‘What kind of action?’
Bocca pushed his chair back from the table and crossed one leg over the other. He was unrecognizable as the dour man who had sat looking so glumly at the table. He was relaxed, animated. Guy noticed he was wearing pink and blue argyle socks. ‘A sweep,’ he said, reinforcing the image with his hands. ‘A coordinated sweep, aimed at taking 5,000 sans papiers off the streets by tomorrow morning. Identify them, process them, and return as high a percentage as possible to their countries of origin within seventy-two hours. All based on common information handling, and taking place under the flag of PEBA. What do you think of that?’
‘Wow,’ said Guy. It seemed to be the right response.
‘It is an emotional moment for Gianni, as you see,’ said Becker. ‘And for me too. We’ve tried so hard to make PEBA a reality. And now it is real, a working institution. Not paper any more.’
‘We should make a toast,’ suggested Yves. He and Becker and Guy and Bocca raised their glasses, and it seemed to Guy that there was a moment of perfect communication between them under the glass dome of the Séraphim, an instant when all channels were miraculously clear.
The main course came, food arranged like cuneiform characters on oversized white plates. Guy found he had ordered more fish. Bocca started to dismember some kind of small bird, a quail perhaps, teasing out tiny gobbets of flesh with the tines of his fork and inserting them one by one into his mouth. His eating had something remorseless about it, something mechanical. Guy had to look away He spent a period pushing fish and leaves through a squiggle of yellow sauce, then waved the empty wine bottle at a waiter, who floated over and replaced it with a full one. Monika and Yves had moved on to the subject of America.
‘We need to take a lesson from them,’ she was saying. ‘They sell themselves so well through their media. Everything American is the biggest and the best. They tell us this and we believe it, even when it is rubbish, like the cars.’
‘Or the food,’ added Bocca, crunching a fragile bone between his teeth.
Yves nodded agreement. ‘Even the bad things in America are always the worst. Their cities are the biggest, the most polluted, the most dangerous. You tell them how Paris is, they don’t believe you. They can’t hear it, you know? It is like a religious faith.’
‘Or Rome,’ said Bocca.
‘Or the coffee,’ said Guy, who had only been half listening.
‘But this is the economic power of Hollywood! It is imperative we compete! Europe needs its own factory for dreaming! Not for vanity. For economic reasons. I have said this to Commissioner Papadopoulos many times. We must have a programme to fund the promotion of positive images of Europe through all media. The cinema, television, bandes dessinées, everything. At the moment it is like the Cold War and we are not even fighting.’
‘But,’ said Bocca, ‘there is already good work in these areas.’
‘Certainly, but please, Gianni, I don’t think classical music and television dramas about the Romans are enough. The promotion of heritage is one thing. We have won this argument. We are the oldest, no contest. It is the youth we must persuade. Hip-hop gangster rappers must drive European cars. They must fire European guns!’
‘They do, sometimes,’ pointed out Guy.
‘This is Guy’s area of competence,’ Yves reminded her.
‘Of course,’ she beamed. ‘And I’m sure you would have many ideas for this. I recently circulated a document urging the creation and promotion of a Community hero. They have Captain America and Colonel Sanders and so on. What have we? But really, I am going off the point. Culture is of course not my directorate. This is more a hobby. What we came to hear are your ideas for PEBA and instead I am talking so much about these other things. I am very excited by what Yves has told me so far, but it is not so much. I was thinking, can you give us a taste?’
‘I’d be delighted,’ said Guy, sitting up in his chair. It was the moment he had hoped for. His heart had slowed down to a sustainable level. He was prepared. Under the table was his laptop case, and a folder of samples and hand-outs. Yves looked on encouragingly.
‘I think the two things are linked,’ he started. ‘The idea of promoting Europe, making it seem like a hip place, was a central focus of our thinking at the agency.’ He handed out four outline maps of Europe. Across the top was written Tomorrow*’s continent as well as yesterday’s. ‘And of course people’s first contact with Europe is usually through its border police.’
‘Exactly!’ Bocca slammed his hand down on the table, making the glassware jingle like a peal of little bells. One or two people looked up from nearby conversations.
‘Gianni,’ admonished Monika. ‘Please, Guy, continue.’
‘Well, we have to promote Europe as somewhere you want to go, but somewhere that’s not for everyone. A continent that wants people, but only the best. An exclusive continent. An upscale continent. And our big idea is to use the metaphorics of leisure to underscore that message. Here’s what I mean.’
He reached into his folder and brought out some keycard blanks. Each had EU blue and gold on one side and the words Platinum Member embossed on the other. Becker and Bocca turned them over in their hands.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Guy announced, with a verbal flourish he had been practising on the plane, ‘welcome to Club Europa — the world’s VIP room.’
Director Becker was visibly charmed.
‘Of course you’re familiar with club culture, so you know that being on the right side of the velvet rope makes all the difference to young opinion formers both within the EU and outside. It’s a concept they’re familiar with. It’s one they respect, and we feel it speaks both to the citizen and to the prospective European. It’s a question of conveying the message that you should only try to get past our doormen if you’re wearing the right kind of clothes, so to speak. We’ve made a short film to support our pitch.’
‘Guy,’ said Yves, ‘why don’t you show them?’
‘Now? You want to watch it now? I have it on my hard drive.’
‘That would be fabulous,’ said Becker. Bocca nodded and made a carry-on gesture.
Guy took his laptop out of its case and laid it on the tablecloth, carefully clearing crumbs and glasses out of the way to make a space. He switched it on, and while they waited for it to start up he passed round his team’s sketches for PEBA insignia and uniforms. The border authority’s acronym was shown as a blue neon sign, as a pattern of sparkling bulbs, and printed in a variety of seventies disco lettering styles. Shaven-headed male and female immigration officers were depicted wearing headsets and mirror shades, their futuristic black bomber jackets embroidered on the back with a PEBA portcullis logo.
‘Very striking,’ said Becker. Bocca pointed out that perhaps black shirts were a controversial look.
‘We’re not wedded to black,’ Guy reassured him. ‘Blue and gold is another obvious possibility.’
By this time the laptop had started up. It sat on the tablecloth, humming and displaying a whirling Windows screensaver.
‘OΚ,’ said Guy. ‘I’ll just find the file. We call the film Europe: No Jeans, No Trainers.’ He clicked on the icon. Nothing happened. He clicked again and the screen went blank. Instead of the ‘DV odyssey through European clubland’ put together by his creative team after a punishing transcontinental bender, there was the stuttering sound of a troubled hard drive, a tinny blast of Indian music and a depressingly familiar little dancing figure.
‘Shit,’ said Guy. ‘Please, not now. Oh shit.’