In the mountains above and somewhat to the left of the town of Montreux we found the place we sought and kneeling down with my valet, Happé, supporting me, I gave thanks when I saw it; dead though its chambers now lie, still its voice, it shall live again when our people come, as over the years they shall assuredly come, sick for home, to this home from home…
Then Lynch warned them again that his time was short, and so was theirs. They were marked men and one of them, he could not say which, would not see another sunrise. And when they protested that he could not possibly know this for sure, he said nothing, just stepped back into his taxi and tapped on the glass and told the cabbie to drive on. When they ran after the cab as it gathered speed demanding to know how anyone would find them in London, he rolled down the window and asked them how they thought he had found them so easily. It would be no trouble to their enemies, they could find them whenever they liked simply by looking in the right place, just as one found characters in a book, simply by looking them up.
CHAPTER 14
Blanchaille looked at Soho with big eyes. Van Vuuren looked hardly at all, turning his gaze inward, as if he knew what was to come.
So they went, the priest and the policeman, the egg and spoon, through the little streets, this once great mixing place of European peoples, now all gone, leaving behind them only their tourists and their restaurants and a profusion of continental erotica. He looked at it with professional eyes, Blanchaille told himself, trying perhaps to explain his interest, as a centre dedicated to sin. It looked to him, Van Vuuren replied, like a dump — over-rated, over-priced, dull, tawdry and sad. Blanchaille stared at the hawkers, the barrow-boys, the suitcase salesmen. A fat man with one sleeve rolled up offering gold watches strapped to his arm like chain mail flashing in the sun, was trumpeting the bargains of a lifetime and waving the highly coloured guarantees like flags. Arab men with pot bellies and tight, flared tailored trousers walked around with their hands in their pockets, staring boldly at single women; a girl winked at him from a balcony; in the dull entrances of crumbling buildings he saw the name-plates of cheap cardboard inscribed in shaky ballpoint — MYRA, MODEL, WALK RIGHT UP. He peered through the bead curtains across the doorways of the ‘adult film parlours’ which gave them an oddly oriental look. A striptease club displayed pale cracked photographs, faded by infrequent suns, showing a female chorus line presenting their buttocks to a delirious audience. Blanchaille was ashamed to find himself hesitating fractionally, drawn as it were, downwards.
THE BARE PIT — SIX LOVELY LADIES IN FANTASTIC COMBINATIONS/DAY-NITE NUDES NON-STOP!!! Some had pound notes tacked to their pubic mounds. One carried a whip. Another was wearing nothing but an iron cross. Two oiled female wrestlers grappled in a miniature ring. A largish and very pale redhead was immersed, for some mysterious reason, in what looked like a giant goldfish bowl. But it was an empty black leather chair in the centre of the stage which looked truly obscene.
A burly and very black man blocked their path and invited them to step below and see for themselves the loveliest things in the universe, at the same time introducing himself to them as Minto, their guide to the pleasures of The Bare Pit. Van Vuuren attempted to brush him off but Minto was persistent and took his arm in what was clearly a very persuasive grip and, as Blanchaille realised when he saw pain succeed annoyance on the square handsome features, one that succeeded in its intentions.
‘Run, Blanchie, run!’ said Van Vuuren.
But there was another man, taller, very wiry, who declared himself to be Dudley from Malta, with a little black moustache and no less fierce a grip.
Of course Van Vuuren would have flattened them both, one, two, bang, bang, in his former life. Perhaps the clerical garb restrained him because he put up no struggle as they were marched downstairs.
It was dimly lit below stairs, a bar at one end and a stage at the other, the twenty or so rows of seats between furnished in red plush, redolent of ancient excitements of old men: of tobacco, sweat, aged underpants, hair oil, disappointed hope, stale beer, old socks, bitter anger, and various unidentifiable, recent stains. In the front row sat several large gentlemen.
Blanchaille remembered what he had read of such places, of the old men who came down here to watch women strip and masturbate beneath their plastic raincoats. One had read of such accounts since childhood, they were a part of the contemporary portrait of Britain, where all the people not on strike were on the dole, or on pension; where child murder was widely practised; few people bathed; income tax was 19/6d in the pound and nobody ate meat any longer. The Regime taught this in its schools. His French mother confirmed at least the last: ‘The roast beefs,’ as she used to call the English contemptuously, ‘have no roast beef any longer.’ Blanchaille’s mother had never been to England, but then that hardly mattered. England was a repository, a store of rumours of decline from which the world could draw at will for stories to frighten children. It had no other use but to remind one, horribly, of what your country might become if the Total Onslaught succeeded.
Minto and Dudley from Malta introduced Blanchaille to the proprietor, a small and stout individual with black hair gleaming lushly in the concealed lighting around the bar. He was called Momzie. Without hesitation he poured Blanchaille a Scotch and soda and patted the bar stool beside him. ‘May as well make yourself comfortable while those gentlemen over there have their little conversation with your friend.’
Minto and Dudley marched Van Vuuren up on to the stage. The props the girls used in their show were still there, the black leather chair, the wicked whip of grey rhino hide, the giant goldfish bowl of rather milky water, the wrestling ring. Van Vuuren was roped to the black leather chair.
‘I think these people intend to injure my friend,’ said Blanchaille.
‘I hire out this place when we’re not busy,’ Momzie said. ‘People want somewhere where they can have a quiet chat. It’s money up front and I don’t care who uses it as long as they watch their hours. I’ve got a show to run here and sometimes they’re inclined to overshoot.’
The men in the front row weren’t wearing plastic raincoats. They were young. They wore a variety of costume, sports jackets, tweeds and safari suits. One of them was a black man wearing a pale blue suit. They looked at Van Vuuren with special interest. From his seat on the stage he gazed defiantly back, but the footlights must have made it difficult to identify them at first.
‘I see it now,’ he said, ‘a deputation from my old Department; Brandt from Signals, Kritzinger from Interrogation, Breda from Surveillance, Kramer from Accounts — well, hell’s bells Jack! I never dreamt you were operational, or did you get promotion, or did they send you over to see the strippers for a Christmas treat, or something?’
‘You fucked out on us, Trev,’ said the man called Kramer from Accounts, ‘and now you’re tootling around England tricked out as a poncey priest. It’s not right, Trev.’
Now Van Vuuren noticed the black man in the pale blue suit. Even from where he sat at the bar between Minto and Dudley from Malta, his drink untouched, Blanchaille saw the horror on his face.
‘Oscar! What in Christ’s name are you doing here?’
The man in the blue suit stood up. ‘Things are complex,’ he said. ‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘But you guys sent for me. I’ve come home, Oscar. Tell them! Why didn’t you meet me at the airport?’
‘We didn’t expect you, Trevor.’
‘But damn it to hell, Oscar, I work for you.’
‘No, you work for us,’ said the shaven-headed man called Kritzinger from Interrogation.
Van Vuuren was straining at the ropes now. ‘What the hell is going on? Oscar what is someone from the ALF doing in this hole with these vultures from my Department? These guys shoot people like you, Oscar. Where is Kaiser? Does he know you’re here?’
Oscar nodded. ‘He sent me. He said to tell you hello —’
‘And goodbye,’ said Brandt from Signals.
The front row laughed heartily.
‘I want to see Kaiser,’ Van Vuuren demanded.