Affairs of State (5 page)

Message received.

So at last to Flandin, the boss of the SEA, the applied electronics company that covered the deal. The tone is not the same as it was last night. Bornand finds him jittery, anxious to protect his company at all costs. There’s the rub, most likely.

‘I warn you, no way will I carry the can. Do what you need to do to stifle this thing, otherwise I’ll spill the beans on all the lousy payoffs from the Iran deals, yours for starters. And I’m not picking up the tab on my own.’

Bornand reclines in his armchair and stretches out his legs. If things get more complicated, this guy will soon become a problem.
The minute I chose to work with a novice on this type of deal, I was taking a risk and I knew it. I’ll give Beauchamp a call and tell him it’s time to shut him up. After all, that’s what I brought him into the SEA security service for
. A half smile. To win you have to be one step ahead of the game.

Fernandez is back. Bornand pours two whiskies and leafs through the dossier he’s given him. The entire operation is set out. Well, not quite. The particulars of last February’s decision by the armaments division of the Defence Ministry: the air force’s Matra Magic 550 missiles are to be replaced by a more efficient model. In May, there’s the contract between the armaments division and a company specialising in electronic equipment, the SEA, which purchases the missiles for the sum of five million francs and pledges to disable them and recycle the onboard equipment in the civil aviation sector. The missiles are delivered to the SEA’s hangars in September. In October, the SEA sells electronic equipment to SAPA, a financial company registered in the Bahamas, for the sum of 30 million francs. The same day, SAPA sells the same equipment on to SICI, a Malta-based company, for the sum of 40 million francs. The equipment is loaded at Brussels International (Zavantem) Airport, destined for SICI, in Malta. The flight plan of the Boeing 747 carrying the equipment clearly shows that the plane never landed in Malta but diverted to Tehran. A separate sheet also shows that two weeks ago, Camoc, a Lebanese company specialising in recycling and adapting French, American and Israeli weapons, opened a branch in Tehran. In short, the entire chain is there, all ready to be spoon-fed to the press, it’ll be all too easy for them to check it out.

Bornand looks up at Fernandez:

‘Terrific work, young man. I daren’t ask you how you got hold of this …’

He smiles.

‘Chardon and Katryn left the restaurant together, quite late, around three, after a game of snooker, and from what I was able to overhear, they were off to a meeting together with someone in Paris. It’s perfectly simple, I took advantage to go
and check out Chardon’s place. I took the dossier, because I thought it might make him stop and think twice.’

Bornand raises his glass to him and nods. Fernandez continues:

‘Among Chardon’s files, I also found some photos. Jean-Pierre Tardivel, an influential journalist at
Combat Présent,
the far-right weekly, having a bit of fun with two exceedingly young boys …’

He nudges the photo towards Bornand who leans forward attentively:

‘That’s extremely interesting. I’ll keep it. I’m sure it’ll come in useful.’

‘… and the fabulous Delia Paxton being fucked by two drag queens, in a setting that looks like a porn shoot.’

Bornand takes the photo and slides it into an envelope.

‘For the President. He’s a fan of Delia Paxton, he goes to see all her films incognito, on the biggest screens possible. At least now he’ll know what to talk about when he meets her at a dinner party. Or in his speech when he awards her the Legion of Honour.’

After Fernandez has left, Bornand pours himself another whisky. Silence in the night. Just a disk of coloured light on the desktop. He needs time to mull things over.

Whoever built up this dossier has sources at every level of the operation, within the ministerial department, at the SEA, but also inside Camoc in Beirut, whose involvement is largely unknown back here. The only two people in Paris who are aware of its involvement are the boss of the SEA and myself. It would probably be easier to track them in Beirut than here. Beirut … Moricet.

Flashback: Moricet tall, built like a fighter, a seducer’s smile on the face of a pirate, and a quirky taste in clothes with a penchant for elegant linen suits. Both high on cocaine in a hazily remembered Beirut brothel with fluid outlines, a luxury apartment gutted by the war, and a stupid competition: which of them could fuck the most girls in two hours? And Moricet had won with nine to his six. Age had certainly been against Bornand, but in any case, he put up a respectable performance.

Another flashback: Moricet and himself, totally hammered, in Beirut, in an unknown car, hemmed in by two groups of armed men. Sobering up in a flash, Moricet had pushed him to the floor of the car, then speeding forward, shooting with a gun that had appeared from nowhere, bullets ricocheting off the bodywork, had got them out of there. Then Moricet drove him back to the Christian quarter. The memory of being scared shitless, the kind of fear that makes you feel you’re really living, and a friend he knew he could rely on.

‘Attempted kidnapping plus a demand for ransom,’ Moricet had commented dryly. ‘The most profitable industry in this country since the war started.’

‘More profitable than the bank, I fear.’

And he had confided some of his concerns over the International Bank of Lebanon, the IBL, which was well established in the Christian community but since the start of the war had been losing its customers among the other Lebanese religious communities, the Syrians, and the rest of the Middle East.

‘Negotiate with the Syrians.’

‘We’d like to, but it’s not easy. They’re more than a little wary of us.’

‘I know the head of the Syrian secret services. Do you want to meet him?’

Two days later, he was as good as his word. A long conversation about the latest archaeological research in Syria (my passion, the secret service man had told them), which Bornand had contributed to as best he could. Honourably, it would appear, since the Syrian came to visit him in Paris each time he was in France on unofficial business, and some of his friends had been appointed to the board of the IBL, which had picked up again. As a matter of fact, that had been a major turning point in the bank’s fortunes. Moricet, a man of action.

In 1982, Bornand had invited him to join the Élysée unit. Which he had done, but not for long: ‘Too many nutters,’ he said, ‘too many bureaucrats, too many bosses, not enough action or sun.’ And he’d set up his own private security firm, ISIS, based in Beirut and which operated throughout the Middle East. If you want to find out something about Camoc, Moricet is definitely your man.

Telephone. He’ll be there tomorrow.

Bornand carefully puts away his notes in one of the two cupboards. Amid the ornate arabesques and carved acanthus leaves are records of everything that has been said in this office, accumulated over four years, a real treasure trove. He locks the cupboard then pours himself one last whisky, which he knocks back standing by the window gazing out over the rooftops.

Fernandez finds himself back in the street. It’s still snowing. Gone, the warmth of the office, the whisky and Bornand. He’s exhausted. He has no desire to go back home and be alone with his dead. He enters the nearest café, orders a Calvados, goes into the toilet and does a line of coke. Good feeling. To
be honest, if you think about it, the situation is rather funny. Finish the night off at Mado’s, Katryn’s boss. Brilliant idea. What class.

On the ground floor of Mado’s building is a vast bar with English-style decor and a hushed, sophisticated atmosphere. Fernandez, Bornand’s right-hand man, has free access to the whole place. The barman greets him and pours him a brandy, which he downs in one, then he goes downstairs to the basement. Swingers’ club. Among a certain bourgeois clientele it’s the new fad; sounds better than going to a prostitute, but it’s no different, except there are a few non-professionals. Mado’s real clientele to whom she owes her fame and fortune, the ones who have a great deal of money and a great deal of power, prefer the call-girl network and orgies in the first-floor lounges.

In the half-dark, there’s a musty smell of sweat and sex, claustrophobia and dust, and the music has an insistent, deafening beat. Fernandez relaxes. Two women rigged out in various items of spiky armour are dancing in a corner. Elsewhere, scantily clad men and women grind rhythmically against each other. On the fringes, couples are entangled on sofas in the alcoves. Girls everywhere, within arm’s reach, available, accessible. Fernandez is suddenly fascinated by a girl who’s dancing naked in the spotlight, with exaggerated movements. A smooth, round arse, engaging but not aggressive, two huge white breasts jiggling and, above them, her head covered with a helmet of black hair, cut over the ears. She has no face. No face. It touches a raw nerve. Flashback: Katryn’s head in the darkness of the garage, thrust against the wall, screaming, the back of her neck exploding. Against a background of hypnotic music.

He walks over to the girl and grabs her arm, drags her to
an alcove and tries to part her hair. No face, just a mouth that opens, a silent chasm. A punch to shut that mouth, two, three, a scuffle, Fernandez crumples, stunned by two beefy bouncers amid the general confusion.

Mado, summoned urgently, has him taken to one of the first-floor bedrooms. The victim has a split lip and a nasty cut over her eye. A doctor is called to tend to her immediately. Really bad luck, the girl was one of the few non-professionals there that night. She groans, threatening to report Fernandez.

‘This guy’s a nutter,’ says Mado, very motherly, and surreptitiously mentions damages.

‘A nutter for sure. He was screaming “Catherine, Catherine”. My name’s not Catherine, he couldn’t hear a thing. He started hitting me.’ Her body quivers with sobs. ‘Scared the life out of me.’

‘Katryn,’ says Mado, suddenly pensive, tidying the young woman’s black hair matted with blood and sweat with her fingertips.

Katryn, a model of professionalism, who’d let her down this evening, for the first time since she’d been working for her.

Bornand, in a black dinner jacket, is reclining on a chaise longue in his mistress’s bedroom, which is done out in green and white with blonde wood Louis-Philippe-style furniture. On his left are two high windows with the curtains open, overlooking the Champ-de-Mars. Through the lattice of snow-covered trees, he can see the Eiffel Tower illuminated, a tangle of girders glinting copper in the light, emphasised by the white snow, the familiar presence of the technological dream
shrouded in nostalgia. A wave of tiredness. Shooting pains in the palm of his right hand, and each time the fleeting image of a pool of blood spreading uncontrollably. A tough day. The President dreaming of the Académie Française, Bestégui stuffing himself, Fernandez a petty housebreaker. And earlier, the reception at the Embassy. He feels ground down. He’s come here to recover, in the calm surroundings of her boudoir. Put a greater distance between himself and all the stress. From his pocket he takes out a gold and black lacquered case, carefully selects a cigarette, a mix of angel dust and marijuana, lights it and takes a long drag. An almost instant sense of well-being. He contemplates his mistress, sitting naked on a low stool at the dressing table, carrying out the ritual she performs for him. He can see three-quarters of her back and her full frontal reflection in the big mirror. A Degas painting. He takes a second drag, holds the smoke in for a long time, and slowly exhales. The image of the young woman shimmers and dissolves. Another face fleetingly appears, that of a very young girl. He creases his eyes to capture it. Too late, it disperses with a metallic sound. He stubs out his cigarette.

Her blonde hair is piled up in a sophisticated chignon, showing off the nape of her neck and the outline of her shoulders. He is utterly absorbed in watching each of her slow, accomplished movements. First of all, she applies foundation, almost lazily, like a sort of slow preliminary, then the tension increases, a few dabs to touch up under the eyes, around the cheekbones. She surveys the overall effect, and her gaze is drawn towards the mirror, intense, her torso slightly inclined, her arms raised, her breasts swell, lolling forward too, her back elongates, her hips spread. She outlines her eyes with precise strokes, paints her mouth (he loves the way she pinches her lips
together), highlights her cheekbones, hollows out her cheeks, makes a correction here and there. A refined, artificial world that exists only for him. He gently caresses his half-erection.