by Cara Black
On her way out, she noticed the bowl of tamarinds, labeled “monkey fruit” in the Asian markets. Pod-like and the color of shoe leather. Soft but once crackled open, revealing a hard stone pit. Like Ansary.
Out on the scorching pavement, she shouldered her bag. She felt sure that Ansary had spoken with Yves. And for the rest, she counted on Langois to supply answers.
SHE PARKED AT Hôpital Lariboisière, the old cholera hospital abutting the Gare du Nord rail lines. Its courtyard held cars now, not the wagons that had once brought the infected and carried away the corpses. In the distance, gray poles and wires supported gray canopies of glass, draped umbrella-like over the nineteenth-century rail station. Gray and more gray. Several carved heads of statues poked over the glass roof, somber and vacant-eyed guardians.
Léon-Paul Fargue’s ode to his neighborhood came to her: “A bustling and noisy circus where iron mingles with men, trains with taxis, cattle with soldiers: a country rather than an arrondissement made up of canals, factories . . . a neighborhood of poets and locomotives.”
Locomotives, all right, but the poets she didn’t see.
On her right lay the rambling headquarters of the French National Railroads, an old-fashioned monument to bureaucracy.
She glanced at her Tintin watch and ran. Inside the Gare du Nord, crowded at noontime and all the time, the crackling loudspeaker and the old metal clock brought back memories of school field trips and harried teachers.
One could set one’s clock by the Gare du Nord’s arriving morning commuters, her father said once after a stakeout. Five to six A.M., the African workers with their lunch pails from the suburbs; seven to eight A.M., local secretaries and receptionists reading Femme Actuelle; nine to ten A.M., the executives carrying briefcases arriving from the rapid RER lines.
However, now as she made her way under the cavernous slanting glass roof, it was among knots of people in summer attire, vacationers with suitcases crowding toward the platforms. Numbers and letters whirred, clicking into place on the black electronic schedule board indicating gates for arrivals and departures.
At the Eurostar gate exit, a surge of scurrying people erupted, pulling wheeled bags. To the right, submerged in the crowd, she made out the train cleaners in blue coats waiting with their carts. Here. This had to be the place.
She saw two men, but neither was small nor moustached. The clock read 12:10 as she scanned the faces for Langois. A trio of uniformed flics on floor patrol approached through the sea of travelers. Their pace was unhurried.
Had the Turkish worker been scared off by the flics? She still saw no sign of Langois. She pulled out her cell phone to call him when a scream carried above the bustle, loud and piercing. Then there were shouts as people parted and another surge of passengers hurried from the platform trying to elbow their way through the knot of congestion.
Worried, Aimée pushed through, registering the shocked faces in the crowd. An old woman in a wheelchair, travel bag on her lap, screamed and pointed to a figure slumped against a baggage cart. Jostling bystanders blocked her view until the flics shoved them aside.
Blood pooled on the station floor. One of the flics kneeled down. And then she saw the camera bag labeled Hôtel Marriot-Sarajevo, and her stomach wrenched. The flic turned the man’s head.
Aimée stared at the expression of surprise on Langois’s blanched face. She stepped back in horror. More flics arrived, shoving aside the bewildered crowd. One of them felt for a pulse, and shook his head. It was too late.
Frantic, she looked around. Behind her, people sat at tables in the restaurant to the rear of the information booth, trains like long dark snakes stretched down the tracks, a constant rush of travelers brushed her shoulders. And always there was the booming loudspeaker: “Gate change for the 12:18 departing for Troyes.”
The killer could be anyone, he could be anywhere now. Melting into the crowd after picking a perfect place to murder Langois, in plain sight, midday, and in the midst of thousands of people. All of them intent on catching a train, carrying their luggage, and on their own agendas. A quick thrust of the knife from behind, covering the movement with a jacket over the arm, and then moving on, keeping pace with the other passengers. Not looking back, disappearing into the Metro, or leaving by the front exit.
But she didn’t think so. Not just yet. The killer was still here, watching; she felt it. Scrutinizing her moves from behind a newspaper, or while drinking coffee at the buffet, or checking a train schedule. Even in this station jammed with people, the killer was waiting for her.
Had they been followed from the canal last night . . . the phone call . . . ? Now she’d never know what Langois meant to tell her. But she couldn’t think about that now. Not yet. She had to get away.
She joined the rush of perspiring travelers, not sure of where to go. But she knew she had to keep moving, stay with the crowd, not too close to anyone. The Metro? No . . . too exposed waiting on a platform for the train. Go out an exit? But then, that’s what the killer would expect. . . . She had to disappear here.
The tunnel. She had to find the tunnel Yves and Langois used to get to Gare de l’Est. And then Yves’s phone rang.
Her hands trembled as she pushed the answer key.
“I know you’re here,” she said.
The station loudspeaker echoed over the line. A conversation trailed, the cry of a child. She searched the crowd. No women in chadors. Only women in halters, pastel tank tops, straw hats—vacationers.
The child’s cry sounded louder now. Of course the killer was calling from a pay phone . . . and she’d slipped from his view.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Then Yves’s phone went dead. Out of battery.
She saw the sign for pay phones. A woman cradling a crying toddler spoke into one, and from the other a receiver dangled. Her spine tingled. Keep moving, she had to keep moving.
Signs pointed to the Metro a level below. Several construction workers paused at a metal service door, opened it, and went inside. Before the door could close, she caught the handle and slipped after them. A lighted stairwell with the smell of concrete and whiff of burning rubber met her. She waited until she heard their footsteps disappear, then followed the stairs down.
She saw signs outlining the platforms above. Diagrams with intricate details of rail lines and freight hubs; placards with the locations of electrical substations. She had had no idea that a small city existed down here.
A loud metallic clang sounded as the door above shut. More workers? Or had the killer followed her? No time to find out, and no reason to wait here like a sitting duck; she had to escape. She saw staff lockers and a sign labeled laundry/changing area. Inside the changing area, she heard voices and then she saw a pile of freshly laundered blue jumpsuits in front of her. Not ironed, but who needed to make a fashion statement right now? She stepped into one. Huge. She rolled up the pant cuffs and sleeves, and zipped it up. For now it would do. Back in the changing area, she saw white hard hats on the wall and took one.
She stepped into the tunnel and headed in the direction she figured was east. This narrow curving gray stucco tunnel lined with electrical cables had Gare de l’Est written on a sign with an arrow.
A construction worker approached. She felt out of place with her second-hand Kelly bag over her shoulder. But he merely nodded as he passed her. She nodded back and kept going.
Lights and the thud of drilling came from ahead. A room built into the tunnel labeled bureau held a copy machine, several desks with phones, and clipboards hanging on nails from the wall. Lunchtime . . . everyone was out for lunch. She had to take advantage. Right now, wearing the jumpsuit and hard hat, she fit in. And, hopefully, if the killer had followed her, she’d be able to avoid discovery. She ducked inside. The clipboards held employee assignment sheets: laundry, train maintenance, food service. Headed by numbers and times, they read like code. She might find this Turkish worker if she could figure it out. But where to begin?
La
ngois had mentioned Yves joking with the maintenance workers. She scanned the names on the train maintenance sheet for a Turkish name. There were at least five. That got her nowhere. She racked her brain. The information was here; she just didn’t know how to find it. How long could she stand here before an employee came back from lunch? If the Turkish man she sought worked here, he had to be assigned a shift; but which one? How could she tell? She took the clipboard, flipped through the sheets, and found the ones dated Monday, the night Yves had met Langois at the Eurostar. She looked for the shift that covered 6:30 P.M., when Langois had arrived and Yves had insisted they wait for his contact. There was no time to study each name, so she went to the copier and pressed POWER. The machine grumbled as it warmed up. Voices came from the outside tunnel. She kept her back turned. The green copier light came on.
“Where’s Basquiet?” a man’s voice asked.
Though she was startled, Aimée controlled her panic and pressed COPY.
“Didn’t he leave the report for me?” the man asked.
“Look on the desk,” she said.
Papers rustled behind her. The red light of the copier flashed: misfeed. The copier was jammed.
“Alors, not this! I want today’s unloading dock assignment.” The man’s voice rose in frustration. “Check the dock assignment log for me.”
“Can’t right now. . . .”
“You’re closer to it than me.”
She looked up to see a row of fat black binders, grease-stained and heavy. She picked the one labeled “dock assignments,” turned around, and handed it to him.
A sallow man eyed her, his shirtsleeves rolled up and tie askew. “That’s not your job.” She looked down at “Food Service” embroidered on her jumpsuit.
“Damn thing’s jammed. Now I have to bring the originals.”
“No one removes those papers from this location.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
She thought fast. “A man’s been knifed on Platform One. The flics demanded assignment sheets; they want to question the whole staff. The station’s gone to lockdown.”
Or it should if they could manage to corral thousands of passengers. She imagined the chaos upstairs while the killer slipped away.
“I didn’t hear about this.”
“You wouldn’t down here, would you?”
She put the clipboard under her arm. “Or would you like to bring them to the Commissaire? Be my guest.”
Before he could answer, she edged past him and out of the room. She kept her head down, clutched the clipboard to her chest, turned into another tunnel, an older one with age-darkened stucco, and passed a group of men working with blowtorches.
She took the train cleaning clipboard, flipped to Monday night, and scanned the list. The shift ran from noon to eight P.M.
“Where’s the train cleaning section?”
“Where it always lives.” A man pushed his welding visor up to reveal a sweaty face.
“And that would be?”
He leered. “Don’t have many lookers like you down here.”
The fumes of burnt oil and solder that filled the dark bowels underneath the station, with trains thundering overhead, wouldn’t make it a sought-after workplace. For women or anyone.
“I’m food service.” She gave a small smile. “New.”
“What time do you get off?”
Never, she wanted to say
“But I’m late, can’t you help me, I have to deliver this to train. . . .”
“Second tunnel on the left.” He caught her sleeve, held it. She gritted her teeth and managed another small smile. “The buffet, say in an hour?”
He winked. “If my heart will take the wait.” And let her go.
She followed the curving tunnel and saw metal carts filled with cleaning supplies.
A salt-and-pepper-haired man stood loading boxes onto the carts.
“Monsieur, I need to speak with these members of the crew . . .” she scanned Monday’s sign-in and found three Turkish names “. . . Tariq, Faroum, and Ketzal.”
He opened a door to what appeared to be a dumbwaiter and shoved a cart inside. “Up on 11.”
“Which way, monsieur?”
“Take the shortcut. They do.” He pointed to a narrow tunnel and stairs. He looked at her and grinned. “Like the Huns did.” On the flaking wall she saw faded painted words: ACHTUNG, RAUCHEN VERBOTEN.
“A sign in German?”
“There’s a whole Wehrmacht command room in these tunnels, still intact.”
“Even now?”
“They didn’t have time to empty it. Our SNCF Resistance loved to garrotte a few, then escape out on the platforms.” He grinned again. “Those stairs are still the quickest way up.”
“Merci.” She ran ahead, began climbing the dark stairs and then she hit her head. A sheet of metal blocked her way. Had the man played a joke on her? Would she have to go back? Her fingers felt across the smooth surface, then hit a metal ring. She tugged it. The metal door moved aside, operated by a spring mechanism.
She emerged and found herself on a platform. This time there were no passengers about. A cleaning crew made trips in and out of the standing cars. “LILLE” read the sign in a slot on the siding. The train blocked her view of the station, but she saw no evidence of flics.
Yet.
“Where’s Tariq?” she asked one of the blue-coated women, a bandanna around her head.
“Out sick today,” she said.
With her luck, he was the one she wanted and he’d reported in sick because he was afraid to come to work. Running scared. She glanced at the two other names. “What about Faroum and Ketzal?”
“Inside, servicing first class.” She paid Aimée no more attention after she’d hefted a plastic container of disinfectant. The container gave off that cloying sweet odor particular to train lavatories.
Aimée climbed the first class car’s steps and walked down the aisle. A heavy-set dark bearded man swept the floor.
“Faroum?”
“Fare, we call him. Mouse.” He shook his head. “What’s the matter?”
“He’s got a phone call,” she said making it up as she went along, using the clipboard to cover the food service logo on her jumpsuit. “The boss said it’s important.”
He jerked his thumb toward the next car.
She prayed Faroum was the one she was seeking.
She kept walking through first class until she reached the last car before the engine. She saw no one. About to leave, she called out “Faroum?”
A hand popped up from under the seats with a rag in it, and then a head with a moustache. “Cabin’s half done,” he said with a heavy Turkish accent. And then he stood, and she saw his blue jacket embroidered with the words Gare du Nord. He reached her shoulder. Almost.
The little one with a moustache, afraid to use a cell phone. Yves’s contact. She’d bet money on it.
Her hands shook as she set the clipboard on a leather first class seat. She told herself to proceed with caution, not to scare him off. “Can you take your break?”
“I just started my shift.” He spoke slowly, as if he had to think of the right French words.
“We need to talk, Faroum. I’m Yves’s friend. Didn’t you call his cell phone last night?”
He looked blank, then shook his head. Superb, she’d done it again. Barked up the wrong tree. While the killer. . . . Calm down, she mustn’t give up so soon. She had to get through to him, he might know who Yves’s contact was. She reached into her bag.
“I’m looking for this man’s friend; he works here, like you.” She lifted up Yves’s photo.
Faroum dropped his cleaning rag. He spun around. Quickly. But she was quicker and locked her arm around his shoulder. She wished she’d gone to the dojo with René and picked up a few jujitsu moves. He struggled as she pulled him down to the seat. She had to keep him still and make him talk. But now he seemed too scared to move.
“You knew Yves, didn’t you? It’s okay, I’m a frien
d.”
“Non, non.” And then he lapsed into Turkish, his eyes pleading.
“Yves.” She pointed to the photo of Yves wearing Kurdish clothing.
He shook his head. He was stubborn.
She ran her free hand across her throat. “You were meeting him . . . a rendezvous, right? But the killer got there first.”
He kept shaking his head.
“Another man, his photographer, was just murdered,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “On the platform by the Eurostar, where you were supposed to meet him.”
His body trembled.
“Tas.” And then he mumbled something in Turkish.
“Tas?”
He pointed to Yves’s photo. “Tas.”
Now the centime dropped.
“You called him Tas?”
His lip quivered. “Turkish name. Good man.”
“Will you talk to me? Please? Don’t run away.”
He shook his head. “Must finish my work,” he said nervously. “Late.”
“Okay, I’ll help you, then we’ll talk.” She grabbed a rag from a bucket. “Did you see Yv—Tas killed?”
He shook his head. “I found him. Then I ran.”
“Did you see a woman in a chador?”
“No one.”
“But the two men who ran into you in Cité Paradis said you were crying.”
“Coward. I’m a coward. I wanted to go back see what I could do, but . . . it’s no use.”
“You helped Tas by feeding him information, right?”
“Tas knew the valley of my ancestors; he loved my country. He spoke good Turkish, wrote good things about my people. Kurdish, you know.” He sprayed a window, then rubbed it clean in circular motions.
“You’re Kurdish?”
He nodded. “No one tells the truth about my people.”
“Jalenka Malat’s in danger, isn’t she?”
His hand stopped. “You in danger, now, too.”
“What does she have to do with Tas’s murder?”
“They have contacts here, I tell Tas.”
“Who?”
“The Turks.”
Ansary had said the same thing.
“The Turks? You mean a hit squad?”
