—that’s such great news
It didn’t matter to me when he finished shooting, as long it wasn’t before the fair on Saturday.
My contacts reconfirmed that Platon would be traveling with Georges, the Serb, and the author Michel Thomas, of the frayed hair and ill-fitting dentures, who was touring this area as research for “an agronomy novel”—whatever that was.
I checked Bruno’s email. The Moulinards had sent him nothing. He had not written them either.
I was working on preliminary materials for my next job when I got a Google Alert for Nancy, an alert that tended to produce many false positives—references to Nancy that were not Nancy, just some person with her name, first and last.
I assumed this was that.
I clicked the link, which led me to a very long article on a news site known for whistleblowing.
The government had just released, after nine years, twenty-five hundred documents concerning the court cases of Nancy and the boy, in response to their lawyers’ persistent Freedom of Information Act requests. The article suggested that among the documents was exculpatory evidence of illegal government surveillance by an undercover agent known by the alias “Amy.”
In having screwed over Nancy and the boy, “Amy” was a symptom of government intrusion, in the form of spying and worse. What kind of person would manipulate and frame young people with utopian hopes and principles? How many Amys were out there, pressuring activists into committing illegal acts, and then disappearing, untraceable and scot-free?
It seemed that all they had was this generic first name, an alias I’d discarded long ago. But I didn’t feel much relief.
The FBI might try to scapegoat me. They had done this, recently, to a former agent. The agent was theirs, and following their orders, but to avoid negative attention, the Feds charged him as a rogue. He had testified at a trial without revealing the methods he’d used to collect evidence. They convicted him of perjury, and he went to prison.
The federal statute of limitations for perjury is five years. It had expired, I reassured myself as I retrieved another formidable.
I opened it, took a sip, and put it on the bedside table covered with Les Babies stickers.
Overthinking things, I reminded myself, goes with the territory of my profession, a profession for which there could be a Les Babies sticker: the Baby Spy.
WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, the Baby Spy was the Hungover Spy, perhaps from not hydrating sufficiently while clearing the road, and not eating, and the stress of that Google Alert. Those two forty-ounce bottles of what I thought was beer turned out to have been malt liquor, twenty proof.
My contacts had sent messages repeatedly. They wanted Platon “neutralized.” That was their term.
I am not a hit man, I responded.
Having a hangover can be useful in that it cuts away the need to soft-pedal things. One is encouraged to speak the truth, because the buffers that allow for subtleties and dissimulation are replaced by splitting headache.
You’re not comprehending, was the reply. They will do it.
Stop acting pious, I told myself. Admit it: you knew all along that they were setting up Platon for something grievous. You knew in Marseille. You knew six months ago, when they had you following the guy around Spanish villages.
It was time to pull back and negotiate.
I upped my price to an absurdly high number. My own worth is an existential metric. It is not determined by the market.
I was certain they would balk.
They agreed to the price.
And suddenly, my purpose here was to get these people to kill a man.
No one cares about Paul Platon, I reassured myself.
The average French person, embodied in his driver, and in his own bodyguard, would not care if Paul Platon disappeared, never to be heard from again. And this was the very reason I had studied his driver and guard: for apathy.
And so why should I care, I reasoned, talking to myself in loud thoughts that banged around my head, which hurt, as I paced Chez Dubois looking for my Advil supply.
I understand that you “deplore violence in all its forms,” I thought at Bruno, as if he were here in the house with me. But what about in the case of a man who is universally reviled?
And why should I, in particular, be more concerned with this man’s fate than the average French person? Than his own driver?
Bruno, why should I care more about Platon’s life than the man who is officially tasked with safeguarding it?
I could not find the Advil.
MY HEAD HURT SO BADLY that I was forced to pound a beer as medicine. It was seven a.m., and I don’t drink in the morning, but this one time I allowed it.
I stopped at the gas station in the little village between the house and Vantôme. I filled the Škoda’s tank, slipped into a bar next to the station, and ordered a whiskey. Now that I had started, it was prudent to have a second dose of medicine before I got to Le Moulin.
When I emerged from the bar, I heard amplified music.
That guy in his Chrysler Sebring, Lemon Incest, was pulling in next to the pumps. The most unlikely vehicle in the Guyenne if not all of southern France. The car without a top, as Françoise had said.
I’d sent her and Denis chasing a mirage, by suggesting he was a cop. But was the mirage chasing me?
Today it was different music, crass and symphonic. It sounded like it had been scored for a James Bond movie.
The man was pumping his gas. As I walked to my car, he turned his head, observing me.
I got in the Škoda and was about to drive away, but thought better of it and killed the motor. I got out and approached him.
