The Seventh Function of Language

D’Ornano: “Secret agents working freelance in their spare time? Frankly…”

Ponia: “Secret agents working for several employers? It’s not exactly unheard of.” (He drains his glass.)

Giscard (stubbing out his cigarette in a little ivory hippopotamus that serves as an ashtray): “Agreed. Anything else?”

Ponia (leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head): “Well, it turns out Carter’s brother is a Libyan agent.”

Giscard (surprised): “Which one? Billy?”

Ponia: “Andropov seems to have got this from the CIA. Apparently, he thought it was hilarious.”

D’Ornano (getting them back to the subject at hand): “So, what are we going to do? If in doubt, wipe them out?”

Ponia: “The president does not need the document. He just needs to know that the opposition doesn’t have it.”

As far as I know, no one has ever pointed out that Giscard’s famous speech impediment became more pronounced during moments of embarrassment or pleasure. He says: “Of coursh, of coursh … But if we could find it … or at leasht locate it, and if poshible, get our handzh on it, I would resht more eazhily. For the shake of Fransh. Imagine if thish document fell into, uh, the wrong handzh … Not that … But, well…”

Ponia: “Then we have to make Bayard’s mission clearer: get hold of the document, without letting anyone read it. Let’s not forget that that young linguist he’s hired is capable of deciphering it and therefore using it. Or of ensuring that every copy of it is destroyed. [He gets up and walks over to the drinks table, muttering.] A lefty. Bound to be a lefty…”

D’Ornano: “But how can we know if the document has already been used?”

Ponia: “According to my information, if someone used it we would know about it pretty damn quickly…”

D’Ornano: “What if they were discreet? Kept a low profile?”

Giscard (leaning against the sideboard under the Delacroix, and fingering the Legion of Honor medals in their boxes): “That doesn’t seem very plausible. Power, of whatever kind, is intended to be used.”

D’Ornano (curious): “Is that true for the atomic bomb?”

Giscard (professorial): “Especially the atomic bomb.”

The mention of a possible end to the world plunges the president into a light daydream for a moment. He thinks of the A71 highway which must cross the Auvergne, of the mayor’s office in Chamalières, of the France over which he rules. His two employees wait respectfully for him to start speaking again. “In the meantime, all our actions should be governed by a single objective: preventing the left from gaining power.”

Ponia (sniffing a bottle of vodka): “As long as I’m alive, there will be no Communist ministers in France.”

D’Ornano (lighting a cigarette): “Exactly. You should slow down if you want to get through the election.”

Ponia (raising his glass): “Na zdrowie!”

36

“Comrade Kristoff … You know, of course, who is the greatest politician of the twentieth century?”

Emil Kristoff was not summoned to Lubyanka Square, but he would have preferred that.

“Naturally, Yuri Vladimirovich. It’s Georgi Dimitrov.”

The faux-intellectual tenor of his meeting with Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, in an old bar located in a basement, as nearly all the bars in Moscow are, is not designed to reassure him, and the fact that they are in a public place changes nothing. You can be arrested in a public place. You can even die in a public place. He is well placed to know this.

“A Bulgarian.” Andropov laughs. “Who would have believed it?”

The waiter puts two small glasses of vodka and two large glasses of orange juice on the table, with two fat gherkins on a little plate, and Kristoff wonders if this is a clue. Around him, people smoke, drink, and talk loudly, and that is the first rule when you want to be sure that a conversation cannot be overheard: meet in a noisy place, full of random sounds, so that any microphones hidden nearby cannot isolate a particular voice. If you are in an apartment, you should run a bath. But the simplest solution is to go out for a drink. Kristoff observes the customers’ faces and spots at least two agents in the room, but he presumes there must be more.