‘Often, when the day’s work is done,’ said Mr Peters reminiscently, ‘I sit by the fire, like this, and wonder if my life has been as successful as it might have been. True, I have made money – a little property, some rentes, a few shares here and there – but it is not of money that I think. Money is not everything. What have I done with my life in this world of ours? I think sometimes that it would have been better if I had married and brought up a family, but I have always been too restless, too interested in this world of ours as a whole. Perhaps it is that I have never known what I have wanted of life. So many of us poor human creatures are like that. We go on year after year, ever seeking, ever hoping – for what? We do not know. Money? Only when we have little. I sometimes think that he who has only a crust is happier than many millionaires. For the man with a crust knows what he wants – two crusts. His life is not complicated by possessions. I only know that there is something that I want above all else. Yet, how shall I know what it is? I have –’ he waved a hand towards the bookshelf ‘– sought consolation in philosophy and the arts. Plato, H. G. Wells; yes, I have read widely. These things comfort, yet they do not satisfy.’ He smiled bravely, the victim of an almost unbearable Weltschmerz. ‘We must all just wait until the Great One summons us.’
Waiting for him to go on, Latimer wondered if he had ever before disliked anyone quite as much as he now disliked Mr Peters. It was incredible that he should believe in this tawdry nonsense of his. Yet believe in it he obviously did. It was that belief which made the man so loathsome. If he had his tongue in his cheek he would have been a good joke. As it was he was anything but a joke. His mind was divided too neatly. With one half he could peddle drugs and buy rentes and read Poèmes Erotiques, while with the other he could excrete a warm, sickly fluid to conceal his obscene soul. You could do nothing but dislike him.
Then, Latimer turned to watch the subject of these reflections carefully, almost lovingly, adjusting the coffee percolator, and thought how difficult it was to dislike a man when he was making coffee for you. The stubby fingers gave the lid a gentle, congratulatory pat and Mr Peters straightened his back and turned again with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘Yes, Mr Latimer, most of us go through life without knowing what we want of it. But Dimitrios, you know, was not like that. Dimitrios knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted money and he wanted power. Just those two things; as much of them as he could get. The curious thing is that I helped him to get them.
‘It was in 1928 that I first set eyes on Dimitrios. It was here in Paris. I was, at the time, the part-owner, with a man named Giraud, of a boîte in the Rue Blanche. We called it Le Kasbah Parisien and it was a very jolly and cosy place with divans and amber lights and rugs. I had met Giraud in Marrakesh and we decided that everything should be just like a place we knew there. Everything was Moroccan; everything, that is, except the band for dancing which was South American.
‘We opened it in 1926 which was a good year in Paris. The Americans and English, but especially the Americans, had money to spend on champagne and the French used to come, too. Most Frenchmen are sentimental about Morocco unless they have done their military service there. And the Kasbah was Morocco. We had Arab and Senegalese waiters and the champagne actually came from Meknes. It was a little sweet for the Americans, but very nice all the same and quite cheap.
‘With a boîte, you know, it takes time to build up a clientèle and you have to have luck. It is curious how everyone will suddenly begin to go to one particular place in the quarter for no other reason than that everyone else is going there. There are other ways of filling one’s place, of course. The tourist guides will bring people to you but the guides have to be paid and the profit is reduced. Another way is to let your place be one where special sorts of people may meet. But it takes time to be known for one’s type of clientèle and the police are not always friendly even though one does not break the law. It is best and cheapest to have luck. And Giraud and I had luck in due course. Naturally we had to work for it. But it came. We had a good chasseur, the tango was chic because of Valentino, and our South Americans soon learned to play well so that people came to dance. When more people came we had to put out more tables so that the floor was smaller, but it did not make any difference. People still came to dance. We used to stay open until five o’clock in the morning and people would come on from other places to ours.
‘For two years we made money and then, as is the way with such places, the clientèle began to change in character. We had more French and fewer Americans, more maquereaux and fewer gentlemen, more poules and fewer chic ladies. We still made a profit but it was not as great and we had to do more for it. I began to think that it was time to move on.
‘It was Giraud who brought Dimitrios to Le Kasbah.
‘As I said, I had met Giraud when I was in Marrakesh. He was a half-caste, his mother being an Arab and his father a French soldier. He was born in Algiers and had a French passport.
‘Mostly you would not have known that he had Arab blood. It was only when you saw him with Arabs that you knew. He never really liked Arabs. I never really liked him. It was not that he did not trust me – that was no more than hurtful to me – but that I could not trust him. If I had had enough money to open Le Kasbah by myself I would not have taken him as a partner. He would try to trick me over the accounts and though he never succeeded I did not like it. I cannot stand dishonesty. By the spring of 1928 I was very weary of Giraud.
‘I do not know exactly how he met Dimitrios. I think that it was at some boîte higher up the Rue Blanche; for we did not open until eleven o’clock and Giraud liked to dance at other places beforehand. But, one evening, he brought Dimitrios into Le Kasbah and then took me aside. He remarked that profits had been getting smaller and said that we could make some money for ourselves if we did business with this friend of his, Dimitrios Makropoulos.
‘The first time I saw Dimitrios I was not impressed by him. He was, I thought, just such a type of maquereau as I had seen before. His clothes fitted tightly and he had greying hair and polished fingernails and he looked at women in a way that those who came to Le Kasbah would not like. But I went over to his table with Giraud and we shook hands. Then he pointed to the chair beside him and told me to sit down. One would have thought that I was a waiter instead of the patron.’
He turned his watery eyes to Latimer. ‘You may think, Mr Latimer, that, for one who was not impressed, I remember the occasion very clearly. That is true. I do remember it clearly. You understand, I did not then know Dimitrios as I came to know him later. He made his impression without seeming to do so. At the time he irritated me. Without sitting down, I asked him what he wanted.
‘For a moment he looked at me. He had very soft, brown eyes, you know. Then he said: “I want champagne, my friend. Have you any objection? I can pay for it, you know. Are you going to be polite to me or shall I take my business proposals to more intelligent people?”
‘I am an even-tempered man. I do not like trouble. I often think how much pleasanter a place this world of ours would be if people were polite and softly spoken with one another. But there are times when it is difficult. I told Dimitrios that nothing would induce me to be polite to him and that he could go when he pleased.
‘But for Giraud he would have gone and I should not be sitting here talking to you. Giraud sat down at the table with him, apologizing for me. Dimitrios was watching me while Giraud was speaking, and I could see that he was wondering about me.
‘I was now quite sure that I did not want to do business of any kind with this Dimitrios, but because of Giraud I agreed to listen, and we sat down together while Dimitrios told us what his proposal was. He talked very convincingly, and at last I agreed to do what he wanted. We had been in association with Dimitrios for several months, when one day…’
‘Just a moment,’ interrupted Latimer; ‘what was this association? Was this the beginning of the drug-peddling?’
Mr Peters hesitated and frowned. ‘No, Mr Latimer, it was not.’ He hesitated again and then broke suddenly into French. ‘I will tell you what our business together was if you insist, but it is so difficult to explain these things to a person who does not understand the milieu, who is not sympathetic. It involves matters so much outside your experience.’
Latimer’s ‘Indeed?’ was a trifle acid.
‘You see, Mr Latimer, I have read one of your books. It terrified me. There was about it an atmosphere of intolerance, of prejudice, of ferocious moral rectitude that I found quite unnerving.’
‘I see.’
‘I am not one of those persons,’ pursued Mr Peters, ‘who object to the idea of capital punishment. You, I gather, are. The practical side of execution by hanging shocks you. Yet, shuddering with horror at your own barbarity, you proceeded to hunt this unfortunate murderer of yours with a kind of compassionate glee that was quite repellent to me. Your attitude reminded me of that of a sentimental young man as he follows his rich aunt’s coffin to the graveside: his eyes are filled with tears, but his heart is leaping for joy. The Spaniard, you know, finds the objections of the English-speaking peoples to bullfighting very odd. What the simple fellow does not realize is that he has neglected to show that it is a moral and legal necessity for him to torture the horses and the bull and that he dislikes doing it. Please do not misunderstand me, Mr Latimer. I do not fear your moral censure, but I resent, mildly yet quite definitely, your being shocked.’
‘As you have not yet told me what I am expected to be shocked at,’ Latimer pointed out irritably, ‘it is a little difficult for me to answer you.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. But, forgive me, does not your interest in Dimitrios arise largely from the fact that you are shocked by him?’
Latimer thought for a moment. ‘I think that that may be true. But it is just because I am shocked by him that I am trying to understand, to explain him. I do not believe in the inhuman, professional devil that one reads about in crime stories; and yet everything that I have heard about Dimitrios suggests that he consistently acted with quite revolting inhumanity – not just once or twice, but consistently.’
‘Are the desires for money and power inhuman? With money and power a vain man can do so much to give himself pleasure. His vanity was one of the first things that I noticed about Dimitrios. It was that quiet, profound vanity that makes the man who has it so much more dangerous than ordinary people with their peacock antics. Come now, Mr Latimer, be reasonable! The difference between Dimitrios and the more respectable type of successful businessman is only a difference of method – legal method or illegal method. Both are in their respective ways equally ruthless.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘No doubt. It is interesting, though, is it not, to note that I am now attempting to defend Dimitrios against attack from the forces of moral rectitude. He would not, I feel sure, be at all grateful to me for doing so. Dimitrios was, for all his apparent savoir faire, hopelessly uneducated. The words “moral rectitude” would mean nothing to him. Ah! The coffee is ready.’
He poured it out in silence, raised his own cup to his nose and sampled the aroma. Then he put the cup down.
‘Dimitrios,’ he said, ‘was connected at the time with what I believe you call the white slave traffic. It is such an interesting phrase to me. “Traffic” – a word full of horrible significance. “White slave” – consider the implications of the adjective. Does anyone talk nowadays about the coloured slave traffic? I think not. Yet the majority of the women involved are coloured. I fail to see why the consequences of the traffic should be any more disagreeable to a white girl from a Bucharest slum than to a negro girl from Dakar or a Chinese girl from Harbin. The League of Nations Committee is unprejudiced enough to appreciate that aspect of the question. They are intelligent enough, too, to mistrust the word “slave”. They refer to the “traffic in women”.
‘I have never liked the business. It is impossible to treat human beings as one would treat ordinary inanimate merchandise. There is always trouble. There is always the possibility, too, that in an isolated case the adjective “white” might have a religious instead of a merely racial application. From my experience, I should say that the possibility is remote, but there it is. I may be illogical and sentimental, but I should not care to be associated with anything like that. Besides, the overhead expenses of a trafficker in what is considered a fair way of business are enormous. There are always false birth, marriage and death certificates to be obtained and travelling expenses and bribes to pay, quite apart from the cost of maintaining several identities. You have no idea of the cost of forged documents, Mr Latimer. There used to be three recognized sources of supply: one in Zürich, one in Amsterdam and one in Brussels. All neutrals! Odd, isn’t it? You used to be able to get a false-real Danish passport – that is, a real Danish passport treated chemically to remove the original entries and photograph and then filled in with new ones – for, let me see, about two thousand francs at the present rate of exchange. A real-false – manufactured from start to finish by the agent – would have cost you a little less, say fifteen hundred. Nowadays you would have to pay twice as much. Most of the business is done here in Paris now. It is the refugees, of course. The point is that a trafficker needs plenty of capital. If he is known there are always plenty of people willing to provide it, but they expect fantastic dividends. It is better to have one’s own capital.
‘Dimitrios had his own capital, but he also had access to capital which was not his own. He represented certain very rich men. He was never at a loss for money. When he came to Giraud and me he was in a different sort of difficulty. Owing to League of Nations activities the laws in quite a number of countries had been altered and tightened up in such a way that it was sometimes very difficult indeed to get women from one place to another. All very praiseworthy, but a great nuisance to men like Dimitrios. It was not that it made it impossible for them to do their business. It didn’t. But it made things more complicated and expensive for them.
‘Before Dimitrios came to us he had had a very simple technique. He knew people in Alexandria who would advise him about their requirements. Then he would go to, say, Poland, recruit the women, take them to France on their own passports and then ship them from Marseilles. That was all. It was enough to say that the girls were going to fulfil a theatrical engagement. When the regulations were tightened up, however, it was no longer as simple. The night he came to Le Kasbah he told us that he had just encountered his first trouble. He had recruited twelve women from a Madame in Vilna, but the Poles would not let him bring them out without guarantees as to their destination and the respectability of their future employment. Respectability! But that was the law.
‘Naturally, Dimitrios had told the Polish authorities that he would provide the guarantees. It would have been fatal for him not to have done so, for then he would have been suspect. Somehow he had to obtain the guarantees. That was where Giraud and I came in. We were to say that we were employing the girls as cabaret dancers and deal with any inquiries that might be made by the Polish Consular authorities. As long as they stayed in Paris for a week or so, we were perfectly safe. If inquiries were made after that we knew nothing. They had completed their engagement and gone. Where they had gone to was no business of ours.
‘That was the way Dimitrios put it to us. He said that for our part of the affair he would pay us five thousand francs. It was money easily earned, but I was doubtful, and it was Giraud who finally persuaded me to agree. But I told Dimitrios that my agreement only applied to this particular case and that I could not consider myself committed to helping him again. Giraud grumbled, but agreed to accept the condition.
‘A month later Dimitrios came to see us again, paid us the balance of the five thousand francs and said that he had another job for us. I objected, but, as Giraud immediately pointed out, we had had no trouble on the first occasion and my objection was not very firm. The money was useful. It paid the South Americans for a week.
‘I believe now that Dimitrios lied to us about that first five thousand francs. I do not think that we earned it. I think he gave it to us simply to gain our confidence. It was like him to do a thing like that. Another man might try to trick you into serving his ends, but Dimitrios bought you. Yet he bought you cheaply. He set one’s common sense fighting against one’s instinctive suspicions of him.
‘I have said that we earned that first five thousand francs without trouble. The second caused us a lot of trouble. The Polish authorities made some chi-chi, and we had the police visiting us and asking questions. Worse, we had to have these women in Le Kasbah to prove that we were employing them. They could not dance a step and were a great inconvenience to us, as we had to be amiable to them in case one should go to the police and tell the truth. They drank champagne all the time, and if Dimitrios had not agreed to pay for it we should have lost money.
‘He was, of course, very apologetic and said that there had been a mistake. He paid us ten thousand francs for our trouble and promised that if we would continue to help him there would be no more Polish girls and no more chi-chi. After some argument we agreed, and for several months we were paid our ten thousand francs. We had during that time only occasional visits from the police, and there was no unpleasantness. But at last we had trouble again. This time it was because of the Italian authorities. Both Giraud and I were questioned by the examining magistrate for the district and kept for a day at the Commissariat. The day after that I quarrelled with Giraud.
‘I say that I quarrelled. It would be more correct to say that our quarrel became open. I have told you that I did not like Giraud. He was crude and stupid and, as I have said, he sometimes tried to cheat me. He was suspicious, too; suspicious in a loud, stupid way like an animal, and he encouraged the wrong sort of clientèle. His friends were detestable: maquereaux, all of them. He used to call people “mon gar”. He would have been better as the patron of a bistro. For all I know he may be one now, but I think it more likely that he is in a prison. He often became violent when he was angry and sometimes injured people badly.
‘That day after our unpleasantness with the police I said that we should have no more to do with this business of the women. That made him angry. He said that we should be fools to give up ten thousand francs a month because of a few police and that I was too nervous for his taste. I understood his point of view. He had had much to do with the police both in Marrakesh and Algiers, and he had a contempt for them. As long as he could keep out of prison and make money he was satisfied. I have never thought that way. I do not like the police to be interested in me, even though they cannot arrest me. Giraud was right. I was nervous. But although I understood his point of view I could not agree with it, and I said so. I also said that, if he wished, he could buy my share in Le Kasbah Parisien for the amount of money I had originally invested.
‘It was a sacrifice on my part, you know, but I was tired of Giraud and wanted to be rid of him. I did get rid of him. He agreed immediately. That night we saw Dimitrios and explained the situation to him. Giraud was delighted with his bargain and enjoyed himself very much cracking clumsy jokes at my expense. Dimitrios smiled at these jokes, but when Giraud left us alone for a moment, he asked me to leave soon after he did and meet him at a café as he had something to say to me.
‘I very nearly did not go. On the whole, I think that it was as well that I did go. I profited by my association with Dimitrios. There are, I think, very few associates of Dimitrios who could say as much, but I was lucky. Besides, I think that he had a respect for my intelligence. Generally he could bluff me, but not always.
‘He was waiting in the café for me, and I sat down beside him and asked him what he wanted. I was never polite to him.
‘He said: “I think you are wise to leave Giraud. The business with the women has become too dangerous. It was always difficult. Now I have finished with it.”
‘I asked him if he proposed to tell Giraud that and he smiled.
‘“Not yet,” he said. “Not until you have your money from him.”
‘I said suspiciously that he was very kind, but he shook his head impatiently. “Giraud is a fool,” he said. “If you had not been there with him, I should have made other arrangements about the women. Now, I am offering you a chance to work with me. I should be a fool if I made you angry with me to begin with by costing you your investment in Le Kasbah.”
‘Then he asked me if I knew anything about the heroin business. I did know a little about it. He then told me that he had sufficient capital to buy twenty kilogrammes a month and finance its distribution in Paris and asked me if I were interested in working for him.
‘Now, twenty kilogrammes of heroin is a serious thing, Mr Latimer. It is worth a lot of money. I asked him how he proposed to distribute so much. He said that, for the moment, that would be his affair. What he wanted me to do was to negotiate the purchases abroad and find ways of bringing it into the country. If I agreed to his proposal I was to begin by going to Bulgaria as his representative, dealing with suppliers there of whom he already knew and arranging for the transport of the stuff to Paris. He offered me 10 per cent of the value of every kilo I supplied him with.
‘I said that I would think it over, but my mind was already made up. With the price of heroin as it was then, I knew that I would make nearly twenty thousand francs a month. I also knew that he was going to make a great deal more than that for himself. Even if, with my commission and expenses, he had to pay in effect fifteen thousand francs a kilo for the stuff, it would be good business for him. Selling heroin by the gramme in Paris, one can get nearly one hundred thousand francs a kilo for it. With the commissions to the actual pedlars and others, he would make not less than thirty thousand francs on each kilo. That meant over half a million francs a month for him. Capital is a wonderful thing if one knows just what to do with it and does not mind a little risk.
‘In the September of 1928 I went to Bulgaria for Dimitrios with instructions from him to get the first twenty kilos to him by November. He had already begun to make arrangements with agents and pedlars. The sooner I could get the stuff the better.
‘Dimitrios had given me the name of a man in Sofia who would put me in touch with the suppliers. This man did so. He also arranged for the credits with which I was to make the purchases. He –’
Latimer had an idea. He said suddenly: ‘What was this man’s name?’
Mr Peters frowned at the interruption. ‘I do not think that you ought to ask me that, Mr Latimer.’
‘Was it Vazoff?’
Mr Peters’ eyes watered at him. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘And were the credits arranged through the Eurasian Credit Trust?’
‘You evidently know a great deal more than I had thought.’ Mr Peters was obviously not pleased by the fact. ‘May I ask… ?’
‘I was guessing. But you need not have worried about compromising Vazoff. He died three years ago.’
‘I am aware of it. Did you guess that Vazoff was dead? And how much more guessing have you done, Mr Latimer?’
‘That is all. Please continue.’
‘Frankness…’ began Mr Peters, and then stopped and drank his coffee. ‘We will return to the subject,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, Mr Latimer, I admit that you are right. Through Vazoff, I purchased the supplies Dimitrios needed and paid for them with drafts on Eurasian Credit Trust of Sofia. There was no difficulty about that. My real task was to transport the stuff to France. I decided to send it by rail to Salonika and ship it from there to Marseilles.’
‘As heroin?’
‘Obviously not. But I must confess it was difficult to know how to disguise it. The only goods which come into France from Bulgaria regularly, and which would not, therefore, be subject to special examination by the French Customs, were things like grain and tobacco and attar of roses. Dimitrios was pressing for delivery and I was at my wits’ end.’ He paused dramatically.
‘Well, how did you smuggle it?’
‘In a coffin, Mr Latimer. The French, I reflected, are a race with a great respect for the solemnity of death. Have you ever attended a French funeral? Pompe funèbre, you know. It is most impressive. No customs official, I felt certain, would care to play the ghoul. I purchased the coffin in Sofia. It was a beautiful thing with very fine carving on it. I also purchased a suit of mourning clothes and accompanied the coffin myself. I am a man who responds very readily to emotion and really I was most moved by the marks of simple respect for my grief shown by the stevedores who handled the coffin at the dock. Not even my own personal luggage was examined at Customs.
‘I had warned Dimitrios, and a hearse was waiting for me and the coffin. I was pleased by my success, but Dimitrios, when I saw him, shrugged. I could not, he said very reasonably, arrive in France with a coffin every month. I think he thought the whole affair a little unbusinesslike. He was right, of course. He had, however, a suggestion. There was an Italian shipping line which ran one cargo steamer a month from Varna to Genoa. The stuff could be shipped to Genoa in small cases and manifested as special tobacco consigned to France. That would prevent the Italian Customs examining it. There was a man in Nice who could arrange for the transport of the stuff from Genoa by bribing the warehouse people to release it from bond, and then smuggling it through by road. I wished to know how that would affect my financial interest in the supplies. He said that I should lose nothing as there was other work for me to do.
‘It was curious how we all accepted his leadership almost without question. Yes, he had the money, but there was more than that to it. He dominated us because he knew precisely what he wanted and precisely how to get it with the least possible trouble and at the lowest possible cost. He knew how to find the people to work for him, too, and, when he had found them, he knew how to handle them.
‘There were seven of us who took our instructions directly from Dimitrios, and not one was the sort of person to take instructions easily. For instance, Visser, the Dutchman, had sold German machine-guns to the Chinese, spied for the Japanese and served a term of imprisonment for killing a coolie in Batavia. He was not an easy man to handle. It was he who made the arrangements with the clubs and bars through which we reached the addicts.
‘You see, the system of distribution was very carefully organized. Both Lenôtre and Galindo had for several years been peddling drugs which they bought from a man in the employ of a big French wholesale drug manufacturer. That sort of thing used to be quite easy before the 1931 regulations. Both those men knew well those who needed the stuff and where to find them. Before Dimitrios came on the scene they had been dealing mostly in morphine and cocaine and always they had been handicapped by limited supplies. When Dimitrios offered them unlimited supplies of heroin they were quite ready to abandon the wholesale chemist and sell their clients heroin.
‘But that was only one part of the business. Drug addicts, you know, are always very eager to get other people to take drugs too. Consequently, your circle of consumers is ever-widening. It is most important, as you may imagine, to see that when you are approached by new customers they are not representatives of the Brigade des Stupéfiants or other similar undesirables. That was where Visser’s work came in. The would-be buyer would come to, say, Lenôtre in the first place on the recommendation of a regular customer known to Lenôtre. But, on being asked for drugs, Lenôtre would pretend to be astonished. Drugs? He knew nothing of such things. Personally, he never used them. But, if one did use them, he had heard that the place to go to was the So-and-So Bar. At the So-and-So Bar, which would be on Visser’s list, the prospective customer would receive much the same sort of answer. Drugs? No. Nothing of that kind at the So-and-So Bar, but if it should be possible to call in again the following night, there might possibly be someone who could help. The following night, the Grand Duchess would be there.
‘She was a curious woman. She had been brought into the business by Visser and was, I think, the only one of us Dimitrios had not found for himself. She was very clever. Her capacity for weighing up complete strangers was extraordinary. She could, I think, tell the most cleverly disguised detective just by looking at him across a room. It was her business to examine the person who wanted to buy and decide whether he or she should be supplied or not and how much was to be charged. She was very valuable to us.
‘The other man was the Belgian, Werner. It was he who dealt with the small pedlars. He had been a chemist at one time and he used, I believe, to dilute the heroin. Dimitrios never mentioned that part of the business.
‘Some dilution very soon became necessary. Within six months of our beginning, I had had to increase the monthly heroin supply to fifty kilos. And I had other work to do. Lenôtre and Galindo had reported in the early stages that, if they were to get all the business they knew of, they would have to have morphine and cocaine to sell as well as heroin. Morphine addicts did not always like heroin, and cocaine addicts would sometimes refuse it if they could get cocaine elsewhere. I had then to arrange for supplies of morphine and cocaine. The morphine problem was a simple one as it could be supplied at the same time and by the same people as the heroin, but the cocaine was a different matter. For that, it was necessary to go to Germany. I had plenty to do.
‘We had our troubles, of course. They usually came to my part of the business. By the time we had been operating for a year, I had made several alternative arrangements for bringing in our supplies. In addition to the Genoa route for heroin and morphine which Lamare handled, I had come to terms with a sleeping car attendant on the Orient Express. He used to take the stuff aboard at Sofia and deliver it when the train was shunted into the siding in Paris. It was not a very safe route and I had to take elaborate precautions to protect myself in case of trouble, but it was rapid. Cocaine used to come in in cases of machinery from Germany. We had also begun to receive consignments of heroin from an Istanbul factory. These were brought by a cargo boat which left them floating outside the port of Marseilles in anchored containers for Lamare to collect at night.
‘There was one week of disaster. In the last week of the June of 1929, fifteen kilos of heroin were seized on the Orient Express, and the police arrested six of my men including the sleeping car attendant. That would have been bad enough, but during the same week Lamare had to abandon a consignment of forty kilos of heroin and morphine near Sospel. He himself escaped but we were in a serious difficulty, for the loss of those fifty-five kilos meant that we were left with only eight kilos to meet commitments for over fifty. None was due on the Istanbul boat for several days. We were in despair. Lenôtre and Galindo and Werner had a terrible time. Two of Galindo’s clientèle committed suicide, and in one of the bars there was a fracas in which Werner had his head cut.
‘I did the best I could. I went to Sofia myself and brought back ten kilos in a trunk, but that was not enough. Dimitrios did not, I must say, blame me. It would have been unfair to have done so. But he was angry. He decided that, in future, reserve stocks must be held. It was soon after that week that he bought these houses. Until then we had always met him in a room over a café near the Porte d’Orleans. Now he said that these houses should be our headquarters. We never knew where he lived and could never get in touch with him until he chose to telephone one or other of us. We were to discover later that this ignorance of his address put us at a disastrous disadvantage. But other things happened before we made that discovery.
‘The task of creating stocks was left to me. It was by no means easy. If we were both to create stocks and to maintain existing supplies we had to increase the size of the consignments. That meant that there was a greater risk of seizure. It also meant that we had to find more new methods of bringing the stuff in. Things were complicated, too, by the Bulgarian Government’s closing down the factory at Radomir from which we drew the bulk of our supplies. It soon opened again in a different part of the country, but inevitably there were delays. We were forced to rely more and more upon Istanbul.
‘It was a trying time. In two months we lost by seizure no less than ninety kilos of heroin, twenty of morphine and five of cocaine. But, in spite of ups and downs, the stock increased steadily. By the end of 1930, we had, beneath the floorboards of those houses next door, two hundred and fifty kilos of heroin, two hundred odd kilos of morphine, ninety kilos of cocaine and a small quantity of prepared Turkish opium.’
Mr Peters poured out the remainder of the coffee and extinguished the spirit lamp. Then he took a cigarette, wetted the end of it with his tongue and lit it.
‘Have you ever known a drug addict, Mr Latimer?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Ah, you don’t think so. You do not know for certain. Yes, it is possible for a drug taker to conceal his little weakness for quite a time. But he – especially she – cannot conceal it indefinitely, you know. The process is always roughly the same. It begins as an experiment. Half a gramme, perhaps, is taken through the nostrils. It may make you feel sick the first time, but you will try again and the next time it will be as it should be. A delicious sensation, warm, brilliant. Time stands still, but the mind moves at a tremendous pace and, it seems to you, with incredible efficiency. You were stupid; you become highly intelligent. You were unhappy; you become carefree. What you do not like you forget; and what you do like you experience with an intensity of pleasure undreamed of. Three hours of paradise. And afterwards it is not too bad; not nearly as bad as it was when you had too much champagne. You want to be quiet; you feel a little ill at ease, that is all. Soon you are yourself again. Nothing has happened to you except that you have enjoyed yourself amazingly. If you do not wish to take the drug again, you tell yourself you need not do so. As an intelligent person you are superior to the stuff. Then, therefore, there is no logical reason why you should not enjoy yourself again, is there? Of course there isn’t! And so you do. But this time it is a little disappointing. Your half a gramme was not quite enough. Disappointment must be dealt with. You must wander in paradise just once more before you decide not to take the stuff again. A trifle more; nearly a gramme perhaps. Paradise again and still you don’t feel any the worse for it. And since you don’t feel any the worse for it, why not continue? Everybody knows that the stuff does ultimately have a bad effect on you, but the moment you detect any bad effects you will stop. Only fools become addicts. One and a half grammes. It really is something to look forward to in life. Only three months ago everything was so dreary, but now… Two grammes. Naturally, as you are taking a little more it is only reasonable to expect to feel a little ill and depressed afterwards. It’s four months now. You must stop soon. Two and a half grammes. Your nose and throat get so dry these days. Other people seem to get on your nerves, too. Perhaps it is because you are sleeping so badly. They make too much noise. They talk so loudly. And what are they saying? Yes, what? Things about you, vicious lies. You can see it in their faces. Three grammes. And there are other things to be considered, other dangers. You have to be careful. Food tastes horrible. You cannot remember things that you have to do; important things. Even if you should happen to remember them, there are so many other things to worry you apart from this beastliness of having to live. For instance, your nose keeps running: that is, it is not really running but you think it must be, so you have to keep touching it to make sure. Another thing: there is always a fly annoying you. This terrible fly will never leave you alone and in peace. It is on your face, on your hand, on your neck. You must pull yourself together. Three and a half grammes. You see the idea, Mr Latimer?’
‘You don’t seem to approve of drug-taking.’
‘Approve!’ Mr Peters stared, aghast. ‘It is terrible, terrible! Lives are ruined. They lose the power to work yet they must find money to pay for their special stuff. Under such circumstances people become desperate and may even do something criminal to get it. I see what is in your mind, Mr Latimer. You feel that it is strange that I should have been connected with, that I should have made money out of, a thing of which I disapprove so sternly. But consider. If I had not made the money, someone else would have done so. Not one of those unfortunate creatures would have been any better off and I should have lost money.’
‘What about this ever-increasing clientèle of yours? You cannot pretend that all of those your organization supplied were habitual drug-takers before you went to work.’
‘Of course they were not. But that side of the business was nothing to do with me. That was Lenôtre and Galindo. And I may tell you that Lenôtre and Galindo and Werner, too, were themselves addicts. They used cocaine. It is harder on the constitution but, whereas one can become a dangerous heroin addict in a few months, one can spend several years killing oneself with cocaine.’
‘What did Dimitrios take?’
‘Heroin. It was a great surprise to us the first time we noticed it. We would meet him in this room as a rule at about six o’clock in the evening. It was on one of those evenings in the spring of 1931 when we had our surprise!
‘Dimitrios arrived late. That in itself was unusual, but we took little notice of it. As a rule, at these meetings, he would sit very quietly with his eyes half-closed, looking a little troubled as though he had a headache, so that even when one became used to him one constantly wished to ask if all was well with him. Watching him sometimes I used to be amazed at myself for allowing myself to be led by him. Then I would see his face change as he turned to meet some objection from Visser – it was always Visser who objected – and I would understand. Visser was a violent man, and quick and cunning as well, but he seemed a child beside Dimitrios. Once when Dimitrios had been making a fool of him, Visser pulled out a pistol. He was white with rage. I could see his finger squeezing the trigger. If I had been Dimitrios, I would have prayed. But Dimitrios only smiled in the insolent way he had and, turning his back on Visser, began to talk to me about some business matter. Dimitrios was always quiet like that, even when he was angry.
‘That was why we were so surprised that evening. He came in late and he stood inside the door looking at us for nearly a minute. Then he walked over to his place and sat down. Visser had been saying something about the patron of a café who had been making trouble and now he went on. There was nothing remarkable about what he was saying. I think he was telling Galindo that he must stop using the café as it was unsafe.
‘Suddenly, Dimitrios leaned across the table, shouted “Imbecile!” and spat in Visser’s face.
‘Visser was as surprised as the rest of us. He opened his mouth to speak, but Dimitrios did not give him time to say anything. Before we could grasp what was happening, he was accusing Visser of the most fantastic things. The words poured out and he spat again like a guttersnipe.
‘Visser went white and got to his feet with his hand in the pocket where he kept his pistol, but Lenôtre, who was beside him, got up, too, and whispered something to him which made Visser take his hand from his pocket. Lenôtre was used to people who had been taking drugs and he and Galindo and Werner had recognized the signs as soon as Dimitrios had entered the room. But Dimitrios had seen Lenôtre whisper and turned to him. From Lenôtre he came to the rest of us. We were fools, he told us, if we thought that he did not know that we were plotting against him. He called us a lot of very unpleasant names in French and Greek. Then he began to boast that he was cleverer than the rest of us together, that but for him we should be starving, that he alone was responsible for our success (which was true, although we did not like to be told it) and that he could do with us as he wished. He went on for half an hour, abusing us and boasting alternately. None of us said a word. Then, as suddenly as he had started, he stopped, stood up and walked out of the room.
‘I suppose that we should have been prepared for treachery after that. Heroin addicts have a reputation for it. Yet we were not prepared. I think it may have been that we were so conscious of the amount of money he was making. I only know that, when he had gone, Lenôtre and Galindo laughed and asked Werner if the boss were paying for the stuff he used. Even Visser grinned. A joke was made of it, you see.
‘Next time we saw Dimitrios he was quite normal and no reference was made to his outburst. But as the months went by, although we had no more outbursts, he became bad-tempered and little difficulties would make him angry. His appearance was changing, too. He looked thin and ill and his eyes were dull. He did not always come to the meetings.
‘Then, we had our second warning.
‘Early in September, he announced suddenly that he proposed to reduce the consignments for the next three months and use our stock. This startled us, and there were many objections. I was one of the objectors. I had had a great deal of trouble building up the stock and did not want to see it distributed without reason. The others reminded him of the trouble they had had when supplies ran out before. But Dimitrios would not listen. He had been warned, he said, that there was to be a new drive by the police. Not only, he said, would so large a stock compromise us seriously if it were discovered, but its seizure would be a serious financial loss. He, too, was sorry to see it go, but it was best to play for safety.
‘I do not think that the notion that he might be liquidating his assets before he got out occurred to any of us, and you may say that for people of experience we were very trusting. You would be right to say that. With the exception of Visser we seemed always to be on the defensive in our dealings with Dimitrios. Even Lydia, who understood so much about people, was defeated by him. As for Visser, he was too paralysed by his own conceit to believe that anyone, even a drug addict, could betray him. Besides, why should we suspect him? We were making money, but he was making more, much more. What logical reason was there for suspecting him? Who could possibly have foreseen that he would behave like a madman?’
He shrugged. ‘You know the rest. He turned informer. We were all arrested. I was in Marseilles with Lamare when we were caught. The police were quite clever. They watched us for a week before they took us. They hoped, I think, to catch us with some of the stuff. Luckily, we noticed them the day before we were due to take delivery of a big consignment from Istanbul. Lenôtre and Galindo and Werner were not so lucky. They had some of the stuff in their pockets. The police tried, of course, to make me tell them about Dimitrios and showed me the dossier he had sent them. They might as well have asked me for the moon. Visser, I found out later, knew more than the rest of us, but he did not tell the police what it was. He had other ideas. He told the police that Dimitrios had had an apartment in the seventeenth arrondissement. That was a lie. Visser wanted to get a lighter sentence than the rest of us. He did not. He died not long ago, poor fellow.’ Mr Peters heaved a sigh and produced one of his cheroots.
Latimer touched his second cup of coffee. It was quite cold. He took a cigarette and accepted a light from his host’s match.
‘Well?’ he said when he saw that the cheroot was alight. ‘What then? I am still waiting to hear how I am to earn a half a million francs.’
Mr Peters smiled as if he were presiding at a Sunday School treat and Latimer had asked for a second currant bun. ‘That, Mr Latimer, is part of another story.’
‘What story?’
‘The story of what happened to Dimitrios after he disappeared from view.’
‘Well, what did happen to him?’ Latimer demanded testily.
Without replying, Mr Peters picked up the photograph that lay on the table and handed it to him again.
Latimer looked at it and frowned. ‘Yes, I’ve seen this. It’s Dimitrios all right. What about it?’
Mr Peters smiled very sweetly and gently. ‘That, Mr Latimer, is a photograph of Manus Visser.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I told you that Visser had other ideas about using the knowledge he had been clever enough to acquire about Dimitrios. What you saw on the mortuary table in Istanbul, Mr Latimer, was Visser after he had tried to put those ideas into practice.’
‘But it was Dimitrios. I saw…’
‘You saw the body of Visser, Mr Latimer, after Dimitrios had killed him. Dimitrios himself, I am glad to say, is alive and in good health.’