Nada Read online

  “For the steak,” he said, “I’ll wait a bit. It’ll take a good twenty or twenty-five minutes for the potatoes to be done.”

  After setting the caged steaks down near the fire, he went back to the end of the table and took another sip of whiskey.

  “This place work for you?” he asked Épaulard.

  “Yes.”

  “Of course you’ll still want to study maps and all that. Want to see the map?”

  “That can wait.”

  “Is something bothering you?”

  Épaulard burst out laughing.

  “What bothers me is the presence of girls.”

  “I’m not a girl, I’m a whore,” said Cash.

  “Don’t exaggerate, Cash,” said the Catalan.

  “I’m a kept woman. This house for instance. You can bless the trick who lent it to me while he’s spending the winter in the United States to work on his marketing skills, racketeering skills. Pubic relations, more like.”

  “And she didn’t even let him screw her,” Buenaventura scoffed.

  “Not true,” said Cash.

  “You kept that from me.”

  “I did,” said Cash. “But I wouldn’t want it to be thought that I was unavailable.” She looked coolly at Épaulard.

  The fifty-year-old did not know what to think. His mind chose the easiest answer and he told himself that the girl was a slut, that he would poke her when he wanted, where he wanted, in a hayloft if he wanted. He emptied his glass and looked down at the wooden tabletop.

  “May we know why you let yourself get mixed up in a setup like the one we have in mind?”

  Cash pouted sardonically.

  “I believe in universal harmony,” she said, “and in the destruction of the pitiful civilized State. My cool and chic exterior hides the wild flames of a burning hatred for a techno-bureaucratic capitalism whose cunt looks like a funeral urn and whose mug looks like a prick. Should I go on?”

  Épaulard gazed at her bug-eyed.

  “Don’t get bent out of shape, comrade,” said Buenaventura. “She is the great inscrutable, this chick.”

  10

  TREUFFAIS woke up to the telephone ringing. He got out of bed and picked up the receiver.

  “Marcel Treuffais here.”

  “Buenaventura Diaz.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re back. At my friend’s now. He thought everything was hunky-dory. He’s going to try and solve the transport question, and if that works out pronto, we can think in terms of Friday.”

  “This Friday!”

  “Well, what do you think? Why not?”

  “We haven’t—well, yes, yes, okay,” said Treuffais, pushing hair away from his eyes.

  “We meet tomorrow evening at your place. Let the others know.”

  “Okay.”

  “So long then. André and I still have a lot of things to take care of.”

  “Good.”

  The Catalan hung up and turned to Épaulard, who was sitting at his fake legal counsel’s desk. He had cleared it off completely and spread one of the lab coats over it as a sheet on which to disassemble their automatic weapons, whose working order he was now checking.

  “He’s a strange one, your Treuffais, it seems to me,” said Buenaventura.

  Épaulard looked up.

  “Is he scared?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s not the problem. You’re going to laugh at this, but I’m not sure he is quite with us, politically.”

  “Why would I laugh?”

  “You yourself aren’t really on board politically either,” said Buenaventura. “But you are up for it anyway. It’s what I was saying about despair.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, boy. Can we bank on Treuffais, yes or no?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “It’s my answer.”

  “If it’s like that, we’ll do the job just the four of us.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not in the least.”

  “But Treuffais is with us!” protested Buenaventura. “He wrote most of our manifesto. He . . . no, no . . . well, fuck it, you can’t be serious.”

  The Catalan had begun striding up and down the office, his black hair flopping over his eyes and his teeth bared by a grimace of agitation. He dropped into a leather armchair. Just then the phone rang. Épaulard picked up.

  “Épaulard Legal Counsel Offices,” he announced, then he listened, pursed his lips, and passed the receiver to Buenaventura. “It’s for you,” he said. “Treuffais.”

  “Hello.”

  “Buen? I have to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I must talk to you. Privately, please.”

  “This evening then. Will you come to me?”

  “At your hotel? Yes, if you like. What time?”

  “Eight o’clock?”

  “Fine. We’ll go for dinner together maybe.”

  “Oh, just ‘maybe’?” said Buenaventura. “That bad, huh? Anyway, eight o’clock it is.”

  “Bye.”

  The Catalan did not reply. Treuffais stayed on the line. Buenaventura could hear him breathing.

  “Hello? Are you there?” went the phone.

  Buenaventura rang off. Épaulard was looking at him knowingly.

  “He’s copping out?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe. I’ll see him a bit later.”

  “All right,” said Épaulard. “We’ll talk about it again tomorrow. I’m off. Must go to Ivry to see about ammo and transport. If your pal pulls out, perhaps you’ll contact Meyer and D’Arcy to let them know that we’ll be meeting here tomorrow.”

  Quickly, the fifty-year-old finished reassembling the automatics, wrapped them up again in the lab coats and made a kind of bundle of all of them that he put away in the khaki metal cabinet. Each man tossed down a vodka, left the office, and went his separate way.

  11

  THAT SAME evening (Monday), Épaulard bartered his Cadillac in Ivry for two hundred and fifty .32 ACP cartridges, which the Manurhins would swallow with ease; the promise of his picking up, on Friday at 2:00 p.m., a completely decrepit old green Jaguar with another few hundred kilometers in it for sure; and a registration card that was not obviously fake. Being a practical man, Épaulard demanded some extra cans of oil and, seeing that the hand brake was of course quite useless, made a mental note to get a wooden chock in case he had to park on a hill. His visit to Ivry and his negotiations there gave him the opportunity to eat an excellent meal in a cheap local café and to chat about the good old days with the Gypsy who had haggled with him over the Jaguar. They recalled the Mediterranean, and the shoot-outs with SFIO pistoleros and ex-Gestapo men infiltrated into the DGER, with not a few dead but quite a few survivors.* Épaulard went home seriously drunk and in rather good spirits.

  Meanwhile, Buenaventura and Treuffais were meeting in the Catalan’s room. Treuffais stated that he did not intend to take part in the operation and gave his reasons. The upshot was a rather short but bitter and distressing conversation, and the two friends did not eat dinner together. Later that evening Buenaventura informed D’Arcy that they would meet the next day at Épaulard’s and asked him to let Meyer, who had no telephone, know about this.

  On Tuesday morning Buenaventura joined Épaulard at his place and apprised him of Treuffais’s defection. He explained that the disagreement was theoretical in nature and that therefore there was nothing to fear from Treuffais, who was a friend and could not be suspected of being in touch with the police and would keep his mouth shut.

  “I don’t like it,” declared Épaulard.

  “I can vouch for Treuffais’s loyalty,” said Buenaventura somewhat stiffly. “I have as much confidence in him as in you.”

  Épaulard reflected for a moment.

  “Okay.”

  On Tuesday night, Meyer, D’Arcy, Buenaventura and Épaulard met in Épaulard’s office. Meyer and D’Arcy were told that Treuffais h
ad dropped out. Meyer made no comment. D’Arcy commented in obscene terms but added that he couldn’t give a shit. Both agreed with the Catalan that this defection did not worsen the risks.

  Then, so far as possible, they decided on the order of events during the kidnapping of Ambassador Poindexter and the days following.

  It may be noted that at the same moment the aforesaid Poindexter was attending a performance of Tristan and Isolde after going to a reception in the function rooms of Hôtel George V. The ambassador was a tall man with a pointy balding head and watery blue eyes behind gold-rimmed eyeglasses. He wore an expression of perpetual mild surprise, distinct interest, and congenial amusement. Wagner’s music brought a slight change in this attitude: interest won out over surprise and amusement disappeared. All of it was carefully measured. The ambassador’s wife was by his side, very tall with a scrawny neck and horsey teeth—beautiful and classy, no doubt, in the eyes of her uptight peers. She was very bored all the time, but had not noticed it for over forty years. They made a handsome couple. They had separate bedrooms. They did number two once a day. Apart from them their box was empty, but outside the door stood two cops—blond, young, resolute, muscled, trained by the FBI and the NSA; two more sat in a Citroën DS21 parked not far from the Opéra, while a third, in a chauffeur’s uniform, was smoking a Pall Mall by the official Lincoln.

  In Épaulard’s office, Buenaventura was passing around photos of Poindexter clipped from American magazines, some of them in color. Before long the meeting came to an end.

  On the Wednesday the terrorists stayed in. Except for Véronique Cash, who got her rusty Renault Dauphine out of the farmhouse garage and began her shopping. She would buy a six-pack of beer and two boxes of pasta at one place, five kilos of potatoes and ham at another, wine and canned meat at yet another, other things elsewhere again, and so on. She returned to the farmhouse between trips to unload. Perishables piled up in the fridge, and other items went into the old stables.

  On the Thursday nobody did anything. Treuffais lay in his bedroom smoking nonstop; the room stank of cold tobacco smoke, warm tobacco smoke, and dirty feet. The young man had three days’ worth of stubble. He bit his nails. He tried in vain to read. He got up once to call Buenaventura on the phone but hung up before he finished dialing the number of the Longuevache Hotel.

  On the Friday, the anarcho-terrorist squad kidnapped the U.S. Ambassador.

  *SFIO: Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (1905–1969), forerunner of France’s Socialist Party; DGER: Direction Générale des Études et Recherches, Free French intelligence service.

  12

  IN IVRY, at 2:00 p.m., Épaulard took possession of the green Jaguar and the paperwork. The machine dated from 1954. Its suspension was a horror, and acid escaping from successive batteries had made holes in the partition between the engine bay and the interior of the car. A wintry draft chilled Épaulard’s knees. He drove back into Paris and met his companions at Place d’Italie. Everyone got into the car. Épaulard gave the wheel to D’Arcy. The alcoholic’s hands were trembling. Once they gripped the wheel, they steadied. The automobile set off gently back to Porte d’Italie. D’Arcy familiarized himself with its operation. The four men smoked continually and left their cigarette butts on the car floor. D’Arcy took the Autoroute du Sud, getting bolder and pushing the motor to the limit. Just before reaching 120 kph it began to hesitate and judder. D’Arcy groaned, grasped the wheel ever more tightly and accelerated once more, but the vibration reached fever pitch and the Jaguar’s rear end swayed from side to side more impressively than Sophia Loren’s. The driver raised his foot, dropped back down to 100 kph, and wiped his brow with his sleeve.

  “That bastard Pepito,” grumbled Épaulard. “He swore she would get up to 140.”

  “On the roads we are taking,” said D’Arcy, “there would be no chance of that anyway. This will do.”

  He got off the highway at Longjumeau and headed back towards Paris via all kinds of minor roads and side streets, testing the car’s performance on bends, while braking, and over cobblestones. Eventually they reentered Paris by way of the Porte d’Orléans.

  “Twenty to five,” noted Épaulard. “Let’s step on it and beat the traffic jams.”

  At five in the afternoon the Jaguar was parked dutifully on the third level down of the Champs-Élysées/George V underground garage. The men closed the doors, took the elevator to the exit and the Métro to Concorde, then repaired to Épaulard’s to wait.

  “Your place is handy,” remarked D’Arcy. “Just a stone’s throw from the embassy.”

  They settled down in the kitchen to play Fuck Your Buddy with kitchen matches for chips. As time went on, the players became more nervous. D’Arcy and Meyer ended up leaving the table and retreating to Épaulard’s bedroom. The alcoholic stayed still, silent, smoking and doing nothing, his hands shaking, while Meyer stretched out on the bed, leant on his side and tried to read Jonathan Latimer’s The Dead Don’t Care, a not very reassuring title. Épaulard and the Catalan stayed in the office playing Sinking Sands, a nasty stud poker variation in which the first card a player turns faceup is wild along with others of the same rank in their hand. Buenaventura won every time.

  “You’re overdoing it,” Épaulard complained.

  “Poker is my bread and butter,” retorted the Catalan. “My only honest income.”

  “You call it honest!”

  Buenaventura chortled.

  “What are you whining about? We’re not playing for dough.”

  D’Arcy came out of the bedroom.

  “It’s seven o’clock. Perhaps we could go for a bite?”

  “If you want an expert opinion,” said Épaulard, “we shouldn’t go for a bite. The trick is to have an empty stomach in case of a gut shot.”

  “A real optimist, this guy,” said D’Arcy.

  “Three jacks.”

  “Shit!”

  The Catalan raked in his matches. Seeing that nobody was paying attention to him anymore, D’Arcy went back into the bedroom grumbling. A little later eight o’clock came around, and Épaulard announced that it was time to go to work. D’Arcy left the building carrying a screwdriver with a set of interchangeable heads. He stopped at the end of the street to toss down a double Ricard in a dive, then walked on to Place de la Concorde and thence towards Place de l’Étoile. He inspected the parked cars. Not far from the Petit Palais, he came upon a Consul station wagon with an open window. He got into the vehicle and spent a good ten minutes hot-wiring it and unlocking the steering wheel. He set the car in motion, merged into the still fairly heavy traffic, made a detour so as to get onto Rue de Rivoli westbound, found a parking space, popped in for another double Ricard, and went back up to Épaulard’s.

  “Haul ass,” he urged. “I’m on a taxi rank.”

  “Stupid idiot!” said Épaulard, handing him an automatic, which the alcoholic pocketed.

  The others were all ready to go, shooters in their pockets and sneakers on their feet—except for Épaulard, who wore leather shoes—and sweaters and jackets for everyone. They went briskly downstairs, reached Rue de Rivoli shivering in the cold air, got into the Consul and turned off towards Place de l’Étoile.

  Ten past nine.

  From Place de l’Étoile, where the traffic was flowing and a light drizzle was falling, the Consul started down Avenue Kléber. Épaulard counted the traffic lights.

  “Next right.”

  “I know,” said D’Arcy.

  Screwing up his eyes, Épaulard scanned the cars parked by the sidewalks.

  “It’s here. Stop!”

  The Consul crossed the intersection, put its blinkers on, and halted on a pedestrian crosswalk. Épaulard and Buenaventura got out.

  “In five minutes exactly, Meyer goes in,” said Épaulard. “Five minutes after that you double-park the car in front of the cathouse.”

  “We know,” said D’Arcy.

  The car door slammed. The Consul set off on a quick circuit that w
ould bring it back to the same place in a few minutes. Épaulard and the Catalan headed down the street with the brothel. At the top of three steps an outer door of varnished brown wood had a Judas window. Tiny gilt metal letters, almost indecipherable, spelled out CLUB ZERO. Épaulard rang briefly and waited.

  Fifty meters away, in the Triumph Dolomite which Ambassador Poindexter used for his weekly escapade and which was parked legally by the sidewalk, Agent Bunker left off his reading of Ramparts magazine to scrutinize the two men waiting to be admitted at the entrance to the brothel. He noticed that one of them was wearing sneakers. With an elbow he nudged Agent Lewis, who was snoozing next to him, and with his chin he indicated the objects of his curiosity.

  “A gray-haired Romeo and a little faggot,” hazarded Agent Lewis.

  The Judas hole opened to reveal the face of a well-coiffed, dark-skinned young woman with heavily made-up eyes and pursed lips.

  “Gentlemen?”

  “I haven’t been here for a very long time,” murmured Épaulard urbanely. “We don’t know each other and I daresay you would be disinclined to admit me on the sole basis of my honest face. I am not a member of the club but I come recommended by friends whose names will be recognized by Madame Gabrielle.”

  By way of an example, he gave the childish nickname used by a senator who had patronized the establishment in the 1950s.

  “Just a moment, if you don’t mind, sir,” said the dark-skinned woman, and the Judas window closed.

  Épaulard looked at his watch. Fifty seconds had elapsed. Thirty more went by and then the door opened. A lady in a Chanel pantsuit stood on the threshold with the dark-skinned woman a few steps behind her. Behind the two of them hung closed drapes.

  “Your face says nothing to me,” said Madame Gabrielle. “But if you know Bichon . . . may I invite you to join us at the bar, sir?”

  “Lucas,” said Épaulard. “And this is Georges, my protégé.” Buenaventura kissed the lady’s hand. She was moderately charmed.