“So let’s assume we are not the only ones looking for the elusive Sergeant Kross,” the French police chief said. He got to work on the phones.
Eventually someone brought in lunches, our bags were searched, and we were questioned at length by an American and a British man whose jobs were never exactly explained, but I could guess. They kept coming back to the question of whether or not Arvo had given us something to carry or asked us to call someone or to meet him later. My patience for repeating myself was wearing thin. At last the British man stood up and walked over to the other table to get tea. I followed him, even though I’d already drunk three cups.
“So, Jody,” he said in a less businesslike voice than before. “What sort of a man is this Arvo? Do you like him?” He poured the tea.
Dad had stepped out of the room, and everyone else was busy.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I liked him very much. He listened to me. I told him I want to be a composer, and he sang with me. That’s what Estonians do. They sing. And he acted like being a composer was a thing an ordinary person could do—a thing I could do. Plus I thought he was dead when I first pulled him out of the river, but he wasn’t, and I can’t stop thinking about him and wondering if he’s okay. Yesterday, when we were walking on a bridge over the Seine, I couldn’t help looking for him in the water. It’s crazy.” I poured milk and sugar into my tea. “He stole from us.”
The British agent looked over the tray of cookies. “You saved his life. That makes this different from any other friendship you’ve had.”
“It can’t be much of a friendship if he stole our money and our tickets and our passports. If he’d just asked, I’d have given him money.”
“Curious that he stole your money and then bought you lunch. That doesn’t exactly sound like the action of an enemy.”
The American agent strolled over, grabbed the last handful of cookies, and started fiddling with the coffeepot. “I’ve been thinking about that lunch, too,” he said, popping a cookie into his mouth. He had an accent I remembered from my kindergarten teacher, so it must have been a Texas accent. “You’d think he’d be in a bigger hurry to run.”
“Did you say he could find a friend in Paris?” the British agent asked. “Did he have someone specific in mind?”
“No, we decided to find some escaped Estonians living in Paris. We were going to start by finding a Lutheran church.”
“Well, Miss Jody,” the Texan said, “that was a good plan. Any Lutheran pastor you could have found would have been the logical and law-abiding type. He’d have called your parents and straightened this whole thing out.”
“So Arvo’s not in trouble?” I said. “I mean, when you find him, you aren’t going to make him go back to his unit in Berlin, are you?”
The British agent smiled. “No. Mind you, we’ll speak to him about stealing from children, but he did mean to help us. He has information we need about the flow of weapons out of the Soviet Union. He’s far too valuable for us to just let him go.”
“We did try to rescue him,” the agent from Texas added. “We just didn’t get there in time. You, on the other hand, were able to accomplish what your father and one of the most highly respected generals in all of Europe were not, not with twenty years of experience in military operations and all the resources that come along with two stars on your hat.”
My mouth fell right open. “Seriously?”
“Oh yes. They spent the last hour on the phone explaining to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe how three schoolgirls saved the life of their Soviet contact. Not a happy conversation for them, I imagine.”
“We’ll never see that man again.” The British agent drank down the last of his tea. “Soviets are a paranoid lot. He’ll never stop running.”
“Well, he can’t exactly run,” I said. “He can barely walk.”
“What?” both the agents said together.
“He broke his leg, remember?” But then I couldn’t remember myself, after all those questions, if I had mentioned the broken ankle, and then I realized I had glossed over that part because I didn’t want to say, in front of Dad, that I’d stolen the painkillers from our house.
“He broke his ankle,” I said. “It was all puffy and pointed in a wrong direction when I first got him out of the water. So when I brought food, I also brought some Tylenol with codeine.”
I looked from one to the other, but neither of them seemed especially shocked. I guess everyone knew soldiers took that stuff for training injuries all the time.
“Arvo managed to splint his broken ankle himself, but he was in terrible shape. The pain medicine helped. Except it ran out by Friday, and he almost fainted when we had to run to catch the train. He went all gray and sweaty. But he didn’t give up. Not even after the spy guy followed us onto the train.”
I shivered, remembering what Arvo had said about the KGB having no mercy, not even for children. I thought about him sitting on the baggage-room floor all night not knowing if the agent would catch him there. I bet he didn’t sleep for one minute. And after all that, he still went out and got us food. Could they have seen each other in the market? Did he know the KGB was just outside the university?
“I think I can guess where Arvo is,” I said slowly. “What if he never left the Sorbonne after he got us lunch? What if he stayed put? General Johnson was just saying that right under our noses is a good place to hide. Plus the army manual says if you are shot down and injured, you should hide and heal before you try to run—at least the American one does.”
“How extraordinary,” the British agent said. “The Sorbonne is full of empty spaces, and Sergeant Kross is the right age to be mistaken for a student. A certain amount of scruffiness that would call attention elsewhere would hardly generate notice among college students.”
“It would take us ages to search the place,” the American agent added. “I suppose eventually he’ll need food.”
“Eventually he’ll need pain medicine,” I said. “He took one when we got on the train, and then I gave him three more because that was all that was left at home. So that’s …” I counted doses twelve hours apart. “He’ll be wanting more pain medicine by six o’clock tonight. Maybe if you looked for him at emergency rooms or wherever it is French people go for medicine, you’ll find him.”
“Brilliant!” the British agent said, and he reached into his pocket and handed me his business card. “If you find music not to your liking, I hope you’ll consider intelligence work. You’ve already got as much courage and savvy as half the people I work with.”
the British agent said, turning to the other men in the room, “we have a solid lead, and if we can turn out enough men on the street, I think we can find Sergeant Kross in the next few hours.” He explained where he thought Arvo was and how to find him.
Giselle, Vivian, and I were left at the table, suddenly unimportant. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to see Arvo again or not. I couldn’t even decide if I was mad at him for stealing our money. Maybe learning that I could take care of myself in a foreign city was worth it. Vivian took a deck of cards out of her pocket and started up a game of spoons, but I wasn’t really into it.
About an hour later our parents came back in, with the French police chief right behind them.
“Good news,” Mrs. Armstrong called out.
The police chief strode up to the table. “Sergeant Kross has been recovered, hungry but alive,” he said.
I let out a huge breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding.
“And our friends in the KGB,” the police chief went on, “are now following the wrong man on a chase that will be as difficult and costly as we can possibly make it.”
General Johnson nodded in admiration. “Those boys are in for a cold day in Moscow if they ever make it home.”
“They’ll see a cold day before the Palace of Justice if they break even one law on French soil,” the police chief said, with no trace of his usual charm.
“Where is Arvo no
w?” I said.
“On a helicopter to the hospital at Ramstein Air Base,” General Johnson said. “He’ll need X-rays and a cast, and also a quiet and safe place to work with the brigade intelligence officer and others sorting out what he knows about weapons transport.”
“However,” the police chief said, “he insisted you have this immediately.” He handed us a large envelope with a flourish. I opened it, and out slid a stack of cash, three passports, and a set of second-class train tickets.
“He was very concerned about these girls,” the police chief said to our parents. “He didn’t want the Soviet agent to see all of them together and bring them to harm. He thought if he took their passports and money, they’d go to the embassy for help immediately.”
The police chief turned to the three of us with a stern look. “He was right, mesdemoiselles. They would have helped you at the embassy. Any gendarme on the street, probably any citizen of Paris, would have helped you, if only you had asked.” He paused while the weight of that sank in. It was true. Everyone we’d met had been kind.
“Next time you visit my city, you will not be so shy—or perhaps not so spirited. Do you promise?”
“Yes, sir,” we each said in turn.
“So all is mended then?” the British agent said. “Well done!” He stood up, and the American agent with him. “We have reports to file. You will remember what I said, Miss Field?”
I nodded and waved as the two left the room. The police chief followed them out, and then it was just us and our parents alone in the conference room.
For a moment no one said anything. Dad peered into his empty coffee cup. Vivi’s mom put her feet up on a chair. General Johnson actually took off the tie on his Class A uniform. They all looked exactly like people who hadn’t slept in two days.
“Dad, I’m sorry—” I began.
He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how worried people have been about you? The number of people? The hours?”
“We were just trying to help,” I said. “Arvo was in trouble. We couldn’t figure out any other way to do it.” I looked from my dad to General Johnson. “We couldn’t just leave him there—hurt and in danger. You would never abandon an injured soldier.”
“It’s what you always talk about,” Giselle said. “Do the right thing. Support the mission. We were keeping him safe. We were helping him be free. Did you think I wasn’t listening to you all this time?”
“You ran away to Paris without telling anyone,” General Johnson said. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
“Dad!” Giselle straightened up. “It’s not the DMZ. This is Paris. People like us here.”
“We didn’t run away!” I said.
“It’s true,” Vivian added. “There was very little running. Mostly we walked.” She gave the parents a little smile and got nothing back.
“Daddy,” Giselle said, “he was all alone, and he needed us. He wanted all the things we want: freedom, self-determination, justice. It’s what you talk about at home. It’s what we sing about at church. You can’t just teach me all that stuff and then expect me not to care.”
Dad turned away from the table and looked me in the eye. “Do you know how hard your mother works to make music happen in your life? She’s the one who thought you were ready for this trip. ‘Give that girl some room to grow,’ she said to me. ‘Trust her,’ she said.”
I knew how Mom got when she was worried. Whenever we were in a crowded place in Berlin, she was terrified about the boys getting lost or stolen; she always made me hold their hands. She could work an emergency room full of gunshot wounds and even help with an amputation and totally keep her focus, but the thought of losing her own boys in a foreign country made her panic.
“I never meant to make her worry,” I said. “We did all that work to come home so you wouldn’t have to worry.”
“You lied. You lied to both of us.”
“I lied to save a man’s life,” I said, trying to hold my voice steady.
“You just wanted to play in that contest with your friends.”
“These are the best friends I’ll ever have,” I said, determined not to cry. “And I’m never going to see them again.”
I thought he was going to yell. Every muscle in my body was ready for it, like you get ready for a wave at the beach.
“If you had told me about Sergeant Kross five days ago, I’d have gotten him out of East Germany, no problem. If you’d told us someone stole your money, we’d have come to get you.” He shook his head, looking at the ground, and I could feel the weight of his disappointment. “Are we really so hard to talk to?”
“It’s not you, Dad. It’s not Mom, either. I wanted to save Arvo by myself. I wanted to find my own way home.”
“Jody,” he said, and looked up. “I was a year younger than you when my dad died.… I’ve found my own way ever since. Everything I’ve gained in my life has been my own accomplishment.” He shrugged the way he does. “And I’d give it all up to have my dad back. Please. I’m right here. Talk to me.”
I should have hugged him. I wanted to, but all that disappointment stood between us.
“When we get to Texas,” I began, “I’ll try to be … less independent.”
Dad sighed, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “Independence isn’t a crime, you know. But we could start with something less extravagant than international espionage.”
“Right!” I nodded earnestly. “I’ll never help a Soviet spy escape ever again. I swear.”
Dad folded his arms and looked down at me. “Exactly. I think we’ll start with something much more local. How about a morning paper route?”
I was not a morning person.
“I have some serious paying back to do, don’t I?”
“Oh yes.”
“So I guess we better move to a town that has a newspaper then, even if it doesn’t have an orchestra.”
“I think I can promise that.”
“Okay.”
I walked over to where Vivi and her mom were talking with Giselle.
“Well, girls,” Vivian’s mom said briskly as the dads meandered over. “I spoke with our ambassador this afternoon. Apologies were in order for all the disruption you’ve caused, and he was good enough to remind me that in addition to this outrageous escapade, which has caused us considerable grief, not to mention expense …”
General Johnson nodded grimly, and my dad was right there with him.
“… you have also managed,” Vivian’s mom went on, “to save the life of an important intelligence contact. Something that will benefit not just our own country but the stability of the region.”
Dad opened his mouth to say something, but Mrs. Armstrong held up her hand and went on. “Needless to say, medals will not be awarded. Nonetheless, the ambassador would like to express his thanks by offering us the use of a vehicle for the remainder of the afternoon.”
I looked from Vivian to Giselle, hardly daring to believe it.
“This is very generous,” General Johnson said. “While I am deeply disappointed by many”—he looked sternly at Giselle—“of your decisions of the last five days, your rescue and resuscitation of our Soviet contact was perfectly executed. Your subsequent actions, though ill-advised, were surprisingly effective … a soldier twice your age might not have done as well.”
Giselle studied the ground in front of her feet, but I could see her beaming.
“So, girls,” Vivi’s mom said, “did you see everything you’d hoped to in Paris? We have a few hours before our flight home.”
“Let’s go to the Eiffel Tower,” Giselle said.
“Yeah,” Vivian said. “I think I want a picture of us at the top of the Eiffel Tower after all.”
“Seriously?”
“Honestly, Jody,” Vivian said, “we never would have come at all if you hadn’t saved Arvo’s life.”
“You’re the girl with the plan, honey,” Giselle said. “We would have been lost without you.”
“Eiffel Tower, it is,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “I’m sure our driver can arrange a quick visit.”
Apparently this is true. If you have the right kind of car, you can park anywhere and also go to the front of the elevator line. After we’d posed for serious and silly pictures at the top of the Eiffel Tower, I went a few steps away from the others and leaned on the rail looking down at the cream-colored buildings, plain and fancy, and the green fluff of treetops in the park just across the river. It was a much tidier-looking city from up there, and I wondered what would become of Arvo, and if his country would ever be free. Dad came and leaned on the rail next to me, and I thought he was going to say something, but for a long time he didn’t.
“About your music,” he said. “You were disqualified from the competition. Contestants have to play a published piece. I know that competition was important to you and you worked hard for months. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the Seine and the slow, flat boats pushing people and cargo. “I guess I forgot about that. I was trying so hard to get home.”
“However, you succeeded in impressing a very distinguished panel of judges. I hear that was quite a piece of music you wrote.”
“Really?”
“Really. The French judge even invited you to attend his school.” Dad reached into his kit bag and pulled out my music notebook.
“You got my notebook back!” I snatched it out of his hand. It was a little bit more tattered and bent than before. I flipped it open to “Canon for Three Friends.” It was still there, every page.
“Thanks.” I hugged the notebook to my heart. “I need this, Dad. I can manage the new house and the new school, all of it, if I have this.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I know,” he said quietly. “I do know that about my Jo.”
I rested my head on his sleeve for a second, and then we went back to leaning on the railing.
“Did you know, I had to give up my piano lessons when my dad passed,” he said. “I never really missed them until now, when I see you loving music every bit as much as I did back then.” He shrugged and looked out at the city of Paris. “I wish I knew how to read your composition, Jody. That’d be a thing to know. I wish I could still play.”
Second Fiddle Page 16