The Courilof Affair - Couverture souple

Prologue

Two men sat down separately at the empty tables on the terrace of a café in Nice, attracted by the red flames of a small brazier.

It was autumn, at dusk, on a day that felt cold for that part of the world. ‘It’s like the sky in Paris . . .’ said a woman passing by, pointing to the yellowish clouds carried along by the wind. Within a few moments, it began to rain, enhancing the darkness of the deserted street where the lamps had not yet been lit; raindrops dripped down here and there through the soaked canvas awning stretched over the café.

The man who had followed Léon M on to the terrace had secretly watched him ever since he’d sat down, trying to remember who he was; both men leaned forward towards the warm stove at the same moment.

From inside the café came the muddled sound of voices, people calling out; the crashing of billiard balls, trays banging down on the wooden tables, chess pieces being moved around the boards. Now and again, you could make out the hesitant, shrill fanfare of a small band, muffled by the other noise in the café.

Léon M looked up, pulled his grey wool scarf more tightly around his neck; the man sitting opposite him said quietly: ‘Marcel Legrand?’

At the very same moment, the electric lights suddenly came on in the street, in the doorways, and outside the cafés. Surprised by the sudden brightness, Léon M looked away for a moment.

‘Marcel Legrand?’ the man repeated.

There was a surge of electricity in the street-lights, no doubt, for they grew dimmer; the light flickered for a second, like the flame of a candle left outdoors; then it seemed to come back again, bathing Léon M’s face, hunched shoulders, gaunt hands, and delicate wrists in a dazzling light.

‘Weren’t you in charge of the Courilof affair, in 1903?’

‘In 1903?’ M repeated slowly.

He tilted his head to the side and whistled softly, with the weary, sarcastic look of a cautious old bird.

The man sitting opposite him was sixty-five; his face looked grey and tired; his upper lip twitched with a nervous tic, causing his big white moustache, once blond, to jump now and again, revealing his pale mouth, his bitter, anxious frown. His lively eyes, piercing and suspicious, quickly lit up and then almost immediately looked away.

‘Sorry. I don’t recognise you,’ M finally said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘My memory isn’t very good these days . . .’

‘Do you remember the detective who used to be Courilof’s body guard? The one who ran after you one night, in the Caucasus? . . .’

‘The one who ran after me . . . unsuccessfully? I remember now,’ said M.

He gently rubbed his hands together; they were getting numb. He was about fifty years old, but he looked older and ill. He had a narrow chest, a dark, sarcastic expression, a beautiful but odd mouth, bad, broken teeth, greying locks of hair spilling over his forehead. His eyes, deeply set, shone with a dim flame.

‘Cigarette?’ he murmured.

‘Do you live in Nice, Monsieur Legrand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Withdrawn from active service, if I may put it that way?’

‘You may.’

M took a puff of his cigarette, without inhaling, watched it burn in his fingers, and threw it down on the ground, slowly stubbing it out with his heel.

‘That all happened a long time ago,’ he finally said, with a wry smile, ‘a very long time ago . . .’

‘Yes . . . I was the one responsible for the inquiry, after your arrest, after the terrorist attack.’

‘Oh, were you?’ M murmured indifferently.

‘I never managed to find out your real name. Not one of our secret agents knew who you were, either in Russia or abroad. Now that it doesn’t matter any more, tell me something — you were one of the leaders of that terrorist group in Switzerland, before 1905, weren’t you?’

‘I was never one of the leaders of a terrorist group, just a subordinate.’

‘So?’

M nodded, a weary little smile on his face.

‘That’s how it was, Monsieur.’

‘Really, and what about later on? In 1917 and after? I know I’m right, you were really . . .’

He paused, looking for the appropriate word; then he smiled, revealing long, sharp teeth gleaming between pale lips. ‘You were really in the thick of it,’’ he said, tracing the shape of a big cauldron in the air. “I mean . . . at the top.’

‘Yes . . . at the top.’

‘The secret police? The Tcheka?’

‘Well, my friend, I did a bit of everything. During those difficult times, everyone lent a hand.’

He tapped out a tune on the marble table with his delicate, curved fingers.

‘Won’t you tell me your name?’ the man said, laughing. ‘I swear I’m also peacefully retired now, like you. I ask out of simple curiosity, professional inquisitiveness, if you will.’

M slowly raised the collar of his raincoat and pulled his scarf tighter with the same cautious gesture he always used.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, laughing slightly and coughing at the same time. ‘People are always drawn back to their first love. And, besides, my name wouldn’t tell you anything more now. Everyone forgot it a long time ago.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No, I’ve kept some of the good old revolutionary traditions,’ said M, smiling again; he had a little mechanical smile that made deep ridges at the corner of his mouth. He picked up a piece of bread and ate it slowly. ‘What about you?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows. ‘What’s your name, Monsieur?’

‘Oh, my name? No mystery there . . . Baranof . . . Ivan Ivanitch . . . I was assigned to His Excellency, to Courilof, for ten years.’

‘Oh, really?’

For the first time, M’s weary little smile faded; up until now, he’d been staring across at the harshly lit wax mannequins, the only items on display in the rain-drenched street, but he stopped staring, coughed slightly, looked straight at Baranof: ‘What about his family? Do you know what happened to them?’

‘His wife was shot during the Revolution. The children must still be alive. Poor Courilof. We used to call him the Killer Whale. Do you remember?’

‘Ferocious and voracious,’ said M.

He crumpled the remainder of his bread, started to get up, but it was still pouring; the rain bounced heavily off the pavement in bright sparks. He slowly sat down again.

‘Well, you got him,’ said Baranof. ‘How many others did you personally bag, in total?’

‘Then? Or afterwards?’

‘In total,’ Baranof repeated.

M shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know, you remind me of a young man who came to interview me once, in Russia, for an American magazine. He was very interested in the statistics, wanted to know how many men I’d killed since I’d come to power. When I hesitated, he innocently asked: “Is it possible? Is it possible that you can’t remember?” He was a rosy-cheeked little Jew by the name of Blumenthal, from the Chicago Tribune.’

He motioned to the doorman who was walking between the tables outside: ‘Get me that cab.’

The cab stopped in front of the café.

He stood up, extended his hand to Baranof.

‘It’s funny running into each other like this . . .’

‘Terribly funny.’

M laughed suddenly. ‘And . . . actually . . .’ he said in Russian, ‘how many people did die? “In answer to our prayers”? With our help?’

‘Huh!’ said Baranof, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Well I, at least, was acting under orders. I don’t give a damn.’

‘Fair enough,’ said M, his voice weary and indifferent. He carefully opened his large black umbrella and lit a cigarette on the brazier. The bright flame suddenly illuminated his face with its hollow cheeks that were the colour of earth, and his wide, suspicious dark eyes. As usual, he didn’t actually smoke his cigarette, just breathed in its aroma for a moment, half closed his eyes, then threw it away. He gestured good-bye and left.

Léon M died in March 1932, in the house in Nice where he had spent his final years.

Amongst his books was found a small black leather briefcase; it contained several dozen typed pages clipped together. The first page had written on it, in pencil, the words: The Courilof Affair
1

Nice, 1931

In 1903, the Revolutionary Committee gave me the responsibility of liquidating Courilof. That was the term they used at the time. This affair was linked to the rest of my life only in a minor sort of way, but as I am about to write my autobiography, it stands out in my memory. It forms the beginnings of my life as a revolutionary, even though I changed sides afterwards.

Fourteen years passed before I came to power, half of them spent in prison, half in exile. Then came the October Revolution (Sturm und Drang Period) and another exile.

I have been alive for fifty years, years that have gone quickly by, and I don’t have much to complain about. But still the final years seem long . . . the end is dragging on.

I was born in ’81, on 12 March, in an isolated village in Siberia near the Lena River; my mother and father were both in exile for political reasons. Their names were well-known in their day, but are now forgotten: Victoria Saltykof and t...

From the author of the bestselling Suite Française.

In 1903 Léon M - the son of two Russian revolutionaries - is given the responsibility of 'liquidating' Valerian Alexandrovitch Courilof, the notoriously brutal and cold-blooded Russian Minister of Education, by the Revolutionary Committee. The assassination, he is told, must take place in public and be carried out in the most grandiose manner possible in order to strike the imagination of the people.

Posing as his newly appointed personal physician, Léon M takes up residence with Courilof in his summer house in the Iles and awaits instructions. But over the course of his stay he is made privy to the inner world of the man he must kill - his failing health, his troubled domestic situation and, most importantly, the tyrannical grip that the Czar himself holds over all his Ministers, forcing them to obey him or suffer the most deadly punishments.

Set during a period of radical upheaval in European history, The Courliof Affair is an unsparing observation of human motives and the abuses of power, an elegy to a lost world and an unflinchingly topical cautionary tale.