A World I Never Made

by James Lepore

  “Yes.”

  “What about your job, your career? If you’re wrong about Raimondi, you’ll never get it back. You might go to jail:”

  “Yes, I’ve thought about that:”

  “And?”

  “If I am wrong about Raimondi, then that means that the DST is indeed hunting both you and Megan and that they are in league with the likes of Ahmed bin-Shalib. I took an oath to defend the French constitution. It did not include working on the side of monsters, beheaders, or slaughterers of innocent people:”

  Catherine’s voice rose as she finished her sentence, and Pat could see a hard look in her exotic eyes, the look of someone who had made a decision and accepted its likely consequences. Despite that look, he pressed his case.

  “Even if you’re right about him, the risk is enormous. There must be someone in authority you could go to:”

  “No. He is very powerful. He will be believed over me:”

  “You could walk away from me, Catherine. I would understand:”

  “If I did, what would you do?”

  “I would try to find Megan:”

  Catherine remained silent. The clouds were scattering rapidly now. Like celestial curtains, they opened onto the amazing sight of a full moon bathing the sea and the jagged coast with its pure silver light. Below, the crashing waves and dark rocks were now lit as if by spotlights. Through the arch, the small strand of sea-washed beach could clearly be seen.

  “You are worth the risk, Patrick,” she said finally. Then she took his hand and put it on her chest. He could feel her heart beating rapidly and strongly. “I will not leave you. I could not:”

  Pat took Catherine in his arms before she could say anything else. Five inches taller, he bent his head down to her face and kissed her, feeling, just before he did, the cool, freshening wind on his face and the hot tears running down her cheeks.

  Changing by candlelight in his second-story room at the rear of the house, Daniel Peletier thought slowly about all that he had learned in the last two days. He had intended to warn Nolan and Catherine off of their search for Nolan’s daughter, to lie to them if necessary to get them to leave the country immediately. Rahman al-Zahra-whoever he might really be—was not a foe to be taken lightly. He had somehow corrupted Charles Raimondi, who, now that he suspected that Catherine could expose him, would be desperate: to stay in control, to save his job, his career, his life. Until he was stopped, he would have great resources at his command. An untrained American and a lone policewoman. What chance would they have against such enemies? Yet he could tell after an evening with Nolan that he would not be denied. He would risk his life to save his soul.

  And Daniel’s Catherine had returned. The spirited and determined young woman who had slowly disappeared after her wedding day had arrived in full glow at his door. He had no doubt that it was Patrick Nolan who had awoken her, who had stirred the ashes of her soul. He knew within a moment or two of their arrival that there would be no stopping them. No one could or should be stopped when they are on the path to their destiny. All futures ended in death, did they not? Moi aussi ...

  Daniel blew out the candle and was about to get into bed when moonlight filled the room through the high window that faced the sea. He cinched his thick velour robe as he crossed to the window and, once there, had a clear view to the patio and the stone wall, and Catherine and Nolan in each others” arms.

  No, you are not exaggerating, he thought, they will not be stopped. They are more afraid of stopping their quest than of dying. So be it. May God and the saints in heaven protect them.

  ~16~

  NORMANDY, JANUARY 6, 2004

  “Which do you prefer?” Catherine asked.

  “The Beretta:”

  “It seems so small in your hand:”

  Pat smiled. The .25 caliber Beretta was a compact gun. It was small in his hand. But it had a better feel than the larger models he had shot, a 45 Luger and a 57 Magnum. With the Beretta he had begun to hit his targets at twenty-five feet and to appreciate the oddly gentle, steady squeeze of the trigger required to fire it accurately.

  “Good, its yours. Uncle Daniel will be happy for you to have it. Let me show you how to load the clips:”

  They had been up before dawn, murmuring to each other in Daniel’s rustic kitchen, unchanged in probably fifty years, while coffee brewed and they waited for thick slices of last night’s bread to toast. After a night under a down quilt in Catherine’s arms, this was the best breakfast Pat had had in years. On the beach, as predawn turned to dawn and dawn to sunrise, Catherine demonstrated the weapons for him, firing at pieces of driftwood she had arranged on a shelf of rock that jutted out from the arch into the water, which now lay as flat as a lake after the storms of the last few days.

  They lay the clips on the same rock shelf, along with the box of copper-tipped, hollow-point cartridges Catherine had brought for the Beretta. Watching her, Pat followed suit and they methodically loaded about ten clips as the sun began finally to warm them. Despite the grimness of the activity, Pat’s thoughts were on Catherine. The lushness of her body, the feel of her hands and lips on his. She had put on one of Daniel’s bulky sweaters, but she was not shapeless to Pat. Watching her hands at their task, the sunlight flashing off of a gold bracelet on her right wrist, he could not remember the last time he had felt this alive. Could it be thirty years? He felt sadness and exhilaration at this thought, a mix of emotions that had occurred regularly since the moment in the All Souls morgue when he realized what Megan had done.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Of you.”

  Catherine smiled, and their eyes met for a second.

  “What shall we do?”

  “Daniel has to come with us:”

  “Yes, I agree, but he is stubborn. He may have other plans:”

  “Like lying in wait for these people?”

  “Yes.”

  A dozen or so seagulls appeared, from nowhere it seemed, and began to circle the now tame breakers, crying their screechy cry as they fished for their breakfast. Pat and Catherine watched them, taken outside of themselves and their human worries for a moment or two by the carefree and seemingly effortless force of nature at work.

  “It’s a beautiful spot;” Pat said.

  “Yes. My father and uncle were raised here. Their parents farmed it. I spent all of my childhood summers here:”

  “Why did you become a policewoman?”

  “Because of my father and Uncle Daniel:”

  “Was your father like Daniel?”

  “Yes, strong and handsome and very proud:”

  “Did he really commit suicide?”

  “No, he died in his sleep three years ago:”

  “You were doing your job:”

  “Yes.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I am breaking many laws:”

  “How does that feel?”

  “I am getting used to it.”

  Catherine’s beautiful face remained deadpan for a second after she said this, then it broke out into a wide smile that charmed and confused Pat, reacquainting him as it did with the essential mystery of woman to man. C’est la vie, it seemed to say, the die is cast, I will roll with it, fuck the world. Or none of the above.

  “And your parents?” Catherine said.

  “My father was in the merchant marine,” Pat replied. “He died when I was fifteen. An accident on his ship:”

  “I was told once that before we are born we chose our parents:”

  Pat did not respond, letting this statement sink in. Choose our parents? Choose our parents?-his thoughts turning not to himself but to Megan. Why choose me? And Lorrie, or the total absence of Lorrie? Or the total absence of both of us, for that matter?

  “Do you believe that?” Catherine asked.

  “I don’t know. My father was never home. When he died, my mother started drinking. My brother and I were on our own pretty early on:”

  “You were left alone?”


  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps that is why your daughter chose you:”

  Pat shrugged. His parents” old-world Catholicism, with its emphasis on suffering and guilt, had never held any charm for him. Lorrie had had an avid interest in the spiritual. She had spoken of karma and chakras and sitting zazen and had once tried to explain to him how each of us creates all the things we see and hear and touch. A tall order for a hard-nosed, genetically skeptical Irish kid, but her passion was authentic, as were all things about his young, beautiful, and headstrong wife of eleven months. There was no guilt in her spiritual world, and maybe he would eventually have entered it. But she died, and his interest in higher, transformative powers died with her. Her death was enough of a transformation for the raw, twenty-year-old Pat Nolan.

  “You mean so she could be left alone?” he asked finally.

  “How cruel a thing is separation when all one wants is to be united to someone:”

  “That’s not what Megan wanted all these years, Catherine. She left home. She hasn’t put a foot across my threshold in over twelve years:”

  “But you are searching for her, no?”

  “Yes, of course. She’s my daughter, my blood:”

  “Your love must be very powerful:”

  “Catherine ...”

  “We should go,” Catherine said, placing two fingers against Pat’s lips. “We dare not linger. We will talk more later:”

  Pat held Catherine’s fingers to his lips and kissed them, then nodded his agreement. They stuffed the guns, the clips, and the box of loose rounds into their coat pockets and together turned toward the arch, at the foot of which began the path back up to the bluff. Just before the first step there was a hollow in the cliff wall, which Pat impulsively pulled Catherine into, taking her rapidly in his arms, and, swiftly finding her lips, kissing her, opening his mouth to drink headily from hers. Surprised at the urgency of his desire, he pulled away and smiled, realizing he was blushing, perhaps for the first time since high school.

  “You have swept me off my feet,” he said, “at the age of fifty.”

  “Such a young and handsome fifty.”

  He was about to kiss her again when he stopped and looked up. “Did you hear something?” he asked.

  “A car door?”

  “I think so:”

  “Uncle Daniel leaving for the village:”

  Pat nodded, his mind turning away from his burst of passion and back to the reality of their situation. “We can’t wait here,” he said. “We would be the ones to be trapped, with our backs to these cliffs:”

  “I agree. He loves me. He will come if I ask him.”

  “Good. He can help us in Paris.” Then, looking up again, Pat asked, “where does he keep his car? I didn’t see it last night:”

  “In the barn:”

  “That sound was much closer.”

  “You’re right;” Catherine replied, her hands gripping Pat’s waist a bit tighter. He could see by the look in her eyes that she too had returned to reality.

  “Is there another way up?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “About a quarter mile down the beach there’s a path up and over the hills. The tide looks to be turning, but we could make it:”

  “It’s probably nothing. Let’s go back up here:”

  “Yes.”

  Pat in the lead, they mounted the first rocky step. About twenty feet up, Catherine grabbed his arm from behind and brought them both to a halt.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I hear voices,” she whispered, putting her index finger to her lips.

  One more step and Pat would be able to see over the crest of the arch to the remainder of the ascending path, all the way to the top of the cliff, to the area actually at the stone wall where he and Catherine had kissed last night. Stepping back and hugging the cliff wall, they strained to hear the sound of voices from above, but the wind had changed and they heard nothing but the screeching of the gulls. Their view to the top was blocked by the steeply rising leg of the arch that was also concealing them.

  “I’ll poke my head up,” said Pat.

  “No, someone may be coming down:”

  “Yes. I’m not cowering here. It’s probably nothing:”

  Paranoid, Pat drew the Beretta from his pocket, unlatched the safety, and held it to the side of his face as he gingerly mounted the next step, bringing the full remainder of the path to eye level. The path was empty, but up at the stone wall a large man in a hooded sweatshirt and some kind of fatigue pants—a massive man, taller and bulkier by far than Pat—was holding Daniel Peletier by his long white hair, gripping it firmly from behind so as to pull Daniel’s head sharply back. In his other hand he held a bunched up portion of the back of the old policeman’s pale blue flannel nightshirt, its tail flapping incongruously in the stiffening morning breeze. Behind them was another man, his forehead bandaged, in a hooded jacket and jeans, holding the muzzle of what looked to Pat like an automatic rifle to Uncle Daniel’s left temple. On the clearest, prettiest morning since he had arrived in France, Pat had no trouble seeing the white fields and dark orbs of the old man’s eyes, opened wide with fear, yes, but also with defiance and an unmistakable contempt.

  Before Pat could do anything, before he could think of doing anything, the man holding Daniel lifted him up and threw him headlong over the stone wall. For Pat, all of eternity elapsed and all doubt he had ever had about good and evil vanished in the heartbreaking two seconds before Daniel—who had fed him meat and bread and wine, who had allowed him to sleep with his beloved niece in his beloved home—crashed into the jagged rocks below. He chanced one last look up and saw the big man leaning over the wall to get a better view of his handiwork and the smaller, bandaged one—his right hand hooding his eyes—scanning the coast first to the left and then beginning to swing to the right toward Pat. Ducking quickly down, Pat turned to Catherine, who had seen nothing, and looked her directly in the eye.

  “You’re sure we could we get through?” he said, pointing to the far end of the small beach.

  “Yes. The tide is not fully in. What is it, Patrick? Tell me:”

  “And we could get up the cliff?”

  “Yes, I told you, I know a path across the hills. But I’m not going until you tell me why. What did you see?”

  Pat’s mind raced ahead, to escape, and back, to the last death he had caused, Lorrie’s, and the sorry life he had led since then. He knew that all he could do was soften the blow, and so he did.

  “Your uncle is dead. Two Arabs just threw his body off the cliff. One of them was our friend from the park. We have to go. There may be ten of them up there. And they’ve seen your car. They’ll wait for us:”

  Catherine shook her head rapidly, back and forth, back and forth several times, and then rushed forward to climb the path. Patrick, moving quickly, placed his large body in her way. She bounced off and then tried again, this time clawing at his chest and then his face. She continued to struggle as he wrapped his arms around her and pinned her against the cliff wall.

  “Catherine, Catherine;” he said, whispering, his voice suddenly hoarse. ”Catherine. We can’t let them see us. There’s nothing we can do:” She continued to struggle for a moment or two, trying to free her arms, but Pat was too strong. Sobbing, the fight went out of her. He loosened his hold so that he could look at her. Her head was buried in his chest. When she raised it, he could see that her tears had stopped flowing, and that they had been replaced by a wild and fearsome look, a look that spoke of terrible pain, as if she were keening with her eyes, but also of something else, something that confused him at first, until looking deeper he saw what it was: revenge.

  “We will circle back,” she said. “I know the landscape, the farms along the coast, the back roads:”

  “Maybe,” Pat replied, “but first we have to get off this beach:”

  They did get off the beach, and they did circle back, and thirty minutes later they were laying on t
heir stomachs on a rocky knoll on the opposite side of the house. Some twenty feet directly below them, in a hollow next to a small stream that ran to the sea, was the smokehouse, now falling apart, built by the farm’s first owner a hundred and fifty years before. In the distance they could see Catherine’s Peugeot parked under and in between the two massive evergreens that stood to the right of the long gravel drive that led from the cliff road, as the locals called it, to the house. Another smaller evergreen stood on the near side of the drive, at the edge of the houses hardpan front yard. A black Citroën sedan was parked beneath it. Standing at the car’s rear were two bearded and scruffy-looking men—not the ones from the cliff—with AK-47s slung casually over their shoulders. Two more Arabs, both in their mid-twenties.