Anything Considered (29 page)

Moreau peered through the window, his lips making faint popping sounds around the stem of his pipe. He nodded. It was satisfactory. “Bonfils, get the men out of the cars. We’ll put four of them at the tables outside—not together, mind—and the rest inside, at the front.” He turned to Anna and Bennett. “You stay with me, in here.” He paused, his head cocked. “What’s that?”

The steady thump of the old man’s stick on the floor had become louder and more insistent. Léon opened the door that led to the bar. “
J’arrive, j’arrive
. Anny, see what our friends would like—
pastaga
, maybe a little
Calva.
” The thumping continued. Léon shook his head.
“Merde! J’arrive!”

The
pépé
, all thoughts of dominoes forgotten, glared at the sudden influx of young men with newspapers, who were seating themselves in the front of the café. Strangers, every one of them. He grunted as Léon placed a tumbler of
rosé
in front of him. “Crowds,” he said. “One cannot even have a quiet drink on a Sunday. Who are they?”

“Tourists,” said Léon. “Just tourists.”

“Foreigners.”

Saint-Martin’s watch committee of elderly ladies, now settled on chairs in front of their houses around the
place
to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the morning, were finding the clientele of the café unusually absorbing. All these clean young men, and so early. And why was it
that each time a car pulled into the village, their newspapers dropped in unison? It was not normal. It was not at all normal.

Anna and Bennett stood at their post by the window in the storage room, drinking coffee and trying to ignore the agitated splutter of Moreau’s pipe and the glowering presence of Bonfils. Moreau was seated on a beer keg, two wine cartons serving as a makeshift desk, his notes and his tobacco pouch arranged in front of him, his eye returning constantly to his watch, his hand hovering over his cellular phone until he could restrain himself no longer. He put through a call to Chevalier.

After a brief but evidently successful conversation—excitement mounting with every
“Ah bon?”
until his voice approached falsetto—he came over to the window to share his good humor with Anna and Bennett. “Paris is pleased with the progress of this affair,” he said. “Extremely pleased. The highest level is taking a close personal interest. He will be at his desk to hear our news. An amusing connection, don’t you think? The back room of a country café, and the Elysée Palace.” He looked at his watch and hummed softly to himself. Any minute now.

——

Georgette’s head emerged from her front door with infinite caution, her eyes checking the windows of her neighbors’ houses. All was still, the lace curtains hanging motionless. In fact, most of her neighbors, drawn by the
magnet of speculation coming from the ladies around the
place
, had discovered a pressing need to visit the café, where Anny and Léon were having their busiest Sunday morning in years.

Satisfied that her journey would pass unnoticed, Georgette pulled her cap down over her eyes, picked up the plastic shopping bag containing the case, and scuttled around the corner to the Allée des Lices. She let herself in and put the case on the table as Bennett had told her, taking care not to scratch the waxy mirror shine of the wood. She made sure the front door was unlocked. She ran her hands over the couch, smoothing away nonexistent wrinkles, and went into the kitchen. There she waited.

——

The dark-green Range Rover swung into the village and parked by the side of the monument to the dead of the First World War. Outside the café, the newspapers were lowered to half-mast. Around the
place
, the elderly ladies paused in their muttered conversations to inspect the passengers. The church clock began to wheeze and whir and count the strokes to ten.

Bennett watched the car doors open, saw Shimo get out, then Poe, and nodded to Moreau, standing just behind him. “That’s Poe.” Anna looked at her former lover, elegant in beige and black, and reached for Bennett’s hand. He smiled at her. “Punctual bastard, isn’t he?”

Moreau kept his eyes on Poe. “Bonfils? We give him
five minutes, and then we pick him up. I want him with the case in his hands,
d’accord?
”

——

Poe and Shimo, dismissing the undisguised stares of the villagers as normal rustic nosiness, walked up the street and turned into the Allée des Lices. Shimo pushed open the door of number 3, and they stepped inside. In the kitchen, Georgette held her breath, listening to the soft sounds of their footsteps on the tiled floor.

Poe bent over the case. “Let’s make sure it’s all there, shall we?” He spun the tumblers on the lock, snapped up the two fastenings, and opened the case, laying it flat on the table.

Georgette, her ears straining, heard the succession of clicks, the faint squeak of hinges.
The case was being opened
. Not ten feet away, the secret was being revealed, the secret that she alone in the entire village could see, and later describe in all its fascinating detail. How could she resist?

“Bonjour, bonjour, bonjour!”
She burst from the kitchen, her eyes darting toward the open case.
“Un petit café pour les messieurs?”

The two men spun around, Shimo falling instinctively into a position of combat readiness until he took in the short and decidedly unthreatening figure in the yellow baseball cap.

“Who the hell is she?” said Poe.

Shimo relaxed.
“The femme de ménage.”
He moved to
block Georgette’s view of the case. “No coffee.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Go in there.”

Eyes wide, Georgette backed through the door. Poe resumed his study of the contents of the case.

——

“Bon
,
”
said Moreau. “Let’s go.” The gendarmes put down their newspapers and rose as one, and the group began to move out of the café and into the main street, the eyes of Saint-Martin upon them. Truly, this was a most irregular Sunday.

——

Tuzzi’s Mercedes, driven with enormous brio by young Benito, swept up the village road and swerved over to the café.

“You!” called Tuzzi from the car. “Where’s the Allée des Lices?”

The startled
gendarme
barely had time to point the way before Benito applied a heavy foot to the accelerator and took off, leaving rubber scars on the road and Bennett with his jaw dropping in surprise. “But that’s Tuzzi,” he said to Moreau. “What the hell is he doing here?”

——

Benito stopped the car at the entrance to the alley and shrugged. Too narrow. “Stay here,” said Tuzzi. “I’ll be
two minutes.” In his haste, he left the passenger door open, and as Benito leaned across to close it, he saw, reflected in the rearview mirror, a group of figures coming up the street. What a busy place it was for a little village. He tuned in to Radio Monte Carlo and thought about girls.

——

The door to number 3 was ajar. Tuzzi pushed it open, paused in the hall, and moved through to the living room, his feet, in espadrilles, soundless on the floor. He was almost in the room before Poe and Shimo were aware of him.

For a second, maybe two, they all were motionless—Poe standing with the case in his hand, Shimo to one side, Tuzzi’s bulk filling the doorway. Poe was the first to move. With a sideways chop of his free hand, as if to push away an unwanted dog, he spoke. “Deal with him, Shimo.”

The Japanese crouched and turned. His preference—a foot-administered frontal lobotomy achieved by a roundhouse kick to the temple—was impossible. Tuzzi was protected by the frame of the doorway. It would have to be
mawashi-geri-gedan
, foot to pubic bone, followed by
hadaka-jime
, the naked strangle. He took two steps forward, seeing as if in slow motion Tuzzi’s hand coming up from his hip, holding a gun.

——

Later, for many years and to many rapt audiences, Georgette would describe the events of the next few seconds,
as seen from the kitchen door. Shimo’s foot, with the unimaginable velocity developed by years of training, struck the Italian on the appointed spot. There was an explosion as Tuzzi doubled forward, the bullet released by the involuntary spasm of his trigger finger passing within inches of Shimo’s shoulder, its trajectory rising before it reached its accidental destination. Poe grew a third eye in his head, and died without losing his astonished expression.

The
gendarmes
entered the house like a torrent, pointing their weapons at everyone in sight. Shimo stood with his back against a wall and folded his arms. Georgette raised her hands. Poe bled silently onto the carpet. Tuzzi, an oversized fetus, whimpered on the floor.

Moreau could hardly have wished for a more dramatic climax to the operation. His pipe forgotten, he moved to the center of the room and knelt by Poe’s body. “Bonfils, call homicide in Avignon. Photographer. Ambulance. The usual.”

Georgette, now that the shock was beginning to subside, saw a further opportunity to take part in the proceedings. “Monsieur? Aristide my cousin is the village
ambulancier
. He can arrange the dead one. Also that other, he who moans on the floor. It is very large, a four-body ambulance.”

Moreau got to his feet and looked down at Poe. “He is evidence, madame. He must under no circumstances be moved until photographs and measurements have been taken.”

Georgette came over to take a closer look at the body. “And my carpet? What of my carpet? See how it stains.”

A sigh of exasperation from Moreau. “Calm yourself, madame. The state will replace it. Bonfils! Make a note of the carpet.” He looked across the room at Bennett. “Now, monsieur. To the best of your knowledge, is this the genuine case?”

Bennett left Anna at the doorway and stepped over Poe’s body. “I think so. May I open it?” Georgette craned her neck for a better view as he fumbled with the lock. Thirty-six twenty-four thirty-six. The vials, snug in their beds of foam rubber, the folders and printouts—everything was as he remembered seeing it before he’d left it with Georgette. He looked up and nodded at Moreau.

Leaving two men to guard the corpse, they left the house. The villagers of Saint-Martin were then treated to the sight of a slow-moving procession headed by the bent, shuffling figure of Tuzzi, supported by Benito and followed by Shimo, the three of them covered by the guns of the
gendarmes
. Sunday-morning business was abandoned as the butcher, the baker, and Madame Joux from the
épicerie
attached themselves to the rear of the group, showering Georgette with questions, which, with enormous pleasure, she declined to answer.

——

Bennett put his arm around Anna and felt the ridge of tension in her shoulders. “Are you OK?”

“I’ll be fine. He didn’t know what hit him, did he?”

Bennett thought of the expression of disbelief on
Poe’s face, the neat hole above one eyebrow, the surprised gape of his mouth. “No. He didn’t.”

“Can we get out of here? I’ve just about had it with guns and policemen.”

But there were, as a jubilant Moreau said when they reached the café, certain formalities to complete, the first of which was a call to Chevalier. He left Georgette, Anna, and Bennett at the bar, where Léon, with great ceremony, insisted on pouring them glasses of his second-best champagne.

The café had never seen such a crowd, and a knot of villagers soon formed around Georgette, who, in her starring role of eyewitness, was rationing her answers rather more carefully than her consumption of champagne. The old men at the back couldn’t hear, and shouted for her to speak up. Anna and Bennett escaped to the comparative peace of an outside table.

Moreau came out to join them, glowing with satisfaction. “I don’t think we need detain you any longer.” He put the car keys and their passports on the table. “A driver will take you to Les Beaumettes to pick up your car. All that remains for me to say—”

“Monsieur Moreau?” Léon, wide-eyed and flustered, called from the door, his hand up to his ear making the shape of a telephone. “It’s the office of the president.”

The café fell silent, every ear straining to listen as Moreau took the call. He stood to attention. He nodded several times. By the time he put down the phone, he seemed to have grown several inches.

“Well!” he said to Anna and Bennett. “I must tell you that the president of the Republic is pleased. Not only with the total success of the operation”—he paused for a self-effacing shrug—“but also with your helpful part in this affair.” He dropped his voice. “
Entre nous
, there is talk of official recognition for your services to French agriculture. Be sure to leave an address with the captain at Les Beaumettes.” He looked at his watch and gave an exaggerated sigh. “You must excuse me. There is still much to do. Dead men make paperwork, you know.” After shaking hands with them both, he returned to the melee around the bar, where Georgette, her cap now slightly askew, was describing how she had felt against her cheek the wind—the deadly breath—of the fatal bullet as it passed.

——

Anna and Bennett drove away from the
gendarmerie
, half expecting to hear the sound of a police siren. Bennett’s eyes flicked constantly to the mirror, the guilty tic of a fugitive. It wasn’t until they reached the ruin above Buoux that they began to believe their liberty.

Bennett dusted off the bag and tossed it onto the back seat. A million dollars, less the price of a tractor. “We’ve got enough for lunch,” he said. “I think we’ve earned it.”

He’d thought about it often, during the past few days—where they’d go, how it would feel to be together and safe—until it had assumed the importance of much more than a meal. It would mark an ending and a beginning,
a celebration and a reward. And for such an occasion, there is nowhere in the world quite like France at noon on a fine summer Sunday. The only problem is an embarrassment of choice. Bennett had eventually decided on an old favorite, Le Mas Tourteron, a substantial stone farmhouse on the road below Gordes, its cooking and its courtyard an irresistible combination.

He turned into the parking area and squeezed the Peugeot in between a Jaguar with Swiss plates and an unkempt local Renault 5. Anna got out of the car and looked through the entrance to the courtyard—tables dressed in white and blue, dappled light, huge pots of flowers against the walls, the clients studying their menus like prayer books. She pushed a hand through her hair, glanced down, and shook her head.