Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 21

“We have to tell Mr. Howard,” Craig said when they were back in the car.

Nora nodded, but she was thinking of something else as she buckled her seatbelt. “Where are we going?”

“North.” He pulled out of the parking space, and after several intricate turns, they were crossing the Seine. “We have to get back into England, and I’d say public transportation is out, wouldn’t you? I need to make some calls-Mr. Howard, then a contact in Boulogne. But let’s get out of Paris first. See if you can get any news on the radio.”

Nora fiddled with the controls on the dashboard. Snippets of various kinds of music and talk radio programs came and went while she searched.

“Whose car is this?” she asked.

“Ours,” he said. “It isn’t trackable, and it sure as hell isn’t bugged if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. What about your phone?”

“Nope,” he said. “Prepaid disposables, always.”

She glanced down at the car phone between the seats.

“Inactive,” he told her.

A deep male voice came from the speakers, and Nora tried to keep up with his rapid French. It was the top of the hour, two o’clock, and the headlines were just coming on. The lead story was about a government scandal of some kind, graft and kickbacks among politicians, five arrested. Then a homicide in Brittany. A hiking accident in the Dordogne, three injured. The Estivade festival in Dijon was officially open for business. By the time he started on a charity ball attended by Marion Cotillard and Ludivine Sagnier, Nora was beginning to wonder.

“What happened to Pinède?” she said. “It was all over the news this morning-”

Craig gave a low whistle. “Cor, that was fast!”

Nora turned to look at him. “What was fast?”

“The intervention,” he said. “The word must have been spread to the media by certain, um, agencies. Total news blackout.”

Nora switched off the radio. “Does this mean they’re not looking for me anymore?”

“No, it just means they’re not announcing it. They’re probably looking even harder now.”

There was nothing to say to that, so Nora said nothing. She knew that her photo could still be online; even a deliberate blackout couldn’t get rid of all the images everywhere. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were passing through Montmartre on their way to the northern autoroute. She studied her companion as he drove. He handled the car with skill, and he kept his eyes on the road, with brief glances in the rearview mirror. She remembered Jacques doing the same thing yesterday, scanning the terrain to be sure they were not followed. After a while, curiosity got the better of her.

“Who are you?” she said. “And don’t give me that jazz about being a student in Dublin. You’ve never been to Dublin in your life, and you’re not a student. Where are you from, really? And how did you get into this-this line of work?”

At first, she didn’t think he was going to answer. He continued to drive in his silent, efficient way; he might not have even heard her. Then she realized that he was thinking, forming a reply. As the northern reaches of the city melted away into suburbs and small towns and the long road ahead he began to talk.

He was originally from Ireland, as he’d claimed, but not Dublin. He was born in Belfast. His father, Craig Elder the elder, owned a thriving auto business. This was in the seventies, the days of the rallies and the skirmishes and Bernadette Devlin. By the time Craig the younger was born, his father had had enough of IRA bombings and threats. He reluctantly sold the business for much less than it was worth and moved the family to London. A relative there helped him open a new auto shop, but it was never as successful as the one back home. For the first time in generations, the family was poor.

Craig grew up on a council estate, with a rough group of kids for neighbors, many of them refugees from the Middle East and South Asia. He saw poverty and crime and drugs and the beginnings of homegrown terrorism all around him, and he hated it. His mother died, and his father married a woman Craig couldn’t stand. When he finished school, he got out of the house by enlisting in the army. A year in Wiltshire, rising from private to lance corporal, then a tour in Afghanistan. Back in England, he reenlisted for want of anything better to do. He nearly married a girl he was dating, but it didn’t work out. She wanted children and stability; he wanted action. Then he met Bill Howard, who was searching the armed forces for recruits to his team.

Mr. Howard gave a speech at the base, making the jobs he proposed sound very thrilling indeed. His group wasn’t like the usual government agencies, he told them. It was smaller, and he was looking for people who wanted work that was hands-on and action-oriented. In other words, military-trained secret agents for queen and country. Craig was the first soldier to volunteer, and Mr. Howard became more of a father figure to him than Elder the elder had been.

“That was five years ago-I’m twenty-eight now-and here I am,” he concluded. “I have a mingy little room in Bayswater, I see me da once a year at Christmas, I have two birds who don’t know about each other, and I’m in debt for betting on football. I’ve got my eye on a condo in Notting Hill and a time-share in Barbados, but for those I’ll need a rise in salary.” He grinned over at Nora before returning his attention to the road.

Nora said nothing, but she was secretly amazed. Excepting the difference in countries, his story was remarkably similar to her husband’s early life. Jeff was from a relatively poor family in Connecticut, and he’d attended the state university on an ROTC scholarship before joining the marines. He’d been in Grenada in 1983, but then he’d gotten stuck in a desk job at the USMC recruiting center in Newport News. When his current employers approached him, he’d jumped at the chance. His reasons had been the same as Craig’s: He’d wanted action, and he’d wanted to make a difference. He also hadn’t had a place to call home. Nora had changed that…

“We’d better get off the motorway for a while,” Craig said, and she snapped to attention. “I have to make those phone calls, and I think we’re being followed.”

Nora didn’t dare turn around, but she looked into the rearview mirror, studying the lanes of traffic behind them. And there it was, a few cars back on their left.

A gray Citroën.