The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Jeffrey Westhoff

  “No, that is impossible,” the priest said. “I would have seen them. I assure you we are the only two people in the basilica.”

  Brian tried to get a fix on Silver and the priest’s position, but the arched ceiling batted their voices about the alcoves. He guessed the men were a step or two above the wooden Apostles. Could they see into this alcove from there? Brian felt Larissa’s heartbeat quicken.

  “May I ask how you got in?” the priest asked tactfully.

  “A side door was open. Over there.”

  The priest clucked his tongue. “I am always telling the cleaning staff not to leave that door unlocked.” A moment’s silence followed. Brian stared at the bronze box in front of him, still holding his breath. Then the priest said, “I am afraid I must accompany you out”—Brian pictured the priest placing his arm around Silver’s shoulder—“and make sure the door is locked behind you. Please do not be offended.”

  “Not at all, Father,” Silver said. The voices and footsteps headed upward. “I just thought the basilica was always open for people to pray.”

  “Yes, yes. That is how I wish it were. But unfortunately we must worry about vandals.”

  “We live in sad times,” Silver replied before St.-Sernin’s vastness swallowed their voices and footsteps. Brian and Larissa let out their breaths simultaneously, but they remained still. Brian feared the priest might return to investigate Silver’s claim about a boy and a girl. Ten minutes quietly passed until Charlie Brown and his cousin, Encyclopedia, arrived to watch Nancy Drew and Tintin dance in a ballroom lined by towering white trees that held up the heavens.

  Larissa sat up, startling Brian. The ballroom and trees vanished, replaced by the stone shelf and dull bronze reliquary.

  “Whassamatter?” Brian said.

  “Nothing,” Larissa replied. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “You were falling asleep, but that is all right. You are exhausted.”

  She slid to the other end of the ledge. “No one will come down here for at least two hours. Sleep. I will wake you when it is safe to leave.”

  She rested her hand on his feet and smiled. He smiled back. “Thank you,” he said.

  Brian placed his head on the backpacks and fell into a cold sleep among the dead.

  CHAPTER 19--TOURISTS

  Brian woke to Larissa gently rocking his shoulders. The ambient noise in the crypt had increased while he slept. Murmured voices filtered from above.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Nine forty-five,” Larissa answered. “You have been asleep for nearly two hours.”

  “Wish I could say it was refreshing.” Brian sat up, and a twinge of pain shot from his neck to his shoulder blades. He groaned.

  “Is it your shoulder?”

  “Mostly my neck is stiff, but it’s aggravating my shoulder a little, yeah.” Brian rolled his head slowly. “I guess that’s what you get for sleeping on a slab.”

  Larissa placed her hands on the nape of his neck and rubbed. Brian winced when she pressed a palm into a sore nerve, but his muscles soon yielded as she rotated her thumbs between his shoulder blades. The pain subsided.

  “How does that feel?” she asked

  “Much better,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Larissa handed him his backpack and said, “We should sneak out of here before anyone comes down.”

  They shrugged on their backpacks and waited in the upper crypt until they were certain no one was near the altar. Then they slipped through the door and began to casually inspect the antiquities displayed in a semicircle behind the altar—more relics, Larissa told him.

  A new fear hit Brian. What if Silver or the rest of Skyrm’s men were inside St-Sernin waiting for them to emerge from the crypt? He moved behind a pillar near the altar and looked about. The only people he saw were tourists or old women in black shawls saying the Rosary.

  Brian was relieved, but not completely. “If Silver suspected we were hiding in the crypt,” he told Larissa, “they might be outside the church watching the exits.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’m not sure. We can’t leave until we’re certain we won’t be noticed.”

  As he spoke, a group of about thirty tourists approached. A prim, middle-aged woman identified herself as the group’s tour guide by wiggling the crook of an umbrella above her head. The crowd stopped before Brian and Larissa, and the guide turned to the altar to describe its elaborate furnishings. She spoke English with the exaggerated French accent of Warner Bros. cartoons and Disney Channel sitcoms, saying “Eet ees” instead of “It is,” etc. Maybe, Brian thought, she’s giving her clients what they expect to hear.

  Several people at the group’s edge ignored the guide and spoke softly to one other. Their voices were American, but Brian heard different dialects: a Texas drawl for sure, and another more difficult to place. Northern, but not quite Midwestern. He studied their clothes. Two women in their early twenties wore green T-shirts emblazoned with “Mercyhurst College—Erie.” Across the crowd, where the Texas accent dominated, a young guy with blond stubble on his chin slouched in a hoodie bearing a cartoon miner and the initials UTEP. Brian figured it out. The guide was leading a combination of two tourist groups, one from Erie, Pennsylvania, and the other from El Paso, Texas.

  “I think I know how we can leave,” Brian said.

  He told Larissa his idea. “Try not to speak,” he concluded. “Your accent might give us away. I doubt anyone will notice your walk, though.”

  Larissa nodded, and they inserted themselves into the group as it moved to the next item of interest, a gold crucifix. Brian and Larissa would be unfamiliar to everyone in the crowd, but he hoped the people from Pennsylvania would assume they were with the Texas group and vice versa. A few women glanced at them curiously, but when no one spoke to them, Brian was confident his plan was working.

  After roughly twenty minutes of lectures about statues, frescoes, and more relics, the tour guide—by now Brian and Larissa knew her as Mlle Larreau—announced they would leave St-Sernin through the Porte Miegeville and head down the Rue du Taur to the Place du Capitole. Brian and Larissa maneuvered themselves into the center of the group as they exited the basilica.

  On the steps of the imposing doorway, Mlle Larreau paused to speak about the Porte Miegeville’s religious, historic, and artistic significance. Brian tuned her out and scanned the Place Saint-Sernin, the street that circled the basilica. He didn’t look long.

  “Oh crap,” he moaned.

  Across the street, on the corner where the Rue du Taur met the Place Saint-Sernin, stood Merz. With him was a man Brian didn’t recognize, a pale, tall man whose shoulders hitched up like a vulture’s wings. Their eyes were fixed on the Porte Miegeville. Merz lit a cigarette and began to smoke.

  Brian nudged Larissa and nodded at the men.

  “Who is the second man?” Larissa asked, keeping her voice low.

  “I don’t know. He’s new.” Brian fought the urge to duck back into the church. “They haven’t spotted us,” he said, “and I doubt they will as long as we stay in the middle of the pack.”

  After three agonizing minutes, Mlle Larreau concluded her lesson on the Porte Miegeville and waved her umbrella toward the street to indicate it was time to move on. Brian whispered, “Amen.” He stole a look at Merz and the other man. They observed the tour group as it approached the street, but their faces were bored. Brian whispered, “Amen squared.”

  The two watchers were stationed on the southwest corner. By a stroke of luck, Mlle Larreau led her flock to the east side of the Rue du Taur. The people surrounding Brian obscured his view of Skyrm’s observation team, but whenever he caught a glimpse of them, Merz and the tall man were ignoring the tour group and looking toward St-Sernin.

  “I think we’ve made it,” Brian said.

  “The Place du Capitole is only two blocks away,” Larissa said. “We will find something to eat nearby.”

  As the group walked south,
Mlle Larreau explained the street’s history. “Rue du Taur means ‘street of zee bull,’” she said. “Eet was along thees route that Saint Sernin met his martyrdom, tied to a bull and dragged to his death.”

  The tourists responded with variations on “Eww!” and “Gross!” until a masculine and unmistakably Texan voiced boomed, “Hell, that’s just another Saturday night at the rodeo!”

  Neither Mlle Larreau nor the people from Erie appreciated his humor.

  CHAPTER 20--FIT

  Brian and Larissa separated from the group when it reached the Place du Capitole. Their departure drew several curious looks but no comments. Brian briefly took in the scene, a wide stone plaza stretching to an official but attractive building with a long façade of pale red brick and white columns.

  Larissa touched his elbow and said, “Time to eat.” She took him to a nearby food court where Brian decided to stick to the familiar and wolfed down three cheeseburgers. Larissa ordered a salad topped with baked salmon. They agreed to stop at a convenience store and buy protein bars so they wouldn’t be caught without food again.

  Reinvigorated by the feeling of a full stomach, Brian said, “We should change our clothes in the restrooms—I mean WCs. You know, alter our appearance so hopefully they won’t recognize us.”

  Five minutes later, Brian stepped out of the WC wearing a black polo shirt and olive drab cargo shorts. Man of action look, he mused. He had to wait another minute for Larissa. She emerged wearing her black Converse sneakers, blue jeans, and a pale blue T-shirt with the perennially placid cartoon dog Droopy saying, “Ce que tu sais? Je suis heureux.”

  “Here, try wearing this,” Brian said. He handed her his Brewers cap. She put it on and pulled her ponytail through the opening in the back, a look Brian found adorable. He put on his sunglasses. They left the food court two different people.

  “We have to talk out what to do next,” Brian said. “We need to find a place where we blend in with a bunch of other people, but can move fast if we’re spotted.”

  “I know of such a place,” Larissa said.

  A multitude of teenagers lounged in the narrow park that ran along the east bank of the River Garonne, which flowed through the center of the city. Laughing, chatting, holding hands, and getting some sun—the youth of Toulouse filled the riverfront. The park reminded Brian of a beach with grass instead of sand, and he knew Larissa was right to bring him here. They would be indistinguishable within this teenage mass, but they wouldn’t be trapped if Skyrm or his men spotted them. Worst-case scenario, they could jump into the river and swim for it.

  They sat beneath a tree, the river behind them. Brian pushed up his sunglasses and looked at the buildings of central Toulouse. They reflected one uniform color in the midmorning sun.

  “It’s very pink,” he said.

  “Oui,” Larissa replied, rubbing a blade of grass between her thumb and forefinger. “It is because of those bricks that Toulouse is called La Ville Rose, ‘the Pink City.’”

  “I see,” Brian said. His lowered his sunglasses and frowned. Back to work, he thought.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “our first order of business is to get out of the Pink City.”

  “What is our second order of business?”

  “We can discuss that once we have a plan to leave Toulouse, which won’t be easy.”

  “You believe they are watching the train station?”

  “And the bus station. Probably even the airport, though they must know I cannot get on a plane without a passport or credit card.”

  Brian took a twig from the grass and twisted it with both hands. “The thing is,” he said, “we don’t know how many people are working for Skyrm. Every time they turn up, there’s a new face. The third man outside Harte’s apartment. That guy watching St-Sernin with Merz. And Skyrm has had a few hours to call in more people to search for us.”

  “He cannot have that many.”

  “Logically, you’re right, but we can’t afford to be logical. We have to act like hundreds of people are after us, because the one place we assume they won’t be looking for us is the place they will be looking for us. Paranoia has to be your new best friend.”

  Larissa leaned over and squeezed his elbow. “I thought you were my new best friend.”

  Brian’s cheeks warmed. “Thanks,” he said, “but I should be your new second-best friend. Paranoia will keep you safer. If it weren’t for paranoia, we would contact your friends for help, but Skyrm is probably watching your friends and tapping their phones.”

  “But my father—”

  “Is the last person we can contact now. Skyrm knows you will want to phone him, so his people will be watching him. They will be listening to his phone calls. If we tried to warn your father by calling him, we could put him in danger.” Brian paused. “Well, more danger.”

  “I am not even sure what to warn Papa about. What do these people want with him?”

  “My guess is Skyrm wants to sabotage your father’s project, this heat-ray weapon, Prometheus.” Brian waved the twig. “But so many things still don’t make sense to me.”

  “The man Eck, the one who was supposed to be dead? Is he angry my father’s design is too similar to his?”

  “Maybe, but if he faked his own death, why risk being discovered by going after your father? I can’t figure out Roland Eck’s part in this at all, except that he is working with Skyrm.”

  “And Silver,” Larissa said.

  Brian hesitated. His instinct still told him Jack Silver couldn’t be working with Skyrm, not willingly. Yet the evidence of the last twelve hours was damning.

  “And Silver,” Brian agreed.

  “He did come closest to catching us,” Larissa said.

  “Which is why we have to get out of Toulouse quickly.” Brian tapped his knees with the twig. “We know that trains and buses are out. Can you drive?”

  “I can, but I do not have a license.”

  “We’d probably have to steal a car anyway. Even if I knew how to do that, it would put the police after us.” He threw the twig aside. “So what can we do?”

  “Ride bicycles,” Larissa said decisively.

  “And how do we get them?”

  “We steal them.”

  Brian laughed. “So as soon as I rule out stealing a car, you want to steal a couple of bicycles?”

  Larissa responded with a shrug. “Do you want to buy them? I do not think we have the money.”

  Brian weighed the consequences of being caught by Skyrm against the guilt of stealing a bike. It was no contest.

  “All right,” he said, “where do we steal these bikes?”

  “The université is only two blocks from here. Even during summer sessions hundreds of students are around, and many ride bicycles. It should not take long to find two unsecured bicycles.”

  Brian looked for flaws in the plan. The only complication he foresaw was if an owner returned while they were stealing the bikes. He considered that chance slim.

  “OK,” he said, “where do we go once we take the bikes?”

  “We ride north, along the Canal du Midi, to the next stop on the rail line, Launaguet, and board a train there.”

  “Is that a suburb, Launa-whatever?”

  “Launaguet. Oui, it is a suburb of Toulouse.”

  “Let’s be paranoid. What’s the first stop that’s more of a small town than a suburb?”

  Larissa considered this. “Grisolles, about twenty-five kilometers away.”

  “That should be safe,” Brian said. “How long would it take to ride there?”

  Larissa pursed her lips as she calculated. “Two hours if we do not rest.”

  “We won’t.” Brian stood abruptly and held his hand to help Larissa up. “Now that we have the first part of our plan, let’s steal some bikes. Lead the way.”

  They walked north along the riverfront. “What about the second part of our plan?” Larissa asked.

  “We can discuss it along the way, but I’m afraid that
sometime after we reach Grisolles we will have to split up.”

  Larissa stopped. “Why?”

  Brian didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at the Garonne, its wavelets flashing from dark green to black as the water rushed past. Its sound reminded him he was just as close to another river when this whole thing started, when he locked eyes with a doomed man in gray. How could Brian say what he had to say and convince Larissa he was right? How could he say it and convince himself?

  He began, “You can’t call your father to warn him his project might be in jeopardy, so you must do it in person. You have to go to Spain.” Brian took off his sunglasses to look into Larissa’s eyes. “But I can’t go with you. Not without my passport. I think I should do what Lenore Harte wanted, go to the Defense Attaché in Paris and ask for protection.”

  “Will they believe what you tell them?”

  “Eventually,” Brian said. “I know too much to be making all this up, about Skyrm and Silver and Eck and Positive Enforcement. They’ll definitely take me seriously once I tell them what happened to Lenore Harte.”

  “Then I should go with you.”

  “No, because by the time they verify my story, it may be too late for your father. Harte said he will demonstrate Prometheus in two days. You have to be in Zaragoza by tomorrow and find him. You know his hotel, right?”

  She clutched his arm. “I don’t want to go without you, Brian. I need your help.”

  “Believe me, Larissa, I’d rather go with you. I want to help you. But if you think I know what I’m doing, you’re wrong. I’m just blundering along hoping a way out of this mess will turn up.” He looked away. “And going to Paris seems like the only way out of this mess.”

  Larissa tightened her grip. “Who will tell me what Foster Blake would do? Who will tell me how paranoid I must be? You can’t involve me in all this and then abandon me.”

  “I don’t want to leave you! But how can I get into Spain? Silver has my passport.”

  Larissa released Brian’s arm and went quiet. She rested her chin on her thumb and tapped her lips with her forefinger as she took a step back to appraise him. Brian felt self-conscious when her gaze rested on his bare legs.