Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

A few moments later, after he had backtracked and found the right way onto the N5, a gap in the retaining wall finally yielded a view of a tight grid of well-lit, three- and four-story Belle Epoque buildings. It was so stunning, Charlie nearly missed the exit.

Descending the ramp, he spotted a road sign for Pointe Simon, the area to which Drummond had instructed him to go when they were still in Switzerland. During a series of left turns to check for surveillance, Charlie noted the street signs mounted on the walls of corner buildings. Dark blue plaques with white letters, exactly as in Paris. The streets themselves were packed with bustling boutiques, cafes, and bars. He cracked a window. The balmy air, wonderfully redolent of fresh pineapple, resonated with French banter and jazz.

More wonderful, no one was following them. At least not by car.

At rue Joseph Compere, the supposed location of the Laundromat, the city grew darker and quieter, the chic boutiques yielding to simple fish stores and produce markets with hand-painted signs. The urban thrum dwindled to a lone sax playing the blues, with traffic declining to one or two cars per block. Pedestrians included a handful of adventurous tourists and, mostly, locals returning home.

The odd television screen shimmered through lace curtains as well as holes in regular curtains. The dwellings themselves, almost all three-story apartment buildings, were either old and dilapidated or new constructions done on the cheap, with views not of the sparkling Baie des Flamands, a block away, but of a four-story, graffiti-covered municipal parking garage. In short, they were apartments where residents would depend on a self-serve Laundromat. The closest thing to a Laundromat Charlie saw, however, was a hairdresser.

He reached down and nudged his father awake. “Sorry, I need you to take a look.”

Drummond tried to shake away his sleepiness.

“Does this look familiar?” Charlie asked.

Drummond rose the fraction of an inch necessary to peer out his window. He smiled, as if in reminiscence.

“Familiar?” Charlie asked, meaning the question to be rhetorical.

“No. Should it be?”

“If for no other reason than we flew four thousand miles to go to a Laundromat here.”

“What Laundromat?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Thank you.”

“How about this, Dad? What if you were, say, a CIA operations officer working under nonofficial cover and you had a fake ten-kiloton atomic demolition munition concealed within a washing machine and you needed to hide it in an urban residential area. Where would you put it?”

“Plain sight.” Drummond’s mouth tightened, as if he were annoyed that Charlie would ask such a stupid question.

“Like where?”

“Is that why you were asking about a Laundromat?”

“Right.”

“For an operation of that magnitude, I might buy an existing Laundromat to use as a front, or open my own.”

“Where, ideally, would you locate it?”

“Easy. A place with access for a delivery truck.”

“Close to a parking garage?”

“Exactly.”

Charlie sped to the end of the one-way street, turned left on Boulevard Alfassa, took another left onto rue Francois Arago, then doubled back to the top of rue Joseph Compere, bringing the car to a stop at the municipal garage he’d noticed earlier.

Still no Laundromats in sight. Just a quartet of three-story apartment buildings painted in repeating pastel squares and adorned with enough architectural flourishes to prevent the residents from realizing that they lived in concrete boxes. The buildings were new, evidenced by the freshness of the paint and the clean stretch of cement fronting them-without any of the stains or ruts on the sidewalks that were everywhere else on rue Joseph Compere.

Charlie indicated the apartments with a sweeping gesture. “How much do you want to bet that the Laundromat used to be there?”

Drummond reacted as if he’d just swallowed vinegar.

Charlie spun in his seat. “What’s wrong?”

“Always with the betting,” Drummond grumbled, taking Charlie back to the years when the two of them still got together on major holidays, always at restaurants where they could eat in less than an hour, ideally with televised bowl games to minimize the time Drummond lectured on squandering one’s life on the horses.

A truck shaped like a baby’s shoe-and not much larger-whizzed past, snapping Charlie back to rue Joseph Compere.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that I now wish I’d become an engineer at the Skunk Works,” he told Drummond. “If only because I’d be in Palmdale, California, instead of on this wild Laundromat chase, unsure if I’m going to live through the night.”

Drummond regarded him as if through a fog.

The bluesy saxophone drifting down the block offered a fitting sound track. The music emanated from a slender two-story hole-in-the-wall. Hand-painted on one of the smoky windows, in a feathery silver cursive, was “Chez Odelette.”

The hair rose on the back of Charlie’s neck. “Your cutout, wasn’t she named Odelette?”

“Nice girl,” Drummond said.

Charlie drove the Peugeot into the parking garage, where the vehicle was less likely to be spotted than at the curb outside Chez Odelette’s. He found a space hidden from the street by a delivery van. Keeping himself and Drummond from detection posed a greater challenge.

“We need to blend in with the other tourists around here,” Charlie said, slipping on the fake-tortoiseshell reading glasses he’d taken from the counter at Sandy’s beach supply shack.

Eyeing Charlie’s image in the rearview mirror, Drummond said, “Since when do you wear glasses?”

“Since they make me look less like the guy on the wanted posters.”

Drummond nodded. “Interesting.”

Charlie had learned almost all he knew about impromptu disguise from Drummond. Foremost among the old man’s dictates was that bulky clothing veiled stature. Second was that individuals attempting to avoid notice should wear different styles and colors than when they were last seen. Accordingly, from his new Sandy’s tote bag, Charlie drew two cotton polo shirts, two baggy floral-print board shorts, two pairs of rubber flip-flops, and two baseball caps.

Hats draped faces in shadows and compressed hair, altering the shape of the head, but Drummond avoided them as a rule because they aroused surveillants’ suspicions. In the Caribbean, however, young men wore baseball caps as often as not, and Charlie believed that the old man could pass for a young man. Drummond was in better shape than most men half his age, present company included. Charlie hoped the two of them would appear to the occupants of a passing patrol car as just another couple of young guys in a neighborhood catering to that demographic, as opposed to the young guy/senior citizen duo for whom the authorities had their eyes peeled.

Wandering from the parking lot onto the sidewalk, Drummond indeed appeared much younger. His slight hunch vanished, his shoulders squared, and his chest appeared to inflate. His stride went from sluggish to a strut.

Finding himself standing and marveling, Charlie had to jog to catch up.

Chez Odelette’s front windows afforded a view of the saxophonist, a spindly native with a white beard. He stood on a pillbox platform, spotlit in a sultry blue whose wash illuminated the face of the bartender, a brown-skinned woman of about thirty with attractive, strong features.

“Is that her?” Charlie asked.

“Who?” said Drummond.

“Odelette.”

“How would I know?”

Jesus, Charlie thought. “She’s the only person working there, other than the sax player.”

“Probably it’s her.”