Bornand’s afternoon continues to be busy. At some point, Customs may decide to poke their noses into the business about the plane. So it’s vital to talk to the Finance Minister. But relations between the two men are complicated, fraught with stumbling blocks. He must prepare the ground. Timsit is the man of the moment. A graduate from the elite École Nationale d’Administration from which civil servants are drawn, his culture is very different from Bornand’s and he has a great deal of influence on the government. They’d met several times on hunts organised by the Parillaud bank and talked at length about collectors’ guns, and Bornand had offered him some magnificent specimens from Lebanon.
‘I wanted to make a point of informing you before talking to the Minister about it. An arms deal with Iran. Nothing to do with big bucks, it’s to do with secret negotiations over the release of the hostages. I’ve just come out of the President’s office. He wants this business to be hushed up at all costs.’
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.