A World I Never Made

by James Lepore

  The cab driver refused to drive into the Carrières Thomas neighborhood, leaving Megan off at the ancient stone portal that marked one of the four entrances to the market square. She walked around the outside of the market and turned into the old souk on the first available street. She decided not to ask Yasmine’s son to guide her because she feared that anyone coming into her orbit now would be suspected of complicity in what she hoped was Lahani’s death. On this issue she was not confident. He had sipped only a small amount of the poisonous champagne. Perhaps he was paralyzed or had had a severe stroke, as this was, according to Abdullah, the physiology of the curare-based concoction he had hastily put together for her. She feared though that he was alive and well and that there would be hell, or worse, to pay.

  The door to Abdullah’s shop was open, only the colorful bead curtain separating the street from the interior. Megan was comforted, as the door was always open in the heat of the day. Inside, the shop was quiet. She called Abdullah’s name, thinking he was in the back room, but there was no response. Something made her step around the counter. Perhaps Abdullah was sleeping, or had gone out and left her a note. As she made the turn, her foot struck something and, looking down, she saw Abdullah lying on his back on the floor behind the counter. His throat was slit and a large nail had been driven through his right wrist—through his Coptic cross tattoo—into the floor. His eyes were wide open, and for a second she thought he was alive. She knelt beside him and touched his chest, which was still warm, but he was not breathing and his face was a death mask. She closed his eyes, gently kissing each lid to keep it closed. Then she placed her face against his chest and whispered, “I did this to you, Abdullah. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me:” Her tears stained his cotton djellaba and the blood from his neck wound coated her hair.

  Before getting up, she took hold of the nail in Abdullah’s wrist and tried to pull it out, not thinking why, just that she had to do it. But it was impossible. The nail was more like a large spike, and had been driven deeply into the hardwood floor. Numb, she remained kneeling, trying to collect herself and think what to do. As she was thinking, she heard a rustling sound in the back room, whose entrance, covered by a thick cotton curtain, was only a step away. She rose and pulled the curtain aside slowly and there, sitting on Abdullah’s bed, his knees drawn into his chest, his large brown eyes wide with fear, was Hakim, Yasmine’s boy. She sat down next to him and put her arms around him, and he leaned into her but did not cry or speak.

  There was nothing for Megan to say, either. As she held the boy, she looked around the room and saw on the table next to the electric burner a brown manila envelope, an ornately painted tin canister, and a set of keys. Rising, she took the envelope and opened it. Inside was a Moroccan passport with a fourteen-day Spanish visitor’s visa clipped to it. The picture inside was of a woman of Megan’s age and complexion, with short brown hair. The tin contained a brown powder. Henna, she thought. Outside, in the shop, Megan shut and locked the front door and then found Abdullah’s scissors in a drawer behind the counter. She hacked away at her hair until it was a ragged two inches long in front and an even more ragged three inches in back. Then, at the small sink in the back room, she mixed the henna with water in a bowl and applied it to what was left of her hair, rinsed, and applied it again, and then again until it was a uniform dark brown and the dye did not wash away.

  While she was doing this she glanced over at Hakim several times and saw that he was watching her intently. She found a worn towel to dry her hair, hands, and face. Her two small bags were still under Abdullah’s bed. She fished them out and pulled from one a striped cotton djellaba—one of the four she had bought from Hakim’s mother’s shop on the day they met. She slipped it on over the clothes she was wearing and then stuffed the rest of her things into one bag. Picking up the keys, she turned to Hakim.

  “They are going kill me, too, Hakim,” she said.“Tell me where the car is and I will leave:”

  Hakim rose and took Megan by the hand, pulling her gently in the direction of the front door.“Come,” he said.“Follow.”

  ~27~

  WALDSASSEN, JANUARY 7, 2004

  “Did you have a honeymoon?” Catherine asked.

  “Yes,” Pat replied, “why do you ask?”

  “Because this feels like one:”

  “This place, you mean?”

  “Yes, this little inn, the snow, the featherbed. I have finally gotten one, a real honeymoon:”

  Pat remained silent, idly caressing Catherine’s hip and breathing in the scent of her hair, his mind going back thirty years, a trip he rarely let it take.

  “We went to the Grand Canyon,” he said finally.“I wanted to see the Hoover Dam before we left for Paraguay.”

  “Why?”

  “Inspiration.”

  They were lying naked under clean sheets and a down quilt on a large bed in the Hotel Peterhof in Waldsassen. Outside, snow was falling at a rapid rate, the town and the woods surrounding it already under several inches. They were in a garret room on the third floor—small but very charming with its pitched ceiling and gabled windows. From the window next to the bed, which was at waist level, they could look out across Waldsassen’s little central square to St. Peter’s church, a squat medieval affair with an incongruously beautiful spire whose tolling bells had woken them from a deep sleep. The night was windless, and in the cones of the square’s ancient lamps they could see the snow falling straight down. All was still except for a solitary figure crossing the square carrying a sack over his shoulder, bent under it and trudging along, determined to be home and out of the cold.

  “How old were you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “And your wife?”

  “Twenty.”

  “So young:”

  “Yes.”

  They held each other in silence for a long moment.

  “And you?” Pat asked.“Did you have one?”

  “Yes. We went to Mykonos. I was very unhappy.”

  “Why?”

  “I had made a big mistake and I thought myself a fool and a failure:”

  “But you tried to make the marriage work:”

  “Yes. For a brief time, I tried:”

  “After Lorrie died, I never allowed myself to make any mistakes. I never tried to make anything work:”

  “Are you saying you were more of a fool and a failure than me? I won’t have it:”

  Pat smiled and said,“I don’t know how to answer that:”

  “Yes, you’re trapped:”

  “I love this trap.” His hand was on her buttock now, kneading it gently, caressing the roundness of it, and he was beginning to think that soon they would make love again.

  “Did you love her, your young wife?”

  “Yes, I did:”

  “Very much?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did she love you very much?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s better that way.”

  Another silence, their slow breathing the only sound.

  “Do we love each other, Patrick?”

  “Yes, Catherine, I believe we do. I believe we love each other very much:”

  “I am not so young... not a real bride:”

  “Catherine, the past is over. It’s taken this awful thing that has happened for me to see it. This terror. All this death. I thought I had lost so much, but did not realize I had gained a child, a daughter. Now she may be lost to me. But it has brought me you. And you I will not lose. I will die before I lose you:”

  They had reached Waldsassen in late afternoon and were at the carousel in the center of the deserted amusement park by five thirty. While they were waiting, the snow began to fall. At six thirty, cold and wet, they returned to town, where they were lucky to get a room. A crowd had arrived for the wedding tomorrow of the children of two local officials. Before locating the Peterhof they had driven past the Altes Rathaus, a beautiful old building where festivities were already underway
. Their innkeeper was a stout, kindly woman, built along the same lines as the church in the square except for the spire. They paid her in advance and asked for a wake-up call at eleven. She put them in the garret and brought up a full dinner, with local white wine and strudel, which they devoured before making love and then falling into a heavy sleep. Now all was quiet, in their room, in the hotel, and outside in the town. They did not make love a second time, but rather held each other while the quiet drifted over them, falling asleep again, this time fitfully, the distant past now contending with the near future for preeminence among their worries. The ringing of Catherine’s cell phone woke them a few minutes later with a start.

  “I’ll get it,” Pat said, rousing himself and swinging out of bed. He had been dreaming of the flower girl, Megan’s flower girl. She had been standing at the edge of a sunlit meadow ringing a bell with one hand and gesturing for him to follow her with the other.

  “It’s the flower girl:”

  “The flower girl?” said Catherine, who had sat up and was peering into the room, waiting for her eyesight to adjust to the darkness. “The flower girl? What time is it?”

  “I mean Doro;” said Pat, remembering that they had turned Catherine’s phone on in anticipation of a call from him.”It must be him. Its just ten thirty. Where’s the phone?”

  “In my bag on the chair,” Catherine answered, pointing to a stuffed chair across the small room, in an alcove under a gabled window, where she had thrown her bag on entering.“I’ll help you:”

  “No, stay there. I’ll get it.” Pat was standing next to the bed. He did not know how long the phone had been ringing, but it seemed like a long time. Still naked, he crossed the room quickly and, rather than groping for the phone, he dumped the contents of the bag on the chair.

  “Hello,” he said, picking the slim, glowing cell phone out of the darkness and swiftly bringing it to his ear.

  “Oh, Monsieur Nolan,” a strangely familiar female voice said. “I was hoping to speak to Officer Laurence.”

  “Officer Laurence?”

  “Yes, Catherine Laurence. I assigned her to your daughter’s case. This is Inspector LeGrand. It is Catherine’s phone you are on, is it not?”

  “Inspector LeGrand?”

  “Yes. We met in my office last week:”

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Inspector. I ...”

  Before Pat could finish his sentence, Catherine had leaped from the bed, crossed the room in two long strides, snatched the phone from his hand, and clicked it off. She stared at it for a second and then threw it on the floor.

  “We have ten minutes,” she said, “no more:”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “Yes. They have our location. I’ll explain later. Get dressed, we must leave. Quickly, Patrick, quickly, vite, the local police station is just around the corner.”

  ~28~

  WALDSASSEN, JANUARY 7, 2004

  Max French turned the collar of his trench coat up and stood with his back to the wind. He had slept on the plane from New York, about thirty-six hours ago, and then not at all since. Luckily, the coat was lined and he had brought along gloves and a scarf, but no boots. His size-thirteen feet, a little too large for his six-foot body, were wet and cold. Tomorrow he would beg, steal, or borrow a pair of boots. Or find a store that carried extra-large sizes. The Waldsassen police chief’s SUV, a sleekly black BMW, was parked nearby. It was running and its headlights were trained on the river Ohře. Their beams penetrated the dark night only thirty feet or so, but that was enough to see the tracks of Catherine Laurence’s Peugeot leading to the edge of the three-foot-high bank and then, about ten feet out, its rear bumper sticking up at a forty-five-degree angle as the river rushed around it. A man in hip boots and foul-weather gear, tethered to a line from shore, was in the tricky process of hooking a tow chain to the Peugeot. This man, who looked to be about seven feet tall, had strode into the swollen river fearlessly, like it was a wading pool. Before attempting the hookup, he had managed to pry open the car’s rear passenger door, signaling with a wave of both hands across his face that the car was empty.

  The helicopter French had come in with agents Orlofsky and Dionne was parked in a field about a half mile away. The snow had stopped about halfway through their twenty-minute flight, to be replaced almost immediately by strong winds crisscrossing their path. The pilot was a pro, his hands rock steady on the controls, his face stony in concentration as he negotiated first the snow and then the winds like he was riding a powerful horse through a storm. It had been Max who, when he was told that Waldsassen was only eighty miles away, had insisted on the helicopter, a heroic gesture that he came to regret in mid-flight. It turned out not to be worth the effort, as either Nolan and Laurence had drowned or a boat had shown up by some miracle and carried them away.

  “You’ll dredge the river?” Max said to André Orlofsky, who had walked over to stand beside him.

  “Yes, but it can’t be done tonight. The current is too swift:”

  “What’s downriver?”

  “Forest and then the town of Cheb, in the Czech Republic. The border is only a few kilometers from here:”

  “Is there a crossing station on the river?”

  “Yes. We have spoken to the guard, a boy of nineteen. He says he saw nothing. He was probably sleeping:”

  “One guard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why bother?”

  “Yes, I agree. They will be officially in the EU in June and then no border stations:”

  “Our boy will be out of a job.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe they’re drowned:”

  “I don’t either:”

  “Of course your German friends have fucked up the scene:”

  Max did not look at Orlofsky as he said this. He looked at the river-bank, a crime scene whose features had once been stenciled in pristine snow, but that was now trashed, the footprints of the tow truck man and of the Waldsassen deputy all over the place. Behind him, near the carousel, it was the same: a welter of footprints belonging to the deputy, the chief, and several others, but how many others and what their movements might have been had been obliterated by the Germans’ heedless trudging around as if they were in the amusement park for amusement. Dionne was at the carousel, where it looked like the Peugeot had stopped before proceeding to the river. He was taking pictures with a digital camera, which they would study in the car, but French was not hopeful that they would be any help. In fact, he was certain they wouldn’t.

  “Yes, they have,” said Orlofsky.“But we do know there were others here. Here’s our deputy now.”

  The Waldsassen deputy, a woman of about thirty in a fur-lined parka and bulky boots, had been the first to the scene. When her chief arrived he sent her downriver to talk to the people in the farmhouses on the German side to see if by chance they had seen a boat pass in the storm and to tell them to be on the lookout for strangers traipsing through their fields. She had parked her four-wheel-drive Audi cruiser behind the carousel and was walking toward them. The chief was in his car trying to raise the Czech police.

  “Do you mind if I speak to her?” Max asked. “My German is pretty good.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Proceed?”

  “Yes, proceed:”

  When Orlofsky picked Max up at the airport in Paris, he had made a point of saying that there had been no terror attacks inside France since 9/11. He did not have to mention how ironic it would be if the first one came at the hands of an American. He had been prickly, in other words, but not too prickly. Just the normal French prickliness that was probably in the water, or the wine. Max had spent two years as an AP reporter in Paris before going to law school in California and then joining the FBI in 1993. This was to him as good a theory as any as to why the French were the way they were. Plus, of course, their deep resentment at the United States for having done, twice, what they, the French, were incapable of doing: liberating themselves from the Germa
ns in two world wars.