Hélène Bastogne is going to come.
Things come and go, which is normal in a consumerist society. The wind in the trees of Cavaillé-Coll park, Lover #2’s cock inside her, the confessions of the secret agent in the Armani suit, everything comes and goes in Hélène Bastogne’s world. A novel to say that. But Hélène Bastogne wouldn’t know how. Hélène Bastogne could almost kick herself for not knowing.
Hélène Bastogne needs redemption. Quickly. Hélène Bastogne needs to come. Quickly. Like everyone else, she no longer believes in God. Perhaps a novel. But Hélène Bastogne wouldn’t know how. To begin with:
she doesn’t know the names of trees;
she doesn’t know how to pray;
she doesn’t know if the spy hasn’t conned her a little;
she doesn’t know if she can write.
Hélène Bastogne is going to come.
Yet Hélène Bastogne is no fool. Lover #2 is an editor-in-chief first and foremost. When he listened to the MP3 recording of the operative, he found it so wild that he danced around Hélène Bastogne’s office at the paper — “It’s a bombshell, baby!” — a pitiful parody of rappers by a fifty-, soon sixty-something baby boomer with an indecent income.
And afterward, he had wanted to fuck Hélène Bastogne. Logical. For the moment Hélène Bastogne, thirty-two in a month, likes the cynical animality of it. Lover #2 is no longer that abstract power managing the editorial board like some tyrannical Nero, who makes trips to New York and back in one day, who meets tired and greedy faces in the drawing rooms of luxurious hotels, who takes telephone calls with a cell nickel-plated like a handgun.
No, Lover #2 suddenly had a body. Hormones, adrenaline, cologne. Slightly trembling hands, moist temples: the flashes of amphetamines, the flashes of triumph, the flashes of his exultant gonads. A spy who’s ratting, a spy spilling names, dates, evidence, a spy who’s going to explode the paper’s circulation.
Hélène Bastogne is going to come.
A stronger gust of wind. The nameless trees in Cavaillé-Coll park are moving. Lover #2 is coming. By distilling all this little by little, they can double the sales over two weeks.
Hélène Bastogne topples onto Lover #2’s torso. Then slips down beside him on a Bordeaux spread. Crumpled La Perla underwear. A Mac screen is pulsing. Hélène Bastogne buries her face in a sweaty neck, near a madly beating carotid artery.
“So, baby, can I take you to this new bar? It’s on Quai de Jemmapes.”
“If you like.”
Lover #2 is a typical baby boomer. Lover #2 likes to exhibit girls who are half his age with a third of his income in lame places like Canal Saint-Martin, which has completely turned into a museum by now. Always in the hope of bumping into the ghost of Arletty. Asshole. For her trouble she’ll play the whore a little and get him to buy her some stuff at Antoine et Lili, a trendy clothing boutique a little farther down, on Quai de Valmy. The fact is, Hélène Bastogne is not in a very good mood.
Because Hélène Bastogne did not come. As usual.
4
“We missed Berthet, sir.”
“You’re really dumb, Moreau. Did you subcontract again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“With your tightwad savings, you’re going to land us up shit creek. Was that you, the killing in the 10th? I just heard it on France Info.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who are the dead?”
“My two subcontractors, three civilians, and Morland.”
“You killed the counselor? You’re so stupid, Moreau.”
“If the counselor was with Berthet, it means the counselor was talking, right?”
“You’re an idiot, an asshole, and a moron. And on top of that, you wrecked one of the nicest restaurants in Paris. Where are you calling from?”
“From the Brady—”
“The alley or Mocky’s movie theater?”
“A movie theater, actually, yes, sir. The room is full of black guys jerking off, sir. Whose movie theater did you say this is?”
“Mocky’s, Moreau, Mocky’s. You’re completely ignorant on top of it all. Stay there, Moreau, and wait for orders. I’m going to fix your dumb blunders.”
They hang up.
Moreau is not happy. Moreau is forced to sit in the dark movie theater.
Moreau is forced to watch a film in black-and-white with the young Bourvil who steals from church collection boxes.
Moreau is forced to stay there with black guys who are jerking off.
Berthet will pay for this.
5
Berthet goes into the Gare du Nord. The caryatids are making fun of him in the blue November sky. Especially the Dunkirk one, it seems to him. A train to Dunkirk, why not? And then a freighter.
And then what?
Berthet is totally losing it. Berthet knows he’s got to get a grip on himself, and fast. This isn’t Conrad. This isn’t Graham Greene.
Berthet has The Unit after his ass. Berthet has a torn suit that smells of cordite and langoustine. Berthet still has one clip for his Glock, two for his Tanfoglio. Berthet knows that going home isn’t an option. The Unit is waiting for him, of course.
Berthet doesn’t live far from here, though, Passage Truil-lot in the 11th, but rue du Faubourg du Temple, the border between the two arrondissements, suddenly seems to him impossible to cross, like the Berlin Wall must have been for Morland before. Poor Morland.
But listen, all this is kind of Morland’s fault.
It was Morland who told Berthet to talk to that journalist, Hélène Bastogne. Saying this was going to be a big help to The Unit. To pass himself off as a guy from the Service. To destabilize the Service by ratting on the Service. Because during this preelection period, The Unit is still loyal to the Old Man, the President, while the Service is rather in favor of the Opposition Candidate, the Pretender. And the Old Man wants to take down the Pretender.
At least that’s how Morland explained it.
Internal politics, what a pain in the ass, thinks Berthet, as he steps into a terrifically impersonal neon and stainless steel café.
Inside there are people with that strained look of all departing travelers, and other people who have that strained look of people who aren’t departing travelers but who have nothing better to do than watch the ones who are.
Yes, internal politics is a pain in the ass, thinks Berthet, who doesn’t mind dying in Algiers, Abidjan, or Rome, but not two kilometers from home in an arrondissement where there are nothing but train stations, hospitals, and whores.
In other words, an arrondissement for hypothetical departures to rainy places, incurable diseases, and paid orgasms with spots of melanin on callipygian asses.
Yes, internal politics is a drag.
And Jesus, talk about those train stations! Berthet thinks the Gare de l’Est is even more depressing than the Gare du Nord. The Gare du Nord plays it futurist and Orwellian, but the Gare de l’Est still reeks of the draftees who went off twice in twenty years to get slaughtered on the Eastern fronts.
Furthermore, the paradox is that Berthet has hideouts even The Unit doesn’t know about in a dozen European and African cities, but here in Paris, in the 10th arrondissement — nothing, nada, zilch.
Berthet finally understands, though a bit late, a precept from The Art of War by Sun Tzu. A book that everyone at The Unit claims to be reading, it’s their bible and the pretext for seminars after Commando Training in Guyana.
Berthet used to think that reading Sun Tzu was a bit of a show-off, a little “We-at-The-Unit-are-philosopher-warriors,” a pose, really.