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  “What is it?” came a male voice.

  “Guess!” said Buenaventura merrily.

  The lock turned. The door opened halfway. Buenaventura gave it a good kick. It flew open and struck the fifty-year-old in the chest, and he fell backwards. Buenaventura entered brusquely, slamming the door behind him. His victim reacted far more quickly than he had expected, grabbing his ankle and causing him to fall. Taken by surprise, Buenaventura let fly with a kick that missed its target. His ears were seized and his head slammed against the wall.

  “Have you quite finished, you little shit?”

  Buenaventura looked at the fifty-year-old man. Both adversaries were visibly astonished.

  “Thomas!” exclaimed the Catalan.

  “Carlos!”

  “I’m not called Carlos now,” said Buenaventura as he got to his feet.

  “And I’m not Thomas,” said Épaulard. “I am André Épaulard. In fact that’s my real name.”

  “Buenaventura Diaz,” said the Catalan. “And that’s my real name too.”

  “You can’t make this stuff up,” observed Épaulard. “What got into you, laying into me like that?”

  “I had no idea it was you.”

  “I don’t get it. Come have a drink. And explain.”

  The two men walked down the hallway and into a study with a heavy desk and two leather armchairs. Against the wall stood a khaki metal cabinet. Épaulard opened it and took out a bottle of Polish vodka and two glasses. He sat down at the desk and Buenaventura took one of the armchairs.

  “Been a while,” said Buenaventura.

  “Since ’62.”

  “What the hell have you been up to?”

  “Algiers. Working on the program with the Pabloists.”†

  “Idiot.”

  “You still an anarchist?”

  “As you can tell.”

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Épaulard suddenly. “Don’t tell me you’re involved with a certain D’Arcy?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “On that ambassador operation?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re fucked,” said Épaulard. “As for D’Arcy, he’s a complete alkie. You shouldn’t go near him.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  “Not with me. But tell me why you are here and why you laid into me. My tender soul wants to know.”

  “It’s simple. D’Arcy was supposed to find us a specialist. A certain André Épaulard. I had no idea it was you. When D’Arcy said his specialist was backing out, I came over here to pay him a visit—just to make doubly sure that he wouldn’t blab about our plans.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Once news is out, it’s out.”

  “Well, anyway, no harm done.”

  “You really mean to go through with this crazy deal?”

  “Yes.”

  Épaulard emptied his glass of vodka and shook his head long-sufferingly.

  “You’re a fine bunch of clowns.”

  “We were a fine bunch of clowns in 1960,” said Buenaventura. “And you were one of us.”

  “Something came out of that.”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” cried the Catalan. “You like what it led to? You like Islamic Maoism?”

  “Oh shit!” said Épaulard. “Let’s not get into theoretical discussions, okay?”

  “All right, suit yourself. We’re having a meeting tonight. At the place of this guy called Treuffais. I’ll leave you his address.”

  “I guarantee you there’s no point.”

  “I’m leaving it anyway.”

  Buenaventura took a writing pad and a pencil from the desk and scribbled.

  “By the way,” he said, “what’s all this crap about legal counseling?”

  “A job that went south,” said Épaulard. “We had a sucker lined up for the classic con about getting hold of the FLN’s war booty, the treasure that Khider ripped off. I needed a front. But a couple of weeks ago my partner got himself knocked off in Germany by some Turks, and the mark packed his bags. I was left holding this office, paid up until the end of the month, a 1956 Cadillac, and eyes open.”

  Buenaventura laughed briefly and poured himself another vodka.

  “As a specialist,” he said, “we could compensate you.”

  “With the ambassador’s ransom, I suppose?”

  “Right.”

  “You’ll never see it.”

  “What do you know? Come this evening.”

  “No.”

  *Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité: mobile reserve police force, part of France’s National Police under the aegis of the minister of the interior.

  †Followers of the Trotskyist Michel Pablo (Michalis N. Raptis).

  6

  ALONE now, Épaulard paced nervously up and down his apartment. At one end of the corridor was the office. At the other, his bedroom, containing a bed, a chair, a small table, and a large armoire. On the table were a big legal dictionary intended for heads of families, Roger Vailland’s Écrits intimes (Personal Diaries), and a few old crime novels, all dog-eared. In the armoire were two pairs of underpants, a set of bedsheets, six pairs of cotton socks, two neckties in solid colors, two nylon shirts, and a ten-year-old camel-hair overcoat. In the coat’s pockets were on one side a box of .30-caliber Mauser ammunition and on the other a Chinese Type 31 automatic. As for the beige raincoat, it lay on the chair.

  Épaulard went into the bathroom and examined his face, which the door had struck when Buenaventura burst in. The fifty-year-old bore a pink bruise to the left of his mouth, and his lips were beginning to swell. He nodded his head. He kept looking at his reflection. He had the painful and familiar feeling that he was a failure. He passed his life in review. He was born in the Antilles in the 1920s. At the beginning of the Second World War he was an orphan, penniless, but he owned a boat that took him to South America. The blockade of Norway had created a shortage of cod-liver oil on the world market. Épaulard fished for shark and made a killing with shark-liver oil. Some months later he was in France, and in love. It was for love that he joined the Resistance. An FTP combatant,* he was separated from his unit in a violent skirmish in the Dauphiné in the spring of 1944. By that time he was no longer in love. Having lost his contacts, he made new ones with Gaullist elements and found himself in the Vercors.

  After the destruction of the Vercors Maquis, Épaulard, having escaped the massacre, conceived a lively hatred for the bourgeoisie and the Gaullists. He was now a man alone. He became a killer. Between 1945 and 1947 he killed five or six people, out of conviction and for money. Succeeding by luck and good management in remaining unknown to both his clients and to France’s police forces, he eventually joined the French Communist Party. There were strikes in the north. Épaulard sabotaged the railroad lines used to deliver armored cars and troops for the purposes of repression. He had a taste of ashes in his mouth. He resolved to assassinate Jules Moch. He abandoned this plan. He was discombobulated. He ran a small print shop in the Paris suburbs. He stopped paying his Party dues.

  Beginning in 1957, Épaulard printed all kinds of underground literature produced by left splinter groups opposed to the Communists. Before long he was working for the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). He met Buenaventura Diaz, who went by the name of Carlos. He met D’Arcy, already an alcoholic. Leaving France in 1962, he worked with the Pabloists in Algiers on the FLN’s program. He quit Algeria after the fall of Ben Bella. He stayed for a short time in Guinea and then landed up in Cuba, working under Enrique Lister. By this time Épaulard was corrupt. As early as his time in Algeria he had trafficked in abandoned real estate. In Cuba he dabbled in the black market until he was expelled. He traveled in South America before covering his tracks completely. Now here he was, back in France. He had taken the Chinese pistol from his pocket and pressed the barrel to his neck. His finger was on the trigger.

  “Might as well end it right now,” he told his mirror.

  Épaulard sighed and did not finish himself off.
He re­pocketed the pistol, a copy of the Russian Tokarev. He consulted his watch. Exactly seven o’clock. He decided he would go to the meeting that night.

  “What the hell, why not?” he said to his mirror.

  *FTPF or FTP: Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Français, an armed resistance organization created and led by the French Communist Party.

  7

  “THE U.S. Ambassador’s schedule is rather inconsistent,” Buenaventura reported.

  He unfolded a map of Paris on the table and, to make room, Meyer, Treuffais and D’Arcy pushed their just-uncapped bottles of beer aside. As for Épaulard, he remained on his feet, circling the table slowly with his Kronenbourg in one hand and the other hand behind his back, his chin lowered onto his chest and the filter of his Française almost crushed between his lips. From time to time one of the others would cast a furtive glance his way.

  “Poindexter is an Episcopalian,” Buenaventura went on, “and he attends the eight o’clock service every Sunday morning at the cathedral on Avenue George V. He never sleeps in his official quarters at the embassy; instead he returns every night, though at no particular time, to his residence not far from the Chaillot Cinémathèque. Anywhere from eleven to four in the morning. He goes irregularly to visit the American Hospital in Neuilly. Three times over the past two months while we’ve been watching him.”

  As he spoke, the Catalan would point to the spots on the map that the diplomat frequented. He also mentioned a few more locations, all of which the ambassador visited only occasionally.

  “All the same,” added Buenaventura, “in one way he is as regular as clockwork. Every week on Friday he spends the evening at a club on the corner of Avenue Kléber and Rue Robert-Soulat.”

  “Would you be so good as to repeat that?” asked Épaulard, coming to a stop.

  Buenaventura wondered why the ex-FTP fighter was suddenly speaking so formally, but he repeated, “Ambassador Poindexter spends every Friday evening at a private club on the corner of Avenue Kléber and Rue Robert-Soulat.”

  “That’s a brothel,” declared Épaulard.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A house of assignation. One of the finest in Paris. The clean and expensive kind.”

  “Shit!” chuckled D’Arcy. “Another gap in the achievements of the Popular Front!”

  “It is the closest whorehouse to the residence of the President of the Republic,” went on Épaulard. “Protected by the police, naturally. And it gets very top security whenever some African head of state comes calling.”

  “Wonderful!” said Buenaventura.

  The others looked at him.

  “I mean the scandal,” said the Catalan. “His Excellency kidnapped by leftists in a whorehouse! Le Canard Enchainé will have a field day.”

  Everyone was delighted. Even Épaulard smiled. Then he bethought himself.

  “True, it’s as fine a prospect as a dead priest,” he acknowledged. “But just the same we have to consider the other possibilities.”

  “His schedule is inconsistent,” Buenaventura recalled.

  “We could snatch him at the church service,” said D’Arcy.

  “Or at home,” suggested Meyer. “At night.”

  “At his residence,” said Épaulard, “we might run into anything. FBI guys or you name it, all over the ground floor, for example. A priori, we should reject that. The Protestant service is dangerous because there would be easily a hundred people there. To keep them all quiet you’d need a shitload of people plus machine guns.”

  “So it’s the brothel,” said Buenaventura jubilantly.

  “We’ll have to see,” said Épaulard.

  Everyone exchanged glances, except for Treuffais, who studied his fingernails.

  The former Resistance fighter went over to an armchair and sat down.

  “How did you manage to get hold of his schedule?”

  “Discreet tailing,” said D’Arcy.

  “Discreet? This guy must be covered nearly all the time by the French security services and continually surrounded by his own bodyguards. How can you fellows be sure you were discreet enough?”

  “We can’t. But we took maximum precautions. We used Treuffais’s 2CV, which doesn’t stand out, and kept our distance. And no RG guys came and asked for the time.”*

  Épaulard turned to Treuffais.

  “No unexpected man from the gas company? No insistent vendors?”

  “No.”

  Épaulard rubbed the side of his nose. He scrutinized each of those present in turn.

  “I would like to know your pedigrees,” he said. “Whether you have records, and, if so, when and why.”

  He looked directly at Buenaventura.

  “D’Arcy and you must have had pretty thick files on you in FLN days. Any problems since?”

  Buenaventura shrugged.

  “Picked up twice in ’68. In Paris and in Flins. To Beaujon for questioning both times.”

  “Nothing for me,” stated the alcoholic.

  Épaulard checked the others. Treuffais had never had any contact with the police. Nor had Meyer.

  “It all seems pretty clean,” Épaulard concluded.

  *Renseignements Généraux (RG): the domestic intelligence service of the French police until 2008.

  8

  ON MONDAY morning the awful Ducatel had failed to prepare his presentation on Gabriel Marcel.

  “I didn’t have the time, sir,” he explained.

  He sneered soundlessly, revealing yellowed irregular teeth like a dog’s. Treuffais gazed at him. Resistance was useless. The lucre of this degenerate was considerable, and good for the taking by Saint-Ange Academy. The imbecile was invulnerable.

  “For Friday then, my young friend,” said Treuffais.

  Then he rose from his chair and began his lesson on modern-day rationalism and its variants. He almost fell asleep three times. At last the clock struck ten. Outside a nasty rain was falling. Treuffais went by the staff room to get his raincoat, which had been hanging up there since the middle of the previous week. Mademoiselle Kugelmann was already correcting papers. Monsieur Duveau was standing near the door with his hands in the pockets of his pinstripe jacket, his bald pate glistening, his pants uncreased, and wine on his breath. He was rocking on his heels and gazing at the drenched windowpanes and the droplets dancing across them.

  “Rotten weather,” he said to Treuffais.

  The young teacher slipped on his raincoat, a great khaki oilskin thing that crackled and retained odors.

  “Rotten times too,” added Duveau. “Coming for a coffee?”

  Mechanically, Treuffais consulted his Kelton and quickly shook his head.

  “I’m going home,” he replied, feeling the need to clarify. “I don’t start again until two.”

  “You would do better to come for coffee. And a chat. You call yourself a philosophy teacher?” Duveau was mumbling in irritation. “What do you know about life, at your age, I ask you?”

  He reached out and grabbed the lapels of Treuffais’s raincoat.

  “You’re pathetic,” said Treuffais, and frantically punched the man in the throat.

  Duveau gave a great cry and fell down. Electrified, Mademoiselle Kugelmann leapt forward screaming. She rushed to Duveau’s side and helped him sit up on the floor. Treuffais was taken aback. He rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want . . . I didn’t mean . . . ”

  But laughter got the better of him.

  “Criminal! Criminal!” cried Duveau feebly.

  “For heaven’s sake!” shouted Mademoiselle Kugelmann. “What happened? What has gotten into you? Have you no sense? A disabled veteran too! Monsieur Lamour is going to know all about this.”

  “Monsieur Lamour knows nothing at all,” declared Treuffais. “He has shit for brains.”

  “I heard that, Treuffais,” said Monsieur Lamour, who had just silently entered the room.

  “Monsieur Lamour, fuck your face!”

  “You�
�re out of your mind!”

  “I’ll beat the crap out of you!”

  Red in the face, Monsieur Lamour leant back. He was a small man. Treuffais could have eaten his supper using the man’s head for a table. What a repellent idea! The young philosophy teacher came close to his hierarchical superior, wondering where to hit him. The director remained rigid and solemn, careful not to retreat under the widening eyes of Mademoiselle Kugelmann. Duveau had let himself fall back full-length on the floor so as not to get involved in the fight; he was pretending to be short of breath. Treuffais delivered a tiny slap to the director’s livid cheek, walked around the man and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “I always knew it, but I wanted to give him a chance,” declared Monsieur Lamour as he wiped the lenses of his glasses, fogged up from terror. “That fellow is worse than worthless,” he concluded. “A complete cipher.”

  Outside, Treuffais had got into his 2CV. As he slammed the door, his fingers were caught for the umpteenth time by the window, and he swore. He looked at his watch. Eight minutes past ten. He started the car. The 2CV made for Porte d’Orléans. Once in Paris, it turned east at Denfert-Rochereau, crossed the intersection at Les Gobelins, and found a parking spot not far from the university buildings but out of sight of the hordes of cops stationed outside them with their submachine guns hooked to their shoulder straps and their riot helmets dangling at their thighs.

  In a brasserie on Boulevard Saint-Marcel, Buenaventura and Épaulard were waiting at the bar with two muscadets in front of them. Treuffais joined them. The rain had stopped.

  “Same thing,” said the philosophy teacher to the bartender.

  “Ten forty,” said Épaulard. “We’ve just been and had a look. A group is dropped off every thirty minutes on the hour and the half hour. We’d better wait for the eleven o’clock. Did you bring the lab coats?”