The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure

by Bill Jones Jr.

  “I think it’s damned suspicious.”

  “Oui.” She turned off her computer without shutting it down first. That made me wince. The woman doesn’t even say goodbye to computers. “And so, we will find Rudenko and ask him ourselves,” she said.

  I almost didn’t hear her because I was wondering if she’d just lost us that file. After I shook that thought loose, I looked at her long and hard, with her sharp chin still jutting at me like a French landmark. “That sounds like a plan, Dr. Dark.”

  “I think I like it better when you call me baby.”

  It took me a few moments to remember that little reference from the previous night’s adventure. Dr. Dark’s sharp memory had me wondering exactly how drunk she actually was back in our hotel. Like I said before, she was my kind of crazy.

  ***

  We were sightseeing, via taxi, on one of Vienna’s main streets. I was enamored with the city’s combination of old and new, with seventeenth-century architecture rising alongside twentieth-century glass and steel infrastructure. Our driver, dressed primly in slacks and a tie, was pointing out how city dwellers cherished the old structures of their buildings, choosing to modernize the interiors while leaving the exteriors largely intact. My home base in D.C. tried to do that, but economics and poorly maintained facilities often limited the reconstruction to saving a few facades while constructing a new building around it with cheaper materials. Our cabbie lamented the “modernist crap” and glass structures that led to our small hotel, saying all post-war construction was shit relative to the glorious history of the older spaces. Being something of a student of history myself, I nodded, awed by the duality of old Wien, which managed to seem to be straddling three centuries all at once. Even more than the structures, I was impressed that our Viennese cab driver spoke better English than American cabbies back home.

  After checking into our room, which featured two twin beds and paper-thin walls, we set out to find a place to eat. By this point I’d given up on setting my partner up in a separate room, since she ended up in mine anyway. I’d begun to suspect the woman had night terrors. More than once on this trip she’d awakened me in the throes of some nightmare. Once back on the streets, with me feeling foolishly Cosmopolitan from touring my second major European city in a week, we decided to do some proper sightseeing. I’d seen a shitload of the world cities compared to most people, but those were generally while in the employ of the military. Contrary to what people think, most work travel is boring beyond reason. If you’re lucky, you get to grab a few vistas from a rushing cab between the hotel and a work site or en route from the airport. Most of the sights I’d seen, in war zones or worse, I’d rather have been blind to. Dark was far more traveled than I, but had the enthusiasm of a kid in the playground now that we were back on more-familiar European soil. She had a little Fuji camera that she used to stop us every thirty seconds to take another photo of Viennese architecture. I amused myself by watching her get pissed off as I photo-bombed her shot every chance I got. A half-hour and three half-hearted slaps across my head later, we found ourselves having lunch just outside of a thousand-year-old church, the second church of that age I’d visited in a week. Back in the States, the only thing you could find that old were Native American villages out west and a few Redwood trees in California. No wonder Europeans treated us Americans like the unkempt neighbors who just bought that fancy new house on the block. We followed lunch by taking tram rides that covered much of the city, hopping off and on at Dark’s whim. My partner was in full tourist mode by then, striking up conversations with strangers with ease. I counted discussions in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and what I guessed was Urdu but which she told me later was “pigeon Hindi.”

  I asked her, “Exactly how many languages do you speak?”

  She said, “I don’t know. How many are there?” I would have taken that answer as truth had she not laughed. “I only speak eight well enough to have conversations,” she said, adding that Russian and rudimentary Arabic also made her list. She used the words only and eight in the same sentence without a trace of irony. I was in awe, since high school French and the rudiments of German I remembered from my youth were as far as I’d ever gone with a foreign language. I swore the woman was blushing, the first bit of overt modesty I’d seen in her. She didn’t brag, normally, but neither was she shy about showing her stuff. She couldn’t afford to be. In her line of work, there was a tendency to diminish her intellectual capabilities and other gifts as though they were some sort of parlor trick or paranormal sorcery. Maybe the old men who ruled our roost believed there was some sort of brain-dampening device embedded in the uterus that kept women, especially pretty ones, from being smart. During my career, I’d learned precisely the opposite was true. The truth was that Dark’s real gift was in having the highest IQ in the room, any room, by a sizeable margin. I didn’t know her IQ and Dark scoffed at the idea of quantifiable intelligence, but I suspected that if she were to be tested, her score would start with the number two and not a one. While the idea that humans only use ten percent of their brains is a ridiculous myth, if Dark had dialed hers down to ten percent, she’d still be ahead of Hardesty and Samuels. What I’d initially believed was the bristly personality of a socially challenged eccentric was actually her mimicking alpha male behavior in order to be recognized as an equal. Dark was a lot of things, but equal wasn’t one of them. If I were she, I’d punch anyone in the face who called me an equal.

  Here in Vienna, with no pressure and no awaiting judgments, quite a different Jeanne Dark was emerging. She was chatty, energetic, funny, and as enthusiastic regarding the history and architecture of the city as a schoolgirl—provided that girl had coopted Leonardo da Vinci’s brain and garnered PhDs in damned near everything. By the time we stopped for a four-course seafood dinner, we’d seen almost everything a first-timer could hope to see in the city and Jeanne had photographed most of it. What we hadn’t seen, however, was a single second of detective work. We’d done nothing but goof off. The entire day was a test set up by my partner. To my deep ire, it ended precisely as she’d predicted. At nine o’clock Vienna time, mid-afternoon back in Washington, we got our expected call from Hardesty. It was a short chat, starting with his telling me they’d gotten confirmation our suspect had fled to Africa. I asked where in Africa, but was told, “That’s need-to-know info only.” After that, the only thing left for him to say was that our trip back to the U.S. was authorized as was one night in Vienna. After that, we were to “hold off on more charging regarding the contract” until further notice. In short, we were being terminated.

  When I hung up, Dark was scanning the restaurant, looking at the décor and other patrons like a kid with new eyes. She wore no glasses. The wait staff had dimmed the lights solely for her once they learned about her trouble with bright lights. It was her new favorite place. “This fish is amazing,” she said, taking a bite. “They don’t have this in America, do they?” I confirmed that they did not. “Here, try it.” She stuck a forkful in my mouth. It was good enough that for a moment I considered getting in the fish importing business if Hardesty was about to dry up my government work. Dark shook me out of my musing with her next question. “He didn’t ask why we’ve done no work here did he?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “It seems to me if two contractors take a sightseeing trip to Austria on the U.S. government’s dollar, someone would care.”

  “Seems to me they would too.”

  “And our contact here didn’t ask where we were?”

  I shrugged. “Hardesty didn’t even mention her. It looks like you were right. The whole point of this trip was to get us out of the UK as soon as possible.”

  She nodded. “And if he’d just tried to send us back home without a cover story?”

  “I’d never have believed him and would have dug in deeper.” I felt my jaw clench. “He’s known me long enough to know that too.”

  “Which means we have at least two more names
for our suspect list.”

  “Two?”

  “Oui, M. Hardesty and your other girlfriend, Monica Samuels.”

  I frowned at her. “Why Samuels?”

  She poked out her lips and shrugged. “Was it she who confirmed Rudenko had left Scotland or my friend Hakim? Did you get a call from her telling you to get your butt on a plane to Africa?” I shook my head. She certainly had not. Samuels was suddenly invisible. Dark lifted her wine goblet and clinked it against mine. “Good thing we already planned our trip to Morocco then,” she said. “Otherwise, what would we do tomorrow?”

  “I know, right? Especially since we’re only authorized one night here in Vienna.”

  “A pity. I would love to have gone skiing while we’re here.”

  “You ski?”

  “Non, silly, my hip is too bad for that. I was hoping to ride on your back.”

  “You must want to get both of us killed.” I laughed and lifted my glass to her again. “Drink up. I’m not sure we can get liquor where we’re going.”

  “Oui. Why can’t suspects flee to places with better accommodations, like St. Maarten? It’s lovely in late November.”

  “Yeah, psycho-polonium-poisoning terrorists are so inconsiderate.” I toasted her.

  “Cheers,” she said, then took a sip, holding eye contact with me all the while.

  “You going to tell me how you know Weasel’s in Casablanca?”

  “I prayed to Ingrid Bergman and she told me.” I tried not to laugh at her stupid joke. She laughed hard enough for both of us anyway. “Danni mentioned Seize Mai, 16 May. There was a pretty big terrorist attack in Casablanca on 16 May 2003. Thirty-three people were killed and over one hundred injured. I thought the group’s name might be a reference to that. Then, when Danni said his brother might be my twin, I knew he was referring to Casablanca. Casablanca is Paris’s twin city.”

  “You got all that from that brief interchange?”

  She pointed her chin at me. “Danni wanted to connect with me. I think it gave her comfort. Besides, even if it’s not true, I can’t wait to go to Casablanca. I have the perfect hat for it.” She stole my hat and placed it on her head. “In the meantime, this one will have to do.”

  “Are you ever going to let me wear my granddad’s hat?”

  “Oui. When you are finally a man. You can help me push the beds together tonight if that will help speed up your development.” She winked at me. “Sadly, we will need separate rooms when we get to Morocco, so as not to draw undue attention to ourselves. It is liberal, but still an Islamic country and we must respect its beliefs. I hope you don’t miss me too much, but, alas, one cannot be French all the time.”

  “Lady, you are playing with fire.”

  She leaned across the table and pinched my cheek. “Oh, don’t worry, Monsieur Foss, I won’t burn you.” She bit into the last of her fish, eating it with a disagreeably wide grin on her face. One of us was crazy. For the first time, I was no longer certain which one.

  14 - Casablanca

  Two days later, we were tucked away in my room in a six-story baroque hotel near Casablanca’s center. It was a decent enough place, although the whitewash used on the exterior had begun to fade in the Mediterranean climate giving it a grimy appearance that the fifty-foot palm trees couldn’t hide. The hotel’s name was in Arabic, but Dark told me it roughly translated as The Palm. We had a small balcony that Dark was using to catch some of the brisk morning air and bright sun while she paced in a four-foot circle and watched her cigarette burn to the filter. She’d had that pack for a week, had smoked half, and I’d counted all of three inhalations total. I was on the phone, being yelled at by Kevin Hardesty who’d all but threatened to send a DEVGRU team—which is what the former SEAL Team Six component is actually called—to extricate us from the hotel. I was calm, mainly because I knew a couple of guys from that group and they were more likely to take out a turd like Hardesty than me. Besides, my brother used to be one of those Special Warfare types. I’d learned a few tricks from him myself, and I’d have given Dark and me even odds against anyone storming the hotel. This wasn’t England, so I’d spent most of the previous day securing weapons in a seedy shantytown of rectangular buildings that looked to have been constructed out of partly demolished homes and whatever spare bricks, stone, and spittle that could be scrounged up.

  After an hour of pointless ranting, Hardesty had convinced me he thought everyone in Northern Africa was potentially part of a Muslim plot. I’d have considered that racist, but the man thought pretty much the same about everyone in North America too. To his reckoning, our little Seize Mai contingent was no more than a fingerprint away from an ISIS plot. It’s one thing to be a racist. It’s another wholly indigestible trait to be despicable simply because no one ever taught you not to be a schmuck. Kevin Hardesty was a schmuck.

  “Cain, you and your partner are interfering in a United States Government Operation.” I was no synesthete like Dark, but I could hear the capital letters in that declaration. I almost saluted out of habit.

  “Boss, I keep telling you, we aren’t working on or interfering with your case in any way. Rather than come back home, me and Dark took a holiday in beautiful Casablanca. You should be happy, since I’m paying for our flights back instead of the government.”

  He bellowed some epithets that I was glad Dark couldn’t hear through the glass door. He went silent then, except for slurping on what had to be his tenth cup of Joe of the day. Actually, it was a Starbucks Tall Latte Mocha Something-or-Other, but I was in Casablanca and found myself channeling Bogart’s Rick Blaine. To me, Hardesty was no longer my obese Government COR, he was Kev Hardass, my stout Fed Bureau Chief, sipping on his cuppa Joe and trying bring his rogue agent, namely me, in line. I sort of sympathized with the poor sap, especially since he was knee-deep in a D.C. snowstorm while we were luxuriating in a Mediterranean clime and I knew there was nothing he could do about our actions short of creating an international incident by sending the troops into a friendly country.

  “Cain, for the last time, tell me the truth. What the fuck are you doing in Casa, and how the hell did you know to go there? If you have someone here leaking you TS-SCI info, friend or not, I will have your ass and theirs.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. I had zero idea to that point that the man considered me his friend. I can be as stubborn an ass as anyone, but I’m a sucker when it comes to loyalty. I’d started to fold just as Dark reentered the room. “Kevin, I promise, no one on the inside told us anything. Dark figured it out from some clues that Danni Rudenko dropped us.”

  “Oh là là là là,” Dark said, throwing up her hands.

  “What clues?” Hardesty asked. I gave Dark the hush sign, received the fuck-you sign in return, and then recapitulated the highlights of our interview with Danni, while my partner stood scowling at the phone with her arms crossed. When I’d finished, Hardesty said, “You’re in central Casablanca based on that meager information?”

  I looked at Dark who called Hardesty something that sounded unconscionably harsh in German before stalking out the room’s front door. “I will see you downstairs,” she said and slammed the door behind her. That made me reconsider. She flat out didn’t trust him; friend or no, if Dark was suspicious then I needed to tread lightly.

  “Cain, did you hear me?”

  “No, sorry. Dark just stuck her head in to tell me we have an appointment.”

  “I was saying that I don’t know how that woman does it, but she hit the nail on the head. Tell her I said she can work for me anytime.” His voice dropped. “Provided, that is, you can clear up that other matter we talked about.”

  “Yeah, about that other matter. That’s, um, why we’re here. Like you said, her great-grandmother was a Vichy. What better place to start investigating Vichy Frenchwomen but Casablanca?”

  Hardesty said nothing for a long time. Finally, he spoke. “Okay, Cain, if that’s how you’re playing it, I’ll play along too. But if you and Dark happene
d to be doing a little photography in the neighborhood of the Hassan II Mosque and happened to stumble upon one Mr. Yusuf al-Gharnati, just remember you’re working on your own case and not for me. I’m sure he’d have interesting suggestions about places to photograph, if she had a camera, that is.” He slurped in my ear making me wince. “Not that I think you’d ever stoop to taking a purely sightseeing trip anywhere when you should be holding an investigation.”

  “Um, no, of course not.”

  “Good, that’s good to know. So, if you meet Mr. Gharnati, be sure not to tell him I said hello.”

  “Got it. I’ll be sure not to do that. In fact, we never even had this conversation.”

  “Right. Call me in two days, noon my time, and we won’t have another one then either.”

  We hung up and I headed downstairs. To my surprise, my partner was seated at the café on the street, enjoying the shade of nearby palms, sipping a coffee, and nibbling around a pastry. She offered me a piece. “Did he give you a contact’s name?” she asked.

  “Yeah, how’d you … never mind.” The woman is a spook. That was all I needed to know.

  “So what did he say?

  “We need to meet a man at a mosque. Do you have your camera with you?”

  She pulled it out of her bag. “Oui, of course. Why?”

  “Something Hardesty said. I got the feeling he knew exactly what we were doing in Vienna.”

  “You think he’s been having us followed?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Hmm, seems like M. Hardesty is on track two.” I asked for an explanation and got my usual response. “I’ll tell you when I am certain.” She reached into a bag near her feet and pulled out a hat, painstakingly affixing it to her head at about a thirty-degree angle with respect to her eyes. It was light green, the same color as her long skirt and vest, with a metallic-green, silk ribbon that circled its crown. She looked up at me, slowly, and smiled, as if some invisible movie director had called for a backlit close-up.