Two men stood across from me. One of them was young and wiry with a ruddy complexion and a square jaw and hair cropped in military fashion. The other was probably fifty; he wore a suit and a civilian hairstyle.
“Comment vous appelez-vous?” asked the older man. French. Did that mean I was in France? It made the most sense.
“Je m’appelle Abbie Elliot,” I said, struggling for a calm, firm demeanor. “Je suis une citoyenne américaine. Je veux—I’m an American citizen,” I said in English, flustered, “and I want to speak with a lawyer or someone from the embassy.”
“Who do you work for?” The younger one, the square jaw, was talking now. He seemed like the one who would play the heavy hand. And he seemed to relish it.
“Work for? I don’t work for anyone,” I said.
Square Jaw approached my chair and bent down, as if to get a better look at me. “You are lying,” he said. His English was as good as his older colleague’s, but his accent was thicker. “How many of you are there?” He wasn’t letting me break eye contact, moving his face to keep my eyes focused on him. “Hmm? How many?”
“You’ve made a big mistake,” I said. “The only group I’m a part of is a group of ladies on vacation. Whatever happ—”
“Tell me!” he hissed, gripping the back of my hair, his hot breath on my face. “Comment? How many?”
“I’m in Monte Carlo with three friends,” I said, trying to project some measure of confidence, but it wasn’t easy. Cold sweat was running down my armpits and along my ribs. My hands were shackled behind me, locking me to the chair, rendering me immobile. “Serena Schofield, Winnie Brookes, and Bryah Gordon.”
“Who do you work for?” he asked me again. “Le Groupe Islamique Armé?”
Islamique? “I’m not Islamic,” I said. “I’m the daughter of a Methodist—”
“ETA?” he went on. “Mujahideen-e Khalq? FLNC? Al-Qaeda?”
Al-Qaeda?
I drew back, in the limited space I had before my head touched the high back of the wooden chair to which I was tied. I looked alternately at Square Jaw and the older guy, as though I were waiting for a punch line. Or for someone to pop out from behind a curtain and tell me this whole thing was a prank, like on Candid Camera or the MTV version of it my son watches.
But there were no curtains, nor were the facial expressions of my inquisitors anything but deadly serious.
I laughed, but no one joined me.
“You think I’m a terrorist?” I asked.
CHAPTER 22
MY INITIAL REACTION, of all things, was relief. I’d had some time to think about this on my travels from Monte Carlo to wherever I was currently, and I’d decided that the most likely explanation for what had happened on the harbor was drugs. A raid—the French equivalent of the DEA searching boats for illegal narcotics, which they would probably find in abundance on those vessels. Given that the occupants of our yacht were singled out, I figured that meant they had found some drugs on our yacht. And I figured that could be a problem for us, even though the drugs weren’t ours, simply because we’d been staying there.
But terrorism? That meant these guys were way off base.
I spent the next half hour fending them off as they lobbed names of terrorist groups at me, even names of specific terrorist leaders, reading me for a reaction, waiting for something in my eyes or my body language to tell them they’d hit their mark. I’d protested initially, to the point of shouting: I wasn’t a terrorist; I was a housewife and mother on vacation; I was about the least threatening person on the face of this earth. We were talking past each other, missing each other completely. My interrogators were probing for an exact spot on the map while I was telling them they had the wrong planet.
When that line of questioning ran aground, they started in on what would happen next. “What else is planned?” they asked me, again throwing out details, presumably the most visible terrorist targets in France. L’Assemblée Nationale? Notre Dame? Roissy? L’Arc de Triomphe?
It was almost comical—a relief, as I said. Before this weekend, my idea of adventure was to order a wool sweater online, sight unseen. Now I was being asked whether I was going to bomb the Eiffel Tower or assassinate the prime minister.
I say it was almost comical because there was one thing missing from this comedy show: comedy. These men were not just serious. They were scared. Something had happened, an event of some kind that had shaken them to the core and made them determined not to let something else transpire on their watch. They were trying for an even-handed approach, peppering me with questions in a staccato, back-and-forth style without expressing much emotion, keeping their voices level and trying to substitute intensity for what, it seemed to me, was their rawest emotion—fear.
That, more than the setting or their questions, unnerved me. Something very bad had happened.
“This is a misunderstanding, guys,” I said in English, not knowing the French equivalent. “Whatever it is that happened, I have no idea—”
“That is a lie,” said Square Jaw, whose name, I had learned, was Durand. “Do not tell us you have no idea.” He was still on his feet, stooped at the waist and looking at me face-to-face.
“I really don’t.”
“You insult us with these lies.” The older guy was named Rouen, the good cop, I suppose, to his younger and tougher partner. But neither of these men was revealing very much to me at all.
“I’m not saying another word until you tell me what’s going on,” I told them.
Durand slowly moved his eyes off me. “Montrez-lui les photos,” he said to his partner, the elder statesman Rouen.
The photos, Durand had said. A crime scene? What had happened? Damon, I thought, with a shot of dread. Had something happened to Damon? The murder of an international movie star could probably elicit the response I witnessed, at least fifty cops or soldiers, or whatever they were, swarming the harbor.
My head started pounding. On a good day, following the intake of as much alcohol as I had last night, I would be barely able to move. But I’d been knocked around on the dock and on the plane and I was in desperate need of a painkiller. And I had a pretty good feeling that what was coming next wasn’t going to make me feel any better.
Not Damon, I prayed.
The two men moved a long table so that it was positioned in front of me. The older guy, Rouen, placed a large glossy photo on the table before me.
“Oh, God.” It was a close-up shot of a man sitting in a car, wounds to his chest and neck. No matter how garish and surreal the sight of his dead body was, I had no trouble identifying him.
“Devo,” I said.
CHAPTER 23
“DEVO,” DURAND SCOFFED, looking at his partner, Rouen. “Yes, Devo, as you say.”
Rouen dropped another photo on the table, a different man, sitting dead in the same car, similar wounds, including a bullet to the forehead.
I turned my head away. It was Luc, the race-car driver.
Devo and Luc had been murdered.
I lurched forward and vomited into my lap.
“Perhaps now we can…dispense with your games? You will tell us what happened?”
I looked up at Durand, catching my breath. “Surely…you don’t think I had anything to do with that? You don’t think we…killed them?”
Durand dropped both palms on the table and leaned into me. “We know you did,” he answered. “It is just a matter of how long it will take you to admit it.”
No. No. This was wrong. This couldn’t be. Don’t talk, Abbie. Get a lawyer. Don’t be an idiot. This is murder we’re talking about.
“My husband works for the American Embassy in Switzerland,” I said. “I want to speak with him. I want a lawyer and I want someone from the—”
His hand flew up so quickly I didn’t have time to react. A blow to the head, to the soft part of my skull near my temple and hairline. Not enough to send me to the hospital, or even to exhibit a bruise later. But enough to send a message.
“You are not in Switzerland and you are not in the United States,” Durand said, his anger rising. “No phone calls. No husbands. No lawyers. Not until you confess this to us.”
“I’m not saying another word,” I managed.
“Then you are saying something with your silence.” This time it was Rouen. “In this country, when you do not talk to us, it appears you are hiding something. This is not America,” he reminded me for the second time.
Durand said, “You must understand, this is for your benefit. If you are able to show—what is it, remords—if you show you are sorry, yes?”
“Remorse,” said Rouen. “It is your only chance. You will spend your lifetime in prison if you do not—”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it.”
Stop, Abbie.
“That is…not helpful.” Durand looked disappointed. “And your friends? You can say the same of them?”
“My friends would never kill anybody.”
Durand held the photos of Devo and Luc up to my face. “They were on your yacht, yes?”
“Yes, we were all on the same yacht—”
“And by this you mean you and your friends.”
“Yes. Correct. And Devo and Luc.”
“And Monsieur Ogletree? Le propriétaire?”
Ogletree? The fat American. The owner of the yacht. “Yes,” I said.
I’d left out one person: Damon. But I didn’t see where he figured in. Surely this whole thing could be resolved without my having to talk about that. It wouldn’t really come to that, would it? I wouldn’t have to choose between admitting to infidelity and being charged with murder.
Would I?
“And when you declare your innocence, you do the same for your friends? You can…make excuses for your friends at all times? Account—account for them? At all times?”
I couldn’t, of course. Nor could they account for me, not once the bedroom door closed with Serena, Winnie, Bryah, Devo, and Luc on one side and me on the other.
Shut up, Abbie. What are you doing? Even innocent people can get in trouble during interrogations. Shut the hell up.
And hope your friends are doing the same.
“She does not respond,” Durand said to Rouen.
“She is protecting her friends, perhaps,” he answered back.
“I want a lawyer,” I said.
“We give her an opportunity to explain her facts and she does not,” said Durand. “So, instead we ask her friends.”
He turned back to me, one last comment, almost as a whisper, his nose inches from mine. “Your friends will be as loyal to you as you are to them? Only a fool would believe this.”
The two of them walked out of the room, leaving me sitting amid the bleached white walls and blinding lights. Leaving me in a cotton robe stained with vomit, my head woozy and throbbing. Leaving me to my imagination and fears.
Leaving me alone, more alone than I’d ever felt.
CHAPTER 24
DURAND DID A slow walk around the room, circling the single chair positioned in the center. “So it was you, Serena, and Winnie,” he said, struggling with the names. SEHR-ee-na. WEE-nee.
Bryah’s eyes dropped to the floor, in part out of shame, in part because of the blinding lights in her face. “Yes,” she said quietly.
“Not Abbie. She did not…accompany you in the bedroom?”
Bryah thought for a moment. She was staring into her lap, into the center of a gray smock that most closely resembled surgical scrubs, which soldiers had thrown over her on the dock in Monte Carlo after pulling her naked from her bed. It did little to protect her from the cool temperatures in the room.
“Abbie slept somewhere else.”
“You do not make excuse for her?”
“I don’t…what?”
“You cannot account for her,” said Rouen.
“I—no. I don’t know what Abbie did,” Bryah admitted. “But she isn’t capable of killing someone.”
“Ah.” Durand bent down and spoke into Bryah’s ear. “She will not say the same of you. They will blame you. All these white women of…privilege will blame the black Islamique, yes?”
“I’m not Islamic, you idiot. Just because I’m black you think—”
“Enough,” he hissed. “You will be taking a risk, allowing them to give their story first. The first story will be the one that is…believed.”
Bryah closed her eyes. “I didn’t kill anybody and neither did they.”
“But you say you were…endormi. Asleep. Now you tell me you know for certain they are innocent. You are telling me lies. These are lies.”
“Tell us who it was,” said Rouen, leaning against the wall. “The killer will spend a lifetime in prison. The ones who help us? Not so long.”
“Are your friends so brave as you?” It was Durand, again, in her ear. “Can you be sure?”
Serena coughed as she tried to concentrate on the question. She was ill already from last night’s events. After being roused from sleep at gunpoint and then seeing the photo of Luc dead, it took all her will not to vomit. She’d collapsed into hysterical sobbing upon seeing that photo and took almost half an hour to recover.
“Abbie wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said.
“That is not my question,” said Durand. “Shall I ask it again?”
Serena struggled against her restraints. She had a pinched nerve in her shoulder that flared up every so often, and now—when she was in the unnatural position of having her hands restrained behind her back and cuffed to a small wooden chair—was one of those times.
“After we went into the bedroom, I didn’t see her again. I can only assume she went to sleep.”
“But you cannot say.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know where she was,” she said.
They’d decided to interview Winnie last. She’d been the most emotional, the most unglued of the four women during the trip from the harbor to headquarters. Let her stew in it, whatever it was—sadness, terror—so she would be ready to burst when it was her turn.
Winnie’s head had fallen. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot from her sobbing.
Durand approached her, squatted down so he was face-to-face with her. But she wasn’t looking at him. She hadn’t acknowledged their entrance at all.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered.
CHAPTER 25
THE DOOR OPENED. Durand and Rouen again. I didn’t know how much time had passed. Best guess was three hours. Maybe four. I was dehydrated and nauseated and completely off-kilter. I was, I assumed, exactly as they wanted me.
It was all about control, after all. Manipulation. They held all the cards, Durand and Rouen, and I held none. None except my complete innocence, if that counted as a card. I hoped that it still did.
“I need to use the washroom and I need some water,” I said.
Durand shook his head dismissively, as if my request weren’t even in the vicinity of reasonableness. “Not until you…explain to us.”
That wasn’t going to happen. I’d spent the last few hours steeling myself. Don’t say a word, I thought. Wait for a lawyer, no matter how long it takes. What in the world was I doing talking to these people? They didn’t have any proof. They couldn’t possibly.
Keep telling yourself that, I thought.
“I want a lawyer,” I said yet again.
“You do not have that right,” said Rouen.
“Do the French still have to prove people guilty? Or did you dispense with that, too? Will I even get a trial?”
Durand held up a large plastic bag and walked over to me. Inside was my black purse.
“This is yours?” he asked.
I stifled my initial instinct to respond. I’d just spent the last few hours promising myself I would remain silent.
Durand looked at Rouen. “A simple question, I would think.”
“It’s my purse,” I said.
Durand, wearing a smug expression, returne
d to the door, where he made an exchange with someone in the hallway and returned with a second bag.
It held a handgun. Not the one Luc had last night; this gun was smaller. He displayed the weapon to me with pride, watching my reaction. I didn’t know how to react.
“Okay, so? It’s a gun.”
“It’s your gun,” he said.
“It’s not my gun. I don’t own a gun. I’ve never seen that before.”
“Why do you lie to us? Admit it. Admit this is your gun.”
“Go to hell,” I said. It felt good, empowering.
He held it still closer, only inches from my face, shaking it for emphasis.
I turned my head. “I have nothing else to say.”
“Nothing else. Nothing else. I am…so sorry to hear that. I hoped you could explain to me something.”
I looked at him. “Yeah? What do you want explained to you?”
He leaned into me, a gleam in his eye. “This gun that you say is not yours? If you would please explain to me why we found it in your purse.”
CHAPTER 26
THE AMERICAN EMBASSY in Paris was a beautiful stone building located near the bend of the Seine just west of the Place de la Concorde, an enormous public square—actually an octagon—each of the eight corners featuring a statue representing a different French city. Where the guillotine once served its bloody function during the French Revolution’s public executions now stood the majestic Obelisk of Luxor, flanked by fountains on each side, glowing in the city’s darkness this evening.
This was the heart of Paris, overlooking the gardens of the Champs-Élysées; steps from the high-end shopping district and the Musée de l’Orangerie and, of course, the Louvre; across the Seine from the Palais Bourbon and the Assemblée Nationale.
The embassy grounds were protected by gates and by United States Marines. Visitors’ identification was checked twice before admittance. At the secured entry, visitors were required to check and turn off their cell phones. They passed through metal detectors and, given today’s events, were subjected to a physical search and an armed marine escort as well.
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