When Isaac Festung woke in his bed at just about the time Officers Cubellis and Hyde were reporting themselves back in service in Philadelphia-and six months after the Ministry of Justice's announcement-he was not at all worried about what the French Supreme Court would decide best served the interests of justice.
Not only had his lawyers told him he had nothing to be worried about, but based on his own analysis of the situation- by which he meant his analysis of France and the French mentality, intellectual and political-he did not see much- indeed, any-cause for concern.
The French, Fort Festung had concluded, had an identity problem, and an enormous capacity for self-deception. At the same time, they professed France to be a world power equal to any. They knew this wasn't true.
They were about as important in the world, Fort Festung had concluded, as the Italians, perhaps even less important. The difference was, the Italians knew what they were, and acted accordingly, and the French refused to admit what they were, and acted accordingly.
The most important factor in the equation was that the French really hated America and Americans. The Italians were grateful that the Americans had run the Germans, and the native fascists, out of Italy in the Second World War, and grateful again for the American relief effort after the war, and for American help in keeping the Communists from taking any real power in Italy.
The French were privately shamed that the Americans had twice been responsible for chasing the Boche from French soil. American aid to France after the war had made France resentful, not grateful, and France had been relieved when the Americans took a whipping in what had been French Indochina. It would have been almost too much for the French to bear if the Yankees had beaten the Vietnamese into submission after they had failed.
Dien Bien Phu was just one more name on a very long list of battles that the proud French Army had lost, something one would never suspect watching them strut down the Champs Elysees on Bastille Day with flags flying.
Fort saw proof of his theory in French automobiles. Most of them, he thought, in addition to being notoriously unreliable, were spectacularly ugly. And they had yellow headlights. No other country in Europe put yellow headlights on their cars. So far as Fort could tell, the only advantage of the yellow headlights was that they immediately identified a car as having been made in France.
They couldn't even sell French cars in the United States. They didn't meet American safety standards. Automobiles made, for example, in Korea did. And that was not even getting into the comparisons that could be made between Peugeots and Citroens and the Mercedes-Benzes and Porsches made by the hated Boche on the other side of the Rhine and which were highly regarded around the world.
There were, when he had time to think about it, literally hundreds of other proofs of France's general inferiority and the French unwillingness-perhaps inability-to accept it.
What this all added up to was that when a Frenchman found himself in a position where he could tell the United States to go fuck itself, he could count on hearty cheers from the great majority of his countrymen.
The issue, in other words, no longer had anything to do with what happened in Philadelphia so many years ago, or with Fort Festung.
It had become a question of the French Republic proving its sovereignty and independence before the world. France, the world's center of culture and civilization, was not about to bow to the will of the goddamned uncultured, uncivilized, and despicable United States of America.
Vive La France!
In the meantime, living in Cognac-Boeuf wasn't at all bad. He admitted he missed the excitement of Philadelphia, and obviously, he could never go back there. But with this business all out in the open, when the Supreme Court issued its decision, he would be able to travel all over France, which meant Paris.
And in the meantime, Fort Festung thought, as he got out of bed and put on a loosely fitting shirt and baggy cotton trousers, and slipped his sockless feet into thong sandals, life here in Cognac-Boeuf wasn't at all bad.
He could, for example, get on his bicycle, ride into Cognac-Boeuf, take a table at La Relais, have rolls fresh from the oven, locally made butter, coffee, and a hooker of cognac placed before him, and consume them while he explained to the locals what the stories inTime and the Trib really meant.
And that was exactly what Isaac David Festung did, while Officers Hyde and Cubellis remained on patrol in Philadelphia, maintaining as well as they could peace and domestic tranquillity in the City of Brotherly Love.
[THREE] When Captain Henry C. Quaire walked into Homicide a few minutes after eight the same morning, he saw Sergeant Matthew M. Payne sitting on a chair outside the chief of Homicide's office. Sergeant Payne rose when he saw Captain Quaire.
"Good morning,Sergeant," Quaire said, smiling, and then waved his hand toward the door of his office. "Come on in."
Matt Payne followed him into the office.
"One of your major responsibilities, Sergeant," Quaire said, pointing to his coffee machine, "is to make sure that one of your subordinates makes sure that machine is tended and ready for service by the time I walk in here."
"Yes, sir," Matt said.
Quaire poured an Emerald Society cup full, and turned to Payne.
"Help yourself, Matt, and then pull up a chair."
"Yes, sir. Thank you."
Privately, Henry Quaire was not overjoyed at the assignment of Sergeant Payne to Homicide. For one thing, he'd had nothing to do with it. Almost traditionally, the chief of Homicide had been able to select his men, and there were a number of sergeants-three, in particular, who wanted the assignment-whom Quaire considered to be far better qualified to be a sergeant in Homicide than Sergeant Payne.
But the commissioner had had his off-the-wall idea of giving the top five guys on the sergeant's list their choice of assignment, so Payne's assignment was a done deal, and there was no way he could fight it.
Not that he really wanted to, he decided. For one thing, he was off the hook about picking one of the other sergeants. If he had had to make a choice between them, two of them would not have gotten the assignment, and they-and their rabbis- would have been disappointed, and their rabbis probably pissed.
Now they could be pissed at the commissioner.
And it wasn't as if Payne was an absolute incompetent getting shoved down his throat. He was, in fact, a pretty good cop, who would probably do a good job in Homicide before moving onward and upward in the police hierarchy. Like his rabbi, Inspector Peter Wohl, he was one of those people who seemed predestined for ever-greater responsibility and the rank that went with it.
Nor was there going to be, so far as Quaire sensed, much-if any-resentment from the Homicide guys about having a brand-new sergeant with just over five years on the job as a Homicide supervisor.
For one thing, Payne was close to the two most respected people in Homicide, Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Tony Harris. Washington had no problem with Payne's assignment, and when Quaire had asked Tony Harris, Harris had been almost enthusiastic.
"I've worked with him, Captain," Harris said. "He's smart as hell. And this place can use a little class. Unless I'm wrong, he's going to be dynamite on the witness stand."
Smart as hell and being dynamite on the witness stand were two desirable characteristics for anybody in Homicide.
And then there was the fact that everybody in Homicide knew that Payne had had two good shootings. The first had been the serial rapist in Northwest Philadelphia who'd tried to run Payne down in his van. That bastard had already had his next intended victim trussed up like a Christmas turkey in the back of his van when Payne had interrupted his plans with a bullet in his head.
The second was when they were rounding up the doers in the Goldblatt amp; Sons Furniture job, and Wohl had put Payne and Mickey O'Hara in an alley to keep them out of the line of fire, while Highway and Special Operations uniforms went in the front. One of the doers had appeared in the alley with a.45 semiautomatic. Payne had taken a hit in the leg, but he'd downed the bad guy anyway.