Free Rough Trade by Dominique Manotti Page B

for someone who can give me some pointers.’
    ‘Why don’t you go directly to the Quai?’
    Lenglet butted in: ‘Because Théo’s like me: he knows the men at the Quai too well to confide in them. They’d only tell him what fits in with whatever their interests are at that particular moment.’
    ‘So will I. I shall tell you what my interests allow me to tell you, as you know very well.’
    ‘Well, naturally, but it’s so much easier to suss your interests than those of the Quai!’ And Lenglet turned to Daquin. ‘In the 1960s, France-Mediterranée made a mess-up in a big way in that part of the world, and Parillaud Bank ditched them. Nowadays, they have to rely on political upsets there in order to get another foothold. To Parillaud’s disadvantage, if need be.’
    Lespinois was of the same mind. Daquin relaxed a little. He could see a few signposts now, more or less. Lespinois went into gear.
    ‘The Turkish extreme right is organized into a legitimate party, The Turkès Nationalist Party, with a duster of clandestine armed groups surrounding it, of which the Grey Wolves is the most important . It appears very powerful nowadays, since it’s succeeded in imposing a situation of civil war, with twenty shot and killed every day. And it’s infiltrated great sections of the State hierarchy.’
    ‘I’ve already seen that for myself – in the police force.’
    ‘But it’s already beaten, because it doesn’t have any coherence. It’s an amalgam of the Nationalist civilian extreme right, more or less influenced by the Nazis and by anti-Kemalist Islamic movements . So it offers a superb field of manoeuver to every political force that counts, on the one hand, and the Turkish mafia on the other. Which one do you want me to start with?’
    ‘The political forces. In any case, we’ll come across the mafia along the way, I should imagine.’
    ‘A fraction of the army encourages extreme right-wing terrorism, because it’s using it to prepare the ground for its full return to power. The Russians play the extreme right as a destabilizing factor in a zone that’s under American influence. And the Americans …’ He made a gesture of disillusionment with his two slender hands.
    Daquin recalled his year working with the FBI.
    ‘As usual? Everything and its opposite?’
    ‘The CIA’s a real can of worms there.’ He sighed. ‘One part tends towards the so-called democratic parties who’re all rotten to the core. And another part plots against them with the generals. And then some, more isolated, are acting off their own bat in some way, and infiltrate the terrorist extreme right. When you’ve the power the US has, there’s no need to be intelligent, or coherent. You always end up on the winning side anyway.’
    ‘Can you tell me about the ones in the CIA who’re acting independently?’
    The maître d’hôtel brought the main course and refilled the glasses. Lespinois, completely absorbed in his thoughts, ate in silence and drank a glass. Then he took up where he had left off, as though he hadn’t heard the question.
    ‘Lenglet’s told me a bit about you, commissaire . It seems you enjoy cooking and eating well. The best food in Istanbul – and traditional Turkish cooking is very refined – you’ll find at an American’s called John Erwin, who has a very beautiful timber-built house by the Bosphorus. He entertains Istanbul society there once a month. He’s in his early sixties now. In 1943, he was twenty, was Turkish and called Mehmet Ervin. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, he enlisted in the Turkestan Legion and fought with the Nazis against Communism, for which he had a deep-seated and completely irrational hatred. An insane hatred. He just managed to escape the Soviets, fled to the States, became an American citizen in the middle of the cold war and returned to Turkey in the 1950s under the name of John Erwin. Officially, he deals in hides and leather. But his main job is as a CIA agent, and