The Kingfisher Secret

by AnonYMous

  “I suppose I thought you had forgotten me.”

  “Maybe you wanted me to see it.”

  Elena put her head in her hands. “Maybe.”

  Sergei took her hand and leaned over the table and kissed her. He reached into her robe and it disgusted her but she could not stop him. “You will receive a call tomorrow, from the agency in New York. If you cannot find a suitable man in Montreal, perhaps you will have to fly farther.”

  “But Danika’s in New York.”

  “It’s a big city. And there are no other girls like you.”

  “Josef stays here?”

  “The divorce papers will be here by Monday. He has mistreated you.”

  “No. He is a buffoon, sometimes, but—”

  Sergei leaned forward. There was no malice in his eyes. There was nothing, which was worse. “He has mistreated you. There are irreconcilable differences.”

  She tightened the belt on her robe. “How long are you in Montreal?”

  “Tonight and tomorrow night. I have air conditioning in my room. Will you come?”

  “I’ll get dressed.” She stood up.

  “The car is out front, waiting for us.”

  Elena put on her finest summer dress and packed another. She filled a bag with makeup and toiletries and stared at herself for a while when she passed the bathroom mirror.

  It had given her no pleasure to leave Czechoslovakia, to leave Jean-Yves and the friends she had made in Strasbourg. She did not want to leave now, but Josef was her brother first and lover second. There was not really a word for how she felt about Sergei.

  Sergei led the way, down the stairs.

  “Now listen here.” Josef slammed his open palm into the wall when he saw them together. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  In the next apartment they were now doing the hustle. “Do the hustle!” they shouted, these regular men and women of Montreal.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Elena said, tears in her eyes.

  “You can’t do this.” Josef hit the wall again. “I’ll kill you.”

  Sergei, who had passed Josef without looking at him, turned and quickly climbed back up the stairs. Elena noticed a feline quality about him, as he chased Josef, even with his new weight. She followed them. Josef backed into a brick wall inside the apartment, next to the potted cactus.

  “You,” Sergei said, with an eerie calm in his voice. “Your family, your friends, everyone and everything you love and care about, Straka, I own them all. You’re here because I want you here. If you try to fight me, you will lose. And I will enjoy your destruction.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Part of Elena did not want to watch but she did. She saw the dark, hot, miserable little place for what it was. Behind her, they all shouted, “Do the hustle!”

  “On your knees, Straka.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Calm your mind. Think. On your knees.”

  It took him nearly thirty seconds but finally Josef lowered himself to his knees on the hard wooden floor. The towel came off but it did not matter, not now. For a while Sergei watched him there, far longer than Elena could allow herself. She went downstairs with her bag and opened the door into the hot night, then turned and looked back at 2311 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, the yellow brick and the maple as thirsty as she was in the ridiculous heat.

  A black town car waited for her with its back door open. She stepped inside.

  17

  STRASBOURG, 2016

  On her walk through the lively old center of Strasbourg, Grace could not stop thinking about Jean-Yves de Moulin and the haunted, hunted life he had been forced to lead. They would find him in Martinique. His pursuers would find him in Polynesia, Réunion, or New Caledonia, they both knew it.

  It remained so bright and warm she took off her jacket and carried it on her arm. She bought five perfect carrots and a little box of blueberries at an outdoor market and wandered in the direction of the steeple of Notre-Dame de Strasbourg. At Pont Royal, a tidy old bridge, she stopped to take a picture of other bridges, the canal sparkling in the sun. And then she saw the two men from Prague, leaning on the handrail. The bow-legged one was watching her while the other, who had swapped his leather jacket for a red tourist hoodie, typed something into his phone.

  They would do to her what they had done to Jean-Yves de Moulin in his mansion, if she gave them the chance: hurt and belittle and haunt her. Grace dug her white earbuds from her purse and spent three long minutes separating them from used tissues and untangling the little wires. When they were plugged in, she dialed her ex-husband, Jason.

  Though it was early in the morning he sounded like he had already climbed a mountain. “Babe. Oh my God. How are you?”

  In the background Grace could hear clangs and clanks, the adorable voices of his little girls. She waited a moment. Her instinct in calling him was to ask for help, for advice. Should she walk away from this? Run toward it? “Really good, yeah. I’m in France.”

  “What? Fabulous! Hey, Caitlyn. Grace’s in France.”

  “Fabulous!” Jason’s second wife, Caitlyn, seemed to be incapable of anger or sadness, let alone small emotions like jealousy. She owned three yoga studios in Fort Lauderdale and volunteered as a counseling psychologist in the public school system.

  Grace walked down Rue des Pontonniers, toward the center of the city. The two men followed her at their usual distance, made no effort to conceal it.

  “Is it just a holiday?”

  “No, no. It’s work.”

  “The Flash sent you to France? Or did you finally get another job? Oh my God, Grace, did you get another job? Worthy of that fine mind of yours? No, wait, let me guess: the Washington Post. Caitlyn, guess what—”

  “Nope, Jason. Same old job.” She passed a white stone building with baby blue ironwork. As she spoke her phone buzzed with two new texts, from numbers she did not recognize.

  Go home

  Its not too late

  “Grace?”

  She realized Jason had been talking. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “No, no, I’m sorry. Um, did you just call to chat? I really want to catch up but we’re trying to figure out Halloween here. Do they trick-or-treat in France?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You sound weird. Everything okay? Why would the Flash need you in France?”

  Grace stopped again and turned. The men stopped behind her. “I was wondering if you could pick me up at the airport. I’m flying into Miami to see my mom and—”

  “You know what: I will cancel whatever I have to cancel. Just shoot me the details. Okay?”

  “Are you sure? Is it cool with Caitlyn?”

  “Beyond cool. She would hate for us to lose touch.”

  Grace tried hard to bury her small emotions. “Thanks, Jason.”

  “Bye, Grace!” Caitlyn shouted and encouraged their daughters, Kellie and Claire, to say goodbye too.

  * * *

  —

  In Place de la Cathédrale there were hundreds of tall senior citizens speaking a Nordic language Grace could not trace and taking photographs of themselves. She confirmed the men were still following her and approached an armed policeman observing the crowd from the steps of the cathedral. It felt so good to be in his presence she said nothing for a moment.

  “These men are harassing me.” Grace pointed to them. They were now posing for pictures themselves.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Following me. They sent these texts.” Grace translated for the policeman. She noted the grammatical error in its, which was difficult to explain in French and only confused the man. “I’m a journalist and they’re threatening me.”

  The policeman, who did not yet seem thirty, looked across the plaza. “How did they threaten you?”

  “They broke into my hotel room.”

  “Here in Strasbourg?”

  “In Prague.”

  “You called the authorities?”

  “No, becau
se they didn’t steal anything. They’re professionals. They work for an undercover organization.” As she said it, Grace realized how she sounded.

  “Madame, do you have evidence they are threatening you?”

  “Just these texts.”

  The young policeman sighed and adjusted his hat. “Wait here.”

  When he approached them, the two men made no effort to flee. They smiled as they spoke, and when the policeman turned their attention back to Grace both of them appeared genuinely confused. Less than a minute later the policeman returned. “There was a misunderstanding. They were walking back from the Orangerie Park. You were too?”

  “I was, but—”

  “They say they have never been to Prague and that they’ve never seen you before, madame.” The policeman spoke as though he were bored. He pulled a card from his pocket and showed her the address of the gendarmerie. “If you remain concerned, I encourage you to go to this address and make a formal complaint.”

  “Did you get their names?”

  “Of course not, madame. This is France. Good afternoon.”

  Grace watched the men as she passed through the square. Neither of them looked at her. At the hotel she had booked the previous evening she entered her room, locked it, and went straight into the toilet. The seat was down and when she lifted it she was delighted to see clear water.

  For the first time in her life she made the bad financial choice of choosing something from the mini-bar. She cracked open a small bottle of Riesling, sipped it like a beer, and looked out over the River Ill and the olde worlde houses across the way. But the silence was too much. She turned on the television and Anthony Craig was speaking on BFM, the French version of CNN. It was the replay of a rally in a hangar. The crowd was massive, and the cameras tracked thousands of latecomers waiting outside on a sun-baked rectangle of tarmac.

  Grace was midway through her Riesling when she noticed something on the computer desk: five Russian nesting dolls, placed in order of size.

  There was a small but sturdy electric kettle on the desk. Grace picked it up and wielded it like a bat as she sneaked through the room. There was no one and nothing was out of place.

  Grace put the kettle down and inspected the dolls. They were painted wooden shells, light as tissue. Beginning with the smallest, she opened and shook them until she reached the second-largest doll. Grace twisted it open to find a page of newsprint crumpled and tied with elastics into a tight ball. She unfurled it and flattened it on the desk.

  The article was in Czech and the only words she recognized were Mladá Boleslav and Vacek and Katka. The photograph was of a burning building. She flattened the article further and realized it was the sporting goods shop, with the apartment up top. With the translation app on her phone she discovered the phrase zemřeli při požáru meant deceased in the blaze.

  She felt sick and wanted to scream, but no one was there to hear her. She picked up her purse, opened the door, and sprinted to the stairway. Down the stairs, in the lobby, her heart pounding in her ears, it took a moment to remember what language to speak at the desk.

  The woman greeted her with a typically flat, professional French smile. “Madame?”

  “I have to check out early.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “A family emergency.” There was no mirror behind the desk, but in the reflection of a giant gold plaque with a logo in the middle she saw two men sitting on a couch reading a newspaper together. One of them wore a cheap beret and a tourist kiosk hoodie that said Strasbourg. The bow-legged one wore a navy suit and sat with one leg crossed over the other. A picture of harmlessness.

  “I hope everything goes well. Though I do apologize, madame. To receive a refund one needs to give twenty-four hours’ notice. In this case—”

  Grace leaned over the desk. “Do you want to know the real reason I am leaving?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “The two men behind me are following me. They have just broken into my room and left a threatening note. They murdered my friends in the Czech Republic, made it look like an accident, and—”

  “What?” The receptionist looked past Grace, her eyes wide. Then she asked, discreetly, “Can you please repeat that?”

  Grace repeated herself and the receptionist picked up the phone, whispered something, and another woman came out from the back. This was the manager, who introduced herself and made her way around the desk.

  “These guests?”

  “They aren’t guests. Well, maybe they are. But they’re criminals first. Murderers and stalkers.”

  The manager approached them and Grace followed, though she did not like to be this close to them. They were older than they appeared from afar but these were definitely the men from the train, from the square in Prague. Surely at least one of them had pissed in her toilet. Both of them stood up and listened attentively to what the manager said.

  The man in the Strasbourg hoodie placed his hand over his heart and turned to Grace. “You poor woman. I am so sorry this happened to you.” His French had a faint accent about it, but it was obvious he had learned and practiced it in France. “You have mistaken us for someone else.”

  “I just spoke to a police officer in Place de la Cathédrale and these two scoundrels played the same game: there must be some mistake. You know what? There isn’t a mistake. I’m calling the police.”

  The second man, the bow-legged one in the suit, nodded at the hotel manager. “This is for the best.”

  Grace did not know how to call the police in France, as the card for the gendarmerie only contained an address. She asked the manager. The number was 112, the manager said, flatly. Grace dialed it and waited. The woman who answered seemed to have trouble understanding her accent and Grace’s grammatical errors compounded as her heart rate increased and her voice rose. She could feel the hotel manager and the men looking at her, with a kind of pity.

  The dispatch operator asked if she might speak to the manager.

  “This is just terrible.” The man in the hoodie raised his hands to his mouth in a forced, effeminate gesture. “Don’t you feel for her, Eric?”

  Grace handed the phone over and the manager took a few steps back and turned away. The bow-legged one, whose nose was crooked too, winked at Grace.

  “Will you two gentlemen please wait here?” The manager held the phone some distance from her ear. “Madame, please accompany me to your room.”

  “Of course.”

  Grace followed the manager up the stairs and down the hall. With a master key the woman entered the room and waited for Grace to pass her and enter. “Please show me the threatening material.”

  “With pleasure.” Grace went straight to the desk, only to see that the article and the Russian dolls were gone.

  The hotel manager stood in front of the bed, whispering into the phone.

  “Well, it’s obvious what they did here.” Grace looked at the manager for a hint of understanding. “They came in and removed them.”

  “You heard that?” The manager spoke softly into Grace’s phone.

  “They’re trying to make me seem crazy. This is what they do to us, every time.”

  “Us?”

  “Women.”

  The manager ended her call and handed Grace’s phone back to her. “I cannot say what has happened here, but—”

  “I’m a journalist, working on a story those men don’t want me to tell. They broke into my hotel room in Prague and they broke into this one. They’re sending me texts. Do you want to see them?”

  The manager sighed. “I would be happy to give you a full refund.”

  Grace followed her down the stairs and, at the desk, waited as they put 112 euros back on her card. The men were reading their newspaper again. “You watch. They won’t stay at your hotel.”

  The clerk looked at her manager.

  “They will come after me, I am telling you.”

  When she was finished and the sliding doors opened for her, the man in the Stras
bourg hoodie called out: “Good luck, madame. Remember: you’re not alone.”

  18

  NEW YORK, 1976

  “This is not where we wanted to have this party, okay? Let’s be honest: this is an old and ugly room and New York deserves better. This is a night to celebrate American luxury, and no one, no one wants to do it in a drafty barn. But we couldn’t find any ballrooms in this bankrupt city—hey, are we bankrupt yet? Mayor, Mayor Beame, are we bankrupt yet?—any ballrooms with doors big enough to bring in my beautiful cars. I had good people on it, the best. Still: nothing. New York, the greatest city in the world, bankrupt or not, deserves so much better.”

  Elena had never heard a more bizarre opening to a speech. The speaker had papers in front of him on the podium but he was not reading from them. Surely, the owner or manager of the New York Coliseum was in the room somewhere, feeling miserable. Why would he say those things about the mayor right in front of him?

  The brochures on each table had a photograph of Anthony Craig on the front, standing with cars and women. Inside, there was a brief story about how Craig Bearings, a family company, had become Craig International under the leadership of its new CEO.

  Bizarre or not, the man could draw a crowd. Then again, Elena and her friends from Montreal were only here, at tables in the back, because the organizers had given Kara Modeling a bit of money, a pile of tickets, and promises of free champagne and gourmet food as long as the women wore gowns. Looking around the room, at other young women in gowns, Elena decided the organizers had probably given free tickets and a check to every agency in New York.

  “America invented cars.” Craig looked down briefly at his notes, but again he seemed to abandon them. He wore a pinstriped three-piece red suit with an enormous tie, and he kept struggling to keep his mop of hair in place. “We invented luxury. We did that. It never existed before us.”

  Elena looked around, to see if anyone else knew about Europe.

  “But we’re losing in luxury cars. We’ve become lazy, lazy and stupid. When I was a kid a Cadillac meant something. Today, what does it mean next to a fake luxury car, the Monte Carlo, an absolute phony? Lincoln once felt like luxury. Now it’s a joke, lipstick on a pig, an absolute pig. My father, he’s here tonight, my father had a Continental Mark II in 1956. Remember that, Dad? Now that was a luxury car. You sat in it and you felt like all that hard work had come to something. That was American luxury. And you know what, my friends? We’ve given up. What’s a Continental today? A jalopy. We’re not building American luxury anymore and you know who’s figured it out? The Germans. The Germans are back, my friends, and they are cleaning our clocks. Cleaning our clocks.”