Little White Lies (10 page)

She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs outside on the terrace, finishing her cigarette when she became aware of the static buzz of a radio presenter’s voice, coming from the street below. A word caught her ear.
Betancourt
. She stubbed out her cigarette and leaned over the balcony. There were two workmen in white overalls painting the wrought-iron balustrades outside the hotel where the film was being shot. A tiny portable transistor stood on the ground between them. Neither saw her; they were both engrossed in their work. She strained to hear.
At 11.27 last night, the president of the tiny West African country of Togo was assassinated in what appeared to be a military
coup d’état.
The president, Crístiano Betancourt, was pronounced dead at 5.18 this morning
.
His only son, Sylvan Olympio Betancourt, is currently residing in Paris but it is believed he will be recalled . . .
Anouschka almost toppled over the railings.

‘François! François!’ she ran back into the room where they were filming, ignoring the looks of surprise. François was in the editing suite with Patrice. She burst through the door. ‘François! Quick! Get me a car!’

‘What’s going on?’ François looked up in alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s Sylvan! His father . . . it’s his father. His father’s been
assassinated
!’ She put a hand to her throat. ‘Last night. Get me a car,
please!
’

‘Phosphate?’ Sylvan looked uncertainly at the man who had just spoken.

‘Phosphate,’ the man repeated firmly. ‘The largest deposits in Africa. Who knows . . . perhaps even the world?’

‘Er, I see.’

‘With all due respect, Mr Betancourt, I’m not sure that you do.’

‘It’s like this, Sylvan.’ Dominique de Valois, whom Sylvan remembered from his teenage years, turned to him. He’d been deputy foreign minister under Pleven and was now minister of finance and economic affairs. Sylvan remembered him primarily for his cigars (Cuban) and his sense of humour (dry). There’d been many a night he’d stayed up listening to his father and de Valois talking and laughing in the Paris apartment whilst he pretended to do his homework next door. But de Valois wasn’t laughing now. ‘We sent out a team of French engineers in May to take a preliminary look at the Hahatoe site. Their initial reports were encouraging, but it was the chief engineer’s report last month that we believe set the whole thing in motion.’

‘Wh . . . what do you mean?’ Sylvan’s mouth was dry.

‘You guys are sitting on potentially the largest lime phosphate deposits on the continent. As Antoine said, perhaps the world. There’s
no way in hell
the timing of this
coup d’état isn’t
connected to the report. D’you know how much all of this is worth?’

Sylvan shook his head. He’d never even heard of lime phosphate until that afternoon. ‘How much?’

‘Enough. It’s used in fertilisers and there aren’t many places on earth where it’s found in such concentrated quantities. Moscow’s got its eye on Hahatoe. And I’ll wager that the thugs who killed your father on Monday were armed by the Soviets. This isn’t a game, Sylvan. Moscow’s been looking for ways to get into Francophone West Africa for decades. This is as close as they’ve ever come and if you think,
for one second
, that de Gaulle is going to sit back and allow
that
to happen, think again. You’re on a flight first thing tomorrow morning. Pack your bags. You’re going home.’

‘Phosphate?’ It was Anouschka’s turn to look blank.

‘Phosphate.’ Now he was the one to sound firm. He paused in the task of flinging more clothes into a suitcase. ‘Lime phosphate. It’s used in making fertilisers.’

‘But what does that have to do with . . . with
this
?’ Anouschka all but wailed, pointing at the wreckage of the hotel room. Three suitcases lay open-jawed on the enormous bed, partially filled with his clothes. ‘Why are you leaving
now
? I thought it was dangerous?’

‘It is.’

‘But I . . . I don’t understand what the rush is all about. When are you coming back?’

Sylvan turned to her. He felt the presence of history like someone standing behind him. He had never, in all his thirty-four years, felt anything like it. He was
needed
. For years he’d resigned himself to feeling (and behaving) like a louche playboy, a handsome no-hoper on whom no one could depend. He was his father’s only remaining son but could never shake off the feeling that he’d been – and always would be – a disappointment. His older brother, Epiphanio, had died in a car accident when Sylvan was fifteen and it seemed as though the Betancourts would never get over the loss. Epiphanio, or Épi, as he’d been known, was everything Sylvan wasn’t. Clever, conscientious, disciplined. All the traits one would expect in an heir and leader, except handsome, unfortunately.
That
was Sylvan’s domain. With Épi’s death came another realisation: not only was his beloved brother gone, so too was the shield that had protected him from everyone else’s expectations, allowing him to do what he did best – nothing. Suddenly
he
was in the spotlight. He’d spent the next fifteen years apologising inwardly and outwardly for letting them down. Now his chance had come to turn it all around.

But there was also another, less noble reason for his enthusiasm: money. If
he
’d understood things correctly (and he was fairly certain he had), there was lots of it to be made, especially if
he
took control. He had the backing of the French and the Americans, and, as politically inexperienced as he was, if there was one thing on which he was absolutely clear it was this: neither the French nor the Americans would give a fig for who got their grubby little hands on Togo’s phosphate deposits if there wasn’t money at stake. He’d never quite recovered from the humiliation of his stepmother’s last words.
Cochon
. Pig. For not having enough money. It would never happen again.

‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m supposed to take over.’

‘Take over what?’ Anouschka’s cornflower-blue eyes were on him. He felt the familiar stirrings of an erection.

‘The government. I’m to take my father’s place.’

Hahatoe, Tsamé, Sevagan, Lomé
. Anouschka sat with François, pronouncing the musical names with some difficulty. Her fingers danced over the map. The solitaire diamond on her left hand sparkled fabulously. She lifted it every now and again to admire it. ‘Beautiful, no?’ she turned to François, holding it out for his approval.

François said nothing. He was sulking. His meal ticket – the girl he’d staked his career on, his closest friend and confidante, the better part of
him
– was going. Leaving him.

‘But I’m going to be
La Première Dame
,’ Anouschka said, genuinely astonished at the depths of his despair. ‘How can you possibly ask me
not
to do this?’

‘I’ll
miss
you!’ François wailed.

‘Well, I’ll miss you too,
chéri
, but it’s not as though I’m going to the moon, come on! It’s half a day’s flight! You can come and visit. Visit me in the palace . . . just think of that! You and me, François, in the palace!’ Anouschka jumped up and grabbed his arm, attempting to drag him into a waltz.

He shook her hand off angrily. ‘It’s not a palace, you idiot! It’s a dump! It’s the
Tiers-Monde
, not the Champs Elysées!’

Anouschka stopped. ‘Don’t be so childish,’ she snapped. ‘Yes, I
know
it’s the Third World. I’m not stupid, you know. I
love
him. Why can’t you just accept that?’

‘Because
I
love you,’ François muttered.

‘You’re gay,’ she said drily. ‘It doesn’t count.’

He flung her a murderous look and got up from the sofa. ‘I’m going home,’ he announced huffily, picking up his scarf.

‘Fine.’

‘Fine.’ He stomped off, slamming the door behind him. Anouschka sighed and collapsed back into the sofa. He would come round soon enough. After all, she still had another week to go. A week spent shopping – she hugged one of the silk cushions to her chest in glee.
La Première Dame
. It had such a
ring
to it, so much more interesting than plain old ‘wife’, or ‘mother’. She’d been surprised, even shocked, at her own unhappiness in those first few weeks after Sylvan left. She, who was so used to seeing herself on television, had been astonished to see
him
. For a good fortnight, as the French army fought alongside the Togolese to install the assassinated president’s son in Lomé’s
Palais National
, the previously unheard-of West African country had been on everyone’s lips –
and
on the nightly television news. The fact that the president-in-waiting was good-looking, with oodles of charisma
and
had been seen stepping out with France’s best-known and loved actress only added to the drama. Suddenly there was another reason to add Anouschka Malaquais to the evening news list. Oh, it was all too delightful for words. Now, when he appeared on the news, she could practically
smell
the aura of power and authority. Overnight Sylvan had become a contender. The spoilt, fun-loving playboy was gone. The image staring back at her was that of a
man
. A powerful man. There was nothing sexier
on this earth
, she declared passionately to François. Nothing at all.

A month later, when the last remaining junior army officers who’d instigated the coup had been rounded up and ‘dealt with’, as he put it, and the thirty-four-year-old son of the assassinated leader was finally inaugurated, a man approached Anouschka with an airline ticket.
Air Afrique
. Paris-Dakar-Lomé. First class. She almost snatched it from his fingers. She couldn’t wait to go.

She stepped awkwardly out of the car that had been sent to the airport to fetch her and looked around. Once, as a very young child, she’d been struck by the sight of a field of sunflowers, heads dropping towards the ground as if the stalks could no longer hold their weight. She’d asked her mother why the flowers looked so sad. ‘Sad?’ ‘Yes, like they’re crying.’ ‘Oh, it’s the
heat
, silly. It’s too hot for them. They’ll perk up as soon as the sun’s gone in.’ Today she felt – and looked – just like those wilting sunflowers. The
heat
. She’d never in her life experienced anything like it. From the moment the aircraft doors opened and she was faced with the blast of hot air – reminiscent of a hairdryer – she could feel herself begin to droop. ‘Where’s Sylvan?’ she asked the silent, stern-faced man who collected her bags. ‘Didn’t he come?’

‘
Monsieur le Président
is busy.’ He looked her up and down insolently. His look said what his mouth wouldn’t.
Too busy to come for his wife
. She recognised the sentiment as if he’d spoken it out loud. ‘Please to follow me.’

The palace certainly
looked
like a palace. Neo-classical, with a long, double row of peeling white pillars and a driveway of raked gravel, leading to a long sweep of identical barred windows, three storeys high . . . Like a palace and an army barrack at once, she noticed with a small chill. Where the hell was Sylvan?
Monsieur le Président
indeed! The car braked noisily to a halt and the door was flung open, allowing the air-conditioned cool to escape and the fierce, hot breath of the outside to rush in. A hand reached in – a large, pink-palmed black hand with a signet ring squeezed tightly into the flesh. She stared at it for a second, and then gingerly stretched out her own.

She was helped down from the car and brought abruptly face-to-face with a long line of unfamiliar faces. Servants were lined up; she recognised the uniforms from photographs Sylvan had once shown her (white drill, khaki shorts, red cummerbunds and, incongruously, white gloves); they wore the same disinterested, impassive faces of servants the world over – blank, almost haughty in their indifference. A man in a navy-and-white striped suit with a white carnation pinned to his lapel moved swiftly forwards.

‘
Madame! Bienvenue
!’ His outstretched hand and proprietary air marked him out as someone of importance, if only in his own estimation. She shrank from him instinctively. ‘Welcome to Lomé. Please, come this way. This way,
madame
, this way.’ He ushered her deftly past the line of blank faces and up the front steps. It was marginally cooler inside the portico. She lifted the heavy curtain of her hair away from her neck, wishing she’d had the foresight to pin it up instead of leaving it flowing down her back. It was Sylvan’s fault, she thought to herself crossly. He liked her hair loose and flowing. Oh, where the hell was he?

‘
Chérie
.’ His voice suddenly broke through the din surrounding her arrival. She looked up. Sylvan was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at her with an amused, playful smile on his face. She opened her mouth in surprise. It had been just over a month since she’d last seen him.

‘Sylvan?’

‘
Chérie
.’ He descended slowly, grandly. His stomach, once flat and solid, was now bloated. He’d broadened in almost every direction. Anouschka’s eyes widened.

‘Sylvan? What . . . what the
hell
have you been
eating
?’

She saw by the quick, severe frown that appeared between his brows that she’d angered him before she’d properly opened her mouth. With a quick, peremptorily dismissive wave, he shooed the small crowd who’d clustered around her away. ‘Go on, get lost. I’ll call you when I need you. Yes, you too, Atekpé.
Even
you.’

‘But,
M’sieur le Prési
—’

‘Buzz off! Now!’ Sylvan cut him off. He stood on the second or third step, staring imperiously down at them as they backed out, one by one. Anouschka’s mouth was still hanging open as the door at the bottom of the stairs closed and they were finally alone.

‘Don’t ever do that,’ Sylvan said, waiting for her to mount the last few steps to join him. ‘Don’t criticise me in front of them. In front of
any
one, for that matter.’