The Fury of Rachel Monette (42 page)

They entered Orange. The old driver slowed the taxi until it crept along at not much more than a walking pace. The town showed no sign of life. No insomniac walked the streets, no dog prowled the alleys for garbage. The houses were dark. The inhabitants were sleeping, the way normal people do in the dead of night. Instead of riding ninety miles in a taxi with a gun stuck to your thigh. Grunberg had been right about Israel, Calvi had been right about innocence. She had given up parts of herself which were gone forever. Tonight she wanted something to show for it. Adam, yes, if he were alive, and she was more sure than ever that he must be; revenge simply if he were not. She directed the driver to the rue de St. Jean-Baptiste.

For the others it was over. Even for Xavier Monette. Simon Calvi had been his only card, and he had played it for the last time. Why had he become involved at all? To that she had no answer, but an understanding of the man was forming in her brain, a man who would kill his son but keep his grandson alive.

The taxi followed the rue de St. Jean-Baptiste to the edge of the town. “Stop,” Rachel said to the driver.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

He steered the car to the side of the road and stopped. He turned to look at her. “You have to piss?”

“No. I'm getting out.” She preferred to keep her destination secret.

He shrugged. “If that's what you want.” Rachel gave him a fifty-franc tip, not in appreciation of his services, but for luck, although she did not believe in that sort of thing. Taking her suitcase and handbag she got out of the taxi. It backed across the road, turned and drove off in the direction from which it had come. It left her alone with the silence and a billion stars.

Quietly she walked through the grass at the side of the road, past the last houses of the town and into the country. Vineyards lay on both sides: the leafless stalks of early spring looked like poor bent gravemarkers. The distance to the house seemed much greater than before. Rachel resisted the temptation to break into a run. She shifted the suitcase and the handbag to opposite hands and kept walking.

From a slight rise a few hundred yards away she saw the high stone walls emerge from the darkness. She set the suitcase on the ground and took off her skirt. She unwound the tape from her leg, pulled on a pair of jeans from the suitcase and stuck the gun in her belt.

“It's very simple,” Pinchas Levy had said, “if you don't mind killing a dog.”

“I do.”

Rachel emptied the suitcase and piled everything on the ground. Then she ripped out the inner lining. Underneath were a screwdriver, a small flashlight, a length of nylon rope with a hook attached to one end, a lead apron of the kind used by dentists to protect their patients during X rays, and a leather muzzle. Rachel repacked the suitcase, closed it and hid it and her handbag behind a tree, safe from any passing headlights. She wound the lead apron around her left forearm, fastening it tightly with the straps which were meant to fit over the shoulders. Then, putting the screwdriver and flashlight in her pockets and carrying the rope and muzzle in her right hand, she advanced toward the gate in the wall, where Xavier Monette had thrown a dead fox to the dog with no name.

The gates were locked and bolted from the inside. The iron railings were spaced about four inches apart, and ended in spear points a couple of feet above her head. Inside the gravel lane reflected the starlight and her eyes followed it easily to the shadows of the peach grove in front of the house. No lights showed. The thought came to her for the first time that she might be too late: he had reason to leave this place, in a hurry. She forced the idea from her mind.

Rachel squatted in front of the gate, placing the muzzle at her feet and holding the hook in her right hand. She poked her left arm through the railings and whistled once in a low tone. Somewhere in the darkness a cicada made a shrill reply. Then the silence returned. Rachel held her breath and listened carefully, but she heard no bark, no paws running through the grass. She was about to whistle again when she felt a soft breeze, and then a vise closed on her forearm with tremendous force.

The Doberman jerked her forward sharply, knocking her head against the gate, and dragging her to her knees. His yellow eyes glowed cold and opaque, and a deep savage growl rumbled in his throat. Despite the layers of lead around her arm she could feel the pressure of his teeth. He would let go only if he had the chance to sink them into a more vital spot. “Remember that a dog in combat is very direct,” Pinchas Levy had said. “It has no guile.”

Rachel struggled into a sitting position and braced her feet against the railing. Using the muscles in her legs she tried to pull the Doberman forward. He dug his paws into the ground and leaned back; she felt that her arm would be torn from the shoulder. But very slowly the dog's head was drawn closer to the gate. He growled more fiercely than ever but did not let go. With all her might Rachel straightened her legs, slowly pulling the dog forward another inch, perhaps two. Her shoulder could bear no more. With her right hand she reached quickly through the railing and slipped the hook under the dog's leather collar. Then she jerked hard on the nylon rope, bringing the dog's head tightly against the gate. In response he bit deeper into the lead. Rachel wound the rope around one of the railings and then several times around the dog's neck.

She tied the rope to the gate, leaving several feet beyond the knot. This free end she wound again around the dog's neck, and began to pull. The dog didn't like it. He choked and gasped and struggled for breath. Finally he released her arm. Rachel grabbed the muzzle and slipped it over his head. She fastened the leather straps very tightly so he could not bark. Then she stood up and unwrapped the lead protector from her arm. One sharp tooth had penetrated all the way, through to her skin. A little wetness had oozed from the hole and already coagulated. She took a few steps away from the gate. The Doberman began to growl again, but could not even turn his head to watch Rachel put her hands on top of the wall and climb over.

She dropped to the ground on the other side. Suddenly she thought of the possibility that she had arrived ahead of him, that he would come along the road any minute and see the dog with his head stuck in the gate. But it wasn't likely: he had a comfortable head start, at least six or seven hours.

She walked toward the peach grove, her feet making little sound in the soft grass. By the time she reached the trees she could not hear the dog's growling at all. Ahead she saw the dark bulk of the house, and beside it and slightly in front the smaller shadow of the miniature Greek temple the olive oil merchant had built for his homesick mistress. A little marble building with no windows and a brass padlock on the door. She remembered Xavier Monette's call from the telephone box at the gate. “Please be quick,” he had ordered the thick-necked housekeeper. Mademoiselle Hoff. And the coffee had been ready.

But she had also seen Mademoiselle Hoff hurrying toward the temple with a heavy washtub in her arms. “We use it for storage and laundry,” he had said of the temple. But the washtub had been big enough to hide a five-year-old boy.

She walked around to the heavy wooden door at the rear of the temple. Not a sound came from within, or from the house nearby. Rachel took her pencil flashlight from her pocket and shone it for a moment on the door. The brass padlock was in place; the hasp was sturdy. But the screws yielded to her screwdriver, and she dropped them one by one into her pocket where they could make no noise. The hasp swung free. Rachel drew the gun from her belt and slowly pushed the door open.

Cool air touched her skin as she stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and ran the narrow beam of light in a sweeping arc. A man stood against the far wall. She jerked the light back on to him, and dropped to one knee, pointing the gun as Levy had told her. But she did not fire: the man had no face. He was a manikin, a manikin with a black round-rimmed hat and a long black coat. Rachel crossed the cold hard floor and lifted the hat off the plastic head. A black furry thing fell out of the hat and dropped to her feet like a dead animal. She did not bother to pick it up; it had to be a false beard. She turned the hat in her hands and sniffed inside. It smelled faintly of mint and stale sweat.

Slowly Rachel shone the light around the room. The walls were hung with heavy red drapes. In the center of each drape was a white circle, outlined in black, and within each circle a black swastika. Gold-framed photographs were displayed on the drapes. A few were portraits of Adolf Hitler; some showed him addressing large crowds. There were photographs of other Nazis she did not recognize. One picture, smaller than the rest, caught her eye. She went over to the wall and looked at it closely.

Two young men were standing on flat sandy ground, one tall and thin, the other shorter and already growing plump. They wore képis, the flat, round-topped, stiff-brimmed hat of the French soldier. The tall one was smiling, the shorter one seemed less relaxed. The smiling man was Xavier Monette and there was little doubt that his companion was DePoe. Behind them stood a long low windowless building which appeared to be made of concrete blocks.

Near the door was a steel file cabinet with two drawers. The top one was empty. In the bottom drawer Rachel found a worn German edition of
Mein Kampf.
She turned quickly through the pages. Some of the passages were underlined in blue ink. Rachel did not know German, but in most of the underlined sections she noticed the word Juden.

In the back of the book was an envelope, addressed to Xavier Monette. She recognized the handwriting and began to tremble as she withdrew its contents. It was a Xerox copy of the letter Dan had written to his father six days before he died, a letter she thought he had never mailed.

“… I have received one letter with which you may be able to help me,” she read. “Not a letter at all, really—it's a document that seems to pertain to North Africa. I know you were there during the war and you may have come across information that might help to explain it. I will make a copy of it in the morning when the secretary arrives, and enclose it with this letter.” From that she had assumed he had not sent the letter. Attached to the last page was a copy of the document. He had copied the letter as well, mailing it and keeping the original. Rachel had never kept a copy of a letter in her life.

Barely aware of what she was doing Rachel neatly folded the letter, returned it to the envelope, placed it in the book and put the book in the drawer as she had found it. Xavier Monette had come for the original document. Had he intended to kill Dan from the beginning, or had there been an argument? He had begun to search the study for it but had been stopped by Mrs. Flores's arrival. He came to the funeral hoping for a chance to continue the search. She remembered leaving him alone in Dan's office, and finding him in the study in the middle of the night. He had to have that document: he could not risk having Calvi exposed.

So he had sent the blond man to try for a third time. The blond man who bore such a strong resemblance to the housekeeper, Mademoiselle Hoff. And the blond man had almost succeeded. Monette would have tried again. She knew that if she hadn't started moving she would be dead. It would take more than a few such setbacks to make him give up. He had been fighting his one-man war for a long time; a war against the Jews. A war, she suddenly thought, that he had been forced to wage finally within his own family, against a wife who knew his secret and a son who wrote books in support of the enemy. And married one.

Rachel closed the door of the filing cabinet and went outside. A thin gray crescent showed on the eastern horizon, as if a giant eyelid was slowly opening. In front of the door she knelt and replaced the hasp. She spent more time than she should have driving in the screws: her hands were unsteady. Inside the house she heard a toilet flush. The sound made her heart pound so hard she feared it would seize and stop forever. She ran to the other side of the temple, where she could not be seen from the house.

Leaning horizontally against the wall was a short ladder of the kind used in harvesting fruit trees. Rachel stood it upright and climbed onto the flat roof of the temple. She crawled across to the edge which faced the front of the house.

She lay on the roof as dawn slowly spread color over the earth. The grass became green, the gravel lane rust, the house white with black trim and an orange tile roof. In front of the house was parked a long black car which the night had hidden from her. She was about to lower herself from the roof and try to disable it when the front door opened.

Mademoiselle Hoff appeared on the threshold. She wore a light coat and a formal black hat on her broad head. Sticking two fingers between her lips she whistled loudly. The harsh sound echoed over the fields, but brought no dog running. Mademoiselle Hoff scanned the grounds, while Rachel crept back on the roof. She whistled again, waited for a few moments, and reentered the house.

A minute later she came out again, carrying three large suitcases. She opened the trunk of the car and lifted them in. From the open doorway came the sound of footsteps on the tile floor. Two sets of footsteps, Rachel thought, one of them very light. She knew those light footsteps, and the knowledge made her as still as a corpse; a corpse with tears in its eyes.

Xavier Monette walked through the door. And there beside him was Adam. Rachel bit her lip to keep from calling out his name.

They were dressed for traveling; Monette in a dark suit and dark coat and Adam in beige shorts, a beige shirt, and a black necktie.

“Is everything ready?” Monette asked Mademoiselle Hoff in French.

“I can't find the dog.”

Monette made a short gesture of dismissal. “It's not important.” He began walking toward the car. Adam hung back. Shoot him now, she thought. But Monette turned. “Come,” he said in English to Adam. “We are in a hurry.”

“Are we going to see Mummy and Daddy?”