Submission (12 page)

Evening fell on Place des Consuls, the yellow stones glowed gently in the setting sun. We were opposite the Hôtel de la Raymondie.

‘Martel is an old village, isn’t it?’

‘Very. And its name is no accident. Everyone knows Charles Martel – Charles the Hammer – fought the Arabs at Poitiers in 732, ending Muslim expansion to the north. That was a decisive battle, it marks the real beginning of the Christian Middle Ages. But it wasn’t all so neat and tidy. The invaders didn’t just pick up and go home. Charles Martel spent years warring against them in Acquitaine. In 743 he won another battle not far from here, and he decided to give thanks by building a church. It bore the three red hammers of his coat of arms. The village grew up around this church, which was later destroyed, then rebuilt in the fourteenth century. It’s true that Christianity and Islam have been at war for a very long time; war has always been one of the major human activities. As Napoleon put it, war is human nature. But with Islam, I think, the time has come for accommodation, for an alliance.’

I shook his hand goodbye. He was laying it on a little thick – the intelligence veteran, the old sage in retirement, etc., but after all he’d just been sacked. It would take him a while to grow into the part. In any case, I was already looking forward to dinner the next day. The port was bound to be good, and I had high hopes for the meal itself. He wasn’t the type who took these things lightly.

‘Watch the news tomorrow,’ he said, before he walked away. ‘I suspect there will be something to see.’

Tuesday, 31 May

Sure enough, the news broke just after two in the afternoon. The centre-right and the Socialists had formed a coalition, a ‘broad republican front’, and were backing the Muslim Brotherhood. Frantic, the networks spent all afternoon asking about the terms of the deal and the division of ministries, and kept getting the same answer – about putting politics aside and unifying to heal the wounds of a divided nation, etc. All of which was predictable enough. More surprising was François Bayrou’s return to the political stage. He had agreed to share the ticket with Ben Abbes: in return he would be named prime minister if Ben Abbes won.

These days the old mayor of Pau, who’d been beaten practically every time he ran for office over the last thirty years, was cultivating an image of
integrity
, with the connivance of various magazines. Which is to say, Bayrou was regularly photographed leaning on a shepherd’s crook, wearing a beret – like Justin Bridou on the sausage labels – in a landscape of meadows and fields, usually in Labourd. The image he kept trying to promote, from interview to interview, was that of
the man who said no
, on the model of de Gaulle.

‘It’s genius, picking Bayrou – sheer genius,’ Alain Tanneur said, the moment I showed up. He was literally quivering with enthusiasm. ‘I admit, it would never have occurred to me. This Ben Abbes really is something.’

Marie-Françoise greeted me with a big smile. She wasn’t just glad to see me, she was thriving. To see her bustling around the kitchen in an apron bearing the humorous phrase ‘Don’t Shout at the Cook – That’s the Boss’s Job!’ (or words to that effect), it was hard to believe that just days ago she’d been leading a doctoral seminar on the altogether unusual circumstances surrounding Balzac’s corrections to the proofs of
Béatrix
. She’d made us tartlets stuffed with ducks’ necks and shallots, and they were delicious. In his excitement, her husband uncorked a bottle of Cahors and one of Sauternes – then remembered his port, which I absolutely had to taste. On the face of it, I couldn’t see what was so ‘genius’ about bringing François Bayrou back into politics, but I was sure Tanneur would fill me in before long. Marie-Françoise gazed at him lovingly, clearly relieved that her husband was handling his dismissal so well, and adapting so easily to the role of armchair strategist – a role that would win him the admiration of the mayor, the doctor, the notary and all the other notables still to be found in provincial towns. For them he’d always retain the glamour of a career in the secret services. The Tanneurs’ retirement was off to a decidedly promising start.

‘What’s amazing about Bayrou, what makes him irreplaceable,’ Tanneur enthused, ‘is that he’s an utter moron. He’s never had a political agenda beyond getting himself elected to the “highest office in the land”, whatever that might take, and he’s never had an idea of his own – he’s never even pretended, which is unusual. If you’re looking for a politician who can embody the humanist spirit, he’s perfect: he thinks he’s Henri the Fourth bringing peace through interfaith dialogue. Plus he plays well to the Catholic base, who find his stupidity reassuring. He’s exactly what Ben Abbes needs, since he wants above all to embody a new humanism, and to present Islam as the best possible form of this new, unifying humanism – and by the way, he happens to mean it when he proclaims his respect for the three religions of the Book.’

Marie-Françoise called us to the table. She’d made a salad of fava beans and dandelion with shaved Parmesan. It was so delicious that for a moment I tuned out of the conversation. The Catholics had all but disappeared in France, her husband was saying, but they still enjoyed a certain moral authority. In any case, from the beginning Ben Abbes had done all he could to court them. Over the last year he’d paid no fewer than three visits to the Vatican. He appealed to the Third World types simply by being who he was, but he also knew how to win over conservative voters. Unlike his sometime rival Tariq Ramadan, who’d been tainted by his old Trotskyite connections, Ben Abbes had kept his distance from the anti-capitalist left. He understood that the pro-growth right had won the ‘war of ideas’, that young people today had become
entrepreneurs
, and that no one saw any alternative to the free market. But his real stroke of genius was to grasp that elections would no longer be about the economy, but about values, and that here, too, the right was about to win the ‘war of ideas’ without a fight. Whereas Ramadan presented sharia as forward-looking, even revolutionary, Ben Abbes restored its reassuring, traditional value – with a perfume of exoticism that made it all the more attractive. When he campaigned on family values, traditional morality and, by extension, patriarchy, an avenue opened up to him that neither the conservatives nor the National Front could take without being called reactionaries or even fascists by the last of the
soixante-huitards
, those progressive mummified corpses – extinct in the wider world – who managed to hang on in the citadels of the media, still cursing the evil of the times and the
toxic atmosphere
of the country. Only Ben Abbes was spared. The left, paralysed by his multicultural background, had never been able to fight him, or so much as mention his name.

Now Marie-Françoise served us a lamb shank confit with sautéed potatoes, and once again my attention began to wander. ‘Still, he is a Muslim,’ I murmured in my confusion.

‘Yes, and so?’ He was beaming. ‘He’s a
moderate
Muslim. That’s the point. He says so constantly, and it’s true. You can’t think of him as some kind of Taliban or terrorist. That would be completely mistaken. Ben Abbes has nothing but contempt for those people. You can hear it whenever he writes those editorials for
Le Monde
– underneath all the moral condemnation, there’s an edge of contempt. In the end, he thinks of terrorists as amateurs. The reality is that Ben Abbes is an extremely crafty politician, the craftiest, most cunning politician France has known since François Mitterand. And unlike Mitterand he has a truly historic vision.’

‘So you think the Catholics have nothing to worry about?’

‘Nothing to worry about? They have everything to gain! You know,’ he smiled apologetically, ‘I’ve spent ten years on the Ben Abbes file. I can honestly say that only a few people in France know him better than I do. I’ve spent almost my whole career tracking Islamist movements. The first case I worked on – I was still a cadet at Saint-Cyr – was the Paris attacks in 1986, which we eventually traced back to Hezbollah and, indirectly, to the Iranians. Then there were the Algerians, the Kosovars, the al-Qaeda offshoots, the lone wolves … It’s never stopped, in one form or another. So when the Muslim Brotherhood was created, we kept a close eye on them. It took us years to understand that, for all Ben Abbes’s ambitions – and he’s hugely ambitious – his plans had nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism. There’s an idea you hear in far-right circles, that if the Muslims came to power, Christians would be reduced to second-class citizens, or dhimmis. Now, dhimmitude is part of the general principles of Islam, it’s true, but in practice the status of dhimmis is a very flexible thing. Islam exists all over the world. The way it’s practised in Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with the Islam you find in Indonesia or Morocco. In France, I promise you, they won’t interfere with Christian worship – in fact, the government will increase spending for Catholic organisations and the upkeep of churches. And they’ll be able to afford it, since the Gulf States will be giving so much more to the mosques. For these Muslims, the real enemy – the thing they fear and hate – isn’t Catholicism. It’s secularism. It’s laicism. It’s atheist materialism. They think of Catholics as fellow believers. Catholicism is a religion of the Book. Catholics are one step away from converting to Islam – that’s the true, original Muslim vision of Christianity.

‘What about the Jews?’ The question slipped out – I hadn’t planned on asking. The image of Myriam on my bed that last morning, in her T-shirt, with her little round bottom, flashed through my mind. I poured myself another large glass of Cahors.

‘Ah,’ he smiled again. ‘With the Jews, of course, things are somewhat more complicated. In theory, it’s the same – Judaism is a religion of the Book, Abraham and Moses are recognised as prophets of Islam. In practice, though, relations with Jews in Muslim countries have often been more difficult than with Christians. And of course the Palestinian question has poisoned everything. Some small factions of the Muslim Brotherhood call for retaliation against the Jews, but I don’t think they’ll get anywhere. Ben Abbes has always maintained good relations with the Grand Rabbi of France. Every once in a while he may let the extremists act out, because even if he really hopes to convert Christians in massive numbers – and who says he won’t? – he can’t possibly have high hopes for the Jews. What would really make him happy, I think, is if they left France on their own and emigrated to Israel. In any case, I assure you, he’d never compromise his vast personal ambitions out of love for the Palestinians. It amazes me how few people have read his early writings – though, to be fair, they’re all in obscure geopolitical journals. The first thing you notice is that he’s always going on about the Roman Empire. For him, European integration is just a means to this glorious end. The main thrust of his foreign policy will be to shift Europe’s centre of gravity towards the south. There are already organisations pursuing this goal, like the Union for the Mediterranean. The first countries likely to join up will be Turkey and Morocco, then later will come Tunisia and Algeria. In the long term, Egypt – that would be harder to swallow, but it would be definitive. At the same time, we’ll see European institutions – which right now are anything but democratic – evolve towards more direct democracy. The logical outcome would be a president of Europe elected by the people of Europe. That’s when the integration of populous countries with high birth rates, such as Turkey and Egypt, could be key. Ben Abbes’s true ambition, I’m sure of it, is eventually to be elected president of Europe – greater Europe, including all the Mediterranean countries. Remember, he’s only forty-three – even if he cultivates a paunch and refuses to dye his hair. In a sense, old Bat Ye’or wasn’t wrong with her fantasy of a Eurabian plot. Her great mistake was in thinking the Euro-Mediterranean countries would be weak compared with the Gulf States. We’ll be one of the world’s great economic powers. The Gulf will have to deal with us as equals. It’s a strange game Ben Abbes is playing with Saudi Arabia and the others. He’s more than happy to accept their petrodollars, but he won’t give up the least bit of sovereignty in return. In a sense, all he wants is to realise de Gaulle’s dream, of France as a great Arab power, and just you watch, he’ll find plenty of allies – not least the petro-monarchs, who have swallowed many a bitter pill for the Americans and alienated their own people in the process. They’re starting to see that an ally like Europe, with fewer organic ties to Israel, might be a much better alternative …’

He fell silent; he’d been talking for half an hour straight. I wondered whether he was going to write a book, now that he was retired, and put his ideas down on paper. I thought his analysis was interesting – if you were interested in history, that is. Marie-Françoise brought in dessert: a
croustade landaise
with apples and nuts. It had been a long time since I’d eaten so well. After dinner, the thing to do was to take a glass of Bas-Armagnac in the sitting room – and that’s just what we did. Wilting in the brandy fumes, pondering the old spy’s lustrous skull and plaid smoking jacket, I wondered what he really thought of all this. What opinion could a man have, after he’d spent his entire life dealing with the
inside story
? Probably none. I’d bet he didn’t even vote – he knew too much.

‘I went to work for French intelligence,’ he said, in a calmer tone, ‘partly, of course, because I’d spent my childhood fascinated by spy stories. But also, I like to think, it was because I’d inherited the patriotism that always impressed me in my father. He was born in 1922, if you can believe it. Exactly a hundred years ago. He joined the Resistance early on, in late June of 1940. Even in his day, French patriotism was an idea whose time had passed. You could say that it was born at the Battle of Valmy, in 1792, and that it began to die in 1917, in the trenches of Verdun. That’s hardly more than a century – not long, if you think about it. Today, who believes in French patriotism? The National Front claims to, but their belief is so insecure, so desperate. The other parties have already decided that France should be dissolved into Europe. Ben Abbes believes in Europe, too, more than anyone, but in his case it’s different. For him Europe is truly a project of civilisation. Ultimately, he models himself on the emperor Augustus – and that’s some model. We still have the speeches that Augustus made to the Senate, you know, and I’m sure he has read them closely.’ He paused, then added, ‘It could be a great civilisation, for all I know … Have you seen Rocamadour?’ he asked all of a sudden. I was starting to nod off. I said no, I didn’t think so – or rather yes, I’d seen it on TV.