The Honorable Correspondent Page 3

  It had been Forjieh who told him about Harouni’s birthday party. After Bobo had left SEDCE, and SEDCE ceased being SEDCE, after they’d gone into business together, Bobo suggested that they bring in a Lebanese chap he’d known, worked with, and trusted for years, Atrash Forjieh by name. Bobo arranged for Gaspar and Forjieh to meet over lunch so that Gaspar could assess the candidate. The idea was that Forjieh would represent their business in Middle Eastern countries where they themselves could not—due to time constraints, they were likely to spend most of their time with their client in Baghdad. The business, Bobo pointed out, ought to have clients other than Saddam, if only for the sake of appearances.

  Forjieh turned out to be a small, pleasant person, over-dressed in a manner that hinted at a yearning to appear grander than his physical dimension permitted. His double-breasted light-blue blazer was of an imposing cut, too little waist, too much chest, with golden buttons that would have done an admiral’s uniform proud. He wore a crimson and silver tie and soft grey slacks that flared at the bottom.

  When Forjieh noticed Gaspar’s gaze resting on the blazer’s buttons he smiled and pointed out that they were made of eighteen-carat gold. “If I have to bribe someone I just pick a button off my jacket and hand it over,” he said with a grin.

  During the lunch they discussed the job, its requirements, the territory Forjieh would cover. Forjieh sounded competent and eager—understandably, since his commissions could run into the millions. Forjieh insisted they drink Dom Perignon, not Gaspar’s favorite.

  Before long, and quite naturally, the conversation turned to Bobo. Forjieh spoke about Bobo’s regard for Gaspar which, Forjieh said, evidenced itself continuously. There was a time, before Gaspar had gotten used to the Middle Eastern propensity for hyperbolic and ornate speech, when this sort of thing would have embarrassed him. Now he only smiled and thanked Forjieh.

  Then Forjieh turned to his own ties to Bobo. He became sentimental. He recalled for Gaspar how Bobo had helped him restore his family’s honor at a time when enemies back home had all but erased the Forjieh name. How this stranger from France had come through, extended a helping hand and made it possible to set things right.

  How had Bobo done this? Gaspar asked.

  At the time, Forjieh explained, Bobo had been an attaché stationed in Beirut while he, Forjieh, was in hiding in France. Bobo had contacted him and offered him the opportunity to settle the score with the Harounis (may the earth spit out their bones).

  By lunch’s end Gaspar had learned new aspects of what had taken place at Claude’s birthday party. He had of course known about the slaughter. Bobo had told him at the time and there had been accounts in the press. Bobo had described it as the outcome of a Maronite blood feud, a case of those living by the sword dying by it. It was a pity, he’d said, about Naama.

  Evening falls, the sun retracts its slender emissaries to the shed. Gaspar lies on the fast-cooling earth, tucked into himself, his hands, pressed between his thighs, clasped as if in prayer. Every bit of exposed skin is cold, the shackle radiates cold into his ankle. He shivers and tears well in his eyes, but he does not retrieve his hands from their nest to wipe them away. He heaves himself over and searches for the places in the wall where the sun had earlier come through, hoping to see into the night beyond, to glimpse anything at all but the darkness that now envelopes him, but there is nothing. At least the futile search serves to point out to him that it is possible, if only for brief spells, to forget his numbing discomfort.

  Deep self-reproach denies him sleep. He harangues himself. He ought long ago, at the beginning of their relationship, told Sarah about Bobo and the Harounis. Now she will find out for herself in a way that will sour her heart, that will convince her that Gaspar has been loyal all the while to another of Bobo’s sanctimonious lies. How stupid that he had kept this from her, even after all the rest became known.

  Sleep comes on the sly, mysteriously, without his willing it.

  Gaspar is awakened by the sound of a key being turned in the lock. It is just barely a new day. He attempts to sit up but fails, his body refusing to obey him. He is rigid from the night’s distorted sleep, from having lain in an envelope of damp frost. His bladder is stabbing at him from within, and he says as much to whoever is at the door. When no answer comes, he painfully flips himself to face the door.

  Silhouetted against the pure blue sky, the shrubbery and trees of the exterior world, stands one of Harouni’s young men. An M16 is slung on his shoulder, and in his hands is a steaming saucepan. The man steps inside and places the saucepan in front of Gaspar.

  “Piss. I need to piss,” Gaspar says insistently.

  The man looks on and doesn’t betray the slightest sign of comprehension.

  Gaspar reaches down for his groin, cups his hands, and makes a motion and sound to illustrate and underline his need.

  This angers the man, and too late Gaspar realizes that his pantomime is taken for an attempted slight, for a depiction of his opinion of his jailer. Abruptly the man bends down, reclaims the saucepan, and splashes the hot liquid it holds onto Gaspar.

  Gaspar urinates standing at the end of his tether. The shed takes on the odor of a movie house men’s room.

  Of the five sheets of paper Gaspar has been given, two are soaked by the overly sensitive young man’s emptying of Gaspar’s intended breakfast. Gaspar lays these out on the floor to dry. During the remainder of the day he moves them around so that light, and possibly drying warmth, fall onto them.

  Gaspar writes for Sarah, not to her; he doubts she will ever read his words. He thinks long and hard before he writes—there is only so much paper, so much pencil.

  “As I consider my life, I realize that for much of the time I did not own it, that it belonged to Bobo, and that he has a claim on it still. I wonder whether this belated realization qualifies as redemption. Was it you who told me that redemption only postpones the inevitable?”

  Chapter Three

  The irony was that, dead as he was, Bobo still pulled strings, reached out from the past and imprisoned Gaspar, made him hapless and unknowing in this godawful tin-walled prison. The pity was that Gaspar had never severed the strings when he might have.

  Ten years ago, Gaspar thinks, early summer. He calculates carefully: June of 1981, a Thursday afternoon. (In the shed Gaspar is developing a mania for precision—there are forty-seven perforations in the metal wall, so many millimeters apart. Why this particular distribution? Where is the highest point on the earthen floor?—as if with precision he can defeat his new and oppressive circumstance, as if in precision he retains his self.)

  On that Thursday afternoon Bobo called him into his office and had him put on an ear phone to listen to a tape cassette played on a small, hand-held Sony recorder. He heard two male voices discussing Osirak. One voice was French, the other spoke with an accent Gaspar couldn’t place. He glanced at Bobo, who brought a finger to his lips, then scribbled on a sheet of paper the word “Juif,” and underlined it. Gaspar understood that the second man was Israeli—Bobo had long ago taken up that penchant of their Arab friends for referring to Israelis as Jews.

  The Israeli was making the case for France not to rebuild Tamuz 17, Osirak, Iraq’s nuclear facility which Israel’s airforce had three months earlier obliterated in a spectacular bombing raid. Osirak had been built by France, an early and pivotal gesture in her relations with Iraq.

  Saddam, the Israeli argued, had no purpose for Osirak other than to construct nuclear weapons, no use for such weapons other than to terrorize his enemies: Israel foremost, but also Iran, the Saudis, and others. And when this inevitably happened, France too would suffer.

  The Frenchman, whose voice sounded familiar to Gaspar, was sympathetic. He spoke of his determination to forestall another holocaust, of the immorality of helping Saddam in this endeavor.

  Then the Israeli switched his argument to grounds other than Israel’s interest, to wit: that if Saddam had the bomb he would surely use it against Iran
(the war between Iran and Iraq was then in its first year) and thus render Iran’s oil useless to the world, including France. “Sir, the previous president pretends to accept Saddam’s claim that Osirak is for research. If that reactor is for research then my grandmother is a bus.”

  The Frenchman laughed briefly. He said he would do his utmost for all concerned, after which there was a long silence. Gaspar glanced at Bobo to see whether something had gone wrong with the recording. Bobo shook his head, indicating more to come.

  From the tape came the sound of someone clearing his throat. It was the Israeli. “Excuse me, sir, I do not wish to sound impertinent, but when you were a candidate for your office and we spoke, you promised not to rebuild Tamuz 17. It sounds to me now as if you are less certain that you will be able to keep your promise.”

  A third voice interjected to say that the president’s schedule made it necessary to end this meeting, that another would be scheduled soon. The conversation ended with an assurance by the Frenchman that he would not be the one to rebuild Saddam’s reactor.

  Bobo switched off the Sony. He and Gaspar left the building together and went for a stroll on a busy street.

  “That was Mitterand, you know,” Bobo said. Immediately Gaspar matched the voice he’d heard on the tape with Francois Mitterand’s puckish face—Mitterand, leader of France’s Socialist Party who had in May 1980 won the presidency.

  “The Jew is Peres, Shimon Peres, another Red,” Bobo continued. “You heard them. He’s going to pull the rug out from under us. Before long he’ll make it impossible for us to go on with Saddam, and without Saddam France will go down the tubes. Which is of course what he and his cabal want.”

  “You’re raving, Bobo,” Gaspar said. “And just how did you get this recording?”

  He received an annoyed look. “How does that matter?” Bobo demanded tersely, which meant that Gaspar had touched a raw spot.

  “Spying on the Socialists will sink you, Bobo,” Gaspar admonished. “Domestic spying is a great big no-no, you know this to be the law, Bobo. If you are ever found out it will mean a couple of years of unpaid vacation on Devil’s Island for you.”

  “Cut the crap, Gaspar,” Bobo demanded. “Did you hear clearly what I said? This little man of the Left is going to ruin everything. If he indeed goes on to deny Saddam his reactor it will mean curtains for us. You’re not quitting now, I want you to stay on, I need you.”

  “Not a chance in the world, pal,” Gaspar said.

  “You don’t understand, Gaspar, this Mitterand is going to close down our shop. He’s going to dismantle SEDCE.”

  “You’re inventing things, Bobo. Fibbing doesn’t become you.”

  “Tell you what, my high-minded friend, you stay on another year, just one more year. It’ll go by faster than you can say ‘Bobo is a liar.’ And if by the end of it the prediction I’m about to make fails to materialize—to its last letter—I’ll let you sleep with Deadeye.”

  “I don’t want to sleep with Deadeye, she’ll shoot me if I don’t perform. So what is going to happen within this year?”

  “Just this: the little Red man in the Élysée Palace will set out to dismantle our Firm. He’ll remake it and rename it, and France will have a counterintelligence operation run by pinkos and pansies.”

  “You’re raving, Bobo. I’m not staying on, I’ve had enough. I’ve done plenty, you’ve said so yourself. I want to rest, I want to sit at my drafting table and draw up boat designs, I want to sleep with my wife more than once every fortnight. I’m sick of going to Baghdad, of Iraqi food, of chills running down my spine every time some stranger walks too close to my table at a restaurant. I want to be able to hold conversations on subjects other than the wiring on this rapid-fire cannon or the blind spot on that radar.”

  A familiar expression came over Bobo’s face, the look of a dreamer of perfect dreams, of flawless visions, of the man from whose dictionary the word “doubt” had been omitted. The look Gaspar had known since forever, since their boyhood days on the riverbank at Belle Marais.

  “The same friend who provided me with the tape you just heard also told me what I will tell you now,” Bobo said, sincere as a preacher closing in on a would-be convert. He grinned. “I too would like to rest, you know. I too would like to sleep with your wife more than once every two weeks and go live at Belle Marais and walk my lands, only I cannot, and neither can you. I need you with me right now every bit as much as I did when I first talked to you about becoming an HC. I give you my word on this.”

  “So what did your informative friend tell you that will cause me to forego what I intend to do with the rest of my life?”

  “The Socialists have drawn up secret contingencies for dismantling SEDCE, redoing it top to bottom in their image. This isn’t just fanciful talk, Gaspar. Want to know what they’ll call this … whatever it will become? ‘Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure.’ DGSE, Gaspar, get it?”

  “Sure I get it, Bobo. Mitterand is pissed off, tired of being treated like a Fifth Columnist by you and SEDCE.”

  “Undoubtedly he’ll get much better treatment from the director he intends to appoint in my stead. You ready for this? Gilbert Valancien.”

  Despite himself, Gaspar was taken aback. Valancien had been director of France’s railway system in the last Socialist government. “Surely you’re joking!”

  “Not a syllable of humor here, Gaspar; dismally serious. Gilbert Valancien. Eminently qualified, don’t you think?”

  Gaspar’s incredulity persisted. SEDCE was France’s eyes and ears in the world. It made no sense that the nation’s leadership, whatever its political colors, would play fast and loose with so essential a component of its national interest. He continued to challenge Bobo, to argue that such a thing was hardly possible. SEDCE was beyond party politics, a sacred cow if ever there was one, and the nation would not stand for tampering with it.

  “Tell you what,” Bobo said. He had resumed his air of missionary zeal. “Take me up on my offer. Let’s wait and see what these guys will and will not dare. Stick with me and then we’ll see, ok? If things go otherwise, if they leave the Firm alone, I will personally paint your ship’s architect shingle.”

  His passion flowed on, the desperate passion of a man whose mistress is being courted by another. “You don’t know these people as I do, Gaspar, you think you do, but you don’t. They’re zealots; they intend to castrate the army, turn it into a troop of show soldiers, ushers for their May Day parades. They mean to cut back on shipments to Saddam. Gaspar, God and you know I have nothing against Jews, but this man Mitterand is surrounded by them. The Élysée Palace will soon become a veritable synagogue under him. His Jewish advisors have their own agenda: Saddam is the enemy of Israel, therefore their enemy. Well, I won’t permit anyone to tamper with this relationship, not while I live. Oh, Mitterand and his gang will camouflage their intentions with exalted words, the Reds always do. They’ll say that France ought not to profit from blood money, they’ll concoct horror stories, they’ll besmirch us and our friends. Their stable of intellectual whores will eloquently decry our misdeeds on television and in their rags. And you and I will know what they’ll really be up to.” Bobo rammed an angry fist into an open palm. “And you and I and ours will not permit them to get away with it.”

  It was nearly a year later on an April evening in 1982 that Bobo was proven right.

  He brought Gaspar for drinks to a restaurant owned by a former honorable correspondent nicknamed Tintin. There they sipped their whiskies and listened as two SEDCE section heads sputtered their bilious discontent because SEDCE, their beloved Firm, was about to be massacred. That was the word they used—massacred. SEDCE was to become DGSE, Valancien its new Director. Valancien, a man expert at drawing up train schedules and at wining and dining travel agents. The only sort of agents he knew his way around, observed one of the two.

  “I thought you ought to hear it from someone besides me,” Bobo said.

  Gaspar was o
verwhelmed by a powerful indignation, the fury of a man who has been out hunting and returns to find that his cabin has been torched.

  He had turned over his life to Bobo when he’d agreed to become an Honorable Correspondent. He was swept up in the honor of having been asked, the pleasure and importance of being part of a great and good secret. He would be a member of the SEDCE’s cadre of far-flung private operatives, pure operatives, not sullied spies like those in the pay of, say, MI6 or the CIA or the KGB and GRU.

  Nothing like them, Bobo had stated emphatically, his voice thick with derision. Nothing honorable about those, indeed not. Those others purchased harlots’ favors, put Judases on their payrolls. Gaspar and his fellow Honorable Correspondents worked out of love for France, not a single coin crossed their palm, never a numbered account was opened on their behalf. Agents got paid, operatives got paid, Honorable Correspondents spied for love. HCs were decent folk—a schoolmarm, for instance, in South Africa, a woman from Nice who taught high school French to the children of the ruling class. As coincidence would have it, one of her students was the son of a general officer in the South African defense forces. One day, for example, the son told her, his favorite teacher, that his dad was traveling on business to Taiwan. The teacher HC passed the information along to her SEDCE handler back in Paris at the headquarters on the Bvd. Mortier, the information was collated, cross-referenced, put to use. Meaning was made of it.

  Another HC owned a button-making factory in Argentina where his family had immigrated from Lyon a hundred years earlier, bringing their button-making skills with them. He was a substantial person, cultured and respectable, a pillar of the community. When a uniforms-maker ordered brass and other buttons from him, buttons for such-and-such quantity of military uniforms, this information too ended up on the Bvd. Mortier.