by James Lepore
Abdullah turned out to be not just a pharmacist, but a former chemistry instructor at the American University in Beirut. In his early sixties, of medium height and build, his liquid brown eyes shone brightly from a deeply lined sunburned face: intelligent eyes that looked out above a prominent, aquiline nose and a neatly cropped black beard shot through with streaks of white and gray. His shop was spacious by souk standards, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen feet, its walls covered with shelves lined with apothecary jars filled with powders, crushed herbs, barks, twigs, and teas of all kinds, each jar bearing a white label on which its contents were neatly written in Arabic and English. In the corner near a back door was a small table with a chess board on it, its pieces arrayed in mid-game. Megan turned to study the board when Abdullah went into a back room to mix a remedy for her nausea.
“Do you play?” he asked, seeing her scrutinizing the board when he came out of his small lab.
“My uncle taught me when I was a girl,” Megan replied, “but I haven’t played in years. Are you in the middle of a game here?”
“Yes, I am:”
“Did I interrupt you?”
“No, I am playing with a former student via e-mail. I can see the board on my screen, but I like to feel the pieces and to look at the board as I work. Would you like to play? I can easily play two games at once:”
“You mean now?”
“We can set a board up now, and then you will have to stop back so we can continue. I am busy with my shop, and so a move every few days is a good pace for me:”
“I won’t be much of an opponent:”
“Do you remember the basic moves?”
“I think so:”
“Then I will refresh your memory and we will proceed from there:”
Megan smiled. The man in the gray djellaba and thick sandals standing before her was her entree into the real life of Sidi Moumim. She had in fact turned on the tape recorder hidden in her bag the moment she entered the shop. But perhaps courtly Abdullah, with his old-world ways, was something else. Perhaps he would turn out to be a friend, as Abdel al-Lahani had turned out not to be. It struck Megan that she was lonely, something she could not remember feeling since she was a child and her father was away, always away, for months that seemed like years, like eternities at the time.
“How shall I address you?” she asked, meeting and holding his gaze, telling him with her eyes that she respected him and was grateful for his offer.
“Abdullah will be fine:”
“Not Professor?”
“No.”
“May I ask, Abdullah, are you Muslim?” Through a small window behind the chess table, Megan had seen three men kneeling on faded wool mats in a dusty courtyard, praying, their foreheads touching the ground.“I thought I heard the call to prayer:”
“I am a Coptic Christian:”
“Ah. Iraqi?”
“No, Syrian:”
“Can you worship here?”
“You cannot stop a man from worshiping, even if there are no churches:”
“Yes, I will play,” Megan said. And we will talk.
~13~
LISIEUX, JANUARY 5, 2004
Pale winter sunlight slanted down on Pat and Catherine as they walked under the striped awnings of a row of shops and cafes on the perimeter of Lisieux’s main plaza. To the east, in the direction of the rising sun, was a series of low hills. On the nearest of these hills stood the Basilica of St. Thérèse, its oddly pointed white domes still in shadow as they reached heavenward. Next to it was the Carmelite convent that housed a group of cloistered nuns and a grandchild whose existence Pat could not quite grasp as real. It was a Sunday morning and, other than townspeople making their way in twos and threes to early mass, the plaza was empty. Ahead, near one of the small fountains that marked the corners of the square, Pat saw a girl selling flowers. Her raven-black hair shining in the sun, the girl stood placidly as the churchgoers passed her without a glance. His prior encounter with the pale and exotic flower girl on the Rue des Fleurs came back to Pat—she told me you would come. You must go to her—as he took Catherine’s arm with a sudden urgency and led her toward the fountain.
“Bonjour, Monsieur, Madame,” the girl said as they approached.
“Bonjour,” Pat replied.“Comment allez-vous... how are you?”
“I am well. Peaceful:”
“Peaceful?”
“Yes, Sunday mornings are very peaceful. When the bells ring the doves leave the church spires and come down here for me to feed them:”
Turning to Catherine, Pat said,“This young lady sold flowers to Megan last week. I met her the other day, just before you and I met, actually.” And then to the girl: “Do you remember me?”
“Yes, Monsieur. I knew you would come to Lisieux:”
Pat did not answer. He stared at the girl. She was very young and yet seemed as composed as a saint. Indeed, it struck Pat that her eyes, deep-set, dark, and glowing, were very much like the eyes of the image of St. Thérèse—the Little Flower—on the prayer card that the girl had given him in Paris.
“Your daughter is in danger, Monsieur,” said the girl.
“How do you know this?” Catherine asked, the sharpness in her voice jolting Pat out of his small reverie.
“And the child, too,” the girl said.
“Where is my daughter?” Pat asked.
“You must ask the Little Flower, Monsieur. She will lead you to her:”
“My child;” said Catherine, her voice now under control, “how do you know Monsieur’s daughter is in danger?”
“I must go, Madame, Monsieur,” said the girl, turning and bending to gather the half dozen bouquets of red, pink, and yellow roses laid out on the fountain’s sandstone ledge.“Please do not follow me, I beg of you.” The bouquets clutched to her chest, she turned and walked away, stepping softly but purposefully, turning out of sight onto a winding street that led from the plaza up the hill in the direction of the basilica and the convent.
They did follow, Catherine pulling Pat by the arm this time, but when they reached the winding street, a cobblestone alley, really, with precarious-looking balconies hanging on either side, the girl was out of sight—around a bend or into one of the yellow brick three-story apartment buildings that lined the street. They continued, stopping to gaze around a small plaza midway up the hill. At the top, the alley gave way to a brick sidewalk that bordered a half stone/half wrought-iron fence that enclosed a long, school-like building dominated at its midpoint by an ornate stone cupola standing on four columns. In an enclosure in the cupola stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, her arms slightly akimbo, beseeching those below to come to her. On the stone lintel above the front door were etched the words Carmel Lisieux.
“We’re here,” said Pat.
“Yes, so we are, and right on time,” Catherine replied, glancing at her watch.“We will search for the girl afterward. Perhaps she is known in the convent:”
Their appointment with Mother Marie de Ganzague, the prioress of the convent, was for ten o’lock, which was announced by the first notes of the Angelis coming from the bell tower of the basilica looming above them to their right. Catherine had called in her official capacity the evening before to arrange for the meeting. They had slept at the house in Rambouillet, leaving at eight for the hundred-mile drive to Lisieux, a town of some forty thousand people located in Normandy, not far from the famous beaches of D-day.
Mother Marie’s office on the first floor was small, simple, and without decoration except for a wood-and-bronze crucifix on one wall, a picture of St. Thérèse on another, and a liturgical calendar on another. Light entered from the window behind the prioress’s desk, a window that gave a view into what appeared to Pat to be a shaded and very quiet courtyard. Mother Marie, seventy or so, wore the same flowing and hooded black habit and snowy white square neckpiece as the other nuns Pat and Catherine had seen going about their business on their way in. On the desk in front of the prioress was a white, business-sized
envelope, which she fingered as introductions were made and Catherine’s credentials displayed.
“Mother,” said Catherine when they were all seated, she and Pat facing the aged nun in straight-backed wooden chairs, “as I told you yesterday on the phone, we are searching for a child that we think was brought here on December 24—and for his mother as well. Monsieur is the child”s grandfather. His daughter is the mother. Was there such a child? Is he here?”
The prioress did not answer at first, but continued to lightly lift and replace the envelope, tapping it once or twice on her wooden desktop. Her slender hands had retained some of the feminine delicacy of her youth despite the redness and roughness that were the inevitable consequence of many years of manual labor. Her lined face was dominated by a bumpy and pronounced nose, but Pat could see kindness in her eyes—and something that looked like sadness—as she glanced from the envelope to him.
“We found an infant on our front doorstep on Christmas morning, Monsieur, a boy. It was dead, Monsieur, I am sorry to have to tell you:”
“Dead?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
She left it outside overnight, Pat thought. After all the trouble of delivering the baby by a strange midwife, caring for it, taking it on the train to Lisieux, she leaves it outside to freeze to death! He thought he was inured to Megan’s habit of giving and then taking away, but here it was again, more painful than ever before.
“Was it from the cold?” Catherine asked.“Exposure?”
“Yes, that appears to be the case:”
“Were the police called?”
“Yes. They were here. The coroner found no foul play. He issued a death certificate the next day. We named the child Louis after the father of St. Thérèse, He is buried in our cemetery.”
“How old was the child?” Catherine asked.
“It appeared to be newborn, perhaps a day or two days old:”
“What’s in the envelope?” Pat asked.
Slipping her fingers into the envelope, Mother Marie extracted a worn silver ring, its outer edges beveled and etched with a delicate filigree, and placed it on the desk. Pat picked it up, looked at it for a moment, and then put it back down.
“That’s the ring I gave my wife when we were married;” he said. ”I gave it to Megan—my daughter—on her sixteenth birthday. She never took it off.”
After saying this, Pat looked down at the ringless second finger of his left hand. He showed no emotion, keeping his hand steady as images of his youth and lost love—his prior life, never very deep beneath the surface—flashed across his mind’s eye.
“We found it on a string around the baby’s neck,” Mother Marie said, breaking the silence.“And this we found also, wrapped in the child’s blanket.” She handed Pat a St. Thérèse of Lisieux prayer card, identical to the one the flower girl had given him in Paris. Pat took the card and turned it over, where he saw that a portion of the traditional prayer to the Little Flower had been highlighted in yellow: “... in your unfailing intercession I place my confident trust ...” Across the margin at the bottom was written, in Megan’s hand, M. François Duval, 33 Rue de Matisse, Paris. He handed it to Catherine, who read it and then asked Mother Marie, “Did the police see this card?”
“Yes.”
“Did they contact Monsieur Duval?”
“That I do not know.”
“One last thing, Mother. We are looking for a girl, twelve or thirteen years old. We saw her selling flowers in the plaza this morning. She has dark hair and soft features, like a much younger child. Do you know her? Can you help us find her?”
“We are cloistered here, Madame. We rarely leave the convent and its grounds. It seems odd, though, to be selling flowers outdoors in the middle of the winter. I do not know the girl you describe, I am sorry.”
Pat and Catherine spent an hour looking for the flower girl, in the plaza and up and down the dozen or so streets that fed into it, without success. None of the people they talked to, mostly shopkeepers, knew the girl. There seemed to be no doubt that Megan had confided in the child and then made a point of mentioning her in her false suicide note. If that was some kind of a clue or a lead, it wasn’t much to go on, for how could she possibly expect that Pat would find the girl in Paris, a city of two million people? It seemed absurd that the child and Megan had joined forces, yet the girl seemed to know that Megan was not dead at a time when Pat thought she surely was. And the child, too, she said this morning, was in danger. She was wrong on that score, but nevertheless she seemed to know more about Megan’s plight, whatever it was, than anyone in France, in or out of law enforcement. He would have liked to continue the search, but at Catherine’s urging they pushed on. The DST, she said, could be a powerful foe when it was moved to act. It would have little trouble locating Catherine if it put its mind to it. They headed for the one place she would be known to surely go, yet for that very reason possibly the safest bet—Uncle Daniel’s windswept, cliffside farmhouse only an hour away. They would arrive at night to his lonely place virtually at land’s end. He would conceal them, lie if approached by the authorities, advise them on their search for Megan. From there, they could plan their next step, wait to hear from Doro, and, if necessary, flee the short fifty miles across the channel to England, an outing—also under the cover of night—that Catherine deemed not at all unlikely.
~14~
PARIS, JANUARY 5, 2004
“Charles?”
“Yes, Mustafa, good morning:”
“Good morning. You are at work early.”
“Yes.”
“Here it is midnight:”
“You are working late:”
“Yes, I have just spoken to Onyx. He is worried that we are losing valuable time, as am I. It has been a full day since the raid in Courbevoie. Where is Detective Laurence?”
“Yes, I understand. I am looking for her.”
“We would like to help:”
Charles Raimondi did not answer. Had Catherine Laurence deliberately fed him wrong information? He could hardly believe it to be so. Yet the house she identified in Courbevoie had obviously not been inhabited for months. And the neighbors knew nothing of a beautiful American blonde. And Laurence was missing, along with Patrick Nolan. Helping his Saudi friends snatch Megan Nolan was one thing, aiding in chasing down Laurence, a French citizen, a decorated policewoman who might be innocent, was another.
“Do you object, Charles?”
“No, but there are other considerations. Where is Onyx now?”
“In Paris, waiting to hear from me:”
“I will call you back:”
“Charles, the body in Volney park was one of Onyx’s men:”
“One of Onyx’s?”
“Yes, we think Detective Laurence killed him. She also took his ID.”
“I wasn’t told this:”
“I’m telling you now. Your Detective Laurence must be found immediately, and we would like to help:”
“She could easily have left the country.”
“Yes, but if she stayed in France, where would she go?”
“Her uncle lives on Cap de la Hague in Normandy. He is her only relative. I was about to send someone there:”
“Let us do it, Charles. Chances are she is with Mr. Nolan. We just want to be the first to speak to them. We will then turn them over to you. The Moroccans have entrusted this to us. We would like to deliver. If Miss Nolan was involved in the Casa bombings, think of the repercussions. An American, Charles. A US citizen. The cowboy Bush would be brought down a peg or two, would he not? Humiliated, perhaps. You will get credit for a brilliant operation, and your government as well:”
“What was Laurence doing in Volney park?”
“We think she was following Nolan, as she was ordered to do:”
“What happened?”
“Onyx’s men were following him as well. Their orders were to intervene if he threatened Laurence. As I have said, we think he is erratic, a dangerous person. He spotted one of th
e operatives and attacked him. Laurence intervened and one was shot. The other got away.”