Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

– Coop

“The real second message,” Craig muttered. He rose to his feet. “He was on his way to London to come here, to De Gaulle Airport. Solange was supposed to deliver this note to you at the museum. They took him, and they killed her. And if I ever get my hands on that Paki bastard, there won’t be enough left of him to bury !”

Nora looked down at the girl. “We have to call the police.”

“We can’t,” he said. “We were never here. Besides, they’d arrest us, and it could be days before Mr. Howard straightened it out. And De Gaulle is no good; they’ll be looking for you there. I’m getting you out of France and putting you on the next plane from Heathrow to New York, and then I’m-”

“No,” she said.

He stared at her. “What?”

“No,” she said again. “I’m not going back to New York. Not now, not while Jeff is-wherever he is. Besides, what makes you think I’d be any safer there than I am here? You and I are going back to London, to Bill Howard, and we’re going to find my husband. That’s what’s going to happen now.”

The authority in her voice surprised both of them. More than that, more than her conviction, Nora was surprised by the anger she felt. As in the hotel room this morning, she was furious, and now she gave herself over to it.

“Who are these people, these terrorists?” she cried. “By what right do they invade our lives? And who in their right mind would help them do it? Look at this girl; she’s not much older than my daughter. Jeff is trying to keep the world safe, he’s working to protect everyone, he and Bill Howard. And you, Craig. I’m not going home until we find him!”

They stood in the silent apartment, regarding each other over the body of the pretty young woman. A shaft of brilliant afternoon sunshine slanted in through a gap in the curtains, spotlighting the lifeless form. It was horrible, obscene, yet oddly beautiful, almost as though this were not a real victim but a young actress in a play or film, and some award-winning auteur had carefully positioned her and lit her body for full cinematic effect. This eerily lovely tableau belonged in the work of Spielberg or Hitchcock, not here on this dusty floor.

The hot tears stung Nora’s eyes, but she didn’t even try to wipe them away. She tore her gaze from the sight and watched Craig Elder, waiting for his decision. After a moment, he nodded.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“We have to tell Mr. Howard,” Craig said when they were back in the car.

Nora nodded, but she was thinking of something else as she buckled her seatbelt. “Where are we going?”

“North.” He pulled out of the parking space, and after several intricate turns, they were crossing the Seine. “We have to get back into England, and I’d say public transportation is out, wouldn’t you? I need to make some calls-Mr. Howard, then a contact in Boulogne. But let’s get out of Paris first. See if you can get any news on the radio.”

Nora fiddled with the controls on the dashboard. Snippets of various kinds of music and talk radio programs came and went while she searched.

“Whose car is this?” she asked.

“Ours,” he said. “It isn’t trackable, and it sure as hell isn’t bugged if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. What about your phone?”

“Nope,” he said. “Prepaid disposables, always .”

She glanced down at the car phone between the seats.

“Inactive,” he told her.

A deep male voice came from the speakers, and Nora tried to keep up with his rapid French. It was the top of the hour, two o’clock, and the headlines were just coming on. The lead story was about a government scandal of some kind, graft and kickbacks among politicians, five arrested. Then a homicide in Brittany. A hiking accident in the Dordogne, three injured. The Estivade festival in Dijon was officially open for business. By the time he started on a charity ball attended by Marion Cotillard and Ludivine Sagnier, Nora was beginning to wonder.

“What happened to Pinède?” she said. “It was all over the news this morning-”

Craig gave a low whistle. “Cor, that was fast!”

Nora turned to look at him. “What was fast?”

“The intervention,” he said. “The word must have been spread to the media by certain, um, agencies. Total news blackout.”

Nora switched off the radio. “Does this mean they’re not looking for me anymore?”

“No, it just means they’re not announcing it. They’re probably looking even harder now.”

There was nothing to say to that, so Nora said nothing. She knew that her photo could still be online; even a deliberate blackout couldn’t get rid of all the images everywhere. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were passing through Montmartre on their way to the northern autoroute . She studied her companion as he drove. He handled the car with skill, and he kept his eyes on the road, with brief glances in the rearview mirror. She remembered Jacques doing the same thing yesterday, scanning the terrain to be sure they were not followed. After a while, curiosity got the better of her.

“Who are you?” she said. “And don’t give me that jazz about being a student in Dublin. You’ve never been to Dublin in your life, and you’re not a student. Where are you from, really? And how did you get into this-this line of work?”

At first, she didn’t think he was going to answer. He continued to drive in his silent, efficient way; he might not have even heard her. Then she realized that he was thinking, forming a reply. As the northern reaches of the city melted away into suburbs and small towns and the long road ahead he began to talk.

He was originally from Ireland, as he’d claimed, but not Dublin. He was born in Belfast. His father, Craig Elder the elder, owned a thriving auto business. This was in the seventies, the days of the rallies and the skirmishes and Bernadette Devlin. By the time Craig the younger was born, his father had had enough of IRA bombings and threats. He reluctantly sold the business for much less than it was worth and moved the family to London. A relative there helped him open a new auto shop, but it was never as successful as the one back home. For the first time in generations, the family was poor.

Craig grew up on a council estate, with a rough group of kids for neighbors, many of them refugees from the Middle East and South Asia. He saw poverty and crime and drugs and the beginnings of homegrown terrorism all around him, and he hated it. His mother died, and his father married a woman Craig couldn’t stand. When he finished school, he got out of the house by enlisting in the army. A year in Wiltshire, rising from private to lance corporal, then a tour in Afghanistan. Back in England, he reenlisted for want of anything better to do. He nearly married a girl he was dating, but it didn’t work out. She wanted children and stability; he wanted action. Then he met Bill Howard, who was searching the armed forces for recruits to his team.

Mr. Howard gave a speech at the base, making the jobs he proposed sound very thrilling indeed. His group wasn’t like the usual government agencies, he told them. It was smaller, and he was looking for people who wanted work that was hands-on and action-oriented. In other words, military-trained secret agents for queen and country. Craig was the first soldier to volunteer, and Mr. Howard became more of a father figure to him than Elder the elder had been.

“That was five years ago-I’m twenty-eight now-and here I am,” he concluded. “I have a mingy little room in Bayswater, I see me da once a year at Christmas, I have two birds who don’t know about each other, and I’m in debt for betting on football. I’ve got my eye on a condo in Notting Hill and a time-share in Barbados, but for those I’ll need a rise in salary.” He grinned over at Nora before returning his attention to the road.