A World I Never Made (37 page)

“Do I have children? Did your father tell you ... ?”

“Tell me what?”

“No, I have no children:”

“Will you take care of him? My baby?”

“We both will:”

Then Pat and Max were firing their pistols and there were two explosions in the front yard, and then a third much nearer the lodge. Debris, timber, glass, smoke. Catherine was stunned senseless for a moment, but not knocked out. Through the smoke she could see a stocky Arab, dreamlike, in slow motion, aiming a handgun at Megan and firing: once, twice. Before he could fire again, Catherine found her gun, raised it, and shot the man twice in the chest. He fell on top of Megan. Catherine crawled over and pushed him off, using the last of her strength.

She put her ear to Megan’s chest, but heard nothing. Then she passed out, as if Megan were her lover and she had fallen asleep in her arms.

Except that Megan’s arms were at her sides, palms up in supplication.

An hour later, Pat and Sargent Ruzika pulled up to the mining camp. Pat”s head was bandaged and throbbing. A veranda post had crashed through the front wall of the lodge to strike him a glancing blow that had knocked him unconscious. When he woke, a uniformed Czech medic was leaning over him, dressing the wound. Doro and Steve Luna were dead. The three Arabs who had attacked the lodge were dead. The helicopter that had dropped off the Czech rangers was on its way to a trauma unit in Prague with Catherine and Ephrem. The Czech special forces soldiers were searching the forest for the fourth Arab, the tall dark grenade thrower. Max French, his left arm broken and hastily splinted, was with them.

And Megan was dead. The stocky Arab had made it through the explosions and killed her. Pat had seen the body. It was being wheeled on a field stretcher to join Doro’s and Steve Luna’s as they lay waiting for a second helicopter to arrive. “Yes, that’s her,” he had said to no one in particular.

I’m her father. I know that’s my daughter. I remember when she was born and I thought of giving her away. Considered it only very briefly, making it less of a sin. She told me she loved me just a few minutes ago ...

He had stopped the soldiers wheeling the stretcher and stared at Megan. He put his arms under her and lifted her to him. She was still warm, and light as a rag doll. The soldiers had backed away. It must have been noisy there in the front yard of the cabin, but Pat had heard nothing, not even the sound of the helicopter landing nearby, except his own sobs. He would have gone with the body to Prague, but with a start he remembered Patrick, back at the camp.

As Pat and Sergeant Ruzika approached the mine building from the rear, along the fire road, Pat saw smoke coming from its central chimney. There were no vehicles parked in front, however, and car and truck tracks and roughshod footprints were everywhere in the mud of the yard. Ruzika went in first, his police pistol drawn. But there was no need. The place was not just empty but looked like it had never been lived in. No furniture, no clothes, no toys, no utensils, nothing. On the floor of the large front room was a pile of American comic books.
Superman. Spiderman. Green Lantern.
That was it; all that Corozzo and his small clan had left behind. Pat stared at the comic books for a moment, then spotted an open staircase on the far right wall. He climbed the stairs two at a time, only to find the second floor just as empty as the first.

The medic had wanted to give him morphine, but he had pushed him away when he saw the soldiers pushing the stretcher, saw the shock of strawberry-blond hair in the space between their arms. He had wasted too much time pleading with Orlofsky and Ruzika, who appeared to be jointly in charge, to allow him to go back to the mining camp. There was a high-caliber terrorist on the loose and they did not want him messing things up. Finally, he put his small Beretta to Orlofky’s head and convinced him to let him go. Orlofsky sent Ruzika with him, threatening as they headed out to have him prosecuted. He had told Orlofsky, an officious prick, that if the baby was harmed he would come back and kill him. Crazy. A crazy thing to say. He could hear the Czech policeman’s boots thudding on the empty floorboards below.

“Nolan,” Ruzika called. “Down here.”

Downstairs, Pat joined the Czech on the other side of the waist-high partition that surrounded the wood-burning stove. Ruzika was staring at something. Following his eyes, Pat looked down. On the floor near the stove was a plastic laundry basket. In it, in a thick white receiving blanket, was a child, perhaps two weeks old. Its hair and skin were fair and it was awake, staring at him with dark unseeing eyes. Pat knelt down and ran the back of his index finger along the child’s cheek, which was soft and tender and pulsing with life.

EPILOGUE

LISIEUX, JANUARY 18, 2004

The waiting room at the Carmelite Convent in Lisieux was hushed like a church, and Pat was worried that Patrick would cry and disturb the silence that pervaded not only the room but the entire building. But the baby was still, as he usually was when he was in Catherine’s arms or lap or in the sling carrier she had bought in Paris. Her flesh wound had healed, but she had worked around it from the beginning when it came to the baby. Yesterday they had buried Megan in the United States Military Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach, permission having been granted by President Bush and French President Chirac.

Abdel al-Lahani had been captured in the woods near the hunting lodge, not far from the dead body of Corozzo’s son, Sebastian. Lahani, a member of the Saudi royal family and a nephew of General Mustafa al-Siddiq, the head of the Saudi Secret Police, was being held in a Czech jail. Nothing of his capture or of the bloody incident in the forest outside Kolin had been reported in the press. There was cautious hope that his debriefing would reveal the identities of others in the Saud family who were actively on the side of terrorism. His name splashed in the papers and on CNN would have been a warning to his colleagues.

Tomorrow, Pat, Catherine, and Patrick II would leave for New York. They were in Lisieux to make a donation to the convent orphanage in the names of Megan Nolan and Daniel Peletier.

“I’m going to walk around;” Pat said to Catherine. ”I won’t go far.“ The prioress had not been expecting them and had sent word that she could see them shortly. That had only been ten minutes ago, but Pat was restless. He would simply have left the check with the prioress’s secretary, but she had insisted on seeing them. He wanted to be home.

They would spend the summer at the farm in Cap de la Hague, not far from Megan’s grave. Catherine was French. Patrick II was a citizen of both France and the United States. France was now as much a part of his life as it was Megan’s. But he wanted to put the key in his front door in Connecticut and start raising Pat-Two, as he had started to call him, as an American, to fulfill Megan’s last request. The only request she had made of him in the last twelve years.

“Bon,” said Catherine. “I will find you:”

Pat chose a corridor to the right. At its far end, soft winter sunshine was streaming through a vaulted window. As he walked, he could hear singing and the voices of children playing. When he reached the window and looked out, there was no one there. Just a lawn sloping down to the stone and wrought iron fence that bordered the convent. He turned back and, after a few steps, saw a door ajar on his right, a heavy oaken door, black with age and with a small window at eye level. He pushed on it and it slowly swung open. This might be where the kids were singing. But the room was empty and he quickly saw that it was a small chapel containing three rows of worn wooden pews and a slightly raised marble altar. On the altar was an open casket on a low pedestal flanked by baskets of pink, red, and yellow roses. The chapel had two high windows, but its primary light came from a group of candles arrayed in tall, slender candleholders in a half circle around the altar.

Pat stepped in and shut the door. He stared at the casket—at the body in the casket—for a long time, and then stepped closer and knelt on the twelve inches of marble in front of the pedestal.

Your daughter is in danger, Monsieur. And the child, too. Have faith, Monsieur. You will be led to her.

He had forgotten the flower girl from the Street of Flowers. Now she was dead, her black hair falling in thick waves to her shoulders, her face, bathed in candlelight, composed and serene. As saintly as it had been in life. He said a prayer and then got Catherine, who also knelt and prayed at the casket for the girl’s soul.

A few minutes later, they were in Mother Marie de Ganzague’s austere office, sitting in the same chairs they had sat in two weeks ago when she told them about the dead baby found on the convent’s doorstep on Christmas Eve. Pat told her that Megan had been killed in a car accident in the Czech Republic and that he had come to thank her for her help. The old prioress was very grateful for the check and, over Pat’s objections, promised to pray for him and for his daughter’s soul. She did not ask any questions, but steadily eyed the baby in Catherine’s arms.

“May I?” she said, extending her arms. Catherine handed her Pat-Two, and the old abbess, standing, gently cradled him for a moment or two.“Your child is very beautiful,” she said to Catherine. “So fair and full of life. May the Holy Spirit be with him always.” Catherine ’s smile on hearing this was like the first sunlight to fall upon a shaded valley in the morning, bringing everything in it to life.

Toward the end of their brief meeting, Pat brought up the flower girl. “Mother,” he said, “I saw the dead girl in the chapel. The door was open. I have met her before. Who is she?”

“You have met her?”

“Yes, once in Paris and once here in Lisieux:”

“When was this, Monsieur?”

“About two weeks ago:”

“In Paris, you say?”

“Yes. My daughter met her there as well. Catherine was with me when I met her in Lisieux:”

“You say you met her,” the prioress said. “Did you speak to her? What were the circumstances?”

“She was selling flowers on the street. She told me that Megan was alive when I believed she was dead. She told me ... she gave me a St. Thérèse prayer card ... I remember it now .. .”

“I see,” said Mother Marie, placing her right hand on her chest and fingering the rosary beads that hung there from her neck. “Her name is Marie Catherine Sancerre. It is a name we gave her when we found her on our doorstep at the age of two months. She came down with scarlet fever when she was four and has been sickly ever since. She did not like to leave the convent. Not even to go on outings that we thought she could easily withstand. She said she would rather stay behind and pray for us. She was not adoptable because of her illness, but when the other children were adopted out, she prayed fervently for their happiness. She died two nights ago in her sleep:”

“I’m sure I met her, Mother,” said Pat.

“It is not possible, Monsieur Nolan. Marie Catherine has been bedridden for the past six months, heavily medicated, dying in fact. How could she have gotten herself out of bed, let alone to Paris?”

Pat shook his head. A month ago, he would have said that only a miracle could have made him a real father to Megan again, and she a daughter to him. But it had happened. A month ago, he would have laughed at the suggestion that, after all these years, he would remarry and have children. But here were Catherine and Pat-Two sitting next to him. He was about to answer when he felt Catherine”s hand on his knee, her fingers squeezing lightly.

“On angel’s wings, Mother,” said Catherine. “After all, it is the business you are in to believe such things:”

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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Copyright © 2008, 2009 by James LePore

eISBN : 978-0-981-95682-4

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First Story Plant Printing: April 2009