Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

“Any friend of Craig is a friend of mine,” he intoned in heavily accented English. Even his manner was foxlike.

“Thank you, Monsieur Reynard,” she said, smiling her best old-lady smile.

“Louis,” he corrected her, and he made a show of helping her over the transom into the rusty old boat. The stench of fish was powerful, and Nora avoided the big grill in the center of the foredeck, which covered the open hold where the catch was stored. Two scruffy-looking young men in T-shirts and shorts were on the trawler with him, introduced as his nephews, and the family resemblance was clear; they both looked like foxes too. The boys nodded a greeting, but they never spoke, and Nora wondered if they were accustomed to having mysterious strangers aboard. Probably. Uncle Louis was obviously a smooth operator of some sort, and the sidelines that augmented his legitimate fishing trade were unlikely to be legal.

“There’s coffee down in the cabin,” Reynard told them, “and I think you should go there now, while we cast off. Something’s going on.” He nodded toward the docks.

Two gendarmes were making their way slowly along the wharf, checking out the craft and the people with more than a passing interest. Craig gripped her arm, and they hurried below. One of the nephews was there, setting out mugs for them. The engines underneath their feet roared to life as the young man poured coffee. With a nod to them, he went up on deck, leaving them alone in the cramped space.

“Do you suppose those men are looking for me?” Nora asked.

Craig shrugged. “Who knows? But let’s not chance it. Louis runs a smuggling trade out of Boulogne, and he’s all kinds of a villain, so he’s got an instinct for trouble. We should stay here.”

They watched through an open hatchway as the two policemen arrived at the Bardot and hailed Louis Reynard, who replied with a hearty laugh. The cops laughed too, and much rapid-fire French was exchanged, something about a tall, attractive, fortyish woman with light brown hair and a beige trench coat. Non, Louis assured them, he hadn’t seen such a person, but if he did, he’d invite her aboard. If she refused his invitation, he’d be sure to call the police immediately. More laughter.

“Don’t worry, Nora,” Craig told her. “We’ll be across the Channel soon.”

The gendarmes were still laughing as they moved away down the dock. Nora exhaled.

“Not soon enough for me,” she said.

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-”