Afternoons in Paris

by Janice Law

  I heard Pavel shake the flashlight, trying unsuccessfully to nurse a little current from the batteries. Then silence. We would have to feel our way forward, and there was an excellent chance that we would wind up walking in a circle. For a few minutes, we stood still, uncertain of how to proceed and frightened of falling into one of the rocky ditches that must have been fragments of a long dry moat. We could easily be badly injured in one of them, and if we were, we might die without anyone knowing.

  “We could call,” said Pavel.

  “If this is the Louvre, it will be closed for the night.”

  “You do not have a watch,” he said in an accusatory tone, as if this was a great failing on my part. “All the Englishmen had watches. The Frenchmen, too.”

  “I’m not a diplomat, and I can’t afford a watch.”

  He seemed set to sulk about this for I heard him move away, then he reached back to touch my arm. “Francis!”

  I turned toward the sound of his voice. “A light!” he said. “Isn’t that a light?”

  There was a horizontal streak no wider than a pencil, a glimmer so faint it had been lost even in our weak flashlight beam. “A door?”

  “Yes!” He started forward eagerly, and I caught his shoulder.

  “Careful. It won’t do to fall now.”

  We put our hands against the rough stonework and edged forward. Several times we kicked against protruding stones and barked our shins on unseen boulders, but at last Pavel exclaimed, “There are steps. Steps going up.”

  We felt our way toward the streak of light that, oh yes, issued from under a door. Pavel ran his hands over it and said, “Give me room.”

  I heard the rattle of his lock pick. Whoever taught him knew the trade well, because it was not very long before I heard a click, followed by the sound of the doorknob turning and a protesting creak from long disused hinges. I put my shoulder to the door and with our combined weight it swung open. We’d reached a long corridor. Pipes and wires ran along a ceiling lit by a few bare hanging bulbs. Pavel closed the door behind us.

  “You look a fright,” he said.

  I returned the compliment. We were filthy from head to foot, our clothes soaked and ruined, our shoes caked with earth, our hands and faces muddy. Worse yet, we left a track of earth and water wherever we stepped. We needed to clean up enough to avoid attention and we needed to find out the time.

  Down the corridor. Curious as a cat, Pavel rattled every door and poked his head in all the unlocked ones. Finally, we found the janitor’s room with a sink and water. We washed our faces and hands, wiped our shoes, and wrung out our sodden pants, an operation that revealed an assortment of tears and rips. I was wondering if we could possibly dry them when Pavel walked over to a set of hooks and lifted down a pair of the blue coveralls French workers wear.

  “Is there another one?”

  Pavel threw me the pair he was holding and lifted another from its hook.

  They were faded and worn and smelled of sweat and hard work and were absolutely perfect. Wearing these and carrying a broom or a shovel, one could come and go as easily as the Invisible Man. We put them on over our shirts, rolled up our ruined pants and jackets, and thrust them into a waste bin. I picked up a broom, and Pavel took a dust shovel. Thus protected, we wandered the vast basement until we located a set of stairs. These were unlit, and we climbed slowly in the darkness, occasionally stumbling when we came to a landing. At last we reached a set of double doors and pushed them open.

  We were in the palace proper. The room was a king-size hall, long enough for all his knights and all their horses, too, with a row of tall, arched windows that brought in the grayish light and the faint glow of the night city. The ceiling was lost in shadows high overhead, and the walls were lined with the dim and mysterious shapes of ancient sculptures, one of which, graceful, armless, draped from the hips down, I recognized immediately: Venus de Milo. We were certainly in the Louvre, and I knew exactly where we were in the immense building.

  The next thing was to find an office, somewhere with a clock, somewhere with lights. It must have taken us over an hour, but after walking miles of wood and marble floors and crouching behind statues or display cases anytime we heard a night guard on his rounds, we found ourselves in a corridor with what appeared to be office doors. The whole place was only dimly lit, but Pavel did not need much light to work his magic. The second door he unlocked proved to be equipped with a telephone and a clock. It was exactly two a.m. when I rang Uncle Lastings.

  He listened without interrupting. When I had given a semicoherent account of our adventures and appealed for protection for Madame Dumoulin, he asked if we could get out of the museum without being detected.

  I said that thanks to our workers’ coveralls we could easily leave after the museum opened. “Before that—I’m not so sure. There are a number of guards, and the doors may have alarms.”

  “They will probably be locked from the inside as well,” he said.

  “Locked has not proved to be a problem.”

  He thought for a minute, then said, “How long will it take you to get out?”

  “Unless I’ve gotten turned around, we’re down in the service areas of the long building facing the Seine, and the Porte des Lions at the west end is probably our best bet.”

  “I’ll drive along the river in an hour,” said my uncle. “Look for the green van. I’ll do two passes. If you’re not there, I’ll assume you can’t get away until the museum opens.”

  I replaced the receiver. “Let’s go,” I said. “We haven’t a lot of time.”

  We switched off the light and, when the corridor remained silent, slipped out. Most of the hallways were badly lit, if lit at all, and we made several mistakes that took us into the dead ends of offices and conservators’ studios. On the other hand, we felt quite safe, as we’d seen no guards since we descended to the service level. When we reached what we thought must be the end of the vast wing, we started to search for stairs, a process that turned out to require a good deal of backtracking.

  At last we located the way up and climbed as fast as we dared in the pitch darkness of the stairwell. The first doors we reached gave onto another set of subterranean rooms and corridors. Back to the stairs, which besides being dark, were extremely hot and close. We reached fancier doors after the second flight and opened them to the welcome sight of the gray Parisian night behind impressive windows. But this was not exhibition space, and to our dismay, we found that it was chopped up into offices and storage rooms without any clear pattern.

  “There should be a door on the river side,” I told Pavel. We made sure we had reached the west end of the building, then started searching. Down one corridor, then another, passing dead ends, locked hallways, and temporary partitions that looked to be permanent, before we saw an open hallway. Thank you, Louis Whatever! No little side doors for the kings of France! We were ready to run for it when the unmistakable scent of Gauloise hit my nose. I held out my arm, and Pavel stepped hastily behind one of the omnipresent cabinets that seemed to hold another museum’s worth of art in reserve. Guards taking a break from their rounds were smoking in the hall.

  I sat down on the floor beside Pavel and we waited. I could almost hear the minutes ticking off. Please let them finish their vile cigarettes and get back to work! But the men seemed in no hurry. Once in a while, we heard a vehicle passing along the road that skirted the Seine. Was one of them Uncle Lastings’s van? It couldn’t have taken a whole hour to get this far, could it?

  A bell sounded on the night wind. One, two, three. I held my breath, but there was no fourth peal. But it was time—we’d have to do something. I was wondering if we would have to retreat to a lower level and try another entrance, when, with what sounded like jovial good nights, two of the men were sent out the door by what must have been their replacements.

  We waited until all was locked up again and the guards had begun their respective rounds, one of them making a cursory pass through the corridor w
here we were hidden. When he had returned to the main hallway and his footsteps faded on the stairs, we crept out to the entrance. The good thing was that there were some steps between the hallway and the doors. Once crouched on the bottom step so that Pavel could go to work, we were out of sight of anyone on the stairs or even passing through the corridor.

  “Quick as you can,” I said nervously.

  Pavel swore softly in Russian but otherwise didn’t answer. The rattle of the pick seemed very loud, and I could not keep myself from creeping up the steps every other minute to be sure no one was around. Clearly this mechanism was so old as to be completely unfamiliar, because Pavel’s vocabulary grew more and more ornate: French kings did not skimp on security.

  A bell somewhere. Tolling the quarter hour?

  Just then Pavel said, “Bien!” and stood up. He turned the oversize doorknob and the door swung open. I leaped for the sidewalk, and Pavel shut the door and rattled the pick in the lock. That boy was a craftsman.

  The vast building loomed over us, but we were outside at last and aboveground. Never had a cloudy city sky looked better, nor the faint scents of exhaust, river, and drains been more welcome. We’d been saved from bombs and drowning and suffocation and psychopaths. Just the same, the fear I’d felt in the tunnel lingered as a twitchy anxiety. We were standing vulnerable on a major street. Could Alexi or one of his confederates be driving around? Could we be spotted by them? Or questioned by some suspicious gendarme? Had we missed my uncle? Had he come and gone? And would he find us if he hadn’t? I was on tenterhooks until I spotted slow-moving headlights. I stepped out of the shadows to the curb. Was that the van? Yes!

  “Hurry, Pavel!” I called.

  Just then lights burst on in the hallway of the Porte des Lions. Pavel jumped back from the door and leaped down the steps. The van stopped with a squeal. The passenger door opened, and Pavel and I squeezed into the front seat beside Uncle Lastings, who put the van in gear and his foot on the gas.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Uncle Lastings kept his foot down all the way to Madame Dumoulin’s village, screeching around the sharp bends of narrow French lanes and blasting through crossroads. Fortunately, it was still before dawn, and there was no traffic, although he did have to brake for the occasional string of cows being driven in for milking or to avoid early farmhands on their way to sheds and stables.

  He made us go over the events of the evening and all the questions Alexi had asked. Beyond the fact that he was looking for Inessa, I was quite hopeless.

  “I said she was with Jules, but he already knew that. And he must have known Jules’s surname, because there were stories in the press. He could easily have found out where Madame Dumoulin lives.”

  “But obviously he hadn’t found her yet. You’re sure you didn’t tell him?” my uncle demanded. He seemed to feel that I had let down the side in a big way.

  “I was semiconscious,” I said.

  My uncle was all focused and military, which gave me insight into what he had been before he embarked on frauds of one sort or another and took to changing his identity. He was a slippery character, but I hoped that his present air of decision and competence was genuine.

  Pavel proved to have far more useful information. He knew a lot about Alexi, having studied his habits right down to the make of his car and the caliber of his handgun. “He’s a night bird,” Pavel concluded.

  My uncle swore at this. The Russian would surely have a head start on us.

  “Oh, yes. If he knew where my sister was, he would go right away.”

  “And you’re sure he left?”

  “He’d hardly have stuck around after that explosion,” I said.

  “So you must have told him something useful,” Uncle Lastings insisted. “Otherwise, why didn’t he leave before?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t handle drugs.”

  My uncle started on about the folly of drinking with Pyotr then broke off abruptly to ask Pavel if he thought Alexi would go alone or take some men with him.

  Pavel thought this over and shook his head. “He told Vlad and Taras nothing except their orders. Everything was supposed to be in the service of the fucking revolution, so he would not have wanted them to know about Inessa.” Pavel bit his lip, his face white and strained. “He might have told me that she was alive. He might have told me that.”

  “He told Inessa nothing about you, either,” I said. “She knew nothing until we learned that you had come into France with Anoshkin.”

  “I will kill Anoshkin.” Pavel was assembling quite a list.

  “Get in the queue,” my uncle said.

  To my dismay, he planned to go directly to where he’d hidden Jules and Inessa. “What about Madame Dumoulin and Luc? I still don’t know where you put Jules and Inessa, but I’m guessing you told Madame Dumoulin. Alexi would figure the same.”

  “With luck, he’ll find us waiting for him,” my uncle said, as we roared around yet another sharp bend.

  “But they could be killed! Or badly hurt—whether they are willing to tell him anything or not. And if they don’t tell him right away, he could still be there. At this hour he might not even have found the house yet.”

  I kept this up until my uncle agreed. He was skeptical but cautious, first driving past the house, then, after making sure there was no one around, pulling out of sight next to the barn. I climbed over Pavel and got out, my legs shaking.

  Up the step, knock on the door. No response. It’s past four in the morning. What did you expect? Again. Nothing. I tried the handle. The door was unlocked. “Madame Dumoulin! Luc!” I called and called again. No answer, but suddenly I heard a rustling and thumping down the dark hallway. I shouted for my uncle before groping my way to the kitchen where two dark shapes lay on the floor. “Madame Dumoulin!”

  The shape moved, twitched. I felt for her face, expecting blood, but found a rag tied over her mouth. I was so nervous my fingers slipped on the knot, and I had to go to the big block of knives to get one to cut the gag. She gasped and choked and cried, “Luc! Is Luc all right?”

  He was banging his feet on the floor. Stumbling over her legs, I reached him and cut his gag. By this time Uncle Lastings and Pavel had arrived, and Pavel’s big knife made short work of the ropes that had trussed up my friends. Madame embraced Luc, who was fighting back tears, then lit the gas lamp. We saw that her face was badly bruised, both eyes blackening. Luc had a swollen lip and a nasty, oozing cut on one cheek.

  “Who did this, Madame Dumoulin?”

  She shook her head. “No one we knew. He must have gotten in through a window. I woke up and there he was. He was very strong but short with dark hair and eyes like a cat.”

  “That’s Alexi,” said Pavel. “And he carries a knife.” Automatically, he leaned down to touch his own weapon, safe again in his boot. I guessed that he had picked up quite a few habits from his ruthless protector.

  “He wanted to know where Jules was!” Madame Dumoulin’s voice was anguished.

  “Did you tell him?” My uncle’s voice was rough with anxiety.

  Poor Luc went white. “He threatened Mama,” he said, his eyes streaming. “He promised he would kill Mama.”

  “Oh, bien sur, he certainly would have,” said Pavel, who patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. “No one escapes Alexi.”

  “There is no time. We have to go. Get help from one of your neighbors,” Uncle Lastings told Madame Dumoulin.

  “And the gendarmes?” Madame asked.

  My uncle hesitated. “If we could have an hour?”

  “It will take that long to reach the station,” she said. “There is no phone except in the café and that will still be locked.”

  My uncle nodded and hurried down the hall. I hated to leave, but Madame almost pushed us out the door. “Hurry!” she said.

  We ran for the van. “The boy stays behind,” my uncle said.

  I jumped in and slammed the passenger door, but, forewarned, Pavel was too quick. As we reversed
down the drive, I heard the rear door of the van bang shut. Uncle Lastings swore but did not stop. Into first, into second, into third, we careened down the narrow road. He at last told me where we were going—a small farm nearby that Madame owned. Though a neighboring farmer leased the land, the house had recently become vacant. I’d once accompanied Jules when he collected the rents, and between the two of us, we found the place quite easily even though it was hidden behind a wall and a tall hedge. A narrow unpaved track led from the country road to the single-story stone farmhouse, quiet and private and possibly a trap.

  Uncle Lastings stopped on the shadowed verge. We stepped out to morning birdsong and rattling insects. Through the morning mist, we saw the low stone house fronted by two fine chestnut trees. Parked out front was a black car that Pavel recognized immediately as Alexi’s.

  My uncle nodded and gave the orders. “You two will stay on the perimeter. You, Pavel, just behind the gate, watch for anyone arriving. Francis, take the barn. They could be there, if—” He didn’t finish the thought and didn’t need to.

  He took out his Webley and, showing a better turn of foot than I’d expected, sprinted along the hedge so that he could approach the house from behind a pasture fence. I moved into the shadows of the chestnut trees and crouched a moment in the long, wet grass before making my way toward the barn and the stable. I’m not fond of either even under the best circumstances. Horses make my eyes water and swell up; hay riles my asthma. At that moment, I also had to resist imagined images of injury and carnage. I told myself that the car meant Alexi was still on the scene. Had anything terrible happened in the barn, he would already have decamped.

  With this in mind, I entered the open door. And sneezed volcanically. Mistake! I shrank against the cobwebby interior wall, my heart hammering, and it took a moment before I realized that the sound could not have carried to the house. I stifled another sneeze just the same before looking around. Hay was stacked to the roof on either side, but the floor between was bare, without any trace of blood or violence—or any sign of my friends.