(2013) Collateral Damage (15 page)
When he had finished Koller sat quietly for a few seconds and
then asked if he had heard of a man called Siegfried? Le Poidevin said he had not,
and after more silent examination Koller concluded that he was probably telling
the truth.
'Siegfried,' said
Koller,
'was a comrade
of mine. He disappeared about the time, or perhaps a few days before, this Fouche-Larimand
asked you to become the cut-out. When the police fished his body out of the Seine
they discovered that, among other things, most of his toenails had been pulled out.
'I didn't really understand that at the time,' Koller continued
in his neutral voice.
'Such an old-fashioned method.
Now
it begins to make sense. Does it make sense to you?'
Le Poidevin's great dome of a forehead became noticeably moist,
and he attended to it with the right sleeve of his dress shirt. 'Yes,' he said,
'it does now. I remember the case, remember reading about it. But I didn't connect
it at the time. Honestly I didn't.'
'Do you understand what's been happening?' He might have been
talking to a delinquent child.
'It's the same as the Gaullist, isn't it? You don't work for
them at all. You work for somebody else, but I came along with the right words,
the right password and ... I'm sorry. But how did you receive your messages before?
Why didn't your people, your organisation whoever they are, get in touch with you?
How could it go on for almost three months?'
'The same way it happened to the Gaullist, I suppose. I received
a message in one of my mail-boxes to make contact with you, and when we met the
first message you gave me contained the right code to break off all old contacts
immediately. It's designed for our protection, you see, in case one part of the
network has become vulnerable, come under surveillance.' He could have been explaining
how a new gadget worked to someone who was not very technically-minded. Suddenly
he snapped: 'But you know all this, don't you?'
'No, I didn't. You must believe me. I didn't know. Why did you
suspect something was wrong?' Le Poidevin was playing for time now, but it was two
in the morning and he lived alone. The brandy courage had vaporized and he was barely
in control of his limbs. The Siamese, smelling his fear, got off the couch and stalked
around the room in worried circles.
Koller appeared to have calmed. 'Two reasons,' he said. 'First
there was a bomb in Holland that I suspected had been placed by some comrades of
mine, but their choice of target surprised me. Then your last message ordered me
to kill somebody with a bomb when it would have been much easier to shoot them.
The orders were very specific on that point; even the type of bomb I must use. Of
course, like a good German I did what I was told. The result was that an innocent
person was killed and we were made to look like incompetent amateurs. After this
I began to ask myself questions and the more questions I asked myself the more it
occurred to me that you had most of the answers.'
Le Poidevin heard all this with mounting horror. He had deliberately
schooled himself to be incurious about the activities of the Comte and his friends.
He found
this quite easy, as sensitive parts
of his brain
were long neglected and the feeblest smoke-screen enough to hide their weak distress
signals. He had drawn comfort from the idea that if he behaved like a machine he
could not be held accountable for his actions. Somebody else was pressing the buttons.
Now he was confronted by this horrible young gunman who spoke of murder and being
made to appear amateur with such matter-of-factness that it amply confirmed his
conviction that his own life was about to be disposed of like an empty bottle. He
mumbled something in the direction of the carpet, but Koller was unable to make
out what the words were.
'What?'
'I said you're going to kill me, aren't you?' he said pitifully.
'No. No, I'm not. I've thought about it, but I think you're basically
telling the truth. It is true you are a disgusting old queen who once betrayed people
to the Nazis, but you can't help what you are. More important, I believe they didn't
tell you the games they were playing with me because you would have shit yourself
every time we met.'
Koller began to enjoy his God-like role. 'Not only will I not
kill you,' he said, 'but I'm going to free you from these elderly gentlemen who
have such a hold on you.'
Even in his growing relief Le Poidevin thought, 'So you can control
me,' but he remained staring at the carpet. He would not consider himself safe until
his visitor had left the apartment.
Koller continued by spelling out the terms for his largess. He
was to give him Fouche-Larimand's address; he would not tell the aristocrat or anybody
else about their little chat. He also pointed out that, compared with that bunch
of geriatrics Le Poidevin had been mixing
with,
his own
people were like a machine-gun at Waterloo.
All these threats were quite unnecessary. At that moment Le Poidevin
loved Koller as the condemned man on the jammed trap-door loved the carpenter.
'Do you live alone?' asked the terrorist.
'Only Napoleon.'
It had been this way
for a long time now. Nowadays, if he wanted sex, he usually had to pay one of the
loathsome transvestites who frequented the Pigalle.
'Who?'
'The cat.'
The Siamese was perched on the open window ledge, its tail to
the 130-feet drop, looking in at the room. The animal, with its accusing blue eyes
and style imperious as his own, suddenly irritated Koller. He threw a glass at the
wall below the window. The sound of the broken glass persuaded Napoleon to beat
a dignified retreat to the outside ledge where he sat with his back on the proceedings,
looking down on to the street.
Before he left Koller decided to search the flat. He pulled out
drawers and scattered their contents about the floor before examining them with
a disdainful foot. He went through Le Poidevin's wardrobe, sneering at his more
extravagant outfits and an ancient frogman's suit that looked as if it had seen
very little time under water. The statues of the golden youths were dismembered
against the edge of a heavy sideboard so that the white carpet was strewn with tiny
alabaster buttocks and thighs. The few books in the apartment, including an old
English-language family bible, had their covers removed to see if there were secrets
stuffed down the spines. He made the Guernseyman accompany him from room to room
where he stood among the detritus weakly protesting, 'There's nothing to find.'
It was as if, having granted life, the terrorist was determined to provoke Le Poidevin
into some blind fury which would provide an excuse to kill him.
In fact, Koller had almost forgotten his presence. His mind seethed
with the implications of the waiter's story. It seemed that the Front, or at least
his section of it, had been infiltrated by a bunch of romantic old fascists who
had cleverly used him to discredit his own cause with a stupid bombing. They had
also ensured the continuation of a hot war between Palestinians by selecting as
their target the publisher, a prominent Realist. Apart from causing fratricidal
strife, presumably the Circle's other motive was to stir a general backlash which
could engender rightist revivals. No doubt they had also taken over the Dutch cell
- hence the explosion at the NATO rally. All classic agent provocateur stuff; all
easily understood.
But why didn't they plant the bombs themselves and claim afterwards
that the Front was responsible? Why this delight in complicated manipulation? Was
the Circle being controlled by somebody else, the brainchild of an Israeli or American
dirty tricks department? Who was this Grand Jules? Did he exist? Was Fouche-Larimand
the top man? Had he made Jules up to cover himself with Le Poidevin? Or was Le Poidevin
lying after all?
He looked at the waiter. He was standing there, drunken tears
streaming from his brown, gun dog's eyes. Koller studied him while he casually disembowelled
some of the Louis Quinze with his flick-knife. The terrorist plunged a hand into
the upholstery and emerged with its innards. 'If you're lying, my fat friend,' snarled
Koller, 'this is what I'm going to do to you.'
'I've told you everything,' Le Poidevin said. Then suddenly Koller
was gone and the waiter was left alone among the wreckage, still too shocked and
befuddled by drink to realise that the search had primarily been intended as a punishment.
He found another bottle of Calvados and sat on the floor drinking
until a timid dawn began to take the flame out of the street lights. It was then
that Le Poidevin noticed that Napoleon was still sitting behind the glass on the
far end of the window ledge. He called to the Siamese to come in, but the animal
simply turned his head and then looked away again as if he had seen and heard too
much to continue their relationship. Angrily, Le Poidevin lurched over towards the
window. 'Come here, Napoleon,' he slurred. 'Come here at once.'
But the cat continued to ignore him.
The room revolved. He took a deep breath and it moved more slowly.
He slid the window open to its fullest extent and tried to grab the cat by its collar,
first with his left and then his right arm. Napoleon remained just out of reach.
'Come here, damn you,' he said. The cat's head sunk deeper into its shoulder and
it made a short, dismissive gesture with its black tail.
The window had curtains made of some flimsy beige material. Le
Poidevin twisted one of them into a makeshift lifeline,
then
hauled himself up on to the window ledge in a kneeling position. The metal slide
for the window frame bit painfully into his knee-caps. In this position he was able
to swing his body round so that the fingers of his outstretched right hand touched
Napoleon's collar. As he did so the curtain ran along its runners, jerking his left
arm behind his head. Sober, he might have recovered his balance. As it was, he fell,
right knee first, out of the window.
For a moment he survived. The heavy man clung on to the curtain,
desperately trying to turn his body so that he could get his right hand to the sill.
Then the material tore away from its upper hem. He dropped backwards, still clutching
the torn curtain in his left fist, and with a groan hardly loud enough to start
a sparrow landed on the low wall nine floors below. Napoleon miaowed treacherously
and went inside.
Since there was no record of his Methodist baptism Graham Le
Poidevin was buried in a Catholic cemetery on the edge of the city, in an old plot
where towering marble angels camouflaged in moss guarded a bourgeoisie who had cheered
the fall of the Commune.
Due to the pressure on space and the absence of protesting relatives
some of these old graves were being re-opened. Apart from the priest and two municipal
grave-diggers to lower the municipal coffin, five others were in attendance. They
were the head waiter at the cafe, who was glad of an excuse to take the afternoon
off, two detectives, and a young reporter from a news agency
who
represented the press's diminishing interest in the case.
The fifth was Comte Christian Fouche-Larimand, the only genuine
mourner present. He had a black, gaberdine trench coat draped around the shoulders
of his dark suit which made him look like a cloaked figure out of some nineteenth-century
duelling scene. As soon as he arrived he spotted the unmistakable figures of the
policemen; he realised he had blundered and would surely not escape their questions.
He excused his error on the reasonable grounds that he was dying and the pain-killing
drugs he was obliged to take sometimes clouded the thought processes. Excluding
his lost eye and burned cheek he had seven other wounds in his body from both bullets
and shrapnel. For the last five years it had been necessary to make an annual pilgrimage
to Athens where a surgeon, who had learned his skills at Stalingrad, dug out chunks
of rotting flesh and tried to pull him together again. He was to have made another
of these visits in a week's time, but the presence of the two young policemen, their
suits not quite tailored for their pistols, made him decide to leave the next day.
It was possible that the surgeon could give him another six months or so of life,
and his new interests had renewed the will to live.
The priest recited his words with great tenderness; Le Poidevin
might have been the loyalist of his flock and a whole village in attendance. Fouche-Larimand,
grey-faced and trying not to look as if he was leaning on the walking-stick he carried,
wondered if Le Poidevin would have appreciated his presence. Such a frightened man,
he thought, always battered by events, like a piece of driftwood. He had no doubt
in his own mind that Koller had killed him. He knew Le Poidevin would have talked
and was convinced what remained of his life was in danger. He looked forward to
a confrontation. The cane he was holding was a sword-stick.
The freshly-turned earth was beginning to tighten its grip around
Le Poidevin and Fouche-Larimand had already seen one sun set on the Acropolis by
the time Koller saw his photograph in one of the afternoon papers. It was the new
Interpol photograph supplied by Scotland Yard from the video camera outside Ruth's
flat. He was taken full face, his jaw pointing upwards, eyebrows arched in quizzical
surprise.
He bought the newspaper at a little green-painted kiosk, watching
the middle-aged woman who served him for a trace of recognition as her hand slid
over his face on more newsprint awaiting customers. From the kiosk he went to a
post and telegraphic office near the Sorbonne. He had deliberately chosen the lunch-hour
when he knew it would be crowded with foreign students calling home or composing
begging telegrams on the wooden shelf that ran the length of one wall. He gave the
overseas telephone operator his number, found a corner where he could keep his eye
on the door, and read about himself while he waited his turn.
