Anything Considered (24 page)

——

Bennett had suggested they catch a few hours’ sleep in Cavaillon before taking the long drive down the autoroute to Italy, but he had misjudged the eagerness of provincial hotel owners to provide hospitality to late arrivals. It was past midnight, and Cavaillon was not receiving visitors. After trying unsuccessfully to raise a sign of life from every hotel they could find, they resigned themselves to spending the night in the municipal parking lot.

Anna settled her head on Bennett’s shoulder. “You really know how to spoil a girl, don’t you?”

Bennett stroked her hair and smiled in the darkness. Tomorrow would be different.

——

Cavaillon is a
routier
town and a market town, and several of the cafés are open at dawn to provide an early jolt of caffeine for the truckers and a breakfast Calvados for
the all-night market workers. Anna and Bennett unfolded themselves from the car and eased the stiffness from their backs in the cool morning air. From the parking lot, they could see a café in the Cours Bournissac, almost opposite the
gendarmerie
, that was already crowded. Bennett found a table while Anna went to experiment with the sometimes complex arrangements of café plumbing.

A few more hours, Bennett thought, and they’d be home and dry. He wondered how long Poe’s men would lie in wait for an empty bag under a bush. They’d been lucky that Anna had found the homing device, luckier still that she knew what it was. Fate seemed to have changed sides.

At the next table, a crew-cut man with forearms like miniature thighs was turning to the sports section of that morning’s edition of
Le Provençal
. Bennett glanced casually at the front page that was held up four feet away, expecting to see the usual early-summer mixture of Tour de France news,
boules
championships, and local politics. Instead, he found himself transfixed, staring with horror at a photograph of his own face.

Anna’s was there, too, under a headline in large, screaming type: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS COUPLE?

Bennett jerked his eyes away, fighting the urge to run, forcing himself to stay calm, willing the man to fold the front page back. He put on his sunglasses and kept his head down. Where the hell was Anna?

She emerged from the back of the café, shaking her head as she sat down. “Boy, I thought the monastery bathroom
was medieval. You should see this place. Unbelievable.” She noticed Bennett’s strained, fixed expression. “What’s the matter?”

He leaned close, and whispered. “Keep your voice down. Put on your sunglasses. We’ve made the front page. Let’s go.”

They stood for a moment outside the café. Across the road, the morning shift was arriving at the
gendarmerie
. Keeping their heads averted, Bennett and Anna walked quickly back to the parking lot. He left her in the car, summoned up his nerve, and stepped briskly into a
bar-tabac
, feeling as though he were wearing a foot-high Wanted sign across his chest. The woman behind the bar, bleary-eyed and surly, took his money for the newspaper without looking up, shrugging as he left without his change.

They sat in the car and read the article. After the breathless excitement of the opening—foreign couple sought to assist in official inquiries concerning an important robbery, police mobilized
partout
—there was a paragraph of padding about the crime rate in Provence, and then a number to call. Anyone with information would be put straight through to Captain Bonfils in Cannes, who was in charge of the investigation. There were vague hints of an unspecified reward.

For once, the journalists had succeeded in getting the details correct. All the details: their names, ages, height, color of eyes and hair, the make and color of the car, the registration number.

“Jesus,” said Anna. “Where did they get all this stuff?”

“Our passports and my car papers. Tuzzi must have given them to the police.” Bennett stared out across the parking lot. Cavaillon was waking up. Outside the corner vegetable market, a woman in slippers and an apron arranged her produce in neat, multicolored pyramids, and wound down the awning to shade them from the sun. A traffic policeman yawned as he checked his first parking meter of the day. “Well,” said Bennett, “we can’t stay here. The autoroute’s five minutes away. Do you feel like risking it?”

“Do we have a choice?”

They drove out of Cavaillon, crossed the bridge over the Durance, and started the descent to the autoroute. Bennett could see trucks lining up to pass through the tollbooths and—just beyond them—a sight that made him brake violently and wrench the car onto the shoulder.

“Shit and disaster. Look at that.”

There were six tollbooths marking the entrance to the autoroute. Opposite each booth stood a
gendarme
, arms folded, facing the oncoming traffic. An orderly, sinister row of six of them, identical in their
képis
and sunglasses and short-sleeved blue shirts.

“They may not be looking for us,” said Bennett. “They do this a lot in the summer. But it’s too much of a coincidence. We can’t take the chance.”

Anna stayed silent as Bennett committed an illegal U-turn and drove back toward Cavaillon. Poe was looking for them. Tuzzi was looking for them. Now the police were looking for them. Dinner in bed at the Villa d’Este seemed a long way away.

MOREAU knocked the dottle carefully from the Cogolin briar that his daughter had given him on his last birthday, the pipe that would see him into retirement. Once again, as he tamped down a refill of fresh tobacco, he went over the notes that he had made during the briefing from Captain Bonfils (Polluce having been forthcoming after the captain described his predicament). Yes, he thought. It was possible. It was entirely possible. He remembered reading somewhere that the government had been trying for years to find exactly what Bonfils had described to him.

He lit his pipe and stared through the grimy window of his office into the bright sunlight that, according to the bureau of tourism, warmed the streets and beaches of Cannes for three hundred days a year. How he disliked the south—the violent colors, the preposterous vegetation, the lack of snow, the smiling, slippery,
swarthy
Mediterranean character. He was counting the months until he could retire to the house his mother had left him in the Charente, where both the climate and the inhabitants were altogether more temperate and reasonable. And to retire
with distinction, to retire after a successful
coup
—that would be a bonus.

He opened his address book, flicking through pages covered in his cramped, meticulous script until he found the number of his old friend Chevalier, another Charentais. Chevalier was a civil servant, a senior mandarin in the Ministry of Agriculture, a man whom Moreau knew to have high and serious connections.

After the customary regrets that they hadn’t seen each other for far too long, Moreau came to his reason for calling. “It appears,” he said, “that someone might have succeeded in producing a formula for truffle cultivation. I’m told that it has been thoroughly tested and that results have been achieved, very convincing results. Now,
mon vieux
, in your opinion—your expert opinion—is this likely?”

There was a moment of consideration before Chevalier’s measured, politician’s response. He always spoke with qualifications, as though what he said might be taken down and used in evidence. “
En principe
, there is no reason why such a discovery could not have been made, although I must tell you that we here in the ministry have sanctioned many experiments of a similar nature in the past.” He made a daring concession to candor. “All of them have been disappointing.” He paused for a moment, to recover from making such an uncharacteristic admission. “That, however, does not preclude the possibility that such a formula might be developed by, let us say, an unauthorized specialist, working independently of the government. And naturally, if that were the case, we
would be most interested.” Another pause, this time for emphasis. “Should it be genuine, this formula, it is crucial that it falls into the right hands.”

Moreau had no difficulty guessing what that meant. “Yours, for instance.”

There was a chuckle from Chevalier. “Indeed, my dear Moreau, indeed. If we were able to regulate the production of truffles, there would be considerable interest at the very highest level.” The final words were spoken in capital letters. “As you know, our president is from Corrèze—one might almost say a country lad, as long as one says it very quietly—and I think he would be more than happy to see the exploitation of one of France’s natural treasures come under official control. There would be feathers available for various caps, Moreau. Principally yours and mine. When could you let me have the formula?”

Moreau explained the circumstances, with Chevalier interrupting occasionally to ask for clarification, or more detail. Moreau could sense that the ministry man was becoming increasingly excited—as far as career politicians ever allow themselves to be—and their conversation ended with Chevalier’s promise to call back after dipping in a toe, as he said, to test the presidential waters.

To Moreau’s astonishment, this happened within an hour. The president was intrigued. No, more than intrigued; he was adamant that this agricultural secret weapon should not be allowed to escape the clutches of Mother France. Every effort was to be made, Chevalier
said, to find and apprehend the two fugitives and recover the formula. French gastronomy could be at stake here, and every conceivable resource—including, if necessary, the entire garrison stationed at the army base in Draguignan—was to be put at Moreau’s disposal.

Bonfils was summoned to Moreau’s office and given his instructions. More police must be brought in, priority directives and photographs distributed to all
gendarmeries
, additional checks on every major road, vigilance everywhere, and promotion for those making the arrest. As Bonfils got up to leave, Moreau, his pipe sending up a string of smoke signals, put through a call to Draguignan, and Bonfils heard him ask for the commanding officer.

Bonfils was a worried man. This was getting out of hand, and well beyond his control. He sat at his desk, shredding cigarettes, putting off the moment when he would have to report back to Polluce. The
army
, for Christ’s sake. All available police in the Midi. Helicopters, roadblocks, red alerts. There hadn’t been a manhunt like this on the coast since the legendary bank robber Spaggiari had jumped out of the judge’s office window onto a waiting motorcycle and escaped from Nice. They never did catch him, Bonfils thought, with a most unprofessional twinge of admiration, as he picked up the phone.

Polluce was far from sympathetic. His voice, never warm, today was arctic. “I am relying on you, Bonfils. My colleagues also. I must know everything that happens. As soon as you know it,
d’accord? As
soon as you know it.”

Merde
. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Whatever happened was certain to cause him grief, either with Polluce or with Moreau. He was in the chocolate up to his eyebrows. As he started to carry out his instructions, Bonfils couldn’t help but hope that the
putain
Englishman, his
putain
girlfriend, and the
putain
formula were all safely out of France.

——

The countryside around the hamlet of Buoux, to the north of Bonnieux, is remarkable for the beauty of its secret valleys and vast horizons, its solitude, and the uncounted dozens, possibly hundreds, of abandoned
cabanons
and
bories
—the small stone shelters that were used by goatherds and hill farmers before the arrival of mechanized agriculture. Many of them are now not much more than walls (a building with a roof being subject to tax), or beehive-shaped piles of stones, and it was midmorning by the time Anna and Bennett found what they had been looking for.

They had driven up an overgrown track that led to a clearing where, some centuries before, a low stone hangar had been constructed, extended, patched up, and eventually left to fend for itself against the elements. Half the roof had collapsed, and the walls were bandy with age, sections of them held together only by spiky coils of brambles. But there was space at one end to hide the car, there was shade from the sun, and they were a comfortable few miles away from the nearest
gendarme
.

Ever since seeing the roadblock on the autoroute outside Cavaillon, Bennett had been preoccupied, scraping his mind for ways of escape that didn’t depend on a car, or expose them to checks at airports or train stations. Earlier, he had joked about walking to Italy. Now it had to be considered as a possibility. What would it be like—skulking around villages, keeping off the main roads, ducking and diving, sleeping rough? It wouldn’t be easy walking, either. They’d be doing well if they covered twenty miles a day. God, it would take them weeks. He was staring at the map when he felt Anna’s fingers, kneading the knot of tension that had settled at the back of his neck.

“You know something? You haven’t said a word for ten minutes.”

“Sorry.” He made an effort to smile. “Not my usual sparkling self, I know. But we are in a bit of a jam.”

Anna looked at him with wide, serious eyes. “Bennett, I know this may not be the best moment to tell you.” She leaned over and kissed the frown on his forehead. “But I’m starving.”

When had they last eaten? Bennett couldn’t remember, and now he became aware of the void in his own stomach. “You’re right,” he said. “We’d better get something.” The prospect of activity, however trivial, made him more cheerful. “Come on. We’ll go to Apt. Don’t forget your false mustache.”

They went over to the car. Bennett squatted down, took a handful of earth, spat in it, and rubbed the muddy paste over both number plates until the white letters and
numerals were less prominent. As he was getting in, his eye was caught by the bag on the back seat, the million-dollar bag. He reached over and pulled it out, took it into the hangar, and buried it under a pile of rubble in a dark corner, a puzzled Anna looking on.