Elixir

by Davis Bunn

  “I know when she couldn’t break us apart any other way, she hired detectives to take—”

  “You know nothing. Amanda hired a prostitute to seduce you.”

  He was forced back a step. “What?”

  “That woman you met on the beach? I hired my own detectives, showed them those horrid photographs Amanda gave me, and tracked the woman down. She was paid. Bought and paid for by my sister.” The pain tore her own words to shreds. “That was when I knew Amanda had to be punished. Hurt where it would hurt her the most. Stopped from doing to more people what she’s done to me.”

  Taylor faced the watching locals as he would judge and jury. Kirra looked out to sunlight and the empty forest. “It doesn’t change what I did. I destroyed us. And I’m sorry. I’ll carry that regret to my grave.”

  He watched her ire dissolve a notch. “How am I supposed to stay angry with you when you talk like that?”

  “I’d do anything to replay that portion of my life.”

  “Well, you can’t. It’s done, destroyed, over. And it’s your fault.”

  Approaching footsteps forced them apart. Inyakie pointed back to the lantern-lit alcove and said, “My father will see you now.”

  JACQUES DUPIN HAD A PRESENCE FAR GREATER THAN HIS height. He was not much taller than his wife, scarcely rising higher than the base of Taylor’s rib cage. But he was broad and solid as the surrounding rock walls, with eyes that glowed more fiercely than the alcove’s lantern. His hand was stubby and rigid, his grip fierce. He continued to hold Taylor’s hand as his gaze slipped away and came to rest upon Kirra. He studied her a long moment, nodding slightly. Then he turned to Inyakie and said something. The younger man immediately left the alcove and spoke with the people seated upon the stone bench.

  Jacques still did not release Taylor’s hand. He spoke again, this time to Kirra. She clearly disliked his request. Jacques spoke again. Reluctantly she said, “Jacques says he hasn’t used his English in years and wants me to stay and translate.”

  Taylor had the distinct impression the healer wanted to make sure Kirra was listening. “Fine with me.”

  Jacques led Taylor over to a table and two chairs. The cavern was full of medicinal gear, herbs, a portable sterilizer, two battery-operated halogens, a gas-powered stove, metal water cistern, and a case of empty glass jars. The lantern softened the cavern’s jagged edges and sealed the opening in shadows. The healer’s hands probed about the wounds on Taylor’s head.

  “He asks how you were injured.”

  “The older one happened before I left Florida. The other was when a shooter tried to take me out at Guethary.” He winced as Jacques traced a hand over the stitches.

  Kirra examined him for a long moment, then translated. “He says you should please tell him the full story.”

  Taylor did so, watching as Jacques withdrew scissors and tweezers from their sterilized packets. Kirra translated, “He asks why the hospital did not remove the stitches.”

  “I had to leave there in a hurry.” Taylor ignored the tugging on his scalp as best he could by watching Kirra’s worried expression. The lantern added an ethereal glow to her skin. She was not his, had not been for years. But her beauty could not be denied, nor her appeal. Studying her from this proximity left him hollowed and wounded anew.

  “Explain, please.”

  After Taylor recounted the second attempted assassination, the healer motioned for Taylor to ease off his shirt. He spent a long time examining Taylor’s torso. “Jacques asks if your legs are also injured.”

  “A couple of bruises.”

  “Do your joints ache?”

  “Some. Not bad, considering.”

  Jacques took a yellowish salve that smelled of crushed flowers and applied it to Taylor’s ribs and bruises. He talked as he worked. Kirra translated, “The Basque culture was born in a time beyond time. Napoleon finally conquered us, the last provinces to be brought into France. In punishment for our desire to live free, the Basque were forbidden education. We were banned from all universities. Our language was outlawed. We were refused passports. We were treated as nonpersons, denied all chance of advancement. This prohibition lasted for 143 years.”

  He had Taylor lean over so as to treat his back and continued, “Up to the Second World War, there was only one hospital in the entire French Basqueland. It was located in Bayonne. This was a two-day journey from the Basque capital of Saint Jean Pied de Port. Most doctors working in the Basqueland had been ordered there by Paris. Many came as punishment for incompetence and addictions and thievery. Most of these doctors spoke no Basque. The Basque spoke little or no French. The doctors often hated the place and the people. The locals called the Bayonne hospital the Hotel of Death.”

  “I’ve heard about the Basque terrorists fighting for nationhood.”

  “That is a small minority of our people. Most, including myself, disagree both with their actions and their aims. Times have changed. We are too small in numbers to exist as a nation alone. Spain and France now recognize our heritage and help us preserve our language and our culture.”

  Jacques handed Taylor his shirt. From the neighboring alcove, Inyakie ushered out the old man and motioned the woman forward. Taylor realized that the son was acting as healer in the place of his father. Jacques continued through Kirra: “In earlier times, however, the situation was very different. The church was the only place where the Basque might come and hear their language and receive instruction. The church maintained records of medieval herbal remedies and helped pass this knowledge on from one generation to the next. Even after the repression ended, still the healers remain a respected part of the Basque culture. Only now our work is illegal. The medical establishment considers us a throwback to an era of witchcraft and sorcery. But we Basque are used to holding things in tight secrecy. Healers do not advertise. We seek out no patients. Our names appear on no registry. To the outside world, we do not exist.”

  Inyakie entered the alcove long enough to collect two bags of dried herbs. He gave them to the woman who carried her child, bid them farewell, then returned to the alcove where his father worked. Kirra moved to stand beside him. Inyakie locked gazes with Taylor as he drew Kirra close.

  The old healer turned to study the pair, his son and the lithe American woman. When he spoke, Kirra’s gaze grew wounded. She did not speak. The silence was complete. Taylor listened to the lantern’s stutter and waited.

  Finally Inyakie translated, “My father reminds Kirra that she also brought this danger to our doorstep.”

  “Not intentionally,” Taylor replied.

  “My father says she must move beyond her guilt and her regret, if she is to forge a new future. She must release the past. Just as you should do.”

  Taylor’s mouth worked hard to form the words: “I don’t know how.”

  Jacques began nodding with his entire body, as though deeply satisfied with the response. Inyakie continued to translate, “Faith is not a single step. Spiritual growth does not end with the initial turning. First you learn to trust God. Then He leads you to the next stage. And the next. And the one after that.”

  The healer drew his chair around so that Taylor could see him and, at the same time, beyond his shoulder, the couple holding each other in the doorway. Jacques spoke, and the translation came from behind him. “Do you truly wish to leave the past behind? Do you want to grow beyond where you stand today?”

  Taylor nodded not so much from agreement as realization. He had never found release from the past because he wanted to keep it as much as he wanted to let it go.

  Jacques formed a fist between their faces, so tight his arm corded. Inyakie translated, “How we struggle and fight to do what only love can accomplish.”

  Then he blew upon his fingers, poof. And the hand relaxed. The hand and the fingers and the arm. And he spoke in English for the first time. “So easy, yes?” He rose and clapped Taylor on the back. “Come. We will eat and you will tell us of your plan.”

  chapter
20

  THEIR DISCUSSION TOOK THE BETTER PART OF three hours. Taylor emerged from the cave to find the surrounding forest a realm of slanted gold and looming shadows. Behind him the cave was filling with people Inyakie had telephoned. Taylor felt drained from the exertion of thinking and plotting, all done under the somber gaze of a woman he had once thought his own. During the meeting, Kirra had never moved from her place by the opposite wall, close to Inyakie and as far from Taylor as she could remain. The force of her gaze had been as exhausting as the discussions.

  He carried Inyakie’s phone and did as the young Basque had instructed, climbing to an elevated position above the tree line. But when he arrived upon the rocky outcrop, he left the phone in his pocket. Instead he just sat and surveyed this world of forested mountains.

  “Taylor?”

  “Up here.” He remained where he was and watched Kirra climb toward him. “Have they already decided?”

  “They’ll be hours yet.” She huffed herself up the last incline. “Nothing fast happens in this world.”

  He watched her select a rock several paces removed. “I can see why you love it here.”

  “Can you?”

  “The people are as genuine as any I’ve ever met.”

  “They remind me of the old Minorcans back home.”

  “Not to mention that it’s as far as you can get from the Revell lifestyle and still remain on this planet.”

  She tossed a rock toward the setting sun. “There’s a lot to be said for that.”

  He pulled his gaze away from her and took in the snowcapped horizon. “And this place is as beautiful as anywhere I’ve ever seen.”

  She threw another rock, brushed off her hands, and said very deliberately, “I want to apologize.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I wasn’t talking about today.”

  “No,” Taylor quietly agreed. “I wasn’t either.”

  She rose to her feet, hesitated, then asked quietly, “Why are you doing this, Taylor?”

  A rook chuckled at them from a neighboring tree. High overhead a hawk swept graceful curves through the sunset. Taylor replied, “The whole time we were together, it was me first, us second. I never let go of my pride or my rage or my stupid selfish . . .”

  He stopped. The sunset bathed her in gold, strong as a halo. “I want to do something for you, Kirra. For you. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  Kirra stood a long moment gazing down at him. Then she reached over and placed a hand upon his cheek. She left it there for a time, then turned and walked back down the rise.

  Taylor watched her disappear into the forest. He felt her touch on his face, as strong as God’s own benediction.

  He waited until her footsteps had merged into the sibilant hush of forested dusk. Then he dialed the number from memory.

  Allison answered on the first ring. “I don’t have anything important to say,” Taylor said in greeting. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “That’s important enough for me.”

  “Would you mind if we just talked for a while? Not about work or what’s going on. Just talk.”

  “I’d like that,” she replied. “So very, very much.”

  chapter 21

  THE RAINS SETTLED IN JUST AFTER SUNSET. TAYLOR spent the night lying in his bedroll, listening to the deluge, and running the plan through his mind. The cave was dry enough, and the chill was offset by a pair of fires kept banked and roaring through the night. But the rain whispered to him of flaws he had failed to uncover. He finally flipped his coverlet aside and went to sit at the cave’s entrance. It all seemed so futile now. How could he ever have expected to take on the might of Revell? He sat for hours, chased by the fiends of doubt, fearing he heard heaven’s tears splashing outside the cave.

  Inyakie found him there sometime after midnight. “Are you ready?”

  It was far too late for false confidence. “I have no idea.”

  “My father says the man who plans well never sleeps well. Come.”

  Taylor balked at the guns slung from the three men’s shoulders. “We don’t need those.”

  “Let us hope you are correct.” Inyakie disappeared into the rain.

  The drive back to Biarritz took two long and silent hours. They wound through empty streets and parked by the entrance of a third-rate hotel. A figure in a rain-slick anorak emerged from a doorway and slipped into the rear seat beside Taylor. Only when he flipped back the hood did Taylor recognize the senior policeman from the hospital.

  The cop said in greeting, “I told you we would speak again, did I not?” He shook hands with the three Basque, spoke softly in their tongue for a time, then returned his attention to Taylor. “Inyakie is a friend. His father saved my father’s life. These are the only reasons you are not in chains, Monsieur Knox.”

  Taylor responded with a tight nod.

  “So. I am to understand you have an explanation for why I am sitting here tonight?”

  “Such talk is for later,” Inyakie replied.

  “And now you are directing my movements?”

  “We asked for help,” Inyakie said.

  “So I am here. But before we move further, I must know why this is happening.”

  Taylor halted Inyakie’s protests by saying, “I came here looking for an American woman. Her name is Kirra Revell. Her family controls one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Kirra has been on the trail of an ancient herbal remedy that threatens to destroy the market for a new Revell product. This market is worth billions to Revell.”

  “This is one of Monsieur Jacques’ remedies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why,” the cop demanded of Inyakie, “did Monsieur Jacques not send this American lady on her way?”

  Inyakie responded by studying the rain drumming on the car hood.

  Taylor replied, “Things get a little complicated at this point.”

  “And they were simple before?” But the cop was smiling. “This American lady, she is beautiful?”

  “Very.”

  “And young?”

  “Enough about Kirra,” Inyakie said. “It is late and there is much to be done.”

  The cop asked Taylor, “So these men who tried to kill you, they have followed you here?”

  “If they’re who we think they are.”

  “Remind me again why we are assuming you are not part of the threat, Monsieur Knox.”

  “They shot at me in the water, remember? They tried again in the hospital.”

  “But only,” the cop reminded him, “because you brought them here.”

  “If Taylor had not come, they would have sent another. At least he has a plan.” This from Inyakie. “Enough with the questions. Enough.”

  “Bon.” The cop nodded. “A plan. I am listening.”

  Taylor sketched out his idea once more. But the night and the rain and the cop’s unblinking intensity muted his confidence. He listened to himself and heard only the possible weaknesses, only the chances for failure.

  When he stopped talking, the policeman sat in silence and studied him. Taylor readied himself for a professional’s objections. But the cop merely said, “Two men. One British, one American. The American is Jackson Yerby. Tall, gray haired, eyes like smoke. The British carries himself like a professional.”

  “We’re told he’s a former cop.” Taylor was suddenly very alert.

  “His name is Colin Tomlinson.” The cop had difficulty with both names. “The car spotted by the Dupin residence is rented by the American. The hotel rooms are both billed to his credit card. These names mean something?”

  “No.”

  He handed over two passports. “Do you recognize either of these men?”

  “The shooter on the cliff was too far away. The hospital room was too dark to see anything.” Even so, Taylor studied the passport photos intently. He tried to compare the American’s to a man in sunglasses driving a Caddy along the road from the Jacksonville airport to St.
Augustine. But that had been a million miles ago. “Sorry. I’m drawing a blank.”

  The cop retrieved the passports and tapped them on his leg. He spoke tersely to Inyakie in Basque. Inyakie replied in English. “I believe him.”

  The cop slipped the passports back into his pocket. “I have spoken with the hotel manager. These men have had visitors. Four, perhaps five men. All are, how do you say, hard cases, yes? Very hard cases. One we believe is a local. A pro. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. We will tap their phones and set a wire in both rooms.”

  “And their car.”

  “The car. Yes. More of a problem but we will see what can be done. When do you lay your trap?”

  “We have spread the word for two days from now. We leave at noon.”

  “Then I must be busy, yes?” He moved for the door, then stopped. “Monsieur Knox, you will come and report to me the remainder of your story when this is done. Inyakie, you will bid your father a hello from me, yes? And tell him to take great care.”

  THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE CAVE SOMETIME BEFORE dawn. The next thing Taylor knew, Inyakie was shaking his shoulder and settling a steaming cup by his head. Taylor pushed himself upright. The cave was a hive of activity. Inyakie said, “We depart in ten minutes.”

  Beyond the cave’s entrance, sunlight turned every dripping surface into a prism. They drove a battered old van and an equally derelict Citroën. Taylor, Inyakie, and Kirra sat in the car and watched Jacques bid his wife a fond farewell and slip into the van’s front seat.

  The village of Sarre greeted them with flags and bunting. The autumn festival marked the end of summer, when the cattle were brought down from the summer highland pastures. An off-key village band practiced the national anthem. The market square was full of locals covering trestle tables with starched linen and heaping piles of food. A trio of spits roasted two hogs and an entire sheep over banked coal fires. A pair of wooden kegs taller than a man were rolled to either side of the central fountain and chinked into place. A group of old men were seated on the fountain’s edge, holding glasses of wine so red they looked black in the sunlight. They toasted Taylor’s convoy with raised glasses and toothless grins.