‘Is Felicite going to be there?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘No. We’re going to settle things. Remove the problem,’ promised Smet.
‘That’s good,’ agreed Dehane.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There are in Paris a very small number of restaurants, three the most notable, renowned as much for their discretion as for their highest Guide Michelin awards. That on the rue du Miel, the first of the notable three, was a place of dark wood, small-paned windows, subdued lighting and conveniently anonymous rooms. The most conveniently anonymous of all were two on the very top floor. The epitome of belle epoque – as indeed the restaurant was – such salons particuliers were originally conceived as private rooms where the rich and famous could dine their mistresses in intimate mirrored luxury before moving to the only other furnishing, an opulent chaise-longue. Favours were expected to be returned for favours received. It was the practice for the courtesans to test the genuineness of their gifted diamond by inscribing their intitials round the mirrors’ edges: those inscriptions – anonymous, of course – are now officially decreed to be national monuments.
The salon particulier that Sanglier entered, five minutes late, was, like all the others, a place where favours were still expected to be exchanged, although no longer cut into the ancient, still reflecting glass which his hosts were studying when he arrived. There were three of them. Guy Coty, the chairman of the party, was the oldest although he did not look eighty-five. He was a small, tightly plump, totally bald man who had spent his life as a pilot fish for sharks in murky French political waters. The diminutive but exalted ribbon of the Legion d’honneur was in the left lapel of his immaculate dove-grey suit. Roger Castille was half the other man’s age, with the dark-haired, ivory-teethed, open-faced looks of a matinee idol disguising a ruthlessness inherited, along with Ff50,000,000, from a financier father. The third man, Lucien Bigot, was one of the few survivors of Castille’s tread-on-anyone ascent to the party leadership. Bigot was a beetle-browed man who used his size to intimidate. His official position was party secretary: like Coty he preferred power-brokering in back rooms to his public parliamentary work. It was Bigot, already known to Sanglier from their six months of political flirtation, who performed the introductions.
There was pre-luncheon champagne but no pretence of toasts: as yet there was nothing to celebrate. As aware as he’d always been of the significance of the Legion d’honneur and the expectations of the recipients, Sanglier accorded Coty the necessary respect, conscious of how it was being properly shown by Castille and Bigot. And it wasn’t stopping there, Sanglier realized. To a far lesser but still discernible degree the two politicians were acknowledging himself as the son of a man who had also gained France’s highest honour.
‘I knew your father,’ said Coty, in a voice clouded by too many cigarettes. ‘Not during the war, of course: I was in London, with de Gaulle, after I escaped the Gestapo. But afterwards, when the sanglier ’s bravery became known. De Gaulle invited him to come into government but he declined.’
It seemed odd, hearing the name like that, properly used as the code designation by which his father had worked before officially adopting it as the family’s legal surname after the war, like several other Resistance heroes. Coty was almost an exception for not having done so. It was the first time Sanglier had heard of the political invitation: another aspect of his father’s life that had been secret. He said: ‘He was a very modest man.’
‘And now you’ve got the opportunity to take up the offer he refused,’ said Castille, seizing the way to move on from reminiscence without offending the elder statesman.
Could he take the risk? Sanglier asked himself for the thousandth time. He didn’t know that his father’s exploits, re-routing Nazi labour-camp trains and execution orders, weren’t totally true: there were, in fact, provable Gestapo records of the failed hunt for the mysterious sanglier. But there were so many gaps, verging on inconsistencies, in those and other records, omissions blamed on Claudine Carter’s father who, as Interpol’s chief archivist, had by almost unbelievable coincidence prepared Sanglier’s wartime history for France’s archive of heroes.
His emergence into political life would inevitably re-focus attention upon his father’s history: maybe, even, rekindle interest in a new biography by a new, more determined literary investigator than the authors of those that already existed, and who had unquestioningly accepted his uncooperative father’s explanation that apparent discrepancies were unavoidable in the chaos of the war’s end.
Cautiously, determined upon assurances that went far beyond his fear of the past, Sanglier said, with false diffidence: ‘I’m very flattered to have received this approach, and I have had several months to consider it. But there are important matters for us to discuss before I can give you my reply.’
‘Food first,’ growled the husky-voiced Coty, pressing the waiter’s bell just inside the door of the private room. He was smoking through a small malacca holder.
The others had already studied the menu, before occupying themselves with the initials of long-ago whores. Sanglier refused to hurry, keeping the attendant waiting while he carefully considered his meal. By the time his choice was made Castille was scuffing his chair impatiently.
As soon as the waiter left the room Castille said: ‘There’s no doubt the present government will fall within six months. No doubt, either, that we’ll succeed them. And we’ll remain in power for a very long time, after the scandals and failed policies of the last ten years-’
‘But with a difference this time,’ Coty broke in. ‘Virtually every minor party making up the current coalition is associated with the disgrace and failures, either part of them or by association. We’re not. We’re clean: above it all. That’s going to be our manifesto: how we’re going to be seen by the electorate. It’s going to give us an overwhelming, unassailable majority so that there’ll be no need to rely on any of the smaller groupings.’
‘We’re going to be the clean party for a new Republic,’ announced Castille, almost too obviously practising an election slogan.
This encounter was just as well rehearsed, decided Sanglier. ‘I have been extremely fortunate in my profession,’ he ventured, ‘but until your approach I’d never considered a political career.’
‘Consider it now!’ urged Bigot. ‘We’ll guarantee you an electable constituency.’
‘And I can also guarantee that I will never forget those who declare for me at this stage,’ said Castille.
He needed an admission without portraying himself as naive, Sanglier knew. ‘If I were to pursue this there would have to be complete truthfulness between us.’
‘We wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t expect you to take everything that’s said with total seriousness,’ said Castille. ‘And never for a moment will I be anything but completely truthfuclass="underline" I intend to practise among colleagues the central core of my manifesto.’
He had learned at the EU meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg and Strasbourg! ‘Colleagues?’ Sanglier demanded, shortly. ‘More than simply members of the party in the Assembly?’
The arrival of the food covered what Sanglier guessed would have been a hesitation among the other men. His oysters were superb, the bone-dry Muscadet the perfect complement. Coty reluctantly extinguished his cigarette.
‘I’ve already made it clear we do not see you simply as a parliamentary member,’ said Bigot, with a hint of impatience.
Sanglier applied lemon in preference to onioned vinegar. It was the moment to wait, saying nothing.
Coty said: ‘You went to Brussels after an extraordinarily successful period as police commissioner here, in Paris. And continued that success there.’
Time for absolute directness, judged Sanglier. ‘What role would you see me fulfilling if I were to become part of your administration?’