Eric van Lustbader, page 17
Bravo frowned. “He shouldn’t have done that; there’s no reason to trust them.”
Camille laughed. “You know Jordan,” she said lightly. “If he can get his terms, he’ll make a deal with the devil.”
“Well, he’s wrong about this particular theory. The brothers may scream but I seriously doubt they have it in them to authorize a violent act.”
“I take it, then, you have your own theory,” Camille said.
“I suspect these attacks have something to do with my father’s death,” Bravo said after some hesitation.
Camille ventured a glance his way. “Je ne comprends pas. What do these people want with you?”
“I have no idea,” Bravo said deliberately. “At my father’s insistence, he and I met just before going to my sister’s house. The fact is, he wanted to talk to me about something he said was important, but my anger got in the way and I put him off.”
“Oh, Bravo.” Camille signaled, moving right across the lanes of the A11. “And in this state your father was taken from you. Quel domage!”
The large gray modern office buildings of the northern outskirts of Paris had given grudging way to green fields interspersed with clusters of residential housing no less ugly, unfortunately, than their industrial brethren.
She exited and took the turn for Magny-en-Vexin. They passed between two magnificent allées of black-leafed hornbeam trees, a darkened bower with the sky lowered and the air heavy as seawater, arriving at length in the city proper. In the old city, they exited the car to the rumble of thunder and a livid flash of lightning somewhere in the turbulent gloom of the northern sky.
Bistro du Nord was on the rue de la Halle, a small, cozy restaurant three steps down from street level. It was long and narrow, filled with dark wood beams and the simple whitewashed walls of a mas, a French farmhouse. Framed paintings of the countryside, colorful and pleasingly primitive, were hung as if at random.
A young woman showed them to a table at the back, near the blackened mouth of a massive unlit fireplace. Bravo could not help but be reminded of the hearth in Jenny’s house behind which was the vertical passageway that had saved them from Ivo Rossi’s initial attack.
When Camille went to freshen up, Jenny leaned across the table and said in a hushed voice, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What are you talking about?” Bravo said.
“We shouldn’t be taking her—or anyone else—with us to St. Malo.”
“You heard her, Jenny. She had a good point. Renting a car might call attention to ourselves.”
“There are a million rental cars on the road in France at any given time,” Jenny said hotly. “Besides, I very much doubt your father would approve of involving this woman in your hunt for the truth.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I simply mean—”
“Do you know your cheeks are flushed?”
“I simply mean,” she persevered, “that knowing your father I think he’d feel that it’s far more insecure to have her with in than for us to have rented a car, that’s all.”
“You’re sure that’s all?”
She picked up the menu, held it in front of her face and muttered, “Bastard.”
Bravo took hold of the top of the menu, bringing her face out of hiding. He smiled winningly, but she wasn’t about to be charmed.
“Why are you so determined to make fun of me?”
“I like you,” he said.
She snorted and was about to make a nasty reply when Camille returned.
“Am I interrupting something? A lover’s quarrel, perhaps?”
“Not at all,” Jenny said, her eyes lowered to her menu.
Camille sighed. “Lovers are allowed to quarrel as long as it doesn’t last long. Alors, you must now kiss and make it up with each other.”
“I don’t think so,” Jenny blurted out, while at the same instant, Bravo said, “We’re not lovers.”
“No, of course not.” Her tone of voice as well as her expression revealed that Camille did not believe him. She took both their hands. “My dears, life is too short to stay angry. Now listen to me, I won’t be satisfied until you’ve kissed and I know all is well between you.” She squeezed their hands. “Come on now, there has been too much sadness in your lives lately.”
Jenny’s eyes were clouded by anxiety, all the worse because she could tell nothing of how Bravo felt. Nevertheless, both understood that there was no getting around this profoundly awkward moment. With Camille looking on, her lips curved in a mysterious Mona Lisa half smile, they both rose and moved tentatively toward one another. Bravo pushed a chair away but even so they halted with a handsbreadth between them.
All at once, he took her in his arms and pressed his mouth to hers. Much to her astonishment, she felt her lips opening under his, felt his tongue enter her mouth, felt her own twine for a moment with his. The breath whooshed out of her and her heart seemed to stop. Then they were apart, standing close but no longer touching, and Jenny’s heart rate slowly returned to normal.
“There now, isn’t that better?” Camille said with an enigmatic smile.
As they sat Camille discreetly signaled the waiter, and they ordered.
Bravo was again engaged in conversation with Camille, telling her where they needed to go, but not why. Jenny saw this withholding of information as a small victory for her side, as she’d come to think of it. Instead, they discussed the best route to take to St. Malo and where Bravo wanted Camille to drop them once they had arrived. Camille wanted to wait for them, but Bravo refused, telling her that he had no way of knowing how long he and Jenny would need to be in St. Malo and where they might be going after that. In the meantime, the food arrived.
“You’re being terribly mysterious,” Camille said between dainty bites of raw shellfish.
Jenny, who had an aversion to mussels, clams and oysters in any form, struggled to keep her gorge down while slicing into her steak frites.
“Not that I mind,” Camille continued, “but I worry that you’re in more danger than you’re willing to admit. That is why you don’t want me to stay in St. Malo with you, isn’t it?”
“Frankly, yes.” Bravo put down his fork. “You’ve already done more than could be expected. I won’t put you in harm’s way.”
“But, my love, it’s my decision—”
“No, Camille, it’s not. In this instance I’m afraid I must insist. You’re taking us to St. Malo, which is more than you ought to be doing. But that’s the end of it. Understood?”
Camille regarded him neutrally for a moment. Then she sighed and turned to Jenny. “Dessert, my dear? The tarte Tatin here is not to be missed.”
After lunch, Camille took them to the pharmacy she had spoken of, where she bought them various creams and unguents for their bruises, cuts and abrasions. Then they went clothes shopping, changing into the new outfits as they went and consigning their old torn shirts and pants to the trash bin.
Back in the car, Camille drove at high speed, circumventing Rouen. They turned onto the El, heading west, where the road became the EB1. Paralleling the coastline, they passed just south of Honfleur, where in the early nineteenth century the Impressionists reigned, and the posh seaside resorts of Deauville and Trouville. Twelve miles past Caen, the sky that had grown dark just before lunch now lowered enough to touch the tops of the bristling hawthorn trees. The buildings on either side of the highway grew black and menacing. In the distance, the horizon had disappeared in a muddy haze of rain, and then the downpour hit them, drumming against the roof of the Citroën, sluiced off to either side of the windshield by the wipers. The car’s headlights cut through the hissing gloom like gas lamps on a coal-dark night.
Within an hour they had made the All. The rain had lessened to a heavy drizzle, but the world outside appeared to consist of colors smeared with an Impressionist’s brush. They were approaching Avranches when Jenny began to complain of severe stomach cramps. Glancing over his shoulder, Bravo noticed that her face was pasty, beaded with sweat. Several moments later, he spotted one of those peculiarly European travel restaurants whose setting was a bridge over the highway. In the same rest area were bathrooms and several thousand yards further on, a gas station.
Camille pulled over, Bravo helped Jenny out. Camille grabbed a raincoat and, holding it over Jenny, insisted on going with her. Jenny did not have the strength to argue, and together the two women hurried into the low, squat building. Bravo went around to the driver’s side of the Citroën, the better to keep an eye on the traffic. The light rain was cool, and he enjoyed the feel of it on his face as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed an overseas number.
It would already be night in New York, the blaze of man-made lights dimming the stars, the great energy of the city flowing unabated through the streets while the tops of high-rises disappeared into the clouds.
Emma answered on the first ring, as if she had been waiting for his call.
“Bravo, where are you?”
“In France,” he said. “On my way to Brittany.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I’m on an errand for Dad. He spoke to me about it just before the… just before the end.” There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. “How are you, Emma?”
“I’m fine. I’m singing again, my voice coach was just here.”
“That’s wonderful—and your eyes? Any change?”
“Not yet. Never mind, it’s you I’m worried about.”
“Me?”
“I can hear it in your voice,” she said.
“Hear what?”
“Trouble. Whatever Dad wanted you to do, it’s trouble, isn’t it?”
“Why would you say—”
“Because I’m not an idiot, Bravo, and I resent you treating me like one. The president of the engineering firm I hired read the report to me. The gas line wasn’t faulty; it was tampered with.”
He looked around to see if the women had returned from the bathroom, but they weren’t in view. “You seem to have taken the news in stride.”
“Dad was in a dangerous business, Bravo. D’you think I hadn’t guessed? And once I had, he confided in me.”
“What?”
“In fact, from time to time I helped him. He knew—and so did I—that there was a high degree of risk in his business with the Gnostic Observatines.”
There was a short pause, during which Bravo could hear her take a sip—of tea, perhaps. He was trying hard to adjust to this new reality.
“Now that you’re launched on this mission,” Emma continued, “I want you to know that I can be of use to you.”
“Emma—”
“I suppose you think it’s different now that I’m blind, but you’re wrong. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself—and I can take care of you. I always have.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Who d’you think kept tabs on you and reported back to Dad when you and he weren’t talking? The estrangement certainly wasn’t his idea.”
“You mean you spied on me?”
“Come off it, Bravo. I did what was best for all of us—you included. Do you think even now that Dad had any evil designs on you? He was worried, and frankly I don’t blame him. You acted like an adolescent, as if he were the enemy, when all he was trying to do—”
Bravo took the phone from his ear and severed the connection. He sat down heavily on the driver’s seat. His mind seemed numb, the traffic on the All a distant buzz. A car pulled in and a couple of tourists with skittish teenagers tumbled out, loped through the drizzle into the low building. A large truck rumbled away from the gas station back onto the slick highway. His eyes registered these small comings and goings without comment from his mind, as if he were in a theater, watching a film.
His cell phone buzzed.
“Don’t you dare treat me the way you treated Dad.” Emma’s voice sounded sharp in his ear. “And don’t hang up on me again.”
“Okay, okay, sorry.” Bravo felt sheepish and a bit as if he were hung over. “But you rattled the hell out of me. I mean, here I was wondering how you were getting from room to room, and you tell me that you can provide me with help the way you did Dad.”
“I suppose that was a lot to dump on you at once, but really, Bravo, sometimes you’re so clueless. If you knew me at all you’d have realized that I’ve been struggling all my life to live up to you and Dad’s expectations. I dealt with that, so I sure as hell can deal with this.”
Bravo thought about how poorly Jenny had been treated by the Order. But when he considered this it didn’t seem much different from how women were treated in corporate life or most anywhere else for that matter. “Listen, Emma, I… well, you know, when you told me, I thought, there it is again—everybody knew about Dad except me.”
“There was a good reason for that, Bravo. You must know what it is by now. Dad was grooming you to take over for him. That’s why he trained you, why he was always so hard on you. He wanted you prepared when the time came, but until that day he didn’t want you involved in the Gnostic Observatines. It was vital that his enemies believed that you had nothing to do with the Order, that your life had been set on another path entirely. If the Knights of St. Clement had suspected for a moment what he had in mind for you, you would’ve been in terrible danger.”
“There’s a woman with me—Jenny—”
“Right, the Guardian. Dad was very high on her.”
“I know. He sent me to her. She says Dad believed there’s a traitor inside the Haute Cour. Do you have any idea who it might be?”
“No. I think in the final days Dad had narrowed it down to a couple of suspects, but he never got a chance to tell me who they were.”
“Right.” Bravo turned, saw Jenny and Camille exiting the building. “Maybe you could do some digging.”
“Sure, no problem.” The tension had drained out of her voice. “I’d love to get back to work.”
“How will you… ?”
She laughed. “Oh, Bravo, before there was e-mail, there was the telephone. I have a facility with voices: if I hear a tape I can be whoever I want to be. Don’t worry, I did this all the time for Dad. It worked quite well—people nowadays are paranoid about e-mails and electronic files.”
Jenny had on the raincoat, and Camille was gripping her with one arm around her shoulders.
“Listen, Emma, about what happened before—”
“Forget it. Now that we understand one another—”
He never heard the end of her comment because at that moment he saw a black four-door Mercedes sedan with German plates heading for the two women. As it closed on them, Jenny pulled Camille out of the way. The Mercedes swerved to come between them and the building. At the last instant, it slowed. A blacked-out window slid down, the offside rear door opened, and he saw the dark glint of metal as a hand gripping a gun appeared.
Before Bravo could make a move, Jenny planted her left foot and with her right kicked the door closed. Then she lunged forward with her upper body, chopped down on the hand, wrested the gun away and fired three bullets into the interior of the Mercedes.
The car shuddered on its heavy shocks as if it had been shot, and it lurched forward. Jenny was whipped off her feet. Bravo could see that the hem of her raincoat had been caught in the closed door.
Emma was screaming through his cell phone as he threw it onto the seat, turned the ignition and put the Citroën in gear. He shouted to Camille, who was running after the Mercedes as it dragged Jenny along the rest area. The car was heading directly toward the gas pumps; it didn’t seem as if anyone was driving it.
As Bravo momentarily tamped the Citroën’s brakes, Camille, who was on his side of the car, pulled open the rear door. Even as she jumped into the Citroën’s backseat he took off, the car slewing alarmingly on the wet blacktop.
“We’ll never make it,” she said breathlessly. “She’s going to go up in a fireball with the assassins.”
Bravo could see that Jenny was twisted up in the raincoat and, though she struggled to get free, couldn’t extricate herself. Then the Mercedes ran over something and the bump swung Jenny around, slamming her head against the blacktop. Her eyes rolled up in her head and her body went limp, twisting grotesquely.
“The door’s the only answer,” Bravo said.
“You’re insane! To get me close enough you’ll risk running her over.”
“She’ll be dead if I don’t try,” he answered grimly. “Roll down your window and get ready.”
Narrowly missing another car on his right, Bravo took up position just off the Mercedes’s right flank. Now for the hard part. Focused solely on Jenny, he depressed the accelerator, creeping up on the other car. Fortunately, he had physics on his side; the force of the Mercedes’s passage was pulling Jenny’s body in toward its undercarriage, giving him slightly more room to maneuver. On the other hand, he was forced to push the Citroën to an unsafe speed; the gas pumps were only several hundred yards away. He forced himself not to think of the beating Jenny was taking. Instead, he concentrated on the outline of her body as if she were part of a puzzle he needed to solve. And yet he hesitated to bring the Citroën closer to her. “You’ll risk running her over,” Camille had said, and she was right. But he had very little time; he needed to act now. Desperately, he maneuvered the Citroën so that it was parallel, then matched the Mercedes’s speed and trajectory. It was still heading straight for the pumps, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He risked glancing sideways, glimpsed the driver slumped over the wheel.
“Come on!” he yelled at Camille. “I can’t get any closer!” Jenny could be under his wheels in a heartbeat.
Already kneeling on the seat, Camille now stretched her torso out the window. Balancing her hips on the bottom of the window frame, she reached out and grabbed hold of the Mercedes’s door handle. Jenny was directly below her, cocooned so thoroughly in the raincoat she couldn’t see her face. She pulled the handle once, cursed mightily, tugged again.
