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An Expensive Place to Die
Len Deighton
An unnamed spy - perhaps the same reluctant hero of The Ipcress File - is sent to Paris to deliver a file of nuclear secrets to a French doctor, but soon finds himself sucked into a twilight world of sex, blackmail and hidden motive, where friend and enemy become indistinguishable.A ‘clinic’ on Paris’s Avenue Foch designed to cater lavishly for multiple perversions, staffed by a group of sexually and intellectually high-powered girls and equipped with devices ranging from an Iron Maiden to psychedelic truth-drugs – that’s the set-up operated by the enigmatic Monsieur Datt.Naturally, it has a hidden purpose: to compile dossiers of tape and film on influential political clients from East and West. Into this twilight world of decadence and hidden motives come the agents of four world powers.Are they after Datt’s pornographic blackmail dossiers? Or is their purpose altogether more deadly than a trip to the blue movies…?This new reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and a brand new introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.
LEN DEIGHTON
An Expensive Place to Die
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
Jonathan Cape Ltd in 1967
Copyright © Len Deighton 1967
Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2012
Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2012
The poem ‘May’ quoted here is from Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry,translated by Kai-yu Hsu (copyright © Kai-yu Hsu 1963) and reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Co. Inc., New York
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007448349
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007458387
Version: 2017-05-23
Epigraph
Do not disturb the President of the Republic
except in the case of world war.
Instructions for night duty officers
at the Élysée Palace
You should never beat a woman,
not even with a flower.
The Prophet Mohammed
Dying in Paris is a terribly expensive
business for a foreigner.
Oscar Wilde
Table of Contents
Cover (#u460716bd-68f6-5d74-b18b-53456d95c31b)
Title Page (#u2a381c92-d6de-5056-8046-bfb2f6ecfff8)
Copyright (#u2cd25c0e-e6dc-5048-a7ab-e2400e7f3d2d)
Epigraph (#u9627368f-0b17-5297-b158-149263a57ee5)
Introduction (#u464ff3fa-1e2a-5e4b-8692-eab9653dfd00)
Chapter 1 (#u57a69dc9-e259-5769-8d17-bbbfd38ac2bd)
Chapter 2 (#u5256ddf3-0330-50ba-a7cb-c9976afdb7fc)
Chapter 3 (#u211b0f61-7d29-5c90-b760-8da239549e72)
Chapter 4 (#uf418aabe-ce8f-5a34-858f-30a4a222aeef)
Chapter 5 (#uf69668b3-8a70-583b-8f4c-c7e79af32e23)
Chapter 6 (#u81f844a4-8e90-5b73-8c28-70be45840536)
Chapter 7 (#u1e7b8be2-84a8-56a7-ae7b-e3e97dd40dc9)
Chapter 8 (#u81bb8b40-a492-564e-bb72-12626f180f93)
Chapter 9 (#u4a9c82e9-f4e7-5ea5-9208-3f1f7d0e0919)
Chapter 10 (#u0fc45ba1-bde0-5fe0-b684-1b3c04de33df)
Chapter 11 (#u84333827-2ece-56d0-89eb-1c858e670a83)
Chapter 12 (#u162e10d2-293f-5714-aec7-7f0ba906b595)
Chapter 13 (#u5e53cb1c-bc1f-54ed-9faf-1dbfc80d9968)
Chapter 14 (#u564eafb1-4476-57eb-8a4c-1834996bd366)
Chapter 15 (#ube731cc5-0277-5689-ae25-fee8bb28715d)
Chapter 16 (#uc9dcd292-fab9-505c-8402-d8382fcfbf8a)
Chapter 17 (#u07aa135d-c5a2-5e23-bfb3-0dd34b5f219c)
Chapter 18 (#u8aace39e-bb91-56d0-92e2-01367937cfe3)
Chapter 19 (#ubaa89059-97bb-58d7-bb54-af76d82fd675)
Chapter 20 (#ub059860b-dde5-5e90-888d-a083338bbb89)
Chapter 21 (#u6579bb33-559a-5242-9147-2248a5182c64)
Chapter 22 (#u5950a110-eb83-5d9f-8f5d-28530f0e1641)
Chapter 23 (#ub795440d-1d64-580e-a76e-2f60071d5df8)
Chapter 24 (#u62305460-5296-5f47-9590-4581ffccf030)
Chapter 25 (#u93d402ea-a47c-58f9-9f27-30b914adc64c)
Chapter 26 (#ucb6af397-b339-5c0a-baf0-2ae82e1ab57c)
Chapter 27 (#u702d8f41-2585-52f2-b628-89ed0f587da0)
Chapter 28 (#ud7594a62-ae2d-5d92-b822-f5494ab09adf)
Chapter 29 (#u9f63d65b-7d88-56bd-87a7-8145288f64f4)
Chapter 30 (#uf796ad17-2113-5d31-8ebe-8d2d79a3aaf8)
Chapter 31 (#ufe48cf6d-bfc1-5c7c-936b-783b8a3b5f41)
Chapter 32 (#ubfb6939b-4d53-559b-b554-68c29298c412)
Chapter 33 (#u2091acc6-dcd4-50f9-870e-eb27a85be833)
Chapter 34 (#u5a2946dc-aa19-5996-a11e-1b5742c08220)
Chapter 35 (#u94f57791-ace8-574c-99f8-beca899f9b06)
Chapter 36 (#u02417652-edb2-518f-96e7-be7720fbcce3)
Chapter 37 (#u5d8fc068-948d-572c-8c8c-4ce478df1a30)
Chapter 38 (#u2703f995-87f9-53d9-b90e-51620734748b)
Chapter 39 (#u6cdb1287-a682-5434-882b-941364ad999b)
Chapter 40 (#u167dfa64-5307-5c1d-a66b-c3424ad4a27b)
Keep Reading (#u37747dac-bdae-5e06-af20-9567b6f1115f)
Footnotes (#uabea683d-566a-58c1-a48e-343b9ce8bfca)
About the Author (#ud959aa76-065d-5856-8a59-03aebe2c7b11)
Cover designer’s note (#ua07b5a8c-c9bc-5747-8c99-03fb2939aeee)
Also by the Author (#u85ab8114-f21e-598a-9b0a-cf7b2b0b61fb)
About the Publisher (#uca4db52b-f050-5ca0-b0d8-b40850fa15c1)
Introduction
France beckons to every lonely misfit, and most novelists answer to that description at some time or another. Many authors have responded to France’s call with enthusiasm; notably during those years between the two world wars when the exchange rates favoured those with US dollars, and Prohibition at home made the noble vintages of France irresistible. But most of those writers were prudent. Writing primarily for English-speaking readers they wrote stories about English-speaking people. Most of those stories were vaguely autobiographical ones about the wealthy English and American visitors with whom the writers fraternized. France provided the mountains and the Mediterranean but the French people in the stories were mostly waiters.
Many of the resulting books were dazzling; some became classics but many of the stories could have taken place in Gloucestershire or Long Island. This was a practical restraint, but writing about France without depicting French people (however inaccurate or untypical the characterizations might be) is like eating a chocolate bar without first removing the wrapper. I am not prudent. I wanted to tell my story with French men and women playing major roles.
It was this need to bring French people into An Expensive Place to Die that led to my including some chapters in the third person. This gave me a chance to show their thoughts and motivation and an opportunity to have action beyond that of the first person. This was not a planned device, it came naturally to the telling of the story and no one criticized it.
No doubt every writer has their own method of writing and this is something that writers enjoy talking about. Most important is whether to write after making a careful plan or to simply invent each new chapter as it comes. Many writers have told me that they don’t know what the end of their books will be when they are writing the first page. The argument against this is the uncertainty that comes of consigning the plot to the vagaries of the writer’s day-to-day temperament. My experience is that there comes a stage in the planning when it is best to start writing and leave some room to develop your characters. Whatever method is chosen, some element of your story is likely to assume an importance beyond your plan. In XPD a character named Charles Stein became that sort of element. He wrestled to take control of my story and nearly did so. Looking back on it, the book was much enhanced by him. For An Expensive Place to Die it was Paris that took on an unplanned importance, and this gives the book an atmosphere rather different to all the other books I have written.
I was a teenager when I first went to Paris. It was not ‘warm and gay’ as the Hammerstein lyric recalled; rather it was ‘old and grey’ as in the lyric that Sinatra was crooning at that time. The war was scarcely ended and I stepped from the train into a dense aroma of Gauloises and garlic. I found myself alone and without contacts standing on the noisy concourse of the Gare du Nord. Packed tight, there were beggars, whores and black-market traders all plying their trades with appropriate subtlety. Heavily burdened infantrymen displayed the silence of the weary while polished and blancoed military police patrols sifted continually through the multitude. My parents had only agreed to this expedition because someone was to meet me and take care of me. That friend was posted away at short notice and I was left to my own devices. Someone put a card into my hand and I plodded along, suitcase in hand, to Place Blanche, a seedy district adjacent to Montmartre. Using the advertisement card, I found a tiny attic room in an old, cheap, threadbare hotel near the Moulin Rouge.
It was all exactly like the little room in which Jean Gabin fought off the flics in that wonderful old film Le Jour se Lêve. All that night I waited for the ‘daybreak’ as I had waited for Santa Claus to arrive on so many Christmas mornings. When light came through the shabby curtains I looked out of the window at the roofs of Paris. This remains one of the most memorable moments of my long, eventful and happy life. I was a teenager, and entirely unsupervised, with this great foreign city laid at my feet. I could scarcely believe my good fortune. I tramped around the city; stood alone at the tomb of Napoleon and inspected the burned-out German tanks that the French were in no hurry to clear away. The fighting had ended but the smell of war lingered. I walked all the way to the Etoile and then back across town to the Place Bastille, only to be sadly disappointed that the grim old prison was no longer there. The Folies Bergère is just for tourists, the concierge at the hotel told me; the Concert Mayol is far more risqué and the girls far, far more naked. I went to the Concert Mayol. I went to the Louvre, where they also had naked girls, to Notre Dame and to that most spectacular of Paris sights – the Sainte Chapelle. I climbed the steep, slippery, and seemingly unending iron steps to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and was spattered with red lead primer paint as I passed workers restoring it to good condition.
Although I was in civilian clothes, my youth and London accent caused me to be mistaken for a soldier and I capitalized on this by eating in the military facilities such as the Montgomery Club near the Place de la Concorde. In some places I was eyed with suspicion and twice I was detained on suspicion of being an army deserter. I soon made sure I carried my passport everywhere I went. I must have walked many miles during that time in Paris and by saving my money I was able to afford a lunch at the renowned Tour d’Argent, which had resumed its production of the famous roast duck, prepared at the tableside in a massive silver press.
After that first visit, I returned to Paris many times. For short periods I lived there in varying degrees of comfort. My wife’s parents enjoyed a lovely home there and we relished their hospitality. The idea of writing about this Paris I discovered never went away. I knew several fashion photographers and in the early 1960s I started notes for a book using as a background the Paris collections. I continued my lengthy stay there but I didn’t continue with this project. I also abandoned a story about a symphony orchestra because I didn’t know enough about music and musicians. Finally I met a Paris policeman who wanted to practise his English and I knew I was going to write An Expensive Place to Die.
Together with my family I have lived in many countries, but I never became one of the dedicated exiles who cluster in the sunshine and snow. Perhaps the France I depict in An Expensive Place to Die is not a land you recognize. Yet this is what France, or more particularly Paris, seemed like back in the sixties when I lived there and wrote this book.
It was the chance introduction to a detective serving with the police judiciaire that gave me the chance to write about the underside of Paris. This friend served in the brigade mondaine, which is the quaint title the French give to what in London was called the vice squad. My policeman knew everything and everyone. People high and low, people in bars and those in exclusive clubs knew him and so did those who went to sleep on the pavement, hugging smelly ventilation grills for the sake of the warmth. In late evening, hundreds of big trucks brought fresh produce into the old market area, and not all the drivers curled up in their cab with a blanket and a bottle of beer. Around the market whole streets of bars and brothels came to life at midnight and plain-clothes policemen, such as my friend, were an inevitable addition to the cast. Muscular doormen and girls with too much make-up greeted him like an old friend. He showed me the flea markets where stolen goods sometimes came to light. He showed me establishments in the swanky arrondissements that do not feature in any tourist guidebooks. It is ‘down these mean streets’ that a fiction writer can venture protected by the armour of disguise that all storytellers wear. I kept close to his side and kept my mouth shut as we walked his beat. Without his unstinting help and good-natured guidance (and did I say protection?) An Expensive Place to Die would have been a different, and rather more conventional, book.
It happens like that sometimes. You encounter a promising source and suddenly a torrent of information comes pouring down all over you. Now the problem becomes knowing where to stop. Research is always more fun than writing and there is always a temptation to go on with it for ever. I enjoy using foreign locations in my stories but feel I should carefully absorb the places I write about; live in them long enough to meet my neighbours, buy from the local shops, sit around in the local cafes and suffer the bus services and the Metro. For some books I went beyond that. My children attended local schools and we almost became natives. Only probing beyond the tourist trails will give a writer the environment in which convincing characters can roam. In An Expensive Place to Die I probed, but the Paris into which I dug was somewhat bleak. Looking back now, perhaps a more generous portion of the glamour of that much-maligned city would have given my story more optimism.
But there was a mysterious epilogue to An Expensive Place to Die. On 24
April 1967 the New York Times carried a story concerning two Russian nationals; both identified by the US Government as officers of the KGB. At Kennedy International Airport they boarded Air France Flight 702 scheduled to depart for Paris at 7.00pm. Ten minutes before the flight was due to leave a man who identified himself as an FBI agent went to Gate 29, handed an Air France official a package and asked him to give it to one of the Russians. Curious about the last-minute arrival of the package, the chief stewardess, Marguerite Switon, gave it to the pilot, Michel Vachey. By this time he was moving his plane from the gate to the runway for take-off.
Still at the controls, the pilot opened the package and found inside a copy of An Expensive Place to Die. It also contained a small dossier of replica documents and maps that were tucked inside the book. Here were official-looking papers signed by high officials and marked ‘Top Secret’. (This dossier had in fact been designed by Ray Hawkey as a supplement to the story; Ray designed the covers of many of my books, and also some similarly fine publicity material for books such as SS-GB.) Vachey was alarmed. He asked the tower for permission to taxi back to Gate 29, to which Air France’s station manager was summoned.
According to the New York Times article the plane was delayed while FBI officials examined the papers and took guidance via several phone calls to FBI headquarters in Washington. At 9.30pm the Air France flight took off for Paris. This strange story was taken up by other papers including TheNew York Daily News.
