TimeLocke

by Jack Barnao

  I closed the door at last, and Amy grabbed me by the lapel. “What kind of stupid game were you playing?”

  I ignored the question. “Is there a phone in the house?”

  The man answered, “Yes, over there.”

  “Good. Call the Gendarmerie. If they’re quick, they’ll get both those guys.”

  “D’accord,” he said, and went to the phone.

  Amy gave my jacket another petulant tug. “What were you doing? Why didn’t you just take your gun out and stop them?”

  “I stopped them,” I said, gently taking her hand off my lapel. “And they still don’t know you’ve got a bodyguard. They think I’m some Brit tourist who got lucky. It gives us another chance before they get wise and start shooting instead of grabbing.”

  That brought her up short, and she sagged against the table limply, dealing with her fear. I went to the window and looked out. The two men were leaving the square, adjusting painfully to the downgrade. The three-legged dog woofed at them in a neighborly fashion as they passed, a fellow veteran, remembering his own Saint Crispin’s Day.

  I turned back to Amy. “Does your buddy have any brandy? You could use a drink.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and then, in a voice that quavered slightly, “Thank you. For what you did out there.”

  “It’s why I’m here,” I said. “Only they still don’t know it.”

  Her friend had reached the police desk, and he was describing the guys in the square. I cut in.

  “Tell them one was around 160 centimeters, dark blue pants, light blue shirt, black soft shoes, white socks. The other was around 180 centimeters, good build, brown pants, brown shirt. His left eye wanders—it’s out of phase with the right—and it’s bloodshot and black. He’s covering it with his hand.”

  The Frenchman turned to glance at me in astonishment. He obviously hadn’t got anywhere near as good a description. But he passed the information on, and after a minute’s worth of talk he covered the phone and gestured for me to take it.

  “Captain Labrosse wants to speak to you. He speaks English.”

  I took the phone. “John Locke here, Captain.”

  “You stop these men from take the girl?” His voice was as blunt as his English. He sounded like one of the tough old paras who fought dirty in Algeria. I decided it would be a dumb idea to get on the bad side of this guy.

  “I was very lucky, Captain. And by the way, they came in a car, a Mercedes sedan, license number 100 JT 13. It’s outside; the tires went flat.”

  “One wonders how this ’appen,” he said dryly.

  “One of the men had a knife. It must have cut the tires.”

  “Good,” he said. “That is a Marseilles license. I must check who owns this car, M’sieur Locke. You will remain where you are, please.”

  “D’accord, Captain,” I said. There! Bilingual.

  He hung up, and I followed suit. The other two were watching me silently, still stunned from the activity outside.

  I stuck my hand out to the Frenchman. “John Locke,” I told him. “I’m here to keep an eye on Amy.”

  “Pierre Armand.” He straightened out of his academic stoop and took my hand.

  “If you had some cognac, Pierre, it might help us all to calm down.”

  “Ah, yes.” He slapped his hands together and left the room. I waved Amy to a chair. It didn’t look comfortable. Nothing in the room did. It was Pierre’s study, a couple of hard chairs, bookshelves, and a table covered with books and documents. A scholar’s workplace. I took the other chair.

  Pierre came back in a minute or so with cognac. Amy still had not spoken. She was looking down at a spot on the tiled floor in front of her as if the secrets of the future were spelled out in its dull red face. American veterans of Nam call it “the thousand-yard stare.” The starer isn’t looking out at all; he’s looking inward for as far as it goes and realizing that the horizon is a lot closer than he used to think.

  Pierre gave us each a cognac, and Amy took a sip of hers. That she’d made the effort meant she was getting over her fright. It was time to talk turkey.

  “This is starting to look organized,” I told her. “You’ve only been in the area since noon and they’re already on to you. It means Orsini is serious. Are you happy going on, or would you rather go home?”

  Pierre said nothing. From the look he gave Amy I figured he had a case on her. He wasn’t going to urge her to leave.

  She wasn’t going, anyway. Her chin was firm, and she set down her glass and stood up. “I’m here to do a job,” she said in a flat voice. “With you here I should be able to finish it. Then I’ll go home, not before.”

  “Fine. Just plan on being extra careful and keeping close to me all the time,” I said.

  Pierre spoke next, nervously. “You are very good, M’sieur Locke. Those men were street fighters, but you hit them first.”

  “Today,” I said. “There’s no guarantee they’ll be fooled a second time. If they’re serious about taking Amy, they might just shoot me.”

  “Yes …” He rubbed his scalp with his left hand. “That thought also came to me,” he said. I noticed that his English had a faint London accent.

  Amy didn’t add anything. She was deep inside herself, trying to get used to the idea of being in real danger. She was quiet but calm; her hands didn’t tremble as she sipped her drink again. A strong woman. Or maybe she had been overimpressed by the way I handled things. Perhaps she thought having me along made her totally fireproof. I knew better. Those men hadn’t been armed except for the knife, but Orsini probably had a lot more, better-armed guys on his payroll. This was going to be an interesting assignment.

  Captain Labrosse arrived a couple of minutes later. He was a smart fiftyish man in uniform, looking as if he had spent his entire life in the service. He was wearing the picture-postcard kepi you see on the Paris police. His tunic had a row of medal ribbons.

  “You are M’sieur Locke. The two men you describe. I ’ave them outside, in my car,” he said with a touch of pride.

  “Well done,” I said. “Why doesn’t Ma’amselle Roger identify them and charge them with trying to kidnap her?”

  “Of course. You stay here. I will talk to you.”

  That suited me just fine. I figured the two men would have only a vague recollection of how I looked. I didn’t want to give them a chance to adjust it.

  I watched from the window as he led Amy back outside. The two men were in the back of his car, and a young gendarme was in the front. From the way the men were sitting I could tell they were handcuffed behind their backs.

  Amy looked at them both, pointing to the one who had held her. Then she spoke rapidly, and Labrosse nodded. He gave his driver instructions, and the man reached into the car and picked up the radio mike. I noticed that most of the unshuttered windows around the square now had faces at them, women mostly, but a couple of elderly men.

  Labrosse ushered Amy back into the house. He came into Pierre’s little workroom and looked around it coolly. “Have you a place where we can sit?”

  “Mais oui Pierre ushered us through to the other downstairs room, a nineteenth-century French drawing room filled with heavy, plush furniture and old knicknacks. Labrosse nodded.

  “Good. Now, per’aps ma’amselle will tell me what is going on.’’

  Amy spoke in French. I could follow about a third of it. My own French is best delivered at seduction speed, with plenty of long, meaningful pauses while I rake together the vocabulary I need to continue. But I caught the name Orsini, and I saw Labrosse’s eyes tighten.

  At last he nodded to her and turned to me. “And you are the bodyguard?”

  “Right.” I pulled out one of my natty blue business cards and gave it to him. He took it and grinned. “If you will forgive my words, M’sieur Locke, you do not look like a bodyguard.”

  “I’m a master of disguise,” I said, and he grinned again.

  “And what are your qualifications for this task?”
/>
  “Ten years in the British army, including seven in the SAS.”

  That whisked the grin off his face. “The SAS. Formidable!”

  There’s no need to add anything to that, so I asked, “What are you planning to do with the two guys in the car, Captain?”

  “They will be charged with assault.” He shrugged. “If they choose to tell me why they were ’ere, bien. If not.” He shrugged again, that wonderful dismissive gesture.

  “And what about Miss Roger? Will she have to appear in court?”

  “This causes you concern?”

  “Some,” I said. “If their boss knows Amy’s going to be in court, he will probably plan to follow her from there.”

  He glared at me. “You want me to release these men? You think this will keep her safe?”

  “Miss Roger is going to be here for a few weeks only,” I said. “If you could lock them up and set a trial date for, let’s say, September, then she would be gone. The case would be thrown out, but she would be safe.”

  “You ask much,” he said. “But I will try to do this.”

  He turned back to Amy. She had composed herself totally by now. She was tired from the all-night flight, and the attack had drained her, but she was calm, and in this museum setting she looked very beautiful. “What is the nature of your business here, ma’amselle?”

  “I’m a historian, working on a paper. I have people to see here.”

  Labrosse frowned. “And this paper, with what does it deal?”

  “As a matter of fact, you’re one of the people I want to talk to, Captain,” she said. “My subject is the Resistance.”

  Lord! They’re born with style, the French. He cocked one eyebrow and asked, “And just ’ow old do you think I am, ma’amselle?”

  “Old enough to have run errands for them as a child. And I know your father was murdered by the Germans.” She was regaining her confidence as she talked, getting back into her professional mode. “I know that it cost him his life. He was a brave man.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You may expect me to cooperate in any way possible.” His English was improving with every sentence. It was like watching a rusty old machine start pumping, settling into the rhythm until the clunking becomes almost music. He didn’t even pause for her response. “Of course, in the days, duty,” he said, and shrugged. He had a cozy tête-à-tête dinner on his mind.

  “Some evening, at your convenience, Captain,” Amy said. She was aware she was getting the treatment, but she acted calmly. She would handle him as she considered fit. Pierre was listening to the exchange anxiously. Jealousy came off him in waves. I was calmer. Amy’s evening with Labrosse would be an evening off. He was quite capable of guarding Amy’s body.

  The doorbell rang, and Pierre answered it. I listened to the exchange, getting the drift about half a beat later than Labrosse. “My car,” he said. He stood up and gave Amy a neat military salute. “Ma’amselle. I will await your pleasure.”

  “Thank you, Captain. And thank you for your speed today.” She could dispense the snake oil just as smoothly as he.

  He gave me a brisk little nod and marched out. I followed to the outer room and watched as he ordered his driver to accompany the other man with the prisoners; then he paused to light a Gauloise and got into the new car, turning crisply and spurting away through the archway.

  Amy was standing beside me. “Well, it’s an ill wind,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, the hint of a satisfied smile on her lips. Labrosse had made his impression.

  She said her good-byes to Pierre, I retrieved my camera, and we left. “Where now?” I asked.

  “Faucon. It’s a couple of miles out of town.” She sat back in her seat, totally relaxed. The cognac and Labrosse’s professionalism had restored her confidence. I’ve seen it happen before. In another day my rescue would be forgotten totally. She would remember only the clumsiness I’d adapted. If nobody else took a stab at kidnapping her, she would laugh about me in the fall, around the faculty coffee table, five thousand miles from harm. It didn’t rankle. I was getting paid for protecting her, not for making my presence obvious. It’s the story that’s important, not the words.

  Faucon is a typical Provencal village. It was walled once, a couple of hundred years back, and the wall still stands, although these days there are houses outside it. The village sits on a small hill. Vineyards stretch out on all sides until they run into land too rough for cultivation. That’s a rarity in France. They have more land under the plough than the whole of Canada, but here you see copses of oaks and pines growing up the side of the hills. This is where the Resistance hid, playing peekaboo with the might of the German army.

  “Drive on down the slope,” she commanded, and we passed the ELF gas station, with its bar and pétanque court, roasting gently under the midmorning sun. Then we drove by a gorge on the left side and came to a small hand-painted sign: La Fongeline. “Down there,” she told me, and I turned off.

  The path dropped steeply, and I hooked the gear into low, turning with the path that led downward, along the side of a steep drop. “This used to be the main coach road to Marseilles,” Amy said. Her voice had the dreamy quality of someone who lives history. Right now she was sharing the excitement and discomfort of those sweating coach passengers of a century before. We passed a small abandoned house, and she waved at it casually. “That was a Benedectine abbey in the thirteenth century.” I didn’t answer, not wanting to intrude on the pleasure of her thoughts. Then she told me, “Turn right at the bottom.”

  I did and bumped up an even narrower track between overhanging trees. “This place is a truffle farm,” she explained. “But Madame is not your average farmer. She has a Ph.D. from Columbia, speaks eight languages. Her bookshelf is something to see.”

  I nodded and concentrated on trying to avoid bottoming the springs in the ruts, turning one last corner and coming up past a carefully planted grove of young oak trees to a fine old stone house. A tiny, gnomelike person, smoking a pipe, was cutting the grass with a whipper-snipper. I was surprised to see it was a very old woman. She stopped the machine when she saw us and came over to the track. I stopped the car, and we got out.

  “Amy,” the old woman said, and they embraced and exchanged kisses on the cheek.

  “This is John Locke,” Amy said, and added something in French. “John, this is Constance.”

  “I assumed he was a husband, not a bodyguard.” Constance smiled at me, showing teeth that were large and gappy but all there, not a bad accomplishment for someone as old as she obviously was. She reached up and shook my hand. Hers was tiny but hard. “Do I call you Mr. Locke or John?”

  “John, I hope. And do I call you Constance?”

  “Ah, that name. ‘A poor thing but mine own,’ ” she said, cocking her head like a little bird.

  I know a challenge when I see one. “I think Shakespeare said ‘ill-favour’d.’ ”

  Now she inclined her head slowly. “Very good.” She turned to Amy. “He has read a book, this bodyguard of yours.”

  Amy said nothing, but she was looking at me with something like respect. She probably thought I knew my way around Shakespeare. I don’t, but I was shut up in a British army Belfast strongpoint for a month once with nothing to read but Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. It’s the Reader’s Digest way to look well-read.

  I went back to the car, trailing clouds of glory, and drove around and parked, facing back the way we had come, ready to roll in a hurry if necessary. I glanced around at the terrain. It was not good for defense. Immediately behind the house there was a steep rise that led up into trees at the top. A company of troops could creep up without being seen and come down on the house like a plague of locusts before I could do anything about it.

  The women joined me as I got the bags out of the car. Amy had her duty-free bag separate, and she handed it to Constance. The old woman pulled out the liter of Scotch it contained and beamed. “How thoughtful. Thank you, my dear.” Not your st
andard grandmother. I was going to like her a lot.

  She offered refreshments, but Amy said no. She wanted to rest, so Constance showed us up to the apartment she rented out. It had a kitchen, a bathroom, and a long sitting room filled with hard, old furniture. From the kitchen a short staircase without banisters led up to two bedrooms. One was small; I drew that one. The other was huge but had a low ceiling and one small window. Already the room was filling up with the afternoon heat. It faced west, and I knew it would be stifling by bedtime.

  Amy took that one; it had a closet. “I’m going to shower, then sleep,” she said. “How about you?”

  “You first.” I waved her on, and she made for the bathroom, grabbing a towel as she went. There was a bottle of water in the little refrigerator, and I poured myself a large glass and sat on the hard couch and waited. After ten minutes, Amy emerged, wearing a housecoat, her hair wrapped in the towel. “That’s better,” she said cheerfully. She might have been any tourist with nothing to fear from Orsini or anybody else.

  “Go ahead and snooze,” I said. “And when you’re rested, maybe we can make plans.”

  “Okay.” She nodded and went upstairs. That’s when a woman’s figure shows to advantage, and with the light housecoat tugged tightly around her, she was a pleasure to watch. I locked the outer door and ducked into the shower, taking my gun into the bathroom with me and leaving the curtain open so I could hear any uproar outside. There was none, and by the time I got upstairs and peeked in at Amy, she was asleep.

  I left her door and mine open and lay down, fully dressed. The siesta hour is a good time for ambushes. I slept lightly but was awake an hour later, before Amy was moving, and went down to the living room. From the window I could see Constance moving among her oaks in front of the house. She had a nondescript dog on a leash, her truffle dog, I imagined, on his summer vacation while the truffles ripened around the roots of the oaks.

  Looking out at the trees reminded me that I had been too tired to scout the land properly when we arrived, and I slipped out, locking the front door, and went down into the old tile-roofed drive-shed, what they would have called a carport if they’d had cars in the eighteenth century, where Constance kept her little puddle-jumper car, a Citroën CV.