He feels as if he has always known this impeccably furnished, unchanging, almost lifeless room. A decor designed as a showcase for Bornand’s wealth and culture. Only the snake goddess lent a rare note of incongruity.
He’d come here for the first time more than twenty years ago with his father, a brilliant defence lawyer who’d made a name for himself after the war defending collaborators. This stocky man with crew-cut hair and a grating voice who resembled a wild boar was Bornand’s close friend. And for Bornand, friendship was sacred. A friend is for life, whatever he does. And Nicolas Martenot inherited this friendship, along with the rest of his legacy. He has attended dozens of gatherings in this drawing room, no grand receptions, but meetings with handpicked associates, personal bonds forming, networks being reinforced, with Bornand at the centre, at the hub of the power machine, elegant and controlling. An instrument of power, and the thrill that goes with it.
Five or six years back, not that long ago and right here in this very room, Bornand had introduced him to his Iranian friends, a few months after the overthrow of the Shah, in the middle of the US Embassy hostage crisis. Two men in their forties, Harvard graduates, in dark suits, equally at ease with the Canaletto and the Picasso. They headed up the international pool of lawyers brought in to support the Iranian government in the countless international disputes resulting from the Islamic revolution. Being part of this pool changed his life, introducing him into the business world operating at planetary level, and making his law firm one of the most prominent in Paris, with branches in ten countries. It also made him a fully-fledged member of Bornand’s ‘family’, and it was to Bornand he partly owed his wealth.
Martenot turns around, Bornand’s slim figure has just entered the room. He’s sporting a beige polo-neck sweater with leather elbow patches, brown velvet trousers and worn tawny leather moccasins. He walks over to Nicolas, puts his arm around his shoulders and hugs him briefly. There’s a great deal of affection in his gesture. Then he turns to the manservant:
‘Bring us some coffee, Antoine, and then you may leave.’
A fine porcelain tray bearing pastries and chocolates. Relaxed, Bornand pours the coffee then sinks into an armchair.
‘When did you get back from Tehran?’
‘Last night, at around ten.’
‘Well?’
‘It’s not good news.’
‘As I feared.’
‘My trip was timed to coincide with the first missile deliveries. The disappearance of the plane caused mayhem.’ Bornand listens closely but says nothing. ‘I met our friends, separately, then all together. They’re unanimous: there’s nothing left to negotiate. You’ve been aware of their demands in return for freeing the hostages for nearly a year, and still nothing. They’re beginning to doubt that you’re in a position to break the deadlock in Paris. Especially as the RPR right-wing opposition party sent an envoy to Tehran, a certain Antonelli, do you know him?’ Bornand nods. ‘I haven’t met him, obviously, but I’ve kept a close eye on him. He’s offering the Iranians better loan repayment conditions and arms deals after the RPR wins the March election, providing they refuse to negotiate with us now.’
‘The Iranians aren’t stupid. They’re only too aware that the Gaullists have always had a special relationship with Iraq, that they negotiated major arms deals and the contract to build Iraq’s nuclear power station. They can’t rely on pre-election promises.’
‘They see the sabotage of the plane as the result of French political infighting …’
‘They’re not wrong.’
‘… and to be honest, they’ve had enough. In a nutshell, they’re giving you two weeks to progress their demands in a visible and public way, otherwise, they’ll break off all contact until the much heralded election of March ’86. And bye-bye hostages.’
‘An ultimatum?’
‘Exactly. Can you meet it?’
Bornand thinks long and hard, his eyes half closed, rubbing the palm of his left hand. A sharp, stimulating pain. Nicolas watches him carefully.
‘Well, François?’
Bornand sits up.
‘Two weeks isn’t long.’
‘But why, why? You know as well as I do that Iraq is on its last legs and will never pay for the arms we supply. Iran is winning the war financially. There’s a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Tehran, and the Saudis want a war with no winner and no loser. Why the delay? Not to mention the Americans. Or rather yes, let’s mention them. In Tehran, I met Green. His room was next to mine …’
‘That can’t be a coincidence …’
‘We played poker all night, and he won.’
‘A bad sign.’
‘They’re going to be stepping up their deliveries of arms to Iran, with the blessing of Saudi Arabia and Israel.’
‘But not of the American Congress.’
Martenot smiles.
‘As you can imagine, it didn’t seem to worry Green. And what about us? Why can’t we simply review our policy on Iran? That’s the President’s intention.’
‘I know, I know. But political life is becoming paralysed in the run-up to the election.’
‘A rather feeble explanation, and you know it.’
‘True … Well let’s say there’s a clan-based power system here in France, and a President who is no longer able to arbitrate, to decide, when issues are as complicated as they are in the Middle East …’
‘And when there are such huge financial interests at stake. The French arms dealers who’ve invested billions in Iraq know full well that they’ll never be paid if Baghdad loses the war.’
‘Naturally, that’s another factor. In other words, it’s hard to get things moving, but I’ll manage it, and that’s a promise. I’m simply saying that two weeks isn’t long enough.’
Martenot rises.
‘It feels like the writing’s on the wall for this government.’
Bornand smiles.
‘There’s an element of that. Trust me.’ He sees Martenot to the door. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’
On the first floor, in the green and white bedroom of Bornand’s mistress, Françoise Michel, Nicolas is reclining naked on the vast white duvet covering the bed. In the centre of the room is the chaise longue, and to the right, the dressing table beneath a giant mirror. Françoise comes in, wearing a green silk tea-gown, tied at the waist, her long, almost straight blonde hair cascading down to her hips. She sashays over to the chaise longue, stops, unties her dress and, turning slowly around, with a languid, deliberate gesture, lets it slide to the floor in a pool of colour and gathers up her hair and twists it into a knot at the base of her neck. She’s the focus of every pair of eyes, in charge, sovereign. The curtains have been drawn across the windows, two uplighters illuminate the ceiling. Nicolas gazes at her sinuous white body in this shadowless light, he loves this exaggerated mise en scène. Bornand’s mistress, stolen, shared. He has a hard-on. She turns to him and stretches out her leg. He kneels before her, removes one white mule and then the other, traces the shape of her foot with his hand, and then her leg, with a precise movement, up to her knee where he places his lips. Her skin is cool and gives off a fragrance of sweet almond. I’m hunting on his ground. His hand moves up to her thigh and he buries his face in her blonde pubic hair, seeks her crotch, finds it soft, alive, a powerful, intense taste. His preserve. He’s gripped by a violent desire. Françoise, present and remote, opens her thighs or pushes him away, grips him, eludes him, derives pleasure from toying with his feelings, she who prides herself in having none, and letting him know it. Only the almost abstract thrill at the spectacle she’s putting on for Bornand, standing behind the two-way mirror. Perhaps.