Mrs. John Doe

Chapter 24

Nora stood at the prow of the Bardot, gazing out at the gray sea, the darkening sky, and the distant lights of England. They’d set off from Calais immediately after the gendarmes had walked away, but only when the trawler was surrounded by open water had her breathing returned to something close to normal. Now the chilly breeze struck her face and played with the silk scarf that covered her gray old-lady hair, but she didn’t mind it. The new coat and her jacket kept out the worst of it, and there was something distinctly soothing about the bracing wind. The cold tingled on her skin, assuring her that she was alive and alert.

She was thinking about all the people she knew. Not many, really. Her husband and daughter were the primary characters in her life, as they should be. She had Aunt Mary in Great Neck, her last living relative. Well, there were some cousins in the Midwest somewhere-Minneapolis?-but she’d only met them a few times over the years, at weddings and funerals. She’d worked with a lot of people back in her theater, film, and TV days, but show business was a nomadic profession, not conducive to long-term relationships. She would do a play or film for a few weeks or months, bonding with a motley assortment of actors and technicians who became her temporary best friends, and then she would move on to the next gig, the next makeshift family. Only a few of these people were still in touch.

The faculty at the university was the only semi-constant group around her these days. The students came and went; four years was the limit for knowing them. She had a couple of pals in the teachers’ lounge, and she’d had several favorite students over the years. When one of her grads appeared on a stage or a TV screen, or in a movie, she was duly informed beforehand and duly effusive afterward. Her former charges now claimed two Tony nominations with one win, one Oscar nomination, one Emmy award, and-at the moment-one Broadway musical, one off-Broadway play, several summer stock companies, and one TV series. An excellent record for one acting teacher, and the award winners always mentioned her in their acceptance speeches. But the kids weren’t close friends, not really-holiday cards and the occasional lunch in town.

She had two close girlfriends, Liz Ryan and Janelle Waller, her best friends since NYU. The three had met in the theater department there and ventured out into the world together, even sharing an apartment briefly. Liz was a fellow Irish descendant, now married with two children and a solid career as a character actress in New York theater and television. Janelle lived out in L.A. with her husband, Behrouz, who was also an actor. The two of them got a steady stream of work in film and television, mainly what Janelle only half jokingly called “the token black BFF and the token Islamic terrorist.” Janelle and Behrouz were the only Muslims Nora knew. She thought of the Pakistani-she didn’t know what else to call him-and wondered what zealous fervor inspired him. She rarely got together with her two friends these days, and then only when husbands and children could spare them all at the same time. Nowadays, it was mostly phone calls and emails.

So, Jeff and Dana. They were her life, her world, and now that world was threatened.

She looked over at the lights of a ship on her left, a barge or ferry moving steadily south toward Calais. Louis Reynard had cleverly-foxily-avoided the main shipping lanes between the two countries; the trawler was well to the east of the heavy traffic. The English Channel was the busiest body of water in the world, according to Craig Elder, with constant movement between England and France, and even more vessels coming down from the North Sea to the Atlantic. Reynard’s plan, Craig told her, was to avoid detection by slipping into a small cove somewhere to the east of Dover, between St. Margaret’s and Deal. Nora didn’t know the coast of England, and she didn’t recognize the names of these places, so she simply left the navigation to the navigators and hoped for the best.

The best. What would that be? She could just make out the forms looming ahead in the last light of day, the famous white cliffs. These vertical barriers seemed to run along most of this stretch of southeast England, with occasional bays and seaside towns nestled at their feet, as it were. She wondered if she and Craig were going to have to do some climbing…

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Nora started at the sudden voice. Craig had arrived at the rail beside her.

“From here, yes,” she said, “but I wouldn’t want to try my hand at scaling those things.”

He laughed. “Afraid you’ll break a fingernail?”

“I’m thinking more of my neck! Please tell me there’s an alternate route.”

Another laugh from Craig. “Don’t worry, Louis has thought of everything. Well, actually, Mr. Howard did, and we’re following his instructions to the letter. He came up with an interesting way to enter England without, um, going through the usual channels, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

“Interesting?” Nora didn’t like the sound of this.

“You’ll see,” he said.

Nora shivered and clutched the collar of her coat.

“Are you cold?”

“No, not really. I’m just worried about-”

She caught her breath as the very thing she was worried about arrived before them, looming up like a specter in the gathering dark. With three sharp blasts of a horn, a British Coastguard cutter crossed their bow, traveling west. The cutter was a safe distance ahead of the Bardot but close enough that Nora could see two uniformed men leaning at the port rail. One of the men doffed his cap and waved it at them, and Craig waved back as Louis Reynard, in the wheelhouse behind them, gave the answering hail. The patrol boat glided by and continued on her way along the coast toward the Atlantic.

“They’re watching the shores,” Nora said. “How on earth does Bill Howard think we’re going to slip past them? Don’t they have, I don’t know, radar and things? We can’t just sail right into England, can we?”

He grinned. “May I draw your attention to the flag?”

Nora turned around and peered up at the rigging above the wheelhouse. There, fluttering in the evening breeze, was a Union Jack.

“Oh, so now the Bardot is a British vessel?” she asked. “How does that work?”

“Louis Reynard is a man for all seasons,” Craig said, laughing. “And all nations. Believe it or not, this trawler is registered in four or five different countries.”

Thinking of the wily little man with the sly smile who even now grinned out at them from his place at the helm, Nora nodded. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. But we have to land somewhere, and won’t there be questions?”

“Not if we play our cards right,” he said.

“How do we do that?”

In answer, Craig pointed toward the coast they were fast approaching. Nora followed his gaze, taking in the sight of a cluster of lights on a beach in an inlet to their right, with a few lit buildings behind them: a seaside village. She could just make out people on the beach, tiny figures moving around a bonfire. A string of lights extended out into the water: a dock, possibly a marina, with several boats moored here and there in the bay. Then she heard faint music from the bonfire crowd, an amateur band of flutes and fiddles playing an old song. It took her a moment to place it: “The White Cliffs of Dover.” Of course.

“What’s going on over there?” she said.

Craig smiled and winked at her. “Put on your dancing shoes, Mother. We’re going to a party!”