The Algerian Hoax by Roger Croft

Author:Roger Croft [Croft, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480891883
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Published: 2020-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

They arranged to meet at a harbour-side restaurant called La Souk. The terrace, sheltered by a white awning with gold stripes, looked out to a bobbing forest of sailboat masts and, across the port to the south bank, the Quai Rive Neuve. Dawson, impatient with Vaux’s hesitancy, had acted as middleman in the negotiations, and he now sat far back in the inside of the restaurant chatting to the chef and part-owner, a slim, short Moroccan known among his clientele as Ali Baba.

For mutual recognition, Vaux had said he would be ostentatiously reading the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, in honour of the magazine’s journalists killed by terrorists in early 2015. Such was his state of mind at the thought, the very thought, that finally, after all the ill-will and recriminations, Damascus had finally expressed a wish to communicate with him.

Over the top of his steel-rimmed reading glasses, Vaux sensed a shadowy figure approaching. This is it, he thought. He didn’t look up from the magazine as he heard a chair scraping the tiled floor and felt the table rock slightly as a slim man nestled into the cane chair opposite.

‘Monsieur Westropp, I presume,’ said the stranger.

Vaux looked up. For some reason, the use of his nom de guerre took him unawares. But he quickly recovered. ‘Oui, monsieur. And you, I presume, are Monsieur Bruno Valayer.’

‘Oui, en effet—exactly,’ said Valayer.

The elegance of the Syrian envoy, his pomaded hair and his thin pencil moustache, reminded Vaux of the movie portrayals of Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s indomitable detective. He decided to say very little. After all, the honorary consul had asked for the meeting.

A young waiter emerged from the back of the restaurant to take their orders. Valayer asked to see the wine list. Vaux ordered a Heineken.

‘Well, Monsieur Westropp. So nice of you to agree to see me.’

‘Yes,’ said Vaux.

Valayer smiled, noted Vaux’s coldness but ploughed on with the business at hand. ‘This won’t take long.’ He paused while the waiter put down Vaux’s beer.

Valayer quickly scanned the wine list. ‘Bring me a glass of your Mouton-Cadet, chilled.’

The waiter wrote the order on a pad, turned, and hurried to the bar in the back of the restaurant.

‘Well, now Monsieur Westropp. At last we meet. I have, over the years, heard a lot about you.’

‘No doubt. I understand you are anxious to give me some information or some message from the Syrian side.’ Vaux knew he was sounding unfriendly, even pompous, but he wanted to get the meeting over and done with.

‘Oh yes. All in good time. I am French-born, you know, and we like to take the diplomatic path, ’ow you say?—well, rather cautiously. Let’s not plunge into the business talk before we ’ave, what I think they say in the best circles, a libation.’

Vaux signaled his agreement by taking a swig from the bottle of Heineken.

It was a sunny morning, but an autumnal chill—a foretaste of the seasonal mistral, perhaps—blew in from north of the harbor, and some of

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