An old, thin, very tall man with a long salt-and-pepper beard went up to the prince, who stepped aside to speak to him in private. Having lost its centre, the group instantly broke up. Wandering aimlessly through the hall with one of the other Frenchmen, Lacoue saw me and walked up with a small nod hello. He seemed out of his element, and he made his introductions so quietly that I didn’t even catch the name of his companion, whose hair was slicked back, each strand carefully arranged. He wore a magnificent three-piece suit of midnight-blue fabric with nearly invisible white stripes. It had a light sheen and looked immensely soft. I thought it had to be silk and almost reached out to touch it, but I caught myself in time.
The prince, Lacoue explained, was horribly put out because the minister of education hadn’t come to the reception despite having formally promised to do so. Not only that — there wasn’t a single representative from the ministry, not one, ‘not even the secretary of universities’. He was beside himself.
‘I already told you, there is no more secretary of universities,’ his companion growled. According to him, the situation was even worse than Lacoue thought: the minister had definitely meant to come, he’d confirmed just the day before, but Ben Abbes himself had intervened for the express purpose of humiliating the Saudis. This was in line with other recent measures, of much broader importance, such as relaunching the nuclear energy programme and funding research into electric cars. The government was racing towards total independence from Saudi oil. Obviously, none of this had anything to do with the Islamic University of Paris-Sorbonne, but I supposed it was the university president who’d have to deal with the fallout. Just then Lacoue turned towards a middle-aged man, a new arrival, who was striding in our direction. ‘Here’s Robert!’ he cried, hugely relieved, as if he were greeting the Messiah.
Before he brought Rediger up to date, Lacoue introduced me, this time audibly. Rediger clasped my hand energetically, nearly crushing it between his powerful palms, all the while saying how happy he was to meet me and how long he’d looked forward to the pleasure. Physically, he was a fairly remarkable specimen, quite tall and solidly built. In fact, with his broad chest and his muscles, he looked more like a rugby tackle than a professor. His face was tanned and deeply lined, and although his hair was completely white, it was very thick. He had a crew cut, and he was dressed, rather unexpectedly, in jeans and a black leather aviator jacket.
Lacoue quickly filled him in. Rediger nodded, and muttered that he’d had a feeling something like this might happen. Then he thought a moment. ‘I’ll call Delhommais,’ he said. ‘Delhommais will know what to do.’ He took out a small, almost feminine mobile phone — it looked tiny in his hand — and stepped a few metres away to make his call. Lacoue and his companion watched without daring to go near him, both rigid with suspense. They were starting to bore me, these two, with their little dramas. What’s more, they struck me as complete idiots. Obviously these petro-dollars required a certain amount of care and feeding, as it were, but in the end all they had to do was take some flunkey and introduce him, not as the minister they’d seen on TV, but as his chief of staff. The joker in the three-piece suit would have made a perfect chief of staff (just to start with who was on hand) and the Saudis would have been none the wiser. Really, they were making everything more complicated than it needed to be. But that was their problem. I helped myself to another glass of wine and went out onto the terrace. The view of Notre-Dame truly was magnificent. It was warmer out than before, and the rain had stopped. The moonlight flickered on the ripples of the Seine.
I must have spent a long time in this reverie, and when I went back inside the guests, still all men, of course, had thinned out. I didn’t see Lacoue or the three-piece suit. At least the evening hadn’t been a complete waste, I told myself, as I took a menu from the caterer. The mezes really had been good, plus they delivered — it would be a change from Indian. While I was waiting for my coat, Rediger walked up. ‘You’re not leaving?’ he asked, with a crestfallen spreading of the arms. I asked whether he’d managed to resolve the breach of protocol. ‘Yes, it’s all sorted out. The minister won’t come tonight, but he called the prince personally and invited him to breakfast tomorrow at the ministry. Schramek was right, I’m afraid: Ben Abbes is actively trying to humiliate them, now that he’s reconnecting with his old friends the Qataris. We’ll have plenty more trouble where that came from. But what can you do …’ He waved the subject away, then he laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m awfully sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk. You should come over sometime for tea, so that we can have a real conversation …’ And all at once he smiled. He had a lovely smile, very open, almost childlike, and extremely disarming in such a masculine man. I think he knew it, and knew how to use it. He gave me his card. ‘Next Wednesday, shall we say, five-ish? If you’re free.’ I said I was.
~ ~ ~
In the metro I examined the business card that my new acquaintance had given me. It was elegant and tasteful, at least I thought so. Rediger provided his personal phone number, two office numbers, two fax numbers (one personal, one office), three email addresses, ill-defined, two mobile numbers (one French, the other British) and a Skype handle. This was a man who let you know how to get in touch. Clearly, since my meeting with Lacoue, I’d made my way into the inner circle. It was almost unnerving.
He gave a street address, too: 5 rue des Arènes, and for now that was all I needed to know. I remembered the rue des Arènes. It was a charming little street off the Square des Arènes de Lutèce, in one of the most charming parts of Paris. There were butcher shops, cheese shops recommended by Petitrenaud and Pudlowski — as for Italian speciality shops, forget it. This was all reassuring in the extreme.
At the Place Monge metro station, I made the mistake of going out the Arènes de Lutèce exit. Geographically, I wasn’t wrong — the exit led straight to the rue des Arènes — but I’d forgotten that there wasn’t an escalator, and that the Place Monge metro station was fifty metres below street level. I was completely exhausted and out of breath by the time I emerged from that curious metro exit, a hollow carved out of the walls of the park, its thick columns, cubist typography and generally neo-Babylonian appearance all completely out of place in Paris — as they would have been pretty much anywhere else in Europe.
When I reached 5 rue des Arènes, I realised that Rediger didn’t just live in a charming street in the Fifth Arrondissement, he lived in his own maison particulière in a charming street in the Fifth Arrondissement, and that this maison particulière was historic to boot. Number 5 was none other than that fantastical neo-Gothic construction (flanked by a square turret like a castle keep) where Jean Paulhan lived from 1940 until his death in 1968. Personally I could never stand Jean Paulhan, I didn’t like him as an éminence grise and I didn’t like his books, but there was no denying that he’d been one of the most powerful figures in French publishing after the war. And he’d certainly lived in a very beautiful house. My admiration for the Saudis’ funding only grew.
I rang the bell and was greeted by a butler whose cream-coloured suit and Nehru collar were somewhat reminiscent of the former dictator Gaddafi. I told him my name, he bowed slightly: I was expected. He left me to wait in a little entrance hall, illuminated by stained-glass windows, while he went to tell Professor Rediger that I’d arrived.