The rug dealer ignored the photograph and focused on Thomas. He spoke in a quiet voice, but his words carried unmistakable authority.
“As you can see,” he said, “I am a tradesman. I sell rugs. Why do you think I would know her?”
“They are friends from the Sorbonne,” Ajit explained before Thomas could speak. “Mister Thomas hasn’t seen her in some time.”
“Do you not have a telephone?” the rug dealer replied. “Or the Internet? Surely, a man educated at the Sorbonne would know how to contact a friend.”
“We lost touch,” Thomas said. “All I know is that she is in Paris.”
The rug dealer narrowed his eyes and thought about this. At last he seemed to relent. He drew the photograph close to his face and squinted at it through his glasses. He blinked a couple of times and then looked at Thomas again, less skeptical than curious.
“What if she does not want to see you?”
“Does that mean you know where she is?” Thomas asked.
The rug dealer stared at him for a long moment before nodding. “I have seen a girl who looks like this.”
As soon as the old man spoke the words, Thomas’s hope took flight. “Is she nearby?” he inquired, trying to control his enthusiasm.
The rug dealer took another look at the photograph and waggled his head. He exchanged a few words with Ajit in Hindi and then vanished into the storage room.
Ajit spoke: “Prabodhan-dada says this girl is working at a restaurant in the Eighteenth. He asks that you not mention him.”
“Of course,” Thomas agreed. “How do I get there?”
Ajit gave him a beaming smile. “I will take you, Mister Thomas.”
Thomas followed Ajit to the Metro station at Château d’Eau. They bought tickets and hopped aboard the northbound train. At Barbès Rochechouart, Ajit stepped onto the platform and led Thomas through the disorienting swirl of the crowd. Exiting the station, Ajit walked east on Boulevard de la Chapelle and took a left up a narrow cobblestone lane. He headed for the glass facade of an Indian restaurant. The restaurant was closed, but Thomas could see a dark-skinned man sitting at a table at one of the booths.
Ajit asked Thomas for the photograph and knocked on the window. The man turned around, clearly irritated by the interruption. He stood and came to the door.
“Bonjour,” Ajit said, preempting the man’s question. He showed the man Sita’s photograph, and the two of them held an animated conversation in Hindi. Eventually the man shook his head and closed the door.
“What did he say?” Thomas asked.
“He would not answer many questions,” Ajit said. “He was not friendly.”
“Did he say anything about the photograph?”
“He said the girl worked here once, but she is gone.”
Thomas took a sharp breath, feeling certain he was close. He studied the restaurant and then walked back down the cobbled lane to Boulevard de la Chapelle. Ajit followed without a word. On the corner was a tourist shop empty of customers. Thomas stepped inside and made his way to the cashier—a young woman with spiked hair and a spider tattoo on her neck. Thomas showed her Sita’s picture and gestured toward the restaurant down the lane, explaining the situation in French.
The cashier shook her head, looking bored. “It is not the same girl.”
Thomas felt a surge of frustration. “How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“A man told me he saw her there,” Thomas argued. “He was pretty certain about it.”
The cashier put her hands on the counter and leaned toward him. “I don’t care who told you what; it’s not the same girl.” She paused and her face softened slightly. “Look, I’m an artist, okay? I sketch people in the park. This girl,” she said, pointing toward the picture, “has lighter skin than the girl who works at the restaurant. And the girl in the restaurant has a cleft chin, a wider forehead, and a mole beside her nose. I ate there not long ago. The food was awful, but I remember her well.”
The cashier’s certainty struck at the heart of Thomas’s confidence. “The man at the restaurant says she doesn’t work there anymore,” he said. “He didn’t want to talk about her. Any idea why that would be?”
The cashier smirked. “Oh, she still works there. I saw her this morning. She’s probably illegal, like half the immigrants in this city.”
Thomas left the tourist shop, feeling depressed. The rug dealer’s lead had seemed so promising. Then he remembered the old man’s eyeglasses. He didn’t see her, he thought to himself. He saw a distortion of her.
He stood on the corner and faced Ajit. “I appreciate all your help.”
Ajit saw his dejection and tried to cheer him up. “Do you like Indian cuisine, Mister Thomas?”
“Yes,” Thomas replied, trying to be gracious.
“My wife makes the best tandoori chicken in France. If you come to my restaurant, I will ask if she has seen your friend.”
“I’ll think about it,” Thomas said, having no intention of doing so. He put out his hand to end the conversation, and Ajit shook it, looking crestfallen.
“Come to my restaurant,” Ajit said. “I promise you will not regret it.”
Thomas took the Metro back to the Fifth and strolled south along the wide promenade of Boulevard Saint-Michel. He entered the east gate of the Luxembourg Gardens just as the sun was descending toward the trees to the southwest. He walked across the plaza to the Luxembourg palace and took a seat near the fountain. Unless Julia’s contact at the BRP came up with something, he was out of live options. He could pound the pavement for weeks, casing different neighborhoods in the city and accosting every Parisian with a pulse, but he would almost certainly come up empty. The odds of success were overwhelmingly against him.
When the sunlight faded into afterglow, he left the gardens by the side gate, heading for his hotel. His BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket.
“Hey, Julia,” he answered when he saw the number on the screen.
“Sorry for the delay,” she said. “Our friend at the BRP just spoke with an envoy at the French embassy in Mumbai. The envoy promised to contact the CBI tomorrow.”
Thomas took this in. “The wheels of justice grind slowly.”
“Apparently. Did you have any luck this afternoon?”
“None whatsoever,” he replied. He gave her a brief summary of meeting Ajit and chasing down the rug dealer’s erroneous tip.
Julia sighed. “I keep thinking what a shame it is that the Bombay police let Navin go. If we had his uncle’s name, I could do wonders on our computer system.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Thomas replied.
After a moment, she asked, “Do you have any plans for the evening?
I know a fabulous Moroccan place on Isle St. Louis.”
Thomas was about to accept when he was struck by an idea. He recalled the advice of Jean-Pierre Léon: “I’d ask women and children, especially South Asians.” And Ajit’s invitation: “My wife makes the best tandoori chicken in France…. I will ask if she has seen your friend.” He knew it was a shot in the dark, but it was better than waiting around for the BRP to produce a lead that might never come.
“I’d love to,” he said, “but right now I’m craving a little Indian food.”
Julia pondered this. “Does that mean you have a hunch?”
“I’d call it a wild guess. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“All right, I’m game. Tell me where to meet you and when.”
Thomas smiled. “Eight o’clock at Porte St. Denis. We can walk from there.”
Chapter 20
Yield not to calamity, but face it boldly.
—VIRGIL
Paris, France
After Uncle-ji and Aunti-ji left the flat with the travel documents, Tatiana returned to the sitting room. “Come,” she said to Sita. “Work to do.”
Sita followed her up the stairs to the library. Tatiana gave her the dust rag, and she spent two hours dusting books, her mind consumed by the mor
ning meeting. Nothing made sense. When Navin had sold her to Uncle-ji, she had expected that she would work in the restaurant for a long time, perhaps years. But then Navin had showed up again and everything had changed. Uncle-ji had hidden her in the closet and handed her over to Vasily and Tatiana, and he and Vasily had made some sort of travel arrangement. She wished she had looked more closely at the airline tickets.
At midday Tatiana brought her a baguette sandwich. After she ate, Tatiana led her to Vasily’s office on the third floor of the flat. Sita had cleaned the office twice in the past weeks, and each time it had made her skin crawl.
“Clean fast,” Tatiana said. “He come home in one hour.”
When Sita was alone, she took out her dust rag and went over the desk. She stared for a long moment at the flat-screen monitors, worrying that any vibration might jar them awake. She moved on to the circular window and the filing cabinet. She made quick work of these and looked around for something else to clean. She noticed that the closet door at the back of the room wasn’t closed completely. She could see a pile of boxes through the crack along the doorframe. She hesitated, but her curiosity got the better of her.
She opened the door and stared at the boxes. They were banker’s boxes, at least a dozen of them. She opened the top box and saw that it was full of paper. She extracted the top page. It was a bank statement for an account in Geneva, Switzerland. Vasily’s name was not listed anywhere on the document. The statement was in French, but the figures didn’t require translation. The balance in the account was over five million euros. Sita took a deep breath and pictured Natalia and Ivanna and the other girls. Whatever Vasily and Dmitri were up to, their business had made them very wealthy.
She replaced the account statement exactly as it had been and backed out of the closet. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a small hook lodged in the wall beside the door jamb. On the hook was a ring with three keys. Sita looked around the room for a lock that would fit the keys, but she didn’t see anything. Apart from the computer system and the desk and filing cabinet, the room was bare.
She thought about the layout of the house. The front door could be opened only by using a numerical keypad. She knew the six-digit code to the door because she had seen Dmitri enter it twice a day. The double doors to the street also had a keypad. The code was different, but she knew it, too. At first she had thought she might use the codes to escape, but the more she had considered it, the less attractive the idea had seemed. To slip out undetected would take sheer luck, and if she failed, she was certain the reprisals would be swift and severe.
She thought next of the internal doors. The door to the basement room where she had found Natalia had a bolt that could be locked by hand from the hallway. The door to the laundry room had no lock. Her bedroom door had a lock, but she realized that she hadn’t given much thought to it in the past few days. Her sudden and inexplicable move from the restaurant to Vasily’s flat had left her disoriented, and the night traffic of Dmitri and the girls had turned that disorientation into fear.
She closed her eyes and tried to recall as much about the bedroom door as she could. Tatiana always locked the door from the outside, and she remembered hearing a sliding sound when Tatiana said goodnight. It might have been the insertion of a key. Still, a keyhole on the outside of the door wouldn’t do her any good unless it was mirrored on the inside. She thought harder, but the area around the knob remained blurry.
She looked at the keys and made up her mind. She took the ring off the hook just as she heard Tatiana coming up the stairs. Secreting the keys in her sari, she closed the closet door just so. When Tatiana appeared, she was dusting the desk again. The keys were cold against her skin, but she took comfort in them. Whatever Vasily and Uncle-ji had planned for her tomorrow, she had at least one more night in the flat.
And with the night came possibilities.
That evening, Sita helped Ivanna serve the family dinner. When the dishes were cleared and the kitchen clean, Tatiana escorted Sita to her room and wished her good night. She closed the door and locked it from the outside. Sita held her breath and looked toward the doorknob.
There was a keyhole!
She waited until Tatiana’s footsteps receded down the hallway before withdrawing the keys from the folds of her sari. She placed her ear against the door and listened for a full minute to make sure no one was within earshot.
When all was quiet, she took the first key and slid it into the deadbolt. The key didn’t turn. She tried the second key. It, too, met resistance. Her heartbeat increased. She held the third key and twisted it in the lock, praying it would turn.
It did!
The key swiveled softly from the vertical to the horizontal position, and she heard the bolt disengage. It was hard to believe it could be so easy. She twisted the key in the opposite direction and reset the bolt. She knew now that she could escape from her room, and if she could escape from her room, she could escape from the flat using the codes she had memorized.
She sat down on the bed and worked each move out in her mind. When she was satisfied, she took a long bath in the tub and then dressed again in her sari. She wished she had better shoes. She was still wearing the sandals Navin had bought her in Bombay. She rummaged through some drawers and discovered an old sweater and a pair of wool socks. She put the socks on her feet and slipped on her sandals. The fit was tight, but the sandals would have to do.
At ten o’clock, she stood by the window and watched Dmitri shepherd the girls across the courtyard to the vehicles. Again, only Natalia accompanied Dmitri, this time in the black Mercedes. The others climbed into the back of the van. The van left the courtyard first and the Mercedes followed. Sita didn’t know how long they would be gone, but she guessed they wouldn’t return until at least three in the morning. It was enough time for her to disappear.
She sat down on the chair by the window and picked up the novel she had been reading. She pulled a blanket over herself to conserve her body heat and read until midnight. Then she went to the door of the room and listened carefully. She had heard footsteps in the hallway half an hour before. Now there was no sound. It was a good sign, but the risk of detection was still high. She resolved to wait another hour or two.
She returned to the novel. As she read, her eyelids grew heavy, but she fought off sleep. Her mind began to drift. She saw Ahalya dancing on the beach. She shook her head and focused on the bookcase across the room.
Ahalya isn’t here, she thought. Stay awake!
Before long, however, she drifted again. There was Ahalya, meeting her after class at St. Mary’s. And Naresh, asking Ambini about her grades. There were mangy dogs barking and the ocean lapping at sand … and Ahalya swimming, diving with her into the depths … the blue sea turning to shade … turning to gray … turning to black.
When she opened her eyes, she sat upright. She glanced at the clock on the wall and fear lanced through her. It was 3:15 in the morning. She couldn’t believe she had fallen asleep. She looked out the window and saw with relief that the courtyard was still empty. She walked to the door and pressed her ear against it, listening. She heard nothing. She slid the key into the lock and retracted the bolt. She stepped out into the hallway. The flat was dark, except for the glow of a night light in the foyer.
She crept down the hall, taking care to step on the balls of her feet. She looked at the stairway. The steps were wooden, and she couldn’t recall if any of them creaked. She held the banister and stepped as lightly as possible on the first step. It sank beneath her weight, but it didn’t make a sound. She took one step after another until she reached the foyer floor. The alarm system was activated. She felt another twinge of fear. Would the system beep when she entered the code? She couldn’t remember hearing a beep when Dmitri used it.
Crossing the floor to the entry closet, she put on the warmest coat she could find. The garment was made of black wool and had a fur collar and hood. She buttoned the coat and took two steps to the keypad.
The red light glared at her. She took a deep breath and punched the six digits she had memorized, praying to Lakshmi that no alarm would sound.
The light turned green without a beep and the latch disengaged. She turned the handle and opened the door. The blast of wintry air took her breath away. She stepped quietly onto the porch. The courtyard was dark and the sounds of the city were muted. A light snow was falling. She moved across the cobblestones to the doors beneath the arch. She punched in the second code and heard a bolt retract. She pushed open one of the doors and slipped out into the night.
Looking both ways, she decided to go left. Her objective was to find a hotel with a night clerk who would agree to contact the police. She had no idea whether she could trust the French authorities, but she had no other option.
She walked quickly, her footfalls echoing in the still air. She reached an intersection with a major boulevard and peered into the distance, searching the street for a hotel sign. The boulevard was lined with storefronts, all of them closed. A couple of taxis passed her, and then silence descended again.
Pressing her hands into her coat, she started up the boulevard. She passed two hotels, but the lobby doors were locked and she could see no one inside. The cold encircled her and needled her face. Her breath came out in clouds of vapor, and snow dusted her nose.
She felt the first signs of desperation. The sunrise was still hours away, and she was freezing. She almost didn’t see the black Mercedes until it passed her going in the opposite direction. Something jogged in her mind and she turned around just as the driver slammed on the brakes. Adrenaline poured into her arteries and she began to run. She was hampered by the heavy coat and the lack of grip on her sandals.
The Mercedes turned around and raced back down the road. She heard the car pass her and slam on its brakes again. Dmitri jumped out of the car. They saw the bakery truck at the same moment. It was coming toward them slowly. Dmitri stood still, watching her, a mere twenty feet away. She stopped in her tracks and began to wave her arms furiously at the truck.
A Walk Across the Sun Page 24