Dominique Manotti - Affairs of State

A mutton stew simmers in a cast-iron pot, filling the air with the aroma of tomato and spices. The kitchen is clean, with a sink, white units, a big fridge and a wooden table in the centre of the room. A hanging light gives out a warm yellow glow. The window is closed against the night and the heat is suffocating. The father, a stocky man with a furrowed face and grey hair, crashes his fist down on the table:

Not the theatre Not my daughter.

Ill do as I like.

His fist strikes her temple and he roars: I forbid you

The girls head lolls backwards, a crack, a red veil in front of her eyes. She reels and clutches at the table. Her mother sobs, wails, pleads and tries to step between them. The two brothers push her into a corner. The younger children have taken refuge in another room, the TV turned up full volume so the neighbours wont hear.

The girl leans forward, resting both hands on the table:

No one is ever going to forbid me from doing anything, ever again. In two months Ill be eighteen and an adult Tensely, almost spitting: An adult, you hear

An adult

He chokes with rage, grabs a chair and brandishes it as he edges round the table bearing down on her. She feels the heat behind her, turns around, seizes the pot with both hands and throws it at his head. The sauce splashes out in all directions, splattering the walls, the floor and the furniture with streaks of orangey-red fat. She doesnt even feel the burns on her hands, arms and legs, she doesnt hear her mother screaming. Her father raises his hands to his head, sways, slides down and collapses in a heap on the floor amid the chunks of mutton.

The eldest brother rushes over, slaps her, twists her arm behind her back, lifts her, carries her to one of the bedrooms and locks her in. The men are arguing in the kitchen, voices loudly raised. The father doesnt want to call a doctor. A taps running. Her mother sobs noisily.

Theyre going to lock me in. Theyre going to kill me. Her temples are throbbing. She walks over to the window and opens it. The air is cold, the housing estate ill-lit, silent, three storeys down. Dont think. Get out. Fast, before they come back. There are two beds in the room. She grabs hold of a mattress, leans over the windowsill, concentrates, aims, lets go. Quick, the other one, repeat exactly the same movements with accuracy. It lands on top of the first. A womans screams in the kitchen. Quick. Dont think, do it; dont think. Jump.

She straddles the sill, tensing her muscles like at the gym. She gazes at the mattress, focuses on it with all her energy, takes a deep breath and jumps.

She hits the ground hard and her right ankle cracks. She struggles to her feet. She can stand on it. She runs slowly, limping, into the night, zigzagging between the apartment blocks, avoiding the well-lit areas, listening out. How long for? She stops, her heart in her mouth. Shes lost. She sits on some steps, concealed by a dustbin, clasping her knees and her head buried in her arms. Slowly she catches her breath. Her hearts still pounding slightly. Cold, very cold. Her left eyes closed up, theres a sharp pain in her right ankle and the burns on her arms and legs are excruciatingly painful. No ID, no clothes, no money. One things for sure: Ill never go back home. And another: They wont come looking for me. As far as theyre concerned, Im dead. Dead.

Outside, its sunny, summers around the corner, but the offices of the RGPP, the Paris police intelligence service, are dark and gloomy with their beige walls, grey lino, metallic furniture and tiny north-facing windows overlooking an interior courtyard. In Macquarts office are three comfortable armchairs upholstered in velvet, halogen lamps permanently switched on. A newspaper is spread out on a table, open at page two, the Comment page. Three intelligence service chiefs, men in their fifties wearing dark suits, are leaning over it.

Its under Guillaume Labbs byline. Who is this Guillaume Labb?

Macquart straightens up.

In my view, its Bornands pseudonym.

The Presidents personal advisor?

Whos your source?

Simple deduction. Guillaume is the Abb Duboiss first name A pause. Advisor to Philippe Duke of Orleans 1 Silence. In any case, Bornands always felt he has a great deal in common with the statesman portrayed by the historians and memoir-writers of the eighteenth century: intelligent, depraved, a man of influence with connections So the pseudonym Guillaume Labb seems obvious to me. I think hes even used it once before. I must have it on file somewhere.

If you say so

They huddle over it and start reading.

In some sectors of the Paris press, one government scandal follows hot on the heels of the last. The wheels of business must be kept oiled.

If it is him, hes got a nerve. He dictates half the editorials of the satirical weekly the Bavard Impnitent, so thats their speciality

After explaining at length how, on the orders of the Defence Minister, the French secret services sank the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship campaigning against French nuclear testing in the Pacific, in a New Zealand port, killing a Portuguese journalist in the process, certain investigative journalists are now kicking up a fuss over the so-called Irish of Vincennes affair, accusing the men from the lyse special unit

Its Bornand, for certain. Hes the one who set up that unit, who recruited the men working in it, who placed it under the Presidents direct authority without having to be accountable to anyone. So clearly, it had better succeed. If it goes, he goes.

Its definitely Bornand. He loves macho police officers who climb over walls and shoot first, ask questions later.

Youve got to admit theyre more of a turn-on than we are.

Order, gentlemen, please.

of having planted the weapons themselves in the homes of the Irish terrorists they arrested in August 1982, the day after the fatal bomb attack in rue des Rosiers.2

The Rainbow Warrior affair prompted impartial observers to question the workings of the French Secret Service: mind-boggling incompetence or complex anti-government and anti-Socialist machinations? And what was the source of the leaks that enabled a handful of French journalists to find out more than the New Zealand investigators, and faster?

Shoot down the Foreign Intelligence Service

The Irish affair is even more ambiguous. The investigative journalists who are on the case all receive their tip-offs from the same source: a psychologically unstable individual with a dodgy personality whose testimony has been doing the rounds of the Paris editors for more than a year, without anyone taking him seriously until now. Furthermore, on his own admission and this is common knowledge he is in the pay of one of our major police departments working on the Secret Services patch.

Well, well

An attack on the Directorate for Territorial Surveillance too For the time being, the intelligence services seem to have emerged remarkably unscathed.

Hes not on top form today.

Have these investigative journalists questioned this informers reliability? Have they tried to cross-check the information he has given them with other sources? Not at all.

The aim is clear: to discredit the lyse unit, the team of police officers and gendarmes responsible for protecting the Presidents security and coordinating the fight against terrorists in France. A crack team which has been successful in every case it has handled and which has, let it be said loud and clear, dealt a serious blow to the spread of terrorism in France with the arrest of the Irish in August 82.