A World I Never Made (34 page)

“Where is she?” Lahani asked.

“I heard you mention twenty-five thousand euros;” the gypsy said to Mohammed, turning his head in exaggerated slowness, as if in full control, the way a drunk will.

“Where is Miss Nolan?” Lahani asked, an edge now in his voice.“Is she at the camp?”

“No, she has left:”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, but tomorrow she is to meet her father. I will find out where and call you:”

“How will you find out?”

“There are people in the camp who hate the woman. It won’t be hard:”

“How was the meeting with her father arranged?”

“A gypsy from our tribe arrived this morning. He made the arrangements with Corozzo.”

“Just the father? Anyone else? Are the police involved?”

“No, my father would not deal with the police:”

“What happened to your face?”

“A quarrel with Corozzo. With the money I will be free:”

“Yes, you will get your money when you have delivered Megan Nolan to me:”

“I would like some now. Half.”

With a nod from Lahani to Mohammed, this Sebastian would be dead. Corozzo would probably thank him. But Lahani believed his story. There was the truth of hatred in his eyes. He could kill him later, once he was sure he had Megan in his sights.

Lahani reached for his jacket, hanging on the back of a chair, and took his billfold from it, extracting a roll of hundred euro notes, counting off ten, and handing them to Sebastian. He then wrote his cell phone number on a slip of notepaper and handed it to the gypsy.

“You will call me, I know,” Lahani said. “You would not risk your life and your entire family’s for a thousand euros:”

“One more thing,” Sebastian said.

“Yes.”

“Corozzo has someone watching you, to warn him if you head for the camp. He is a boy of fifteen, driving a red Volkswagon Beetle:”

“Thank you. We will take care of him.”

“Yes, I’m sure you will:”

Sebastian did call late the next morning. Afterward, Lahani had Mohammed call their two men in from their stakeout. While waiting for them, the Saudi prince savored his situation. A week ago, a French policewoman had made a routine call to the Foreign Office in Rabat regarding a female suicide possessing a Moroccan diplomatic visa. The inquiry had reached the person who had issued the visa, who indeed issued all such visas in Morocco, a jihadist in league with the Falcon of Andalus. Now, after seven months of circling in frustration and muted anger, the Falcon was about to land. Where Uncle al-Siddiq, through his idiotic dupe, Charles Raimondi, had failed, he would succeed. He would kill Megan Nolan with his own hand, first looking her in the eye, and thus expiate the humiliation that had weighed so heavily upon him these past months. Afterward, he would resume his work of killing infidels, of reinstituting the caliphate in Europe, starting in Spain, the most cowardly among a continent of cowards. March 11 was only two months away.

~35~

CZECH REPUBLIC, JANUARY 9, 2004

Pat had turned off the cheap electric heater when they went to bed because it made so much noise he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. When he woke at two AM the room was very cold and Catherine wasn’t there. He turned the heater on and, as he was dressing, he saw the glow of a cigarette outside through an opening in the synthetic drapes that covered the front window. Relieved, he stood for a moment and watched Catherine smoke. She was wearing Uncle Daniel’s blue wool sweater and her stylish French jeans. Her hair hung down to her shoulders. Her arms were folded on her chest and her head was slightly bent. She looked younger from behind, more like a girl of twenty than a woman of thirty-five. Younger and more vulnerable. She had been subdued during their long day of waiting, and so had he. They had bought provisions, checked into the room, showered, eaten, made love on the edge of exhaustion, fallen asleep for six or seven hours, eaten again, watched CNN—understanding little—and then tried to sleep again.

As the day wore on, Pat realized that they had become disconnected somehow, a phenomenon that he gave himself credit for grasping, but the cause of which eluded him. It had been a long time since he cared whether or not he was disconnected from a woman, much less tried to figure out why. Now he cared, but was confused as to the cause.

She’s probably having second thoughts. We’re strangers, really, I’m older, I’m American, I’m quiet, I’m boring. Fuck.
These thoughts stung him, but the sting aroused him to action.

“What’s the matter, Catherine?” Pat said a few minutes later. He had gone out and brought her back in, and they were seated facing each other on the room’s chrome-and-plastic chairs, the bottle of brandy they had bought earlier on the dresser next to them along with two glasses.

“Are you going to pour that?” Catherine said, nodding toward the brandy. Pat poured out the liquor and handed Catherine her glass.

“Thank you,” she said. “To finding Megan well:”

“To finding Megan well,” Pat repeated. They drank and looked at each other, their faces in shadow. The only light in the room came from the fixture outside over the front door, spilling in through the cheap curtains. The better, Pat had thought when arranging the chairs and putting out the brandy and the glasses, not to see the cheap carpet and the rest of the cheap furniture. The room was quiet, the heater, having gone through its initial series of clanks, would not run through its annoying cycle again for another fifteen minutes or so.

“I’m afraid;” Catherine said.

“Of what? Besides the obvious:”

“That our lives will change after tomorrow.”

“Is that why you couldn’t sleep?”

Silence.

“Catherine ... your husband died only seven months ago. I believe you when you say you didn’t love him, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t been traumatized:”

“You have helped me to heal:”

“And now you’ve lost your uncle ...”

“What are you saying, Patrick? That you don’t want the job of caring for me? That I am too wounded a bird to take on?”

Up to this point, Pat had felt he was doing the honorable thing, easing the way for Catherine to back out. Now he was confused again. He decided to press on, though he was not feeling quite so chivalrous as he had just a moment or two ago. “No;” he said, ”I don’t want you to wake up one day and resent me. I’m fifteen years older than you ... Children are an issue:”

“I thought you said you die before losing me?”

“Catherine ... ,”

“Children are not an issue:”

“You say that now, but you’re young,” Pat said, regaining his confidence. “I’m not sure I want more children. But it would be only natural for you to want a family.”

“Natural, yes, but I am not natural:”

“Of course you are:”

“No, I’m not:”

“I don’t understand:

Pat’s vision had adjusted to the semidarkness. He could see Catherine’s face, half in shadow, her eyes cast downward. He wanted her to raise them, to look at him, but she did not.

“Talk to me, Catherine,” he said.

“Jacques wanted children. He was very insistent. One weekend I told him I was going on a training exercise. I went to Switzerland to have my tubes tied. To sterilize myself.” As she said this, Catherine lifted her eyes and looked directly at Pat. In them, Pat saw Catherine’s pain, and her fear, he realized with a shock almost palpable, that she could lose him over this issue.

“I thought I was punishing him,” she continued, “but of course I was punishing myself.”

“Catherine.”

“Yes?”

Before answering, Pat edged his chair closer to Catherine’s so that he could see her face better and hold her two hands in his. “I was afraid you wanted to leave me,” he said.

Smiling, Catherine replied, “I was afraid—I still am—you would not want me. It is a great sin I have committed:”

“Listen to me, Catherine,” Pat said. “I have lived for years in a fantasy of the past. I have neglected my daughter, a cruel and selfish thing. I have no understanding of what it is to be married. I thought I did, but how could I?”

Silence.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” Pat said. “I am not that brave:”

“A moment ago you were giving me a way out:”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean it. I thought it was what you wanted:”

“If you left me I would accept it as my penance:”

Pat pushed his chair back, stood, and kneeled before Catherine, taking her in his arms and burying his face in her neck and hair. Then he pulled away and looked directly into her eyes.

“No more penance, Catherine. No more sin. Marry me:”

The heater suddenly started its racket, and they turned to look at it, startled but smiling at its awful timing.

“I could fix that,” Pat said.

“You could fix anything ...”

“But I don’t want to:”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’ll tell you, but first you have to answer my question:”

“Yes, I will marry you.
Mais oui.
So?”

“To make love,
mais oui.”

“Moi
aussi,”
Catherine said, smiling. “Shall we begin?”

~36~

CZECH REPUBLIC, JANUARY 9, 2004

At eleven, the two Skodas left together. Nolan, Laurence, and the oldest of the gypsy boys were in one, the other two boys in the other. The agents, Dionne driving and Sergeant Ruzika in his truck, followed. The day was quite warm for January, nearing fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The rising sun had quickly melted the light dusting of snow from the day before and there was, after a long cold night, a welcome glare on the windshield. At daybreak, Dionne had gone to the restaurant and brought back coffee, hot rolls, and egg sandwiches. Max had devoured his and then fallen into a dead sleep, thinking of the tragically beautiful Catherine Laurence and her Helen of Troy face, the long hours of static waiting having activated the melodramatic elements of his brain. He was back in the world of genuine drama now, the one that had lured him to policework in the first place, intently watching the two Skodas up ahead. They were on the A4 westbound for only a few miles when the Skodas pulled into an area off the shoulder that seemed to have been cleared of trees, a cutout from the heavy pine forest that leaned into the highway on both sides as it made its way around Kolin. The police drove their vehicles past, then made U-turns and slowly headed back, pulling over onto a grassy verge next to the forest, about a hundred yards from the parked Skodas. Ruzika trained his binoculars on the clearing for a moment, then got out of his pickup and went over to Orlofsky, who had also exited his car.

“They went on foot into the forest,” the Czech policeman said, his English thickly accented but passable.

“What’s back there?”

“A fire road that goes up behind the mining camp:”

“That’s it?”

“There’s an old hunting lodge up at the head of the creek, a couple of miles in. The comrades that were more equal than us took their mistresses up there to watch American movies and fuck:”

“I see. Is your backup still with us?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Two cars, four men:”

“Then you stay with them. Watch the Skodas. If Nolan and Laurence or any of them come back, arrest them:”

“Orlofsky?”

“Yes.”

“There are five of them. Do you want me to call for assistance?”

“Yes, as many as you want, but they are to stay out of the forest. I don’t want an army traipsing around in there, scaring them off.”

“Let’s go,” said Max, who had also gotten out of the car and was eyeing the clearing up ahead. “Before we lose them:”

In the forest, it was Max who took charge, following the stream, tracking mostly by sound, stopping for long moments to listen and then swiftly but very quietly moving on. They saw their quarry once across a large sunlit field of tall winter-brown grass, and a second time as they were reaching the top of a small rise, where Pat Nolan was reaching a hand down to Catherine Laurence to help her negotiate some rocks.