Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

The young man in the petrol station was very wet and very polite. As she paid in cash for a full tank and a small bottle of water, Nora tried to calm herself enough to remember some basic French. She was suddenly exhausted. She had to stop for the night; she couldn’t drive any farther now. The storm was getting worse, and shock was setting in. She downed some water and spoke.

“Un motel, um, ici?” was all she could manage, but it was enough. With a grin, he burst into rapid speech, with gestures. She could barely follow him, but she got the gist of it. His mother-in-law-or his wife’s aunt?-ran a lovely chambres d’hôte just down the way, at the next sortie, Chez Martine. Cheap, clean, and she loved les touristes Americains. Salles de bains privée, petit déjeuner inclus dans le prix fixe, et la Wee-Fee pour les portables! Down the ramp, à la gauche, deux îlots, l’édifice jaune à la gauche . He then pulled a cellphone from his pocket and spoke into it. Yes, a room would be ready, and Martine herself would be expecting Mademoiselle Hughes.

Nora smiled and thanked him, glancing at her watch. It was nearly midnight. She’d only been driving for ninety minutes or so, but between the weather and her nerves, not to mention the unfamiliar car with standard transmission, it seemed much longer. Still, her mind was working overtime. Just before the young man ran inside the station, she called him back over. She explained in halting French that she’d met a man today who said he worked for the SDAT. Did he know what that was?

His eyes widened. “Ess-day-ah-tay? Oui, mademoiselle, ils sont les flics! La Police Nationale! Vôtre ami est un homme très, très important! Ess-day-ah-tay, c’est la Sous-Direction Anti-Terroriste!”

Nora sat up with a start. She was in a strange bed in a strange room, and for one wrenching moment she had no idea where she was. Then she remembered, and she fell back against the pillow, relieved.

Chez Martine. She’d arrived at midnight, carefully parking the car out of sight from the road, and the sleepy proprietress had signed her in and led her upstairs, apparently not noticing the smear of blood on the collar of Nora’s raincoat. Nora was the only guest, which didn’t surprise her. This stretch of the autoroute was between major towns, and most people probably kept going until they arrived in one. Martine was delighted to have the business, and very proud of her son-in-law at the gas station, who sent occasional weary travelers her way.

Nora had thrown off her clothes and fallen into bed, but not before washing the bloodstain out of her coat as best she could, putting a Band-Aid on her neck, and taking the gun from her bag to study it. The name, SIG Sauer, was on it, and the barrel was augmented with the fat, twist-on cylinder she knew was called a suppressor. Not a silencer-that was an invention of Hollywood and crime novels; it didn’t really exist. A suppressor was the best you could do for sound control on firearms, and it made that loud hissing noise. Pfft, pfft . She remembered the graveyard with a shudder.

She’d only handled one gun in her life, a semiautomatic, when she’d played a bank robber in an episode of a short-lived TV cop series long ago. The prop crew had explained everything to her, where the safety was and how to insert and remove the clip, which she’d had to do on camera. That gun had been a dummy, not particularly heavy.

This very real gun was bigger and heftier, but the safety and clip were in the same places, and she could see that the clip was nearly full, which made sense; Jacques had only fired two shots. Rounds -they were called rounds. She reinserted the clip and slid the safety catch until she heard the click as it locked. Leaving the suppressor in place, she put the weapon back in her bag. She didn’t think she could fire an actual gun at anyone, but it was reassuring to have it with her.

Now it was morning, nearly eight o’clock by her watch, and the thunderstorm of last night was gone. Bright sunshine beat against the closed lace curtains at the window, and she threw them open to let in the light. The world beyond the inn’s forecourt was going on as usual.

Why was she suddenly thinking of Mike Lasky? Her daughter had been distraught the other day in New York, devastated by her prelaw student boyfriend’s alleged infidelity. Dana was in Great Neck with Aunt Mary, safe for now, but Nora was not at her side, counseling her on the potential drawbacks of romantic relationships. No, Nora was here, four thousand miles away, searching for Dana’s father. Her maternal priorities had shifted, and not in a good way.

A hot shower, her first since London two nights ago, did wonders for her. Her neck stung where the chip from the edge of the mausoleum had pricked her skin, but it was healing; she wouldn’t need the Band-Aid anymore. Clean hair, a toothbrush, fresh makeup-the little daily things she’d always taken for granted brought on a sense of calm. Well, not really, not entirely. She didn’t know where her husband was or what he was doing. She didn’t know if Jacques Lanier was alive or if he’d given his life for her. Sous-Direction Anti-Terroriste: Thinking of that name, what it clearly meant, was sharply unsettling. The beneficial qualities of the shower were already fading.

There was no phone in the room, but they’d have one downstairs. Jeff was off the grid, as Lonny Tindall would undoubtedly say, but she could call Bill Howard. Well, she could call Vivian Howard and ask her how to get in touch with Bill. She didn’t know what agency he worked for. MI5? MI6? Or was it some other group, one of those outfits even the queen and the prime minister didn’t know about, whose name you wouldn’t learn from reading John le Carré or watching James Bond movies?

Langley. Jeff had an assistant there, a polite young man named…something or other. She’d spoken with him a couple of times. Ray? Roy? Roger? No, Jeff wouldn’t want her to call Langley, and Ray/Roy/Roger would need clearance to tell her anything, assuming he knew anything, which he probably didn’t. He was too far down the chain of command.

Clearance, chain of command, off the grid . Dear God, the phrases she was throwing around! It was unreal-no, it was surreal; that was the word. This whole thing was surreal. Coded messages, bodyguards, silenced-no, suppressed -gunshots in midnight graveyards. Washing blood from a raincoat. And a dead body, possibly two. Three, if she counted her “husband” in the London morgue. She had to count him because he mattered. He mattered to someone somewhere, whoever he was.

In that moment, in the clean but otherwise nondescript bedroom in a guesthouse in the French countryside, Nora Baron realized with a shock that she was angry. It wasn’t the emotion she’d expected, but it was probably a good thing. Otherwise, she might have waited there, crouching in a corner until someone came to save her, or to kill her. Her anger got her out of the room and down the stairs to the lobby.

The young woman at the desk looked so much like a younger version of Martine that Nora had no trouble identifying her. This would be her daughter, the wife of the nice young man at the filling station. With a smile, she ushered Nora into the empty dining room beside the lobby, seated her by the picture window looking out on the parking lot and the autoroute access road, and asked if mademoiselle preferred coffee or tea.

Mademoiselle preferred coffee, lots of it, and in minutes she had a pot of it and a basket of fresh bread. The daughter told her an omelet was on the way, and with a flourish of obvious pride, she switched on the big brand-new flat-screen television mounted on one wall before going back to the lobby. Nora gazed out the window at the parking lot, drying from last night’s torrent, and listened to the droning voice of a news reporter and the distant noises from the kitchen.