by Jon Steele
Monsieur Gübeli turned to the chauffeur and addressed him in French, telling him to wait. The chauffeur bowed and closed the car door. He then removed a white handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it, and proceeded to dust the Mercedes of any offending particulates. Katherine shook her head in disbelief and started across Main Street. Monsieur Gübeli followed close behind.
“You know, you and your chauffeur didn’t make the most subtle of entrances.”
“Madame?”
“In this town, nobody’d be caught dead in a vehicle without four-wheel drive and mud flaps, preferably with a freshly killed deer across the hood. You drive into Grover’s Mill in a hundred-thousand-dollar Merc with Lurch at the wheel.”
“Madame?”
“The butler from The Addams Family. American TV sitcom. I was raised on reruns. Lurch reminds me of your . . . never mind. Point is, the two of you are sort of hard to explain. I mean, I am supposed to be hiding out in this town.”
“Ah. Yes, of course. Officer Jannsen and I have already prepared a cover story that fits with your current arrangement.”
Katherine stopped in the middle of the road, turned around.
“What story?”
Monsieur Gübeli looked up and down the street with concern.
“Don’t worry,” Katherine said. “The only real traffic we get in this town is when the tour buses come through. So what’s your idea of a reasonable cover story when you’re trying to explain a guy in a suit who wears funny glasses, who’s just been driven into town by a six-foot-plus other guy who spends his downtime polishing a spotless Merc with a handkerchief?”
Monsieur Gübeli adjusted his pince-nez.
“Ah. Well, that your family is extremely wealthy and that I am the family lawyer, as well as your godfather. I have been asked by your parents to persuade you to abandon your current living arrangement and to return to your family in North Carolina, where your illegitimate child may be put up for adoption.”
Katherine shrugged.
“Damn if that doesn’t sound exactly like something my parents would do. Not bad, Monsieur Gübeli. You got a first name, seeing as you’re my make-believe godfather?”
“I am afraid that would suggest an informality I could not presume.”
“Huh?”
“It is not our way, madame.”
“Whose way?”
“The firm I represent.”
“Suit yourself.” Katherine spun on her heels and led the way to Molly’s Diner. She went immediately to her favorite booth, undid her cloak, and let it fall down from her shoulders. She flipped her way through the jukebox.
“Molly’s on a mission to widen my musical tastes. She’s loaded the box with Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia tunes. Says they’ll cleanse my spirit. Molly’s a genuine child of the sixties.”
Monsieur Gübeli removed his topcoat and took the bench opposite, rested his briefcase on the seat. Molly came over.
“Howdy, sugar. Who’s your friend in the suit? And who’s the funny-looking character in the street dusting the limo?”
Katherine rolled her eyes. “The family lawyer and his driver. Sent by Mommy and Daddy to bring me home to Jesus.”
Molly set her hands on her hips.
“Is that so? Well, let me tell you, it’s a free country, and your parents can choose to be old sticks-in-the-mud and you can just go on choosing to live your life the way you want it. Isn’t that so, Mr. Lawyer-Person?”
Monsieur Gübeli cleared his throat.
“I assure you, madame, I am only a messenger. I do not pretend to affect opinion.”
“Say, you are a lawyer, aren’t you? No matter, we serve all kinds here. What can I getcha?”
Katherine slapped the table.
“Two blue plate specials and two iced teas, Molly.”
“I’ll make it three and send a plate out to the chauffeur, seeing as he’s working up an appetite being so funny-looking. Back in a jiffy.”
Molly walked away. Katherine leaned over the table and whispered, “How’d I do on the cover story?”
Monsieur Gübeli smiled and whispered back, “Very well, madame. Most convincing.”
“Great.”
She found two quarters in her blue jeans, dropped them in the jukebox, and punched C-13. A seventh chord hit on a downbeat and rippled along till the band fell into a slow-rolling rhythm with a faraway voice:
“The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.”
Katherine watched Monsieur Gübeli stare at the jukebox and saw the look of amazement on his face.
“Welcome to the great Pacific Northwest,” she said. “Stay awhile, you’ll get used to it.”
Monsieur Gübeli looked at Katherine.
“To tell the truth, madame, I was recalling a time from my younger days. May 26, 1972, to be exact.”
“Wow, that’s pretty good recall. What happened?”
“I took two hundred fifty micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide and attended a Grateful Dead concert at the Lyceum Theatre just off the Strand.”
Katherine studied Monsieur Gübeli’s bankerlike appearance.
“You. Dropped acid. And went to a Dead concert?”
“Oh, yes. I remember how that evening’s performance of ‘Morning Dew’ affected me. It had the quality of a lament for all mankind. I was very moved.”
Molly arrived with the plates and a pitcher of iced tea.
“Molly,” Katherine said, “you won’t believe this, but the family lawyer here was an acid-tripping Deadhead back in the seventies.”
“Of course he was.” Molly laughed. “I had him pegged as a fellow traveler the minute I laid eyes on him.”
“Yeah? How?”
Molly set the plates on the table and poured the iced tea. She put her hand on her hip and waved her finger at Katherine like she was teaching a lesson.
“Once a Deadhead, always a Deadhead, sugar. Dress him up in a suit and he’ll still be tripping his way through life with a good and honest heart because he has seen the light. Ain’t that right, Mr. Lawyer-Person?”
Monsieur Gübeli nodded graciously. “An excellent way of imagining it, if I may say so.”
Molly winked at him and walked away. Katherine looked at Monsieur Gübeli, and she couldn’t help giggling.
“Well, that was one of the weirder things I’ve ever come across in this town.”
“I’m pleased it amuses you, madame.”
Katherine picked up her fork and dug in.
“Anyways, this is good old North American food, the real thing. Hope you like it.”
“Oh, I have had this very dish before,” Monsieur Gübeli said.
“No way.”
“Indeed, madame, with Master Rochat. He said it was a secret—”
Katherine sat very still. Not noticing the music had stopped, not seeing the man across the table from her. Not hearing her own voice complete Monsieur Gübeli’s sentence . . .
“. . . recipe. From his mother.”
Monsieur Gübeli waited a moment before speaking softly.
“Are you all right, madame?”
Katherine blinked, refocused her eyes.
“Yeah, it’s just you were talking about Marc and his mother, and I remembered he was telling me about his mother’s secret recipe. No . . . something’s not right.”
“Not right?”
“Yes—I mean, no. I mean it was someone else who told me about it.”
“Someone else?”
There was a quick flash through Katherine’s mind. Almost a glimpse of the man who wasn’t there. He was tall, he was waving to her, saying good
-bye. She shook her head.
“No, it had to be Marc. It was only him and me in the cathedral. That’s what the doctors keep telling me. So damn confusing.”
“The confusion is understandable, madame.”
“Yeah, they keep telling me that one, too. Thing is, sometimes, I can see things, like I was there again.”
“A bit of beforetimes, perhaps?”
The sound of the word sank deep into Katherine. She held on to it for a long moment.
“How do you know that word?”
“Master Rochat said it very often when talking about people he remembered. It was one of his endearing habits.”
“Yeah, it sure was.”
Katherine slowly twirled noodles with her fork. Her mind drifted again. Monsieur Gübeli coughed politely.
“I apologize if I have upset you, madame. It was not my intention.”
“No, it isn’t that.”
“May I ask what it is?”
“It’s really strange, you know. Sometimes, I feel like Marc’s imagination, the way he saw things, I feel it rubbed off on me. Like you said, a bit of beforetimes. Silly, I guess.”
“Actually, madame, I would call it a gift.”
Katherine felt a chill. She lifted the black cloak and pulled it over her shoulders and wrapped it around her body.
“You know, he gave me this old thing the day he died. I don’t remember much, but I remember Marc said I’d need it to keep warm. The doctors told me I slept with it for a month, wouldn’t let anyone take it from me.”
“Master Rochat was extremely sensitive to the needs of others. That sensitivity had a remarkable effect on people.”
Katherine looked at Monsieur Gübeli.
“Did we already talk about this stuff?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you just tell me that before . . . about Marc being sensitive, the way he affected people?”
Monsieur Gubeli coughed. “No, madame, I cannot say I did.”
“Really?”
“I’m quite sure.”
“Huh.”
They ate and the conversation turned to the weather and the candle shop. Molly came by to collect the plates and refill Monsieur Gübeli’s glass with iced tea and tell him it was mighty fine he’d come to town and that he should come back real soon for some magic brownies and a perusal through her Grateful Dead bootleg tapes. Monsieur Gübeli said he would be delighted to do so. Molly looked at Katherine.
“I’ve got some of your Midday Buzz tea brewing in the kitchen, sugar. I’ll bring it out when it’s ready.”
Katherine rolled her eyes.
“Jeez, between you and Anne, I’m gonna go berserk.”
“You’re living in a small town, sugar. We all take care of our own. And don’t you even think about paying the bill. Let Mr. Lawyer-Person pick it up. If he can afford a limo with a funny-looking chauffeur, he can afford lunch.”
“Will do, Molly.”
Katherine sat back in the booth, closed her eyes, combed her fingers through her hair. She heard Monsieur Gübeli’s voice:
“Remarkable.”
She opened her eyes, saw him staring at her.
“What’s remarkable?”
Monsieur Gübeli appeared embarrassed, quickly taking a handkerchief from his pocket and the pince-nez from his nose to wipe the indiscretion from his lenses. Katherine noted Monsieur Gübeli and his driver were both big on handkerchiefs.
“You must excuse me, madame. Normally, I am not one to stare.”
“Hey, it’s okay. I’m used to men staring at me. Well, not so much now, but back in the day when I was doing the hooker thing.”
Monsieur Gübeli’s eyes widened. Katherine covered her mouth.
“Oh, shit. You didn’t know about the hooker thing?”
“Well, of course I knew, but . . . I would not presume to mention . . .”
Katherine lowered her face into her hands.
“Oh, shit.”
“I assure you, madame, such a thing is of no concern to me or my firm. We are not in the business of making judgments regarding our clients.”
Katherine peeked through her fingers.
“So, why were you staring at me?”
Monsieur Gübeli cleared his throat.
“It was the way you were sitting and touching your hair. I found myself drifting in beforetimes, as Master Rochat called it.”
“Really? Where were you?”
“With Master Rochat, in fact. The afternoon I dined with him at his home, having tuna-noodle casserole. After our meal, he showed me a sketch he had drawn of you. I was stunned. It was a sketch worthy of a Renaissance master. And watching you in similar repose, just this moment, I understand how he was inspired to draw it.”
Katherine saw herself in the cathedral in the middle of the night, watching the light of the candles Marc Rochat had set about the nave. Hundreds and hundreds of candles. Listening to him tell her the story of the lost angels who’d come to Lausanne to hide in the cathedral because they had no other place to go. He took a folded paper from his coat and gave it to her . . .
“What’s this?”
“It’s the angel I saw in Lausanne.”
Katherine blinked, took a slow breath.
“I remember it. He showed it to me in the cathedral.”
“I am very happy to hear that you remember it, madame.”
Katherine combed her hands through her hair again, her mind drifting.
“Mr. Gübeli, when Marc showed the drawing to you, did he say anything to you about it?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Like I said, Marc had one wild imagination. I was just wondering if it was a little, you know, less wild before I barged into his life. Do you remember if he said anything?”
Monsieur Gübeli sipped at his iced tea. He rested his glass on the table.
“It was the last day I was to see Master Rochat alive, madame, so I remember the day vividly. He showed me the drawing, and I asked him who it was. He said he was very sure it was a drawing of an angel who was lost in Lausanne.”
Tears burned at the corners of Katherine’s eyes, and she saw herself holding the drawing in her own hands, telling Rochat she wasn’t an angel, telling him she was a prostitute. He stared at her, his voice was desperate, so wanting to believe . . . Maybe you don’t know you’re an angel because you’re so lost.
“Madame Taylor?”
Katherine refocused her eyes. “Huh?”
“Are you unwell?”
“No, it’s just . . . He knew the truth before he died. He knew I was nothing more than a hooker . . . then he died.”
Monsieur Gübeli let Katherine sit with her thoughts for a minute.
“Perhaps, madame, you would like to see that drawing again, so that you would know what Master Rochat actually felt for you.”
“You have it? Now?”
Monsieur Gübeli lifted his briefcase to the table, tapped a code into the keypad under the handle. The locks snapped open.
II
OFFICER JANNSEN HIT SPEED DIAL. THE LINE CONNECTED TO A recorded message.
“You have reached the twenty-four-hour help line of Guardian Services Limited. Please leave your message after the tone.”
The tone came and went. She let her watch count down five seconds before logging in.
“Bravo-Delta-neuf-Zulu-Lima-trois-Echo-Echo-cinq-India-Foxtrot.”
Then a blast of static as white noise analyzed her voice, then the ping of a seven-hundred-digit key unlocking a line to the communications grid of the Swiss Special Unit Task Force, then a familiar voice from Berne.
“Good afternoon, Officer Jannsen.”
“Good evening, Inspector. Have you been monitoring the video and audio feeds?”
“Cameras in both the s
hop and the restaurant are picking up light fluctuations in the subject’s irises each time Monsieur Gübeli mentions Marc Rochat’s name. Your suspicions are correct, Madame Taylor’s imagination is moving through time.”
Officer Jannsen stared at the close-up of Katherine’s face and the optical targeting locking onto her eyes and the cascade of numbers running down the side of the screen.
“How should I proceed, sir?”
“As planned.”
Officer Jannsen didn’t respond.
“Was my order unclear, Officer?”
“I’m not sure how she’ll react to luminance probes being conducted on the child. Not this soon.”
“We’ve already seen to it, Officer.”
“Sir?”
“Her teas have been adjusted to keep her in check. As far as the tests on the child, she’ll have no reason to think they are more than a required medical procedure. You’ll reassure her that this is the case, of course. The equipment will be in place three days hence, in good time for the child’s next checkup in Portland.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir.”
There was an icy pause.
“Go ahead, Officer.”
“Luminance probes on the child weren’t to be conducted for another six months. I’d like to know the reason for the change.”
Officer Jannsen waited for Inspector Gobet to analyze the manner of her thinking. Even with years of training, it took getting used to. She remembered the many times a question remained unanswered for hours. This time it took less than thirty seconds.
“Our operations in protecting Madame Taylor and the child are based on the assumption she was raped and impregnated by the enemy. Whilst I cannot go into details, I can tell you evidence has come to light that may contradict that assumption. I need confirmation on the boy’s status, one way or the other.”
Officer Jannsen remained quiet, not wanting to give the inspector a clue to the terrible thought in her mind: If the boy turned out to be normal, HQ in Berne would drop all protection. Katherine and Max would be left on their own, and without a memory of what really happened over the last two and a half years. Officer Jannsen touched the image of Katherine’s face on the monitor.
“Oh, Kat . . .”
“I beg your pardon, Officer?”
