the Fourth Republic. Maybe a more decent nostalgia for those days played a part too, who knew?
Plismy was a large man with a pitted face like a cactus with the thorns extracted. That was his nickname at the DGSE. Cactus. The Frenchman’s oily face gleamed, and his thinned hair was flattened to his skull by sweat. His dark southern eyes bored into you. The vinous paunch that took decades to create, unlike a beer drinker’s, rested comfortably—naturally, Logan thought—on a black leather briefcase worn bare in numerous places, trapping it in its fold. With his thick neck, thick hands, and thick thighs that filled ample light grey trousers, Plismy was like a French rugby prop who’d seen better days.
Logan watched the Frenchman look to his right, toward a wall mirror with a lime green frame, so that he could see Logan approaching from his left. When he was sure it was Logan, Plismy turned to face him.
“Good. Now we can get a bottle,” Plismy said, grateful for his companion’s arrival. “You’re still allowed to drink in America, I suppose?”
He grinned and showed a set of smoker’s teeth that turned darker brown the closer they approached the gums.
“In the privacy of your own Dumpster,” Logan replied.
Plismy laughed. It was a staccato noise that contained no humour. Then, as he nodded abruptly to the Algerian, his smile evaporated, replaced by a scowl. The stooped Algerian barman didn’t need to be told, Logan noticed. He was used to Plismy treating him like a dumb animal, knew what he wanted, and didn’t expect any courtesy.
“I didn’t expect to find you,” Logan said. “What are you doing in Paris, Thomas?” He took the high stool next to Plismy. “Why aren’t you on the Cote d’Azur? Getting a tan.”
“The Anglo-Saxons destroyed it years ago, that’s why. And now the Slavs are scoffing up the leftovers like the dogs they are.”
“Jews and blacks are off the hook this time, then,” Logan replied.
“This time.” Plismy laughed. “I’m an uncomplicated man, Logan.”
“Some might call it ‘Neanderthal.’ ”
Plismy’s face darkened, then broke into a smile. Logan knew how to play Plismy. Plismy was another sadistic bully who fell for the masochism of being bullied himself.
A bottle was set on the counter, and the Algerian opened it swiftly and poured a measure into two glasses, a new glass for Plismy.
“A good burgundy,” Plismy said, raising his glass. “You’ll see. Sante.”
“Sante,” Logan responded. It was a very good burgundy indeed, he thought, and Plismy saw his reaction.
“I’ve been promoted!” the Frenchman said, unable to contain the good news. “My superior died in an air crash in the Cote d’Ivoire.”
“Congratulations, Thomas,” Logan replied, and raised his glass again. “To dead men’s shoes,” he toasted him.
Plismy laughed again, the short, staccato sound. “You have a tasteless humour I find so sadly lacking in your compatriots,” he said, and drank thirstily.
They drank the bottle steadily, like two professional drinkers rather than connoisseurs. The talk ranged from the forthcoming presidential elections in America—who did Logan think was going to win?—to the Russian invasion of Georgia; from the stock markets to the Olympic Games in Beijing. By the time they’d finished the bottle, like true drinkers they were beginning to comprehend the state of the world in all its futility. But unlike Plismy, Logan remained clearheaded, as he usually did unless he’d decided to drink alone, for a lonely reason. He saw that Plismy had already been drinking, probably celebrating at the office before they met.
Good, he thought. A loose tongue in a euphoric head was a most reliable recipe for the one-way exchange of confidences.
When they’d finished the bottle, they took a taxi to a place Plismy knew—and that knew him. Located near the Gare de Lyon, it was a small, family-run restaurant, with excellent Alsatian cuisine. Plismy talked all the way through the depleted August traffic about his new responsibilities, his new salary, and the new perks that came with the job.
Logan might have been more envious of Plismy’s secure employment position had he not been entirely focused on how, this evening, he could exploit Plismy’s garrulous desire to impress him. Lead him on, Logan, he told himself. That’s all it takes.
The waitress, a daughter, Logan assumed, brought two plates of something concealed beneath a rich-looking cream-coloured sauce. Plismy had insisted on ordering for both of them. He knew everything tonight; he was completely full of himself, Logan was pleased to see.
“Surely you must have been thinking about retirement?” Logan inquired. “Before the promotion, I mean. Haven’t you had your fill of the world’s secrets?” Plismy was twenty-five years older than him, at least.
“Before my promotion? Maybe, yes. A little.” Plismy beamed with pleasure. “But now, why should I retire? I have even greater power, Logan. Access. The secrets behind the lies, the lies behind the secrets. Something you and I know all about. And also I have bigger allowances, a higher pension, and a new car,” he boasted.
A fat pension sounded nice. But it was an equation that had never quite convinced him. The longer you worked, the bigger the pension, the less life you had to freely spend it. Illogically, having a cut-price pension suddenly made him feel better.
Logan wasn’t sure whether Plismy knew about his fall from grace back in the 1990s. They’d both worked out in the East, Plismy in Russia, Logan in the Balkans. They’d met during the western standoff with Russia over the Serbian war. But if Plismy did know, he’d never mentioned it. Plismy didn’t think a great deal about other people, however. Whether he knew or not, Logan wasn’t going to supply the information.
“Don’t you get trapped by it, though?” Logan persisted. “I sometimes feel I do. There are so few people to talk to about what the world isn’t supposed to know. You’ve been at this game for—”
“Thirty-three years,” Plismy said expansively. “And counting. I’ve seen a lot, believe me. And now? Now things are just getting more interesting.”
Get him onto Russia, Logan told himself. That’s his speciality. That’s where the game has squarely shifted once again.
“What happens to your old desk, then?” Logan said. “Some young Russian expert taking it on?”
“Nobody has my experience,” Plismy said grandly. “I’ve been there through it all. Before the Wall, when the Wall came down, and after the Wall. You know I was in Moscow through the whole period, almost. And when I wasn’t, I was running agents from here.” He paused. “No, I’ll keep my interest in the Russian desk. In fact, I’ve recently returned from a very interesting trip out East.”
“Chasing hookers round the nightclubs of Samara?” Logan asked. “Isn’t that where you tell me the real beauties come from?”
Plismy looked torn between telling Logan some hooker story for a laugh, or demonstrating his own importance in the thick of things, at the centre of power. He chose the latter.
Leaning across the table to indicate a confidence was about to take place, he said, “Do you know that we are going to take all the lovely Russian oil from the British and the Americans?”
“What? You and me, Thomas?”
Plismy pulled away sharply, cross that Logan wasn’t taking his confidential leak more seriously. He poked his fork across the table at the young American.
“I was there,” he said, mysteriously, and then filled the fork and put it decisively in his mouth. For a while he chewed his food thoughtfully, and Logan made no attempt to prompt him.
“The French have always known how to handle the Russians. With subtlety,” Plismy explained, when there was room in his mouth to speak.
“Like when they burned Moscow to the ground?” Logan said.
“Particularly then.” Plismy smiled. “Napoleon knew how to deal with the Russians.”
“And the Russians, I seem to remember, subsequently knew how to deal with him,” Logan said, with too much acidity in his voice.
But Plismy just laughed. He glowed at the memory of Napoleon’s two-hundred-year-old victories and forgot the defeats.
“So the French are taking lots of Russian oil?” Logan prompted this time. “Good luck to you.”
