I turned the key, trying to remember everything Lars Aquavit had tried to teach me about forward and reverse, and when to do those things, about all the different gears, about the gas, and especially about the brake.
Please, I thought, getting serious as I backed the car down the drive, just let me be competent long enough to do what I need to do.
Being competent lasted just long enough to get me the rest of the way down the drive, turning the car around and heading for the church at a snail’s pace in one of the lower gears.
“At this rate, it would probably be quicker if you walked,” I told myself.
“Oh, shut up. Whose side are you on?” I told myself right back.
Yes, being competent lasted as I drove through the streets, passing the occasional cars of intrepid Icelanders who’d probably been out late partying. It lasted right until I got to the church.
That was when, seeing the finish line right there ahead of me, perhaps due to my overeagerness, I did the same brain-dead thing I’d done on the first day Lars Aquavit tried to teach me to drive. Pulling up, confusing the gas for the brake, I hit down hard on it, slamming into the side of the church.
Crap!
There went the front end of the car again. Having been healed once by mechanics already, it was once more crumpled up like an accordion at a bar mitzvah.
But there was no time for that now. Fuck the car.
I pushed the door open with my boot, grabbing the umbrella as I exited.
Then I raced to the door of the church, praying it was unlocked, since I’d forgotten my sewing needle and expired Amex card back at the embassy.
The door pulled right open. Maybe in other parts of the world, sanctuary had to be limited to business hours due to vandalism and violent crime. But here in Reykjavik, where the most likely criminal thing to happen was whatever was going on here, sanctuary was just as convenient as slurpies at a 7-Eleven.
I rushed into the church, trying to be as quiet as a rushing person in winter boots could possibly be, so as not to alert Bebe.
But the church was empty. I could see that, as I zigzagged in and out of the pews, checked out the altar. Empty.
Had I been wrong?
Oh, crap! This was just the kind of thing that would never happen to Nancy Drew—wasting time by going to the wrong place, chasing phantoms. All of Nancy’s phantoms always turned out to be real. Well, except that they were all fiction.
Think, Charlotte, think!
The stairs!
The stairs in the entryway, the ones that led up to the bell tower!
Moving quicker than I’d ever moved in my life, I ran to the entryway and up the winding stairs, pushing aside the feelings of nausea and dizziness brought on by a full day of not eating anything.
As I came through to the top that overlooked the city, the freezing top where the wind whipped around, I saw by the light of the stars a huddled something in the corner: Annette!
Guarding her, of course, was Bebe Iversdottir.
She no longer looked beautiful to me, not even icily beautiful.
“You bitch!” I screamed at her, unthinking, as I pointed my umbrella at her.
“You…governess!” she laughed back at me, raising her gun in frustration. “You’re too late.”
“What?”
I looked more closely at Annette. It was then that I noticed for the first time that her eyes were closed. She hadn’t noticed my loud and clumsy entrance. Was she asleep? Was she…dead?
“What have you done to her?” I demanded.
But before she could answer, we both heard the sound of more than one pair of feet echoing up the long stairwell.
Bebe glanced over the edge. Then she turned back to me, horrified.
“The police?” she said, no longer laughing as she trained her gun on me. “You called the police?”
I was as surprised as she was. And I didn’t like to be talked to like that.
“No,” I said just as scathingly, “I didn’t call the police.”
Of course I hadn’t called the police. I’d figured: Who would ever believe me? Who ever believes anyone about things like kidnappings and the Russian mafia until afterward?
But then I realized that gun she had trained on me was no laughing matter. In her desperation, who knew what she would do? It would be convenient if she hurled herself over the side of the tower, falling to the concrete and ice down below, but I wasn’t counting on it.
So I reverted to plan.
Thank God I’d made a plan!
I hit the release on the umbrella and as it popped open wide, I swung it two-fisted like a Louisville Slugger, connecting the silver tip clean with the deadly gray of the gun and sending it sailing out into the night.
“Okay,” I heard the Icelandic-accented voice behind me. “Which one of you crashed the embassy car?”
chapter 12
You could say that it was my lousy driving skills and not Nancy Drew at all that saved my life and Annette’s. After all, the cops never would have found us if I hadn’t crashed into the side of the church. And who knew what Bebe might have done then? True, I was ready with my umbrella. But there was no guarantee there would have been the same happy ending.
Of course, the happy ending was a while in coming. First, Annette had to be revived. Only, it turned out she didn’t need to be revived at all. It turned out she was only sleeping. That child could sleep through anything!
In the meantime, Bebe had been trying to persuade the cops that I was some kind of lunatic—“Just look at how she is dressed!”—who’d kidnapped the two of them at umbrella-point.
She was just backing toward the stairwell, as though the cops might just let her go, when Annette woke up.
She looked around the bell tower, confused, wiping the sleep from her eyes.
“Miss Charlotte!” she cried with joy when she saw me. Then she looked accusingly at Bebe. “That woman is awful,” she told me. “She promised me we were going someplace special, but then she brought me to this cold place and told me to go to sleep. I definitely do not want her to be my mother.”
Now that she was awake, the cops immediately recognized the ambassador’s daughter and they began to take matters more seriously.
If this really were a Nancy Drew book I was living, they would have let me grill Bebe myself. The police always let Nancy question subjects and after a few empathetic words from her—“We all make mistakes at times”—they were always ready to tell her the whole story and go straight. Perhaps I could be that persuasive, too?
Well, of course that wasn’t going to happen. And when I told them Bebe was a spy with the Russian mafia, they became very skeptical.
See? I knew that would happen.
But I had the presence of mind to have them call police headquarters and have someone else sent to the embassy to retrieve the fax from Robert Miller fingering Bebe. They called another car to take Bebe away for questioning and then they took Annette and I home. It was all so confusing, and I still wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, what had gone on, but at least Annette was safe and in my arms.
It wasn’t until late the next day that I learned the whole story.
I hardly could believe the truth when I heard it.
Apparently the urgent call for Edgar, summoning him to the States, had all been another ruse of Bebe’s and he came rushing home on the earliest flight.
He hugged Annette so hard, crouching down beside her, I thought he was never going to let her go. But then he stood and hugged me, too.
“Thank you, Charlotte,” he said, tears in his eyes. “If it hadn’t been for you…”
He left the sentence hanging. We both knew it didn’t bear thinking about.
Previously, when I’d wanted to learn the answer to a mystery, I’d played Nancy Drew, sneaking around the house. But now I realized the best way to learn what I wanted to know—and there was a lot!—was to just be straightforward about it, ask a few questions. If I was lucky, I might even get
a few answers.
“Just what the hell has been going on here?” I demanded once Mrs. Fairly had removed Annette from the room, promising her extra cake. Everyone, the whole household, was about spoiling Annette for the time being.
I suppose I could have phrased my question more delicately, but I was through once and for all with being subservient. Whatever was going on here, it had almost gotten people killed.
“I suppose I owe you an explanation,” Edgar said.
“And how,” I said. “By my calculations, you owe me about fifty-six explanations, but I’ll settle for one at a time.”
“Which would you like me to start with?” he asked with rare contrition.
“Bebe,” I said, certain that would answer a lot, “anything to do with Bebe.”
“Well,” he said simply, “she works, or I should say worked for the Russian mafia.”
“I know that,” I said, exasperated. “I saw the fax.”
“Yes,” he said, “and it was a good thing you did. It’s also a good thing you told the police here about it. When Bebe realized she’d been identified, she immediately caved under questioning.”
“You’ve spoken to the police here already?” I asked.
“Yes, I called them repeatedly from my cell whenever I could while traveling. You don’t think I was going to wait until I got back here to find out what was going on, do you?”
“Well,” I said, “you do have that outdated fax machine upstairs, so who knew you could be so modern as to carry a cell?”
“That’s right,” he said ruefully. “You saw the room, finally learned your madwoman was really my old equipment in the communications room.”
“Communications room?” I echoed. It sounded so ominous, so…CIA. “Why would you need such a thing?”
“To keep nosy people like Mrs. Fairly and you from reading things you shouldn’t. We’d been suspicious of Bebe for a long time but hadn’t any proof.”
“Well,” I said, “it was a good thing I was nosy this time, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said, getting serious, his voice soft, “it was.”
But I didn’t want to hear that softness in his voice. I certainly didn’t want to respond to it.
“Back to Bebe…” I suggested.
“Yes,” he said, getting businesslike again, “Bebe. Once she saw the fax, she fingered everyone else in the organization. This is great news,” he said, looking a trifle sad, “because it means that very soon Annette will finally be able to go home.”
“Go home?” I echoed his words once again. “But this is her home,” I said, “here, with you.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “You see, Annette’s not really my daughter.”
“What?”
That was when he explained to me that Annette was the next in line of a country with royalty whose current royal was under control of the Russian mafia. Now, with the plot to snatch Annette busted up—Bebe had been hiding with Annette in the tower until morning, when she was planning to fly Annette out of the country, never to be seen again—the little girl could finally go home. Edgar himself was ex-CIA and he’d been put in Iceland as the ambassador so he wouldn’t be noticeable in order to protect her.
“You mean you’re not really an ambassador?”
“Oh, I’m really an ambassador.” He smiled.
“How?” I asked.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, “how few people want these posts, considering the vetting process. And I was qualified, sort of. I am ex-CIA, after all.”
“That’s a little hard to believe,” I said. “It’s very hard.”
“Yes, well,” he said, “we live in a world where skyscrapers can fall from the sky and yet, somehow, flowers still bloom, somewhere, every single day. So what’s one more improbable thing?”
Indeed.
“Does Annette know about any of this?” I asked.
“No,” he said sadly. “She’s been with me since she was just two years old. She really does think I’m her father.”
It was like Annette was the Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, given away for her own protection at a young age.
“It’ll be so hard on her when she finds out,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “but her mother is a good woman. I’ve met her. And she’s waited so long to get her daughter back.”
It had rankled me, the idea of Bebe raising the child I loved so much. This I could deal with, however: once Annette went back home, wherever home was for her, I might never see her again. But she’d be going to a mother who loved her.
“It’ll be hard on you, too,” I said, realizing it even as I said it, “letting her go like that, after all this time.”
“Yes,” was all he said.
“So,” I said, sucking it up, “back to Bebe.”
“Yes?”
“Were you really ever in love with her?”
“God, no!” he said, clearly horrified at the prospect. “That was just all to trap her. The only woman I can ever remember really loving in my life now, truly loving, is you.”
And then he kissed me.
It was the kind of amazing kiss that heals everything, erasing all the bad, leaving only good.
I couldn’t believe how good it was.
Finally, I forced myself to draw away from him, looked up at him with hopeful eyes.
“Then we can be married now?” I asked.
Now it was his turn to draw back.
“Well,” he said, “there’s a slight problem. You see, I’m already married.”
“What?”
I drew back farther.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, reaching for me, but I pulled back even farther, out of reach, crossed my arms.
“Explain,” I said, hiding behind sternness, refusing to give in to the tears that threatened to form.
God, I was emotional these days. What was that all about?
“I’ve been married for a long time,” he said, running his fingers through his hair as though exasperated at the mere thought of that marriage. “But in name only,” he hastily added. “I was already married, and my marriage was already dead as far as I was concerned, when Robert Miller came to me with the mission of protecting Annette.”
“And, what?” I asked. “You were just too busy these last few years to get around to getting divorced?”
“Essentially? Yes.”
“And what of your…wife—is it in name only for her, too?”
“I haven’t spoken to Belinda for a long time,” he said. “The last I heard, she was living with some businessman in Spain. So, to answer your question, I’d say, yes.”
It was so much to digest.
“I’ll get a divorce,” he said, “as soon as possible. But in the meantime,” he added, reaching for me again, “we can be together.”
“No,” I said, remaining out of reach, “we can’t.”
chapter 13
Who should plunk down next to me on the Icelandair flight back to America but George Cranston, the same man who’d been seated next to me on my trip out there. I suppose I should have been surprised at the strange coincidence, that he should have been with me the first time and was now here with me again so many months later, but as Edgar had pointed out, so many strange things happened in the world, so many strange things had happened in my world—what was one more?
“How did it work out for you?” George asked without greeting, his words sounding somewhat surly.
“Excuse me?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“That book you were going to write,” he said. “How did it work out?”
I thought about how I’d burned the manuscript in the embassy fireplace.
“I changed my mind,” I said finally. “It wasn’t the story I wanted to write after all.”
“Ha!” he crowed triumphantly. “See? You should have written mine.”
I felt a wave of the now-familiar nausea, but I welcomed it: it was a harbinger of something hopefully good to c
ome.
“It’s okay,” I said, patting my still reasonably flat stomach, “I think I’ll have a new story soon.”
In my bewilderment over Edgar’s revelations, I had decided to do the only thing I could do: I returned to New York, back to the place where, even if they preferred not to take me in, they just had to.
Only this time, I wasn’t going back to Aunt Bea. Of course I’d visit her, visit my cousins over the upcoming holidays, if they’d have me, but it was time I got a place of my own. It was time I discovered who I was in this world without the props of other people.
I hadn’t been willing to accept much from Edgar when I’d finally left his house, just the money he owed me and one other thing: it would have been hard to land in the city and find a place to live by nightfall, so I allowed Edgar to use his connections to make sure there would be a place for me. If I didn’t like it, I could always move once I got my bearings and had time to properly look.
I’d remained in Iceland just long enough to see that Annette had received the shocking news and taken it well. A part of me had been concerned it would be too much for her—her father wasn’t really her father, her mother lived in another country, she herself was a princess—but I hadn’t factored in the adaptability and resilience of small children. Besides, what little girl doesn’t want to be a princess? Annette was thrilled at the notion, particularly after Edgar promised he’d visit her and visit her often, to make sure she was doing all right. Of course I knew her future wasn’t going to be all tiaras and parties—still tea parties for now—but at least as a princess she would no longer have to worry about math.
It would have been harder for me, saying goodbye to her, if I hadn’t seen for myself how happy she was now. I suspected that all those years of viewing family photos that had no record before she was two may have planted the seed of suspicion in her mind, that there was another story out there. Whatever the case, she’d always been a girl badly in need of a mother and now she was going to get one.
“I will miss you, Miss Charlotte,” she said tearfully.
How Nancy Drew Saved My Life Page 23
