I drove along the road to Annecy for a mile and then turned left-handed up to the Annecy golf course. I parked with three or four other cars outside the little club house and went in and had lunch. Halfway through, my camera man took a table well away from me and ordered beer and a sandwich. There were only a few other people eating and they had all been there before I arrived. That meant that number two was outside somewhere by now. I took my time. Julia had a longish drive ahead of her, even in the Facel Vega, and various things to do before we met.
Finally I went downstairs, paid a green fee and hired a small bag of clubs from the professional. I was wearing a pullover and thick brown shoes so I had no changing to do, but I went into the dressing room to see a man about a poodle. There was the usual notice over the place asking you not to throw cigarette ends into it. Some wag had added underneath: Cela les rend si vachement difficile a fumer apres.
I was more interested in a camera that was hanging from one of the coat-hooks in the changing room. I didn't examine it, but I made a note of the brown suit jacket which was also on the hook.
When I went outside there was a man tapping balls about on the putting green. He was wearing brown trousers that matched the jacket inside. His shoes were suede moccasins. Never mind, like good policemen, they were doing their best.
They couldn't have anticipated golf. He was a big man, with the height, bulk and look of a de Gaulle but with a nervous, hesitant smile on his face when I nodded to him that would never have done for a man of destiny. He didn't look as though he could say 'Non' to anyone. But appearances are deceptive — or Aristide wouldn't have chosen him. He was going to stick to me. Just for a moment I was tempted to ask him to join me, set the stakes high and hope that I'd got a pigeon. Then I thought of Julia and gave up the pleasure.
I was lucky that I was operating on familiar ground. I'd once spent a memorable month in these parts and played the course a few times. I climbed the flagpole-decorated mound to the first tee and saw that my tail was wandering across to play round after me.
I didn't hurry. I couldn't have done because it was one of those days when I was right off my game. If I'd been playing the whole course — which I wasn't going to do — something in my bones told me that I would never break a hundred. I lost a ball on the first hole, in the long grass of the right-hand slope down to the green. I sliced one out of bounds on the second, over a stone wall and trees into a bungalow garden. On the third, which was a short hole of about two hundred yards, and the farthest outward point on this section of the course, I hit a lucky screamer to within three yards of the green. I wasn't too happy about that because this was the point I had picked for operations. I didn't want par golf, I wanted manly work in the rough, so I took a seven iron and chipped the ball boldly across the green into the bushes ten yards behind it. Then I started to look for it, and couldn't find it naturally. Behind me my tail hit a bad shot halfway down the fairway, and then a few more bad ones, working to the green and giving me time to find my ball and play out.
I stepped back from the bushes and politely waved him through. He had to come. It was a nice spot, low down and far out and not so easy to see from the clubhouse.
My tail holed out on the green, and then, with the camaraderie of an afternoon potterer, strolled across to me to help look for my ball. He came up with that nervous smile that meant nothing except that he wasn't going to lose sight of me, and I hit him, hard, with the side of my hand across his windpipe and again across the side of the neck as he choked and fell back. He went down with a rattle of irons from his bag and stayed down.
I ducked through the bushes and ran. Three hundred yards away, over a field and some small farm plots, was the road to Annecy.
The timing was beautiful. As I hit the road, a horn honked behind me and the Facel Vega came screaming down from the direction of Talloires.
A couple of miles farther on, through Menthon on the road to Annecy, Julia swung hard right up the hill.
I said, 'Where are we going?'
She was driving fast, concentrating, and said without turning, 'I've got a ski-lodge near Megeve. There won't be anyone there.'
'You collected all the things I wanted?'
She nodded.
I'd asked her to hire a projector and a tape recorder as she came through Annecy on her way down. She'd then gone to Talloires and picked up my bag from the hotel and the parcel from the safe at the Auberge du Pere Bise.
When we hit Megeve, some hours later, she stopped in the main street, near the Casino.
She said, 'There's no food in the place. You get coffee and bread. I'll do the rest.'
She was being very brisk and efficient, playing the role of assistant conspirator and enjoying it.
The shopping done, we went out of the town, along the road to Mont Arbois, past the golf course and then a mile further on she swung into a small open drive. Isolated in the middle of a small alp was a neat two-storey chalet, great stones wired to the roof, the facade polished boards, and the pink-and-grey shutters at all the windows cut with little heart-shaped openings. She parked the car round the back on bare gravel and we carried all our stuff in. There was a large main room with a tiled stove in the centre, comfortable chairs and a couple of settees, and an open stairway running up to the top floor. In a way it was not unlike Ansermoz's place.
When all our stuff was dumped in the middle of the floor, I said, 'I want a room to myself for half an hour. Okay?'
'You can take the big spare bedroom.'
I looked at her. She was worth looking at. She wore tight tartan trousers — I wouldn't know what clan, but there was a lot of red and yellow in them — a black sweater and a loose leather coat. On her head was a peaked black cap, shaped like an engine driver's. I could imagine the original photograph of it in Vogue.
She looked good; just the sight of her did things for me — but there was no getting away from the fact that our wavelengths were different. However, I had an idea now of the station she was more or less permanently tuned in to. As though to confirm it, she said, 'What about Otto Libsch?'
I said, 'We'll come to him in good time.'
I lugged the projector, tape recorder and the parcel up to the spare room. I took a sheet off the big bed, hung it across the shuttered window and set up the projector. Then I locked the door and ran the two reels.
They were more or less what I had expected; dramatis personae — Panda Bubakar and, a safe bet for the other two, General Seyfu Gonwalla and Mrs Falia Makse. It had all been shot from a hidden camera somewhere high up in the room. Either Durnford or Tich Kermode, I thought, could have been responsible for that. More probably Tich. As a display of acrobatics it had its limitations; as a fillip for a tired businessman it was just run-of-the-mill stuff, but for private showing to Gonwalla's cabinet it would have been a bomb, particularly under the seat of the Minister for Agriculture. The public image set up for Gonwalla in his country was that of the stern father-figure, determined to stamp out corruption, immorality, and all social and economic evils. Given selective showing in the General's home country, I could see that the film would lead to a speedy change of government. Which, of course, was what O'Dowda was after.
The tape recorded a conversation between the General and Mr Alexi Kukarin. They were very friendly, referring to each other as General and Alexi, and it was all in English. And it had all been taped, I was sure, without their knowledge, otherwise the General would not have offered some of the comments he had about his government colleagues, and Alexi would not have made one or two beefs about his which would have made him very unpopular at home. The meat of the conversation, however, was that Alexi's people would be happy to supply aircraft, arms and equipment against a guaranteed percentage — a large one, and at a cheap rate — of certain minerals, ores and chemical products, simple innocuous things like cobalt, aluminium ore and uranium, which were to be produced eventually by a state-owned monopoly of mineral and mining resources now in process of being established. In addition, Alexi was insistent that no compensation should be paid to existing European concerns already operating in the country. Straight appropriation was the ticket. The General stuck at this one a bit, but Alexi insisted — pointing out that the country had suffered decades of colonial exploitation, and there was no need to be soft-hearted. The General in the end agreed.