I doubt one’s heart actually does leap into one’s throat when hit with scary news, but that’s what it felt like. I managed to ask, “Did you accept the offer?”
“No, of course not. But that’s what I want to talk to you about.” He led me into the great green bower around the Marie de Médicis Fountain and found a bench where we could sit and feel alone beside the reflecting pool. As he relaxed against the back of the bench, he removed his tie, rolled it up, stuffed it into a jacket pocket, and undid the top shirt buttons. “Maggie, ma chérie, now that we are, at last, in the same time zone, in the same house, I want us to enjoy as much of that time together as we possibly can. But there is still a great big beautiful world we have yet to explore, you in your work and me in mine. So, how can we manage for both of us to brush our teeth together every morning and still get out into the world in a meaningful way?”
“Experience tells me you had an answer before you asked the question.”
“A possible answer. At least, one that might be worth considering.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Your contract is for one season, yes? Six films.”
I nodded. “So far.”
“Your television friend, Roddy Combes, the talk show host, was so in love with the Laotian segment of the unexploded bomb piece you recently finished that he offered to partner with you on a future project, meaning he would bring his checkbook if you let him come along to, as he says, play. I am making you the same offer.”
“With or without Roddy?”
“He’s good company, he can come, too.”
“After the last film on this contract airs in January?”
“Yes. Or, until you complete the last film on the contract.”
“To be clear, you’re talking about going independent. No contract, no salary, no benefits.”
“I am. Unless your new employer agrees to come aboard.”
“And Guido?”
“We’ll ask him what he wants to do.”
“I am intrigued, Jean-Paul. But there are these little details to think about, like paying the mortgage and keeping the lights on. Dom starts university in a year, and that will be expensive. I know there is no tuition here, but room and board and books—”
He smiled. “To begin, Dom will have no university costs. As a student at one of the Grandes Écoles he will have the same status as a military recruit and will be paid a small salary until he completes his degree. Next, I have no mortgage and I am fairly confident that income from investments will be sufficient to keep the lights on and put food on the table.”
“But I have a mortgage on my house in Los Angeles,” I said. “And a daughter at a very expensive public university with plans to go on to medical school. Health insurance to pay for.”
“My dearest Maggie, you do realize that your share of the income from the apartments at rue Jacob will more than cover those expenses, yes?”
“Oh” was all I could manage, because I had not factored in the rents from rue Jacob. Shortly after Isabelle died, I was told that I had inherited her share of a “residence” she owned on rue Jacob. With my imperfect understanding of French and my notaire’s sketchy English, I gathered that I had inherited an apartment. Just one, though that was amazing all by itself. But recently I learned that I now owned not only Isabelle’s apartment but a half share of the entire apartment building on rue Jacob, and that Jean-Paul owned the other half. The fact of that seemed more like something out of a Gothic novel than a reality in the life of Maggie MacGowen who for years had lived and supported a daughter from paycheck to paycheck. I knew it was going to take a while for me to adjust to the reality, or the unreality, that I did not have to worry anymore about where the next paycheck would come from if I was careful.
For a while, before we were rescued by a television network contract, Guido and I had made independent films and nearly starved. I doubted Jean-Paul knew the extent of the economic perils of his proposal. After running through a mental checklist of what would likely be involved, I said, “Filmmaking can be expensive.”
He shrugged. “Let me and Roddy worry about that.”
What he proposed was huge. I had not been financially dependent on anyone since I graduated from college and left the shelter of the Bank of Mom and Dad, and I was proud of it. Adamant about it, in fact. So much so that I had avoided talking with Jean-Paul about financial arrangements once we married. Maybe the time had come. I said, “I’ve never asked to look at your bank statements.”
“I have offered. My current financial statements are still in the top left-hand drawer of my desk,” he said. “The drawer isn’t locked. When you’re ready to talk about it, you know where to find me.”
“Jean-Paul, this is huge. Before we go any further, I have to know why.”
“Why.” He gripped my hand and sighed. “There is so much hate, so much danger out in our big beautiful world right now. For all of my working life I have believed that quiet, reasoned conversation among reasonable people with authority—diplomacy—would resolve most global problems. You give some, you get some, we find a way to co-exist. But without reasonable people in authority, maybe I can be more effective if I stop talking to leaders and start showing to people.”
I said, “From diplomacy to propaganda?”
He laughed. “I prefer the term huckstering. All media are selling something, yes? So, is it wrong to want to sell compassion for our fellow man?”
“I suspect you have some very particular men in mind.”
“And women and children, yes,” he said. “I want to show the world the conditions in refugee camps. But more importantly, I want to show who the people are and let them explain why they are there.”
“Unfinished business?” I said, looking into his eyes. What was there, lurking behind the little smile? With a finger I traced the fine scar line that coursed down the left side of his face from his hairline, around his eye socket, ending in the middle of his cheek, a reminder of the last time he inspected a camp. The plastic surgeon who worked on him the day the bomb hit the road in front of his car did a brilliant job of putting him back together. In another six months, or maybe a year, the scar would be nearly invisible. At least, the scar on the outside would no longer be apparent. But the scars inside, the ones we cannot see, what about them? When would the nightmares go away? He took my hand and kissed the palm.
“What happened to me in Greece, ma chérie, had nothing to do with the refugee camp I was visiting,” he said. “But yes, unfinished business. Everything about the camps is unfinished business.”
I said, “What will be your role be in this filmmaking enterprise, other than signing checks?”
“Logistics and contacts. You know I have contacts.”
“You’d share a tent with me in a snake-infested jungle?”
“I’d share a tent with you anywhere.”
“I can be very bossy and very exacting.”
“I am a trained diplomat.”
I laughed and extended my hand to seal this deal. “If you’re game to explore the idea, I am.”
He shook my hand. “We’ll call Roddy tomorrow.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon being Paris tourists, talking over some of the details of this possible filmmaking joint venture while we walked. After strolling through the Luxembourg Gardens, we stopped at the fifteenth-century shrine to Saint-Étienne du Mont to gawk at the Gothic structure. I was walking up one of the flamboyant lacertine staircases to the loft above the chancel to get a better look at the stained-glass clerestory windows when my phone vibrated. For just a moment, against logic, I hoped this was a call from Roni Pascal’s source about Yvan Fouchet ready to spill some bit of information that would help to find Ophelia, but it was way too soon for that call to happen. Likely it never would happen. That doesn’t mean that hope will cease to trickle even when it’s clear it won’t spring eternal. Still, the text that set off this flutter was plenty interesting.
During his lunch hour, Zed had
looked at the CCTV tapes from the street behind the train station Friday night and found the girl carrying a cello case. He parked the footage in my cloud account because Bruno wasn’t around to give him my inhouse mailbox information and I wasn’t listed in the studio directory yet. I found Jean-Paul studying the pipe organ and showed him the text. We waited until we were outside to open the file on my phone.
With a stone effigy of the martyred Saint-Étienne du Mont looking over our shoulders, on my telephone screen we watched a dark blur emerge out of the general haze beyond the range of a CCTV installation at an intersection. The blur took form and become identifiable as Ophelia, still carrying her cello in its hard-shell case. She passed below the camera and out of view. Zed then cut to the camera above the next intersection. We could see her approach, but the second camera was installed on the opposite side of the street so we lost sight of her whenever a car passed between her and the lens. A slow-moving service van went by followed by two cars trapped behind, unable to pass. When we could see the far sidewalk again, Ophelia was again a gray blur walking out of range until she disappeared into the night. The entire sequence took just over three minutes. The time signature on the last frame was 21:35:18, a little less than fifteen minutes from the time Ophelia and Nabi walked into the train station’s parking lot.
“Vanished,” I said as I forwarded the footage to Detective Delisle with a brief note. “I wonder if anyone in those vehicles remembers seeing her.”
“The image isn’t very sharp, but maybe our fine detective can get registration numbers off the vehicles. Someone may have seen something after the cameras lost her.”
“If Delisle has time to look,” I said. “Officially, she isn’t on the case anymore.”
“Ah, there is that. Maybe we can find her some help,” he said, holding out his hand. “May I?”
I gave him the phone and he tapped in a text before forwarding the video somewhere. Within moments a reply came to his own phone.
“Who was that?”
“A friend at vehicle registration. He’ll work on it.”
I laughed, taking his arm. “The people you know.”
“You see? I can be put to good use. Now, what would you like to do?”
“I want to go home,” I said. “It’s getting late. We need to pick up something for dinner on the way, but something light after that lunch. Isn’t there a big marketplace near here?”
“Yes.” His face brightened. “Le Marché Mouffetard.”
Rue Mouffetard was a street lined with food shops and outdoor stands, a food lover’s paradise. We picked up some interesting cheeses, thinly sliced ham from Savoy, fresh cherries from Vaucluse in the south, spring peas from Normandy, lemons from Calabria, and beautiful dark chocolates made on the premises from African fair-trade beans. There was still room in the shopping bag I had brought from Isabelle’s, so we added some whole-grain rolls, several bunches of fresh herbs, and a tub of Greek yogurt.
Arm in arm, we walked toward the closest Métro station, just a block away. It was the evening rush hour and the one-way street was packed with cars creeping forward in fits and starts, and pedestrians, many with laden shopping bags and sometimes also briefcases, school children lugging backpacks, little family clutches of parents and children; end of the work day, everyone headed home. I leaned into Jean-Paul, thinking how lovely it all was, how happy I was to be there, at that moment, with him.
Car horns came first, then screams and an unfamiliar dull thump. Everyone turned toward the noise, as people do, curious and alarmed at once. Just as I realized that a small van was on the sidewalk speeding toward us, plowing through people, the van seemed to take flight an instant before a ball of fire and black smoke erupted inside and blew it apart. I felt the explosion before I heard it, a push of pressure that stole the air from my lungs and deadened all sound for just an instant before shards of burning metal, glass, stone, asphalt, and people rained down around us. I reached for Jean-Paul as I turned to run but he grabbed me around the shoulders, pulled me down tight beside a stone wall and crouched over me. Because it’s what I do, it’s who I am, I had my phone out and, because he would know where to send it, I streamed video of what I could see sheltered under Jean-Paul to Zed at the studio: the feet of people running into traffic, climbing over cars stalled in the street, desperate to get away, a cacophony of car alarms and screams. And blood. Arms, chests, legs, faces washed in blood.
Jean-Paul’s face was next to mine, his phone in his hand. My ears buzzed from the blast so the only words I understood were car bomb, Mouffetard Métro, and come. Panicked people surged around us, bumping us as they tried to push their way through the mass of souls in their path. Through the buzz in my ears I heard the two-tone claxon of police and fire sirens, adding another layer of noise to the confusion as they approached. Sharing the feeling of panic, I shoved against Jean-Paul to get up, to run. But he held me tighter and said, “Wait for the gas tank to blow.”
I saw on the video later that hardly a minute elapsed from the time we first saw the van careen into the crowd until the second explosion sent a second wave of fire and debris flying into the crowd. I felt Jean-Paul flinch and knew something or someone had hit his back, but he stayed in place, a shield around me.
His phone buzzed; he looked at the screen, said, “Now,” and pulled me to my feet. Traffic was at a standstill; the blast set at least two cars aflame and now they blocked the street. Moving against the flow of humanity, we wove our way through stalled cars and rushing people, headed toward the fires. The closer we got, the thicker and more rank the air became with burning oil and rubber and I didn’t want to know what else; people had been trapped under the van. The heat grew nearly unbearable as we ran past the flaming cars, but we kept running forward, into the zone of conflagration, fighting against the tide of people moving away.
A big black Peugeot pulled up just as we emerged through the curtain of smoke and out into nearly breathable air on the far street. Jean-Paul opened the car’s back door, dove in and pulled me with him. The door was still open when the driver took off. Reaching past me to grab the handle, Jean-Paul told the driver, “Vaucresson, Charles, s’il vous plaît.”
Stunned that a rescue car had suddenly appeared, I said, “Jean-Paul, who are you?”
“I couldn’t be seen there,” he said, struggling out of his suit coat. “Delicate negotiations are underway.”
“Do you think that car bomb was aimed at you?”
“Of course not.” He put his finger through a hole burned through the back of his coat by flying debris. “Look at that.”
I nudged him forward and pulled out his shirttail so I could get a look at his back. The shirt had a charred spot and there was a red mark on his skin about the size of an American quarter, but no blister. I kissed the spot and said, “All better now.”
He laughed and wrapped his arm around me. “Forgive me if I handled you roughly, but things were flying about, yes?”
“Yes.”
“We were very lucky. And this is very important: We were not there, d’accord?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at the video I shot. When I had shifted the angle of the phone to pan up, a bit of Jean-Paul’s sleeve covered the top of the lens. But that second of dark blur was all of him I captured. I texted Zed again and told him that if the news division used the footage I sent him, it was important that I not get credit. He texted back a thumbs-up emoji.
“May I see?” I handed my phone to Jean-Paul. He ran the first few frames a couple of times and handed it back. “Did you get a look at the driver?”
“No. I didn’t pull out my phone until after the explosion.”
“Someone is sure to have gotten a look at his face. Not that it matters; we know who he was, do we not?”
“Do we?”
His left shoulder rose slightly. “Young man, probably between eighteen and thirty-five, feeling disaffected, alienated, became angry enough or felt righteous enough about a cause or his own rage th
at he sacrificed his life to make his point known. We’ll learn his name soon and forget it soon afterward.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Jean-Paul,” I said. “Who the hell are you? There’s a car bomb, total chaos, you make a call, and boom, within minutes we’re in the backseat of a big black car. How does that happen?”
“The Palais de Justice is very close by, ma chérie. I called my friend Davey, who is always in his office until late. He sent his driver, and we are extrait.”
“Extracted like a bad tooth, or like a spy, by David Berg, the chief of police?”
“A spy?” He chuckled. “No, never that.”
“Tell me what it is, exactly, that these delicate negotiations you’re involved in are trying to make happen?”
“Trying to make happen? Nothing,” he said. “Maggie, I am the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to hold on to the status quo in a very volatile situation. We may not be happy with things as they are, but if I, if we, fail, then the dike breaks and the results will be catastrophic. What do I do? I make nothing happen.”
“Next time you tell me your work is boring, I won’t believe you.”
“Believe me,” he said. “It’s very boring. I work hard to maintain boring.” He leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Tell Maggie, Charles, what does the head of the Paris police prefer, a boring day, or an exciting day?”
Charles laughed. “Better to keep the finger in the dike, sir. Much better.”
When I was considering the offer to work at a French television network, Jean-Paul warned me that commuting by car between Paris and the suburbs was grim; better to take the train, he said. The traffic was not as grim as Los Angeles, but awful just the same. That Wednesday night, however, nestled together in the backseat of David Berg’s big car with the capable Charles at the wheel, I was grateful for the time it took for the short trip between conflagration in Paris and the leafy quiet of Vaucresson. By the time Charles let us out at the train station car park, the initial rattle of shock had morphed into a dull unease and wariness. I wondered, did people who lived in war zones, under regular bombing raids, ever become inured, numb, to danger? I decided that wasn’t possible.
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