The Statement (5 page)

‘I’ve been briefed,’ T said. ‘It’s up to me, when and where.’

‘I see. Well, let me just say one thing to you. This individual is old but he is a fox who knows perfectly well how to go to ground. If he gets your scent, he will disappear and, believe me, you won’t find his tracks. We mustn’t let that happen.’

‘Right.’

Why did I have to come here? Why did he want to see me? Is that all?

And then, as if he had spoken aloud, the old man said, ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I asked to see you. It’s against our rules. But I feel I should be honest with you. Our friends haven’t told you that you’re the second man to try this mission. Am I right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A week ago we sent someone from this same commando to kill Brossard. We knew exactly where he would be at a certain date. Our information was correct. He was there. In Salon de Provence, as a matter of fact. The person we sent was someone like yourself, young, trained, knew what he was doing. We don’t know what happened. But we know he’s dead. He was shot and his car was tossed into a ravine. We’d given him a false passport like yours. It wasn’t on his body. The statement – you know about the statement?’

He now took from the manila envelope a large typewritten sheet of paper and held it up. T nodded.

‘It disappeared. It wasn’t found with the body. We’ve had a discussion about this. Apparently, your friend the Inspector hadn’t informed you about it. That’s why you’re here tonight. I know it’s up to you when and how you do it. But I felt you should be told – everything. You must kill him on your first attempt. You may not get a second chance.’

He stood up. ‘Thank you for coming. And don’t forget.’ He held up the typewritten sheet. ‘This
must
be found on his body. People must know why we did it.’

He paused. T heard voices in the outer hall.

‘Those are my dinner guests.’ The old man took off his brown cardigan and picked up a dinner jacket which was lying on the leather sofa. ‘If you’ll come this way, I’ll let you out by the rear entrance. There’s a service stair. Sorry about this. People usually arrive late. These guests are early.’

The back stairs were dark and narrow. The flight was at nine o’clock. He would have to take a taxi to the Hotel Terminus to pick up his bag, then go straight out to Orly.

On the Boulevard St  Germain it was raining. He started to run, looking for the nearest taxi rank. He was lucky. There were two taxis waiting. It was only when he was sitting in the taxi, crossing over to the Right Bank, that he began to think about what he had been told. And about the Inspector. Why didn’t the Inspector want him to be warned? Why ask?
Flics
always lie. What Pochon said was, ‘This man is seventy years old, he’s been hiding out for forty odd years. He’s not expecting you. He never was one of the hard ones in the
milice
, he was a paper shuffler, the head of the second section. He made up lists of people to be arrested and shot but he sent others out to do the shooting.’

No warning. Not a hint that he’d already sent someone down to do the job. Sent him to Salon where this old paper-shuffler shot him dead. How much are they paying Monsieur l’Inspecteur, these Jews? How much is he charging them for me?

It was eight-thirty when he arrived at Orly. He went to a phone booth. Janine answered.

‘Where are you? I thought we were going to meet at the Pergola?’

‘I’m at the Gare Montparnasse,’ he said. He hadn’t even thought what he was going to tell her: a lie came more quickly than the truth. It was normal: everyone lied in the milieu. ‘It’s my father,’ he told her. ‘He’s had a heart attack. He’s in hospital in Bayeux. Maman rang me this afternoon.’

‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I’ve had this bad feeling all day. I’ve just read your horoscope. I’m sorry about your papa. When will you be back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shit! Next Tuesday is your
fête
. I’m not supposed to tell you but we were planning a surprise party. What do you think? Should I cancel it?’

‘What’s this about a horoscope?’ he said. Horoscopes were no joke.

‘It’s just a horoscope in
Elle
. It’s silly. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘What did it say?’

‘I don’t remember exactly.’

‘
What did it say?
’

‘Oh, it was something like, “You have to make a sudden trip and lose out on pleasures.” I thought that meant the party. It sounds like it, doesn’t it?’

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Get it and read it to me. Hurry. I’ve got to go.’

He waited. There was something bad in the horoscope. He knew it.

‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Virgo. With a seventh house, Saturn, in your solar return chart being echoed by a full moon in Pisces, this is a dangerous time for you. You will have to make a sudden trip and lose out on previously planned pleasures. Beware of strangers on your journey. As Mars moves to Leo on the 9th you will be forced into an action that could do you great harm. If possible you should not agree to a proposal that others have made to you. This is no time to play the hero.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yes. It’s funny, isn’t it, about the sudden trip. I hope everything goes all right with your papa. And listen. Phone me on Sunday. I won’t cancel the party until I hear from you. Take care.’

‘I will.’

On the plane he took out the sheet of ruled paper and looked at what was written on it:
Prieuré St  Christophe. Avenue Henri Martin 6, Aix-En-Provence. Telephone: 42 96 17 36
.

Underneath this address someone had written in a tiny tight handwriting:

Cistercian residence, adjoins Cistercian boys’ school. Prior, Dom André Vergnes. Sixty-five. [In touch with Chevaliers.] B should arrive there August 10. He is expected to stay
circa
fourteen days, then plans move to Villefranche, then Nice. Drives white Peugeot, 1977. In Aix, the Café La Mascotte, Place des Tanneurs, is where he goes most afternoons. Uses this café’s address as a poste restante.

He took his bag from under the plane seat and opened it to the folder. There were two photographs. The first, a black-and-white head-and-shoulders of the subject, showed a young man in a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, pointed ears close to his head like an angry dog, frizzy blond hair, light-coloured eyes. Underneath, pasted on the border of the print, a hand-lettered notation:
BROSSARD. 1946
. He stared at the face. French. Pure blood. Not like me. He looked at the second photograph. The slip of paper with it said it was seven years old. There were two men, an old priest and another old fart, white-haired, in a cardigan. He studied the old fart’s face. The same close-set ears, the same stupid stare. Now he’s supposed to be seventy, he should be dead, he’s part of history. The
milice
. Those days are old movies, that’s all, Nazi uniforms, propeller bombers,
Casablanca
with Ingrid Bergman, and
chez nous
, Rommel in the desert with his tanks, and the Americans landing at Algiers. Papa was a little kid in the Arab quarter in Oran, he saw Rommel’s tanks on the run, then the winners, Americans, French, British, parading through the streets, he loved that, he loved uniforms, Papa, he wanted to be a soldier, a French soldier, not the ones in France, not Vichy, not the ones this guy fought for, but de Gaulle’s. Not that it mattered. No matter which French side you fight for, the French will fuck you, like they did Papa, who couldn’t wait to grow up and join the French army, yes, in ’55, signing on in Algiers, he was twenty years old, and they filled him full of lies, he was to be a Harkis, part of an elite commando, auxiliary troops, riding camels, encamped beside the French, Papa was in the top commando, the Georges, Muslims under French officers, fighting for Salan and the junta against the FLN, our own brothers. I wonder if that rich Jew officer tonight knew I’m the son of a Harkis. No, he wouldn’t know that. I’m not dark, like Papa. I can always pass for French.

He looked again at the photographs on his lap. The old man could have changed a bit in seven years. But his ears will be the same. When I see him, I may only have a minute to make up my mind. So I have to be sure.

He looked again at the photograph of the young man, the
milicien
. Look at the ears, the nose, the mouth. Remember them. Remember them.

But the photograph face stared out at him, as if defying him to remember, the young man’s eyes calculating and guarded as though the camera were in a police station. He looked at that face. When you think of it, this guy is like Papa. They both picked the wrong side and paid for it. Papa, who fought his guts out for the French, had to leave his own country because his people saw him as a traitor. If he’d stayed, people like him, the FLN buried them in sand and put honey on their faces for the ants to eat. Or cut their ears, lips and balls off, dressed them as women and lit them with a match and a jerrycan of petrol. And the French did nothing. They sailed home. Like the Nazis. The Nazis dumped this guy who fought for them against his own people. Papa was lucky, he didn’t stay behind, he thought he was French, he thought he could live here, so he took the lousy French offer to leave with the army and sail to a country he never knew. In school they told him Algeria was part of France, stupid cunt, he wasn’t French he was Harkis, native troops, an embarrassment, the French government stuck them into camps and farmed them out as casual labour and promised proper jobs, proper housing, all that shit. But did nothing.

And here I am tonight, going south, to Aix, not so far from where I was born in the Harkis camp at Sète, where Papa was paid slave wages to pick grapes. Is it any wonder he did what he did? Is it any wonder I do what I do?

But that’s it. People who back the wrong side lose the war. And go on losing. Like Papa, picking up the gun again, after eight years’ hard labour in Harkis camps. And two years after that, shot dead in the street by French
flics
. And look at this guy, this French Nazi, condemned to death
in absentia
twice over, a traitor, forty years on the run. Even now, when he’s an old man, it’s not finished for him, I’m on this plane, I’m going to kill him. And he, he’s waiting for me. He killed whoever came before me.

My horoscope. What date is today? The 6th. ‘On the 9th you will be forced into an action that could do you great harm. This is no time to play the hero.’

3

How old was she? It was the first question Colonel Roux asked himself when he received the summons to meet her. As an examining magistrate she must be a woman of a certain age. But there was always this curiosity if one was to work with a woman. Madame Annemarie Livi. An Italian name. He had not been able to ask anyone about her. Until this news became official, it was something he was not able to discuss, even with his fellow officers. General de Bernonville himself had called Roux into his office and warned him that politics were involved. Politics at the highest level. The Commissariat of Police did not yet know that they were being dismissed from the investigation. There were sure to be repercussions. Political repercussions.

Last evening he and Claire had dined together in a little restaurant just off Rue du Four. Claire’s sister, Anne-Laure, had agreed to babysit. He had waited until then to tell Claire his news. And, of course, the first thing Claire seized on was that he was going to work with a woman.

‘How old is she?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been wondering. She must be getting on, if she’s a
juge d’instruction
.’

‘Livi,’ Claire said. ‘Wasn’t that Yves Montand’s real name?’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe she’s his sister.’

‘I hope so,’ Claire said. ‘In that case she’ll be too old for you.’

Now, in the sunshine of a May morning, waiting in a corridor outside one of those anonymous offices near the Galeries d’Instruction in the Palais de Justice, he saw, sitting at her desk, a tall woman, elegantly dressed in a dark-green
tailleur
and a white silk blouse. In her late forties, he supposed. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders as she bent to untie the tapes of the mass of documents that the clerk spread out on her desk. The clerk turned and signalled Roux to enter. Judge Livi stood up, smiling, her hand extended in greeting. The clerk closed the door, leaving them alone.

He liked her at once. She was direct.

‘Colonel, as you know, I am the third examining magistrate to be given this case. When I read through these dossiers, I became aware of the difficulties my predecessors faced. The case is baffling. We simply must take a new direction and at once. Tell me. Have you been told why I am requesting that the gendarmerie take over this investigation?’

It was a direct question. He gave General de Bernonville’s answer. ‘I’ve been told that it concerns the relations between the Commissariat of Police and the Vichy regime. It’s a matter of record that the French police were pro-Pétain and collaborated with the German occupiers in deporting Jews to German concentration camps. Moreover they often acted on their own initiative before the Germans requested such aid. The gendarmerie, on the other hand, were sympathetic to the Resistance and to the de Gaulle forces fighting outside France. As a result the gendarmerie has a clean record in the matter of collaboration with the Germans. The Commissariat of Police does not. General de Bernonville, my superior, says that because of that you have decided to transfer this investigation from the police to the army.’