Flashback

TWENTY-FIVE

It was just after three the next afternoon when Brian and I ascended from the metro under the gaze of St. Michael, his stone feet trampling the writhing form of evil. And the great dragon was thrown down, I thought, conjuring up the passage from Revelation, that ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole earth.

John’s psychedelic vision of the apocalypse had always been one of my favorite parts of the New Testament. I’d liked the utter unambiguousness of it, the way the crazy hermit had seen the end of the world in good and evil, a clear delineation, each of us marked with the sign of the beast or the name of the Father. But as I looked up now at St. Michael, at his upstretched wings splattered with pigeon shit and his feet littered with cigarette butts, I was unconvinced. For wouldn’t evil, when it did appear, know better than to come as the serpent? Wouldn’t it hide itself? In the folds and feathers of an angel’s wings. In the face in the mirror.

As cold as it was, the Place St.-Michel was still jammed with bodies, a Latin Quarter mixture of Parisian students meeting friends and earnest tourists looking to soak up the fifth arrondissement’s exiled-artist mystique.

“This way,” Brian said, pulling me after him as he started down the narrow rue de la Huchette.

We’d be early. A good thing, Brian had said. Time to get the lay of the land. We’d been over our plan a dozen times at the hotel, but as we neared the rue St.-Jacques, Brian put his hand on my arm and pulled me to the side of the street.

“One last time,” he said.

“We split up here,” I told him. “I cross the Petit Pont, then come back through Notre Dame. Before I go into the tearoom, I stop at St.-Julien-le-Pauvre and say a quick prayer, left side of the aisle, second row back.”

“And after?”

“You’ll be watching from the church. When I leave the tearoom, I walk straight back to the St.-Michel metro stop. You’ll meet me on the platform.”

“Good. And if anything goes wrong?”

“We meet back at the hotel. If one of us isn’t there by seven, the other one goes.”

Brian nodded. “Don’t wait for me,” he said. “I won’t wait for you.”

He put his hand on my back, touching the butt of my Beretta through the canvas jacket. “You’re okay,” he said, as if reassuring himself of this fact.

“I’ll see you at the church,” I told him, my eyes steady on his, my hand on the pen drive in my pocket. Then I turned away and started down the rue St.-Jacques toward the Ile de la Cité and Notre Dame.

City of Tourists. That’s what Sister Theresa called Paris, her distaste for the crassness of the visitors apparent. She’d grown up rich here, a daughter of privilege, Heloise had told me one night over a mound of brioche dough, obviously not meaning to flatter. I’d been taken aback by the revelation, surprised by the deep-rooted sense of class in a place I’d naively assumed to be above such distinctions.

Theresa had been the last of the sisters to warm to me. Even after I’d gained her trust, she’d had a particular way of correcting me, of pointing out the flaws in my French, the imperfections in my cooking. You see, she’d say, biting into one of Heloise’s éclairs, this is the real pâte à choux. As if the fate of the republic rested on my inability to make the perfect pastry.

As I made my way toward the imposing spires of Notre Dame, I was reminded of Theresa’s prejudice. The island was clogged with sightseers, many of them obvious Americans, harried families running from one great European monument to another, guidebooks and digital cameras in hand. I could understand the nun’s snobbery. Yes, there was a coarseness to these people, an arrogance borne of unchallenged comfort. What I still couldn’t see was my place among them.

And yet, Theresa had seen it. So had Mohammed, my little friend from the train tracks. American, he’d insisted, when I’d tried to say otherwise. And so I was, though surely in no way these compatriots on the Ile de la Cité would recognize. There was something besides the clothes, the T-shirts and athletic shoes, besides the blank and bewildered faces staring up toward Notre Dame’s exquisite facade. There was something other than loyalty even. The real pâte à choux, I heard Theresa say, her tongue clicking accusatorily. Later, after everyone had gone to bed, I’d sneak down into the kitchen and taste mine against Heloise’s, trying in vain to tell the difference.

I made the loop Brian and I had discussed so many times, crossing the Pont au Double, then walking west along the river before heading down the rue Viviani toward St.-Julien-le-Pauvre. I got my first glimpse of the tearoom, a tiny establishment tucked into the first floor of a medieval town house, before turning through the iron gate into St.-Julien’s churchyard.

The church’s door was closed, but it swung open easily, ancient hinges groaning in protest. I stepped inside and stood for a moment in the warm foyer, letting my eyes adjust to the absence of sunlight, taking in the little stone chapel. Not Catholic, I thought, noticing the ornate icons on the altar. No, whatever its origins, St.-Julien-le-Pauvre now belonged to the Greek Orthodox order.

Unlike its flashy cousin across the river, the unassuming St.-Julien drew few visitors. There were just a handful of us today, a young Italian couple studiously surveying the twelfth-century architecture, a stooped old woman in widow’s black saying her rosary. And in the second row back, on the left side of the aisle, a solitary man with his head bowed in prayer. Brian.

I checked my watch, making sure we were on schedule, then slid into the row in front of him. He leaned forward onto his kneeler and put his hands on the back of my pew.

“It’s hard to tell,” he said, “but I don’t think there’s anyone else waiting for your meeting. It should just be you and your mystery date.”

I looked up at the lurid crucifix, the gilt images of the saints.

“There’s a back way out, but it’s a tight alley, with just one exit. I wouldn’t use it unless I had to.”

Nodding almost imperceptibly, I leaned forward and crossed myself once, fingers moving from head to gut to shoulders as they’d done so many times at the abbey. Then I slipped from the pew and started for the back of the church.

There was something unnervingly quaint about the little low-ceilinged tearoom, something ominous about the white-aproned serving girls, the tiny sandwiches, and the thick slices of gingerbread with delicate dollops of cream. Close as we were to Notre Dame, I’d expected a mob of tourists and the bad food that inevitably accompanied them, but it was obvious at first glance that the establishment catered to locals.

Most of the customers were old Parisian ladies, archaic creatures in hats and smart wool suits, but there were three male patrons as well. The first, a grandfatherly type with salt-and-pepper hair and a neat mustache, sat alone near the back of the room, deeply engrossed in a copy of Le Figaro and a slice of fruit tart. The second, a rumpled bureaucrat in his late fifties, sat closer to the door, an untidily folded copy of Le Monde on the table in front of him, his brown wool overcoat occupying the opposite seat. The third man was even younger, a university student, I figured, sharing a weekly tea with his grandmother. Either that or he was a gigolo, catering to the over-eighty set.

None of the three seemed a likely match for my enigmatic contact. Certainly not one of them had taken even the slightest note of my arrival. I scanned the room one last time, searching for something I might have missed, then took the last free table. It was exactly four o’clock by my watch. One of the waitresses came over, and I ordered a pot of Darjeeling, just as Helen had told me to do.

The tea came, hot and smoky, and I poured myself a cup, dousing it liberally with cream, checking my watch again. It was a quarter after now, and still no sign of whoever it was I was supposed to meet. Of course the message had gone up late, I told myself. I could always try again tomorrow.

Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw the Le Monde reader get up from his chair and shrug into his coat. Reaching into his pocket, he fished out a euro note and some change and laid the money on the table. He was just a few feet from me, and when he moved I thought at first that he was heading for the door, but he stepped toward me instead, his heavy coat brushing clumsily against the narrowly spaced tables.

“Katy?” he asked, stopping just in front of me.

I set my tea down and looked up into his face. “Uncle Bill. You got my message.”

He nodded, his eyes nervously taking me in, his hands gripping the old newspaper.

I motioned to the chair opposite mine. “Sit down.”

He shook his head, then smiled unconvincingly. “We should go,” he said. Fumbling in his pocket with his inky fingers, he pulled out money for my tea.

Something was wrong, I thought, glancing out the tearoom’s front window toward St.-Julien’s gray facade. My gut told me so, and so did the man’s hands, the way they shook when he laid the coins on the table.

“We should go,” he said again.

I nodded and started to get up.

Beyond the man’s elbow I saw the young student rise as well. He reached into his jacket as he came up, his body pivoting toward us, the nickel nose of an automatic sliding out from beneath his coat.

“Get down!” I yelled, diving for the floor, but my voice was drowned out by the crack of the first bullet.

The man in the brown overcoat spun around, his paper dropping to the floor, his head suddenly knocked backward as if by an unseen hand, a dark rose of blood staining the skin behind his ear. He fell sideways, taking one of the tea tables with him, hitting the floor in front of me in a hail of bullets and broken china.

The granny was up, too, her prim suit open to reveal a shoulder holster and, beneath her shirt, two firm young breasts that put her age closer to twenty than eighty.

I crawled backward, reaching for my Beretta as I went, taking advantage of the few seconds of chaos that followed the opening round of fire to find shelter beneath one of the tables. The rest of the patrons were on the floor, too, a jumbled mass of floss-white hair, lavender water, and fear. Toward the back of the room someone was crying, but everyone else was dead silent.

I took a breath and surveyed my options. My back was to the wall, literally. The first shooter, the man, stood directly between me and the front door. My best bet was the alley exit, but it was ten meters at least, across a minefield of upturned tables and huddled figures. I wouldn’t make it without help. I turned and glanced toward the front window again, praying Brian had heard the shots, hoping my choice to trust him this time hadn’t been a fatal one.

The fake granny took a step forward, her pumps crushing broken glass. One of the old ladies beneath the table next to mine lifted her head and blinked up at me. There was a smear of blood on her powdered cheek, a piece of clear glass, part of a bud vase, lodged in her skin. She put her index finger to her eye, then motioned to something behind me.

I followed her direction, my eyes moving once more to the front window. A shadow ducked beneath the frame, a head slipping from view. Brian, I thought, though I couldn’t be sure. When I looked back, the old woman nodded at me, and I nodded back. Yes, I’d seen it too. I smiled reassuringly, then mouthed the word Down in French. The woman lowered her head, laying her uninjured cheek against the floor.

Moving carefully, I dodged out from my cover, sighting for the woman with the gun, squeezing two rounds off. The first bullet went wide, but the second found her left shoulder. She flinched and spun sideways, her gun hand flying to her wound. Her partner fired in my direction, his rounds splintering the flimsy tabletop. Then both he and the woman hit the ground.

Someone else was firing now. I looked over to see the front window shatter and Brian’s face appear above the frame.

“Go!” he shouted, clearing what was left of the tattered pane with the barrel of his Browning.

I moved in a tight crouch, navigating my way from table to table, heading toward the back of the establishment while Brian occupied the two shooters in the front.

I wouldn’t use it unless I had to, I heard Brian say as I neared the alley door. Suddenly, had to had become an unfortunate reality. I glanced back one last time, and Brian waved me on with his gun. “Now!” he yelled, firing once more, then slipping from my view.

I rose up and hit the door with my shoulder, stumbling blindly out into the alley, slamming into the stone wall of the opposite building. The little passageway was barely the width of a footpath, not even a meter across, too narrow for me to outstretch my arms. It smelled of centuries of waste, both human and animal, and a perpetual lack of daylight. White scum streaked the walls.

Keeping a tight grip on the Beretta, I edged forward. Out the alley’s mouth I could see one of the quarter’s cramped side streets and a steady stream of foot traffic passing by. Somewhere in the distance a police siren let out its frantic wail, the noise growing louder and closer with each passing second.

I reached the street and slid the gun back into my jeans, hesitating a moment to get my bearings. There was no going back for Brian. He wouldn’t have done it for me, I told myself, merging into the crowd, heading west toward the Place St.-Michel. Besides, if anyone could take care of himself, Brian could. He’d be waiting for me in the metro. If not there, then back at the Hotel de l’Espérance. He’d be fine.

There was no sign of Brian on the crowded platform at the St.-Michel metro stop. I took the Porte d’Orléans line south to Montparnasse, then walked the rest of the way to the hotel. It was five-thirty when I got back to our room, and still Brian was nowhere to be found. We’d asked the maid not to come in, and it looked as if she’d heeded our request. The bed was unmade, the dirt streaks from her last visit untouched. Still, I made a quick check of my leather bag, reassuring myself the passports were still there. Satisfied, I sat down by the window to watch the street below.

The half dozen sex shops on the rue de la Gaîté did a booming afternoon business. The clientele was mostly male, white-collar commuters and manual laborers making a quick post-work stop, but there was the occasional single woman as well, the ubiquitous gaunt-faced urbanite in torturously high heels and a grim gray suit. The shop directly across from the hotel, a tiny storefront through whose open door blared the disco whine of Rai music, seemed the most popular of the establishments. A steady stream of customers filtered in and out, no doubt lured by the neat row of leather restraints that hung in the front window, the flaccid forms like roasted ducks in a Chinese butcher shop.

I watched the parade of neon-lit faces for a good hour. By six-thirty I was starting to worry. If one of us isn’t there by seven, the other one goes. We’d agreed to it a dozen times, and yet it hadn’t occurred to me that it might happen. I glanced at the SEAT keys on the bedside table, our meager possessions, my bag and Brian’s pack. I won’t wait for you, Brian had told me, and yet, if I left now, there was nowhere for me to go.

I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, then lay down on the bed’s dusty coverlet, tracing the cracks in the plaster ceiling. My watch clicked past six-forty-five, then six-fifty. I should get ready, I told myself, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Six-fifty-five, and like a miracle, a key rattled in the lock.