Blowback

THIRTY-ONE

When Jillian came down to the Hotel Gare du Nord’s lobby, she was dressed in the secondhand clothes Harvath had sent up to her room earlier in the evening. She couldn’t figure out if he’d incorrectly guessed her sizes or if he had purchased the black turtleneck and black jeans slightly snug on purpose. Regardless of what his intentions had been, with the battered, secondhand leather jacket she felt that she looked perfectly Parisian. She was also glad to have the warm clothes, as a second storm front had moved in and the rainy night air was bitterly cold.

At exactly midnight, Harvath appeared in the lobby and motioned for her to follow him. Outside on the street, he hurried her through the rain to a tiny, windowless van. He had left it running, and though the wheezing heater was cranked all the way up, its effect was barely noticeable.

“How do the clothes fit?” he asked as they pulled away from the curb.

“Strangely enough,” replied Jillian, “the boots are a perfect fit, but everything else is a little tight.”

Harvath glanced over at her before turning right onto the boulevard de Magenta and said, “No they’re not. They’re just right.”

Jillian should have known better. Anyone who could nail her shoe size after having only spent two days with her certainly knew what he was doing with everything else. “Where’d they come from?”

The tires of the tiny van wobbled as they splashed through puddles making their way south. “I got them at a flea market.”

“And the van?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy.”

Jillian looked into the cargo area behind their seats. “And I assume everything in back is from—”

“The same guy,” said Harvath, hanging a right onto the boulevard de Strasbourg and speeding up in order to make the light at the next corner.

“So what is all that stuff?”

“Skeleton keys.”

“Skeleton keys?” repeated Jillian, looking behind her at the duffel bag and two plastic Storm-brand cases. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I couldn’t be more serious. Trust me. You’ll see.”

Ten minutes later, they had threaded their way through the bustling Les Halles neighborhood and had managed to find a parking space around the corner from the Sotheby’s annex. Walking around to the back of the van, Harvath opened the double doors and leaned inside to get his head out of the rain. He slid the two Storm cases and heavy black duffel toward him, opened them, and checked their contents one last time.

“I thought you said you had a set of skeleton keys in there,” said Jillian, who had darted behind the van and was now leaning inside next to him.

“I do,” replied Harvath as he withdrew a small sledgehammer about a foot long from the duffel. “This one unlocks the downstairs door.”

Jillian looked at him as if he was nuts. “You realize that when I said you were like a hammer and that you approached all your problems like nails, I was speaking metaphorically, right?”

Harvath ignored her and tucked the sledgehammer beneath his coat.

“I’m serious,” said Jillian.

“I know.”

“So tell me what your real plan is.”

“I told you. I’m going to use my skeleton key to open the downstairs door.”

“What about the security guards?”

Harvath zipped up the duffel and then slung it over his shoulder. He grabbed the larger of the two Storm cases and indicated that Jillian should take the other. As he closed the rear doors of the van, he said, “If we do this right, they won’t have any idea what we’re up to.”

“And if we don’t do this right?”

“Then I hope your tight jeans don’t prevent you from running.”

“That’s a good one,” said Jillian. “You sure know how to kid a girl.”

“Who’s kidding?” replied Harvath as he set off down the block.

Jillian peppered him with questions the entire way, but Harvath didn’t feel like talking. Despite his leather jacket, the nylon straps of the overweight duffel were cutting into his shoulder. He couldn’t wait to finally set it down. Thankfully, the heavy Storm case had built-in casters that allowed it to be dragged behind him.

For her part, as much as Jillian wanted to trust Harvath, she couldn’t help feeling he was acting out of desperation. Smashing through the glass front doors of the Sotheby’s annex with a sledgehammer was the most insane plan she could ever imagine. They wouldn’t make it more than five feet before the armed guards would be on them. She was just about to say as much when Harvath pulled up three doors short of the annex. Ducking into a small alcove, he set his heavy duffel down, leaned his Storm case against the wall, and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Here,” he said as he offered them to her.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Neither do I, but that’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Everybody in Paris smokes.”

“So?”

Harvath turned the pack over, tapped out a cigarette, and handed it to her. “So, standing around with nothing to do looks suspicious.”

Jillian didn’t see the sense in his logic. “But it’s okay to stand around with nothing to do as long as you have a cigarette in your mouth?”

“In Paris it is,” replied Harvath as he raised the lighter for her.

“You know, I quit smoking these things about three years ago,” said Jillian as she bent over the flame. When she had it lit, she leaned back and took a deep, long drag. She felt that old familiar feeling as the smoke filled her lungs and the nicotine began to race through her bloodstream. Though she knew it was terrible, the cigarette tasted fabulous. It was like coming home. “What I do for queen and country,” she sighed.

Harvath hated cigarettes. “I didn’t say you actually had to smoke it, you know.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Fake it. Don’t inhale.”

“Too late now,” she replied as she took another hit. The damage was already done. “While I’m standing here throwing away three years of willpower and hard work, what are you supposed to be doing?” she asked.

Harvath tucked his hands in his coat pockets, rocked back and forth on his heels, and nonchalantly said, “Me? I’m just waiting for the Métro.”

“Waiting for the bloody Métro? You’re aware that it runs below ground in these parts?”

“Quite aware,” replied Harvath as he continued rocking.

Jillian had no idea what to make of him. “If you see the bus for Piccadilly coming, you’ll be a dear and let me know, won’t you?”

“No problem.”

Jillian stepped to the edge of the alcove and watched as the heavy rain pounded the roofs of cars parked up and down the street. There were flashes of lightning accompanied by peals of thunder somewhere off in the distance. Jillian counted the seconds between them. The storm was getting closer, and as it did, her unease grew. As she stared out into the rainy street, her mind was taken back to the night she had lost both her parents and her grandmother.

“The French call it the danse macabre,” said Harvath, figuring she was staring at the disturbing mural under the eaves of the building across the street. “It means—”

“Dance of death,” she replied as Harvath stepped out of the shadows of the alcove to join her for a moment.

“Do you know it?” he asked.

“Of course. It’s probably one of the single most popular allegorical art themes in the paleopathology field. People in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries believed that skeletons rose from their graves to seduce the living to join them in a mysterious dance that ended in death. From the pope on down, no one was immune. The murals served as a memento mori.”

“What’s a memento mori?”

“Simply put, it’s a reminder that no matter what we do in life, we’re all going to die. It supposedly comes from Imperial Rome when victorious generals had their triumphal processions. A slave was said to have accompanied each general as he passed through the streets repeating the chant, ‘Remember thou art mortal.’ Kind of a reality check, I guess.”

“Interesting. Do you know where the first mural was painted?”

Jillian looked at him and said, “Germany. They refer to it as the Totentanz. It depicted a festival of the living and the dead.”

“Actually,” replied Harvath, “the first depiction of the danse macabre was painted three blocks from here in 1424, in the Church of the Holy Innocents.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been to Paris a couple of times. I like to learn about the history of the places I visit.”

“You’re sure that the first danse macabre was painted here?”

“I double-checked it this afternoon,” replied Harvath, a flash of lightning illuminating his face.

Jillian counted the seconds in her head until the thunder. “I suppose then that it must have something to do with what we’re doing here?”

“In a way.”

“How so?”

The ground beneath them began to rumble with the sound of an approaching Métro. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” replied Harvath as he removed the sledgehammer from beneath his jacket. “Right now, we’ve got a train to catch.”