Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 23

Louis Reynard lived up to his name: There was something distinctly vulpine about him. He was about Craig’s age, as nearly as she could guess, and he also had brown hair, but there the similarity ended. He was short and slight, with the deep mahogany tan and sinewy muscularity of a sailor, and his long face, shaggy mane, pointy beard, and crafty brown eyes made his name perfect for him. The constant little smile on the thin lips beneath his mustache only added to the fox effect. The moment she met him on the dock in Calais, Nora instinctively disliked him, but she smiled as his long, thin fingers reached out to shake her hand. He was clearly being polite to the old lady, for that was what she now was.

Her original thought had been to dye her hair, but that had seemed somehow inadequate, considering the people who were looking for her. When she’d remembered the young woman in the service station restroom yesterday, the complete transformation from an ordinary girl to someone else entirely, Nora had decided that a more extreme plan was in order.

They’d pulled into a shopping mall just before they reached Calais, and she’d left Craig at the car while she went to find the items she needed, putting on the scarf and sunglasses and keeping her head down in the crowded building. She bought a shapeless gray cloth coat, a gray woolen shawl, gray gloves, pale lipstick, a brown pencil to emphasize the lines on her face, the palest face powder she could find, a brown wig, and a can of something the salesgirl assured her was the French equivalent of Streaks ’N Tips, a spray-on hair color popular with actors. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses with clear lenses completed the illusion.

In the mall’s empty ladies’ room, she applied the makeup and doused the wig with gray, remembering how many times she’d done this in dressing rooms all over America. This she could do; this she understood. She knew very little about spying and international intrigue, but she could become another person in a matter of minutes. Coat, shawl, gloves, and glasses followed, and she automatically developed a slight stoop and shuffle. The woman who tottered out of the restroom was twenty-five years older than the woman who’d entered it. A girl coming in as she was going out actually held the door for her and smiled in that way young people smile at their grandmothers. Nora thanked her and made her stately way back to the car. A tall man was standing there, leaning against the hood, and it took her a moment to realize that it was Craig.

“Wow!” they said in unison, staring at each other.

His buzz cut was gone: He now had longish brown hair and a mustache, sunglasses, an olive drab fatigue jacket, and a baseball cap. Nora eyed his wig and facial hair critically, admiring the effectiveness of his disguise. She wondered what else he carried in the backpack.

“Excellent,” she said. “So, what do we do now?”

“We wait.” He was studying the busy parking lot, looking for something. There was a franchise near the entrance to the lot, a fast food stand with a tall sign in the shape of a coffee cup, and Craig’s attention was soon drawn to it. Trucks and big rigs were constantly stopping there, and the drivers ran inside and emerged with oversize cardboard cups, got back into their vehicles, and headed for the port city.

Craig stuffed Nora’s trench coat and the revolver from the glove box into his backpack, slung it over his shoulders, and locked the Volvo. Then they walked over to the coffee place.

“Wait here,” he said, and he went inside. Nora watched through the glass wall as he approached a couple of burly men waiting for their orders at the counter. He spoke to them, pointing to her. One of the men shook his head and jerked a thumb toward Paris, but the other one nodded. Craig paid for that man’s coffee, and they came outside together.

“This is Gaston,” Craig told her. He turned to the big, bearded truck driver. “Ma mère.”

Gaston nodded and led them over to his eighteen-wheeler. Nora paused, staring at the massive truck, but Craig scooped her up and lifted her into the cab before she could protest. She sat between the two men for the twenty-minute ride, terrified by the high perspective of the road and the sheer size and noise of this strange mode of transportation. Gaston drove them all the way into town, and he refused the money Craig offered him. With a friendly wave, he turned around and backtracked down the autoroute toward the toll plaza for the Dover ferry.

Calais was as dismal a port city as Nora had ever seen, all dull gray buildings and dour-looking locals. She knew that most of the city had been destroyed in World War II, and it had never fully recovered from the damage. She stopped to admire the still-intact, ornate city hall and the famous sculpture by her favorite artist in front of it. Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais had withstood two world wars in this plaza, and it was gorgeous, much more impressive than the other version at the museum in Paris, but it was the city’s only highlight, as far as she could tell. Craig tore her away from the monument, and they walked some more.

The waterfront was every bit as sinister as the rest of the landscape around here: shadowy warehouses and hangars, rusting ferries and tankers. The docks for smaller craft were removed from the commercial section, along a crumbling esplanade past more warehouses and ugly convention hotels. By the time they had reached the marina, it had been nearly dusk. But here they were at last, and here was Louis Reynard. He stood, shaking her hand, in front of the berth where his ramshackle fishing trawler, the Bardot, had just arrived from Boulogne.

“Any friend of Craig is a friend of mine,” he intoned in heavily accented English. Even his manner was foxlike.

“Thank you, Monsieur Reynard,” she said, smiling her best old-lady smile.

“Louis,” he corrected her, and he made a show of helping her over the transom into the rusty old boat. The stench of fish was powerful, and Nora avoided the big grill in the center of the foredeck, which covered the open hold where the catch was stored. Two scruffy-looking young men in T-shirts and shorts were on the trawler with him, introduced as his nephews, and the family resemblance was clear; they both looked like foxes too. The boys nodded a greeting, but they never spoke, and Nora wondered if they were accustomed to having mysterious strangers aboard. Probably. Uncle Louis was obviously a smooth operator of some sort, and the sidelines that augmented his legitimate fishing trade were unlikely to be legal.

“There’s coffee down in the cabin,” Reynard told them, “and I think you should go there now, while we cast off. Something’s going on.” He nodded toward the docks.

Two gendarmes were making their way slowly along the wharf, checking out the craft and the people with more than a passing interest. Craig gripped her arm, and they hurried below. One of the nephews was there, setting out mugs for them. The engines underneath their feet roared to life as the young man poured coffee. With a nod to them, he went up on deck, leaving them alone in the cramped space.

“Do you suppose those men are looking for me?” Nora asked.

Craig shrugged. “Who knows? But let’s not chance it. Louis runs a smuggling trade out of Boulogne, and he’s all kinds of a villain, so he’s got an instinct for trouble. We should stay here.”

They watched through an open hatchway as the two policemen arrived at the Bardot and hailed Louis Reynard, who replied with a hearty laugh. The cops laughed too, and much rapid-fire French was exchanged, something about a tall, attractive, fortyish woman with light brown hair and a beige trench coat. Non, Louis assured them, he hadn’t seen such a person, but if he did, he’d invite her aboard. If she refused his invitation, he’d be sure to call the police immediately. More laughter.

“Don’t worry, Nora,” Craig told her. “We’ll be across the Channel soon.”

The gendarmes were still laughing as they moved away down the dock. Nora exhaled.

“Not soon enough for me,” she said.