm doubtful, you know, whether your official inquiries will meet with much enthusiasm.' Van der Valk digested this news for a minute.

‘You think I'm going to hit a big dull echoing silence, do you?'

‘I just thought of giving you a bit of a hint. So you wouldn't think I was just being obstructive.' That, thought Van der Valk, is reasonably clear and certainly familiar, but one would like to know what he was talking about, even so.

‘My customer's name rings a little bell, does it?'

‘Oh yes. No particular surprise will greet your news. Nothing's known of course. I have nothing on paper. In fact I don't have anything for you at all.'

‘I didn't suppose you had. Would have been a great deal too much to hope for.'

‘It might strike sensitive ears in some quarters,' went on the voice in a do-you-understand-me way, ‘turn them a bit red.'

‘I see.' He didn't but hoped he might, with perseverance.

‘That's all, really.'

‘Give me a clue to the crossword, though.'

‘Yes, of course – you couldn't possibly be expected to grasp it. Let's see – you talk any English?'

‘Some.'

‘Think about a dee, a bee, and a pee, and then use your memory.'

‘When I get a tiercé in the right order I'll order two bottles of champagne.' Chuckles sounded.

‘Drop by any time. Yes, mademoiselle, but don't panic me.'

‘Are you finished with your correspondent?' asked a prim Dutch voice.

‘Yes, miss, thanks.' A dee, a bee, a pee? His mind was a perfect blank. ‘Di, bi, pi, and do I understand English?'

‘What?' said Arlette.

‘It's the police boss where Esther used to work in the military hospital. I sent a routine wire for anything known – I mean she might have a police record or something. I sent a civilian wire just asking casually whether he knew of anything that wasn't official. He goes extremely enigmatic, hints that my request may prove an embarrassment to persons unknown – I have no clue whatever who or why – and ends up giving me something and do I know English? Di, bi, pi – now what can that mean, in English?'

‘Why English?' asked Arlette, puzzled.

‘Well he's spelling something out so he does it in English to throw the phone girls off – they use that Lucien Arthur jargon.'

‘And you don't understand?' asked Arlette, in such an odd voice that he looked sharply at her.

‘You mean you do?'

‘Certainly I do,' in a dry curt way. A red light, he thought. She's not going to say any more. It's something that affects her, which she refuses to talk about. After a minute's thought he looked at her but she was deep in her book. He thought he understood but he was still no nearer the meaning of the, dibipi.

Arlette was a handicap to him. A policeman, more particularly an officer in the detective branch, is in a sensitive profession. Just as a diplomat who marries a Russian wife runs a considerable risk of being sent to the Bahama Islands and left there, a policeman who makes an unconventional marriage stands an excellent chance of having thirty years in which to look at the four walls of the Bureau of Records. Van der Valk, who had occasionally brought off showy, nearly brilliant performances which had attracted the notice of his superiors, had
been noted down as a useful tool, but he would never be thought altogether sound. He knew this and had accepted it. In more recent years there had been graver troubles. Arlette knew of this, and it burned her. She had done her best, but had never forgiven herself. She was still bitter, whereas he was no more than faintly cynical.

It had been a humiliating episode, with characters from the security police asking questions. Arlette had shown one the door and he had been very nasty indeed. When Van der Valk came home to find her crying and trembling but still refusing to be bullied he had gone straight back to the office and slammed his resignation on the table. He had waited three weeks – suspended – to learn whether it had been accepted or not. He had some reason to believe that the refusal to accept it came from high up, higher than political police riffraff, at least. Arlette had been suspected of OAS sympathies, and the sad thing about this was that she did have OAS sympathies. She came from southern France, from the Department of the Var, had a brother in Algiers, and had, very naturally, been as vociferous as most about
‘Algérie française'
.

When the Armée Secrète proper was formed, when plastic explosive got stuck to the houses of doctors, lawyers and liberal administrators, and when she understood – before the day of the barricades – that Algeria belonged to the Arabs after all, she fought a battle between her emotions and her conscience and her conscience won.

It had no importance now. She no longer had any illusions about the admirers of General Salan, but she knew that a few years ago she had blocked her husband's promotion and had been close – within the thinness of her skin – to destroying his career. It had left scars.

He thought he understood. Esther Marx had served in Indochina and had been mixed up with French soldiery. She had been assassinated with a sub-machine-gun, and there was something in her past that was known to the French administration. It was easy enough to believe that this was something to do with the Secret Army, but how in heaven's name did Esther, peaceably married for ten years to a Dutch serving soldier, come to have importance to the Secret Army? Still, he realized that Sergeant Zomerlust's promotion had been blocked for exactly the same reasons as his own.

What should he do? Plainly, ask the political police whether they knew anything about Esther Marx. He was rather badly placed to ask anything of the political police. Ask for another man to do the job – himself feigning ill-health? Would be tactful; the Dutch would like that. No – he hadn't any tact. If there was a problem, for Arlette's sake he was going to meet it head on, and damn the consequences. But was there really a problem? Was that really the meaning of the French policeman's cagey behaviour? He had known nothing about Arlette, of course. He had only meant, possibly, that Van der Valk might do well to be wary of asking questions that might involve him in politics.

Esther Marx was – had been – might have been – involved with a movement for which many French functionaries had felt – and stifled – sympathy. If Esther Marx was now dead by violence, went this message, better not embarrass a number of officials in a small town in the South-west of France – perhaps not too long ago they too were being thought of as ‘security risks'. Their promotion might have been blocked too. There have been magistrates for whom at one time the way to Versailles lay open – perhaps even prefects – who found themselves unaccountably left sitting in Rodez or Mende.

It does look, thought Van der Valk ruefully, as though I have stepped on a wasps' nest.

It is too late to withdraw. I got a telegram this afternoon saying that a ‘representative' would be calling on me tomorrow morning, and the telegram was signed DST.

And Arlette has proposed adopting Esther's child. Knowing her, she will now be more determined than ever.

‘Arlette.'

‘Yes.'

‘I have understood some things.'

‘In that case,' with a sideways smile, ‘I can go to bed.'

‘But I think we'd better reconsider this business with the child.
Que Zomerlust se débrouille, non?'

‘By no means,' said Arlette standing up – there, he had known it! – ‘If Zomerlust is agreeable, and I gather he is, I keep Ruth. Say it's my bit for the war effort.'

‘We don't know who her father is.' He could see flame run through her, see her opening her mouth to say ‘He could be General Salan for all I care' but all she said, mildly, was, ‘Perfectly true, we don't.'

‘Very well, then that's settled.'

‘By the way, I don't suppose that badge means anything to you?'

‘Badge?'

‘On Ruth's beret.' He looked at her, and went and got the beret to look at more closely. A blue cross of Lorraine, on a grenade.

‘Isn't the grenade the Legion?'

‘It is. Specifically, it is the badge of the Thirteenth Half-Brigade – the same unit that was at Bir Hakeim.'

‘Oh.'

‘You weren't to know. You weren't brought up in Toulon. Are you coming to bed?'

‘Not for a little while.'

‘You'll forgive me if I go to sleep?'

‘Of course. Goodnight – and don't worry.' He heard her go upstairs. Now what was the meaning of the Bee Dee – no, the Dee Bee Pee? It sounded like I came – I saw – I conquered.

Di Bi Pi. Sounded like Vietnamese. Could it be a person – or
a place – in Indochina? But the man had said it was English. When he saw it, suddenly, it was so ludicrously simple he could have kicked himself. Of course, the English alphabet: it went Ay Bee Cee. Translate into French and you got Day Bay Pay – Dien Bien Phu.