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  “Yes.”

  “And the lead bars?”

  “Yes, in the trunk with the lab coats.”

  “Are you parked far away?”

  “A hundred meters.”

  “Good.”

  The three men emptied their glasses.

  “Same again please,” said Épaulard.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” said Treuffais to the ex-FTP fighter.

  “Why?”

  Treuffais shrugged. The glasses were refilled.

  “The difference,” said Buenaventura, “is that Épaulard is here with us because he no longer believes in the revolution, whereas we are here with him because we still believe in it. Épaulard is acting out of despair.”

  “Just shut your big mouth, you little prick,” said the former Resistance fighter, but he was laughing.

  “Ten forty-five,” said Treuffais.

  They finished their drinks. Épaulard settled up. They left the brasserie, took side streets to the 2CV and got in. Reaching over the back seat, Treuffais took three lab coats from the trunk. Raincoats and the moldy leather coat were doffed, the lab coats donned, and the three men got out of the car. Treuffais held a robust-looking black leather briefcase containing four lead bars. They took side streets again and emerged once more onto Boulevard Saint-Marcel almost directly opposite a tuberculosis monitoring center. On the far sidewalk a number of uniformed police officers had almost all entered the building. Others were coming out.

  “Eleven o’clock on the button,” said Épaulard. “No hurry. Give them time to go upstairs and change.”

  No one stopped the three men at the entrance to the clinic or in the lobby. They seemed to know where they were going, and indeed they did know, and they looked professional. They were apparently deeply engaged in a conversation at once technical and entertaining.

  “ . . . sedimentation rate,” Épaulard was saying to the world at large, “and you’ll never believe what was found . . .”

  They passed two other people in white coats, a petite redheaded woman and a dark-haired guy, neither of whom paid them any mind.

  The three reached a landing, turned without hesitation, and went through a double door. A hall worthy of a railroad terminal stretched before them, with windows on the left and, on the right, the doors of a row of dressing rooms. Into these policemen had been disappearing. Inside, in the cubicles, they had undressed or were getting undressed. The rustling of fabric could be heard along with the clinking of belt buckles, the sighs of a fat man, and the occasional fart. Once down to his underwear, the occupant of each dressing room would exit through a door on the opposite side for his medical examination. Meanwhile, the cubicle would remain empty, locked shut from the hall by means of a swing latch. The officer’s clothes, belt and weapon were left there on a stool, or hanging from a peg, in the semidarkness.

  Sounds came from the first cubicle, then a door slammed. Épaulard withdrew a small rigid hacksaw blade from his inside pocket, slipped it between the cubicle door and the doorjamb, raised the swing latch and opened the door. The cubicle was empty except for the uniform, the belt, and the weapon. Treuffais opened his briefcase and handed a lead bar to Épaulard, who closed the cubicle door behind him. Treuffais and Buenaventura moved along to the next cubicles. Inside the first one, Épaulard opened the case holding the cop’s automatic pistol and took out a Manurhin PP (Walther licensed), which he pocketed; then he placed the lead bar in the case and closed it. With the familiar weight at his belt, the policeman would probably take a while to realize that his pistol was gone, perhaps not even until he went off duty. Épaulard came out of the cubicle, carefully half closing the latch and holding it thus with his blade until he could slip it out and let the latch fall back into place.

  At the next changing room Buenaventura followed exactly the same procedure.

  Upon opening the third door, Treuffais found himself face-to-face with a red-faced policeman wearing boxers and a single sock, holding the other sock in his hand, and staring at him in stupefaction.

  “Oh, excuse me, I’m looking for Doctor Moreau,” said Treuffais with a smile, quickly closing the door, moving away and passing four other doors. He could see Épaulard at the end of the row entering another cubicle. Treuffais was dripping with sweat. He tried another door. There was no one inside. The young teacher grabbed a pistol and got out. Épaulard was striding towards him. Buenaventura had also just exited, and the three men reassembled.

  “I’ve got one,” whispered Treuffais.

  “Me too,” said the Catalan.

  “Which makes four. That’ll do,” said Épaulard. “See you in the street.” Treuffais was now drenched in sweat. He consulted his watch: six minutes past eleven.

  “Phew!” he said.

  “Quick! Quick! To the car!” urged Épaulard.

  The sidewalk of the boulevard was crawling with cops. Épaulard and the two anarchists crossed the street.

  “A piece of cake,” said Buenaventura. “We could easily have taken their ammo too.”

  “Ammo won’t be a problem,” said Épaulard.

  He kept up the pace all the way to Rue des Plantes, where the Cadillac was parked. As they walked they took off their lab coats and folded them up. When they got to the white car, they placed the firearms inside the folded garments and stowed them beneath the front seats.

  “We’ll drop you at your 2CV,” said Buenaventura to his friend. “We are going to eat in Couzy. Épaulard will be checking the hideout. So we won’t have time to take you to your two-o’clock class.”

  “That doesn’t matter now,” said Treuffais. “I just lost my job. I won’t be holding any more classes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing special. But I’m going to be short of money.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “Who cares?” answered Treuffais coldly. “After all, we’ll all be rich after this operation, won’t we?”

  The Catalan shot him a surprised glance.

  “We’ll sort that out later,” said Épaulard impatiently, and started the car.

  “Fine,” said Buenaventura. “So, in that case, are you coming with us to Couzy?”

  “All things considered, no. Drop me at my 2CV.”

  The Cadillac negotiated narrow streets with relative ease and pulled up briefly by Treuffais’s car. The philosophy teacher jumped out, slammed the Cadillac’s door, waved goodbye. The Cadillac moved off.

  “He’s strange, your buddy,” said Épaulard.

  “He’s a troubled soul. He asks himself questions.”

  The Catalan chuckled.

  Treuffais had got into his car. He started it up and headed for his place. When a red light at Rue Alésia turned to green, he trod too brutally on the accelerator, and its return spring snapped. The pedal stuck firmly to the metal beneath Treuffais’s foot. Roaring, the car crossed the intersection at top speed in first gear. Treuffais declutched. The engine went on revving to the maximum, and the gas pedal remained stuck. Treuffais steered the vehicle towards a pedestrian crossing, turned off the ignition, and the car bumped the curb gently and came to a halt. The young man got out, opened the hood and surveyed the damage. There was a book and stationery store fifty meters away. Treuffais made his way there. A wooden sign urged “Be Like Everyone—Read France-Soir.” Treuffais cleared his throat and directed a gob of mucus onto the stack of newspapers. Entering the store, he bought a rubber band intended for bulky folders, then returned to his car and used the broad, thick elastic as a stand-in for the broken return spring. He set off again, and the 2CV ran as well as before, except that the accelerator was now very loose. Treuffais reached his neighborhood, circled for a while without finding a spot in the busy streets, but finally parked on Rue des Morillons.

  He went upstairs. It was five past noon. No mail. He opened a Kronenbourg and sat down in his father’s armchair. He pulled a transistor radio towards him and pressed a button.

  “Work has resumed following a secret ballo
t,” came the Europe 1 broadcast. “At the Gouraud plant, however, conflict continues. A delegation of unionists was invited this morning to the Ministry of Labor, where they made their case to Monsieur Lhareng. In racing news, there were eighteen horses at the starting gate at Longchamp this afternoon . . .”

  Treuffais turned the radio off. He felt deeply uneasy. He wondered why. Liver trouble? But he finished his beer before leaving his apartment once more to go and eat lunch in a nearby restaurant. After eating he felt no better. His anxiety, he decided, must have a mental origin. He went back home and, raging now, went to bed in his room and tried to go to sleep.

  9

  THE CADILLAC jolted horribly on the dirt road and threw up clods of cold mud that streaked its sides. It followed the badly maintained byroad, classified as “rural,” before stopping with its nose against a barrier. This was a primitive structure—a few stakes linked by barbed wire and flanked by two gateposts. Buenaventura got out of the car and opened it, rolling the wire up and placing it by one of the posts. The Cadillac entered an area covered with gray and yellow grass that surrounded a farm.

  The landscape was hill and dale, woodland and pasture. The loamy soil was sodden. On hilltops and in hollows leafless trees could be seen, black against the darkish green of the grass, gray against the gray sky.

  The farmstead was on the flat, shaped like a right-angled letter U. Two short wings stood perpendicular to the main house, roughcasted and roofed in brown tile. There was an attic story. The left-hand wing was just a garage, the right-hand one old unrestored stables. The whole place was fairly small. Its isolation was startling in a region of clustered hamlets and small towns. In view of its age, it would have been of interest to ethnologists or geographers specializing in human settlement. Buenaventura and Épaulard couldn’t have cared less. The Cadillac had pulled up between the two wings. Buenaventura had reclosed the barrier, and now the two men approached the front of the house and its glazed door. The Catalan tapped on the glass. No reply. He tried the handle, and the door opened. The pair entered a living area with a tiled floor, a gigantic table, a great fireplace with a metal hood, and a staircase that disappeared towards the upper floor.

  “Cash?” called Buenaventura.

  No response. Hands in the pockets of his damp raincoat, Épaulard walked around the room, which measured some fifty square meters and had three large windows with small panes and wooden shutters, a bench, four chairs, and two caved-in upholstered armchairs by the fireside. Beneath the staircase, which climbed obliquely up the back wall, were two doors, one leading to a kitchen, the other out to the rear of the farmhouse. The latter opened at that very moment to reveal an apparition. Épaulard raised an eyebrow, for it simply did not make sense: Why was a girl like this involved in such a crummy operation? For she was beautiful, but more than that: she was put together. Light blond hair falling to her shoulders, a delightful nose à la Hedy Lamarr, brownish-green eyes, high cheekbones. Her makeup was of British inspiration (looking at her, Épaulard smiled automatically); she had put rouge on her cheeks before powdering them lightly, her lips were red, her body was ecstatically small, and she was wearing black cotton pants and a shimmering loose shirt with loud vertical stripes, red, pink, orange, and white.

  Buenaventura slipped past Épaulard and kissed her on either cheek.

  “Hi, Cash.”

  “And you, sir?” Cash asked Épaulard.

  The fifty-year-old stuck a Française in his mouth and his lips crushed the filter. He searched his pockets for matches.

  “André Épaulard,” said Buenaventura.

  “Hi,” said Cash.

  She took Épaulard’s mitt. Her hand was small but her shake was strong.

  “He’s in with us on the job,” said the Catalan.

  “The job?”

  “The ambassador.”

  Cash raised her reshaped eyebrows.

  “I wasn’t expecting you. I have nothing to eat here.”

  “We stopped in Couzy. We have rib steaks and potatoes. In the car. Can we put it in the garage?”

  “Of course.”

  The Catalan looked inquiringly at Épaulard, who took the car keys from his raincoat pocket and held them out.

  “Good, I’ll get the chow,” said Buenaventura, taking the keys and leaving through the glazed door.

  Épaulard lit his cigarette. Cash looked at him through the smoke.

  “Would you like a drink? Scotch?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  The sometime maquisard sat down on the bench alongside the enormous table. Cash opened a dark sideboard and brought out three glasses and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, three-quarters full, with a little Prisunic stamp on its soft-metal screw top.

  “I’ll get some ice.”

  She went out through the communicating door, leaving it ajar. Épaulard glimpsed a kitchen with many Formica-covered cabinets. The girl rummaged in a large refrigerator and came back with ice cubes and a magnum of Perrier. She poured Scotch into the three glasses, adding two ice cubes to each, and then sat down opposite Épaulard. He contemplated her and found her exciting. He was excited.

  “You look like Roger Vailland,” observed Cash.

  To Épaulard’s mind this felt like a cold shower. I am an unanalyzable person, his ego claimed silently, not a personality (his id just said “Meh”). Not so easy, though, to make that claim with a mug like mine, and with my résumé: militant turned crook, former killer—yes, I’ve lived, I’m way past fifty. And for eighteen months he hadn’t so much as touched a girl and, what was worse, had not even felt the need until now. He recalled an inventive Cuban prostitute and blushed stupidly. He stabbed his Française furiously into a white and gold Martini ashtray, rubbing it on the bottom to make sure it was out, then produced another cigarette and lit it immediately.

  “No literature, if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t you like Roger Vailland?”

  “Well, yes, a little.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “No. Let’s talk about something else, if you don’t mind. Literature is of no interest.”

  “I’m a character like the young bourgeois girl in Playing with Fire,” persisted Cash.

  “What the fuck do I care? Or do you want me to pop your cherry?” asked Épaulard in a spasm of vulgarity. “You know, you’re beginning to worry me,” he added. “I have no desire to work with clowns on a thing like . . . a thing like what we’re here for.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Why don’t you show me the layout instead,” said Épaulard, getting to his feet with his glass in his hand and his cigarette in his mouth.

  Cash acquiesced. The small door beneath the staircase through which she had entered the room gave onto several hectares of grassy orchard. Hutches lined the back wall of the farmhouse. Inside them rabbits were busy nibbling.

  “I was in the middle of feeding them when you arrived,” said Cash. “But don’t get me wrong. Boring, easy tasks are not my thing. I don’t know what my style is. I’m nothing but a little whore.”

  Chatter away, thought Épaulard. The former FTPer checked the lay of the land. Plenty of trees meant good cover in the event of incoming gunfire. But what in hell am I thinking? he asked himself. We are not here to face a siege. If we’re going to get to that point, we might as well surrender right now. We’d be completely screwed. He went back into the common area of the farmhouse. Buenaventura, after garaging the Cadillac, had just returned with two string bags containing the steaks and potatoes.

  “I’m getting the tour,” said Épaulard.

  “Carry on. I’ll light the fire.”

  The Catalan took a hit of Scotch and went over to the fireplace. He began laying crumpled newspaper between the andirons and breaking up kindling. Cash showed Épaulard the kitchen: a window overlooking the rear of the house; a connecting door to a disused workshop festooned with cobwebs.

  The girl closed the workshop door, returned to the common area and approached
the foot of the staircase. Épaulard followed her. As they climbed the stairs, he looked at her ass, which was magnificently small and as muscular as that of a young boxer dog. At the top of the stairs was a landing and a long corridor with four doors and very narrow windows like arrow slits overlooking the back of the house.

  “A bathroom and three bedrooms,” said Cash.

  Épaulard glanced into the bathroom, which received natural light via large frosted-glass blocks, then he inspected each bedroom in turn; they were rather similar with their white walls, two small dormer windows in each, a double bed in one and twin beds in the other two, shelves and chests of drawers here and there. The fifty-year-old absentmindedly picked up a grubby and creased paperback lying on the floor whose subject was “the Maoist movement in France.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a Maoist?”

  “I’m not a complete idiot,” answered Cash.

  Épaulard tossed the book onto a bed and went out into the half darkness of the passage, which smelled of sap or perhaps wax. Cash closed the door behind him and pushed him in a friendly way towards the staircase.

  “That’s all there is to see. The ambassador, in my opinion, should be put in one of the rooms with twin beds, with one of you there to keep an eye on him. I’ll keep the one with the double bed, which is my room. That’ll leave two beds for four people. But anyway I expect that someone will have to be on watch downstairs, so it might as well be two—they can play cards.”

  “Won’t one of us be your lover?” asked Épaulard idly as he went down the stairs.

  “Neither one nor any of you. Should I show you the garage and the barn or should we have lunch?”

  “It’s not ready yet,” said Buenaventura, who had overheard them now that Épaulard and the girl had reached the foot of the stairs.

  “We’ll take a look later,” said Épaulard. “Let’s relax and have that drink.”

  He was still holding his Scotch. He emptied the glass, poured himself another, stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, coughed violently, and sat down. Buenaventura poked the fire, shifting the already-glowing logs. He slipped potatoes among the embers and covered them with ash, then he unwrapped the steaks and placed them in a long-handled grilling basket.