by Alan Russell
“She was there to make a courtesy call, is that it?”
Graham nodded. “She evidently wanted a face-to-face with him before her condition became known, or obvious. Maybe it was the last time she ever planned to see him, and she wanted to get things straight between them. I know she was already thinking about her unborn child, and was trying to be careful to not complicate an already difficult situation.”
LeMoine was engaged, and she had her foundation to operate. They first met when he had handed her a well-publicized check of one million pounds for her charity. A short-lived relationship ensued, one they kept secret, but with one huge ramifications.
“She was afraid of saddling her child with the famous name of the father,” said Graham. “I think she wanted as normal a life as possible for her baby. She was also afraid that LeMoine’s contributions would look tainted if their relationship was known. The Lady had already been condemned by many for taking off her clothes for charity. She probably knew there were those who would have categorized a romance with such a generous donor as prostitution. But it was anything but that. I know. I saw.”
Graham heard it in their voices, and saw it in their regard for one another. Their dying together and the subsequent revelation of her pregnancy had resulted in all sorts of tawdry speculation.
“Do you think you have an obligation to set the record straight?” asked the Abbot.
“Not at my expense. They were public figures. If you embrace the upside of fame, you have to accept the lumps of the downside.”
“They received more than lumps.”
“He was the one who was driving like a madman. He just wouldn’t quit.”
“That’s what made him what he was.”
“And that’s what makes me what I am. You think anyone ever says, ‘Oh, the poor paparazzo’? No one hands me my shots. I have to scratch and dig and hustle for them. Was I just supposed to roll over?”
The Abbot’s calm voice contrasted with Graham’s vehemence. “You tell me.”
“No. Hell no.”
“Don’t you think people are entitled to some privacy?”
“People. Not public figures. That’s the key word: public.”
“There’s no sanctity in anything? Would you monitor a confessional booth?”
“Don’t give me any ideas.”
“It seems to me you find it easier to be angry than to face your sadness.”
“In my trade, a conscience is a hindrance. I don’t need that dead weight. I don’t want it.”
“Then find a way to remove it. That will allow you to forgive yourself.”
Graham shook his head. That wasn’t him. This was all too silly. A paparazzo needs his thick skin. Self-help lectures weren’t for the likes of him. The heat was off now. He was free and clear, and it was time to get back to work. But he wasn’t ready for Hollywood yet. He needed a war instead. Before becoming a paparazzo, Graham had been a conflict photographer. He had worked conflicts and wars and seen more than his share of death and destruction, and he was now ready for a little more.
Graham consulted the faces of the figurines and settled on pride. There was a sneer on pride’s face, almost a disdain. Pride had seen it all. Graham took note of his resemblance to the figurine. Asking him to change his face was like asking a leopard to change his spots.
The Abbot reached into his desk and brought out two glasses. He poured a few fingers of brandy into each glass and passed one over to Graham. The two men raised their glasses to one another, clinked them lightly.
“Happy trails,” said the Abbot. He was a fan of westerns and had told Graham on several occasions that it was a shame Hollywood didn’t make those kinds of pictures anymore. The Abbot had once confessed to Graham how upset he was when John Wayne had died, and how he still remembered exactly what he had been doing, and where he was, when he heard the bad news.
The thought came to Graham, unbidden and unwanted, that many people remembered the precise moment when they heard Le Croc and the Lady died.
Damn their intrusion into his life.
The men drank in silence for a few minutes, each of them contemplating sunsets. The Abbot finished his glass and put it down with a sigh. He always limited himself to the one. There was something on his mind, something nagging at him.
He asked, “Did you ask for a blessing for that old woman’s son when you reached the cathedral?”
Graham picked up his drink, sipped, shrugged, and then sipped again. He didn’t answer directly. The last ritual of the Camino was to touch the figure of Santiago. To get to it, you climbed a narrow staircase that went behind the altar. Santiago’s cloak is silver. In one hand he carries a walking staff, in the other a scallop shell.
“I touched his walking stick for luck, and as I did I said one word: ‘Hernando.’ I probably should have said more.”
But saying that one word, Graham remembered, was hard enough. He was a skeptic and a cynic, not a pilgrim. At journey’s end, Graham neglected to have his last credencial validated at the pilgrims’ office. The church would never recognize his journey. He even skipped the free meal the Hotel de los Reyes offered to any that walked the Camino.
“You didn’t pause to offer any other prayers? Not even one for yourself?”
Graham shook his head.
The Abbot smiled. “When I offer up prayers to Saint James of the Starry Field—I will remember you as well.”
“Thank you.”
“You will be in good company. Santiago de Compostela is the patron saint of Spain.”
“Who’s the patron saint of lost causes?”
“Saint Jude.”
“I’d feel more at home being remembered with him.”
The Abbot nodded as if taking Graham’s comment seriously. He raised his glass. “Vaya con Dios.”
CHAPTER
SIX
Graham struggled to awaken. At some level of consciousness he knew something was wrong. He was usually instantly awake and alert, but this time just thinking straight was a struggle.
At first he thought he was back in the Middle East, where he had gone after Spain. Graham had almost felt at home there. He didn’t have to look hard for horror stories. Rape, murder, jihad, pillage, and ethnic cleansing—they had it all. There was no shortage of subjects for his camera. In the face of such atrocities, Graham could almost feel good about himself.
But everything had a way of twisting itself back to Paris. When he was led to a mass grave, he thought of the Paris catacombs, and he didn’t feel so superior.
Still, he felt as comfortable in the Middle East as he could have anywhere. There was plenty of guilt for all to share with what was going on in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. The area had a long and bloody history that no one could feel good about. Graham shot the ravages of war, and the plight of the victims and the dispossessed, until there came a time when no one cared anymore. The market for pictures dried up. He considered finding another war zone. The hazards were many, and the stringer pay low, but misery loves company.
His head was clearing. No, he wasn’t in the Middle East. He had decided to go home. The sounds of crashing waves filtered through his hazy mind, and he knew that wasn’t right either. His apartment wasn’t anywhere near the ocean. He opened his eyes and found he wasn’t lying on his bed, but on a metal decking. And he still heard waves.
Graham sat up and looked around. He was atop some kind of tower. A floating tower. There was water on all sides. He started to get to his feet when a voice came out of the darkness:
“I wouldn’t wander too far. You might be dizzy, and it’s a long drop.”
The speaker materialized. He was taller than average, and carried himself with the confidence of someone used to giving orders. He had a long, gray face that would have suited a cadaver. It was made even more ghoulish by his smile. If the smile was supposed to make Graham
feel better, it didn’t.
Graham tried to hide his shaking. It was cold, but not that cold. He was wearing a coat that wasn’t his.
“I was drugged.”
The man nodded. There was no thought, or even hint, of apology.
“Who are you?”
“Call me Mr. Smith.”
“John Smith, I suppose.”
“Or Adam.”
Graham’s head was clearing, and his eyes were getting used to the darkness. They were on an oil rig and in the far distance he could see lights on the shore. He guessed at their location: “Is that Santa Barbara?”
A nod. Somehow he had been taken from his apartment and transported to an oil rig off the Santa Barbara coast. The drive alone was close to a hundred miles, not to mention the logistics of getting him from shore to the rig.
“Why am I here?”
“I wanted to meet with you.”
“Hell of a place for a meeting.”
“I thought it would suit our needs.”
“What’s wrong with a Hilton?”
“It was necessary to ensure our privacy.”
“You’re a spook.” Graham wasn’t asking a question so much as speaking aloud. There had been men like this on the periphery of all the armed conflicts Graham had covered.
“I’m in intelligence, yes.”
“Which acronym?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. You’ll have to pardon my curiosity for wanting to know who shanghaied me.”
Graham eased his way over to the edge of the platform, cleared his throat, and spat out toward the dark sea.
“It was difficult tracking you down,” Smith said. “One day you were a successful paparazzo, and the next you just vanished.”
“I’d had enough of the trade and needed a break.”
“There was speculation you had a drug and alcohol problem. You were doing some serious binging. The word was that you were drying out.”
“I was.”
“At a monastery in Poblet, Spain? I understand you even led the life of a lay brother.”
“I tried to earn my daily bread.”
“You weren’t raised a Catholic.”
“I wasn’t raised much of anything.”
“Despite that, you spent six months at a Cistercian community being your basic monk. You chose to live behind medieval rock walls and live the life of an ascetic.”
“My liver needed that.”
“Your liver or your soul?”
Graham didn’t answer.
“You’ve never spoken of your monk days with anyone, and no one knows you were there.”
“Then how do you know?”
The man who called himself Smith continued on as if Graham hadn’t spoken. “I’m surprised you lasted a day in the monastery. You’ve always had a problem with authority. At Poblet you had to rise before dawn. There were no comforts of modern life. You had to follow rules, something you’ve had a notable problem doing throughout your history.”
“Their rules made sense to me.”
“That’s a first. In all the years you’ve been a mercenary with a camera, no one has ever doubted your skill with a lens, or your photographic instincts, but your detractors always thought you too aggressive, and not a team player. That’s why you never managed to last with any newspaper or magazine. You’ve always disregarded any rules or guidelines that got in your way. That’s especially true in a war zone. There are lots of people who are surprised you’re still alive.”
“I’ve never been interested in doing public relations shoots.”
“News organizations got tired of your cowboy act. So even though you’ve always fancied yourself a photojournalist, you went back to being a paparazzo.”
Graham wondered where this was all going.
“You took a leave of absence, though. You abruptly quit for a time. Something happened that made you stop.”
There it was. He knew. They knew. Graham didn’t look up. He turned and stared out at the water. He was almost too numb to think. His stomach felt as if someone had taken a bat to it, and his throat was too tight to even swallow.
“You were in the Citroën that was sideswiped moments before the accident in the tunnel that killed Lady Godwin and Georges LeMoine.”
Graham said nothing. Smith was doing more than exposing his Achilles’ heel. His every word was wrenching out what Graham had thought was his terrible secret. His—not the world’s. Graham pictured the crash, just as he had remembered it thousands of times before.
“I assume you were playing a little photo tag.”
Still not looking at him, Graham worked up enough spit to answer, but his words were spoken as much to himself as to Smith. “He was trying to run me off the road.”
“I’m sure he was. But the big question is: Would he have lost control if it weren’t for you?”
Graham had played that “what if” game too many times by himself. He didn’t answer.
“It’s rather amazing,” said Smith, “that you got away with it. You kept expecting the other shoe to drop. And you knew that when that information came out, you’d be the most reviled man on earth.”
Graham finally turned and looked at his interrogator. He wondered where all of this was leading.
“How did you get rid of the car?”
“I dumped it in the Bay of Biscay.”
Smith nodded. “What did you do with your photos of them?”
Graham said nothing.
“You wouldn’t have been involved in a high-speed chase if you hadn’t taken pictures. What happened to them?”
“I destroyed the camera and the memory card.”
Smith shook his head in disbelief. “How could you have done that? Those shots would have been worth a fortune.”
“It could have convicted me.”
“I know a certain collector who doesn’t suffer from moral or ethical qualms. He’d pay a considerable amount for those pictures.”
“I wish I had them to sell, but I don’t.”
“Are you quite certain? I am confident I could get you high six figures.”
“Why are you so interested?”
“As the broker, I would benefit as well.”
Graham shook his head. “I can’t sell what I don’t have.”
“That’s a shame. Enough others cashed in on their deaths. You and your kind helped make them icons. They’ll always be young and beautiful and immortal.”
“Small consolation.”
“What surprises me is that it got to you, Wells. No paparazzo has ever been mistaken for a social worker. Most of your ilk would trample their grandmother to get a good photo. Word is, that goes double for you. ‘Hard as nails’ is how people describe you. Thick-skinned and uncaring. Yet you ended up hiding away in a monastery for six months before slipping out of your robes to play photojournalist in the killing fields of the Middle East. Tell me, were you hoping for redemption, or did you just want to get killed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Finally, the prodigal son has returned home. Now you’re back in Hollywood, just like old times.”
Graham thought about all that he had heard and been told. Smith’s being there still didn’t make sense. As a photographer, he wondered where he was in the picture. Smith finally answered that.
“We need your services, Mr. Wells.”
“Who is we?”
“You will be serving the interests of the United States government.”
“You sure you have the right guy?”
“Very sure.”
“What services are you talking about?”
“Your assisting us through your paparazzo work.”
Graham started laughing. It was either that or cry. “You want me to gather intelligence in Ho
llywood? That’s an oxymoron.”
“From time to time we’ll need you to study certain individuals who could potentially be working to undermine our government.”
Graham shook his head. “Why me? You guys are the cloak-and-dagger experts. All I do is say ‘cheesecake.’ ”
“Hollywood is not our bailiwick. Our agents would stand out. In your case, you don’t have to worry about being low profile.” Smith offered his supercilious smile again. “Like us, your job deals in gathering information.”
“I’m a sneak, not a spy.”
“Of course, you are free to refuse. It would be a shame, though, if certain information fell into the hands of the French government.”
Smith had a vise on his balls. Graham knew there was no choice. The thought of prison was daunting enough, but even worse would be his having to face up to what had happened in Paris.
“What would I have to do?”
“Your job, and nothing else. But on very rare occasions, we might narrow your focus to a certain target or event.”
“How many people know about the accident?”
“Only a handful. If you cooperate, your secret will always be safe.”
“And I’ll just be on your string forever.”
“A few years at most, and a few assignments.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Graham offered a small nod. It was enough for Smith.
“When we need you, the caller will identify you by your code name of—”
Smith paused, and offered that smile again.
“Pilgrim.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
“Pilgrim.”
The one word brought everything back. It had been a month since Graham had encountered Smith on the oil platform, and even then the mystery man had stayed in the shadows, never allowing himself to be fully seen. Smith made him relive the shame of Paris, and when the spook finished talking and offered his gloating smile, Graham felt as if he had been physically beaten. It hadn’t taken much to break him, Graham thought, but then he had already laid much of that groundwork himself.