The Enemy (37 page)

"OK," he said again. "Is that it?"

"No," I said. "Also tell her to call Detective Clark in Green Valley and have him fax his street canvasses relating to the night of New Year's Eve. She'll know what I'm talking about."

"I'm glad someone will," Franz said. He paused. He was writing stuff down. "So is that it?" he said.

"For now," I said.

I hung up and made it down to the lobby about five minutes after Summer. She was waiting there. She had been much faster than me. But then, she didn't have to shave and I don't think she had made any calls or taken time for coffee. Like me, she was back in BDUs. Somehow she had cleaned her boots, or had gotten them cleaned. They were gleaming.

We didn't have money for a cab to the airport. So we walked back through the pre-dawn darkness to the Place de l'Opera and caught the bus. It was less crowded than the last time but just as uncomfortable. We got brief glimpses of the sleeping city and then we crossed the Peripherique and ground slowly through the dismal outer suburbs. We got to Roissy-Charles de Gaulle just before six. It was busy there. I guessed airports worked on floating time zones all their own. It was busier at six in the morning than it would be in the middle of the afternoon. There were crowds of people everywhere. Cars and buses were loading and unloading, red-eyed travellers were coming out and going in and struggling with bags. It looked like the whole world was on the move.

The arrivals screen showed that Joe's flight was already on the ground. We hiked around to the customs area's exit doors. Took our places among a big crowd of meeters and greeters. I figured Joe would be one of the first passengers through. He would have walked fast from the plane and he wouldn't have checked any luggage. No delays.

We saw a few stragglers coming out from the previous flight.

They were mostly families slowed by young children or individuals who had waited for odd-sized luggage. People in the crowd turned towards them expectantly and then turned away again when they realized they weren't who they were looking for. I watched them do it for a spell. It was an interesting physical dynamic. Just subtle adjustments of posture were enough to display interest, and then lack of interest. Welcome, and then dismissal. A half-turn inward, and then a half-turn away. Sometimes it was nothing more than a transfer of body weight from one foot to the other.

The last stragglers were mixed in with the first people off of Joe's flight. There were businessmen moving fast, humping briefcases and suit carriers. There were young women in high heels and dark glasses, expensively dressed. Models? Actresses? Call girls? There were government people, French and American. I could pick them out by the way they looked. Smart and serious, plenty of eyeglasses, but their shoes and suits and coats weren't the best quality. Low-level diplomats, probably. The flight was from D.C., after all.

Joe came out about twelfth in line. He was in the same overcoat I had seen before, but a different suit and a different tie. He looked good. He was walking fast and carrying a black leather overnight bag. He was a head taller than anyone else.

He came out of the door and stopped dead and scanned around. "He looks just like you," Summer said.

"But I'm a nicer person," I said.

He saw me right away, because I was also a head taller than anyone else. I pointed to a spot outside of the main traffic stream. He shuffled through the crowd and made his way towards it. We looped around and joined him there.

"Lieutenant Summer," he said. "I'm very pleased to meet you." I hadn't seen him look at the tapes on her jacket, where it said Summer, U.S. Army. Or at the lieutenant's bars on her collar. He must have remembered her name and her rank from when we had talked before.

"You OK?" I asked him.

"I'm tired," he said.

"Want breakfast?"

"Let's get it in town."

The taxi line was a mile long and moving slow. We ignored it. Headed straight for the navette again. We missed one and were first in line for the next. It came inside ten minutes. Joe spent the waiting time asking Summer about her visit to Paris. She gave him chapter and verse, but not about the events after midnight. I stood on the curb with my back to the roadway, watching the eastern sky above the terminal roof. Dawn was breaking fast. It was going to be another sunny day. It was the tenth of January, and the weather was the best I had seen in the new decade so far.

We got in the bus and sat in three seats together that faced sideways opposite the luggage rack. Summer sat in the middle seat. Joe sat forward of her and I sat to the rear. They were small, uncomfortable seats. Hard plastic. No leg room. Joe's knees were up around his ears and his head was swaying from side to side with the motion. He looked pale. I guessed putting him on a bus was not much of a welcome, after an overnight flight across the Atlantic. I felt a little bad about it. But then, I was the same size. I had the same accommodation problem. And I hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep either. And I was broke. And I guessed being on the move was better for him than standing in the taxi line for an hour.

He brightened up some after we crossed the Periphrique and entered Haussmann's urban splendour. The sun was well up by then and the city was bathed in gold and honey. The cafes were already busy and the sidewalks were already crowded with people moving at a measured pace and carrying baguettes and newspapers. Legislation limited Parisians to a 35-hour work week, and they spent a lot of the remaining 133 taking great pleasure in not doing very much of anything. It was relaxing just to watch them.

We got out at the familiar spot in the Place de l'Opra. Walked south the same way we had walked the week before, crossing the river at the Pont de la Concorde, turning west on the Quai d'Orsay, turning south into the Avenue Rapp. We got as far as the Rue de l'Universit where the Eiffel Tower was visible, and then Summer stopped.

"I'll go look at the tower," she said. "You guys go on ahead and see your morn."

Joe looked at me. Does she know? I nodded. She knows.

"Thanks, lieutenant," he said. "We'll go see how she is. If she's up for it, maybe you could join us at lunch."

"Call me at the hotel," she said.

"You know where it is?" I said.

She turned and pointed north along the avenue. "Across the bridge right there and up the hill, on the left side. Straight line."

I smiled. She had a decent sense of geography. Joe looked a little puzzled. He had seen the direction she had pointed, and he knew what was up there. "The George V?" he said.

"Why not?" I said.

"Is that on the army's dime?"

"More or less," I said.

"Outstanding."

Summer stretched up tall and kissed me on the cheek and shook Joe's hand. We stayed there with the weak sun on our shoulders and watched her walk away towards the base of the tower. There was already a thin stream of tourists heading the same way. We could see-the souvenir sellers unpacking. We stood and watched them in the distance. Watched Summer get smaller and smaller as she got further away.

"She's very nice," Joe said. "Where did you find her?"

"She was at Fort Bird."

"You figured out what's going on there yet?"

"I'm a little closer."

"I would hope you are. You've been there nearly two weeks."

"Remember that guy I asked you about? Willard? He would have spent time with Armored, right?"

Joe nodded. "I'm sure he reported to them direct. Fed his stuff straight into their intelligence operation."

"Do you remember any names?"

"In Armored Branch? Not really. I never paid much attention to Willard. His thing wasn't very mainstream. It was a side issue."

"Ever heard of a guy called Marshall?"

"Don't remember him," Joe said.

I said nothing. Joe turned and looked south down the avenue. Wrapped his coat tighter around him and turned his face up to the sun.

"Let's go," he said.

"When did you call her last?"

"The day before yesterday. It was your turn next."

We moved off and walked down the avenue, side by side, matching our pace to the leisurely stroll of the people around us.

"Want breakfast first?" I said. "We don't want to wake her."

"The nurse will let us in."

We passed the post office. There was a car abandoned halfway up on the sidewalk. It had been in some kind of an accident. It had a smashed fender and a flat tyre. We stepped out into the street to pass it by. Saw a large black vehicle double-parked on the road forty yards ahead.

We stared at it.

"Un corbillard," Joe said.

A hearse.

We stared at it. Tried to figure which building it was waiting at. Tried to gauge the distance. The head-on perspective made it difficult. I glanced upward at the roof lines. First came a limestone Belle Epoque facade, seven storeys high. Then a drop to my mother's plainer six-storey building. I traced my gaze vertically all the way down the frontage. To the street. To the hearse. It was parked right in front of my mother's door.

We ran.

There was a man in a black silk hat standing on the sidewalk. The street door to my mother's building was open. We glanced at the man in the hat and went in through the door to the courtyard. The concierge was standing in her doorway. She had a handkerchief in her hand and tears in her eyes. She paid us no attention. We headed for the elevator. Rode up to five. The elevator was agonizingly slow.

The door to the apartment was standing open. I could see men in black coats inside. Three of them. We went in. The men in the coats stood back. They said nothing. The girl with the luminous eyes came out of the kitchen. She looked pale. She stopped when she saw us. Then she turned and walked slowly across the room to meet us.

"What?" Joe said. She didn't answer.

"When?" I said.

"Last night," she said. "It was very peaceful."

The men in the coats realized who we must be and shuffled out into the hallway. They were very quiet. They made no noise at all. Joe took an unsteady step and sat down on the sofa. I stayed where I was. I stood still in the middle of the floor. "When?" I said again.

"At midnight," the girl said. "In her sleep."

I closed my eyes. Opened them again a minute later. The girl was still there. Her eyes were on mine. "Were you with her?" I said. She nodded.

"All the time," she said.

"Was there a doctor here?"

"She sent him away."

"What happened?"

"She said she felt well. She went to bed at eleven. She slept an hour, and then she just stopped breathing."

I looked up at the ceiling. "Was she in pain?"

"Not at the end."

"But she said she felt well."

"Her time had come. I've seen it before." I looked at her, and then I looked away. "Would you like to see her?" the girl said.

"Joe?" I said. He shook his head. Stayed on the sofa. I stepped towards the bedroom. There was a mahogany coffin set up on velvet-padded trestles next to the bed. It was lined with white silk and it was empty. My mother's body was still in the bed. The sheets were made up around her. Her head was resting gently on the pillow and her arms were crossed over her chest outside the covers. Her eyes were closed. She was barely recognizable.

Summer had asked me." Does it upset you to see dead people? No, I had said.

Why not? she had asked me.

I don't know, I had said.

I had never seen my father's body. I was away somewhere when he died. It had been a heart thing. Some VA hospital had done its best, but it was hopeless from the start. I had flown in on the morning of the funeral and had left again the same night. Funeral, I thought. Joe will handle it.

I stayed by my mother's bed for five long minutes, eyes open, eyes dry. Then I turned around and stepped back into the living room. It was crowded again. The croque-morts were back. The pallbearers. And there was an old man on the sofa, next to Joe. He was sitting stiffly. There were two walking sticks propped next to him. He had thin grey hair and a heavy dark suit with a tiny ribbon in the buttonhole. Red, white and blue, maybe a Croix de Guerre ribbon, or the Mdaille de la Rsistance. He had a small cardboard box balanced on his bony knees. It was tied with a piece of faded red string.