‘No, I won’t have anything. Very nice of you though.’
‘So, what’s this favour?’ She sat down opposite him.
‘Well, it’s this: the flat I’m renting doesn’t have a cellar. The agents told me you might perhaps rent me yours.’
‘That’s not possible. I’ve already let it to people in the building, the Bernachons, I can’t go down there any more myself, you understand, so it’s of no use to me.’
‘Well, in that case, please excuse me for disturbing you.’ He stood up.
‘Is that all you’d like to know, monsieur le policier?’ Thomas was taken aback. ‘You hadn’t noticed you’re built just like a cop? And, then, how d’you suppose the tenancy on the fourth floor would change without me knowing? Oh, don’t worry. I won’t say anything to the Bernachons, I don’t really like them. But now, you can’t refuse a coffee.’
Thomas took off his mack and sat down again.
‘Well, since you’re not all that fond of them, let’s have a chat.’
11.30 a.m. Rue de la Procession
The Immigration Office’s files were in perfect order. You could access them through the surname, nationality or date of arrival in France. Romero had no difficulty finding his four Turks. They’d been invited to come by the same employer, Monsieur Franco Moreira, of Morora Ltd, a rat extermination business in Nanterre. Quite a joker, this Moreira. And their files had been dealt with by the same civil servant at Immigration, Dominique Martens. It was just as easy to find all the files of Turks processed during the year and to discover that, out of a total of a hundred, twenty-two were dealt with through Martens, and of those twenty-two, all were working at Moreira’s in Nanterre. All he had to do now was carefully note all the names, and the address of the business.
Then he went to say hallo to the director. All along the corridor, he could hear a buzz of conversation, punctuated by the clink of coffee spoons against cups. The deafening sound of inactivity.
1 p.m. Place Gaillon
As soon as he entered Chez Pierre in place Gaillon, Daquin noticed Lenglet sitting at a table at the back, with a man. They were talking and drinking champagne. There was about them that certain undeniable, calm familiarity — of old lovers. He went over to them. The two men rose to their feet. Lenglet did the introductions.
‘May I introduce Superintendent Daquin. We did political science together. We shared everything in those three years, except our bed. Théo, Charles Lespinois, an old friend, an adviser to the France-Mediterranée Bank.’
Tall, thin, with a distinguished, refined air about him. An extreme reserve. A grey three-piece suit, grey like his hair and eyes: a man of steel. Daquin thought of Sol, warm, wild, alive. Lenglet and I have stayed friends because we never hunted the same patch, he thought. All three sat down. The sommelier filled Daquin’s glass with champagne.
‘I ordered for you, Théo.’
‘You’ve always liked doing that.’
‘That’s true. Now let’s get down to business. Charles is a great fan of Turkey. And, in fact, the greatest connoisseur of Turkish political life I know.’
‘What would you like to know, commissaire?’ The calm, steady voice of a man accustomed to the reality of power.
The maître d’hôtel brought in the entrées.
Daquin was tense and barely noticed what he was eating. These complex triangular relationships. Lespinois didn’t exactly give the impression of being a well-disposed helpmate. And Lenglet, who was the most intelligent man he knew, had multiple interests in the Near East. He turned to Lespinois.
‘Quite by chance, as the result of an inquiry in Paris, I’ve fallen on a whole bunch of extreme right-wing Turks, linked, it seems to me, to the Grey Wolves. I know nothing about Turkey. I’ve a hard job to place them. I’m looking for someone who can give me some pointers.’
‘Why don’t you go directly to the Quai?’
Lenglet butted in: ‘Because Théo’s like me: he knows the men at the Quai too well to confide in them. They’d only tell him what fits in with whatever their interests are at that particular moment.’
‘So will I. I shall tell you what my interests allow me to tell you, as you know very well.’
‘Well, naturally, but it’s so much easier to suss your interests than those of the Quai!’ And Lenglet turned to Daquin. ‘In the 1960s, France-Mediterranée made a mess-up in a big way in that part of the world, and Parillaud Bank ditched them. Nowadays, they have to rely on political upsets there in order to get another foothold. To Parillaud’s disadvantage, if need be.’
Lespinois was of the same mind. Daquin relaxed a little. He could see a few signposts now, more or less. Lespinois went into gear.
‘The Turkish extreme right is organized into a legitimate party, The Turkès Nationalist Party, with a duster of clandestine armed groups surrounding it, of which the Grey Wolves is the most important. It appears very powerful nowadays, since it’s succeeded in imposing a situation of civil war, with twenty shot and killed every day. And it’s infiltrated great sections of the State hierarchy.’
‘I’ve already seen that for myself — in the police force.’
‘But it’s already beaten, because it doesn’t have any coherence. It’s an amalgam of the Nationalist civilian extreme right, more or less influenced by the Nazis and by anti-Kemalist Islamic movements. So it offers a superb field of manoeuver to every political force that counts, on the one hand, and the Turkish mafia on the other. Which one do you want me to start with?’
‘The political forces. In any case, we’ll come across the mafia along the way, I should imagine.’
‘A fraction of the army encourages extreme right-wing terrorism, because it’s using it to prepare the ground for its full return to power. The Russians play the extreme right as a destabilizing factor in a zone that’s under American influence. And the Americans …’ He made a gesture of disillusionment with his two slender hands.
Daquin recalled his year working with the FBI.
‘As usual? Everything and its opposite?’
‘The CIA’s a real can of worms there.’ He sighed. ‘One part tends towards the so-called democratic parties who’re all rotten to the core. And another part plots against them with the generals. And then some, more isolated, are acting off their own bat in some way, and infiltrate the terrorist extreme right. When you’ve the power the US has, there’s no need to be intelligent, or coherent. You always end up on the winning side anyway.’
‘Can you tell me about the ones in the CIA who’re acting independently?’
The maître d’hôtel brought the main course and refilled the glasses. Lespinois, completely absorbed in his thoughts, ate in silence and drank a glass. Then he took up where he had left off, as though he hadn’t heard the question.
‘Lenglet’s told me a bit about you, commissaire. It seems you enjoy cooking and eating well. The best food in Istanbul — and traditional Turkish cooking is very refined — you’ll find at an American’s called John Erwin, who has a very beautiful timber-built house by the Bosphorus. He entertains Istanbul society there once a month. He’s in his early sixties now. In 1943, he was twenty, was Turkish and called Mehmet Ervin. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, he enlisted in the Turkestan Legion and fought with the Nazis against Communism, for which he had a deep-seated and completely irrational hatred. An insane hatred. He just managed to escape the Soviets, fled to the States, became an American citizen in the middle of the cold war and returned to Turkey in the 1950s under the name of John Erwin. Officially, he deals in hides and leather. But his main job is as a CIA agent, and he’s carrying on that same fight of 1943-5, by other means. Obviously, he’s on friendly terms with everyone in the Turkish anti-Communist extreme right, But his world view is an original one. He doesn’t believe in direct military confrontation between the US and Soviets. He dreams that the Soviets will disintegrate from within, a sort of implosion that would spread from the south northwards, a gangrene that would begin in the Central Asian republics. And this gangrene is called Islam. So this man, who’s a complete atheist, supports every Islamic movement going.’