‘Please, wait for me. I am scared.’
‘Everyone’s scared,’ said Caitlin as she drew up. ‘Trick is to push through anyway. Come on.’
They crossed an open area of the park, where the city put on moonlight cinema in the summer, always showing French films, and usually only those that had been filmed in the surrounding district. And they call us insular, she thought, before experiencing a weird episode of doublethink. Of course, there was no ‘us’ anymore.
This part of town was relatively quiet, but sirens still reached them from across the metro area, and from the banlieue, she imagined, the outer suburbs where generations of North African and Middle Eastern migrants had created their own pinched and grim little fiefs in the tenements and public housing projects of Paris. Caitlin was as familiar with them, with the slums and dangerous, gunned-up sharia towns like Clichy-sous-Bois, as she was with the global Paris of Montmartre, the Louvre and Avenue Montaigne.
‘Do you think everything will be all right?’ Monique asked in small, mousy voice.
Caitlin stopped dead in her tracks. They were halfway across the darkened park, two figures who stood out from the handful of wandering, self-obsessed lovers by the tension evident in their every exchange. Stiff limbs, jerky movements, voices pitched too high and sharp-edged like broken glass in the night.
‘No, Monique. Everything is not going to be all right.’ She faced her captive companion square on, hands on hips, jaw jutting out as her teeth ground together. Pain like a cold knife welled up from nowhere behind one eyeball. ‘Start. Paying. Attention, sweetheart. Someone is trying to roll me up, and you with me. Hundreds of millions of people disappeared today. Important people, too. The guarantors of life as you know it. Even if they all get beamed back down tomorrow morning with nothing to show for it but a sore ass from the alien butt-probing they got, the world will still never be the same. Your city is falling apart. The whole fucking world is falling apart. What do you think will happen – that you’ll all suck down a few celebratory bottles of Lafite now the left bank is the centre of the world again? That everyone will wake up tomorrow and go, “Hey, isn’t this cool, we don’t have to worry about big ol’ fat-assed America ruining everything with her shitty fucking movies, and fast food and violence”? Is that what you think? Huh?’
Her delivery grew more intense and unbalanced with each question, until by the end of her little speech, Caitlin knew she was ranting but couldn’t stop. Monique withered away under the lashing, shrinking into herself and dropping her eyes until she looked like a small child being shouted at by the scariest grown-up they’d ever met. Caitlin regretted her loss of control immediately. It was stupid and unprofessional – not at all the sort of thing she’d normally do, especially out in the field with hostiles on her case. She saw a couple of teenaged boys on pushbikes pointing at them, but there was no aggressive intent to the gesture. They merely seemed to be amused by the crazy woman speaking in English, and had probably picked up on her American accent.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said, running a hand through lank, greasy hair. ‘It’s been a helluva day, and it ain’t getting any better.’
‘I am sorry too,’ Monique replied in small, but surprisingly strong voice. ‘You have lost everything, non? You had family?’
Caitlin nodded, a dark blue wave of sadness breaking over her at the thought of her family, now gone.
‘What will you do… Caitlin?’ She was still unsure of that name and pronounced it with extra care. ‘You cannot go home and cannot stay here. You are a spy, yes? A killer? I suppose you know how to disappear?’
They resumed walking through the park, heading north-west, back towards the old centre of Paris, but still away from the hospital and the fighting they had happened across before.
Caitlin smiled sadly. ‘I’m better at making people disappear than doing it myself. I have… well, let’s not go there. You shouldn’t even know any of this. It’s only that things have changed so much, and… well… I’m sorta swinging out here on my own now.’
They passed a homeless man, making himself a bed on a wooden bench, balling up a copy of Le Figaro for a pillow. He smiled at them, a wide toothless grin, and doffed his filthy cloth cap as they passed. Monique stopped and handed him a couple of crumpled banknotes.
‘Merci, mademoiselle, merci.’
‘You know,’ said Caitlin a minute later as they neared the edge of the Parc de Choisy, ‘that guy back there doesn’t know it, but he has a bunch of skill sets that are about to put him back at the top of the food chain.’
‘Why?’ asked Monique.
‘He’s a survivor.’
* * * *
‘I need to rest and eat,’ Caitlin announced half an hour later, as they left behind the unattractive, modernist high-rise district of the Centre Commercial Italie on Rue Vandrezanne.
Seven roads met in a great starburst of an intersection a short distance away. Some of them were major arterials, like Rue Bobillot, which ran back into the huge roundabout at the Place d’ Italie. Others were smaller tree-lined streets, on which cafйs dealing in simple fare survived on local custom rather than the tourist trade. Monique steered her into one such venue, grabbing a table near the door, which Caitlin immediately rejected in favour of another where she could sit with her back to the wall and watch the entrance and the street.
‘Does this place have a toilet out the back?’ she asked. ‘Do we have access through the kitchen?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Monique with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘I come here sometimes, but I’ve never had to ask. Why – do you need to go?’
‘No. But we need another exit. Indulge me and ask them.’
Monique rolled her eyes, which Caitlin took as a good sign. She was throwing off her shock, reasserting herself. Still, she did as the American asked. While she chatted with the owner, Caitlin sat and leaned up against the red-brick wall. Faded posters of beach scenes in New Caledonia had been tacked up around the cafй and they looked mighty inviting. She felt her head swimming with exhaustion and forced her eyes open, gesturing to the one waiter and asking for a double shot of espresso.
‘I’ll teach this tumour to mess with me,’ she muttered to herself.
After the violence at the hospital, and an hour or more on the run, she could have wept with relief at being able to just sit somewhere comfortable and warm, where people weren’t hunting her. Nine other patrons were scattered about in ones and twos and such conversation as she could hear was all about la Disparition. She ignored it as best she could. The cafй smelled of baking bread, fried garlic and roast lamb. A man at the table next to her supped at a bowl of soup in which floated big white chunks of fish meat and black mussel shells. He tore small pieces of bread from a baguette and dipped them into the stock, washing it down with a glass of wine poured from a bottle with no label. Caitlin’s stomach rumbled in protest and saliva leaked into her mouth. Her coffee arrived just as Monique returned.
‘There is a convenience out the back. You have to go through the kitchen and they do not normally allow it, but I have told them you have just been diagnosed with cancer and they relented.’
Caitlin favoured her with a crooked half-smile. ‘Nobody wants to disappoint the cancer girl. Good work, Monique. You’re learning.’
‘I am.’ She nodded, even seeming a little pleased. ‘The toilet is in a separate block, in a small yard that opens onto an alleyway. The alleyway runs in both directions, linking up with Bobillot and Rue du Moulin des Pres.’
‘Damn,’ whistled the American. ‘You could do this for a living, sweetheart.’
She spooned a single sugar into the coffee and threw the drink down in one go.
‘I ordered some toasted sandwiches – croque monsieur,’ said Monique. ‘I thought you would want something simple.’
‘And fast,’ Caitlin added, dropping her voice. ‘We have to get to the apartment as soon as we can, and see if I can contact anyone from my shop.’
Two straw b
askets arrived, brimming with thick, toasted white bread wrapped around ham, gruyere cheese and French mustard. Two glasses and a bottle of house wine landed next to them, a nameless vin blanc. Monique poured herself a glass and drained it in two gulps before filling Caitlin’s and refilling her own. Dark half-moons stood out under her eyes, which were puffy and red from crying. Her hand shook as she poured, but not so much that she spilled any.
Caitlin took a careful sip of her own but was more interested in the food. The bread had been dipped in egg and pan-fried in butter, with more melted cheese drizzled on the outside. Her eyes watered with the intensity of flavours as she bit into a moist, heavy slab. Right then it seemed like the finest meal she had ever tasted. She wanted to close her eyes and savour each moment, but her training demanded that she continually scan their surroundings and the entrance to the cafй for any threats. Apart from the heart attack she was holding in her greasy hands, however, there was nothing.
They ate in silence for five minutes, chewing through their meals and sipping at the wine. Unspoken, but lying between them like a dead curse, was the fate of Monique’s friends. She had not mentioned them again, but Caitlin could tell they were on her mind. She didn’t raise the issue herself, not wanting to unsettle the precarious emotional balance that Monique seemed to have achieved. There would be time for that later. Perhaps.
She ordered another coffee and paid for the entire bill when it came, but didn’t finish her wine. Even a few mouthfuls had left her feeling light-headed and dizzy. It would have been luxurious to stay in the cafй for a few hours, drinking and smoking Gitanes as though all was right with the world, but Caitlin hauled herself to her feet as soon as she’d downed the second espresso. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
The American headed out through the kitchen towards the rear of the cafй. The owner nodded and tutted and tried to look as sympathetic as he could for the pretty cancer girl. The kitchen was cramped and narrow, with crammed shelves running all the way up to a high ceiling. A woman in a stained apron gave them a querying look but the owner, her husband most likely, shushed her with one word: ‘Cancer.’
Caitlin shut her eyes for a few seconds before pushing open the flyscreen door and stepping out into the small darkened car park. A single pallid globe struggled to illuminate the courtyard, in which two scooters and a battered old van were parked. She had shifted the guns into easy reach, but there was nothing in the scene to alarm her.
‘Well, my Spidey senses ain’t tingling,’ she told Monique, who gave her a weird look in return. ‘We’re fine,’ she explained.
Two blocks later, she found a couple of bicycles chained to a cast-iron railing in front of a white, Moorish-looking tenement, and was pondering how to break the chains when Monique admonished her.
‘Please, Cathy… sorry, Caitlin. Bicycles? Look at them. They are not expensive models, no? The people who ride these do so because they cannot afford a car. Do not steal them, please. They will not be insured. You will only be spreading more misery.’
Caitlin’s irritation at the scolding was transitory. She was feeling quite ill now, and was coming to think she would need Monique to get through the next couple of days if she was unable to make contact with Echelon. It was better that the girl was feeling more confident, even if it meant she’d be less malleable and, frankly, more of a pain in the ass. ‘Fine,’ she conceded. ‘No bikes. But we’re gonna need some wheels soon. If we get caught out in the open on foot we’re dead.’
They resumed their journey towards the 14th Arrondissement, walking against the flow of one-way traffic along the Butte-aux-Cailles, which was alive with throngs of younger Parisians, all of them wealthy and well dressed, hopping from bars to clubs and restaurants as if this were a normal evening with a warm spring in the offing. The buildings here were smaller, with steeply pitched Alpine roofs, and tended to be given over to commercial concerns, chichi diners and exclusive clubs, so the two fugitives stood out in their cheap, unwashed clothes. A few bookstores remained open for late-night browsers, and apple trees lined the street, perfuming the air with sticky pink blossoms. The footpath in front of the cafйs and bistros had been colonised by clusters of small round tables, all covered in immaculate white linen, and playing host to lovers, friends, gourmands and modern boulevardiers. Monique’s cluster of angry political badges and sewn-on patches drew a score of withering glances and even open sneers. Caitlin tried to arrange her face in as neutral a fashion as possible, but something about her must have tripped warning beacons for most of those they passed by. In contrast with Monique, nobody looked her in the eye or dared make any snide, slanting comment about her bloodstained pants and leather jacket.
Two police cars and an ambulance went rushing by at one point, forcing Caitlin to softly squeeze Monique’s arm and remind her to ‘be cool’. She felt terribly exposed on the expensive strip, and wondered whether it might be wiser to dive into a side street, but the GPS indicated that the route they were walking would get them quickly to the apartment opposite Montparnasse Cemetery. The longer she was out on the street, the more imperative her need for shelter. She hadn’t said anything yet, but her headache was getting worse, and now she was beginning to suffer from such severe nausea that it was possible she might lose her dinner all over the sidewalk. She had to get to that apartment. There, she’d find shelter, weapons, money, clothes and, just possibly, somebody from Echelon waiting to bring her in. Maybe even Wales. Although, what the fuck ‘bringing her in’ meant at the end of a day like this was a mystery. Perhaps a flight to London on one of the agency’s black renditions – if the French were still allowing them. Nothing that had gone down in the last few hours gave her any confidence on that score. She was certain the muscle at the hospital had been French secret service. But she had no idea why they’d come in hot.
Even though she was an undeclared operative – an assassin, no less – working on their turf, there had been no call for that bullshit back at the Hospital. This wasn’t the movies. You didn’t draw down on somebody and start banging away without serious fucking reason.
‘Caitlin?’ Monique’s voice was quiet but thick with emotion.
They had passed out of the busy, well-lit entertainment district and were back on the quieter streets. Caitlin checked the navigator, estimating that they had about twenty minutes to go before reaching the apartment. She’d have to decide very soon about whether to steal another car or sneak up on the building through the cemetery, investing a couple of hours in surveillance before heading in. Beside her, Monique’s eyes had welled up again and her shoulders were hitching beneath the thick jacket she wore.
‘You thinking about your friends?’ the American asked.
‘They were your friends too, Caitlin. Or so I believed.’
They were my mission, she thought. But aloud she said, ‘I liked them all right. Celia could be a self-righteous bore. And Maggie was kind of embarrassing, but…’ She shrugged off the rest of whatever she had been planning to say, not wanting to upset Monique further, but not wanting to construct a series of defensive lies around her previous actions either.
Thunder, distant and muffled, rolled over the city, although there didn’t appear to be a cloud anywhere in the sky. The city lights blotted out most of the stars, but only a few wispy strands of grey drifted across the face of the moon. Monique didn’t appear to notice and Caitlin said nothing. The French girl was upset enough without being told that something big had just exploded a few miles away.
‘I feel so guilty… about the hospital,’ Monique confided. ‘About Maggie and Celia and…’
‘It’s natural,’ said Caitlin. ‘It happens. You can’t understand why they got zapped and you didn’t. You keep telling yourself you should have done something, anything, to change it. You obsessively pick away at the memory like a wound, wondering if one small thing here or there might have changed it all, and kept them alive.’
‘Yes,’ she admitted in a small voice.
They st
opped at the steps of a narrow-fronted apartment building. Flickering blue-green light behind a set of drawn curtains in the ground-floor flat indicated the presence of a television. Probably tuned into a news service. Sirens, police and fire service, swooped by a few streets away.
‘Well, don’t feel that way,’ Caitlin continued. ‘You’re gonna have to let it go at some point, Monique. May as well be now. Your friends got taken out by a couple of guys you would’ve called “fascists” just yesterday. I took them down in return. For what it’s worth, that’s about as much balance as the world ever achieves.’
Monique’s eyes looked hurt and almost resentful, but Caitlin continued anyway.
‘This isn’t over. I don’t know why I’ve been targeted like this, or whether it has anything to do with what happened back home today. But it isn’t over. They’ll keep coming until they get what they want or we get away. You need to toughen up, Monique. And you need to understand that I will not let them take me or you without paying a heavy fucking price. Some people have been killed. Some more will go that way before I’m done. And that’s just in our little world, which nobody knows about ‘cept us and the guys who are hunting us. The rest of the world? It’ll be a shit-load worse.’
Without warning Page 18
