went largely unnoticed as he struggled to find the right English phrase to frame his amended conclusions. As recently as four years ago, when he was living in the States, this language block would have been inconceivable; he found it remarkable how rusty these skills became when they went unused, even for a bona fide bilingual speaker such as he.
He had noticed the two lovely ladies, seated side-by-side on the left of the carriage a couple of rows ahead who kept turning, smiling then chatting among themselves just loud enough for him to hear,
‘I think he’s a movie star.’
‘Which one?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe a singer.’
‘Go ask him.’
‘You.’
It would have been breathtakingly easy to gather up his papers and invite them to the cafe car. Then, inevitably, an exchange of numbers before they disembarked at Montparnasse station. Maybe one of them, maybe both, would be available for a late drink after his dinner with Hugo Pineau.
But he absolutely had to finish the paper then fully prepare a lecture before he returned to Bordeaux. He didn’t have time for this impromptu meeting and had told Hugo as much, but his old school chum had begged – literally pleaded with him – to make time. He had something to show him and it had to be done in person. He’d promised that Luc wouldn’t be disappointed and in any event, they’d have a blowout dinner for old time’s sake. And, oh yes, first-class travel and a good room at the Royal Monceau, courtesy of Hugo’s firm.
Luc settled back to his paper, a study of population kinetics among European hunter-gatherers during the Glacial Maximum of the Upper Paleolithic. It was incredible to think that as late as thirty thousand years ago there’d only been some five thousand humans in all of Europe, if his team’s calculations were correct. Five thousand souls, a number precariously close to zero! If these few hearty ones hadn’t found sufficient refuge from the numbing cold in the protected havens of the Perigord, Cantabria and the Iberian coasts then neither of these giggling young ladies – or anyone else – would be there today.
But the women were relentless with their whispering and their glances. Apparently they were bored or maybe he was simply too ruggedly irresistible, with his thick black hair spilling over his collar, the heavy two-day growth on his jaw, the pencil dangling like a cigarette from his lips, the cowboy boots extending rakishly from his tight jeans into the aisle. In some ways he looked like a much younger man, but his need for reading glasses balanced the image nearer to the forty-four-year-old professor he was.
One more furtive smile from the prettier of the two girls, the one on the aisle, broke down his wavering resistance. He sighed, put away his papers, and in three long strides he was standing over them. All he needed to say was a friendly, ‘Hello.’
The girl on the aisle bubbled over, ‘Hi. My friend and I were wondering who you are.’
He smiled. ‘I’m Luc, that’s who I am.’
‘Are you in films?’
‘No.’
‘Theatre?’
‘Not that either.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m an archaeologist.’
‘Like Indiana Jones?’
‘Precisely. Just like him.’
The girl on the aisle peeked at her friend then asked, ‘Would you like to have a coffee with us?’
Luc shrugged and thought briefly about his unfinished work. ‘Yes, of course,’ he answered. ‘Why not?’
THREE
General Andre Gatinois was taking a brisk stroll through the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, his habitual lunch-time routine on fair days. Keeping lean into his fifties was proving nettlesome and he found it increasingly necessary to skip lunch and walk a few kilometrers instead.
The cemetery, the largest in Paris, was the most visited and arguably the most famous in the world, the resting place for the likes of Proust, Chopin, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Moliere. Much to Gatinois’s irritation, it was also home to Jim Morrison, and he personally complained to the cemetery administrator whenever he noticed another addled Doors fan had spray-painted a TO J IM sign complete with arrow on a piece of masonry.
The cemetery was only a kilometre or so from his office on Boulevard Mortier in the 20 th arrondissement, but to maximise the amount of time in greenery, he had his driver take him to the main cemetery gate and wait there until he was done with his constitutional. The number plates on his official black Peugeot 607 guaranteed the police wouldn’t bother the idling chauffeur.
The cemetery was huge, some fifty hectares, and Gatinois could vary his route endlessly. On a sunny late- summer day, the masses of leaves overhead were just starting to turn and were rustling pleasantly in the breeze. He walked amidst a throng of visitors, although his fine blue suit, military-style hair and stiff posture set him apart from the jeans and sweatshirts of the scruffy majority.
Lost in thought, he found himself somewhat deeper than usual in the grounds so he picked up his pace to make sure he’d be back in time for his weekly staff meeting. A particularly large ornate tomb on a knoll made him slow and stop for a moment. It was open-walled, Byzantine, housing side-by-side sarcophagi adorned by a medieval man and a woman in marble repose. The tomb of Heloise and Abelard. The twelfth-century star-crossed lovers who so defined the notion of true love that, for the sake of national homage, their bones were sent to Paris in the nineteenth century from their original resting place in Ferreux-Quincey.
Gatinois blew his nose into his handkerchief. Eternal love, he scoffed. Propaganda. Mythology. He thought of his own loveless marriage and made a mental note to buy a small gift for his mistress. He was tired of her too, but in his position, he was obligated to subject each dalliance to a full security check. Although his colleagues were discreet, he felt somewhat constrained: he couldn’t chop and change too frequently and still maintain his dignity.
His driver passed through the security cordon and let Gatinois off in an internal courtyard where he entered the building through a huge oak door as venerable and solid as the Ministry of Defence itself.
La piscine.
That’s what the DGSE complex was nicknamed. The swimming pool. Although the name referred to the nearby Piscine des Tourelles of the French Swimming Federation, the notion of swimming laps, working your tail off but remaining in the same place, often seemed apt to him.
Gatinois was somewhat of an anomaly within the organisation. No one inside the Directorate-General for External Security held a higher rank, but his unit was the smallest and in an agency where opacity was a way of life, Unit 70 was the most opaque.
Whereas his departmental peers within the Directorates of Strategy and Intelligence commanded vast budgets and manpower, stood toe-to-toe with their counterparts in the CIA and other intelligence agencies worldwide and held star status within their ranks, his unit paled in comparison. It had a comparatively small budget, only thirty employees and Gatinois worked in relative obscurity. Not that he ever lacked for resources – it was just that the amount of funding he required was dwarfed by the Action Division, for example, with their global network of spies and operatives. No, Gatinois achieved what he required on a fraction of what other groups needed. In truth, much of his unit’s work was accomplished by contractors in government and academic labs who had no idea what they were actually working on.
Gatinois had to be content with the knowledge, reliably passed to him by his superior, the DGSE director, that the Minister of Defence, and indeed the President of France himself, were often more interested in updates about Unit 70 than any other matter of state intelligence.
Unit 70 had its suite of rooms in a nineteenth-century block within the complex. Gatinois favoured it over the other modern cookie-cutter buildings and always resisted relocation. He preferred the high ceilings, intricate mouldings and wainscoting of the quarters even though the toilets were bulkier than their modern equivalents.
