Free A Void by Georges Perec Page B

do", his boss at Matignon
    had no doubt in his mind what would occur) — nor, I say, did
    any inquiry gain much ground. With an accumulation of damning
    data, opposition politicians saw an opportunity of indicting a
    form of tyranny guilty of an act so arrandy criminal as to go as
    far as confiscating a tract that sought to point up a shadowy
    conspiracy linking this abduction of Ibn Barka with that, six
    months prior to it, of Argoud in Zurich. Talk was of a contract
    going out to a commando of informants, outcasts of all kinds,
    all of whom had criminal pasts as long as your arm (mosdy bank
    jobs) and who had also had payoffs from Matignon for having
    brought off 5 or 6 political "liquidations": an antagonist of Bour-
    guiba shot down in Frankfurt, ditto an African militant in Saint-
    Moritz, Yazid in Louvain, Gabon's consul in Madrid! So, to
    maintain in his position a cowardly tyrant, his waning authority
    totally, and notoriously, in pawn to a major Parisian bank (Capi-
    tal Fran^ais), Foccard had a rag-tag-and-bobtail gang of thugs,
    good-for-nothings, gold, contraband and drugs Mafiosi, join up
    with his battalion of bullyboys, all working hand in hand! It was
    a squalid affair all right. Discussions would go on out of sight
    in smoky back rooms. Though any small fry not up to scratch, any
    moron placing his organisation at risk, was instandy (in gangland
    lingo) "put out of harm's way", nothing and nobody could touch
    its instigators, its VIPs, its "big boys" . . .
    "Ho hum," murmurs Ottaviani, gulping down his Munich and
    wiping its froth from his lips. 'Talk of a can of worms . . ."
    5 8
    It's his last word. Amaury sighs and, though Anton Vowl's
    abduction has at first sight nothing at all to do with Ibn Barka's,
    informs Ottaviani of visiting a zoo, running into Olga, and
    Hassan Ibn Abbou, who was also trying to find his companion.
    "Aha!" laughs Ottaviani. "So Vowl had a champion you didn't
    know about!"
    "Why . . . that's right," says Amaury, curious as to why Ottavi-
    ani thought that important. Continuing, though: "Now look at
    what you and I know. This morning I saw Hassan Ibn Abbou
    in a zoo. But what was it that Anton Vowl said: 'A solicitor who
    lights up his cigar in a zoo". So I rush off to this city's only zoo.
    And what do I find? A solicitor lighting up a cigar. All right.
    But what if said solicitor thought to turn up at said zoo and light
    said cigar simply to conform to Anton's portrait of him, hoping
    by so doing that Olga or I would contact him?"
    "So," Ottaviani succincdy sums up, "it was possibly not for-
    tuitous?"
    "Fortuitous or calculating, who can say? But what I plan to
    find out on Monday is what, if anything, was significant about
    Anton's allusion to 10 tots of whisky. First, though, it's worth
    studying a factor that's not as crucial but still apropos. To wit:
    do you know Karamazov?"
    "Dmitri of Karamazov Bros Inc. ?"
    "No, his cousin Arnaud, who runs a taxi out of Clignancourt
    and who would occasionally do odd jobs for Vowl. You could
    find out for us if this Karamazov also knows of Anton's kid-
    napping. Do that on Monday morning, will you, whilst I'm at
    Longchamp."
    "Just as you say, boss," grunts Ottaviani, snoozing into his
    glass.
    It's suffocatingly cold. So cold, in fact, no duck would think of
    putting a foot outdoors, nor would a chimp (with brass balls or
    not). But Ottavio Ottaviani is robustly striding along, as though
    that night's thick, damp fog simply hasn't got through to him.
    5 9
    Arriving at Alma, Ottaviani mounts a bus that drops him at
    Paris's famous Quai d'Orsay, stops an instant to catch his wind
    and consult his watch. It's 11.40. Longchamp is still a long way
    off.
    "Off I go," says Ottaviani, mumbling inaudibly to nobody in
    particular.
    Not far from Orsay, only yards away from Iran's consular build-
    ing, is a small snack bar with which our Corsican is familiar from
    having had an occasional ham or salami sandwich in it. Ottaviani
    walks in, dusty,