There was a knock at the door. Francesca came in.
She was wearing flowing garments this morning, in gray and sand-colored tones, a sort of long cardigan, floating slacks, but what you noticed, above all, today like any other day, no matter what she wore, was how tall and slim she was, her long neck, her regal bearing. Her face was bare beneath her short curls, combed back, and she wore no jewelry apart from the heavy ring she could not remove from her left hand, and she was smiling.
The saddest smile you could imagine. Van had known her for years—if you can say you know someone who comes in to buy books from you five or six times a year—and he had always seen her like this, with her half-regal, half-broken air. You could not say that she had become any less sad since their conversation in April. Since then, all the same, in Van’s presence there was a simplicity about her that contained an element of serenity.
Van moved away from the window and went over to her.
“Tell me everything,” she asked, straight off. “What is going on, now?”
“Francesca,” said Van, standing opposite her in the middle of the big room, “since the beginning of November, there have been three attacks against three of the committee members. To be precise, on November 7, November 15, and then last week, some time between November 18 and 24. I didn’t hear about the events right away. But now it’s clear, I’ve spoken to all three of them, we’re not talking about a coincidence.”
He listed the facts and Francesca did not interrupt him. Neither of them had thought about sitting down. When Van finished, Francesca said decisively, “These are warnings. I don’t want real bullets, Van. It’s too much for us. Let’s tell the police everything.”
Van refrained from taking her hands.
“That’s what I intended to do, so long as you agree.”
“Have you talked about these attacks with Anis?”
“No. I don’t want to frighten her.”
“That was wise. The fewer we are who know about it, the fewer points that gives our enemies. And there won’t be so many sleepless nights.”
“Francesca!”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up! What you’ve just told me is horrible, but I can’t see myself giving up on The Good Novel. But I could understand perfectly well if you want to distance yourself. I would approve of your decision.”
“I hadn’t even thought of it.”
“Well, I’m asking you to think about it.”
“And give up? Now? What would become of me?”
At times there was a spark of joy in her eyes, piercing her restraint, like a ray of sunlight through a gray sky.
“As for you and me, we’ve burned our bridges,” she said, radiating gratitude. “That is our strength. Ivan, who should we see at the police to denounce attacks against literature?”
It was Van’s turn to smile.
“I’ve just spent an hour wondering the same thing. I think we have to go to the criminal investigation department. But that’s an army of eight thousand people.”
“Well, we needn’t aim for the supreme commander,” said Francesca, probably because that had indeed been her initial impulse. “We’d be wasting our time. What we need is a clever, sensitive colonel—in crime novels, they exist.”
Ivan went to his desk to fetch the two sheets he’d printed out before Francesca arrived: the organizational chart, in color, and the numbered list of all the staff.
“Eighty-four detective inspectors and one thousand one hundred and forty two officers for the Paris region alone,” he read. “Just in the subdivision of criminal affairs, there are seven central offices, three divisions and thirty or more units specialized in a variety of crimes and offences. The hard part was finding which one would be the right one for us.”
Francesca went to sit at her desk. She leafed through her address book.
“I haven’t kept in contact with the police,” she said, her voice changed. “My dealings with them date from the worst time in my life.”
“Don’t talk about it.”
“No. But I have a nephew who’s a prefect—one of my husband’s nephews—who was the boss over at the DST for a few years and who must have some friends in the police. He’s a boy with a lot of heart. A bit of a bear, not very talkative, but basically as good as gold. It always surprised me. You always imagine that a prefect must be hard as nails. I can call him.”
“So he’ll point us in the right direction?”
“Yes. He knows The Good Novel. I talked to him about our problems the last time I saw him, at a wedding in June. At that time they were still problems you could talk about with a glass in your hand.”
“The tricky thing will be to ask for his advice without giving too much away. We can’t have the slightest leak. Just imagine if the other committee members found out through the papers.”
Francesca nodded. She sat thoughtfully for half a minute or so with her hand on the receiver, immobile, then called the prefect, managed to soften up a secretary who was giving her a hard time, got her nephew on the line, and explained her request to him in a few sentences that were magnificently graceful and vague.
Her nephew-prefect must have begun asking her questions, because after that Van only heard things like: If you want, Yes, In a way.
“So you’ll call me back?” asked Francesca.
She hung up.
Her nephew would look into it, find the right person, try to get his consent, and call them back, went her summary to Van.