“Yes,” Armand replied, cautiously tensing the way a fisherman stays still as he sees a fish approaching his baited hook. The fish hadn’t asked specifically for anyone, which meant that Armand was free to take the call. “I’d be happy to serve you. We’re the division that deals with policies of a minimum value of five hundred thousand Euros.” He expected that to be the end of it.
“I’d like to buy a policy.”
“May I ask in what range?”
“Ten million Euros.”
Armand’s heart thumped in his chest as if it were a cat frantically trying to escape from a cat carrier, but he strained to be nonchalant. “Your age, sir?”
“Seventy-five in June.”
The premium would be beyond anything anyone in the office had ever snagged, and the commission would be life saving. As far as Armand knew, although nothing would prevent writing a policy of that magnitude, there was no such policy in effect not only in his location but in any of the others throughout France. If he could do it, he would outshine everyone, he would save his family, get revenge, and secure his position. Outwardly, he remained magically calm. “I’d be happy to discuss this with you at your convenience. Where are you located?”
“Saint-Germain-en-Laye.”
“We’re in La Défense.”
“I know. It’s convenient, part of the reason I called you.”
“Would you like to come in, or shall I come to you?”
“Why don’t you come here?” Jules asked.
“Are you free this afternoon? I can suit your convenience.”
“What about now?” Jules proposed.
“Your address?”
Jules recited it.
“I can reach you in less than an hour, certainly. The weather was so bad I didn’t take my car,” Armand lied. “I’ll have to use the train.”
“Don’t rush,” Jules told him. “Take your time. I’ll see you when you arrive.” He hung up without saying goodbye, like Jack, or the generic kind of person who might buy a ten-million-Euro life insurance policy.
In near shock, Armand gathered his brochures, calculator, and forms, automatically put them in his briefcase, left the office, locked the door, and walked into the elevator like someone who had been hypnotized. He knew they would be mad at him for deserting his post. They would think that this was the final dereliction, the failure that would at last put him under. And if he couldn’t sell a policy, they would be right. The thought occurred to him that the call wasn’t genuine, and that he would find himself in the rain in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, standing in front not of a house but a butcher shop or police station. Because of this, waiting on the platform, riding on the train, and finding his way through the town was a torture such as one might feel on the drawn-out path to one’s execution.
BUT AS ARMAND MARTEAU, in dread, left the station and walked through the lovely gardens of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the sun began to disperse the clouds, which had been no more than a thick mist settled upon the countryside. As it was February 18th-, the sun strength was roughly equivalent to that of October 23th. The day had not been too cold, and there was no wind. So, all of a sudden, something like spring arose. The sun came into the clear, surrounded by blue. Remnants of fog, which in the absence of strong light had been gray and dull, now shone in white as they fled upward and disappeared. Evergreens and the stems and branches of deciduous bushes were covered in droplets of condensation left behind as the fog lifted, and they sparkled like a hundred million suns. Best of all, the air was soft and forgiving, as it is when light returns to the world after the dark of winter.
He dared to take this as a sign, but, still, he imagined that nature was merely cruel, and that, as so often it did, it was setting him up the way it does with farmers, who after a glorious summer redolent of perfection then find in drought or hail or pests that they have been tricked. Because so many of his father’s crops had failed, Armand Marteau was expecting to see that the address he had been given was in fact a graffitied storefront, its iron gate long rusted and closed.
At the Shymanski gatehouse he didn’t know what to think, because as camouflage it was deliberately modest and decrepit. Only when the gate was opened and one could see a small palace set in its own meticulously landscaped park would one realize what splendor lay beyond the nondescript walls. As he knocked, he knew it could go one way or another. And as Claude the now discreet gardener, happy at the prospect of earning twenty Euros, opened the gate, Armand Marteau knew that he had finally been given his chance.
JULES HAD SOLD the piano, a small Picasso ceramic that he had always hated, his Volvo, a few first editions, half a dozen Krugerrands, and the little Daubigny. He had consolidated the proceeds of the sales with all his cash and savings into a single checking account, the new balance of which was more than €236,000. Shymanski had gone to the South of France forever, but for the moment his furniture and decorations remained in place. Except for the gardeners, the servants were with him, but the house was alarmed with every beeping and blinking contraption known to man, including nets of laser beams suitable for a great museum.
Jules had disarmed the alarms. Greeting the awestruck Armand Marteau in the main hall, he was dressed in his characteristic blazer but with one of Jacqueline’s Hermès silk scarves made into a cravat, which made him look both ridiculous and the part of a billionaire. Shymanski wore cravats. Had Jules not been standing on marble parquet in a magnificent hall with Renaissance oils on the walls, but on some street corner in Paris, he would have looked like an idiot who thought he was David Niven. Here, it was just right.
“Thanks for coming on short notice,” he told Armand.
“The client is our reason for existence,” Armand stated, trying not to let his knees knock.
“Good, good. I like that,” Jules responded as he acted the part of a man imbued with confidence and kindness. “Come in and we can talk.” Armand followed briskly. He tried to walk deliberately so as not to thunder against the floor and draw attention to his weight, but the floor was marble so solid it would have remained absolutely silent even had he jumped up and down like a child on a hotel-room bed.
Almost open-mouthed at the decor of the salon, with its Fragonard, tapestry, eastward view, and extraordinary surfaces made all the richer by carefully designed lighting, Armand tried as hard to pretend that he was calm as Jules tried to pretend that he was in control of his life.
“Subsidiary of Acorn?” Jules asked.
“Directly owned – and backed – by all the resources of Acorn. I’m Armand Marteau, by the way” – he gave Jules his card – “of the La Défense office, high-value, one of two we have in France.” He then launched into a general description of Acorn, its reliability, and its history of payment to beneficiaries, explaining that though it was expensive it paid out much more readily than any other company.
“That’s why I chose Acorn,” Jules said, smiling invisibly. “What is the cost of a ten-million-Euro policy?”