It’s at this point that Lilstein began to relax. He’s happy about what happened to Morel in that American restaurant, caught in the act of over-reaching himself, through excessive self-confidence, Morel is still an amateur, he still lets himself be guided by his reactions, especially with women. Lilstein has long believed Morel to be invulnerable because he no longer had a wife, no more Marguerite, but all the Americans had to do was dangle a women with a modicum of allure in front of Morel for him to stop thinking straight, Lilstein would never have made the same mistake, he would have spotted the second team, he reminds Morel of this as they stand looking at the dolls in the window of the Blue Dwarf, he reminds him of basic principles, he regains the initiative in a few slow sentences, just like in the good old days: the professional first puts up a curtain, my young French friend, he watches everything that passes in front of the curtain, and if all is well only then does he move on to the stage himself. Morel had walked into a trap, such a comfort. Lilstein does not say this last thought aloud, he looks around him, he’s not going to let himself be lifted.
Morel heard Lilstein out, thanked him, then went on with a kind of amused affection in his voice:
‘The sporty type took out a packet of cigarettes, he offered one to Maisie, lit it, went back to his table. He was only a bodyguard, Misha, just a bodyguard, a gun-carrier and cigarette-dispenser, for a lady who wanted to cut down on her smoking. I’d given myself a scare. Maisie inhaled deeply, she glanced at her cigarette and said “I’m trying to give up too, you managed it twenty years ago, that right? after a six-month stint with Gallia, the day they elected you to the Collège de France? smoke bother you? we’re going to cooperate seriously.”
‘For all these years they hadn’t managed to pin me down, Misha, and yet they knew all about Gallia, you really protected me well. You shouldn’t have bet your shirt on Gorbachev. The CIA hadn’t managed to get to me. I told them all about the past, but that wouldn’t have been enough to make me interesting, they need a project, they have a thing about projects, programmes.
‘If they were talking about cooperation it meant that I had a future I could sell them. I told them Gorbachev is going to fail. At the time, they really liked my analysis of Gorbachev’s future.
‘Maisie invited me to dinner a second time insisting “it’s still on me”, same Toulouse restaurant, same cigarette-carrying bodyguards, same cassoulet.
‘But sitting at our table was another man, well-dressed, relaxed, tweed jacket, handkerchief in his breast pocket, corduroy trousers, Maisie’s real boss this time, you’re going to meet him very soon now, you’re going to have fascinating conversations at the highest level, the man’s name is Walker, they refer to him as Richard F. T. Walker, the American mania for initials, F. T. is for flame-thrower, Richard Flame-Thrower Walker, I don’t know why, but it says what it means, with you he’s promised not to go any further than the lie-detector, he’ll keep his word, after all you’re going to be one of his colleagues, he gets on very well with Maisie, he’s deputy-director of the CIA, he’s Maisie’s boss, but it’s more complicated than that, sometimes he talks to her as if she’s a subordinate, at others as if he’s talking to someone who could one day be giving him orders, their relationship is very ambiguous.
‘I explained my assessments of Gorbachev for Maisie and Walker, the imminent failure of perestroika, the absence of genuine material conditions, they said “you’re talking Marx but that’s our kind of Marxism”.
‘It’s given them an edge, over the State Department and even the British, thanks to me, for once, the CIA got it right before everyone else did, they got it right for their president when Thatcher was giving him a hard time over her beloved Gorby, a desperate survivor hanging on to power, he misses his footing and to save himself reaches out and grabs a nest of vipers.
‘Maisie and Walker are both very pleased with me, Thatcher said “we must make cash payments to Gorby, we mustn’t let the West Germans absorb the GDR, we didn’t win the war for nothing”, she went off and told Gorbachev “don’t let go of the GDR”, the French also had the wind up them, no one wanted a greater Germany, not straight away, not for fifteen, twenty years.
‘I told the Americans Gorbachev is just a doctor who makes dying last longer, I also told them that German reunification was a done thing, it was unfortunate, but it was all settled, I sold them a slice of the future, think of what comes next, strengthen the ties with Poland, the Czechs, the Hungarians, in the old days they called them reverse alliances, I told them that my assessments came in part from you, don’t look like that, Misha, I really needed to embed you in the business, you’ll see why soon, I also said about you “there’s a man you could rescue”.’
By now Lilstein and Morel are no longer in the rue Saint-Honoré, they have walked under the colonnades of the Louvre, they emerge into the Place du Carrousel. Lilstein is happy to have put some distance between himself and the road and the cars which brush past pedestrians, he heads off to the Pei pyramid. Morel trails meekly behind him, takes up his thread:
‘The Americans found our friendship very touching, they want it to continue, with them as a third party, and I need your help to go on with my work, you may perhaps have wronged some innocent people, my dear scapegoat, but don’t give way to romantic impulse and turn yourself in to restore the order that’s been upset, though we must go on believing in order…
‘I know, Misha, you’d like the German police to arrest you, your new compatriots, they can only do that for your pre-war activities against Hitler, and you want to force them to do it, it would be droll, a great moral victory, but then what? A short spell in jail, slopping out in your cell, officially there’s no blood on your hands, officially, they’d be forced to release you fairly quickly, you’d be just a guilty man with no ideals left, a senile Cassandra, paid less and less handsomely by newspapers that become more and more vulgar.
‘Misha, I don’t want to see you eating up your days in melancholy, I’m offering you a hand in the big game until the end, a chance to go out in style, you’re holding a file out to a secretary and at that very moment, curtains, your arm drops, heart attack halfway through a file, better, ruptured aneurysm, a death like de Gaulle’s but when you’re still working, truly a gift, that’s what I’m offering you, you were born to die in harness, tempting, no? Yes, you’re right, I’m reversing the roles, today the tempter, the Devil, is me, the world turned inside out? The reverse of Goethe’s world? No, the world isn’t Goethean, we don’t need to turn it inside out, you’re wrong, I’m going to let you in on a secret, there’s no need to turn the world inside out.
‘The world never has had a right side except in the eyes of those who are paid to make us believe that it has, a world without God or the Devil, temptation rushing round and round in a whirlwind, and that’s it, you just never had the bottle to be honest with yourself.
‘The Americans, at least the ones I know, my new friends, believe in their God, they grapple with the Devil, and keep their end up by resorting to a theory of the necessary lie, since they believe truth has no opposite they are forced to lie, they sit in the Devil’s seat, they’re convinced they can get up off it whenever they like, with a prayer.