IN DESPERATION, Samuel Farakhan immediately rushed out of the house into the October dusk, made sure with a quick glance that the three vehicles were in the garage, ran out onto the road and peered right and left into the empty darkness. His teeth were chattering. Lajos must have caught some bus or other, most likely in the middle of the day, and then a train in Dieppe or Arques-la-Bataille or Rouen. Farakhan restrained an urge to jump into the Aronde or the Land Rover right away and drive to Paris as fast as possible. He went back into his empty house and took off his overcoat.
That evening he listened to the news on the radio and played an LP of Lajos’s on which a group of nine players could be heard, among them the trumpeter Miles Davis and the saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz, but he could not evince any interest in this vaguely danceable, vaguely discordant disc.
He dined on toasted French bread, went to bed early, took two American opioid sleeping pills, tried unsuccessfully to read a novel and fell asleep with the light on and the open book clasped in his hands. He awoke at half past five on October 25, 1956, got up calmly, washed, dressed with care, drank very strong coffee and ate more tartines with Normandy butter. At six fifty he got into the Aronde, which he found easier to handle than the Land Rover, and set off for Paris, arriving at quarter to ten. He entered the city via the Pont de Saint-Cloud, then drove to Place de l’Étoile and down the Champs-Élysées. The movie theaters were showing And God Created Woman with Brigitte Bardot, Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe, Fritz Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and various other things. Farakhan proceeded east and easily found a parking spot at Place de la Concorde. At the corner of the Place and Avenue Gabriel is the U.S. embassy. After a few moments and brief explanations, Farakhan was received by a sort of assistant undersecretary of something or other. After they had exchanged a few words, the man asked Farakhan to come back in the afternoon.
Farakhan went to Fouquet’s for lunch after strolling on the Champs-Élysées and dawdling for an hour on a café terrace slowly drinking one good scotch after another.
Farakhan had money. He was the son of a brewer who had made an enormous fortune. He had been to Cambridge. There he rubbed shoulders with other homosexuals whose political ideas led them later to spy for the Russians. Farakhan had different ideas. He read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and subsumed both the USSR and the Third Reich under the rough heading of bureaucratic despotism. It was at Cambridge that he learnt to fly at the Aero Club founded when the threat of war began to loom large. At Fouquet’s on October 25, 1956, he lunched on caviar and rib of beef. Apparently anxiety made him ravenous. His face was gray; his lips trembled.
At half past three at the American embassy the sort of assistant undersecretary of something or other accompanied him to the second floor and left him in the company of a man in his fifties, somewhat bald and somewhat paunchy. He had a pleasant, chubby face, a large nose, bushy fair eyebrows, blue eyes, gold-framed glasses and a three-piece anthracite-gray suit worn over a white cotton shirt with a solid-blue silk tie.
“My name is Turrentine, Mr. Farakhan. Edward Turrentine,” he informed his visitor, waving Farakhan to an armchair and sitting down himself behind an old, almost cubic desk of dark wood with a crenellated rim reminiscent of the work of Isaac E. Scott. “I am one of the cultural attachés here,” he went on, “but actually I deal with all kinds of issues. Correct me if I am wrong, but I gather you are looking for a Hungarian citizen you believe to be in contact with our security services?”
Farakhan nodded emphatically. He unbuttoned his overcoat. It was warm in the office and he had drunk and eaten copiously.
“You think that this young man”—Turrentine consulted a notepad—“this Lajos Obersoxszki, has asked our people to help him get back into Hungary? Do you have any proof?”
“The certitude.”
“I’m sorry, but that is not proof.”
From the voluminous inside pocket of his overcoat Farakhan produced the duplicate of one of the two photographs of Victor Maurer that Lajos had taken with him. He showed it to Turrentine, whose eyes narrowed.
“Could I have this picture?” he asked in a different tone of voice.
Farakhan shook his head and put the photograph back in his inside pocket.
“Well,” said the American, “I won’t beat about the bush. There is some possibility that this young Hungarian might have asked certain of our services to get him back into Hungary. But naturally carrying out such a task would in no circumstance be within their authority.”
“Naturally,” said Farakhan.
“But they might conceivably have offered advice.”
“Given him a lead?”
“Come on now,” said Turrentine. “We are not in one of the novels of your Ian Fleming. But still, let’s say a lead. And at this moment”—he consulted his Baume & Mercier brushed-steel watch—“at this moment, Lajos Obersoxszki has probably just crossed the Hungarian border.” He looked Farakhan straight in the face. “Would you pay a good deal for his return?”
“Yes. But I assume you don’t want money?”
“Of course not,” said Turrentine, as if deeply offended. “My only desire is to serve my country. From that point of view, Mr. Obersoxszki probably gave us some interesting information, always assuming that he was in fact provided with a, er, lead. But that information would certainly be more valuable were it to be enhanced by you in a greatly detailed way.”
“You bastard! You piece of shit! Scum!” said Farakhan.
Turrentine sighed, took off his gold-framed glasses and polished the lenses with a chamois leather.
“Now that he is over there you have no way of getting him back,” said Farakhan.
“Well,” answered Turrentine, “that is true. But in a few days we might possibly be able to get him back. Would you be willing to talk to us in that event? To ensure the prompt repatriation of your friend?”
“Yes,” said Samuel Farakhan after a moment.
Turrentine handed him the notepad and a Waterman fountain pen.
“Leave me your telephone number,” he said.