“There is a way, Brian,” she said. “And you seem fit enough.”
“To do what?”
“To walk across the Pyrenees.”
CHAPTER 21--TRANSIT
Thousands of hiking trails crisscross the Pyrenees, the mountain range that forms the natural barrier between France and Spain. Many of these trails, such as those that follow ancient Basque smuggling routes, snake their way back and forth across the two nations’ equally serpentine border. For this reason the rugged frontier goes largely unguarded. Customs officials assume that nature walkers who begin their trek in France will end their trek in France and that Spanish hikers will do likewise.
Larissa explained all this to Brian on their way to the Université de Toulouse campus. “Why waste time checking the passport of a person crossing from France to Spain,” she said, “if his route takes him back into France ten minutes later?”
“So you’re positive I can cross into Spain without a passport so long as we’re on a mountain trail?”
“Yes,” Larissa said, “but for an extra precaution, and to honor paranoia, we will be somewhat off the trail when we cross the border.”
“Sounds like you have a particular trail in mind.”
“I do. We will follow the Comet Line. Not exactly but—” she searched for the word—“approximately.” Larissa gave Brian a sidelong look and smiled. “I think you will appreciate our route, because it involves espionage.”
That perked his ears. “Really? How?”
“During the Second World War, partisans in my country used the Comet Line to smuggle into Spain hundreds of American and British pilots who were shot down by Nazis.”
Brian nodded. He knew from The Military Channel that downed Allied pilots would cross the Pyrenees to escape the Gestapo. Now he would be tackling these mountains himself.
Suddenly, Brian visualized Foster Blake climbing to Kang’s precipitous lair at the end of A Tiger Hunts Alone. So what if that happened in the Himalayas? A mountain’s a mountain, right?
“Won’t we need ropes and pitons and boots with spikes and all that?” he asked. “And maybe you think I’m in shape to climb a mountain, but I’m not so sure.”
Larissa laughed. It was a wonderfully loud and musical laugh, but it ticked Brian off because the longer it lasted the sillier he felt. Finally, she draped her arm across his back. “You can relax,” she said. “We will be walking. Uphill, but walking.”
They arrived at the university’s bicycle lot before Larissa could explain further. Conferring briefly, they agreed to locate a pair of unlocked bikes and take them simultaneously. As Larissa had correctly predicted, they found two suitable bikes in less than ten minutes. They mounted their bicycles, which were across the lot from each other, at the same time and rode off at a casual pace. Brian braced for shouts of “Voleur! Voleur!” and the need to apply a burst of speed, but no shouts came.
He followed Larissa up a tree-lined street hoping they would reach the canal soon so he could learn more about the Comet Line. They came to a bridge. Looking down, Brian saw a watery junction where the Canal du Midi approached the Garonne from the east then bent away to the north. Larissa led Brian over the bridge, across another tree-shaded boulevard, and down to the path that ran along the canal. They rode north, leaving Toulouse behind.
The trail before them was inspiring. A cortege of trees with long, curving branches created a green canopy over the water. Houseboats and small barges were docked on the other side of the canal, and people sitting on their decks waved as the teenagers cycled past. In the books Brian read and the movies he watched, spies were pursued through parking garages, dockyards, or narrow alleys at night. Here he was running for his life through paradise, and it wasn’t yet noon.
Brian pedaled faster until he came alongside Larissa. “So how do you know so much about the Comet Line?” he asked.
“I heard about it from a guide in the Pyrenees. She said the leader of this dangerous escape route was a young woman, only twenty-four years old, named Dédée de Jongh—”
“Really!”
“I know what you think, but her last name is not the same.” Larissa spelled it for him. “But you can see why I wanted to learn all about her. When I returned home I read everything I could about the Comet Line and Dédée de Jongh, who became my hero. She was from Belgium originally, like my father’s family, and I hoped that despite the different spelling of our names, I would discover Dédée was a distant aunt, perhaps.” She let go of her handlebars and shrugged with her palms up. “Malheuresement, that does not appear to be true.”
“I know how you feel,” Brian said. “I have the same last name as Spider-Man, but I’m pretty sure we’re not related.”
He wasn’t certain Larissa would get the joke, but she laughed.
“My admiration for you just skyrocketed,” Brian said.
“Because I know Peter Parker is secretly Spider-Man?”
Brian nodded.
“Even for an American you are a strange boy.”
“That I do not deny.”
The canal path ran smooth and straight. Encountering few other cyclists or joggers along the way, Brian and Larissa were able to ride abreast and discuss her plan.
In Grisolles they would board a train heading northwest to Bordeaux, and there they would catch another train south to Bayonne. This was a regrettably circuitous route, Larissa said, but the only one available by rail. From Bayonne they would take a bus to Hendaye, a Basque village on the Bay of Biscay and nearer the Comet Line. Once in Hendaye, they would buy the hiking and camping supplies they would need for the mountains. Brian raised his eyebrows when Larissa mentioned camping. She told him it would be best if they camped in the foothills that night then rose early the next morning to make for the border. Larissa hoped they would be hiking out of Hendaye that evening before sunset.
“Is that realistic?” Brian asked.
“If we have luck with the train schedules, yes.”
Rolling into Grisolles an hour later, they discovered the train station was situated not in the small village center but on the other side of the Canal du Midi. They rode across a bridge and slowly approached the station from the north. The modest brick depot sat by itself with the canal on one side and a highway on the other. The building was so isolated that any of Skyrm’s watchers would be obvious. Brian saw none, so they went inside.
They bought their tickets and learned the train to Bordeaux would arrive in forty-three minutes. Brian suggested they spend most of that time in the village, where they would be less conspicuous. They grabbed a quick meal of crêpes and lemonade at a café. As they pedaled back to the train station, Brian spotted a bicycle shop. He ducked inside to buy a chain with a padlock and key. At the station, he secured the bicycles to a rack near the parking lot.
“When we’re on the train,” Brian told Larissa, “you can write an anonymous note explaining that two bikes missing from the University of Toulouse can be found outside the train station in Grisolles. We’ll send the note along with the key to the Toulouse police department when we reach Bordeaux.”
“How will we know the address?”
“It’s in my guidebook,” Brian said. “We just mail a letter and—presto!—we erase the guilt of being vélo voleurs.”
Larissa laughed. “Très amusent,” she said and patted his cheek.
Brian smiled. First the Spider-Man joke and now a one-liner in French. Maybe he could quip after all.
CHAPTER 22--DANGER
Although the train schedules did not align as favorably as Larissa had hoped, forty-five minutes of sunlight remained when she and Brian stepped off the Rue Errondenia above Hendaye and entered the mountain trails of the Pyrenees.
The pair had slept most of the way to Bordeaux. In the Bordeaux station, they mailed the bicycle key and waited an hour to board the next train. Brian again nodded off during the shorter trip to Bayonne, but Larissa stayed awake to compose a shopping list. In Bayonne they had to dash to catch
the bus to Hendaye. Aboard the bus, Larissa explained the rest of their travel plans: once in Spain they would find a highway and hitchhike to the nearest town, probably Irún, where they could catch a bus to Zaragoza.
“Hitchhike!” Brian cried. “Are you nuts?”
Surprised by his objection, Larissa asked, “Why should we not hitchhike?”
“In America,” he said, “we assume anyone who picks up a hitchhiker is a serial killer. Boy, they sure didn’t show you French kids the same safety videos in grade school.”
“Hitchhiking is a common practice in the Pyrenees,” Larissa said. “We will be safe if we are together.”
“OK,” Brian said, but he remained skeptical.
The bus arrived in Hendaye, and they marched to the nearest outdoors supply store. The pair spent half an hour selecting the items on Larissa’s list. Brian understood why they were buying a tent, hiking shoes, and sleeping bags, but Larissa had to explain the need for other equipment. On the way to the cashier she made an impulse purchase, a maroon and navy FC Barcelona soccer jersey for Brian.
“You can wear this in Spain, and people will be less likely to think you are a foreigner,” she said.
“Won’t my American walk give me away?”
Larissa grinned. “The Spanish are not as sensitive to such things as we French.”
In a nearby café, they had a light meal and transferred their supplies and their original backpacks into new, taller packs with aluminum frames. The shopping spree had sapped most of their cash, but except for bus fare and meals tomorrow, Brian doubted they would need much more money until they found Larissa’s father. They put on their hiking shoes and pants in the café’s WC (Brian was getting used to changing in public restrooms). After that, they walked out of the town and into the mountains.
Larissa indicated a wooden post marked with a white stripe above a red stripe. “We are on the GR 10”—she pronounced it guh arr dee—“a trail that extends the entire length of the Pyrenees, from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean. It takes six weeks to hike the complete trail, which I hope to do next year. I have hiked only this section before, from Hendaye to Sare.”
“With your mother?” Brian asked.
“Oui, with my mother.”
They went in silence for a while. Brian used that time to adjust to walking with the higher, heavier backpack that raised his center of gravity. The hiking shoes, which looked like brown sneakers but had stiffer soles, required no adjustment period. Their comfort surprised him.
Larissa gestured toward peaks in the southwest. “We will be headed that way tomorrow, into Spain, but not up those mountains. Do not worry. No ropes or pitons required.”
Brian shook his head. She wasn’t going to let him live that down. They passed beneath a motorway and put the concrete world behind them. The evening sky was turning orange and salmon, dappling the landscape before them in darkening shades of green. Rounded summits hovered like gray ghosts in the distance.
“It’s funny,” Brian said. “I was just in the Alps a few days ago and figured all mountain ranges would be the same. But the Pyrenees seem less … severe.”
Larissa squeezed his arm. “We have a saying: Les Alpes stupéfient, les Pyrénées séduisent. ‘The Alps amaze, the Pyrenees seduce.’”
“I’m not sure I want to be seduced by a mountain range,” Brian said. “It sounds painful.”
Larissa laughed the throaty laugh he already adored. “Maybe you will change your mind tomorrow,” she said, “when you see the Pyrenees in the daylight.”
They walked out of a copse of trees into a meadow that stretched for miles. Shadow covered much of the valley, but the waning sun still illuminated a grassy stretch dotted with purple flowers.
“I wish we had arrived here an hour earlier,” Larissa said. “This is my favorite place on Earth. It is so beautiful and so peaceful. Once I sat there”—she pointed toward a spot nearby—“singing along to ‘Sheena Is a Punk Rocker’ on my iPod. Only I changed her name to Larissa. There I was by myself in the middle of this quiet field singing punk rock until my lungs burst.”
Her voice trailed off. Larissa had stopped walking and was smiling serenely, her hands clasping her shoulders as if to embrace the memory. Brian cupped her shoulder blade with his palm, his fingertips within an inch of hers. She relaxed into his arm and he smiled as well.
“I wish I could have seen you,” he said. “I might have been terrified of this lunatic Ramones fan rolling in the grass, but I wish I could have seen you.”
She laughed again and led him along the meadow’s edge and back into the forest. “It will be dark soon,” she said. “And we need to find the right place to set up the tent.”
They were carrying flashlights by the time they came to a small clearing, about fifteen feet around. “We can camp here,” Larissa said.
They set down the backpacks. Larissa pulled the furled tent from Brian’s pack and unrolled it on the ground. She turned on a battery-powered lantern so they could see what they were doing.
“Do we even need the tent?” Brian asked. “This seems like a nice, warm night. Sleeping bags should do.”
“The weather can change quickly in the mountains,” Larissa said, handing him a compact rubber mallet. “You will be glad to be in a tent if it rains while we sleep.”
Brian set to tapping stakes into the ground, pulling the tent’s reinforced plastic floor taut as he proceeded. “Have we been following the Comet Line?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” Larissa said as she screwed together sections of the tent’s single, hard nylon pole. “If we followed the whole length of the Comet Line it would take two days. We are following only the section that crosses into Spain.” She threaded the pole through a long, curving sleeve in the tent’s fabric. “But we are not following it precisely. We do not need to. The forest is not filled with Gestapo agents pursuing us with their dogs.”
“Good point,” Brian said. Pounding in the last stake, he imagined the baying of hounds from a distant, desperate past.
“Which means we can take easier paths,” Larissa said. “Help me with this, please.”
They pushed the pole into a pin on one side of the tent and then pulled in the opposite direction to form a bow. “Also,” Larissa continued, “if we stayed on Dédée de Jongh’s actual trail we would arrive at a picnic area after crossing into Spain. I assumed you would want to avoid public places, at least until we reach the road.”
“You assumed right,” Brian said as they secured the other end of the pole. The arched pole now supported a mesh dome. They pulled a fabric skin over the skeletal tent and fastened it with Velcro straps, plastic clips, and a few more stakes.
Admiring the finished tent, Brian was about to say something lame like, “Home sweet home,” when he looked up and was struck dumb. Beyond the treetops was a night sky his urban eyes had never beheld. More stars than he thought possible shined brightly and crisply, intense white specks blazing through infinite blackness. Brian realized he and Larissa were miles from any building. With no city lights to obscure it, the night sky glittered with endless beauty.
“You have not seen the stars like this before, have you?”
“Uh-unh. This is amazing.” Brian wanted to add something profound, but his bedazzled optic nerves short-circuited his brain’s speech function.
“It will grow more spectacular as the night continues,” Larissa said as she turned off the lantern to complete the darkness. “This is merely prelude.”
They stood for a long time in the black, still night gazing at the stars. Larissa pointed out constellations to Brian, who recognized only the Big Dipper on his own. When Larissa yawned, they knew it was time to retire.
She turned on the lantern, and they crawled into the tent, which was just big enough for the teenagers and their backpacks. They unrolled their sleeping bags and settled into them. The pair had a tacit agreement to sleep in the clothes they were wearing.
Not yet ready for slumber but alw
ays ready for a good spy story, Brian said, “So tell me more about Dédée de Jongh.”
“They called her the Little Cyclone,” Larissa said, “and it was she who ran the Comet Line. Dédée organized many people all the way from Belgium to San Sebastian in Spain. Most of those who worked for her were men, including macho Basque smugglers, yet they all obeyed the Little Cyclone. All but one.”
“What happened?”
“One of the Basques betrayed her. The Gestapo captured Dédée and put her in prison, but they did not execute her because it was beyond their comprehension that a woman, particularly a young woman, could run so large and successful a resistance operation.” Larissa paused, and her eyes flashed playfully. “The Gestapo were male chauvinists, just like Foster Blake.”
“Hey!” Brian retorted, unprepared for the ambush. “That was uncalled for.” Larissa’s grin told him she was teasing, but it was still a cheap shot.
“Are you telling me you do not idolize Foster Blake for all the beautiful women he sleeps with?”
“That is a tired, unimaginative criticism.” Brian tried not to sound defensive, but he had had this argument with girls before. “I could find lots more sex in other books and movies. And if sex was all Foster Blake had going for him, he wouldn’t still be popular after all these years.”
“So what besides sex makes him popular?”
Brian went quiet. He sat up to focus his thoughts. Finally he said, “I think it’s the racing changes.”
“Racing changes? What are racing changes?”
“I don’t really know. But every time there was a car chase in one of the books, Clive Hastings would write something like, ‘Blake threw his E-type into the hairpin curve and executed a perfect racing change before roaring into the straightaway.’ I have only a vague idea what a racing change is—something you do with a stick shift—but it sounds cool as hell. Racing change. What matters is that Foster Blake knows how to do it, and he knows exactly the right moment to do it while cornering at high speed. Things like that. Like how he always knows the odds he’ll be dealt a winning hand at baccarat. Foster Blake is in control of his world. That’s what makes him so appealing. It’s not just that women throw themselves at him or that he can kill with discretion, or that he gets amazing gadgets—those are extras. Foster Blake remains iconic because he has this, this masculine expertise that keeps him alive.”
The Boy Who Knew Too Much Page 12