by Mj Roë
As they walked slowly up the staircase arm in arm, Anna asked, “Does your PC in the reception room have a connection to the Internet?”
“Oui, pourquoi?”
“Do you mind if I use it someday to check my e-mail? My agent mostly communicates with me that way. I didn’t want to bring my laptop since I declared this a vacation, but I promised him I would find an Internet café or something to pick up any urgent e-mails he might send. I don’t suppose there is an Internet café in Castagniers?”
“No, not yet anyway.” He stopped at the top of the stairs and kissed her passionately, and then he said, “You are welcome to use the PC whenever you want. Except, not now.”
Anna’s concerns of the morning vanished. The anticipation of lovemaking was delicious; his lips tasted delicious. She told herself it was C-C’s business how he could afford all this, not hers. Maybe he had inherited or borrowed the money. There had to be an explanation. She would most likely find out.
They lay down on the bed together. He pulled off her tank top and kissed her breasts and bare stomach. She pulled him to her and caressed his back. He was hard and ready, but he took her slowly. ”We’ve got two hours,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 57
Lunch was in the tranquil shade of the garden in back of the Ajaccio, where the celebration the evening before had taken place. Martine greeted C-C and Anna and invited them to be seated at a small table covered in a pale green, linen cloth and set with china and crystal. In the background, they could hear the constant hum of cicadas singing with gusto, their unique, high-pitched hissing and whirring filling the air in the heat of the day.
“I will let Diamanté and Elise know that you have arrived,” Martine called over her shoulder as she hurried back into the kitchen.
“She’s on her good behavior today,” Anna remarked with a wry smile as she fetched her camera from her handbag. “She stayed at least a foot away from you.”
C-C was absorbed in examining the label on a bottle of wine cooling in a silver bucket next to the table. Anna snapped a photo of him. At the sound of the camera click, he looked up at her with a seductive grin.
Diamanté appeared just at that moment. “How about a photo of the two of you together?” he suggested. Anna handed the camera to him and walked over to C-C, who turned her gently, placed one arm lovingly under her chin, and squeezed her to his chest. Diamanté moved in close and took the photo.
“Now your turn,” Anna said as Diamanté handed the camera to her.
“Should I remove my beret?”
“I thought it was glued to your head,” she teased.
“Pas du tout,” he said stiffly as he removed it and held it to his chest. Anna was surprised that, instead of smiling toward the camera, he looked off into the distance, as if deep in thought.
Elise came through the open French doors onto the back terrace. She embraced Anna, brushing her on each cheek, then graciously offered her own cheeks for C-C’s kisses.
“So I see you two have survived last night,” she said.
Anna blushed and looked at C-C. Elise was immediately apologetic. “Oh, my dear! I meant the dinner party. I myself was exhausted.”
Diamanté came to her rescue. “And she says she is going to dance until after midnight on our wedding night.”
“I am, too. You just keep up with me.” She poked him in the chest with her bony finger.
“Come, you two lovebirds. Stand together so I can take a photo of you.” Anna stood with her camera ready as Diamanté replaced his beret and folded his arms around his bride-to-be.
“Magnifique!” Anna said as Elise wrinkled her nose in pleasure.
They seated themselves at the table. Martine poured chilled rosé wine and served the first course, a goat cheese tart with baby artichokes.
“Who’s in the kitchen today?” C-C asked Diamanté.
“Both of them. Jacques allowed Lucie to have it all by herself last night, but he couldn’t stay away today. There are many tourists in the region, and it is the weekend. The resto will be busy all day.”
“Waoui,” Martine piped in. “But, you should hear them arguing! Nom de Dieu! The stories they tell on each other. You would think that they would be taking the cutlery to each other’s throats any minute rather than to the vegetables!”
Diamanté chuckled as he passed a basket of thickly sliced, hardcrusted bread while Elise served them a summer salad of zucchini, tomatoes, and black olives tossed with olive oil and sprinkled with lemon juice and fresh mint leaves.
“How long are you planning to stay in France, Anna?” Diamanté asked.
Anna looked in C-C’s direction. “I’m on vacation until the first week of September. I have friends not too far from here whom I am planning to visit. They purchased a bastide last year near Grasse and have been restoring it. I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Are they Californians?”
“No, Parisians. I have known them for a long time.”
“You should turn in your rental car,” C-C said to her. “You can take my car to visit them.”
“I haven’t seen a car rental agency in Castagniers.”
“There is one in a neighboring village that is a little larger than ours,” Diamanté said, trying to be helpful.
“I’ll think about it. It’s not costing me that much. Anyway, I may be visiting Monique and Georges for several days, and you might need your car,” she looked intently at C-C, “in case of an emergency, that is.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and their eyes locked. “It’s your decision,” he said.
What a strange suggestion, Anna thought. They had not discussed any plans following the wedding.
“Let’s have some coffee, Martine,” Elise commanded when they had finished helping themselves to a dessert platter of Madeleines and miniature candied apples. “Then I will have to excuse myself for the afternoon. I have so many things to finalize before the wedding tomorrow, not the least of which, my coiffure.” She patted her hair.
After Elise had departed, Diamanté turned to Anna and said, “Come up to the library. It will be cooler, and we can have a nice talk.”
C-C excused himself as they got up. “I have a patient to attend to,” he said as he kissed Anna lightly on the cheek.
“À très bientôt,” she whispered in his ear.
Diamanté took C-C’s arm firmly above the elbow, saying in a low voice, “Can I have a quick word with you before you go?”
C-C nodded, and they strolled to the front of the restaurant together. When they were safely out of hearing range, Diamanté said in a low voice, “Écoute, Charlie, I have intelligence that Narbon disappeared two weeks ago. There’s been no sign of him since.”
C-C gave him a questioning look.
Diamanté shrugged his shoulders. “You and I must be careful. We are the only ones left who know.”
“There’s also the nurse.”
Diamanté nodded in agreement. “But she’s married to the bodyguard now. What’s she going to give away? Heh? Just watch yourself, my son. Be alert.” Diamanté put his hand on C-C’s shoulder and gave him a piercing look. “Like a Corsican.”
C-C walked off in the direction of the convent. Ever since he had arrived in Castagniers, he had wondered why Narbon had been involved. Who was he? What was his role anyway? C-C had felt safe in Castagniers, his security assured. He put his hands in his pockets and kicked at a stone. Narbon missing could only mean one thing: that they were all in danger. The old fear that he had felt in Paris suddenly seized him.
CHAPTER 58
The book-lined library above the Ajaccio was darkened and cool despite the heat of midday. Anna and Diamanté settled into soft, overstuffed chairs, facing each other.
“I’d like to hear about my father, your son,” she said nervously as she took a photo from her handbag and presented it to him. “I have only this one picture.”
Diamanté switched on a lamp and carefully placed a pair of half-inch-thick reading glasses on the b
ridge of his nose. “It is Diamanté fils all right,” he said as he moved his fingers slowly over the photo.
“My grandfather refused to tell me anything about my father, until the dreadful night of the car accident, that is, when he was dying. Afterwards, I found that photo in an old album in my grandparent’s home. I didn’t even know who the man with my mother was, but I guessed, just looking at them.”
“I can see a resemblance in you to both of them,” he said looking keenly at her. “What happened to your mother?”
“She died when I was very young.” Anna hesitated, then decided to spare the old man the sordid details of her mother’s life. “I was raised by my grandparents.”
“In California?”
“Yes, in Laguna, where I now live. Have you ever been to the United States?”
“No, but I would like very much to visit one day.”
“Guy told me some of your history when I visited him in Obernai.”
“How did you find him?”
“I discovered a card in my grandfather’s personal items. It was sent after the war, postmarked from Strasbourg. A friend of mine helped me locate him through business associates in Strasbourg. I took a chance. I didn’t think he would want to see me.”
“He is a good man, Guy. He has become very fond of you.”
“And I of him.”
Diamanté placed the photo on the coffee table between them. “Did you know he was Charlie’s grand-père when you visited him?” She sensed distrust, or was it just Gallic reserve?
“No, I didn’t, not until the end of the visit, that is, when he told his story about the astronomical clock. It was so familiar that I had to ask, but I didn’t tell him that I knew C-C.” She looked down at her hands. “The circumstances were, well…I had my reasons.”
They both fell silent. The only sound in the room came from the faint hum of the ceiling fan slowly whirling above them.
“It is none of an old man’s business,” he said awkwardly as he eased himself from his chair and walked over to stare out the window. After a moment, he said, “It looks like we may have a storm brewing. It will arrive during the night, most likely. They always do. Don’t be surprised at the fury of our storms, Anna. There will be wind, cracks of lightning followed by booming thunder, and torrents of rain. Sometimes we even get hailstones. But it will be all over by morning.”
She was watching him intensely. “Tell me about your son…my father,” she said, repeating her earlier question.
Diamanté stood looking out the window for what seemed to Anna a long time before he cleared his throat and began to speak. Without turning to face her, he said hesitantly, “My son met his death mere days before the cease-fire ended the Algerian war. He was a patient young man, generous,” he chuckled lowly to himself and cocked his head sideways, “a bit stubborn, but so exuberant for life. He was a great storyteller, even as a youth.”
The old man walked slowly to one of the bookshelves against the wall behind where Anna was seated. She noted how quietly he moved.
From a shelf, he pulled a worn, black leather journal. His hand shook with age and emotion as he handed it to Anna.
“I have only this of his from Algeria. It was shipped back to me after his death. So many anecdotes. He must have had a premonition that something was going to happen to him. Read the last entry, written the day he was killed.” He wiped his eyes and blew his nose loudly into his cloth handkerchief as he sat down across from her.
Anna carefully opened the timeworn book and rested her fingers on the yellowed pages, as if she were gently touching the hand of the father she would learn to know through them. The cursive was small, traditional, in the French style, wedge-shaped letters, broad at one end and pointed at the other, but unique all the same. The entirety of it had been written in dark green ink. It was obvious that care had been taken in the beauty of the penmanship as well as the words. She turned to the last entry, dated March 15, 1962, and began reading the French aloud.
La guerre, c’est l’enfer. L’enfer. La guerre.
The atmosphere of Algiers is extremely depressing. The hot, dry sirocco wind blows constantly across the desert.
I have lost my spirit. Some in my unit have committed suicide. The morale is very low.
Today, the “reign of terror” climaxed. There are puddles of blood everywhere. Trucks on the road are riddled with bullets. Every exit is guarded by soldiers with machine guns. We ask everyone to show us their identification cards. Some do not make it past the checkpoints. We search houses. The inhabitants are all scared of us, and we are scared of them.
I have written my father a letter. I told him how much I love him and admire his courage in another war. I ended it with adieu for if I get out of this war alive, I do not intend to return to Corsica. Instead, I shall go straight to California, to my beloved Lily, if she will forgive me.
There was nothing after that. Anna closed the journal with a sigh and looked up at Diamanté.
“He was quite handsome,” Diamanté said. “I identified his body. He was a victim of a drive-by shooting. The insurgents. He died on the street. He had been shot many times, but not once in his face. We buried our son in Corsica, in a cemetery in the village where he was born. His mother passed away the next year. Her heart was broken. She lies next to him. He was our only child.” He shook his head. “I never received that letter he refers to.”
“So we’ll never know what he meant by that last comment,” Anna said sadly. It was a clue, though, that she would always wonder about. Perhaps something that had happened between them had been the cause of her mother’s problems.
Diamanté looked at her kindly. The tension between the two of them had eased.
“He would have been proud of you, being a storyteller, too.” For the first time since she had met him, he used the familiar “tu” with her.
A sudden gust of wind came through the open window.
“Ah,” he said. “It is announcing its intention, our weather.”
C-C entered the convent’s hospital corridor. When he turned the corner by the statue of Saint Bernard, he came upon the nurse and her new husband in a passionate embrace.
“Oh, pardon,” he said.
The newlywed couple, still holding each other tightly, simply turned their heads and smiled at him with their cheeks touching.
“Hello, Doc.”
“Hello, Geoffrey. Bonjour, Florence. I seem to have appeared at the wrong moment.”
Geoffrey winked at him. “We were just taking a bit of a break.”
“Mind if I talk to you in private, Geoffrey? I’ve a concern I need to discuss with you.”
The British security guard nodded. Florence smiled at her new husband, gave him a quick love pat on the behind, and went inside to tend to her patient. Geoffrey and C-C walked along the corridor toward the courtyard.
“What’s your concern, Doc? We’ve tightened it up pretty well around here.”
“I’ve just learned that someone who was involved in all this—his name is André Narbon—is missing. According to Diamanté, it’s been about two weeks since anyone has heard from him. He’s apparently completely disappeared.”
Geoffrey’s eyebrows knit together, and he scratched the back of his neck. “Diamanté mentioned something about being wary recently, but I thought he was just reminding me of my duties. You know, since Flo and I have been a bit distracted.” He chuckled. “I thanked him for his concern, and I didn’t think much more about it. Is this Narbon a possible victim or a security threat?”
“Don’t know. Diamanté seems to think that we’re in danger, nevertheless. He was concerned enough to warn me.”
“If you want, I’ll run it by headquarters. They might know something of the bloke’s whereabouts. Probably nothing to worry about.”
“Diamanté’s wedding is tomorrow, as you know.”
“Right. We’ve got it covered. You won’t even know we’re there.”
“Bon. There’s one more bit of i
nformation I’d like,” C-C hesitated. “Keep this confidential, for now, if you wouldn’t mind. I’d like to know more about Narbon’s background. All Diamanté told me was that he was dangerous and that they had had ‘some differences’ over the years, as he put it. There’s still something that bothers me about him. I’d like to know if he’s on our side.”
“Sure, Doc. I’ll see what I can dig up through Interpol.”
CHAPTER 59
The storm awakened Anna and C-C just after midnight. As Diamanté had predicted, it was fierce. First there was the wind, then the rain came in sheets, pounding the windows.
“It will be all right,” C-C insisted. “The storms in Provence always seem violent.” Just then, a lightning strike hit a nearby tree, and they heard the crash of a branch falling against the side of the house.
Anna screamed and then cried, “Oh, C-C, what about Max? He’s outside. We have to find him.” She flew down the stairs and opened the front door. The drenched and terrified dog ran into the foyer and immediately shook himself off.
The three of them waited out the storm in the hall under the stairwell. When it was over, they left Max to sleep in the foyer for the rest of the night, and then they returned to bed, energized and unable to resist yet another opportunity to make love before they fell asleep, exhausted in each others’ arms.
The next morning, the air was pure and fresh and smelled of ozone. From the bedroom window, Anna, in C-C-’s terry robe, observed the caretaker in the garden picking up debris from the storm. He appeared to be in his early fifties and walked with a cane.
“What’s wrong with Clo? Why is he limping?”
“He lost his leg in Southeast Asia. A land mine. I met him when he came to me with a problem. He couldn’t wear his prosthesis any longer, and he had sores which were badly infected. I arranged to get him a new one. At the same time, I offered him the cottage to live in, and he took me up on it.”
