Suddenly she was laughing, grateful to him for having changed the mood. She stretched up, her hand on his arm. ‘What I would say, Monsieur Benning,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘is what the hell!’
For Max the morning in court had a nightmare quality of repetition and irrelevance. Van Khoa’s assistant prosecutor who delivered most of the morning’s statements spent at least an hour on Quatch’s Paris finances, establishing that his allowance from the then North Vietnamese was extremely modest. Against this he read from details of what he claimed were Quatch’s bank account at the Credit Marseillais. What might have been established in ten minutes, that Quatch had an extra source of income while he was in Paris, took over three hours. Throughout these statements Quatch sat on a small cane chair, his manacled hands in his lap, his expression unchanged from one of vague detached boredom. To Max it seemed as if he already considered the trial over.
Only after lunch was the froth of rhetoric suddenly blown away. ‘The case of former comrade Quatch is a revolutionary tragedy.’ Van Khoa suddenly reverted to normal tones. ‘He was sent to Paris as a man of honour. Among the many tasks entrusted to him was to attempt to recover from museums and even private collectors as many as possible of the Vietnamese works of art which had been stolen from us during the period of French colonialism.’ Van Khoa glanced towards Quatch, his mouth turning down. ‘But the corruption of the West was already working on Quatch. He began to abandon the simple precepts of Ho Chi Minh. He began to dress in the finest Western clothes. To eat at the celebrated restaurants of Paris. To escort his concubine to the Opera or the horse races at Longchamps. He began to seek out even more dubious pleasures.’
Van Khoa turned his back on Quatch. ‘But the corrupt life had to be paid for. And how was this to be done? A Paris museum had agreed to the return to us of an objet d’art of great beauty, an ivory screen from the Imperial Palace at Hue.’ Van Khoa stopped. ‘Through a certain antiquaire of the seventeenth arrondissement, Paris, a convicted receiver of stolen goods, Quatch disposed of the screen for his own profit. It was broken into individual pieces, comrades, this screen which was unique in Sino-Vietnamese history, and sold throughout the Western world. It was the first of many dealings Quatch was to have with this criminal Frenchman.’
‘Were any of the prisoner’s illegal profits brought back to this country?’ one of the judges asked.
‘When we searched the administrator’s apartment on Avenue Giap and his summer house on the river we recovered twenty-thousand US dollars,’ Van Khoa said. ‘The prisoner’s claim is that this is all that remains of the considerable sums he made from the sale of antiquities in Paris.’
Before he could continue the court’s attention was deflected by the low hiss of voices at the panelled door as an official was reluctantly allowed past by the soldiers. Crossing to Van Khoa he handed him a note. The court watched while the prosecutor read it and, with a long glance at Quatch, approached the president of the judges. An adjournment was immediately announced. Longer than the standard ten minutes, it stretched to twenty, then half an hour. A further announcement was then made. The newsmen were free to leave the court. The adjournment would last for a further hour. A new witness was to be called.
Outside in the square, Max sought out Nan Luc. She came towards him, biting her lip anxiously. ‘Van Khoa has just told me that they have found my grandmother.’
‘I thought she was in Paris?’
‘Her Red Cross passport was out of date. At the last moment she discovered that Quatch had failed to renew it. It would amuse him of course. My grandmother has been living in a village in the Delta, bribing people to look after her. When her money ran out they turned her over to the police.’
‘Why does Van Khoa need your grandmother? Doesn’t he have all the evidence he needs anyway?’
She hesitated. ‘Van Khoa has always believed that Quatch still has money hidden in Europe. Perhaps my grandmother will confirm this.’
When the court reassembled Van Khoa announced that there had been certain developments concerning a witness he had been seeking for some weeks. Suddenly Max felt a tingle of electricity pass through the courtroom. Quatch, for the first time, seemed disturbed, his hands fluttering in his lap. The newsmen were leaning forward trying to make out what was happening.
‘I wish to call,’ the prosecutor said, ‘Bernadette Hyn. Prostitute. Mistress of former administrator Quatch.’
Nan Luc was watching Quatch. His sense of shock was palpable. He had thought Bernadette was already in Paris, beyond reach of Van Khoa’s questions. His mouth had tightened. His thin jowls were tucked into his collar. He turned in his seat, his manacles clinking lightly on his wrists.
Bernadette was led from the same door at which Quatch had appeared. She was greatly changed from the last time Nan Luc had seen her. Her hair hung about her thin face and her grey prison clothes made of her a shapeless, shuffling form. Staring at her grandmother, Nan felt a numbness, a cold absence of emotion. In the past weeks when she had imagined Bernadette in Paris, safe and rich and uncaring, Nan Luc had experienced sharp shafts of bitterness at the idea that her grandmother should triumph so effortlessly once again. Then, when a few minutes ago Van Khoa had told her that Bernadette had been found, Nan Luc imagined she might feel something approaching pity for her. But now, watching the shuffling figure, she felt more apprehension than pity.
Bernadette offered her one cold glance as she took her place in the witness box and Nan Luc knew, from that glance alone, that her grandmother had somehow contrived to sell herself yet again. From his wary expression Quatch knew it too.
‘I first met Monsieur Quatch,’ she said, in answer to the first question, ‘in 1965 in what was then known as Saigon. Later he asked me to work with him in Paris. Mistakenly, I agreed. I was already completely under his influence.’ She glanced brazenly across the courtroom. ‘Monsieur Quatch delights in submission.’
‘He forced you to do things against your will?’
‘He beat me regularly.’
Nan Luc studied the face of Quatch. He had recovered from the shock of seeing Bernadette in court and now pretended to be watching the scene before him with no great interest. A smile touched his lips as Bernadette continued, but whether it was intended as a smile of contempt for the treachery of his mistress, or of pleasure at a memory he relived, it was impossible to say.
‘Tell the court about these beatings,’ the president said.
‘These beatings were part of the sexual act,’ Bernadette continued. ‘He would also take me up to the Bastille area in Paris. There the streetwalkers gave beatings for money. Quatch would pay them to beat me.’
Van Khoa nodded. ‘After your return from Paris did he continue to beat you?’
‘From time to time.’
‘Why did you not leave him?’
Bernadette smiled. ‘He was also very generous.’
‘He gave you a place to live, food and wine…’
‘More than that. He gave me a passport, a Red Cross passport, so that when the time came I could leave for the West with him.’
‘He intended to defect?’
‘Of course,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s where all his money was. Here, he only had a few thousand dollars left. The money you found at the summer house.’
Van Khoa let the moment sink in. ‘The prisoner Quatch has bank accounts in the West?’
Quatch’s reptilian eyes slid back and forth across the courtroom.
‘In recent years, yes…’
Van Khoa flipped his hair back with the stump of his hand, a look of bewilderment on his face. ‘In recent years? In recent years?’ he repeated. ‘How can that be? How can Vo Tran Quatch still be trading in antiquities?’