The Eyes of Lira Kazan (19 page)

“Forex means cash withdrawals,” he said.

They had quickly identified Finley's accounts, and Louchsky's as well. With one simple addition of four transfers from Lichtenstein into Finley's account, Nwankwo was able to conclude with a sigh: “It's like a subscription – eighty million dollars a year!”

“Meaning?” Lira asked.

“The petrol company drilling in the desert pays Finley a few centimes per litre and credits it to the Lichtenstein account.”

Sometimes his voice would fade away, as though crushed by all that money, and he would appear to be absent for a few seconds as his thoughts wandered back to his homeland; then he would once again pick up his pencil and get back to work on his arrows and bank accounts. A lot of the payments went directly to their recipient, revealing the sense of impunity that reigned at the top of the pyramid. Others went through under the cover of code names and offshore companies that Nwankwo noted down in order to check later on the Internet. Sometimes it was enough to look up old newspaper articles or accounts of past business transactions, and cross-check them with the bank statements to find out who had been involved in Louchsky or Finley's business dealings.

As the day went by, the low table became covered in mugs, plates, crumbs, pieces of ham or cake left over from improvised meals. Nwankwo and Félix watched Lira, looking out
for signs of fatigue showing through the dark glasses she wore to hide her lifeless eyes that were still circled with raw skin. She proudly insisted that she was fine, often mocking her own clumsiness and incapacity – “The poor blind girl would love a little more coffee,” she would say, as if by saying it about herself she could forestall them from thinking or saying it.

On the third day she became obsessed by a new name, a company called Hilar, which had received four large sums from Louchsky. There was nothing by that name on the Internet. Lira wondered out loud what was hidden behind the name. She had worked so hard in the last few years that she knew all the links and connections within the Louchsky empire. Looking at her you might have the impression that blind people either become possessed by their illusions or lose them entirely. She longed to be indispensable, impossible to fault, as nimble as Félix's fingers on the keyboard or Nwankwo's pencil on his notebook.

“Well, apart from the Minister of Defence's dog, I've never heard that name…” Félix sighed finally.

“A dog, did you say?” Nwankwo asked.

“Yes it's some kind of Labrador, he was always posing with it in
Nice-Matin
, that's our local paper. But I'm talking about when he was regional president.”

“What sort of guy is he, your minister?”

“Arrogant, ambitious, part of the Élysée inner circle. He's often talked about as the possible next prime minister.”

“It might be a possible track to follow…”

“What, because of his dog?”

“Sometimes the only things powerful men still love are their animals, you know…” Lira said.

A dog providing a powerful man with a hunter's image. A dog leading a blind woman. A lot of images sprang to Lira's mind, and she suppressed them as well as she could. The advantage of all these figures was that they in some way protected her by removing her from the normal world in
which she no longer had a place, apart from that reserved for the disabled, exposed to the pitying stares of other people. The figures formed a dark circle around her; they were concealed, invisible to the rest of the world – only she, Lira, could see them. They seemed to produce sparks in her brain, and then she felt like David facing Goliath. At these moments she was bathed in a soft euphoria, but never for long: each point gained increased the risk they were taking, and then a kind of sticky fear would inhabit their minds and bodies – not just Lira's but Nwankwo's and Félix's too. Fear affected them all and came between them.

Félix left at around six. The evenings were long after that. At first Nwankwo hadn't dared turn on the television, for fear of seeming to taunt Lira, but then it was she who asked him to. After that the glowing screen made this strange, upside-down household sound much the same as all the others at that time of night. They would watch the news and talk about it. Lira, not being a child of the Commonwealth, did not understand everything, and Nwankwo would explain. Then he would often give her the remote, putting her thumb on the buttons so that she could clumsily surf the channels. She would usually stop on a music channel – the throbbing rhythms of rock music had always made her feel good.

In the evenings too she would dictate letters to Nwankwo to send to her daughter. They were in English, not even in their own language, and filled with lies – she said she was fine, and that they would meet soon. Lira ended by covering the letters with kisses and words they had used since Polina's babyhood. She missed her and yet she dreaded seeing her; it was as though her daughter's gaze would confirm once and for all the permanence of her blindness. Then Nwankwo would write the address on the envelope: “Poste restante. Nîmes. France.” Outside the nights were beginning to draw in. It was getting colder too. And there was no more police protection; only an emergency number in the kitchen, just in case.

 

US EMBASSY, COPENHAGEN

 

CONFIDENTIAL

 

SECTION 01.081685

 

SEPTEMBER 17

 

SUBJECT: MEETING BETWEEN AMBASSADOR AND SUNLEIF STEPHENSEN

 

BANKRUPT FAROESE BANKER SUNLEIF STEPHENSEN HAS ACCEPTED THE PROTECTION PROGRAMME OFFERED BY THE CIA. CEPTED THE PROTECTION PROGRAMME OFFERED BY THE CIA. HE WILL BE EVACUATED TO THE UNITED STATES.

“You were more fun when you were a civil servant.”

That's what Mark had said the previous night. Félix had not replied, because it was true. His insomnia left him more and more often at the edge of the bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, tossing and turning between the sheets, while Mark lay next to him breathing deeply in a mildly alcoholic doze. He could have moved closer to him and woken him up, but he didn't have the strength, or even the will, to do it. A part of him always remained in the Oxford house with the other two. He knew nothing of Lira's nightmares and Nwankwo's nocturnal roaming, but he could guess at them.

The telephone rang. He had gone to sleep late and it seemed to come from far away. It continued to ring insistently. Since nobody was answering it and the cat had climbed onto the bed, and since it was ten o'clock and Mark had gone, Félix finally got up and grabbed the receiver. He heard a familiar voice against the background of a strange noise, almost like a hairdryer. It was the judge, sitting behind the counter at Max's – the barber who had been cutting his hair for the last fifteen years in his shop at the top of Rue Gioffredo in Nice. He had been reduced to using his barber's telephone. The barber didn't ask questions and even imagined some kind of sinister affair that might give his shop the air of a hideout, with its plastic seats and tired sign outside. Félix was suddenly wide awake.

The judge was speaking very fast; sometimes there was the sound of a bell in the background, either from the door or the till, where Max was busy charging thirty-five euros for a cut and blow-dry to a heavily backcombed lady. Anyway the news was good: the judge had found a mention of a
company called Hilar in the penal records, the computer archive of all victims and perpetrators of crimes and misdemeanours. There had been a complaint three years ago about neighbourhood troubles from the director of the company, a lady living in a two-bedroom apartment in Nice.

“Félix, you'll never guess who came in to make the complaint! It was Douchet's wife!”

“Douchet's wife…” Félix repeated, under his dishevelled hair. “She was on the yacht for Linda Stephensen's little party that night.”

He took a shower in record time, got dressed and rushed to Oxford. He was late but wildly excited.

“It's a bombshell, my friends. Douchet is the minister with the dog! Hilar is a company run by his wife! Louchsky was paying bribes to one or other of them!”

He told them at high speed about the judge's call, the hairdresser, the archives. Nwankwo and Lira listened dumbstruck. Each one was thinking about their own piece of the story, their particular enemy, their part of the world. But things were coming together and they were jubilant. They had struck gold with proof that a French minister was taking money from Louchsky. Then Lira began to enumerate all the hundreds of scams she knew about, repeating lists of figures in a monotonous voice, reeling off an inventory of Louchsky's villainy.

“We'll expose it all, we must call the press,” she said.

“It's just what Charlotte MacKennedy has been waiting for!” Félix added.

“Not now!” Nwankwo snapped.

He sometimes spoke sharply in a tone that was not to be contradicted. In other times, Lira would have flown at him. But she kept quiet – she respected him, and she depended on him. Félix also bit back his words. They set to work again, now seeing everything in the light of this new information, their minds churning. They settled down, returned to the figures and put their differences aside.

After a couple of hours, Lira said: “I need to go out, I want to walk, I want to hear some noise.” It was as though the news had given her wings.

The other two sprang to attention and a trip into town was hastily arranged. It was the middle of the afternoon, the weather was warm, and there were crowds on the pavements. Nwankwo played the role of bodyguard, looking around constantly, walking first in front and then behind the other two. Oxford, with its churches, colleges, libraries and cafés, and all the old stained-glass windows and ancient oak floors, seemed to be studded with potential traps. Félix gazed around him at the ancient buildings and the Gothic spires ringing out the time. Seeing the privileged students with their devouring ambition awakened his youthful revolutionary instincts. He did not wish to admire the splendour of the city – all he saw was the tyranny of convention in this cradle of an elite which would soon become as docile and silent as its predecessors. He liked to think that he was in charge of his own life, and that nobody else would ever make any decisions for him. He felt that having Lira on his arm was one of the finest things he had ever been called upon to do.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“It's strange, it's like going into a dark room and feeling that you are being stared at from all sides, but much, much more intense than that…”

She had been to Oxford before and her brain was processing the images she remembered. But now she felt everything as an invisible mass. She knew that the buildings were high because she could sense them like a huge weight above her head; she felt the passers-by going past by the movement of air on her face; she guessed that the door of a shop or restaurant was opening by the sudden gust of warm air against her body. She had become sensitive to every minute change in the atmosphere and could even tell whether she was in a street or a cul-de-sac. But it was
all so intense and fast-moving that after half an hour she had had enough. It was all too much for her, the noise, the movement, all those shapes above and around her. This sudden return to the real world reminded her cruelly of everything she had lost, and of how concentrated she would have to remain in order to survive. They went back to the car. Lira said nothing. She had thought that this outing would do her good, but now she felt that it had just been a waste of time.

They drew up in front of the house. Before Nwankwo had even switched off the engine he noticed a shape in the window. He silently pointed it out to Félix.

“What's going on?” Lira immediately asked.

“It looks as though someone has taken advantage of our expedition to pay us a visit,” Félix replied.

“It shows they know perfectly well where we are,” said Nwankwo.

“Who's ‘they'?”

“There are plenty of ‘them' to choose from!”

“What shall we do? Shall we go in?”

“No. We could be shot down like rabbits. And we've got all the important stuff with us.”

He didn't care about his possessions, his memories – all that mattered were the computer and the notebooks on the back seat. Nwankwo put the car into reverse, turned around and they set off. For a while nobody dared ask where they were heading. Nwankwo didn't know either. He kept his foot flat on the accelerator, his eyes on the mirror, and instinctively headed towards London.

“We'll go to Mark's flat.” Félix finally broke the silence. “After that we'll see.”

They left the house far behind them. Inside, drawers and cupboards had been opened, beds turned upside-down. Two men stood paralysed on the landing. They had thought they still had plenty of time. They had knocked everything over. Their orders were not to kill,
just to make it look like an ordinary burglary, and to get hold of the computer on which “the blind girl, the African and the little gay frog”, as Scotland Yard called them, had been working. Three
sputniks
, Lira would have called them.