Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  Three days later she complained to her case officer in a written report, which the case officer forwarded to the chief of station in Paris. Three weeks after that she was shoved in front of a tram in Marseille near the Rue Grignan, saved only when her momentum in falling left her at an angle that caused the tram to bump her aside. She broke two ribs and badly bruised her hip, but the act had been so artfully carried out that eyewitnesses later recalled that she seemed to have tripped on her own.

  With the help of her case officer, who was acting without authorization, she secretly obtained a new identity and an off-books posting to San Sebastián, although he agreed to help only on the condition that she no longer pursue her claim against Robert. Since arriving there she had twice had brushes with ETA operatives, yet she still believed it was safer to remain there than return to France. She had come here at great risk, she said.

  “And now you are at great risk,” she said. “So I must ask, why have you come for my story?”

  “Turn that off first,” Helen answered. Marina nodded and did so.

  “There are others besides me who want to get out the word about Robert. Three of us. We’re working together. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “It is official, then? This action you are taking?”

  Helen considered lying, then decided there was nothing to gain by doing so.

  “No. I’m sorry. It’s not official.”

  Marina nodded.

  “I never thought it would be.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the table and tossed aside the butt. She stood, walked the recorder over to Helen, and said, “When he finds you, you must tell him nothing of how you came here.”

  “He will not find me.”

  Marina smiled ruefully and shook her head.

  “All right. But what you must know is that you cannot tell him anything about these arrangements.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. They hooded me, I saw nothing. I don’t even know where I am.”

  “But you know many small things, and he is skilled at adding small things into something larger. So you must say nothing for one day. One day, at least, to give me time to return.”

  “A day?”

  “No matter what he or his people do to you.”

  Helen swallowed hard and gripped the recorder as if it were a lifeline back to safety.

  “They’re waiting for you downstairs,” Marina said. “You will go now.”

  “They?” Had she already been betrayed? Was this a setup?

  “The taxi that brings you here. They are waiting.”

  “Right. Of course.” Helen was letting fear get the best of her. She exhaled slowly, wanting to show Marina that she was up to the task at hand. Marina lit another cigarette as Helen stood. They did not speak again.

  Half an hour later Helen was back within the environs of Paris, dropped off in the middle of a traffic circle only a few blocks inside the Périphérique. Checking the road signs and then unfolding her map as cars whizzed by, she saw that she was on the eastern rim of the 20th arrondissement, at the intersection of Rue Belgrand and Boulevard Mortier. She ran the gauntlet of the circle and crossed to a quiet block of Rue Belgrand, where she ducked into a bar. It was a fairly prosperous neighborhood, with a clientele to match, and for the first time in several hours she was able to relax.

  She ordered a whiskey and checked her watch. Nearly 9 p.m., meaning she would be at loose ends for nineteen hours until her next designated contact with Claire. It felt like far too long to wait. From here it would be easy to take cabs and buses back into the outer suburbs, where she might board a train toward Germany at a station less likely to be manned by Gilley’s people. Or maybe instead she should find a room for the night, to give her a safe place to think.

  A room. It made her remember Claire’s report, one of the last copies, and maybe the only one that could be easily obtained. It was still hidden at the other hotel, a place that was now off-limits. She sipped her whiskey, and then cursed herself. It seemed foolish in the extreme to take all of these risks only to leave behind a third of the evidence that all of them had worked so hard to compile in the case against Gilley. Claire’s message had been emphatically clear: Do not return to your hotel! But they needed all the ammunition they could get if they were going to stop Gilley. And if she could escape undetected across a rooftop in Berlin, then why couldn’t she enter via a rooftop in Paris?

  She paid her bill, found a store that was open, bought a few clothes, a small backpack, and a few other supplies, and then spent the next hour wandering before stopping in a cozy place for a light dinner, plus a glass of wine to bolster her resolve. Toward eleven she hopped a Metro to a discotheque that the guidebook had said “stayed open until the sun came up,” where she kept herself awake with coffee and club soda while watching Parisian couples dance until 3 a.m. Two men asked her to dance, and she politely declined.

  Just before leaving she changed clothes in the washroom, emerging in black jeans and a black pullover. She stuffed her remaining belongings, including the tape but not the recorder, into the backpack, which she secured snugly to her shoulders. She jammed a penlight into her pants pocket. Half an hour later, after vaulting onto the fire stairs in the back of a building near the end of the Passage de Flandre—unnoticed by anyone in the street below, as far as she could tell—she climbed five stories to the roof and began making her way down the block.

  The going was more difficult than in Berlin. The roofs of two of the buildings were sloped, and the footing was tricky. She slid once all the way to the gutter, barely catching herself and making a terrible clatter. Worse, there were recessed windows along the edge, and she had to climb around them. She did so with her heart beating crazily, not daring to glance downward. She worried about all the noise she must be making in the rooms below, and at one point froze as she heard a window rattle open, followed by a quavering voice that called out, “Hallo? Hallo?”

  She waited for the window to shut, and then practically crawled to the next rooftop.

  Her hotel, fortunately, had a flat roof, and she easily found the ladder down to the fire stairs. If Gilley’s people were posted below, then she needed to remain as quiet as possible. She reached the steel landing by the window at the end of the fifth-floor hallway. Locked. Shit. The fourth-floor window was locked as well.

  She crept down toward the third floor, alarmed by the creaking of the stairway. Straining her eyes in the darkness, she tried to detect any sign of movement from the alley below. All was quiet. As she reached the landing she saw with immense relief that the window was ajar. She slid it open and hopped quickly inside, the cat burglar in black. Her room was up front, so she had to walk the length of the hallway, fearing all the while that someone would open the door and call out in alarm. No one did.

  She got out her key and listened carefully. No noise in the stairwell. No slamming doors or clattering footsteps. She had made it.

  She let herself in and switched on the flashlight, taking care to keep the beam from shining toward the window or any mirrors. She slid off the backpack and set it gently on the floor. Easing past the bathroom door toward her bed, she directed the light toward the wall where the poster was, only to see that the poster was gone. She then saw the report itself, folded neatly on the console table by the tourist magazines, which made no sense at all unless—

  There was a sudden movement to her rear, a shadow darting out from the bathroom. She pivoted quickly as someone strong and fast knocked the flashlight from her hands. A second person grabbed her arms from behind and, quick as a flash, bound them in plastic while a hand clamped across her mouth just as she attempted to cry out. She tried to kick outward, but someone yanked her legs out from under her and bound her ankles with another band of plastic, and then he dropped her sideways to the floor, which nearly knocked the wind out of her. Someone slipped a gag into her mouth and tightened it, and h
er cry of pain emerged only as a mumble.

  Someone picked her up, a strong and easy lift. Then, with a mighty heave, he tossed her onto the bed like a bundle of laundry. She bounced once and might have rolled off the side if the second man hadn’t caught her and rolled her back toward the middle of the mattress.

  The ceiling light went on, bright in her eyes.

  Now she saw them. The man by the bed, stouter and shorter, spoke rapidly in French to a taller and more muscular fellow who stood at the foot. The taller man answered by shaking his head and speaking brusquely. A third fellow then emerged from over by the window, where he must have been standing all along. He and the stouter man nodded in reply and they both left the room, the door shutting with a click. Helen heard one set of footsteps receding down the hallway, meaning that the other one must have remained just outside.

  The taller man looked down at her with an expression of triumph. He was about forty, she thought, as she tried to memorize his face. Slim but fit, with short dark hair gleaming with either sweat or pomade. He wore a black ribbed turtleneck, black running shoes, and a pair of black jeans. Then he spoke to her in English.

  “Welcome, Miss Abell. What a pleasant surprise.”

  When he stooped down to reach for her, Helen kicked out at him with her bound legs, but he easily evaded the blow and laughed lightly, as if to say it hadn’t been a very good joke.

  “Can we calm down now, Helen?” Perfect English, with a slight British accent. “Oh, yes. I suppose you can’t really answer with that gag in place.” He reached behind himself, toward his belt, and produced a long and slender knife, which he displayed for a second or two as if to give her the best possible chance to gauge its possibilities.

  “Here’s what we’ll do, then. I’m going to cut off that gag so we can talk. At the first sign you’re about to scream or start shouting for help, I’ll cut your tongue out as well. Then it won’t matter how loud you scream, because I’ll be out the door with that report and also your backpack, which I am guessing has an item of interest to us. And then, after all of your hard work, you won’t even be able to tell the police what happened. Remain quiet, however, and you get to keep your tongue. At least for now. Do we have a deal?”

  She nodded, which wasn’t easy while lying on her side with her hands and ankles bound.

  “Very good.”

  He leaned closer, and with alarming deftness he sliced free the gag. She coughed and tried to push herself back toward the headboard so she could at least raise up her torso.

  “No, no,” he said, again showing the blade. “None of that. All you need to do is speak. Remain still.”

  She obliged.

  “Good. I want you to tell me all about this afternoon, then. Not a rundown on how you got away from us, but on who you met afterward, and where.”

  “I didn’t meet anyone.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  He lunged toward her, and with a flash of his hands he pinned her torso against the bed and landed with his knees on her chest. He placed the point of the knife against her neck, near her artery, and then pierced her skin, just deep enough to sting. She felt a warm trickle of blood dripping toward the duvet.

  “This is my lie detector, you see.” He shifted his weight, pressing his knees so hard into her diaphragm that she could barely breathe. “Like the needle on the machine when they flutter you. Except this one jumps a little deeper every time you lie or don’t cooperate. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Louder please. A whisper is insufficient.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “If drawing blood is insufficient, then we’ll begin collecting your digits. First your fingers and then your toes, one by one, and it will get a lot sloppier than either of us would like. So how about if we avoid all that and just get talking, all right?”

  “Yes,” she said weakly, and for a moment she thought she might pass out.

  Then she remembered Marina, and how broken the young woman had looked. Now she knew why. She also recalled Marina’s final admonition: Hold out for one day, to give her time to make her way back to safety.

  Twenty-four hours? Helen doubted she would even last for one.

  51

  August 2014

  Even with the helpful sedation of the rye whiskey, Henry awakened before dawn. The fleeting image of a dream hovered in the half-light—Willard Shoat, barefoot and bloodied, lumbering down the grassy shoulder of Highway 53.

  Henry stood and pulled on his trousers as he recalled the forensic report’s map of bloody footprints. He threw on a T-shirt, laced up his shoes. One more try, he decided. One last look.

  Pulled along like a sleepwalker, Henry headed out the door. The only thing that slowed him down was the sight of Scooter’s half-filled bowl. He thought of the lonely grave in the back, covered by pine needles, and he scanned the street for any strange cars. Reassured that nothing looked out of the ordinary, he headed down Willow and was soon making his way up the shoulder of Highway 53.

  Bugs jumped in the grass. The dewy blades reached the tops of his ankles. It was probably only a matter of days before a state mowing crew would roll through, shredding every remaining scrap of evidence.

  Henry watched for litter and debris as he marched forward. Not a single car was in sight, although somewhere in the distance he heard a tractor already at work, a farmer up with the chickens. Then it stopped, and all was quiet. Just as before, the red lights of a radio tower pulled him toward the sign at the edge of town. He stooped to check a wad of paper, but it was a discarded grocery list. He continued, slower now, his ears ringing from the silence. No more bugs and no traffic, as if the world had paused to let him concentrate. In quick succession he passed a crushed can of Bud, a receipt from a convenience store, a fast-food wrapper smeared with ketchup, a Styrofoam hot dog box, a shred of foil. The sign was only fifteen yards away, and he was about to lose hope when he spied something just ahead to his left, peeping from a tangle of clover six feet off the pavement—a small orange cylinder.

  He bent down and picked up an empty plastic pill bottle, the lid gone.

  WILLARD SHOAT was written on the top, with his address on Willow Street. Dr. Ridgely’s name was off to one side. Just below, in a white rectangle with a red border, it said, ZOLEXA 100 MG TABLETS. TAKE 1 TABLET BY MOUTH EVERY MORNING AND 1 BEFORE BED.

  He imagined Willard standing there in the dark, shaking the final tablet into his mouth, swallowing it without water and then tossing aside the cylinder. Had he done it while coming or going? Did it even matter? Henry shivered, and kept reading.

  There had once been sixty tablets. The prescription had been issued about a month ago, in July, around the same time that Willard’s “new doctor” had claimed his old files from Dr. Patel’s office. The pills were from a Walgreens in Cambridge. There was a twelve-digit prescription number.

  Henry pocketed the bottle and looked around. The road was still empty in both directions. He headed back toward the house at double time, and after fifty yards he broke into a run. Half an hour later, showered and eager to get going, he was knocking at the front door of Anna’s B&B.

  Gail Hollis, the innkeeper, was already up, bustling around the kitchen with bread in the oven and coffee brewing. The smells were welcoming and warm. She was familiar with Henry by now, so she waved him upstairs with barely a pause. He wondered fleetingly what she must have thought when Anna hadn’t returned the night before last, and then he knocked at the door.

  “Yes?” she called out sleepily.

  “It’s me.” His voice was breathless. He tried to calm himself. “I found something important. I’ll be downstairs.”

  She groaned, but he heard her feet hit the floor, so he headed downstairs.

 
“Can I get you something to eat?” Hollis asked. “I’m about to take out a pan of muffins.”

  “Thanks. That would be great.”

  “Help yourself to coffee. Just filled the carafe.”

  Henry poured a mugful and pulled a folding chair over to a table that was set for one, figuring it was Anna’s usual spot. None of the other guests was up, hardly surprising since it wasn’t yet 7 a.m. He was too excited to sit, so he paced as he sipped. Ten minutes later he heard steps on the stairs, and Anna rounded the corner. She stopped short when she saw him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Sit down.”

  She pulled out a chair. He reached into his pocket for the pill bottle and set it on the table.

  “Where did you get this?” Her voice a whisper.

  “By the side of the road, out near the sign.” He didn’t need to say which sign.

  “When were you out there?”

  “Just now, less than an hour ago. I dunno, I woke up and just had a feeling. I was thinking of that map, the one the crime scene techs drew, and, well…” He didn’t feel like explaining that it was the second time he’d made the walk.

  “We should go to the Walgreens,” she said.

  “They open at eight. It’s fifteen miles.”

  “Then I guess we’ve got time for breakfast.” She managed a weak smile. He pocketed the pill bottle and turned toward the coffee.

  “I’ll get you a cup.”

  When he returned to the table she was frowning at her phone.

  “News?”

  “A voicemail. Must’ve come in last night, after I was already dead to the world.”

  She put it up to her ear to listen. He waited until she was finished.