Yesterday's Spy (18 page)

Thursday was a free day for me. I spent it in Nice. That morning I walked slowly through the market, smelling the vegetables, fruit and flowers. I ate an early peach, and put a blue cornflower in my buttonhole. From the market it was only a stone's throw to Serge Frankel's apartment. He was not surprised to see me.

‘We'll have coffee,' he said. He ushered me into the study. It was in the usual state of chaos. Valuable stamps were scattered across his desk, and there were piles of the old envelopes that I had learned to call ‘covers'. Catalogues, their pages tagged with coloured slips of paper, were piled high on a chair, and some were placed open, one upon the other, alongside the notebooks on his desk.

‘I'm disturbing you.'

‘Not at all, my boy. I'm glad of a break from work.'

I looked round the room, carefully and systematically. I tried to be discreet about it but there could be no doubt that Serge Frankel knew what I was doing. He waited for me to speak. I said, ‘Aren't you frightened of burglars, Serge? This stuff must be worth a fortune.'

He picked up some creased stamps that he'd lined up under the big magnifier. Using tweezers, he put them into a clear paper packet and placed a small weight upon them. ‘This is only a small percentage of what I have. A dealer has to keep his stock circulating to prospective customers.' He plugged the coffee-pot into a wall socket. ‘I can give you cream today. It will make up for last time.'

‘Is Steve Champion still buying?' I said.

The telephone rang before Frankel could answer my question. He answered the call, ‘Serge Frankel,' and then before the caller could get launched into a long conversation, he said, ‘I have someone with me at present, and we are talking business.' He watched the coffee-pot and interjected a few laconic and noncommittal words and a farewell. The coffee-pot was bubbling by the time he rang off. ‘A stamp dealer faces a thousand problems,' he said. ‘One or two of them are philatelic but at least nine hundred and ninety are simply human nature.'

‘Is that so?'

‘This woman, for instance,' he made fastidious movements with his fingers to indicate the telephone. ‘Her husband died last month … a decent sort: a printer … well, you can hardly respond to his death by asking her if she wants to sell her husband's stamp collection.'

I nodded.

‘And now,' said Frankel, ‘she's phoning to explain that a Paris dealer called in to see them, was shocked to hear that her husband had died, offered to advise her on the sale, and wound up buying the whole eighteen albums for five thousand francs.' He ran his hand through his hair. ‘About one quarter of what I would have given her for it. She thinks she's got a wonderful deal because her husband would never admit how much he was spending on stamps each month … guilty feelings, you see.'

‘You get a lot of that?'

‘Usually the other way about: the husband with a mistress and an apartment in the Victor Hugo to pay for. Such men tell their wives that they are spending the money on stamps. When that sort die, they leave me with the unenviable task of explaining to the widow that the stamp collection that she thought was going to pay off the mortgage, give her a world cruise and put their sons through college, is just a lot of “labels” that I don't even want to buy.'

‘Those collections you
are
offered.'

‘Yes, dealers from Paris don't just happen by when there's a death in that sort of family. Worse, the widows so often suspect that I've been through the albums and stolen all the really valuable items.'

‘A stamp dealer's life is tough,' I said.

‘It's like being Cassius Clay,' he said. ‘I thump this desk and proclaim that I'll take on all comers. You could walk through that door, and for all I know you might be the greatest authority on Ballons-Montes or the stamps of the Second Empire or – worse still – telegraph stamps or tax stamps. Everyone wants an instant valuation and payment in cash. I've got to be able to buy and sell from experts like that, and make a profit. It's not easy, I'll tell you.'

‘Do you ever sell to Champion?' I asked.

‘Last year I did. I had three very rare French covers. It was mail sent by a catapulted aeroplane from the liner
Ile de France
in 1928. It was the first such experiment. They ran out of stamps so that they overprinted the surcharge on other stamps. On these the surcharge was inverted … It's all nonsense, isn't it?' He smiled.

‘Evidently not to Champion. What did he pay?'

‘I forget now. Twenty thousand francs or more.'

‘A lot of money, Serge.'

‘Champion has one of the top ten airmail collections in Europe: Zeppelins, French airships, balloon mail and pioneer flights. He likes the drama of it. He doesn't have the right sort of scholarship for the classic stamps. And anyway, he's a crook. He likes to have the sort of collection he can run with, and unload quickly. A man like Champion always has a bag packed and a blank airline ticket in his pocket. He was always a crook, you know that!'

I didn't follow Serge Frankel's reasoning. It would seem to my non-philatelic mind that a mobile crook would prefer classic stamps of enormous price. And then he'd never need to pack his bag. He could carry his fortune in his wallet everywhere he went. ‘You didn't tell him he was a crook in the old days,' I pointed out.

‘Didn't say that when he ambushed the prison van and set me free, you mean. Well, I didn't know him in those days.' He drank the rest of his cup of coffee. ‘I just thought I did.'

He brought the pot and poured more for both of us. He spooned some whipped cream on to the top of his strong coffee and then rapped the spoon against the edge of the cream jug to shake the remains off. The force of the gesture revealed his feelings. ‘Yes, well, perhaps you're right,' he admitted. ‘I must give the devil his due. He saved my life. I would never have lasted the war in a concentration camp, and that's where the rest of them ended up.'

‘What's he up to, Serge?'

‘You're out there in the big house with him, aren't you?'

‘But I don't know what he's up to, just the same.'

‘This oil business,' said Serge. ‘It will change the lives of all of us.' He picked up the jug, and in a different voice said, ‘Have some cream in your coffee?'

I shook my head. I would not provide him with another chance to move away from the matter in hand.

‘I'm not a Communist any more,' he said. ‘You realize that, I suppose.'

‘I'd detected some disenchantment,' I said.

‘Did the czars ever dream of such imperialism? Did the Jew-baiters dream of such support? The Russians have us all on the run, Charles, my boy. They urge the Arabs to deny us oil, they pass guns and bombs and rocket launchers to any group of madmen who will burn and maim and blow up the airports and hijack the planes. They brief the trade unionists to lock up the docks, halt the trains and silence the factories.'

I reached for my coffee and drank some.

‘Makes your throat dry, does it?' he said. ‘And well it might. Do you realize what's happening? In effect we'll see a movement of wealth to the Arab countries comparable to the movement of wealth from India to Britain in the eighteenth century. And
that
generated the Industrial Revolution! The USSR has now become the biggest exporter of armaments in the world. Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Libya – I won't bother you with the list of non-Arab customers – are buying Soviet arms as fast as they can spend. You're asking me if I help the Israelis! Helping the Israelis might be the West's only chance to survive.'

‘And where does Champion fit into this picture?'

‘A good question. Where indeed! Why should the Arabs bother with a cheap tout like Champion, when all the world's salesmen are falling over each other to sell them anything their hearts desire?'

‘Don't keep me in suspense.'

‘Your sarcasm is out of place, my boy.'

‘Then tell me.'

‘Champion has promised to sell them the only thing their money cannot buy.'

‘Eternal happiness?'

‘A nuclear device. A French nuclear device.'

There was a silence broken only by my heavy breathing. ‘How can you know that, Serge?'

Serge stared at me, but did not answer.

‘And if he delivers?'

‘Two hundred million pounds was mentioned.'

I smiled. ‘You are taking a chance on me … suppose I went back to the house and told Champion …'

‘Then either he would give up the plan – which would delight me – or he'd continue with it.' He shrugged.

‘He might
change
the plan,' I said.

‘I wouldn't imagine that alternative plans spring readily to mind for such a venture.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I suppose you are right.' I reached into my pocket, found my cigarettes and matches and took my time about lighting a cigarette. I offered them to Serge.

He waved them away. ‘You haven't told me your reaction,' he said.

‘I'm trying to decide whether to laugh or cry,' I told him.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You've been overworking, Serge. Your worries about the Arab–Israeli war, the oil crisis, your business, perhaps … you think that they form a pattern. You have invented a nightmare, and cast Champion as the archfiend.'

‘And I'm right,' said Serge, but as soon as he said it, he realized that it would confirm my diagnosis. He was a lonely old man, without wife, child or very close friends. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to calm his fears. ‘If Champion can steal an atomic bomb he deserves whatever it was you said he'd get.'

‘Two hundred million pounds was mentioned,' said Serge, repeating the exact words he'd used before as if it was a few frames of a film loop that never stopped running through his mind.

‘Why a
French
atomic bomb?' I said. ‘Why not an American or a British or a Russian atomic bomb?'

I wished I'd not asked him, for he'd obviously worked out the answer to that one long ago. ‘A French nuclear
device
,' he corrected me. ‘The technology is simpler. The French made their bomb unaided, it's a far simpler device, and probably less well guarded.' Serge Frankel got to his feet with all the care and concentration of the arthritic. He steadied himself by touching the windowsill where there was a brass inkstand and a carriage clock that always stood at four minutes past one o'clock. I wondered if the hands had become entangled. But Serge was looking not at the cluttered sill but through the window, and down into the street below.

The word ‘probably' left me an opening. ‘Now, you don't really believe that the French leave their goodies less well guarded than anyone else in the world. Now, do you, Serge?'

‘I take back the less well guarded,' he said over his shoulder. From his window there was a view of the market in Cours Saleya. I went over to where he was standing, to see what he was staring at. He said, ‘Any one of them could be working for Champion.'

I realized he was talking about the dark-skinned North Africans, so evident among both the sellers and the customers.

‘That's right.'

‘Don't humour me,' he said. ‘Champion's bringing Arab cut-throats into the country by the dozen. Algerians don't even need immigration papers. It was all part of de Gaulle's sell-out to them.'

‘I'd better get going,' I said.

He didn't answer. When I left he was still staring down through the window, seeing God knows what terrible scene of carnage.

As I started to descend the stone steps, I heard someone hurrying behind me from the floor above. The metal-tipped shoes echoed against the bare walls and I moved aside cautiously as he came closer.

‘Vos papiers!' It was the age-old demand of every French policeman. I turned to see his face, and that was my undoing. He struck my shoulder, from behind. There was enough force in it to topple me and I lost my balance on the last few steps of the flight.

I didn't fall on to the landing. Two men caught me and had me pinioned against the landing window, with no breath left in my body.

‘Let's have a look at him.' He gave me a sudden push to flatten me against the wall.

‘Wait a minute,' said the second voice, and they searched me with the sort of precision cops achieve in towns where the favourite weapon is a small folding-knife.

‘Let him go! I know who it is,' said a third voice. I recognized it as that of Claude
l'avocat.
They turned me round very slowly, as a vet might handle a fierce animal. There were four of them: three coloured men and Claude, all in plain clothes.

‘It was you who phoned Frankel, was it?' I said.

‘Was it so obvious?'

‘Serge went into a long explanation about stamp collectors' widows.'

Claude raised his arms and let them slap against his legs. ‘Serge!' he said. ‘Someone must look after him, eh?'

‘Is that what you're doing?'

‘He has acquired a lot of enemies, Charles.'

‘Or thinks he has.'

Claude looked at the French plainclothes men. ‘Thank you. We'll be all right now.' He looked at me. ‘We will, won't we?'

‘You assaulted
me
! Remember? What are you waiting for, an apology?'

‘You're right,' said Charles. He held up his hand in a gesture of appeasement. Then he indicated the way through the lobby to the street. The Nice cops had given him one of their stickers and now his white BMW was askew on the pavement under a ‘No Parking' sign. ‘I'll give you a lift somewhere.'

‘No thanks.'

‘We should talk, I think.'

‘Another time.'

‘Why put me to all the trouble of making it official?'

I said nothing, but I got into the passenger seat of his car. The anger, despair and humiliation of Claude's wartime betrayals boiled up inside me again.