"I don't need your cooperation."
"Yes, you do. If you don't want to end up like him."
"You going to break my neck?"
M. Beret looked offended. "No, but there is someone in the neighborhood who doesn't like you, that's the impression we're getting." He paused. "Don't ask me how I know." He paused again. "I don't want anything to happen to you, not here. Having one of you in the freezer is enough."
"He had plenty of enemies."
"Then we'll have to make a list, won't we? I'll find a thick pad of paper." He dropped both halves of the roll in my lap. "Two o'clock, I'll be at the bar, the one where you met him. If you hurry, you can make the start of the morning negotiating session. It's at your mission this time, is it not? Don't worry, you won't have an afternoon session today."
Chapter Two
The morning session of the talks went nowhere, though there was a testy exchange that kept everyone awake as long as it lasted. The afternoon session was canceled; somehow, I wasn't surprised.
When I opened the door to the Sunflower a little after two o'clock, the man behind the bar was watching a small television on the counter next to the cash register. He looked up from the soccer game that filled the little screen with little figures running aimlessly. He frowned at me. I frowned back. Like I'd told the Mossad over dinner, I don't like soccer that much. They probably had already put that in my file. The man glanced at his watch, shook his head, and then pointed to an alcove in the back. M. Beret was there arranging a number of photographs on the table in front of him.
"Ah, Inspector. I knew you would make it." He pointed to the photographs. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an effort to connect names with faces, faces with places, that sort of thing. I'm sure you do it all the time."
There were twelve pictures, arranged in four rows of three each. The first three rows each had one clear photograph of a face; the other two were grainy or taken by cameras with fixed shutter speeds-and from a considerable distance. The last row was all landscape shots.
"We're going to do this in a certain order. All you have to say is yes or no to what I ask. Don't jump ahead; don't assume you know what I'm going to ask. Shall we begin?"
"I don't see a photo here of Sohn. I thought that's what you wanted me to do, identify him."
"Already! I make things simple, and you make them complicated." He took a deep breath. "Again, I'll go over the procedure again."
"'Don't jump ahead.' I heard you the first time."
The man from behind the bar appeared. He and M. Beret had a brief conversation in French, in raised voices. They both looked at me. M. Beret took out his wallet and handed some money to the man, who a moment later returned with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a small plate of cheese. There was no room on the table, so he put everything on the seat of a chair, puffed out his cheeks, and left.
"Let's get the pictures out of the way first, then we can sit." M. Beret picked up the bottle and read the label. "No hurry, actually; this won't be ready to drink for another year or so."
"I'm supposed to wait until you ask me a question."
"Good. Top row, picture on the right end. Taken at night?"
I leaned over and studied the photo. "No." It might have been, for all I knew. I just wanted to get this over with.
"Excellent. Simple answer. Continue in that vein, if you please. How about the one just below it?"
That one was taken at a distance, maybe at dusk. Two men faced the camera, although they had their heads down as if they were talking quietly. One of them was short and had sharply chiseled features; you could see that much because of the angle of the shot. In the dying light, it was hard to tell, but he seemed to have a dark complexion. I couldn't see anything of the man standing next to him. Both had on short-sleeve shirts. There were palm trees in the background. If I had to guess, I would have said it was taken somewhere tropical, but the question hadn't been where but when. I don't volunteer information unless I'm going to get something in return. There was nothing in this for me, except to find out what happened to Sohn. "You mean was it taken at night?"
"Yes."
"No. Twilight, maybe." By now I knew he didn't care when the photographs were taken, and he probably didn't care what answer I gave. He was just warming up the machinery.
M. Beret put his hands behind his back and stood on tiptoe as he leaned over the table. "Now, I want you to listen closely. Do you recognize anything in the third row of pictures? Look at them closely before you answer."
"Third row?"
"Yes."
"Third row from the top?"
"Inspector…"
I didn't recognize anything in the third row, but the middle picture in the second row was of my brother meeting with the short, dark man. My brother had on a hat, something stylish and worn at just the right angle. I didn't know he wore hats. From a distance, this one might make him look taller, but it didn't change his face. He looked angry, which didn't surprise me. From what little background was visible, it appeared they were in Europe, and fairly recently. I couldn't see any loaves of bread.
The last picture in the second row was of the facility in Pakistan where the Man with Three Fingers and I had botched the operation during those few minutes a lifetime ago. I had forgotten a lot of things in the meantime, but I still remembered the layout of the facility and the target building, and especially that one room, by heart. In the picture, the door was open; it hadn't been that night. The photo must have been old. All of the trees looked smaller, younger than they had been when I was there. What the hell was M. Beret doing with that picture? "No," I said finally. "I don't recognize anything."
"Not even the first picture, the one of the individual?"
I shook my head. "In the third row?" I hadn't focused on that one before. "No."
"That's Sohn when he was younger. He's changed a bit, may have had some sort of operation. I think he may have gone by another name in those days."
"Doesn't look anything like him." There was nothing wrong with the lighting or the focus. It was a good ID picture, a little old, with some of that yellow-brown that colors old pictures, but it just wasn't Sohn. The ears were too big.
"You're sure. Quite sure."
"If this is the person with the broken neck, I'm not going to be able to identify him for you, because I don't know who he is."
"Positive?"
I picked up the photograph and looked at it closely. For a moment, in the flickering light of the Sunflower's back room, it looked a lot like Pak might have appeared twenty-five years ago. "I don't know who it is. But now you have my fingerprints. Also, I suppose, my DNA. Would you like a blood sample? I could pee in a cup, if you want."
M. Beret took the photograph from me, collected the others, and put them all in a brown envelope. "I don't need your fingerprints." He moved the wineglasses onto the table. "I already have plenty. Blood samples are someone else's business. Perhaps you should visit the Red Cross headquarters, up the hill. Cheese?" I shook my head. "You must acquire a taste for cheese, Inspector. It will open up a whole new world for you."
"If it is anything like this one, I don't need it." I took three big swallows from the glass he handed me. "Do you have any other questions? Or am I free to go?" No sense hanging around; I don't like white wine.
"Have you ever broken anyone's neck, Inspector?"
"You surely don't think I killed Sohn, or whoever is in your morgue, do you?"
M. Beret took a sip from his glass. "I think many things, but I manage to winnow out most of what is untrue. You're sure you won't try some cheese? This here"-he pointed to a square piece covered with what could have been mold-"it's very good. Or this." He sliced off a small piece. "Goat cheese. Why don't you try some?"
"Excuse me, but when we first met, didn't you say that you are head of counterintelligence?"