The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

silly European tax plan on art sales. That should be worth a raise. A raise? Ye gods. It should be worth a partnership. A little game of footsie under the table was a picayune price to pay.
    “And now a toast,” said Malrand. “That this lost part of our great national heritage will soon be home, where it belongs.” They all drank and began to eat their lamb.
    “We will sadly not have time to linger too long over our coffee,” Malrand said casually. “I have arranged for us all to visit Lascaux this afternoon. The real one, that is. We might as well remind ourselves of the heritage we are all trying to safeguard.”

    They had driven up the road that ran along the Vézère, past their hotel at la Campagne and through Les Eyzies itself, past the high limestone cliffs that contained cave after cave. Layer after layer of continuous history. Lydia worked it out. Say twenty-five years to a generation, four to a century, forty to a millennium. Seventeen thousand years since Lascaux. Seventeen times forty. Six hundred and eighty generations. And there were still people living in these caves into the twentieth century, some perhaps even descended from the originals who had carved and drawn upon the cave walls the first evidence of a distinctive human sensibility. Who could tell what genes had drifted down from the people of Lascaux to this placid loveliness of modern France? So all but the last two or three generations had been born and bred and died in these gray cliffs, looking at this river, at these blue skies. Probably never dreaming that one day tourists would stand in line to come and tread along the stones where they lived, and pay money to see the carvings they had left.
    “Have you visited any of these caves?” Lydia asked Lespinasse, the bald-headed security man with the mustache who had seemed to be in charge of the security staff back at Malrand’s house. He was driving them in one of the big Citroën limousines. To her relief, Malrand had whisked off Clothilde in another car. She remembered one of her mother’s phrases about some men being NSIT, not safe in taxis. Malrand would probably have qualified. Lespinasse had shown her and Manners into this one, and a dark blue Renault Espace followed them with some of the tough young security men.
    “Of course, mademoiselle. I was born and raised in le Bugue and used to play in Bara-Bahau, our local cave. My father was with President Malrand in the war.” He did not turn his eyes from the road but directed his voice to Manners. “He knew your father, too. They blew up railway lines together. My father’s dead now, like yours. I met yours when he came out to the funeral. He always came to funerals, your father. He signed the book at Papon’s, the funeral parlor, when he came to pay his respects. Came to the church in le Bugue and to the grave.”
    “Really,” said Manners. “I never knew.”
    “Must have come four or five times. Always stayed at Malrand’s place. I picked him up a couple of times at the station at Périgueux and drove him here. They always sat up half the night talking, the two of them. It’s normal. I have some old comrades from the time we were in Lebanon. I like to see them, drink a pot or two. You’re a soldier too, I hear.”
    “Yes, but there’s not much about Northern Ireland that I like to remember. Which unit were you in?”
    “Paras. I served my time, finished as a sous-off, and then applied for the security detail. Malrand was already President. He and my father fixed it up.” Lespinasse leaned forward, punched the cigarette lighter, and fired up a Gauloise. They were cruising quite fast along the open road.
    “Are you always based here in Périgord?” Lydia asked.
    “No, mademoiselle. I’m deputy chief now, so I always travel with the President, in France and abroad. I met them all with Malrand, your Thatcher, and Gorbachev, and Yeltsin, Reagan, and Kohl. Japanese whose names I can’t remember. I got to know some of your English security people, the ones from Scotland Yard. We went on some courses together. They came and used our special driving school at Nantes, and we spent two weeks with your SAS at Hereford. Tough guys. You did the SAS course, didn’t you?”
    “A long time ago,” said Manners. “I’m back with my regiment now.” Lydia raised her eyebrows—that came as a surprise. But then French security would have checked out his career. Manners seemed eager to change the subject. “Were you in