Colonel Argaud was not to know it, but Brouzet’s photographs were beginning to lose their power. There were only a limited number of shots available on such an occasion, and most of them had been pressed into service.
‘Photograph number eleven,’ Brouzet began, but photograph number eleven never saw the light of day that afternoon. Colonel Argaud cracked.
‘All right, Brouzet, all right. I give in. You really would carry out that awful ritual against my family, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Brouzet lied. ‘We are all in the service of France.’
‘If I tell you exactly what you want to know, will you promise never to interfere with my family in any way?’
Brouzet looked him coolly in the eye. ‘I will.’
There was a pause while the two Colonels looked at each other, the girl in Fragonard’s swing rising gracefully to the top of her arc on the wall behind Brouzet.
‘These questions can be very painful,’ said Brouzet finally. ‘I apologize for that to a man of your military distinction.’
‘There won’t be much of that left after this afternoon,’ Argaud said sadly. ‘But carry on. You must do your duty.’
‘Were you passing information about French military tactics to another power?’
‘I was.’
‘I am compelled to ask to whom you were sending this information, mon Colonel? To the Germans?’
Argaud was scornful. ‘To the Germans? Me, an officer in the French Army? After Sedan? After their ludicrous Emperor had himself crowned in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles? After Alsace-Lorraine? I thought you would have thought better of me than to ask that question.’
‘Not to the English, surely? They probably know it already after all these joint exercises.’
‘Not to the English, no.’
‘The Russians? Surely not.’
‘Surely so, Colonel Brouzet. They are not fools, these Russians. They know the problem facing Germany of fighting on two fronts. And it takes ages for the Russians to mobilize their forces across the vast space of the Russian interior with their ignorant peasants and their inefficient railroads. The Russian generals want to know how long they have got before the full might of the German Army comes to fight them. If the French hold out and win, as our generals are always telling the Russians they will every time they meet, then they may never face the full might of the German military machine at all. But if the French look like losing, it is a different matter. That is what I told the Russians, that the French would not win an immediate victory in the West.’
‘The Russians are not stupid,’ said Brouzet. ‘This knowledge could impact on their military planning.’
‘Such as it is,’ said Colonel Argaud. ‘One general told me the entire country would be paralysed by the effort of getting the troops to the front, wherever that might be.’
‘I see. And how was your information sent on to St Petersburg, might I ask?’
‘You will laugh when I tell you.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was sent to St Petersburg through the Ballets Russes.’
‘The Ballets Russes! When they were here in Paris?’ Brouzet could see it all, the limitless possibilities of sending messages as they travelled from the Russian capital to Monte Carlo, to Paris, to London, now perhaps on to some cultural city in Germany. They travelled through and across the possible combatants in any future European war with their vast entourage and mountains of paraphernalia. This knowledge could occupy weeks and weeks of time for the customs men of Europe. There was somebody he knew in England to whom this information would be pure gold. He would send it on at once.
‘That’s a very imaginative choice, those ballet people; you could send anything down that route and not get caught.’
‘Tell me, Monsieur Brouzet, what is to happen to me?’
‘Well, I shall have to write a report, Colonel Argaud. Whether I ever send it anywhere is another matter. It seems to me, you see, that your sending this information to the Russians might work in France’s favour. If they think the French are going to collapse early in the war, they will have to be ready sooner than they might have planned, and that could only work in France’s favour if the Germans have to move divisions from the west to the east, if you follow me. I shall let you know what I decide. If I were you, mon Colonel, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it, but I wouldn’t do it again.’
‘Thank you.’
As the elegant Colonel made his way downstairs, Olivier Brouzet put away his photographs. It was the fourth time he’d used them and they hadn’t failed him yet. Not bad for an afternoon’s work with some actors, a director, an experienced photographer and some props from the Comedie Française at his mother’s house in the country.
16
Literally ‘tail’. As in music, a coda is a passage which brings a movement or a separate piece to a conclusion.
In ballet, the coda is usually the ‘Finale’, a set of dances known as the Grand Pas or Grand Pas d’action and brings almost all the dancers onto the stage. A particularly large or complex coda may be called a Grand coda. If a large group of dancers are concerned, the terms Coda générale or Grand coda générale may be used.
In ballet there are many famous codas, such as the one found in Le Corsaire Pas de Deux. The so-called Black Swan Pas de deux from the ballet Swan Lake features the famous coda where the ballerina performs thirty-two fouettés en tournant.
Powerscourt thought there was something rather sad about watching the stages being dismantled shortly after seven thirty the next morning. Floorboards were being removed from the stages in the lake, the great staves that held them in position just visible beneath the water. He had already had a conversation with Inspector Jackson, who saw the logic, if not the practicability of his proposal.
‘Let’s try it by all means,’ he said. ‘Thank God it’s a Sunday and there are no performances of the Ballets Russes in London. I’ve got a couple more translators, students at the medical school, coming to help with the translation. But they say Diaghilev was refusing to talk to anybody at all last night. He stomped off and looked at the pictures and wouldn’t speak to a soul, even though the Duke’s guests had a couple of fluent French speakers among them.’
Michel Fokine was looking troubled when Powerscourt found him drinking coffee in the State Dining Room.
‘Of course I will take you to him. He is in a terrible mood. “The afternoon of my greatest triumph”, he keeps saying, “spoilt by some silly girl who decides to throw herself over the balcony.” For Diaghilev, my lord, art wins out over everything.’
They found him pacing up and down the Palladian bridge, as the planks and beams were being dismantled beneath him.
‘Good morning, Mr Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt. ‘May I offer my congratulations on your ballet yesterday afternoon. It was a triumph. It will live long in the memory of all who saw it.’
Diaghilev stamped his cane on the side of the bridge. ‘They will remember it for the dead girl, that Vera Belitsky, not for the poetry of the Ballets Russes.’
‘Mr Diaghilev,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think you are wrong about that. But I wish to speak to you about matters of today. The local Inspector here will not let your people go until they have been questioned by the police. It is just not possible. You wish to bring your company back to London for tomorrow’s performances in Covent Garden. As things stand, those interviews may still be going on when the curtain goes up. There will, inevitably, be one or two people to whom Inspector Jackson and his staff will wish to talk again. He is well aware of your problems, the Inspector. He has organized another couple of interpreters to come here with all speed from the Oxford Medical School. They are Russian born and one of them is also fluent in French from his time at the Sorbonne. If your people could be organized in groups of five or six, to be interviewed one at a time, of course, the process could be over by early afternoon, if not sooner.’