“Wow,” Brian said, “and I thought you looked good in jeans and a T-shirt.”
Larissa looked up at him and grinned. “The consul’s wife took me shopping this morning. She wanted to improve my tastes.”
Brian returned her grin. “The old you was already beautiful, but I won’t argue with the efforts of the consul’s wife.” Brian looked into her eyes and his smile faltered. Her lower eyelids were puffy and her eyes slightly bloodshot.
Larissa saw his concern and nodded. “I have had time to cry,” she said.
Brian wasn’t ready to face this subject, so he changed it. “How is your knee?”
“Much better,” she said. “Simply a little sore now.”
Brian then told Larissa everything that happened the night before. She clutched his arm when he talked about the runaway van.
“I am afraid my side of the story is not so exciting,” she said when he finished. The police had picked Larissa up a few minutes after she ran away from Brian (which she admitted was intentional). She refused to say anything to the police and insisted she speak to the French consulate. By then the consulate knew her father had died, so the consul himself arrived at Barcelona police headquarters to bring Larissa in.
“And I have been here since,” she said, “except for my shopping trip. But I have not been alone. Many people from my government want to talk to me.”
Brian laughed. “I’m the opposite. I’m poison to the CIA. Silver’s the only one allowed to talk to me.”
“Have you talked to your parents yet?”
“No. It’s still the middle of the night in Wisconsin. I’ll call them in a few hours, and hopefully convince them I’m fine. And then I’ll have to call my school chaperone, Miss Weninger, and try to calm her down. I guess Silver has been stonewalling them all for the past few days. I’ll have to lie to them.” Brian frowned. “I’m not looking forward to that.”
He explained the cover story the CIA conjured for him, that he had spent the entire time in the safe house in the south of France. Once Silver realized he and Brian were involved in a hostile operation, the CIA decided to put Brian in protective custody. For Brian’s own safety, no one was allowed to talk to him or know where he was, not even his parents.
“So,” Brian said, “I have to convince everyone I was all secure and happy and spent my time reading comics, watching DVDs, and playing video games. Actually, I don’t think I’ll have a hard time convincing people of that.” He touched Larissa’s cheek. “What about you?”
Larissa told him that her aunt who lived in a Paris suburb would arrive in Barcelona that afternoon. Larissa would move in with her aunt’s family. She and her aunt would have to spend several more days in Barcelona dealing with bureaucracy and meeting with officials from Eurocorps and the SDECE, France’s secret service.
Brian asked, “Are you going to tell anyone else the truth about what happened?”
Larissa shook her head. “Non. My government is going to put out the story that my father was killed by terrorists who wanted to steal the weapon he was developing. The government will not say he collaborated.” She added quietly, “This is how I want my father remembered.”
Brian no longer could avoid the subject. “Larissa, I am so sorry about your father. I don’t know how you can forgive me. If I hadn’t come to your house—”
Larissa placed a hand over his mouth. “My father was the victim of his own terrible decisions.” A tear rolled down her face. She continued to cry, but her voice didn’t falter. “If not for you, those men would have succeeded with their plan, and I would forever think that my father committed suicide because the weapon failed. You offered him the chance to save himself, but he realized too late he was dealing with evil people. At the end, he tried to protect me. I will always remember this.”
Brian held her, and the two were silent except for Larissa’s quiet sobs. When these subsided, Brian said. “I need your e-mail address.”
Larissa laughed. Her laughter reverberated through Brian’s ribs, and he wished the sensation would never stop. Yet it ended just seconds later as Larissa pulled away to reach for a pen and pad on a nearby secretary’s desk. “Mais oui,” she said.
They exchanged e-mail and snail mail addresses, cell phone numbers, and Facebook and Twitter information. They invented their own cover story in case anyone wondered how Brian had formed such a fast friendship with a girl he met in France. He would explain that he struck up a conversation with a lovely Parisian girl in a bookshop and they really hit it off. “I’ll say I was dazzled by your Ramones T-shirt.”
She punched Brian’s arm playfully and gave him a wide, warm smile. Brian brushed away her last tear. Pressing his forehead against hers, he said, “You are so…très jolie.” He kissed her. The kiss lasted a long time, and Brian slowly ran his fingers through her hair and down her back. He broke away. Their lips still close, he murmured, “I don’t want to stop kissing you. I’m afraid that once I do, it will mean goodbye.”
Larissa leaned back so they could see each other’s face. Her deep brown eyes held his as she said, “I can never say goodbye to you, Brian Parker. Never. I can only say au revoir.”
“Until we see each other again,” Brian said.
“I am so pleased you understand my language.” She clasped the back of Brian’s neck and pulled him close for another kiss. Then, gently, she pushed herself away.
“Au revoir, cher Brian.” Larissa traced her fingers down his cheek one last time and disappeared behind the door.
CHAPTER 55--GIFT
As Silver told the story, his superiors had debated for hours how to smuggle Brian back into France. Because Brian did not legally enter Spain, he could not legally leave it. They considered putting him in a Zodiac speedboat and depositing him on a beach in France, but decided that would be time-consuming. They considered carrying him out on a black flight, but decided that even blindfolded, Brian might guess the location of the CIA’s secret Mediterranean airbase. Finally, they decided the simplest approach was best, so early the next morning Brian crossed into France in the trunk of Silver’s car.
It wasn’t so bad. Brian didn’t have to get into the trunk until they were a few miles from the border. He crawled past the suitcase he had not seen since Nice and into a hidden compartment at the rear of the trunk. Inside were a flashlight and a pillow (Silver was being considerate). The car stopped minutes later and Brian heard muffled voices speaking French, then the car was moving again. After another ten minutes the car pulled over and Brian rejoined Silver in the front seat.
“Bienvenue vers la France,” Silver said. He tossed that morning’s Barcelona newspaper, La Vanguardia, into Brian’s lap. The paper was folded to an inside page, and one of the upper headlines contained the word cementerio. Brian was able to glean that the headline referred to vandalism in the Montjuïc cemetery.
“The story will start dribbling out today,” Silver said, “or at least the version the concerned governments want their citizens to know. The Guardia Civil and the Spanish security services will get the credit for recovering the van with the missing weapon. That’s in exchange for erasing Roland Eck’s role from the record. The Pentagon insisted that since he died nearly a year ago, he couldn’t possibly have been involved in this terrorist plot.”
“I like how this became a terrorist plot,” Brian said.
“All the bad guys are terrorists these days,” Silver responded. “The public doesn’t question that. And the terrorist mastermind behind the operation was Mathias Skyrm. The security brain trust decided it would be easiest to blame the whole thing on him. And of course, the Guardia Civil gets credit for killing one of Europe’s most notorious criminals.”
“I don’t recall seeing any of them on Las Ramblas,” Brian said drily.
“Oh no, that’s not where Skyrm died. He was killed in a shootout at the delivery warehouse, along with his accomplices Kralik, Voss, and Carter.”
Brian nodded. So Voss and Carter had both been in the BMW.<
br />
“The van was recovered from the warehouse, too,” Silver continued. “It was never in the cemetery.”
Brian held up the newspaper. “Because vandals ransacked the cemetery.”
“You got it,” Silver said. “And that other incident you referred to, the one in the bird market, that was just local thugs in another example of the increasing violence along the Ramblas frightening away the tourists.”
Brian sighed. He saw how the last few days of his life were being swept neatly under the carpet.
Silver filled him in on other details. Masson, who was still in the San Gregorio brig, started talking as soon as he heard Eck and Skyrm were dead. The CIA had recovered the Prometheus prototype from the warehouse outside Zaragoza. And the Prometheus van was now aboard a container ship bound for Norfolk, Virginia.
Brian watched the rolling scenery of the Pyrenees as they sped along a busy motorway. After a few moments he asked, “How much trouble are you in for dragging me into this?”
“A ton,” Silver said, “but that’s balanced out by my foiling a conspiracy to steal one of our latest weapons.” He glanced at Brian. “Sorry, but I had to take credit for that.”
“Take it,” Brian said. He was too weary of the whole affair to feel bitter. “Did they discover your financial arrangement with Tetzel?”
“If they did, I’d be on a military flight back to Washington right now. I think I’m safe, though I’d better not touch that account in Liechtenstein for about five years.”
Brian paused before asking his next question. “And what about the guy you had watching my family? How much trouble will he be in for domestic spying?”
“He wasn’t CIA. He’s a private investigator friend of mine from Chicago who owed me a few favors.”
“Did your friend know you were using him to frighten a fifteen-year-old boy?”
“No,” Silver said.
They lapsed into silence after that. Silver drove to a small airstrip outside of the medieval town of Perpignan. A twin-engine Beechcraft was waiting for them, its propellers already roaring as Brian and Silver stepped aboard. They were airborne within seconds. The cockpit door was closed; Brian never saw the pilot.
After an hour in the air, Silver engaged Brian in small talk. They discussed the chances that the Brewers and the Orioles, which was Silver’s team, had for the rest of the season. Silver asked for a fuller explanation of Spider-Girl “because that comic was pretty good.” When they were over the Loire Valley, Silver told him to look out the window. Brian watched several châteaux drift past below.
They landed at another small airfield outside of Paris. An empty black Citroën sedan was parked at the end of the runway. Silver and Brian got into the car and drove off. The Beechcraft was in the air again before they reached the road.
Silver called Miss Weninger from the car and learned the group would be at the Eiffel Tower by the time he and Brian reached central Paris. Silver volunteered to drop Brian off there instead of at the hotel. Miss Weninger agreed, saying the group would wait until Brian arrived before going up the tower.
Thirty minutes later Silver found a parking spot along the Avenue Emile Deschanel. Brian saw the Wauwatosa East group exploring the Parc du Champ de Mars, the long, grassy plaza that stretches from the Eiffel Tower and lends it a postcard setting. Brian stared at the top of the tower and his mouth fell open. “That thing is a lot taller than I expected,” he said.
“Let that go to show you that not everything in life will be a disappointment,” Silver said.
Brian retrieved his backpack from the rear seat and reached for the door handle, but stopped when Silver touched his arm. The man’s eyes held a sincerity Brian had not seen before. “Brian,” he said, “you probably won’t hear this from anyone else, but I want you to know that you deserve a thank you from the American government. You truly did a service to your country.”
Brian scoffed. “Like you did?”
“I only did everything I could to save my own skin.”
“That’s all I did.”
“Not entirely,” Silver said. “You could have stayed on the base at San Gregorio. You were safe there. But you left with Larissa and her father to protect them.”
“Yeah, fat lot of good I did.”
“But you did, don’t you see? If you had stayed on that base, Larissa would have been killed with her father.”
Brian went cold at the thought of Larissa dying. Quietly, he said, “If you say so.”
Silver reached beneath the driver’s seat and pulled out a manila envelope. He handed it to Brian. “It’s much less than you deserve, but here are some parting gifts.”
Brian tore off the edge of the envelope and tipped it. His passport dropped into his lap. Brian opened it to find that his entry stamp into France matched the day he left Lucerne. “Courtesy of your friends at the French consulate,” Silver said.
Brian tapped the envelope on his knee and his watch and cell phone fell out. He picked up the phone. “I put a dead battery in there,” Silver said. “Fortunately for me, the charging cord you brought doesn’t fit European outlets, so you won’t be lying when you say you couldn’t recharge your phone.”
Something else was in the envelope, something flat and rectangular. Brian let it slide out. It was a paperback book. Brian read the title: Schnefeuer.
“That’s what you were looking for in Lucerne, wasn’t it—a German copy of Snowfire?”
“Yes,” Brian said. “Yes it was.” He looked at the painting on the cover. Foster Blake was dead center in a dark blue ski suit, flinty-eyed and poised for action. His right hand held his Sig-Sauer, and his left hand rested protectively around the waist of the ravishing Georgianna Fox, who was wearing the tightest-fitting polar jacket the artist could conceive. Her zipper was pulled low enough to reveal the inevitable cleavage.
“Thanks,” Brian said.
“Like I said, the least I could do.” Silver pressed a button to unlock Brian’s door. “I’ll drop your suitcase off at the hotel, OK?”
Brian stepped to the curb. “Goodbye, Brian,” Silver said. “I won’t be seeing you again.”
“Goodbye,” Brian replied, and he shut the door.
A familiar voice shouted Brian’s name. Tim Gifford was running toward him. The others members of the Wauwatosa East group were looking at him and chattering excitedly, but they were willing to let Tim be the official greeter. Tim reached Brian, clasped his upper arm and leaned in, not quite hugging.
“Dude! What happened to you? I sent you, like, a thousand texts.”
“My phone died, and I couldn’t recharge it because I brought the wrong kind of cord,” Brian said, and realized it wasn’t a lie. Not technically.
Brian hitched his backpack over his shoulder and they started walking toward the group. Tim went on, “We heard they were hiding you in the south of France because terrorists were after you because of that dead guy you found in Lucerne. Is that true?”
Brian shrugged. “Nobody really told me anything. I was in a little apartment with the shades drawn. I spent the whole time watching DVDs, playing videogames, reading comics, and wishing I was seeing the sights of Europe with you guys.” He punched Tim in the shoulder. “I really missed you.”
“No, you know what you really missed?” Tim’s eyes brightened. “When we were in Frankfurt they put us in this hotel in the middle of nowhere, just some industrial park somewhere. Anyway, Skip Lewis and Sam Newton somehow managed to sneak a six-pack of Heineken into their room, and they drank it all themselves. So when they come down the next morning they look green as frogs, and then they puke all over everyone’s continental breakfast! And Miss Weninger exploded! She screamed at them, ‘If you two don’t shape up, I will personally drive you to the nearest airport and put you on the next plane back to Milwaukee!’ Ah man, you missed all the excitement.”
Brian shook his head. “Yeah, I missed all the excitement.”
Ahead, Miss Weninger disengaged from the group and walked toward
them, relief showing on her face. Brian scanned the pathway leading to her and noticed a trash can to the side.
Tim gave Brian a knowing nudge. “By the way, pal, Darlene Miller found your disappearing act highly intriguing. You’re in, man. You are in!”
Brian nodded absently. His thoughts were not on Darlene Miller. He looked around the Paris skyline and wondered which direction would lead him to Larissa’s new home.
A car engine started behind them, and Brian turned in time to see Silver pull into traffic.
“Was that that Silver guy?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, that was him.”
“So what’s his story? Was he a spy after all?”
“I never quite figured out what he was,” Brian said as they passed the trash bin.
Without Tim noticing, Brian executed a behind-the-back toss that landed his copy of Schnefeuer in the trash. It didn’t make a sound.
THE END
Acknowledgements
Because this is my first book, I have many people to thank. Here goes:
To my wife, Jeanette, thanks for the love and support. I couldn’t have done this without you.
To my mother and sisters, thanks for being such fabulous cheerleaders. I regret that my father didn’t live to see this book published, but I am glad he got to read the first draft.
To Laura Caldwell, thanks for misunderstanding my question about teenage spy novels and responding with the best possible answer: write one!
To Mathilde Bigorgne, thanks for befriending a stranger on the Internet and telling me about your hometown of Toulouse. Any errors pertaining to “la Ville Rose” should be attributed to me and not Mathilde.
To the best copy editor I know, Joan Oliver, thanks for taking your red pen to my first draft.
The Boy Who Knew Too Much Page 27