Mrs. John Doe

by Tom Savage

  A shootout in a cemetery. Two unidentified men, one dead and one seriously wounded. The words invaded her thoughts, and she looked over at the TV screen. The churchyard where she’d been last night was swarming with people: police, paramedics, and what looked to be half the population of Pinède. There was a shot of a covered stretcher being placed in an ambulance, followed by footage of Jacques Lanier, strapped to a stretcher carried by two men, awake and aware, blinking around at the crowd.

  Jacques was alive! She felt a surge of relief, followed immediately by alarm. The live images switched to an artist’s sketch of the face of a young white man she’d never seen before: the dead assassin. This was followed by a grainy but distinct photo of a wild-eyed woman in a beige London Fog trench coat caught in the glare of floodlights, clutching a silver SIG Sauer in her hand. She was looking directly up at the camera, which was obviously a CCTV mounted on the corner of the church beside the emergency lights.

  Nora had done a lot of television work and played small parts in several major films, so she was used to looking at herself on a screen, but nothing had prepared her for this. A still photo, taken from security camera footage, of her, Nora Baron, brandishing a gun. Brandishing—that was the only word to describe the image, and the expression on her face could only be called a snarl. She’d been dazzled by the sudden light in the cemetery, and she’d squinted directly up into the camera, raising her hand with the gun…

  The newscaster, a pleasant-looking man, went on to report that the unidentified woman—Caucasian, fortyish, tall, slender, light brown hair—was wanted by the Gendarmerie Départementale. In the cemetery, a heavyset, balding older man with a walrus mustache and horn-rimmed glasses, identified as Maurice Dolin, directeur, SDAT, made an appeal for all citizens to be on the lookout for her. “Armée et dangereuse, approche avec prudence.” The still photo was shown again, and it was held on screen for a very long time, or so it seemed to its subject. Nora stared at the image of the desperate criminal, realizing that this unflattering picture was being broadcast from every network, on every television, computer, and electronic device in France.

  She was on her feet, reaching for the now-famous raincoat, when Martine’s daughter bustled back into the room, ushering in a tall young man in jeans and a denim jacket, bearing a backpack. A hiker, no doubt, stopping for breakfast before hitting the trails. The hostess showed him to a table on the other side of the room. He dropped the heavy backpack on a chair and turned around.

  Nora stared at him, sinking slowly back into her seat. The daughter was going through her litany of breakfast choices for the new arrival, but he interrupted her speech by coming directly over to Nora’s table.

  “Pardonnez-moi, madame,” he said to Nora. “Anglaise?”

  “American,” Nora replied.

  “Great!” the young man said in booming, perfect English, and he grinned. “My rental car broke down a mile back, they can’t get me a replacement for hours, and I really have to be in Paris today. Are you driving that way, by any chance?”

  The hostess arrived at the table now, frowning at the young man; she clearly had rules about one guest intruding on the privacy of another. Nora nipped the woman’s angry speech in the bud by smiling and waving to the empty chair across from her.

  “Yes, I can take you to Paris,” she said, transforming herself into a friendly fellow traveler. “Won’t you join me?”

  “Great!” he boomed again. “Thanks so much!” He turned his beautiful grin on the hostess. “Café, fruit, omelette, et—um, have you any corn flakes?”

  Martine’s daughter blinked. “Corn…flakes? Oh, les Kellogg’s! Oui, nous avons les Kellogg’s!” She turned an inquiring look to Nora, who smiled and nodded. Translation: Yes, it’s okay for him to sit here.

  The big screen across the room was now filled with the image of a lovely young woman in an evening gown, extolling the delights of her silky, manageable cheveux. Nora asked if la tay-vay could perhaps be turned off?

  The daughter complied immediately. Then she produced a very French smile, winked at Nora, and hurried off to the kitchen. The young man went over to retrieve his backpack from the other table, threw his large, lanky frame down into the chair across from her, and grinned some more.

  Nora glanced over at the door to the kitchen, then back at her new companion, instantly dropping her pretence.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” she said.

  Now, at last, the disarming grin vanished, and Craig Elder the younger leaned forward to whisper.

  “I’m here to get you out of here.”

  Chapter 18

  Nora was instantly on her feet again. She peered through the door into the lobby, then out the picture window, scanning the terrain for signs of movement. The police, or worse: her pursuer from the gray Citroën. The sudden stab of panic sliced through her, cutting off her oxygen.

  “Sit down,” Craig Elder said quietly, and there was a hint of humor in his voice. “You’re not in any immediate danger. There’s no one here but us. I simply meant that I have to get you out of France—but it’s okay to have breakfast first.”

  Nora sank back down into her seat once more. She drew in a long breath, studying his face, waiting for the panic to subside before trying to speak. At last she said, “You’d better explain yourself, Mr. Elder. Who, exactly, are you? You obviously work with my husband. Where is he? Where’s Jeff?”

  He looked around the otherwise empty room before replying, and now there was no trace of humor. “We don’t know.”

  “We?” Nora stared at him. “Who the hell is we?”

  He looked her straight in the eye. “His people. My people. Our people. Mr. Howard is my boss, and we’re working with Mr. Baron. But Mr. Baron has disappeared.”

  Nora tried to assimilate this. “When?”

  “Two nights ago, as near as anyone can make out, sometime after you and I met in Russell Square. Mr. Howard is frantic. Mr. Baron—”

  “Stop,” she interjected. “Please stop calling him that. Call him Jeff, okay?”

  He studied her a moment. Then he said, “Okay, Jeff has been in hiding ever since the car accident. Mr. Howard—Bill was the only one who knew how to get in touch with him. It turns out that Jeff was hiding in Bill’s new house in Norfolk. Bill called him just before nine that night, after I’d delivered you to the hotel, and he told Jeff all about Russell Square. Bill had just come back from dinner with the minister and his wife, who were in his living room expecting a nightcap, so he told Jeff he’d call back as soon as they went home. He called Jeff again at eleven, and this time Jeff didn’t answer. The people at the place in London where he usually lives—you do know where he stays in London, right?”

  Nora nodded. “Yes, it’s an apartment in Soho. I know where it is, but I’ve never been there. When I join him in London, he always stays with me at the Byron. Go on—what about his apartment?”

  “They say Jeff hasn’t shown up there; nobody knows where he might be. He left Bill’s house in Sedgeford at nine, right after they spoke on the phone. He drove one of Bill’s cars to King’s Lynn station and bought a ticket to London. The train was at nine-forty. The station’s security cameras showed a man approaching him on the platform just before the train arrived. They had a conversation, and instead of boarding the train, Jeff walked out of the station with him. They found Bill’s car, the one Jeff had borrowed, still parked in the station’s lot.”

  Nora calculated. It was nine o’clock now, so Jeff had been missing for nearly thirty-six hours. “The man with him—did any of your people recognize him?”

  “No.” He paused, clearly troubled about the next part. “But he was—we think he was—umm…”

  “A Paki wanker?” Nora supplied, cringing at her own vulgarity, and the look on his face confirmed it. “But not the one from Russell Square, right?”

  “No,” he said. “How did you know that?”

  The hostess and an old man in an apron arrived from the kitchen with trays an
d proceeded to lay out a feast.

  Nora said, “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire to one called Cemeteries, and get off at Elysian Fields. I’m visiting my sister and her husband. My brother-in-law is a rough and very crude man, positively prehistoric! Relations can be such a trial sometimes, don’t you agree, Mr.—?”

  “Brando,” Craig supplied. “Joe Brando.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Brando? I’m Miss Noreen Hughes from Belle Reve, my home in Mississippi. Do you know what Belle Reve means? It means beautiful dream. Isn’t that enchanting?!”

  As soon as the servers were gone, Nora said, “I know it couldn’t be the man from the park because he was here the next morning, in Paris, following me. At least I think he was. I didn’t see him, but Jacques Lanier did.”

  Craig frowned. “Jacques Lanier— Is that the Frenchman who drove you?”

  Nora stared at him. This young man was an assistant, or so she’d gathered, an employee of Bill Howard and her husband, and she didn’t know his rank. He might be another Ray/Roy/Roger, in which case there was every chance that she knew more details than he did at this point.

  “Eat,” she said. “We have to go, and who knows when we’ll have time for food again? I just saw the morning news; you’re dining with the most wanted woman in France.”

  She managed to eat half her omelet and a slice of toast, despite the numbness in her brain and the queasiness in her stomach. She noted with something approaching humor that her companion wolfed down everything else on the table in the same amount of time. She was beginning to relax a little when the hostess came in with two women who were clearly locals. Nora looked at Craig, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing: These women might have seen the news reports. Nora kept her face averted from their table.

  “When we leave here,” he whispered, “you drive and I’ll direct you. My car is not far from here; we’ll switch to that. Paris is our first stop; I have to check on a colleague who isn’t answering her phone. It’s very urgent, or I wouldn’t take time for it now. She’s been silent for two days, ever since she delivered that message to you in London and came to Paris on the late train, so we’re going to her place. Then we’ll decide how to get you out of France.”

  Nora remembered the pretty blond girl from the hotel dining room, but she didn’t ask about her now. Instead, she settled the bill and thanked Martine’s daughter for everything. The daughter smiled, clearly assuming that the middle-aged American cougar had just picked up the sexy British backpacker. Nora let the woman believe whatever she chose and hoped she wouldn’t be watching TV in the next few hours.

  “Do you have everything from your room?” Craig asked her.

  She nearly laughed at that. Everything from her room: A Coach bag and a London Fog raincoat. The clothes on her back. One sinister manila envelope. And a huge, ugly gun. At the moment, they were all she had in the world.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m ready.”

  As she and Craig went out into the parking lot, she put on her sunglasses and a scarf, taking in the details around her as she moved: the empty lot; the distant traffic on the autoroute, two small boys sailing by on bicycles, laughing in the sunshine; the strident morning song of an enthusiastic robin in an elm tree beside the building. Nothing else. When they arrived at Jacques’s car, she rolled up her trench coat and placed it on the backseat. Craig dropped his backpack on top of it, hiding it from view. She was opening the front door to get into the driver’s seat when Craig suddenly said, “Look.”

  He was on the other side of the car, staring through the picture window into the dining room. Nora followed his gaze. The hostess was back in the room now, once more turning on the wall-mounted television, her pride and joy. On the screen, the earlier report from Pinède was being repeated, complete with film footage and photos.

  Without another word, Nora and Craig Elder got into the car and drove away.

  Chapter 19

  He’d parked in a field beside the autoroute about half a mile west of Chez Martine. Nora followed his instructions, driving along the access road and straight out into the tall grass, stopping next to his car, a gray Volvo. She got out of the Renault and took her things from the backseat.

  “Wait here,” Craig said. He maneuvered himself over into the driver’s seat of the Renault and drove it off into the woods that lined the farthest edge of the field from the road. It was mostly farmland around here, as far as Nora could tell, but that wood seemed to be fairly dense, practically a forest. Craig came out of the trees on foot. He unlocked his Volvo and threw his backpack and her bag and coat into the backseat. He drove this time. In minutes they were on the autoroute, heading northeast in the bright midmorning sunlight. Nora took in a deep breath and began.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Why are these people after me? What do they want with my husband?”

  Craig thought a moment before replying. “I don’t know a lot of it myself, and it’s definitely classified, but under the circumstances, I think you deserve security clearance. Here’s what I’ve pieced together:

  “Jeff has been working with Bill Howard and some people in France on intelligence he brought to them. It seems a tip was given to the Americans by one of their informants over here. Someone in England, or possibly France, has made a covert deal with a group in our purse snatcher’s part of the world. We think it involves, um, arms sales. WMDs.”

  Nora stared over at him. “My God, what are we talking about here? Do you mean that someone in the West is selling those people nuclear weapons?”

  He shrugged, eyes on the road. “Parts for them, anyway. I haven’t been briefed on the specifics, but they’ve formed a task force, operatives from several countries working together to find the dealer.”

  “I see,” Nora said. “And this dealer is—”

  “In England or—”

  “—or possibly France,” she finished for him. She stared out through the windshield, imagining convoys of canvas-covered trucks transporting plutonium warheads through the bright French countryside. After a moment she said, “If Jeff’s agency shared all this with England and France, why would the South Asians be singling him out for payback, or whatever you call it?”

  He glanced over at her. “Nora, I’m already breaching protocols here; I’ve told you more than I’m supposed—”

  “Then you can damn well tell me the rest!” she said. “Why him? Why me?”

  Now Craig Elder sighed. “I haven’t been told, but I have a guess. I think your husband faked his own death so he’d be free to move about under the radar and stop the deal. And I think the people on the other end of the deal—the South Asians, as you call them—found out he wasn’t really dead. They learned where he was hiding and, um, extracted him.”

  Nora leaned back against the headrest and shut her eyes, thinking it through. Craig was switching lanes, aiming for the signs that indicated Paris, when she spoke again.

  “I don’t know much about Jeff’s business,” she said, “but I know Jeff. I know how his mind works. He planned the car accident with the fake body— Who is that man in the morgue, by the way?”

  Craig shrugged again. “I have no idea.”

  “Okay, well—Jeff wanted everyone to think he was dead, and he wanted me to come over and take his ashes back to New York. He’d only get me involved if it was really vital. I don’t think he’s trying to find out who the arms dealer is. I think he must already know who it is. And I think…”

  She turned in her seat to look at her Coach bag beside Craig’s backpack.

  “What?” Craig asked. “What do you think?”

  Instead of answering his question, she asked one. “Who is the girl in Paris, the one you’re so worried about? She gave me the first note from Jeff. Is she American or British?”

  “She’s French,” Craig said, “but she works in London. I think Jeff contacted her a couple of days ago, gave her notes with instructions. Apparently, she was to deliver one to you at the Byron Hotel, the
n she was to go immediately to Paris, to deliver a second message to you the next day. She took the Chunnel train to Paris late that night, and she went to our apartment in the Latin Quarter, near the Sorbonne. No one in London has heard from her since. Who gave you the second message?”

  Nora told him about the museum, the creepy Frenchman, the odd note all in capital letters, and the trip to Pinède.

  He nodded. “I see. It’s pretty obvious that the message wasn’t the real one, the one from Jeff. I came to Paris last night to find our girl, but then I got a call from Mr. Howard telling me to get to you and bring you back to London.”

  “How did you find me?” Nora asked.

  “That took some doing,” he said. “Bill called the French people here, and they called the agent assigned to you. They got his wife, who told them he’d switched autos; he was now driving his son’s Renault. Once they knew which car they were looking for, they could track it, and they directed me to it. When I saw that it was parked at a guesthouse, I figured it out. We knew the French agent and the other man met up in Pinède, and I’d seen that photo of you fleeing the scene on the telly. So, I stashed my car down the road from Chez Martine and became a stranded hiker, and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Yes, but why?” Nora asked. “I mean, why didn’t the police simply go to Chez Martine and arrest me? They think I was involved in the shootings.”

  Craig smiled indulgently. “Nora, the French police don’t know anything about this. The French people Mr. Howard called have nothing to do with the police; they’re on a whole different level—like Jeff is in America, like Mr. Howard is in England. The French police will be informed when the time is right, but not now. Now we have a national emergency—an international emergency. This deal is imminent, and we have to stop it. Two of our people are missing in action, and one of them is your husband. Those are our priorities.”

  Nora stared out at the autoroute. They’d be in Paris soon; she recognized the suburbs. She drew in a steadying breath and asked the question foremost in her mind.