The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (4 page)

“Georges has to make a last-minute drive today to check out a film location on the coast. We’re leaving shortly. Why don’t you join us?”

Within the hour, Monique, Georges, Anna, and Sabastien were on their way to the port of Le Havre. As Georges maneuvered the big, black Mercedes onto the A13 expressway, a box truck whizzed past, followed closely by two motorcyclists with riders.

“Why do the French always drive like bats out of hell?” Anna wondered out loud from the back seat. Sabastien was curled up and asleep with his paws tucked under him on the seat beside her.

“Because we’re dying to get to heaven,” Georges countered in English with a slight British accent. He was older than Monique, handsomely dressed, expensively shod, and his silver gray sideburns glistened in the sunlight streaming into the car.

“By the way, do you two know what all those sirens were about last night?” Anna asked.

Monique and Georges looked at each other and nonchalantly shrugged their shoulders.

“We don’t concern ourselves much with the news on Sundays,” Monique explained. “It’s our day to enjoy each other,
n’est-ce pas, chéri
?

Georges nodded and blew her an affectionate kiss.

“
Oui
,
chérie
, I only have eyes for you on Sundays.”

“Oh, you two. You must have heard the sirens. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

They smirked. “Actually,” Georges confessed, raising his eyebrows, “we did turn on the TV a bit this morning. There was an incident in a tunnel near the Eiffel Tower. The Alma Tunnel. The TV announced that Princess Diana was killed.”

“Killed? You mean, murdered?”

Georges shook his head. “They said it was an accident.”

CHAPTER 5

T
he unmarked SAMU entered the outskirts of Rouen and followed the quay until it reached rue Jeanne-d’Arc. Two motorcycles with riders followed at a distance. Diamanté watched them in the rearview mirror. Just short of the rue du Gros-Horloge, he instructed the driver to make a sharp turn into a back alley. They pulled alongside another truck and waited. Then, with a roar, the first motorcycle spun around the corner. The man on the pillion held a camera with a large lens perched on his shoulder.

“Paparazzi,” yelled Diamanté to the driver. “Hit it.”

Lucie La Forêt spotted the truck and the motorcycle. She shouted at her kitchen assistants, who were busy unpacking crates of produce. “
Tout le monde
! Everyone,
vite
!
Vite
! Toss your crates into the alley behind that truck.
Maintenant
!”

They did as told, and just as the truck passed, the motorcyclists saw a storm of produce and crates, some still unpacked, come hurtling towards them.

Jacques saluted Diamanté and motioned to the driver not to stop. The SAMU zoomed off just as the second motorcycle, its rider hanging precariously off to the side, turned the corner.

Lucie amassed her army behind her. “
Hé, les commis, à la sortie
!”

The small army of kitchen assistants positioned themselves behind the massive body of their head chef, standing in her white apron with her hands on her hips, legs spread apart, frizzy white hair protruding under her chef’s cap. Jacques, a rather hesitant Father Truette, and the portly La Bergère joined her.

The first motorcycle plummeted into a sea of wooden crates, and its two riders were thrown into the mess. They lay moaning, covered with cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks, and carrots. The next two arrived, braked, and skidded to a screeching stop just inches in front of the miniature brigade. As they revved the engine and reversed their direction, Lucie motioned to her sous-chef. The man went into action instantly. As the second motorcycle attempted a speedy retreat back down the alley, the sous-chef lowered the loading dock just in front of them. With a crash it came down, and the paparazzi were trapped.

“
Où allez-vous
? What do you think you are doing?” yelled Jacques angrily. He stepped forward, motioning to the army behind him to hold their position. “See what a mess you have made of my Sunday menu? The cabbages for the
chou-croute
are all over the cobblestones.”

“And the leeks,” Lucie added, her Gallic arms flying. “My leeks for the soup.”

“We were so looking forward to the
morilles
.” La Bergère shook his head in disgust.

The two who had crashed into the wall finally managed to get up and were picking salad greens out of their clothing. The motley army and the stunned paparazzi faced each other.

In all the chaos, no one had noticed that Narbon was missing.

Narbon was an old man, but in his Résistance days he was the most athletic of
Les Amis
, and he was still wiry and quick. As the SAMU sped out of the alley, he scurried into the courtyard of the hotel next door to the restaurant, crossed it, and arrived in the rue du Gros-Horloge just as the truck pulled around the corner.

Diamanté spotted him. It had been years since the two had seen each other, but the slight profile with the oversized beret and the thick, dark, square-rimmed glasses was unmistakable. He had seen it many times in the shadows, planting dynamite under bridges, behind buildings waiting for rendezvous with escapees, beneath trees in the dark forest waiting for planes. He briefly wondered to himself how André had managed to appear in Rouen at this very moment, but this was no time to question Jacques’ decision. He motioned to the driver to halt.

“We can’t very well do that, now, can we?” the young man objected. “What do you want us to do? Get out and give a press conference, old man?”

“Your replacement.” Diamanté pointed to Narbon, now hurriedly approaching. “You realize your absence will be noted if you are not back at your post in two to three hours.” He was correct; the driver was an employee of the British Embassy. It would not be smart for him to be reported missing after his break.

The driver pulled up, got out, and reluctantly allowed Narbon to take over the wheel.

“Go around to the main entrance of the restaurant and wait in the bar.” Narbon spoke to him in low tones. “Have a cigarette. Act nonchalant. They are expecting you. You will be driven back to Paris immediately.”

Narbon hauled himself into the driver’s seat and nodded in Diamanté’s direction. “Jacques has everything under control.” There was no warmth between them. The SAMU lurched and sped off toward their destination, the port of Le Havre.

“
Alors
, so,
mon frère
, why didn’t the Brits get the Yanks to do this job? The CIA or something? They would have been eager to do it.”

Diamanté gave Narbon a hard look. “No one will suspect a bunch of old fighters like us. We can be trusted to do this quietly. The Yanks would bring in the big helicopters and artillery, probably a tank or two for good measure. And the whole operation would appear live on the evening news…Hollywood style.” He chuckled to himself. Secretly, he liked the Americans, an opinion that he, Jacques, and particularly André Narbon had not shared.

“
Eh bien
, André, what brought you to Rouen just at this moment?”

CHAPTER 6

I have reached the point where the Seine begins…and ends. Where a story I have in mind begins…and perhaps will end. I sit on a bench on the quay in Le Havre, the wind blowing in my face. The sea is gray, angry, troubled. I taste the salt as droplets of water in the air fall on my lips.

A
nna paused from writing in her journal and stared at a British ship in the dark waters of Le Havre harbor. The quay was deserted. It was misting, overcast, and threatening to rain as a storm approached from the Channel.

Anna tried to make out some activity at the end of the wharf. Breton fishermen, perhaps coming in with their catch. The wind was blowing stronger, and the light was dimming. The British ship, in full view, seemed to be turning around. As it did, it sent a series of waves into the Channel. Anna closed her journal as a small, white, unmarked truck pulled up to the end of the pier. Next, a yellow military helicopter hovered over the truck and landed behind it, its rotary spinning. From the distance, Anna couldn’t tell what was being said, but it was obvious that someone was motioning to the driver and yelling to him to get out of the cab. Two elderly men jumped out, both in berets. Without hesitation, they ran. Anna stared in amazement as they approached her. They didn’t look back. One of them seemed to have spotted her. He diverted his path to avoid looking her in the eyes. The two disappeared into the maze of corrugated iron warehouses in the streets that made up the port. Anna looked back at what was going on where the truck was parked. All the action seemed to be on the side opposite from her. In an instant, the helicopter took off and was gone. She couldn’t tell where it went because of the storm. It just disappeared into the mist. The truck seemed to have been abandoned.

I wonder what that was all about
, she thought as she opened her journal and briefly sketched the scene.

Fate had brought both Anna and C-C to the same harbor on that last day of August 1997. Fate could not, however, arrange their reunion. Destiny intervened.

The only person who saw Anna did not know who she was. With the keen wolf’s eyes, Diamanté had spotted the young woman watching him.

In Rouen, Jacques turned on the television in the bar of the restaurant. A press conference was being broadcast live from in front of La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.

The princess was pronounced dead at three a.m. Paris time after failing to survive emergency surgery.

The phone rang.

“
Allô
?” Jacques said anxiously.

“It was a setup.” Diamanté’s hoarse voice was lower than usual.

Jacques tensed. “What do you mean, a setup?”

“André and I, we had to escape. I am at the
gare
in Le Havre.”

“Where is Charlie?”

“I don’t know, honestly, Jacques. I think the nurse was killed. I’ll be in touch.” There was a sound of footsteps and muffled voices in the background. The phone went dead.

Jacques’ chest felt tight, and he was suddenly nauseated.

CHAPTER 7

T
he following morning, September 1, Anna stepped onto rue Beaujon, uncertain where the day would take her. Earlier, she had admitted to Monique over breakfast that there was one person in Paris who might know of C-C’s whereabouts: Elise, the Portuguese concierge who managed his apartment building in the fifth arrondissement. Anna crossed the busy avenue de Friedland. She breathed the familiar mix of diesel exhaust, bakeries, wet streets, and Gitanes. People were beginning to fill the sidewalk cafés, and the vehicle traffic was at its usual frantic pace. As she skillfully dodged an errant taxi that came screeching around the corner, it occurred to her that Elise may not even be still alive. She would be in her seventies by now.

Putrid smells and the familiar ricocheting sounds of the métro assaulted her senses as she descended into the station at the Arc de Triomphe. It was all so familiar, as if she had never left Paris at all. Knowing that she would be spending some time in Paris, she bought a
carnet
of tickets at the
guichet
and plunged into the depths of the labyrinth. As she walked onto the platform, she recalled vividly how in her student days she had always compared descending into the métro to descending into Dante’s Inferno. While some of the stations were clean and well lighted, most were not. The whole system reeked of sewage, garlic, and vomit. She waited for the train to slow and the doors to open, then boarded, holding her breath as she noted that the car was full of people. The overcrowded cars always smelled of human sweat and stale tobacco. The doors slammed closed, and the train lurched. She found a corner and stood, holding onto a metal pole next to her so as not to lose her balance. It wasn’t long to her stop: Maubert Mutualité. Absorbed in memories, she ascended to the street. She knew the quarter well. She had lived there while attending the Sorbonne. It was where she and C-C had met and spent many hours studying together, where they had browsed for antiquarian treasures in the bouquinist’s stalls and, as lovers, walked arm in arm along the quay.

Suddenly, a soft-beige stone building with seventeenth-century details reared up, beast-like, directly in front of her. The monster enveloped her, drew back on its tall, ground-floor windows, then pitched forward. Its eyes became progressively smaller, seeming to squint at her. The tiny mansard windows peeped down from the sloping roof, and the iron railings and protruding sills of the balconies sneered in unison. A huge “No. 4” stared at her from its forehead. Anna blinked. A young man with a cigarette in his mouth stood on the balcony of the
première étage
. Just as suddenly, the monstrosity shrunk and took its place amongst the others just like it on the street; the young smoker disappeared.

Anna shook her head, thinking that she must still be jetlagged, when she realized that she was standing directly in front of C-C’s former apartment building. She pressed the main button on the keypad. The heavy, wooden
porte d’entrée
pushed open easily. It wasn’t locked; the daily mail apparently had not yet been delivered. She peered into the courtyard, looking for any sign of Elise, who could usually be found humming softly to herself while working in the small kitchen garden outside her apartment.