"Here's what I know," I said. "First, I have a diplomatic passport; second, and in contradiction to point one, I am being held against my will in a basement somewhere in France by people who have no authority to do so."
"No, Inspector, we're not in France at all. We're in Italy. We were in France, but your M. Beret seems to know a lot of people in the French service. He doesn't like the Italians, however, and they don't like him. While you were resting we all drove here. Excuse my interruption-do you have a third point?"
"What about Jeno?" There was apparently a great deal of lamb going around this corner of Europe, French lamb, Italian lamb.
"He's probably sitting with M. Beret at this moment. They have a lot to talk about. As do we, Inspector. We have a message for you to give to Mr. Sohn. It is an important message, and we had quite a discussion among ourselves as to whether we could trust you with it. In the end, there wasn't much choice. Someone suggested that we pass it to your brother, but we have reason to believe that he and Sohn don't get along." A broad smile.
"And?" No question about it, they had good sources.
"And so you got the lamb dinner."
"I'm not authorized to pass messages to Sohn from you, and having disappeared for I don't know how long, I doubt if anyone in my mission will listen to anything I have to say once I get back. In fact, they probably already think I've defected." I stopped to give a short laugh, but it came out more like a bark. I should have gone to dinner with the wolves.
"Amazing, you sound just like Sohn, Inspector," said the man with the napkin. By now he had fashioned it into a hand puppet, though I didn't recognize the shape. "It's a dog," he said when he saw my questioning look, "though it appears to have lost a leg. You've never seen a three-legged dog? They seem to adapt rather well, though they can be painful to watch." I glanced around the table, but none of the others gave anything away.
"Adaptation has never been my best quality," I said. "If you want me to pass a message to Sohn, you'd damn well better have a convincing explanation for why I disappeared." I didn't need authorization to carry a message to Sohn. They knew that perfectly well.
"So, you agree to pass the message?"
"I imagine that is the only way I'll get out of here."
"Goodness, no, Inspector. We're not going to carry you away wrapped in a rug." The man to my left snorted.
"Let's get on with it." A short, bald man walked in and sat down. The others nodded at him. "I ask only that you listen closely, Inspector." He turned his full attention to me. "When I'm finished, if you have any questions about what I have said, you should ask them then. Understood?"
It wasn't an order or a threat, nothing peremptory about it. He seemed like a man under a lot of pressure and in need of a good night's sleep. "I'm listening," I said.
"Good. Sohn must have told you we have been meeting with him, or with people attached to him, for quite a while. We've been dancing around each other, but there isn't time to dance anymore." I put aside the mental picture of Sohn's little ears dancing in the desert at dusk. "Let me be blunt. We don't want our neighbors buying missiles from you." I assumed he didn't mean me personally. "You, of course, don't care what the buyers do with the missiles, as long as you are paid. You need the money from those sales, and if the sales stop, Sohn has made it very clear to us, you must have something to fill the vacuum. It's not a difficult equation to solve. We do our part, you do yours." He poured me a glass of wine, and then one for himself. "There is a little complication, however-the negotiations you are currently holding in Geneva." He took an orange from the fruit bowl, examined it closely, then put it back. "A decent orange cannot be such a difficult thing to find in this country," he said to the others in English. "Or am I wrong?" Nobody said a word.
"So far," I said when it seemed that if I didn't break the silence, we would be sitting all night contemplating fruit, "I haven't heard a message."
"That's because I'm not quite there, Inspector." The bald man rummaged through the bowl and emerged with a plum. He polished it. He held it up to the light. "Do you like plums, Inspector? Do you know what happens to a plum when it is dried? It becomes a prune. Same thing happens with countries. When they dry up, they are only good for shit."
Ahmet smiled absently into the fireplace. The others watched me with interest. I may have flushed, but I was determined not to let him win the point. "Maybe that sort of thing works with Arabs," I said evenly, "or with what's left of the Ottoman Empire. Don't try it with me." Ahmet's smile dimmed slightly, but I could tell it didn't break his concentration on which of my body parts to add to next week's lamb sausage.
The bald man bit into the plum. He said something to the others in a language that came from the back of his throat, and they nodded. "Very well, Inspector. We get down to business." The plum had dripped onto his chin. He ignored it. "The talks you are holding. I'll be blunt. They are a problem for us if they make progress."
"I don't think there's much danger of that."
"You may not think so. We do not think so. But things sometimes take an odd bounce in these talks. Do you play soccer?"
"Too much running around," I said.
"Then you know what I mean. An odd bounce in a game that seems to be going nowhere, and suddenly someone makes a goal. If your talks should suddenly make a goal, that would be a problem." He finally reached up and wiped away the drop of plum juice. "Like watching dirt on another man's face."
Sohn had sent me out to talk to the Americans in Geneva; instead I was somewhere in France-or Italy, if they were to be trusted-sharing a fruit bowl with Mossad. Sohn didn't make mistakes. I was here because he wanted me to end up here. When he played soccer, I had a feeling, the ball only bounced where he wanted it to. "If the talks succeed," I said, "it will stop our missile sales to your neighbors. I take it that isn't what you really want, even though you say that it is."
"To the contrary, it is very much what we want. And as you know, we are prepared to invest quite a bit in your country if we can be sure we are getting what we need. We want those missile transfers to stop, not slow down, not be rerouted. We want them to stop. But if the talks succeed, that will not happen. Why? Because you don't trust the Americans, your side will probe for the seams in an agreement."
Ahmet hissed through his false teeth.
"The deal will fall through sooner or later; and we will end up losing a lot of precious time on the problem. If the talks succeed, by which is commonly understood you sign something and drink a glass of champagne, we will be put on the sidelines and told not to interfere. Meanwhile, and this is our estimate, so please contradict me if you think we are wrong, your own situation will not improve. You will gain nothing from the negotiated deal, and the money you earn from sales elsewhere, even from your old customers, will become a pittance because no one will trust you anymore as a supplier. How can anyone sign a contract with someone who takes their money and then negotiates away the deal, tears it up for diplomatic gain? They barely trust you as it is. You see my point." He didn't wait for me to respond. "So it comes down to this: Would your side rather deal with someone who can deliver, or someone who can't? That's the choice. That's the message that we want you to pass to Sohn." He threw the plum pit into the fireplace and walked out of the room without saying good night.
7
"Don't turn around, but that is probably one of your M. Beret's boys who just swung in behind us."
"Why do you keep calling him 'my' M. Beret? He isn't mine. If anything he's yours. You're the one who dined with him last night. I didn't even eat." I could see headlights in the rearview mirror.