Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 17

Nora sat up with a start. She was in a strange bed in a strange room, and for one wrenching moment she had no idea where she was. Then she remembered, and she fell back against the pillow, relieved.

Chez Martine. She’d arrived at midnight, carefully parking the car out of sight from the road, and the sleepy proprietress had signed her in and led her upstairs, apparently not noticing the smear of blood on the collar of Nora’s raincoat. Nora was the only guest, which didn’t surprise her. This stretch of the autoroute was between major towns, and most people probably kept going until they arrived in one. Martine was delighted to have the business, and very proud of her son-in-law at the gas station, who sent occasional weary travelers her way.

Nora had thrown off her clothes and fallen into bed, but not before washing the bloodstain out of her coat as best she could, putting a Band-Aid on her neck, and taking the gun from her bag to study it. The name, SIG Sauer, was on it, and the barrel was augmented with the fat, twist-on cylinder she knew was called a suppressor. Not a silencer-that was an invention of Hollywood and crime novels; it didn’t really exist. A suppressor was the best you could do for sound control on firearms, and it made that loud hissing noise. Pfft, pfft. She remembered the graveyard with a shudder.

She’d only handled one gun in her life, a semiautomatic, when she’d played a bank robber in an episode of a short-lived TV cop series long ago. The prop crew had explained everything to her, where the safety was and how to insert and remove the clip, which she’d had to do on camera. That gun had been a dummy, not particularly heavy.

This very real gun was bigger and heftier, but the safety and clip were in the same places, and she could see that the clip was nearly full, which made sense; Jacques had only fired two shots. Rounds-they were called rounds. She reinserted the clip and slid the safety catch until she heard the click as it locked. Leaving the suppressor in place, she put the weapon back in her bag. She didn’t think she could fire an actual gun at anyone, but it was reassuring to have it with her.

Now it was morning, nearly eight o’clock by her watch, and the thunderstorm of last night was gone. Bright sunshine beat against the closed lace curtains at the window, and she threw them open to let in the light. The world beyond the inn’s forecourt was going on as usual.

Why was she suddenly thinking of Mike Lasky? Her daughter had been distraught the other day in New York, devastated by her prelaw student boyfriend’s alleged infidelity. Dana was in Great Neck with Aunt Mary, safe for now, but Nora was not at her side, counseling her on the potential drawbacks of romantic relationships. No, Nora was here, four thousand miles away, searching for Dana’s father. Her maternal priorities had shifted, and not in a good way.

A hot shower, her first since London two nights ago, did wonders for her. Her neck stung where the chip from the edge of the mausoleum had pricked her skin, but it was healing; she wouldn’t need the Band-Aid anymore. Clean hair, a toothbrush, fresh makeup-the little daily things she’d always taken for granted brought on a sense of calm. Well, not really, not entirely. She didn’t know where her husband was or what he was doing. She didn’t know if Jacques Lanier was alive or if he’d given his life for her. Sous-Direction Anti-Terroriste: Thinking of that name, what it clearly meant, was sharply unsettling. The beneficial qualities of the shower were already fading.

There was no phone in the room, but they’d have one downstairs. Jeff was off the grid, as Lonny Tindall would undoubtedly say, but she could call Bill Howard. Well, she could call Vivian Howard and ask her how to get in touch with Bill. She didn’t know what agency he worked for. MI5? MI6? Or was it some other group, one of those outfits even the queen and the prime minister didn’t know about, whose name you wouldn’t learn from reading John le Carré or watching James Bond movies?

Langley. Jeff had an assistant there, a polite young man named…something or other. She’d spoken with him a couple of times. Ray? Roy? Roger? No, Jeff wouldn’t want her to call Langley, and Ray/Roy/Roger would need clearance to tell her anything, assuming he knew anything, which he probably didn’t. He was too far down the chain of command.

Clearance, chain of command, off the grid. Dear God, the phrases she was throwing around! It was unreal-no, it was surreal; that was the word. This whole thing was surreal. Coded messages, bodyguards, silenced-no, suppressed-gunshots in midnight graveyards. Washing blood from a raincoat. And a dead body, possibly two. Three, if she counted her “husband” in the London morgue. She had to count him because he mattered. He mattered to someone somewhere, whoever he was.

In that moment, in the clean but otherwise nondescript bedroom in a guesthouse in the French countryside, Nora Baron realized with a shock that she was angry. It wasn’t the emotion she’d expected, but it was probably a good thing. Otherwise, she might have waited there, crouching in a corner until someone came to save her, or to kill her. Her anger got her out of the room and down the stairs to the lobby.

The young woman at the desk looked so much like a younger version of Martine that Nora had no trouble identifying her. This would be her daughter, the wife of the nice young man at the filling station. With a smile, she ushered Nora into the empty dining room beside the lobby, seated her by the picture window looking out on the parking lot and the autoroute access road, and asked if mademoiselle preferred coffee or tea.

Mademoiselle preferred coffee, lots of it, and in minutes she had a pot of it and a basket of fresh bread. The daughter told her an omelet was on the way, and with a flourish of obvious pride, she switched on the big brand-new flat-screen television mounted on one wall before going back to the lobby. Nora gazed out the window at the parking lot, drying from last night’s torrent, and listened to the droning voice of a news reporter and the distant noises from the kitchen.

She had to make a plan. Paris. Get to Paris, leave the Renault in that alley next to Felicia’s restaurant, leave the gun in the glove compartment, give the keys to Felicia, and proceed to Gare du Nord. London: the Byron for her things, the hospital for her “husband’s” ashes, Heathrow. She could be home by midnight. Forget about the SDAT: Whatever her actual husband was doing, she was clearly more a liability than an asset as long as she remained in Europe-

“…une fusillade dans le cimetière de l’église Notre Dame des Montaignes…Pinède, un village en Jura de la Franche-Comté…deux hommes non identifiés, un mort et un blessé grave…”

A shootout in a cemetery. Two unidentified men, one dead and one seriously wounded. The words invaded her thoughts, and she looked over at the TV screen. The churchyard where she’d been last night was swarming with people: police, paramedics, and what looked to be half the population of Pinède. There was a shot of a covered stretcher being placed in an ambulance, followed by footage of Jacques Lanier, strapped to a stretcher carried by two men, awake and aware, blinking around at the crowd.

Jacques was alive! She felt a surge of relief, followed immediately by alarm. The live images switched to an artist’s sketch of the face of a young white man she’d never seen before: the dead assassin. This was followed by a grainy but distinct photo of a wild-eyed woman in a beige London Fog trench coat caught in the glare of floodlights, clutching a silver SIG Sauer in her hand. She was looking directly up at the camera, which was obviously a CCTV mounted on the corner of the church beside the emergency lights.

Nora had done a lot of television work and played small parts in several major films, so she was used to looking at herself on a screen, but nothing had prepared her for this. A still photo, taken from security camera footage, of her, Nora Baron, brandishing a gun. Brandishing-that was the only word to describe the image, and the expression on her face could only be called a snarl. She’d been dazzled by the sudden light in the cemetery, and she’d squinted directly up into the camera, raising her hand with the gun…

The newscaster, a pleasant-looking man, went on to report that the unidentified woman-Caucasian, fortyish, tall, slender, light brown hair-was wanted by the Gendarmerie Départementale. In the cemetery, a heavyset, balding older man with a walrus mustache and horn-rimmed glasses, identified as Maurice Dolin, directeur, SDAT, made an appeal for all citizens to be on the lookout for her. “Armée et dangereuse, approche avec prudence.” The still photo was shown again, and it was held on screen for a very long time, or so it seemed to its subject. Nora stared at the image of the desperate criminal, realizing that this unflattering picture was being broadcast from every network, on every television, computer, and electronic device in France.

She was on her feet, reaching for the now-famous raincoat, when Martine’s daughter bustled back into the room, ushering in a tall young man in jeans and a denim jacket, bearing a backpack. A hiker, no doubt, stopping for breakfast before hitting the trails. The hostess showed him to a table on the other side of the room. He dropped the heavy backpack on a chair and turned around.

Nora stared at him, sinking slowly back into her seat. The daughter was going through her litany of breakfast choices for the new arrival, but he interrupted her speech by coming directly over to Nora’s table.

“Pardonnez-moi, madame,” he said to Nora. “Anglaise?”

“American,” Nora replied.

“Great!” the young man said in booming, perfect English, and he grinned. “My rental car broke down a mile back, they can’t get me a replacement for hours, and I really have to be in Paris today. Are you driving that way, by any chance?”

The hostess arrived at the table now, frowning at the young man; she clearly had rules about one guest intruding on the privacy of another. Nora nipped the woman’s angry speech in the bud by smiling and waving to the empty chair across from her.

“Yes, I can take you to Paris,” she said, transforming herself into a friendly fellow traveler. “Won’t you join me?”

“Great!” he boomed again. “Thanks so much!” He turned his beautiful grin on the hostess. “Café, fruit, omelette, et-um, have you any corn flakes?”

Martine’s daughter blinked. “Corn…flakes? Oh, les Kellogg’s! Oui, nous avons les Kellogg’s!” She turned an inquiring look to Nora, who smiled and nodded. Translation: Yes, it’s okay for him to sit here.

The big screen across the room was now filled with the image of a lovely young woman in an evening gown, extolling the delights of her silky, manageable cheveux. Nora asked if la tay-vay could perhaps be turned off?

The daughter complied immediately. Then she produced a very French smile, winked at Nora, and hurried off to the kitchen. The young man went over to retrieve his backpack from the other table, threw his large, lanky frame down into the chair across from her, and grinned some more.

Nora glanced over at the door to the kitchen, then back at her new companion, instantly dropping her pretence.

“What on earth are you doing here?” she said.

Now, at last, the disarming grin vanished, and Craig Elder the younger leaned forward to whisper.

“I’m here to get you out of here.”