Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

The park bench yesterday-Andy Gilbert and Yussuf. The conversation she’d overheard, now that she recalled it, could’ve been interpreted two ways: bad guys conniving to kill her or good guys desperately trying to locate her and protect her. Now she knew the truth. Andy Gilbert had been trying to save her.

Andy Gilbert. Dear God, had that liar Craig at least told her the truth about Andy Gilbert’s injuries? She hoped so. She hoped the man was in a hospital, alive. If she’d killed him, she’d never be able to forgive herself.

Killing Craig Elder, on the other hand, would be easy. Nora had been wondering about her capacity for violence. Well, now she knew. She could shoot him, stab him, set him on fire, and she wouldn’t even blink.

But now the play continued. She was conscious and aware of her surroundings. She wasn’t naked; there wasn’t any spotlight. She was lying on her back on something soft, and there were voices nearby. A horrible, sharp pain was pulsating in the back of her skull. Oh yes-Craig Elder had struck her with the SIG Sauer, smashing it into her cranium. And that laugh, that awful sound in her ears just before it: Craig Elder, her friend, her only ally, had been laughing at her. He’d knocked her out, she’d dreamed the actor’s dream, and now she was awake, lying on a soft surface with a pillow under her aching head.

She regulated her breathing, careful not to make any sound or movement, and she kept her eyes closed. Now she remembered exactly what play she was performing. She was Mrs. John Doe, the worried wife, the reluctant spy, and she was in the lair of her enemies. They were here in the room with her; their low voices emanated from the space just above the…bed? Yes, she was on a bed, probably in an upstairs room of the farmhouse, in her black denim suit and boots, her widow’s weeds. Don’t move, she directed herself; you’re unconscious. Keeping her respiration slow and steady, she listened.

“…took your sweet time,” Bill Howard was saying.

“I had to make it look good; I even asked a local for directions,” Craig Elder replied, his voice light with the humor she’d seen on his face mere seconds before he’d struck her. “That old sot who’s always in the pub, Wycliff, the one with the dog. Then you had to ruin it all! I was about to sneak in here with her, charging in to rescue her husband, and deliver her straight into your arms. But then she saw you in the doorway, and that was the end of that idea. She nearly screamed, and we couldn’t have that, could we? If those fellows outside had seen the ruckus, they’d have known something was amiss, and they’d be out of here, and there’d go all our plans up in smoke. They don’t know about Baron, do they?”

“Of course not!” Bill said. “They think everything’s fine. He’s tucked away in the barn, and he’s not going anywhere.”

“Well, she’s not going anywhere either,” Craig said, and he laughed again. “So, where’s Gamal?”

“On his way-he just called from the road. He’s in the second truck, and those men on the lawn are waiting for him. As soon as he’s here, they’ll load up the two trucks, and-”

“What about the Barons?” Craig asked.

Bill Howard didn’t respond. Now Nora became aware of rustling sounds from elsewhere in the room, farther away from the bed. There was a third person here. Bill suddenly said, “Have you found anything, Mustapha?”

“No,” said a new voice: male, low, guttural, accented. The big man from the doorway? “There’s nothing else here, just the tracer and the gun and a lot of women’s things-”

“Never mind,” Bill said, and she could hear the impatience in his voice. “Leave it. We have the envelope, and we can grill them just as soon as-”

He was cut off by sounds from outside. There was a window on her left, she reasoned. Footsteps went over that way; Bill and Craig were looking out. She heard the distant sound of an engine. The second truck was coming up the drive from the main road. Nassim Gamal had arrived.

A sharp curse from Bill Howard. “Okay, let’s get down there. They’ll load up and leave for the airfield, and then we can see to our guests. I don’t know what he has on me, I don’t know what he gave her, but I’m going to find out before we leave here today.”

“And how are we leaving?” Craig asked.

“Same way as they are,” Bill said. “Their plane is at three, ours is at five. By eight tonight, we’ll be in Geneva.”

“I wasn’t planning on-”

“I know, I know,” Bill said, cutting off the complaint. “You were going to stay here, the innocent bystander, and be as perplexed as everyone else when it all came out in the wash. But then you had to go and kill that girl!”

“Solange? You told me to-”

“Not Solange, idiot! The other one, your girl, the one in London last night.”

“I had no choice!” Craig protested. “She overheard me on the phone with you, when you called to say that you and Mustapha had done your wife and the maid, and I was to call your cell in ten minutes, after Nora had come back downstairs and found you all dead. I was repeating your instructions back to you as you gave them, and Wendy heard me, and she freaked. I had to shut her up, and even so, she made enough noise to get that old woman across the hall involved, and she called the police. I ran out to the takeaway down the road, and-”

“Never mind, you can tell me the rest in the plane. Now we have to entertain Nassim and his friends. Mustapha, stay up here but out in the hallway. I may need your help downstairs if anything goes wrong with the exchange. We’ll lock her in here-she won’t be a problem-and you just wait in the hall outside this door. If you hear me call for you, get down there with your weapon drawn, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, come on,” Bill Howard said. More footsteps, then she heard the door open. “God damn that meddling Jeff Baron! I always hated him, such a nosey parker! I can’t wait for the pleasure of snuffing him-and her too. It will be almost as much fun as snuffing that bitch I was married to! But first-”

The door closed, cutting off the rest of his comments.

Silence. Nora lay still another thirty seconds, then opened her eyes and slid her legs over to the edge of the bed. She put her feet down on the carpeted floor and tried to sit up. A numbing stab of pain in her head nearly sent her down again, but she waited a moment until it passed. She rose slowly to her feet, peering around her in the darkened room. Yes, it was a bedroom. Aside from the bed, there was a dresser and chair by the front window. Her shoulder bag lay on the carpet, its contents strewn everywhere around it. The only other window was in the wall next to the head of the bed. She moved over to it and looked out.

This was the side wall of the house, the wall she’d seen from the forest. It was the way she’d have to go; the men in the driveway would see her if she tried the front one. Below this window was a drop of perhaps fifteen feet, past another window directly under it, to the side lawn with the obsolete corral. Beyond the corral was the field, and then the fence and the trees that concealed the car. Freedom. But she couldn’t run to the forest now; that wasn’t an option.

It was 1:15; she’d been out for more than an hour. She looked around the room, and her gaze settled on the bed: two sheets and a chenille bedspread. She knelt beside her Coach bag, picking it up and running her fingers around the inside until she found the tracer Mustapha had mentioned: a black metal disc the size of a quarter, pinned to the black satin lining at the bottom. She frowned in self-disgust, remembering the morgue in London her first day here, when she’d handed this bag to Bill to hold for her while she went in to identify her “husband’s” body. Craig hadn’t called the SDAT to locate her at the French guesthouse after she’d fled the cemetery. There was no need; he’d known exactly where she was all along.