Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

In the last three years, it had mostly been London. No specifics, of course, but she knew his group was working with Bill Howard’s group and their equivalents in France, and once she’d overheard a phone conversation in which he’d mentioned Interpol and Europol. She wasn’t sure of the difference between those two entities, and she wouldn’t dream of asking Jeff. She raised their beautiful daughter, taught acting classes, and stayed out of his way.

Until now.

It should have been so simple. A quick in-and-out, as Jeff had described it. She would get a phone call, probably in late June or early July, from someone, probably Bill Howard, telling her that Jeff was dead. She was to go into grieving-widow mode on the live phone. That was Jeff’s phrase for it, meaning tapped . Then she would fly to London, claim the body at the morgue, have it cremated, and take it back to New York. A matter of two days, three at the most.

She and Bill had played their parts, but the plan had apparently been altered, and now she was proceeding without a script. The ultimate actor’s nightmare: She didn’t know her lines or even what play she was in. There was no way to ask anyone either; she didn’t have their contact information. All she could do now was wait for messages, like the note last night that had brought her here, to France.

She wondered who the man in the morgue was. She’d been told that no one would be harmed in this exercise, so he was probably a random body doing his bit for truth, justice, and the American/British/French way. A homeless man? Perhaps he’d volunteered for the job, when his heart and liver problems had brought on a death sentence. No, she wouldn’t think about him now. Later…

She wondered who the purse snatcher was. Young, dark, possibly South Asian. Paki wanker . Many refugees in England were Pakistani, so that boy’s rude epithet in the park was not unusual. But the man could just as easily have been Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan. Taliban? Hezbollah? Al Qaeda…

She had a vivid memory of where she’d been that Tuesday morning in September 2001. She’d just dropped little Dana off at preschool, kissed her forehead and ruffled her silken hair, and she drove into the parking lot at the university, all prepared for the early Theater Arts department faculty meeting to discuss the coming semester. The car radio was tuned to some AM station that played golden oldies between news reports. She pulled into her space, and she was reaching to turn off the engine when ABBA suddenly stopped singing “Chiquitita” mid note and a shocked male voice came on. She didn’t even get out of the car. When she could move, she drove back to the preschool, collected her daughter, and went home.

The rest of that day was spent in the study-Dana upstairs and safely away from it-watching the awful TV images and frantically trying to reach her husband, who was in Washington at the time. When she saw the footage of the Pentagon, she began to pray. Jeff finally called at four that afternoon, and she nearly fainted with relief, but he couldn’t talk for long. He was at a military airfield, on his way somewhere. He called her again that night, but he wouldn’t say where he was. He’d come home three months later, just in time for Christmas, and she’d never learned what he’d been doing all that time.

He’d disappeared again after Madrid, then after the London bombings, and she hadn’t asked questions. She’d never met any of his American colleagues, so she didn’t have a network of spouses to fall back on. She only knew Vivian Howard in London, but Viv was even more clueless than Nora. She wondered how all the other wives-and husbands-coped. Just as she did, probably: getting on with things and waiting by the phone a lot. What else could anyone do? She’d never gotten used to it, but she’d never told Jeff that. Even so, he knew.

She wondered if the purse snatcher was one of them .

She wondered why the plan had changed.

Most of all, more than anything else, she wondered about Jeff. She hadn’t seen him in nearly three months. He’d left home for London in early April, and he’d called several times, always postponing his return to America and apologizing for the delays, but he hadn’t explained. Then, in June, an old-fashioned handwritten letter had arrived in the mail, explaining the plan and her part in it. A quick in-and-out . She knew he was doing something important, but she had no idea what it was. Where was he now? Was he safe? She had to know, even if it meant breaking the precious rules of his employers. So, here she was.

Lille had come and gone, and now the announcements were being made for their arrival in Paris, first in French and then in English. She listened to the foreign language, translating it, remembering Sister Boniface (“Bony Face”) in high school. Two years of French, and the actress in her had picked up the words and the accent fairly well-not exactly fluent but not bad either. She could get by here as long as everyone spoke lentement . She had the charge card in her other name and plenty of euros, nearly a thousand dollars’ worth. And she had the manila envelope. She was as ready as she’d ever be.

The window went dark; they were in the station. She shut her eyes and relaxed back in the big seat, breathing deeply. She was hungry, and she was tired. Today was her third day in a row without sufficient rest. When this was over, she’d sleep for a long time.

But now she would be vigilant. She’d study the faces of every passenger getting off the train with her, and she’d scan the crowds in the busy station. She’d be on the lookout for a young, dark-haired, dark-skinned man in a dark suit, or anyone else who might be showing an interest in her. She was no longer Mrs. Nora Baron, the grieving widow, but Ms. Noreen Hughes, an unmarried, middle-aged actress on a lark in Paris. A day’s shopping, with a carefree side trip to a museum dedicated to her favorite artist. Nothing more.

It was now 10:47. She hoped the hired car would be waiting when she arrived. She had a little over one hour to get to the next stage, to make her next entrance.

The old man in the terminal of Gare du Nord was holding up a sign that read HUGS. Nora passed by him twice before she realized that he was probably there for her. She stopped in front of him, pointed to herself, and said, “Hughes.” He grinned and nodded vigorously.

Now that she saw him up close, he wasn’t that old, probably in his mid-sixties. He was small and slight, his shaggy thatch of hair was a deep steel-gray color, and he had the weathered, lined face of a sailor or a farmer. His chauffeur’s uniform had definitely seen better days, and it had clearly been issued when he’d weighed thirty pounds more than he did now. His cap was in the hand that wasn’t holding the handwritten sign, and now he quickly slipped it on his head and bobbed a sketchy bow.

“ Bonjour, Mademoiselle Hugs,” he said in a raspy voice. Two packs a day at least, Nora thought. “ Je m’appelle Jacques Lanier. I talk good the English, so I do that now, yes? Welcome to Paris!”

“Thank you, Monsieur Lanier,” she said.

“Oh no, mademoiselle, you are to call me Jacques, oui ? Oui ! Forgive my old uniform, please; the new one is in the shop for the cleaning. Your reserving was very late last night, and I was not expecting to work today. But I am delighted to serve you. Do you have any of the luckages?”

“Um, no, no luggage,” she said. “I’m only here for the day. I must be at Musée National Auguste Rodin at noon. À midi. Comprenez-vous? ”

“Yes, I understand. Noon. Come, we go.” With another huge grin and a twinkle of his deep brown eyes, the little man turned and forged through the crowded main concourse of the station, toward the exit. Nora clamped her arm firmly over her shoulder bag and followed close behind him.