The Vintage Caper

years before, did little to change Sam’s expectations. Compared with the ordered gentility of Bordeaux, Marseille as she remembered it was a scruffy, crowded labyrinth, teeming with raucous, often rather sinister-looking men and women. “Louche” was the word she used to describe both the city and its inhabitants—that is, as the dictionary puts it, “shifty, suspicious, dubious and equivocal.” She wondered how her cousin Philippe could live, apparently happily, in such a place. But then, as she said to Sam, she had often thought there was a slightly louche side to him.
    When they arrived at Marignane airport that afternoon, such dark thoughts were immediately dispelled by the dramatic, almost blinding clarity of the light, the thick Gauloise blue of the sky, and the amiable nature of the taxi driver who was taking them to their hotel. It soon became clear that he had missed his vocation; he should have been working for the tourist office. According to him, Marseille was the center of the universe, whereas Paris was no more than a pimple on the map. Marseille, having been established more than 2,600 years ago, was a treasure trove of history, tradition, and culture. The restaurants of Marseille were the reason God made fish. And the people of Marseille were the most generous and warmhearted souls one could wish to meet.
    Sophie had been taking this in without comment, although her half smile and raised eyebrows suggested that she wasn’t entirely convinced. She took advantage of a pause for breath to ask the driver what he thought of Francis Reboul.
    “Ah, Sissou, the king of Marseille!” The driver’s voice took on a respectful tone. “Now there’s a man who should be running the country. A man of the people, despite his billions. Imagine, a man who plays boules with his chauffeur! A man who could live anywhere, and where does he choose to live? Not in Paris, not in Monte Carlo, not in Switzerland, but right here in Marseille, in the Palais du Pharo, where he can look out of his window and see the most beautiful view in the world—the Vieux Port, the Mediterranean, the Château d’If, the magnificent church of Notre-Dame de la Garde … Merde!”
    The driver stamped on his brakes and reversed, weaving backward through a chorus of horn-blowing from the oncoming flow of traffic until he reached the short driveway leading to the hotel. With apologies for having overshot the destination, he dropped them off, gave Sophie his card, beamed his appreciation of Sam’s tip, and wished them a memorable stay in Marseille.
    On her cousin Philippe’s advice, Sophie had made reservations at the Sofitel Vieux Port, a modern hotel with a view of the twelfth-century Fort Saint-Jean, one of a trio of forts that had been built to keep pirates and seagoing Parisians at bay. Up in his room, Sam slid back the window, went out onto the terrace, and took a deep breath of salt air. Not bad, he thought, as he looked down across the sweep of the city. Not bad at all. Spring had come early to Marseille, and the reflection of sun bouncing off water seemed to have polished the air and made it glitter. The masts of hundreds of small boats made a floating forest of the port. Out to sea, the Château d’If was in silhouette, flat, sharp, and clear. Sam wondered if Reboul’s view could be any better than this.
    He went down to meet Sophie in the lobby, and found her pacing up and down, cell phone pressed to her ear. As she finished the call, she came over, glancing at her watch.
    “That was Philippe,” she said. “He suggests we meet for a drink in half an hour.”
    “They start early in Marseille. Is he coming here?”
    Sophie sighed and shook her head. “It’s never simple with Philippe. He wants to show us one of his little bars where tourists never go. It’s in Le Panier. He says it’s a nice walk from here, typiquement marseillais . Are you ready for that?”
    They stopped at the front desk to pick up a map and set off down the hill toward the Vieux Port. As they walked, Sophie passed on what little she knew about Le Panier. The oldest part of Marseille, once the home of fishermen, Corsicans, and Italians, it became a hiding place during the war for Jewish refugees and others trying to escape from the Nazis. In a particularly thorough act of retribution, the Nazis ordered the area to be evacuated in 1943, and then blew most of it up.
    “Philippe knows many stories about that time,” said Sophie. “After the war,