The Vintage Caper

Fifteen

Sam was up early, still at odds with himself about the previous night’s phone call. He should have called Elena back and explained. No, he shouldn’t. To hell with it. If she wanted to jump to conclusions, let her jump. He paced up and down, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. This was how their fights had often started in the old days: suspicion from her, pigheadedness from him. It had made for a stormy relationship-but, it must be said, for some spectacular reconciliations. He shrugged the memories away and turned his attention to the Reboul dossier that Philippe had left with him.

Sam’s French was far from fluent, but as he plodded through the articles he managed to pick up the gist of much that had been written. One recurring theme-no matter what role Reboul was playing, whether newspaper czar or pirate of the Mediterranean-was the greatness of France and all things French. Culture, language, cuisine, wines, châteaus, couture, French women, French soccer players, and on and on. Even the TGV high-speed trains, although Reboul admitted never actually having traveled on one, were given a ringing endorsement. And somehow he made it sound as though he had played a vital part in the creation of it all.

Reboul’s only concession to the possibility that France might be less than an earthly paradise was his disdainful opinion of the fonctionnaires, that gray army of bureaucrats that infests every area of French life. Here was a hobbyhorse he mounted in public each spring when he gave his income-tax press conference, to mark what he called the fête des fiscs, or the festival of the tax man. Not content with simply telling the world how much tax he had paid, he translated the figure into its equivalent in fonctionnaires’ salaries. This provided an appropriate starting point for his annual rant against the idleness, incompetence, and waste of the bureaucracy, which always went down extremely well with the popular press. But that was it-a single blot on the otherwise perfect French landscape.

Reboul was an oddity among billionaires. Most of them preferred to spend their lives ducking in and out of the havens of Nassau or Geneva or Monaco, on constant alert in case the tax laws should change. Sam couldn’t help but like a man who was prepared to pay the price to live in the country he so obviously loved. With a nod of approval, he closed the file and went down to meet Sophie in the lobby.

• • •

Florian Vial was waiting for them in front of the main entrance to the Palais du Pharo. Had they not known that he was in charge of Reboul’s cellar, they would have taken him for a professor, or perhaps a poet fallen on good times. Despite the mild spring temperature, he was dressed for the chill of the cellar in a suit of thick, bottle-green corduroy. Wrapped several times around his neck, in the complicated French fashion, was a long black scarf. A hint of plum-colored shirt showed beneath his jacket. His hair, worn long and brushed straight back, was the same mixture of salt and pepper as his beard, which had been clipped into a neat triangle. Pale-blue eyes peered out through round, rimless spectacles. There was a definite air of the nineteenth century about him. All he needed was an oversized fedora and a cloak, and he could have been a subject for Toulouse-Lautrec, a boulevardier on his way to pay a call on his mistress.

He bent over to kiss Sophie’s hand, brushing her fingers with his whiskers. “Enchanté, madame. Enchanté.” Turning to Sam, he shook hands with a vigorous pumping motion. “Très heureux, monsieur,” he said, and then stepped back, raising both hands in the air. “Mais pardonnez-moi. I forget. Monsieur Reboul tells me that you prefer English. This is no problem for me. My English is fluid.” His eyes twinkling, he beamed at Sophie and Sam. “Shall we commence?”

With Vial leading the way, they went through a series of ornate rooms-Vial described them as salons-until they came to a vast kitchen. Unlike the salons, which had been allowed to retain their rather pompous period décor of chandeliers and gilt and swags and tassels, the kitchen was a study in modernity: stainless steel, polished granite, and recessed lighting. The only hint of bygone culinary tradition was an overhead cast-iron rack that held thirty or forty polished copper pans. Vial waved at the massive stove-a Le Cornu, with enough burners, hot plates, and ovens to service a banquet-and said, with considerable satisfaction, “The chef at Passédat, who is a friend of the patron, comes here often. He would kill to have such a kitchen.”

They passed through to a second, less glamorous kitchen, a large room lined with storage closets, deep freezes, and dishwashers. In the corner were two doors. Vial opened the larger of the two and looked back over his shoulder. “The stairs are very narrow. Attention! As you say-slowly does it.”

The stairs were not only narrow, but steep, and wound around in a tight spiral before coming to an end in front of a door of painted steel. Vial pressed some numbers on the electronic keypad that was set into the wall and opened the door. Turning on the lights, he stood aside to watch the reaction of his guests, a smile on his face. This was obviously a moment he relished.

Sophie and Sam stayed rooted to the threshold, stunned into silence. Stretching away in front of them for a good two hundred yards was a broad, flagstone passageway with a barely perceptible downward slope. The ceiling was a series of lofty, graceful vaults constructed of old brickwork that the effects of time had softened to a pale, dusty pink. Leading off on either side were smaller passages, their entrances marked by square, head-high brick columns. To the left of the door, propped against a barrel, was Vial’s bicycle, an elderly Solex. The air smelled as the air in a cellar should smell: faintly humid, faintly musty.

Vial was the first to break the silence. “Alors? What do you think? Will it fit into your book?” He was smiling as he stroked his moustache with the back of an index finger, the picture of a man who knows that he is about to receive a compliment.

“Very, very impressive,” said Sophie. “Even in Bordeaux, one would never find a cellar this large, not in a private house. It’s magnificent, Sam, don’t you think?”

“Perfect,” said Sam. “Just great for the book.” He grinned at Vial. “The only problem is you need a map to find your way around.”

Vial almost burst with self-satisfaction. “But of course I have such a map! Mais oui! We must go down to my office, and I will show you how to get as you say from A to B.”

They set off down the flagstone pathway, with Vial settling into his role as tour guide. “Here everything is streets, you know, like in a town. We are actually on the main street.” He pointed out a small blue and white enamel sign, placed at eye level on the first column they came to, marked Boulevard du Palais. “And off to each side,” Vial continued, “are other streets, some big, some small.” He stopped and raised a finger. “But the name of each street tells us who lives there.” A wag of the finger. “I speak of bottles, of course.” He beckoned them off to the side and into one of the passages. Another blue and white sign announced this as the Rue de Champagne.

And there it was, champagne in glorious abundance, filling racks on either side of a narrow gravel pathway: Krug, Roederer, Bollinger, Perrier-Jouët, Clicquot, Dom Pérignon, Taittinger, Ruinart-in bottles, magnums, Jeroboams, Rehoboams, Methuselahs, and even Nebuchadnezzars. Vial gazed at the display with the fondness of a doting parent before leading them out and down to the next street, the Rue de Meursault, followed in quick succession by the Rue de Montrachet, the Rue de Corton-Charlemagne, the Avenue de Chablis, the Allée de Pouilly-Fuissé, and the Impasse d’Yquem. This side of the main boulevard, Vial explained, was devoted to white wine; the opposite side to reds.

It took them almost an hour to travel the length of the cellar, stopping as they did to pay their respects here and there-to the great red Burgundies, for instance, in the Rue du Côte d’Or, and the legendary trio of Latour, Lafite, and Margaux in the Rue des Merveilles. By the time they had reached Vial’s office they felt curiously light-headed, as if they had been tasting rather than just looking.

“Let me ask you a question,” said Sam. “I didn’t see a Rue de Chianti. Do you have any Italian wines?”

Vial looked at Sam as though he had insulted his mother. When he’d finished shaking his head and clicking his tongue, he allowed himself to speak. “No, no, no, absolutely not. Every bottle here is French, as Monsieur Reboul has insisted. Only the best. Although…” Vial seemed of two minds about what he was going to say. “Entre nous, and not for the book, over there you will see a few cases from your California. Monsieur Reboul has a winery, as you say, in the Valley of Napa. He amuses himself. It’s a hobby.” And, judging from Vial’s expression, not a hobby that he viewed with great enthusiasm.

At the very end of the cellar, a patriotic golf cart, painted in the blue, white, and red of the French tricolore, was parked in a corner, next to a giant pair of doors. At the touch of a button, these swung open to reveal the long driveway that led down to Eugénie’s wistful statue and the gates to the property.

“You see?” said Vial. “The cellar is underneath la grande pelouse, the lawn in front of the house.” He nodded at the cobblestoned area outside the doors. “This is for deliveries. The truck unloads here, into my chariot de golf, and I drive the bottles to their addresses.”

Sophie looked at the golf cart with a frown on her face. “But Monsieur Vial, when you’re ready to drink the wine, how does it get into the house? Not up those stairs, surely? Or do you drive your cart around…”

“Aha!” Vial tapped his nose. “Trust a woman to be practical. I will show you before we leave. Now we go to my office, and you will see my crazy furnishings.”

It was becoming apparent that Vial saw a major supporting role for himself in the book, and he was at pains to point out the many objects of interest in his cluttered office. A colossal corkscrew, easily a meter long, with a handle made from a twisted, highly polished billet of olive wood, leaned against the wall by the side of his desk; a connoisseur’s desk, Vial called it. Apart from the glass top, it had been constructed entirely out of wooden wine crates from the great estates, each crate used as a desk drawer, each drawer identified by the name and mark of an illustrious château stamped into the wood. The unobtrusive drawer handles were circular plugs of wood, stained to resemble corks.

Sam took out his camera and held it up. “Is it OK? Just for reference.”

“But of course!” Vial moved across so that he would be in the shot, placed one hand on the desktop, raised his head and assumed a noble expression: the eminent caviste, caught during a rare moment of reflection.

Sam grinned at him. “You’ve done this before.”

Vial flicked at his moustache and assumed a different pose, this time perching on the edge of the desk, his arms folded. “For wine magazines, yes. They always like what they call the human interest.”

While Sam was taking pictures, Sophie studied the other examples of human interest that covered most of one wall: framed photographs of Vial with movie actors, soccer players, pop stars, fashion designers and models, and other distinguished visitors. These shared wall space with certificates from the Jurade de Saint-Emilion and the Chevaliers du Tastevin, and, in a suitably prominent position, a letter of thanks and appreciation from the Elysée Palace, signed by the President of the Republic himself. Like his boss Reboul, it seemed that Vial was not averse to a little self-promotion.

Moving away from the rogues’ gallery, Sophie stopped at a long, wide shelf filled with alcoholic antiques-unopened bottles from the 1800s, their labels blotched and faded, their contents murky and mysterious. Her eye was caught by a bottle of what had once been white Bordeaux, an 1896 Gradignan, the remains of the wine resting on a five-inch layer of sediment. Vial tore himself away from the camera and brought Sam over to join her.

“My sentimental corner,” he said. “I find these bottles at flea markets and I cannot resist them. Undrinkable, of course, but very picturesque, don’t you think?”

“Fascinating,” said Sophie. “And that, too.” She pointed to a small copper alembic-the apparatus that distills grape sludge into eau-de-vie-standing in the corner. “Look at that, Sam. Do you have those in California?”

Sam shook his head. “Only for show. Does this one still work?”

Vial pretended to be shocked at the very idea. “Do I look like a criminal, monsieur? Not since, let me see, 1916, has it been allowed for private persons to distill their own, as you say, moonshine.” He permitted himself a wink and a pleased smirk at having come up with such an appropriate foreign word. “And now, let me show you how to find your way around my little city.” He walked back and waved an arm at the map that hung on the wall behind his desk.

It was perhaps eighteen inches high and three feet wide, a hand-drawn bird’s-eye view of the cellar, with the street names marked in immaculate copperplate script. Surrounding the map, just inside the simple gilt frame, was a border of colorful miniature corkscrews, each with a different handle. Some were whimsical-a heart, a dog, a French flag, a bird’s beak-others were the artist’s version of more conventional models. The map had been signed in one corner and dated in Roman numerals.

“That’s great,” said Sam. “It would make terrific endpapers.”

Sophie, who had no idea what he was talking about, nodded sagely. “Good idea.”

Sam explained to a puzzled Vial that some books-the more elaborate and expensive editions-often had designs decorating their inside front and back covers. “Your map is a natural for a wine book,” he said, “with all those names and corkscrews. You don’t happen to have copies of it, do you?”

With another wink, Vial darted over to his desk, opened one of the bottom drawers, and produced a scroll, which he spread out on the desk for them to see. “These were printed before we framed the original. We give them as little souvenirs to the friends of Monsieur Reboul who come to the cellar for tastings. Charmant, non?” He rolled up the map and handed it to Sophie.

Vial cut short their thanks by looking at his watch and grimacing. “Peuchère! Where has the morning gone? I have a rendezvous in Marseille.” He shepherded them from the office. “You must come back after lunch.”

He climbed into the golf cart, motioning Sophie and Sam to follow. “Imagine you are a case of wine,” he said to Sam, “and that tonight is your moment of glory, your night to flabbergast the guests of Monsieur Reboul, your night to be consumed with cries of ecstasy.” He started the cart and set off up the Boulevard du Palais.

“Sounds like fun,” said Sam. “Am I a case of red or a case of white?”

“Either,” said Vial, “or both. It doesn’t matter. The important problem for you is how to get up to the dining room.” Arriving at the end of the boulevard, he parked the cart in front of the cellar door. “As you see,” he said, getting out of the cart, “there is another door just here.” He pointed to a low, narrow doorway set into the wall. With the air of a magician who has found not one but two white rabbits in his hat, he pulled open the door and stepped back. “Voilà! The elevator for bottles. It goes up to the back kitchen. There is no turbulence. There is no giddy feelings from climbing up the stairs. The wine arrives composed, relaxed, ready to meet its destiny.”

“It’s what we call a dumbwaiter,” said Sam.

“Exactly,” said Vial, mentally adding another colloquialism to his repertoire. “A dumbwaiter.” He looked again at his watch, and flinched. “Shall we say three o’clock? I will meet you at the delivery door. And I give you a good address on the Vieux Port for lunch.”

Sophie and Sam exchanged glances. “Typiquement marseillais?” said Sophie.

“Mais non, chère madame. A sushi bar.”