He peered across the desk and grinned. ‘You are surely not fool enough to think me worth a little childish bullying before throwing me out into the snow? What do you want?’
The Ruler raised his eyes and nodded, and the bodyguard retreated soundlessly from the room. He turned to the dossier in front of him. ‘During the Vietnam War you stole two billion dollars from the Americans and gave them to Hanoi. Did the Communists pay a commission on the deal?’
‘They paid a commission,’ said Pol. ‘It was not large.’
‘What were your motives?’
‘I like to spit in the eye of Goliath. It is more satisfying than killing him — and a lot easier. Besides, if the operation had failed, I had nothing to lose. I was not there at the time.’
‘You used mercenaries, of course?’ The Ruler began to turn the pages of the file. ‘On at least two other occasions in your career you have cheated the French, Soviet and British governments, and earned yourself approximately a million dollars playing one off against the other. You also appear to have successfully organized several African terrorist movements against the whites. These, I assume, were not so remunerative?’
‘They paid my expenses.’
‘Monsieur Pol, you have amassed great wealth through great cunning and enterprise, and yet when my agents finally contacted you, you were living in a cheap hotel where it seems you were having trouble paying your bills. You are also banned from entering the United States and the Soviet Union, and a number of smaller countries where you have indulged your adventurous appetites. I understand that you are not very welcome here in Switzerland, after they rescinded your Resident’s Permit last year and sequestered your villa on Lac Léman in order to settle your debts. Nor do I hear that your own compatriots are very happy about you, following certain double-dealings you did with the OAS after the Algerian War. It seems that only your reputation during the Resistance has kept you out of a French gaol.’
‘I congratulate you on the thoroughness of your Intelligence Service,’ said Pol. ‘But as you will have seen from my dossier, I too have some experience of the spy trade and have usually found its practitioners disagreeable, incompetent, and prone to exaggerate. I have no wish to correct their mistakes for them, except to point out that I am still gainfully employed as the legal owner of a shop for ladies’ undergarments behind the Gare St Lazare. As for my relations with the French authorities, I can assure you, Your Majesty, that while not official they are, in certain circles, more than merely cordial.’
The Ruler sat inspecting the knuckles of his manicured hands, on one of which he wore a single gold ring with a square emerald. ‘Your views on Intelligence agents do not interest me, Monsieur Pol. I did not summon you here, in the middle of my short winter vacation, in order to discuss irrelevancies.’
‘Why, then?’
The Ruler appeared to hesitate. He was not used to direct questions. ‘How would you describe your present political leanings?’ he said at last.
Pol began to pat down his kiss-curl. ‘Where you are concerned, Your Majesty, my politics are what you pay for them. The more extreme, the higher the fee;. What are you paying now?’
The Ruler closed Pol’s dossier and pushed it away from him. Then he sat back and steepled his fingers together under that much photographed, deep-cleft chin. ‘I am offering you two million English pounds sterling, Monsieur Pol. It will be paid in gold or any equivalent currency you choose to name. This sum will be sufficient to cover your personal fee, and all expenses.’
‘To do what?’ Pol’s lips were parted, unsmiling, and the sweat had broken out again on his pink brow.
The Ruler was looking at him with his steady black stare. ‘I want you to kill me, Monsieur Pol.’
Charles Pol gave a cooing giggle, almost a girl’s giggle; and his right hand darted back under his jacket and beneath his waistband, groping into the deep recesses of his immense buttocks. Considering his extreme corpulence and the tightness of his clothing, this whole movement displayed an astonishing dexterity.
Before the Ruler fully realized what was happening, Pol’s fat little hand had reappeared, clutching another folded white handkerchief. With a further giggle he thrust out his arm until his hand was less than twelve inches from the Ruler’s face.
The Ruler flinched back, but quickly checked himself. Pol had unclenched his fingers and the handkerchief slowly opened like the petals of a flower, giving off a faint puff of pollen-like powder. The Ruler made another involuntary movement backwards, and remembering where the handkerchief had just come from, raised a hand to his nostrils; then he recognized the smell — it was the same talcum powder that he himself often used after bathing. For a moment he stared at Pol’s hand with an expression of distaste and curiosity.
In the centre of the white petals lay what looked like a small grey cigarette lighter. Pol crooked his little finger and there was a
