The Marseille Caper

Fourteen

Miss Perkins and Sam arrived at the tent to find Jim, the second member of Gaston’s security team, busy behind the tiny bar, polishing glasses. Although he was half hidden behind a vast ice bucket holding two magnums of champagne, Sam could see that he was a substantial man, verging on huge, dressed in a black suit, and wearing pitch-black sunglasses. As he left the bar to greet them, Miss Perkins let out a cry of recognition.

“Jim, c’est toi! Quelle bonne surprise!”

Jim beamed, whipped off his sunglasses, and kissed Miss Perkins loudly on each cheek.

“I guess you two know each other,” said Sam.

It was Miss Perkins’s turn to beam. “Indeed we do, don’t we, Jim? We’ve been going to the same cookery course all winter, and I must tell you that this young man makes the best cheese souffle in Marseille.” She kissed her fingertips. “Such a light touch.” She bustled away and put the pile of bound presentation documents on the table. “There. Each of these has a committee member’s name on. Or, as you would say, dear, personalized.”

“How do you know their names?”

Miss Perkins looked at Sam as though he were a backward child. “I made inquiries at the project office. Now let’s see. The project model is up at the far end, where everyone can see it. I suppose we have to put that ghastly chairman here, at the head of the table.”

“You know him too?”

“I met him at the consulate many years ago, when he was a very junior dogsbody. A shifty little monkey, even then. Not to be trusted, dear, mark my words.”

Jim had positioned himself at the entrance to welcome any early arrivals, and Sam made a final tour of the tent, which looked crisp, professional, and inviting under the golden glow of filtered sunlight. He felt a surge of hope. There would be opposition from Patrimonio, that was inevitable, but he was confident of finding a few open minds among the members of the committee. A pity Reboul couldn’t be here.

Shortly after four o’clock the first members of the committee arrived, putting up the merest token resistance to a welcoming glass of champagne. By 4:15 all seven of them had been seated at their places around the table, each with his glass and his copy of the presentation document. The atmosphere quickly became relaxed.

The chairman’s chair remained conspicuously empty for another ten minutes, and Sam was considering a reward for patience in the form of a further distribution of champagne when there was a flurry at the entrance of the tent. It was Patrimonio, shooting his cuffs, smoothing his hair, and announcing that he had been delayed by a very important phone call. He was in black today-a silk suit-with a white shirt and a sober, blue-striped tie.

This immediately caught the attention of Miss Perkins. “I cannot believe he went to Eton,” she whispered to Sam, “but that’s an Old Etonian tie he’s wearing.” She sniffed. “The impertinence of the man.”

With Patrimonio finally seated, the presentation could begin. Miss Perkins delivered a few words in her excellent French, explaining the purpose of the documents and instructing the committee members to raise their hands if Sam said anything they didn’t understand.

As he began, Sam reminded himself of the advice he had been given by one of the old partners when working many years ago in corporate law. “Don’t get complicated. Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you’ve told them.”

He soon felt that he had a sympathetic audience, and he was right. The previous day they had endured the presentation of Madame Dumas and her team from Paris, who had bombarded the committee for several hours with forecasts, feasibility studies, estimates, cost analyses, charts, graphs, and occupancy predictions. Sam’s presentation, helped no doubt by the occasional refill of champagne, was a complete contrast: simple and easy to understand. Looking around the table, it appeared that some members of the committee had actually found it enjoyable.

With one exception. The chairman remained wooden-faced throughout Sam’s performance, declining champagne, heaving the occasional sigh, and consulting his watch frequently. But he was the first to speak when Sam had finished and invited questions.

Rising to his feet and clearing his throat, Patrimonio launched into his remarks. “Land, as we all know, is very limited in Marseille, particularly land overlooking the sea. And yet here we have a proposition that ignores this basic fact. We find an extravagant amount of room being taken up by a nonessential garden and a marina of doubtful usefulness. This is bad enough. But even worse, by keeping the height of the buildings to only three stories, there is a waste of air space that I can only call reckless. Developments of this sort may be acceptable in America”-Patrimonio jerked his head toward Sam-“where there is almost unlimited land, but here we must be aware of the restrictions imposed by local resources. We can no longer afford horizontal expansion. The way forward is upward.” He paused and nodded, as if pleased with his little bon mot. “Yes, the way forward is upward. I’m sure my colleagues will agree.” And with that, he looked around the table, eyebrows raised, as he waited, if not for applause, then at least for support.

Sam broke an embarrassing silence by repeating the benefits of his scheme, principally that it would provide shelter and enjoyment for the people of Marseille rather than for tourists. This prompted several nods around the table.

Patrimonio scowled. “I hope you will excuse me. I have another meeting to attend. I will discuss this later with members of the committee.”

With Patrimonio gone, the mood in the tent lightened. With another glass of champagne all around, it lightened even more, and it was nearly an hour before the last member of the committee drifted off.

Miss Perkins had spent that hour chatting to members of the committee. “Well, dear,” she said, “you should be pleased. That went very well, except for the chairman’s contribution. But I don’t think you should let that worry you. From what I heard, he was definitely a lone voice. The comments made to me were extremely positive. Does Mr. Patrimonio have a great deal of influence?”

“We’ll see,” said Sam. “It’s a difficult one to call. I’m sure he’s going to twist a few arms.”

Miss Perkins patted his hand. “Don’t you worry, dear. He’s not very well liked, you know. One can tell from the odd word dropped here and there. We must relax, and let hope spring eternal.”

The Floating Pound, taking up two berths, was moored stern first against the quay in Saint-Tropez, where passers-by could admire the opulence of the afterdeck and watch-at a distance, of course-the start of the cocktail hour on board.

Annabel had spent much of the short voyage from Marseille on the phone, organizing an impromptu cocktail party, and had managed to round up a mixed bag of expatriates and vacationers. These could be identified by their complexions: brown and leathery for the expats; varying degrees of pink, from blush to medium-rare, for the visitors. They shared a fondness for white clothes and conspicuous gold jewelry, and an observer could be forgiven for thinking that they were members of the chorus in a summer variety show.

“Darling!” “Sweetie!” “It’s been ages!” “You look fabulous! The Botox really worked!” “Divine!” “Mmmm!” And so it went on-the sound track of summer in Saint-Trop.

Lord Wapping, his good humor restored by a long, champagne-induced nap, had gone through his wardrobe in search of something appropriate for the occasion. He had finally chosen a billowing caftan in white (with gold brocade highlights) which, if you believed Annabel, made him look like a Roman emperor in his Sunday-best toga. He moved among his guests, stately and tentlike, and was beginning to forget his cares and enjoy himself when he heard, coming from the inner billows of his caftan, the sound of his cell phone.

It was Patrimonio, an agitated Patrimonio, with disturbing news. Following that afternoon’s presentation, he had made brief calls to the members of his committee. Almost to a man, they had been extremely enthusiastic about what they had heard, and Patrimonio had the distinct feeling that some of them had already made up their minds in favor of Sam’s proposal.

“Shit!” Wapping’s guests stopped in midgossip, and he moved out of earshot. “I thought you said you had them in your pocket.”

“There is still your presentation to come, don’t forget. If there is something special you could offer …”

Wapping’s special offers were usually limited to bribery or coercion, but he could see that brute force could hardly be used on all seven committee members. “What’s it going to cost to make them change their minds?”

There was a moment of silence while Patrimonio considered the possibility of wholesale bribery. “It’s very delicate,” he said at last. “Even supposing they all accepted, if it ever got out, if the mayor got to hear about it … No, I don’t think we dare to try that.”

“Fat lot of help you are. Use your head, man-there must be something that would put him out of the running.”

Patrimonio sighed. “Well, of course if the American could be persuaded to withdraw his bid, we would be in a much stronger position.”

Wapping left his guests to their own noisy devices and found a quiet corner on the upper deck. He needed to think.

Reboul listened to Sam’s account of the presentation with considerable satisfaction. “So that little nonsense about land being scarce was all Patrimonio said? No interruptions? No comments as you were going through the details? Well, it sounds as though it could hardly have gone better. Congratulations, my friend, but also a word of warning: Patrimonio and Wapping-it’s a dangerous combination, and they’re not going to give in without a fight. Don’t let your guard drop. But enough of that. You must celebrate this afternoon’s success, and take the delightful Mademoiselle Elena out to dinner.”

They left Mimi in charge of Philippe and, following his advice, made their way to Chez Marco, a bistro tucked away behind the Vieux Port. Pausing at the entrance, they looked in vain for a menu. Marco served steack with frites, or steack without frites, with the option of a salad. And that was it. Despite this, almost every table was taken, the ambiance was loud and friendly, and their waiter fell in love with them at the first sound of Sam’s accent. He adored Americans, he told them, having spent three months working in a restaurant in downtown New York, where he had been amazed-epoustoufle! — by the generosity of his tips. He took their order and brought them a carafe of red wine.

It was soft and round and surprisingly good. The steaks were juicy and perfectly cooked, and the frites were a connoisseur’s delight. But the real triumph, according to Elena, came with the salad. “You can always tell a good restaurant by its dressing,” she said, “and this is terrific. They’ve used just the right amount of balsamic vinegar.”

Sam realized that, thanks to Philippe, they had stumbled upon a minor treasure-a restaurant that was content to provide a very limited choice, but of the highest quality, and at old-fashioned prices. According to Philippe, there used to be simple little restaurants like this throughout France; now they had become few and far between, killed off by the invasion of fast-food chains. But Chez Marco, it seemed, was doing fine. A knot of customers waited at the battered zinc bar, and tables were taken as soon as they became free. The laughter level was high, the waiters agile, and behind the bar the patron, Marco himself, dispensed pastis, jokes, and insults with a broad gap-toothed smile.

Elena used her bread to wipe the last of the dressing from her plate. “Apart from the food, you know what’s so great about this place? It’s genuine. Nobody designed it. A decorator would have a heart attack, but it works. Do you think they do dessert?”

They did. Again, the choice was limited to one. Panna cotta, made by Marco’s Italian wife and served in a thick glass tumbler, a white, satiny mixture of heavy cream and vanilla with a dense topping of semi-liquid caramel. Elena took her first spoonful and sighed with pleasure. “Heaven.”