The Guardian of Lies Read online

  ‘Paris?’

  ‘Merde, all right, I’m the one who needs you.’

  ‘What’s going on? Are you on a new case?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been hired by a wealthy father whose son is caught up in an illegal gambling syndicate.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  We spent the next ten minutes discussing the case. I suggested several options of action and I could feel the purr of satisfaction in her voice.

  ‘Are you able to come back to Paris just for a week or two to oil the wheels on this case?’

  ‘Sorry, Clarisse, I can’t.’

  ‘C’mon, Eloïse. There’s more to life than horses and bulls and bloody brothers. You need some fun in your life again. Pop back to Paris.’

  ‘No time, sorry.’

  ‘Can’t I tempt you? I’m off to a party tomorrow night at Les Danseuses.’

  ‘Well, I’m off to a party myself tomorrow night. A dance at the American air base.’ I paused.

  ‘What is it, chérie?’ Clarisse’s voice was soft and smoky. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I need to ask a favour of you, boss.’

  She let loose a short surprised whistle that shot down the line. ‘Now that’s a first. What do you want?’

  ‘I need information on two men. They both live in Paris, but they work in Intelligence so they are good at being invisible. Both big, both in suits, both French. Their names are Gilles Bertin and Maurice Piquet. Bertin has a pencil moustache and keeps his hands clean. The other one, Piquet, is pure beef muscle.’

  ‘And why are you searching for information on these men?’ I said nothing.

  ‘Okay,’ Clarisse muttered. She sighed elaborately.

  ‘They are dangerous, so take care,’ I warned her. ‘They are what our American friends call tough cookies.’

  ‘So am I.’

  Clarisse hung up.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Americans do not dance as well as Frenchmen. I learned that much.

  They stepped on my feet with as little finesse as America stepping on France. But they did it with such broad smiles and with so much laughter that I put aside all my fury and fear, and I laughed with them. They proved to be an unexpected combination of bold teeth and respectful hands, of tall stories and secret confidences. And they called me ‘ma’am’ – yes ma’am, no ma’am, would you care to dance, ma’am? Which made me want to kiss them. They didn’t seem to give a damn about my face scar either. But maybe when you have hundreds of men from the United States Air Force on a base and only a handful of women, some in uniform, some not, well, what’s a little scar between friends?

  I drank beer, something I would normally never touch. But this wasn’t normal, was it? This felt like a bite out of the future, a quick taste of what was coming our way. The evening in the recreation hall was buzzing with its bright yellow chairs on chrome legs and lamps that looked more like space rockets, its pulsing music and its young men convinced they could kick down worlds and rebuild them with their chewing gum, their Hershey bars and their big cars.

  It sent a tremor through me, so strong the beer in my glass rippled. I wasn’t sure if it was from excitement at this tidal wave of energy and American can-do attitude or fear of losing all that was dear to me in my beloved France. I knew that Prime Minister Laniel would just roll over and let the Americans take whatever they demanded, despite the unease about it in France. André was right about that. We needed them. Or we would soon be singing the state anthem of the Soviet Union over our morning coffee.

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself ?’

  It was Mickey who asked, my attentive mechanic from Chicago, who had this evening told me more about the internal combustion engine than I expected ever to need in a lifetime.

  ‘We’re having a great time, aren’t we, Eloïse?’ Marianne answered for me.

  My friend snuggled closer to her handsome lumberjack, Calvin, and treated me to a pointed look in case I complained about the Budweiser beer or the ear-splitting volume of the music. But she was wrong about that. I didn’t object to them at all. The only thing I objected to was the double chainlink fence that stood between me and the business-end of the air base.

  I had picked up Marianne from her apartment above her glass shop in Serriac, and was knocked out by her Marilyn Monroe-style figure-hugging dress.

  ‘Since when?’ I asked.

  ‘Since the Yanks hauled into town,’ she’d grinned.

  I’d driven us out to the air base with one eye on my rear-view mirror. At the gates we were met by Mickey and Calvin in smart khaki uniforms and greeted by two heavily armed guards who wanted to see passes. The base looked to me like a concrete fortress with a double stretch of chain-link fence and barbed wire around it. The sort of place where things went on you didn’t want to know. But I wanted to know so bad, that I was happy to sit through a whole damn day of learning how to fix a carburettor if that’s what it took.

  Mickey must have noticed my eyes glazing over because when he heard Big Mama Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ come on the jukebox, he wrapped his strong mechanic’s hand around mine and said, ‘C’mon, another jive?’ But I had no more jives left in me, no more kicks and flicks or joyous bounces. I was all out of joy.

  It was Calvin who rescued me. ‘Give the girl a break, Mickey. French girls are more . . .’ He studied me for a moment, his eyes as brown and steadfast as one of my father’s dogs. ‘. . . more refined than girls back home. You gotta give them time to breathe. Time to think.’ He smiled at me. ‘Ask her what she wants to do.’

  ‘Thank you, Calvin.’

  ‘You’re welcome, ma’am.’

  ‘So what would you like to do now? Another beer?’ Mickey asked, still keeping hold of my hand, while his other arm slipped around my waist.

  ‘I’d like some fresh air. Outside. It’s very hot in here.’

  He beamed at me. ‘Sure.’

  Outside were the planes. We started for the door.

  ‘Good evening, Mademoiselle Caussade,’ a voice said behind me.

  I spun round fast. Too jumpy. Calm down.

  In front of me stood a United States Air Force officer. Immaculate uniform, impressive insignia and dark hair parted ruler-straight on one side. One glance and I knew he was the kind of man I’d want defending my country. Wellmuscled with dark intelligent eyes that knew exactly how to create order out of disorder, and a bearing that I could see would inspire men to follow him. I’d guess he was in his thirties, but he had a look about him that was older, as though he’d seen more than any man in his thirties had a right to.

  I nodded politely, but suspicion ran over my skin like ants. How did this stranger know my name?

  ‘I am Major Dirke. I’m sorry to disturb your evening but I saw you walking past my office window earlier.’

  Beside me Mickey had jumped to attention.

  ‘As you were,’ the major told him. ‘I just want a word with Mademoiselle Caussade.’ He softened the lines of his face with a smile for me. He had a nice smile. ‘If I may?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, Major,’ I responded. ‘Outside would be better. It’s quieter.’

  ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ was now belting out of the jukebox, but I shot out of there with more haste than was decent.

  *

  I could feel the menace outside. Hard and sharp-edged. I felt it in the bitter taste at the back of my throat. No amount of upbeat music drifting out from the recreation hall could pretend otherwise, however persistently it tried. This was a place dedicated to death.

  ‘I apologise for breaking into your evening of enjoyment,’ the major said with an easy Southern charm and long silky vowels.

  ‘That’s no problem. I’m happy to take a break and get some fresh air.’

  Except the air was not fresh. It smelled of engine oil and aircraft fuel and male testosterone in equal measures. The darkness was not real here. Security lights all over the air base kept the night at bay, the same way its weapons were designed to keep the Soviet Union
at bay. A creamy halfmoon hung in the bull-black sky directly above the main runway and shadows shifted between the buildings each time the warm night breezes nudged against them.

  I turned to face Major Dirke straight on.

  ‘What can I do for you, Major, and how do you know me?’

  ‘I want to speak to you about what happened yesterday.’

  ‘A lot happened yesterday. What do you have in mind?’

  ‘I was at the funeral for Goliath at your father’s farm.’

  I tried not to show my astonishment. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘You weren’t looking.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I saw you at your father’s side, then running into the flames, and I was concerned. When I noticed you walk past my office window this evening, I decided to check that you’re all right.’ He gave me another easy smile. ‘You certainly look more than all right.’

  I was wearing a long-sleeved blouse. My blisters didn’t show.

  ‘Thank you for your concern, Major.’ I let a silence linger for a moment in the sultry air, while I tried to work out what was going on, and my eyes strayed to the massive barrel of the heavy anti-aircraft gun on its raised platform at the edge of the nearest runway. Others were dotted about in the semidarkness like giant fingers pointing the way to hell. It was hard not to stare at them. On the far side was a large floodlit area with men in white playing a game of some sort.

  ‘Baseball?’ I queried.

  He nodded with a grin. ‘An American camp would not be an American camp without a baseball diamond.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘It may seem bizarre to a French person, but never underestimate the power of baseball, Miss Caussade.’

  ‘Tell me, please, why did you attend Goliath’s funeral?’

  It struck me as odd.

  We were strolling slowly along a concrete pathway at the edge of the road that ran in front of the row of recreation buildings, with Major Dirke making no effort to get to the point. A guard with a German shepherd dog on a leash saluted as he patrolled past us.

  ‘It seemed courteous,’ the major commented at last. ‘Given that your father has surrendered a large parcel of his land for the expansion of our air base. I wanted to inspect the well of feeling on the ground for myself.’

  In the semi-darkness I could just make out the concrete apron with at least twenty aircraft of varying shapes and sizes lined up on it. Like strange animals in a zoo. I wanted to go over for a closer look but a second chain-link fence had other ideas.

  ‘You saw the reaction,’ I said. ‘How strongly people feel against the expansion – against the air base altogether.’ I glanced up at his shadowy profile. ‘Strong enough to set fire to my father’s stables, strong enough to kill,’ I added quietly.

  His long stride slowed and came to a halt. ‘Miss Caussade, it took the State Department, at the direction of the Joint Chiefs, years of negotiation to come to an agreement with the French General Staff for these air bases to be constructed. As well as to cost out the whole project.’

  ‘Our country is contributing two billion francs towards the total cost,’ I pointed out.

  ‘You are well informed.’

  ‘In France we all need to be well informed on this subject. The stationing of foreign troops on our soil again so soon after the war is like pouring salt on a raw wound. We all remember the feel of the Nazi jackboot on our neck.’

  He nodded and swatted away a mosquito into the damp night air. ‘It was why I was in civvies at the bull’s funeral. But our new American president, General Dwight Eisenhower, has more military experience and expertise than any president since Ulysses Grant. He understands the impact of US troops on a foreign country and is trying to minimise the political damage that the USAF and our Seventh Army are doing in France right now. But we have a job to do, Miss Caussade. Russian forces could come marching straight through Germany like a blade through hog-fat and into your country any day now. We are that close to war.’

  He held up his thumb and forefinger scarcely a hair’s breadth apart.

  ‘That close. We are on a knife edge. So tell your family and friends in Serriac, tell all the Communist Party hotheads stirring up trouble in the factories, tell them that they need American aircraft patrolling their skies, they need our nuclear warheads. It is the only guarantee of peace. For France. For the Western world.’

  I wanted to wrap an arm around the major’s stiff military neck in gratitude and weep. Men like this and men like André were laying their lives on the line for France while the rest of us sipped our vin rouge and went dancing. Even men like Mickey and Calvin were risking their lives for us, when I thought about it like that. They weren’t taking my father’s land. They were giving us safety.

  ‘Thank you, Major Dirke, on behalf of my family.’

  In the gloom I saw his face register surprise. Maybe these airmen were not accustomed to thanks from the French. He gave me a small formal bow of his head and smiled. ‘Let’s return you to your dance partner. I’ll walk you back there.’

  ‘No need. I can easily find my way, thanks.’

  We had walked in a straight line under a bright moon and military-strength security lights, for heaven’s sake. I was hardly likely to get lost. But he set off back the way we’d come.

  ‘This path is rough in places,’ he said. ‘We don’t want you to come to any harm.’

  I didn’t break stride. I didn’t stumble. I made no sound.

  Come to any harm. Was it a threat?

  Or was this charming American just demonstrating old Southern courtesy? I couldn’t tell. The ground under my feet was shifting and cracking like Marianne’s glass when she fired it wrong. Strangely, I had a sudden desire to have Léon Roussel at my side, inspecting the path and inspecting Major Dirke’s face. He would know a lie when he heard one. His policeman’s ear was fine-tuned to deceit.

  ‘Two of the horses in our stables had to be shot,’ I told him, but as the words came out of my mouth, I knew he would not understand what a horse means to a Camarguais.

  ‘I’m sorry. My brother and I were raised on a ranch with mustangs, so I know how bad you must be feeling. I’ve exchanged horses for B-50s, but I miss them.’

  ‘My own horse was . . .’

  The dull drone of an aircraft’s engines reverberated out of the night sky. I glanced up and as it came closer I saw the ghostly silhouette of a twin-engined plane. Its landing lights blinded me for a second before it skimmed down low and landed smoothly. This heavy-bodied shape was one I was already becoming familiar with, because they crisscrossed the skies throughout the day. The noise it made was a low-pitched growl rather than the high scream of the jetengined fighters.

  ‘That’s our workhorse,’ Major Dirke commented. ‘A Douglas C-47 Skytrain. It’s our transport aircraft and ferries in supplies for . . .’

  His sentence lay unfinished. A car had pulled up alongside us out of the night, its headlights carving yellow craters in the shadows. It was one of the big American showy saloons with white roof and green body, flashing what looked like gleaming chrome teeth across the front. A Chevy. Even their cars made us feel small. Its door opened and the driver emerged wearing a dark suit.

  I knew him like I knew the smell of a hospital ward.

  It was Gilles Bertin.

  *

  It is important to know your limits. Shaking hands with Gilles Bertin, the man involved in the violent attempt to murder my brother, was beyond my limit. It was that simple.

  I did not even attempt it.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ I said when he offered his hand in greeting. Same cold eyes. Same thin moustache. Same way of looking as if he intended to shape the world. ‘My fingers were burned in a fire yesterday.’ I hid my hand at my side.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Was he sorry? For what he had done. Did he ever give it a thought? Was he the one who ordered the match to be lit yesterday? What the hell was he doing here on an
American air base? Did Major Dirke not know Bertin worked for the MGB, the Soviet Union’s Intelligence unit? Obviously not. They had greeted each other with smiles and handshakes, while I let my hair fall forward over the damaged half of my face and stepped further into the shadows. The three of us were standing on the path in the semi-darkness and I made sure I stood with my back to the nearest lamp, certain of one thing. Gilles Bertin did not know me. There was not a spark of recognition in his eyes.

  Why should there be? I was nobody to him.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you today, Gilles,’ the major said. ‘Let me introduce you to . . .’

  ‘Eloïse,’ I said, and left it at that.

  Bertin inspected me with fleeting interest, clearly focused on getting down to the purpose of his visit, whatever it might be, and turned immediately back to Dirke. ‘We don’t have long, Joel, so I’ll head on over to the office to get cracking. Follow as soon as you can.’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ I said at once. ‘Goodnight.’ And I walked briskly in the direction of the dance hall, the gentle throb of a drumbeat stirring up the heat of the night.

  He had no idea. None at all.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Did you think I would flee?

  Did you think I had learned nothing from my brother? If you did, you were mistaken.

  I sat in my car half a kilometre out from the air base in the pitch dark. No headlights to betray my position and no moon. It had slumped down behind a heavy bank of cloud, and the countryside was now so dark that you would only see my tiny Citroën behind the clump of dogwood if you fell over it. I’d worked fast. I’d entered the recreation hall, found Marianne in a slow smooch on the dance floor, scooped her up and whisked her away with no more than a farewell wave for Calvin and Mickey. I bundled her into my car.

  ‘Eloïse, slow down, what’s going on?’

  ‘We’re going to chase a car.’

  ‘In this tin can?’ She laughed the way only someone who has enjoyed a few beers can laugh. ‘You mean you’re not leaving me on my own with five hundred airmen?’

  ‘No, I’m not. They wouldn’t stand a chance.’