"Not when we first met. I never do that on a first date. At some point, though, I may have mentioned something along those lines. It never hurts for the target to know whom he is talking to. What of it?"
"Why are you investigating a murder? That isn't counterintelligence business. Don't you have police for that?"
"Usually yes, but in this case no. The police have registered their firm position that this case is odd and not something they want to touch. The exact wording to me over the phone was, 'It stinks.'"
"I salute them, a police force with good judgment."
"Was Sohn a friend of yours?" You could almost hear the question snap into place. Nice technique, I thought, but the delivery was a little flat-footed.
"Friend? People here seem to use the word loosely. Where I come from, it's not a term to be tossed around. Sohn was an acquaintance, someone I'd barely met; not even a colleague, really. I wouldn't say I considered him a friend."
"Does it bother you that he is dead?"
Odd question. "Should it?" Very odd.
"I'm going to tell you something, Inspector, because I don't give a damn if you know, and maybe it will help you realize that you are about to be caught in a hurricane that will be so destructive it will probably blow your little country apart. Where it will toss you I do not know. Nor do I care."
"We're clear on one thing, anyway." Pak spoke to me of winds from odd places. M. Beret spoke of hurricanes. Maybe that was one of the differences between them and us.
"Sohn had been here before." M. Beret paused, but as I did not respond, went on. "He struck me as an intelligent man from what I saw, a bit nervous at times, and a tedious way of sitting for long periods at cafes, nursing a cup of coffee, staring at nothing."
"So far, if there is a hurricane coming, I don't even feel a breeze."
"He was here several times. He met Jeno. I know for sure he did that at least once."
"At least once? Such careful phrasing holds so many wonderful possibilities. To which conclusion would you like me to jump? Or am I free to choose on my own?" So, as soon as Sohn arrived, they already knew who he was. They were probably on him from the moment he got off the plane and entered the air terminal. More than that, they would know perfectly well if it was his body in their morgue. "Don't tell me you're unsure about something like how many times Sohn met someone as interesting as Jeno. I thought you and your teams were everywhere." Over the lamb dinner, or maybe it was over the discussion of prunes, Mossad had told me about their exchanges with Sohn. M. Beret knew as much as I did about Sohn and Jeno; in fact, he probably knew a lot more. But he didn't seem to know for sure how much I knew. Maybe he didn't know for sure how much Jeno had told me. That suggested Jeno might be working for M. Beret, and with him, and against him all at the same time.
"Funny story, you might recognize the outlines. The two of them disappeared one evening, and then reappeared hours later. We spotted them separately, about the same time in the same part of town, near a nightclub. Sohn was nursing a bruised shoulder when I saw him next. I think he may have jumped out of a moving car. It's not something your people do very well."
"No garbage truck?"
M. Beret poured some more wine into my glass. "I don't know why, exactly, but I'm trying to help you."
"One minute you don't care if a hurricane blows me away. The next minute you're trying to help me."
"You are a smart man, Inspector."
"But what?"
"Are you so sure there is something else to that thought? Don't you take compliments, unqualified?"
"But what? M. Beret, no one begins or ends a sentence like that unless he has something else to say."
Silence for a moment. I could see he was deciding whether to let me be right or to prove me wrong.
"Very well," he said at last. "You are a smart man, so why do you stay?"
"Go on."
"That's it. That's all. Fin."
"No, it's not. It might be all in some other place, under other circumstances. Not here, and not from you. Please continue, M. Beret."
He sighed. "Very well. You stay, that is, you won't leave because you are a patriot, I suppose."
"One supposes."
"Why else?" I didn't reply. "Well, then," he went on, "if it were possible to do something, would you? Wouldn't you get out of the way of a hurricane if you could? Wouldn't you help warn other people?"
"Go on."
"How bad do things have to get, Inspector?"
"We are back to 'you are a smart man,' aren't we?"
"No, I misspoke. I think you are a man of morality."
"No longer smart?"
"You cannot keep dodging the point. Yes, you know it, Inspector. You cannot come outside and go back exactly the same, ever again. Nothing can look the same when you go home. Especially now."
"But I will go home."
"Yes, we've established that, haven't we? And once there, once you get back, what then? How will you pull up the mental drawbridge and lock it tight? Are you going to forget everything you've learned about the rest of the world? Empty your brain as you step across the border?"
"I can only do what I can."
He took off his beret. Without it, he looked older, but he seemed to feel less constrained. "Compromise with evil is an awful thing, Inspector."
"Do you know, M. Beret"-I hesitated because I knew that wasn't his name and it seemed wrong to call him that at this moment-"but surely you must, that the starkest moral positions are the easiest to state? Truth to be palatable cannot sit in a complex sentence. Truth must be simple, don't you agree? It must be something that does not need to be chewed. It should simply slip down the throat. 'Do not compromise with evil.' Simple, easy to remember, even easier to say. Tell me, is there a tattoo parlor nearby? It wouldn't be too painful, would it? We could put it on your wrist, perhaps."
"My wrist?"
"Oh, I've read my history, M. Beret." I didn't give a damn what his name was anymore. Sohn was in their morgue, and they were using that as their opening to get to me. They'd have spent the past week arguing how to do it, watching for an opportunity, comparing notes on where I went, what I ate, whether I looked at the sky in the morning, trying to figure out who I was. Go slow and sideways, that's what they'd concluded. Work his mind, find the intellectual buttons. He doesn't like Portuguese boys, so that's out. What's left? Maybe talk to him about morality and evil, that sort of thing. Nothing too direct, just enough to provoke him. Make him mad, confuse him, throw a little dust on his internal compass. What kind of idiot did they take me for? "I'm quite clear on the subject, as I'm sure your countrymen have always been. Compromise with evil, or just keep it over the border. Very tidy, except for the people you turn away."
He put the beret back on his head. "Sohn had eyes for Ahmet's daughter. More than eyes, actually."
They really did want to provoke me. I buttoned everything down, went right down the checklist of emotions and buttoned each one down. "I can imagine a long line of men with eyes for Ahmet's daughter, M. Beret. A few might even be Swiss, am I right?"
"She can charm the pants off of anyone she chooses. I would be very careful, were I you." No, being careful with Dilara was out of the question. But it didn't matter.
"Were you me, M. Beret, you would have a headache from the wine. You're right. It's too young."
He put his hands together and sighed deeply. "I need your help, Inspector, if that isn't too blunt. The police have warned me that they are not going to investigate the case until they have assurances that they will receive full cooperation from your mission. Although technically your mission falls under the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, your ambassador doesn't seem to bother much with diplomacy and so the entire matter has, as the Americans like to say, fallen into my lap. I want to get rid of it, and for that, I need your help."
Helping the chief of Swiss counterintelligence was not wise, nor was it healthy. Swallowing razor blades was higher on the list of things I would consider. Still, the man seemed to know something about Sohn and his dealings with Jeno; he seemed to be working against whatever my brother was doing, and so far he had not done anything to me other than get under my skin, which was his job.