At long last, it was the day before departure. Adam had insisted on returning Anna’s deposit, which was good, since she was getting low on cash. She’d now made notes of all her experiences, then copied them and everything else to do with YOUNGER onto yet another flash drive, which she wrapped well in paper and sealed in an envelope, on which she wrote, “To be opened only in case of my death or an emergency and given only to the proper authorities. Anna.” She stuck that in another sealed envelope, writing on the front of it: “Allie, I wanted someone to have a copy of my will and you’re It. No need to open now.” She put on her wig, then stealthily hurried around the corner to buy a padded mailer and send it to the United States.
She stayed in the rest of the day, packing and charging her equipment. Then, when it was dark and her roommates were all out, she put the wig back on and went out.
She avoided the central areas, taking a tram to student-filled Žižkov and finding an Internet café, where she checked her personal account emails. There was one from Richard telling her Clive Madden was being recalled to London. “But he’s here for another month and is trying to raise money to buy Coscom in the hopes BarPharm will want it off their hands.” A brief note from Allie said only that George, taking Jan’s death hard, had remained holed up at home since the funeral. The “studiocitygirl” Drafts folder was empty.
Outside, on her cheap cell phone with the Czech SIM card, she rang David’s home number, willing him to answer. When he did, she said nothing, overwhelmed by hearing his voice, biting back the temptation to tell him to call her back. She hung up. At least now she knew he was alive. In a grotty student hangout café, over a much-needed glass of wine, she cleared the phone’s memory and SIM card. She wouldn’t be calling David again. And she’d leave no new notice in the Drafts folder until she was sure of the plan forming in her mind.
As she got off the Metro in Vinohrady a short time later, she surreptitiously left the phone, turned on, on her empty seat. With luck, someone would find it, see there was still three hundred crowns’ worth of credit left, and carry it around Prague for the next week or so.
Chapter 20
On hearing that Anna would be going straight to Milan’s Central Station, Heather insisted on depositing her there, saying succinctly, “I drove in Naples. I’ll never be afraid of traffic again.”
Anna was sad to see the rental car drive into the setting sun and kept waving until it was out of sight. She had enjoyed both Heather’s cheery chatter and the feeling of being safely ensconced in an anonymous vehicle without having to worry about madmen speeding up behind it.
Still, she wasn’t sad enough at parting from Heather to have been honest when she’d said she was catching a train to Florence. Inside the massive train station, she bought a different ticket for the following night. Outside again, she went quickly to a large, bustling tourist hotel across the street, not to register but to copy down the number of a pay phone off the hotel lobby. Then she rolled her suitcase in the direction of a street Heather’s guidebook had assured her was lined with inexpensive hotels. Along the way she stopped at the first Internet café she came to, where she wrote a two-line email to David and put it into the Drafts folder. The vision of Kelm in Berlin, Marina’s email, and the fake Fleur’s sighting of Aleksei had spurred her to work out the rudiments of a plan as Heather drove them to Italy; she was itching to take action.
Anna had, she knew, reached the end of the avoid-the-passport-issue road. Italians were strict about documents; any hotel would demand her passport. She was running out of time and options and would soon have to get to Rome and beg for help at the embassy. But first, she had a few things to take care of.
So, promising herself it would be her final assumed identity, she walked into a down-at-heel pension just a few blocks from the station and handed the desk clerk the fake passport she’d found in Pierre’s attaché case. She checked in as Maria Kelm, her accent Benny Hill British. She looked the right age now to be the woman in the photo of Marina Barton. Not that it mattered, the desk clerk being of an age that considered anyone over thirty elderly.
The next day, she checked her big suitcase at the train station’s luggage deposit, then took the Metropolitana to the chic shopping area near the Duomo, having found the name of a good hair salon online and decided to take her chances by just showing up. When she emerged three hours later, she could have passed for Marina’s taller, more robust sister. She was lucky, the salon receptionist had said: there’d been a last-minute cancellation. A stranger implying that fortune was on her side was enough to help her ignore her own restlessness and sit patiently for the intricate balayage highlighting of layered tones. When she caught sight of her reflection in a mirror on the way out, she smirked. Totally Russian hair. Still, she looked more like the California Anna than she had in months. Her old look, she decided, was her best look.
She was going to be Anna again. It was impossible to go back completely; the procedures and residual effects of YOUNGER had left her with fewer lines and more youthful, glowing skin. This I can live with, she thought. She knew the time had come to reclaim her lost identity; she was more reluctant to admit that she wanted to look good for David, if he agreed to meet her. She left the salon feeling almost optimistic.
The weather had turned cool since yesterday, the sky threatening rain and a haze hanging over the crowded Piazza del Duomo. In spite of the chill, waiters at the cafés shuttled among crowded outdoor tables. Trusting that she wouldn’t be noticed in the crowd, Anna sat and ordered a late lunch of mixed antipasti and a glass of Barolo.
All around her, people were laughing, shopping, using their phones to take photos of the city’s imposing main church. Surely, she was the only person there wondering how she might tell someone that not only was she thirty years older than she’d been pretending to be but was also his former lover—and that she’d been letting him air his feelings about her all this time without setting him straight.
She didn’t dawdle. As soon as her plate and glass were empty, she settled up and backtracked to an Internet café she’d passed earlier. She logged in to the Hotmail account, which now showed a new saved draft. David!
If anything bad has happened, I’m to blame. Early on, I thought Ur imagination was working overtime so failed to take pay phone biz seriously. The # I gave U for that 1st call was my 2nd phone line at home. Beyond stupid of me! I promise I’ve never gone to this acc’t except on public computers.
Some odd things going on. Barton’s autopsy report still not released, & some newspapers are asking why. For another, 4 days after U were supposed to ring me, I had a visit at home from that ‘private detective’ of Marina’s.
According to him, police r ‘pressuring’ Marina about Ur relationship w/ Pierre, saying they suspect U were his mistress & refusal to leave wife left U unhinged. Yes, implication was cops think U killed Pierre. Except that I didn’t want him to know I was on to him, I’d have laughed in his face.
Kelm! Had he tapped David’s home telephone? Could a slimeball like him be telling the truth? Did she have cops as well as killers coming after her? But if he was the killer, why should she believe in the cops?
The draft went on,
When I rang Bartons’ house, told Marina not in London now. Don’t believe any of them and worried about Ur safety, Tanya. I will call as U asked, every day at the same time if needed. Plus, have a new phone & new SIM cards now, all just for you. In case of emergency U can reach me any time at # below. Pls forgive me. I miss our dinners. D.
By the time she finished reading, Anna had already made two important decisions: she was going to tell David the truth, and she was going to stop being such an escapist scaredy-cat and take control, play offense rather than defense. Her life might depend on both.
She copied out the cell number David had given her, then deleted the saved draft. Before going off-line, she checked the British tabloids but found only
one small item on Barton, stating that the coroner’s jury had not announced its findings pending toxicological test results and that the police had no comment. Barton’s widow, according to the ever-persistent Nelson Dwyer, released a statement saying only, “My grief is overwhelming, but for the sake of my sons, I must put this behind me.” Bullshit, Anna thought. The Marina she’d known wasn’t someone likely to be “overwhelmed” by anything other than being seated at a top restaurant’s worst table.
The night before, she had lain awake thinking about Marina, Martin Kelm, and Aleksei, the three people who knew her secrets. Marina seemed to have been a, if not the, driving force behind YOUNGER and the acquisition of Coscom. What had Pierre been about to tell Anna in his final minutes? How would the sentence “My wife . . .” have ended? And how did Martin Kelm fit into the picture? Pierre had looked genuinely shocked when she told him about Kelm showing up at the National Portrait Gallery that day, but why would Pierre be out of the loop—unless the real loop was elsewhere? And Aleksei? She no longer believed he was, as Pierre had put it, “what he appears to be.” But what was he? And which of them was her enemy?
Anna paid for her coffee, then, queasy with anxiety, took the subway back to the bustling hotel near the Stazione Centrale and stood by the pay phone. She picked up on the first ring.
“David? I got your message,” she said. “I think the Drafts folder is secure, even if someone manages to intercept emails.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“That’s all right. I can’t blame you. The situation’s insane. I spent week after week in London thinking I was just paranoid. Now I know I’m not.”
“What can I do to help?”
“You can meet me in Italy.” She hurried on before he could say no. “I’ve got some important docs on a flash drive, and I need someone I trust to put it in a safe place in case anything happens to me. I mailed one to a US friend, but I want to put this one in someone’s hand so I know it can’t go astray. I don’t know from one minute to the next who’s watching or what’s being monitored.”
After a long pause, he said slowly, “I’m not sure I’m the right person to help you. I mean, don’t you have someone you’re closer to, a relative, a friend?”
“I don’t,” she said. “I can’t ask someone to fly from America.”
After another pause he asked, “So why don’t you come back to England?”
“I don’t know who’s waiting for me there or what they plan to do. When you hear the whole story, you’ll understand why. I’m sure now Pierre was murdered, David. And other people, too.”
“But why not fly back and go to the police, Tanya?”
She took a deep breath. “There is no Tanya, David. I’m Anna.”
She heard his sharp intake of breath. “But—Anna? Jesus, this is a hell of a time to make jokes!”
“Listen to me, please. Barton set me up so I’d accept his offer to work on a product that takes thirty years off anyone’s appearance. At least three people have already died over this.”
“You really expect me to believe—”
“Anna always loved the song I’m a Believer, and you used to sing it to her. You’d go to the Elgin Theater on Eighth Avenue to see movies together at the midnight show.” The words poured out. “Whenever you ate at Joe Allen’s, she had a cheeseburger and you had a plain burger with grilled onions. Your favorite sushi is sea eel; hers is yellowtail. You gave her a copy of Lucky Jim, and she gave you Steppenwolf to pretend she was an intellectual. And that flash drive I just said I mailed? I sent it to Allie—remember I used to talk about her, my old college friend?—but I have no idea if it will arrive.”
“My God—I can’t—Anna, what the hell? Is it really you?”
She didn’t speak, couldn’t speak, and after a moment, he said, sounding grimly resigned, “Okay, I’ll come.” But then his voice lightened as he said, “At least I don’t have to hire a private detective to find you . . .” She held her breath as he went on, “I can’t come for at least a day or two. Nick’s with me right now—his mother’s in France—and I won’t put my son at risk any more than I have already.”
“I understand,” she murmured shakily.
“Where? And when?”
“Can you fly to Rome next Monday? If you can’t get a seat, come the next day, or the next. There’s a daily British Airways flight out of Heathrow that gets to Fiumicino at five past two. You should have no problem arriving in Piazza di Spagna to be at the fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps between four and five. Got that? The Boat Fountain. Just stand there when you arrive, and you’ll hear from me.”
“All right. Got it. No phone number or anything?”
“Destroy the SIM card you’re using now, put a new SIM card in your phone, and don’t turn it on until you arrive in Rome. Put the number for it in the Drafts folder along with the day of your flight. And David?”
“Yes?”
“I know I’m the one who needs to apologize. I’m sorry for everything. Everything now and everything then.”
During the drive from Prague with Heather, Anna had realized there was one thing she still had to do before going to Rome. So after speaking to David, she picked up her suitcase at the train station, where, the day before, she had booked a single sleeping compartment on the overnight train to Paris, arriving at half past ten the following morning. She’d left the return open and just had to hope she could get a compartment for the trip back to Italy. If not, it was going to be a grueling journey propped up like a sitting duck all night in a car filled with strangers, but she didn’t know how long it would take her to do what she had to do. No question—she had to make this trip to France. She was certain that at least a few answers awaited her there.
She got a panino and a pastry to eat on the train at one of the station’s coffee bars, then bought bottles of water and a liter of Coke before she boarded the train. No leaving her compartment or drinking wine tonight. She had to remain hidden and alert.
She’d planned to read the other book she’d picked up in Prague, Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night, on the way. But when she opened it in her tiny sleeping compartment on the Milan–Paris express, she was unable to get past the introduction, where Vonnegut stated the moral of the story:
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
She hadn’t cried much during this whole lunatic, ludicrous experience. But tears fell when she read that prescient line; they started and threatened not to stop until they’d swept her off the train and into the Lombardian countryside, a woman drowning in a sea of grief for her irretrievable past and fear for her increasingly threatened future. She had pretended to be so many things over the course of her lifetime, had let so few others know her well. How would she fare at being herself? And would she like the real Anna Wallingham? Finally, she climbed out of the narrow bunk and washed her face. Then she got back in, turned off the light, set her phone to wake her ninety minutes from Paris, and at last she slept.
When the alarm went off, she washed, then dressed in the most stylish clothes she currently possessed: her black jodhpurs and fake cashmere twinset and her wig. She doubted anyone was watching trains to Paris, but it made her feel safer. When she got off the train at the Gare de Lyon, she removed her wig in the ladies’ room, putting it into her backpack, and softened her makeup. Then she checked her big rolling case and headed for the Metro.
She hoped she was doing the right thing. She thought back to that day in June and the doll-like little creature with her ravaged face saying, “I lunch almost every single day at Chez Jimmy. It is my tradition.”
Please, please, she thought fervently, let it still be!
She had scribbled down the address of Chez Jimmy and found it easily. From there she just had to walk around a little until she found the apartment house. It was a snap, as Monsieur Couret
was outside holding the door open for a couple who were leaving when she approached on the opposite side of the street. She kept walking, turning around a block later to double back, then crossing the street to a small café anyone walking to the restaurant from the apartment would pass.
Now she had to hope the shock of her son kicking the bucket hadn’t done in the indomitable Marie Héloise and that she hadn’t switched loyalties from her favorite eatery.
It was noon when Anna sat down at a table by the front window and ordered a pot of tea. It was half past twelve and she was nursing the dregs when the woman she sought walked slowly by, elegant as she had been when they’d met, in a navy-and-white suit Anna just knew was a genuine Chanel from Coco’s time.
Sometimes you get lucky, she thought when she entered Chez Jimmy about fifteen minutes later, Madame Barton’s table in her line of vision. She walked straight over. “Madame Barton, bonjour. You might not remember me—”
“Mais oui, I recall. I’m one of the old who pride themselves on their memory. But what brings you to Chez Jimmy, Madame Wallingham?”
“Oh, please, it’s Anna. I was in Paris for a meeting and I remembered your saying how delicious the food here was.”
“Did I?” The old woman gave Anna a cool look that said “balderdash!” but then smiled gently to indicate she didn’t care. “Then you must join me.” She motioned to the chair across from the banquette where she sat. “S’il vous plaît.”
Anna didn’t bother with the menu, just asked Madame Barton what was good and ordered the halibut Provençal she suggested and a glass of wine. Then she cut to the chase.
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