Saint-Germain
GIVEN HOW COMFORTABLE PAUL LOOKED in the restaurant near his office, I guess it’s his usual lunch spot. When he sees me waiting on the terrace again, it’s as if he’s expecting me and he comes outside immediately.
‘You’re still making enemies, then,’ he says, his eyes tracing the bruises on my face.
‘You didn’t tell me about Lara,’ I say.
‘Lara?’
He continues to feign ignorance and so I tell him about the commune Lisa mentioned in the south, the place Tomas had been living last summer.
‘So where is it? Do you have the address?’ he asks impatiently.
‘Tell me about Lara and my father.’
He sighs in frustration. ‘For God’s sake, Alex, that was years ago.’
He gestures for us to move away from the restaurant, and he walks close to me, speaking quietly into his scarf. ‘I didn’t know what was going on until much later.’
‘You didn’t know she was pregnant?’ I say.
He turns to me, expressionless. ‘She wasn’t pregnant. The whole thing was a scam – the pregnancy, her marriage. It was a trick.
‘She made it all up,’ he says, walking on ahead. ‘After the fake termination, the “husband” threatened to go to the police and have Eddy charged with procuring an illegal abortion.’
He smirks, unable to hide his pleasure at my confusion, and I imagine this is how he is with his students – patronising and superior. ‘I told you he was blackmailed. Blackmailed into running their stories and propaganda.’
‘He wasn’t blackmailed for money?’
‘It was a honey trap, but in the end, they paid him.’
‘Who?’ I say, completely lost.
He shifts uncomfortably. ‘I only know what Eddy told me much later. After they hooked him in, they put him on the payroll.’
‘And this was what he was writing about?’
‘I tried to talk him out of it, but that just spurred him on.’
He looks down the street, pretending to think. He even scratches his chin to complete the charade. ‘It wasn’t long before he died. I reminded him one night when it came time to pay the bill that I’d lent him money all those years ago for the termination, and he’d never paid me back. It was meant as a joke about the bill, but he was drunk and got very offended and then it all came out. How he blamed me. How he thought I’d had a role in the whole thing.’
‘A role?’
‘He accused me of setting him up with Lara in the first place. He thought my opposition to his sordid little memoir was proof I was part of it.’
‘And were you?’
‘Of course not! He met her at a club we all went to back then.’
‘The Matrix Club?’
He stops abruptly. ‘You know about that?’
‘He met her there?’
‘He was introduced to her there.’
I stand at a distance, trying to imagine this world they inhabited then – the deception and the many layers of lies. No wonder my father didn’t know who to trust. I want to ask Paul whether he knew Eddy wasn’t my father, but I can’t give him that pleasure and who knows – if they all swapped partners, it may even be Paul himself. The thought sickens me, but why not? I may as well prepare myself for the worst, and the idea that Tomas is somehow my brother is just about as bad as it gets. As I watch Paul with disgust, it occurs to me that this is how secrets prevail, and why no one tells the truth – because no one really knows.
‘Eddy was set up?’ I ask.
‘Yes, but not by me.’ He lets out one of his condescending laughs. ‘It was typical of the way Eddy’s paranoid mind worked, especially when he was drunk. He thought I was out to get him. I wish I’d never lent him any money either. Never do anyone a favour, Alex. They’ll hate you for it.’
‘So why did he hate you?’
‘I’ve no idea. Your father was played by Lara and then trapped by her so-called husband. He was the victim of an operation, and then a smear campaign, but rather than blame himself or the perpetrators, he blamed me.’
‘Is that why he was with Céline? To get back at you for something that happened in the past?’
He stops. ‘Who knows? He resented my success for sure, but he could have had that. When he was younger, he was brilliant.’
‘You said he never amounted to much.’
‘He didn’t,’ Paul said, not meeting my eyes. ‘He could have, but after Lara, he lost it. It wasn’t his fault – he was deceived brutally, but once you cross that line, it’s very hard to come back. He hated himself for being so easily fooled and for what he did after. It destroyed him.’
‘But he carried on working. He moved to Egypt.’
‘That was my idea,’ he says, pointing at me. ‘Jean-Marc wanted to get rid of him. Eddy was drinking and making mistakes. Making a clown of himself in the office. Eventually, I persuaded Jean-Marc to send him to Cairo. Sitting it out somewhere else was the only way for him to survive.’
‘And Jean-Marc?’ I ask.
‘What about him?’
‘Where is he now?’ I say, thinking I need to see him too.
Paul taps his chest, ahead of me now. ‘Last I heard he was in hospital. He’s been unwell. Lung infection.’
I walk quickly to catch up. ‘So why did Eddy want to write about all this?’
‘That was the incredible thing. After years of hiding and deliberately losing contact with everyone, he suddenly wanted to get to the bottom of it all. He had an appetite for revenge, I guess.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why did Céline try to hide it from me?’
‘Céline wanted to protect me,’ he says irritably.
‘The swingers’ club?’
‘Yes.’ He gestures back in the direction of the restaurant, his office. ‘She was worried it would compromise my position here if that was all dragged into the light.’
I think of the photos in my father’s shoebox. ‘The sleaze, the exploitation. It’s not that fashionable anymore.’
He raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t take the bait. ‘It was clear what Eddy wanted from Céline, and she didn’t want to expose me like that.’
‘And Patrick?’
‘What’s Patrick got to do with it?’
‘He visited me in prison. He asked if I could remember what Eddy was working on before he died, and then two weeks later he’s dead too. It’s more than a coincidence.’
Paul shakes his head. ‘That’s just another conspiracy. Patrick killed himself. There was an autopsy, an inquiry. The reports he filed before his death – he was depressed. He hated it back here, hated being tied to the desk after years as a correspondent. He and Elena weren’t getting on. His death has nothing to do with this.’
He loosens his collar and affects a casual look.
‘And those codenames – Vestnik, and the rest?’ I say.
He shifts impatiently. ‘Vestnik means messenger in Russian. As in journalist, newspapers. Eddy thought Vestnik was the ringleader, the mastermind. He thought that person was still active.’
‘Still active?’ I say, imagining some kind of volcano, smouldering away in a backroom filing cabinet.
‘Still involved in things. He thought Vestnik hadn’t just gone away, that he’d just moved on to different things.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘For God’s sake, Alex, I don’t know. Eddy wanted to track him down, find out what he was doing now. His view was that these kind of people didn’t just disappear, they went on to other projects.’
I hand him a piece of paper with the location of the commune. ‘Why did he think it was you?’
He takes the paper and gives me a sour look. ‘You know what? Eddy always distrusted me, but I was only ever helpful to him so forgive me if I don’t remember your father kindly,’ he says, before he walks off.
*
Paul occupies my thoughts as I walk back to my aunt’s. The way he always has an answer, yet never tells me the full story. All this talk about helping Eddy, then how much he disliked him, but drinking with him all those times. If my father really hated Paul, then surely they wouldn’t have spent all that time together.
As for the past, Paul said he wasn’t involved, but that’s just his word and he’s hardly been totally straight with me so far. If Eddy was on the payroll, then why wasn’t Paul? He’s an academic now, and before that, he was a journalist. Neither of those are the kind of jobs that buy their kind of apartment, let alone a country place and a fleet of vintage cars. I think of Paul and Céline standing at the door the other day, a fragrant blur of matching pastels. That carefully cultivated look they think is so subtle, the discreet uniform of the rich.
Back at my aunt’s cellar again, I sift through the files to the note from Vestnik, this so-called messenger, referring to a new role and sudden financial commitments with the direction of money to a bank account in Switzerland. Had Paul received that kind of cash? And if so, what was he doing in return?
I delve further back through the files, thinking about how Paul might fit into the puzzle when I receive an email from Lisa:
In the hospital, you mentioned Ligne Rouge. I found a few companies with that name. There’s one registered in the Seychelles. It looks like they own properties in the suburbs here in Paris. The strange thing is they’re all clustered around the forts – those places you showed me on your father’s computer.
I ring her and she picks up straight away.
‘What do you mean forts?’ I say, opening the attachment she’s sent. It’s a list of public spaces – parks and gardens, sports facilities and gymnasiums.
‘The old forts around Paris,’ she says. ‘There are sixteen of them, all built around two hundred years ago as defence against the Prussians. The government now uses them for high-level security purposes: police training, emergency services, security, surveillance. There’s one dead opposite you – the Fort d’Aubervilliers.’
‘And Ligne Rouge?’
‘Ligne Rouge is a holding company for businesses that seem to run migrant centres, clubs and gyms all over Paris but mainly near these forts. Its shareholders and directors are Seychelles companies, so it’s impossible to see who actually owns it all.’
‘Gyms?’
‘Yes, it’s odd they’d go to so much trouble to hide the ownership of gyms.’
‘There was a gym. When I was attacked last week, I was taken to a place that had a gym,’ I say.
I think of the bulldozed camp we passed, the face in the metro, his fighters’ muscles, the boxing gym. That same slurred voice and the persistent sense of being followed. Nick and Sami weren’t related, but they were ‘brothers’, and although Nick really didn’t care about Sami, he was a useful asset, a hard worker. If someone’s taking revenge for Sami, then perhaps it’s Nick.
Whoever attacked me wanted whatever Mari had given me on the stick and it was probably the same people who broke into my room. But why would Nick want that?
I really need to visit Sami now. I need to find out more about Nick.
*
Later that afternoon I head back to my flat for the first time since the attack. When we spoke, Lisa insisted I stay with her until I’ve properly recovered, but I need to collect some things first. I keep to the main roads and nearing the hostel, I pass the fort site. There are protesters outside the gates as usual, large makeshift posters and people with clipboards gathering signatures.
In the lobby of the apartment I see Hamid, who’s carrying a box of vegetables from his allotment and we catch the lift together. I mention the protesters I saw near the fort.
‘It’s valuable land, though, isn’t it?’ I say as we step out of the lift onto the walkway between the buildings
He passes me the box and then cups his hands around a match to light a cigarette. ‘Not really. They say the land’s contaminated, so no one wants to build on it. Some think the whole site’s radioactive.’
I look over the motorway and beyond to the two construction sites. Next to the site are the allotments – a thin strip of land producing a few beans and cabbages.
‘The army did nuclear experiments in the bunkers of the old fort,’ he says. ‘Madame Curie had labs in there before that. The place is full of contaminated waste.’
‘They tested bombs here?’ I say, and he laughs, making me think it’s all some kind of joke.
His laugh turns bitter. ‘No, not here,’ he says, flicking ash from his roll-up. ‘They tested the bombs at a safe distance – in Algeria, three thousand kilometres away. They kept it all a big secret, but everyone knows. The temperatures were so high it turned the desert sand to glass.’
‘And they say the fort’s still contaminated?’ I ask.
‘They say the levels are high, but no one knows. It’s the usual thing. The protesters say one thing, the government says another.’
‘If it’s contaminated why would you grow stuff there?’
He exhales casually. ‘Yeah, that’s right. It could be made up.’
I look at the produce in the box, which now seems deformed. The beans are too large and woody, the tomatoes bulbous and mottled. I know that’s the way home-grown ones usually are, but suddenly they all look toxic, and there’s a heavy smell on the late afternoon air.
He sees me eyeing the vegetables. ‘Occasionally they take samples for testing but they never tell us what the results are, so we assume everything’s OK. I probably get more trouble with these,’ he says, grinding his cigarette on the railing. ‘Or the fumes from the motorway.’
‘But they’d tell you if there was a problem?’ I ask.
He looks up, and there’s an edge to his smile. ‘Maybe not. It’s mainly Algerians living out here, too, so maybe it’s like the desert tests. Why else would they let us farm it?’
‘You’d prefer not to know?’
There’s a pause and he shrugs.
‘I didn’t say that. But if they do proper tests and find it’s contaminated, we’ll have to leave. If it’s not, the developers and bulldozers will come. We lose both ways.’
‘You think they’d throw you off?’
He nods. ‘Of course. There’s already talk about development,’ he says. ‘That’s what all the protests are about.’
‘Development of the whole site?’
He nods. ‘There are always rumours about what’s going on here. The latest is that the attack at Les Halles the other week was caused by someone from the travellers’ camp on the edge of the cemetery. There are rumours the old labs are being used as a bomb-making factory, that terrorists are making sarin gas in the tunnels. Someone even reported that the Imams have converted the gypsies to Islam and they’re manufacturing nuclear bombs in the bunkers again. The whole thing’s out of hand. It’s crazy.’
‘Who says all this?’
‘The papers never let it go. They call the area a no-go zone. The police have ramped up security and that’s just made it worse.’
‘Why?’
‘Because now there’s so much more focus on the area and it gives the place a bad reputation. Apparently, they’re going to bulldoze everything like they have at the Fort D’Issy. The story is they want to decommission the old labs, clean up the site and build luxury apartments.’
We say goodbye and I’m still thinking of the contamination next door when I see an email from my parole officer. She tells me my application for a visitation permit with Sami has been denied. There’s no way he’ll see me, and who can blame him? I need to come up with a better plan.
Later that night, I’m starting to write a letter to Sami when a message flashes up on my phone. It’s from an unknown number with a video file that takes a while to download. Even before I see it I know it’s me. My body naked on a blue plastic mat, and bound with black ropes. The image lasts for two seconds, and then it’s gone.
That night I dream of Sami and I wake up sweating, tracing the marks and bruises across my body.