Where the Wolf Lies

by Tyler Flynn

  Hart stood with his arms raised. He began screaming, pleading for help like a mortally wounded animal howling at the injustice of its destiny. He turned to look at his would-be captors, their faces tense, guns at the ready.

  “She needs help, please!”

  He collapsed to his knees as the rain began to fall harder.

  42

  Paris

  The sky darkened as day turned to night; the storm clouds rolled further inland, bringing with them more rain and cracks of heavy thunder. Angry winds swept across the office buildings and apartments of the Seventh Arrondissement as the Eiffel Tower watched on like the stoic guardian of Paris. Another storm, and this one, too, shall pass. Flashes of white lightning scorched the black sky as rain lashed against the small window that Hart stared out of.

  He sat handcuffed to a steel table in a dimly lit room on the third floor of the DGSI building. It was next door to Les Invalides, where its eternal captor, the resting Napoleon, stayed like Hart, confined to a small box, surrounded by guards, with no hope of escape.

  Hart had sat comatose alone for nearly three hours. Finally, a tall man with flowing dark hair, a thin nose, pointed chin, and a light-gray Prince of Wales suit had visited him. The man seemed important, carrying with him the elegance of an aristocrat who knew he had power yet wielded it sparingly, knowing full well the damage he could cause. He had a light-blue silk pocket square that matched his dress shirt and dark-navy tie, with golden French cuffs in the shape of the fleur-de-lis. He’d come into Hart’s room three times and spoken fluent English, but spoke deliberately, sounding out the syllables. He asked pointed questions to Hart, who sat stupefied, lost in his own thoughts.

  When the man had first come into the room, he’d introduced himself as Pierre-Emmanuel. He didn’t give his title or position, but Hart could reasonably surmise from the manner in which he carried himself that he was in the business of intelligence, and at a high level. Pierre-Emmanuel had a large black-pebbled-leather notebook with leafy gold pages that fluttered when he rapidly flipped through them, and he never asked a question he didn’t already have an answer to with which to cross-check it against. He had produced a pen and proceeded to ask Hart a series of short questions, referencing back to his small notebook as he listened. Your name? Nationality? Occupation? Reason for your visit to France? What type of business? And whom did you meet with? Had you met him before? How about the girl? How many days? Which hotel? Maxim: know of him? You know he’s dead? How? One word is enough, thank you.

  Hart had barely the strength to think, his mind shutting down completely as if to spare him from reliving the day. The pain from not knowing how Clara was, if she was even alive, corroded his thoughts. Everything had changed in a blink of an eye. More trivially, what was to become of him? He thought of the new life that stared him in the face and how alone he felt. The only things he had to keep him company were the small window with thick glass, and the cold steel table where he sat.

  The second time Pierre-Emmanuel came in, Hart was more attentive; perhaps he could make an ally. He figured Pierre-Emmanuel to be in his early forties. His long fingers, when not writing or holding the ever-present notebook, tapped slowly on any surface they could find. Hart first noticed the habit when he was asked to describe his business relationship with Claude Renard and Clara Nouvelle. As Hart tried to piece together what he’d been asked to do by his own boss, Pierre-Emmanuel tapped his index and middle fingers softly on his left temple as he took notes, a repetitive one, two. Again, Hart noticed the tapping when he was asked to describe his relationship with Maxim, the first time they’d met, and how often they talked. With the eyes of a hawk—alert and a golden brown—his interrogator would give him a cursory glance before squinting back at the notebook. The glances caused Hart to question the authenticity of whatever he was saying. He realized he looked guilty, and he certainly felt guilty. Guilty he was alive; others had not been as fortunate.

  The defense he offered was the truth, but he knew it could only be told with time, and he had very little available. The only hope of surviving the catastrophe was Clara, whom he kept asking about every chance he got, pleading to Pierre-Emmanuel that he be told her status. His response was tactful, a quid pro quo, told with a tilt of the head and squint of his hawkish eyes: You tell me something, I’ll share something with you.

  Hart shared everything he knew, the key people he’d met or knew about, Igor, Jean Luc Bichot, Renard, Clara, Maxim, but every time his interrogator would pout, exhale a deep breath, and gently drum with his fingers on the steel table. One, two; one, two. With an exasperated breath, Pierre-Emmanuel said he would see what he could find out about Clara and left.

  It had been several hours, after Hart had been brought a small plastic tray for dinner consisting of a ham sandwich, a few slices of apple, and a cup of coffee, before he returned. Hart didn’t touch the food but drank the coffee, leaning close to the table to drink because his handcuffs didn’t allow otherwise.

  Pierre-Emmanuel sat across the table and stared at him intently, studying his prisoner, and folded his hands neatly over the notebook.

  “I am afraid that I do not have good news,” he started, observing Hart closely before continuing. “Your friend Clara has lost a tremendous amount of blood. She sustained a gunshot wound to her abdomen. Furthermore, the trauma her head received in the car accident gave her a severe concussion. That combined with a large blood loss has put her health in grave danger, with her organs struggling to keep her alive on their own. She is currently still in surgery to remove the bullet, but to reduce brain swelling after surgery she will most likely be induced into a medical coma. Her recovery will be left up to her own body’s ability to heal, I am afraid.”

  Hart bowed his head and let his chin fall on his chest. His face didn’t flinch, but several tears swelled in his eyes and fell into his lap. Pierre-Emmanuel stood and turned to face the window and the black Parisian night sky. He allowed Hart a quiet moment before turning back to him and crossed his arms. His mouth opened for several seconds before he spoke.

  “I’ve been in this job for years,” he said, looking at the ceiling as if recalling memories. “The thing that has always baffled me is that the people who commit crimes—big crimes: extortion, embezzling, fraud, murder”—he looked at Hart when he said the words as if to gauge his reaction, but Hart sat motionless, his head still resting on his chest—“they all try desperately to hold on to some variance of innocence. They’ll say, ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ ‘They asked for it,’ ‘I had no choice,’ or my personal favorite, ‘I didn’t do it.’ But the thing they don’t realize is that they are already here, in this room. The very room in which you sit, which means we know that you have committed a crime, and you were caught for it. Yet criminals insist on clawing and scraping for a few last moments of their perceived innocence.”

  He gently pulled the other metal chair out from under the table, scraping the metal on the floor before he sat. “The thing is, Monsieur Hart, over time the truth catches up with us all. The only honest thing I’ve ever known in my life is time. With it, everything is eventually revealed. Please think about this when I come back in the morning.”

  He stood and left Hart alone with his thoughts.

  43

  Paris

  The shuffling of heavy-soled shoes and raised voices in the hallway woke Hart from a dazed stupor. The voices grew from a hushed discourse to animated shouting. He could hear people arguing back and forth, then hurried footsteps before the shouting would resume. Hart didn’t allow his mind to think on it, but instead he stared out his small window at the brightening blue sky as the sun rose on a new day.

  He’d sat up nearly all night, visited twice by a guard bringing him a cup of water and oatmeal in addition to a piece of paper, translated into English, that explained he was being held under the French National Security and Anti-Terrorism Act of 2017. He read and signed it but gave his detention no further thought. Instead, he could only think about Cl
ara, and if he’d ever see her again.

  Hart replayed their memories: their first meeting over lunch, her casual laugh and seductive half smile, their tipsy walk home after drinks, the perfume lingering on him during his lonely walk back to his hotel. The ignorance he had just days prior was bliss, as he recalled London, the happier moments, where he learned about her and the island where her grandfather lived and the Passage du Gois. Hart bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. He’d give anything for another chance to do it over. They would have run away, taken the car, and hid out on that island, safe for only a little while, but long enough to know freedom, her warm skin under the sheets, a soft hand to hold on a quiet beach.

  Hart was stirred from his memories by voices shouting loudly in the hall before the door to his room burst open. A wide-set man in a gray suit that matched his hair and thick silver beard curtly nodded at Hart. He made his way around the table and plopped down in the opposite chair and laid on the table a bottle of Mountain Dew, along with a thick leather zipper portfolio. He pushed his steel-framed glasses further up his nose and took a swig from his bottle. Hart guessed he was mid-fifties, clearly not French, and if the Mountain Dew didn’t give it away, his tailoring did. He wore a dense suit jacket that fit, but not especially well, a large blue zigzag tie and a Tag Heuer watch, which he consulted quickly before scribbling a few notes in his portfolio. He cleared his throat and looked Hart in the eyes.

  “My name is Stephen Palmer. I am a delegate of the United States Embassy in Paris.”

  He undid the cap to his Mountain Dew and took another sip before consulting his notes, flipping through the pages of an official-looking report. Hart sat quietly, cursing the eventuality he knew would come: the United States had become involved.

  Palmer cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair, and tapped his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “So, I have an elementary understanding of your time in Europe over the past week or so, but why don’t you take me through it slowly, and we’ll see what we learn?”

  Hart shook his head. “I first want to know the status of Clara Nouvelle. She was in the accident with me and—”

  Palmer cut Hart off by holding up a thick and callused hand. “I already checked. The DGSI isn’t too happy their agent is fighting for her life, but she is out of surgery. I don’t have a prognosis, and nothing else has been communicated. Now, please, Mr. Hart, can we start? We’re in for a long day.”

  Hart couldn’t decide if Palmer was trying to play the good cop to Pierre-Emmanuel’s bad cop, but he didn’t care. What he did care about was Clara and the truth, wherever it lay in the abyss where Renard and Igor had hidden it. He hoped it would see the light of day in time.

  Palmer took notes but didn’t show any sign of intrigue or offer any confirmations. Hart had told his story thoroughly to make sure he didn’t leave anything out, but he knew there would still be questions. Probing questions; the type where a simple yes or no wouldn’t do. Palmer asked him questions that were phrased as inquisitive conversation starters, open-ended in style to encourage Hart to chat. Tell me about your boss? What is your position at your company? How did you get your job? They spoke at length about where he’d worked before, how he got the job, and what he did every day. Palmer consulted his notes often, adjusting his glasses absentmindedly while looking on with indifference as he listened. He excused himself and left the room for several moments before bringing back a cup of coffee with some hard breakfast pastries for Hart.

  Palmer then shifted the speed of his questions and asked Hart to go back over his trips to Paris and London. He keyed on small bits of information that Hart didn’t view as important, but Palmer was his only chance at having any semblance of an ally or friend, so he answered as thoughtfully as he could. He detailed his days spent at Renard’s office with files in the cramped glass conference room, where everyone walked by, and the last-minute trip up to London with Clara. It was so unexpected that he needed to go shopping for a tuxedo hours before the gala. He described the envelope, along with Igor’s reaction at the auction and the following day’s adventure in Borough Market.

  A few nods here and there were all the feedback Palmer gave. He would stop writing every few minutes, stretch his hand, and continue listening with a blank stare. Palmer asked several times for Hart to explain how he booked the flight back to Paris, who was on the flight, what type of plane it was, where he took off from and landed, and at what time. Renard called you? Where is your phone? What were his instructions? How did you feel about the request?

  Palmer closed his leather portfolio, leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses, and produced a white handkerchief. He meticulously cleaned the lenses while paying no attention to Hart, who watched in silence.

  Hart leaned his head over the table. “So, who exactly are you?”

  “Like I said earlier, an embassy delegate.” Palmer gruffly curled his lips into a toothless smile, his beard bushing upwards on his face. “And an ally.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  Palmer chuckled and then cleared his throat. “Paul, we’re the United States government.”

  “So, why are you here?”

  “I can leave you to the French if you’d like. However, the implications if this escalates into an international incident, and the ripples that it will cause if it does, are huge. We prefer to keep the troublesome fish in our own pond. More easily controlled that way. Less ripples, if you will.”

  Palmer grabbed his things, stood, walked to the door, and gave three knocks, and the door opened. He spoke in French with the guard rapidly, saying, “Si’l vous plaît,” several times to the indifference of a shrug, a small flap of the lips, and a point down the hallway from the guard. Hart heard more French down the hall, a chorus of three or four voices volleying back and forth with Palmer, who leaned out of the doorway. Finally, Palmer gave a merci and a polite wave as he turned in the doorway, holding his portfolio with both hands.

  “Good news. These fine gentlemen have agreed to take the handcuffs off of you and allow you some lunch. I’ll have something dropped off, because otherwise, with French bureaucracy and their lunch breaks, you wouldn’t eat for hours. I’ll be back, but I need to get some things done before I return tonight.”

  Hart nodded and began to speak. The only need he had was to hear about Clara. He managed to get the words, “Can you—” out before Palmer held up his meaty hand, and a reassuring look spread across his face.

  “I will give you a full update on Mademoiselle Nouvelle when I return.” He paused to see if that was what Hart had wanted, and Hart nodded in solemn appreciation. Palmer gave a small nod in return before he turned on his heel vanished out into the hallway.

  The day passed as fast as it could for a man imprisoned in a small room. The walls were thick, and except for the occasional voice heard by the door, his thoughts remained his only companion. Outside of the small window, the sky turned a brighter blue, the sun strong until late in the day, when it crept by his window, pouring sunlight and heat through the thick glass. Hart had eaten a sandwich and drank a bottle of water. He was escorted twice to a small restroom down the hallway. But most of all he waited.

  Late in the evening—or at least he guessed it was late, since the small window had long since turned to the night sky—the door to his room opened, but it was Pierre-Emmanuel who entered. He wore a black sweater over a white dress shirt and dark-gray trousers, and cut a more casual figure than the previous day.

  “Bonsoir.”

  He walked around the table, placed a manila envelope on it, and leaned against the far wall. Hart had been stretching his legs but took a seat and nodded at his captor.

  “How did your visit with Mr. Palmer go?” Pierre-Emmanuel inclined his head.

  “I told him the truth, same as I told you.”

  The answer seemed to please Pierre-Emmanuel. He leaned back on the far wall and sighed. “I have some news for you, and perhaps it will spark a discussion for us. It’s important
for you, and then afterwards we can get to Mademoiselle Nouvelle. Is this agreeable?”

  Hart nodded apprehensively then stopped. “Maybe it’s best to have Palmer here.”

  This precipitated a small chuckle. “Contrary to what you may think, we are both on the same side, Mr. Palmer and I. We want the truth and to make sure the threat is over. We are working together on this, as France and America have done and will always do.”

  Hart nodded. “What have the two of you learned?”

  “We have both reached somewhat of a similar conclusion about you.” He glanced up at the ceiling, his face unchanging. “There are things that don’t add up.”

  Hart felt his stomach twist. They think I had a role in all of this, he thought to himself. Maybe Hutchens could help. It was required compliance to ensure clients’ identities; at least that was the original purpose of his trip, until he’d been distracted by Renard’s promises and Clara. But he realized that maybe he didn’t know his boss as well as he thought, and he might never find out if he was sent out of maliciousness or simply naivety.

  Hart understood his situation: Clara was his only hope if he wanted to clear his name. But more importantly to him and his innocence, he hoped she would recover. But he understood their relationship compromised her integrity and alibi, at least according to the late Maxim. Hart rubbed his brow as he tried to stay engaged with Pierre-Emmanuel.

  “As you know, you’re being held under the 2017 Terrorist Act. The document you signed outlines our governments’ internal security laws. This means that we have great discretion over how long we can hold you, what for, and even where.” He watched Hart as his words lingered in the air for a moment.