Fugue State (14 page)

“Here’s two thousand. I will give you the rest after I receive the passports.”

He spat another mouthful of cigar mush. This time, he spat at the floor in front of her feet.

“All right, stupid American. I need two photos.” He opened the door wide and motioned for her to enter. Alexa still shook a little, but she felt satisfied with her success. She hadn’t realized she was going to need her picture taken. She thought fast. She wanted the two pictures to look very different, yet they both needed to look like her. For the first photo, she pulled her hair back and left her face bare. For the second photo, she wore her hair down and applied eye makeup and lipstick, then removed her jacket. She also altered her information on the two passports. She made the up-do passport her alias and the photo with her hair down her real name. She added 5 pounds and a half-inch to her height for the alias, and subtracted two years from her age.

He snapped the photos in front of a white sheet hanging like a curtain. Vincent’s workstation consisted of a digital camera connected to a laptop computer and a large box printer/scanner. He had bits of passports hanging on a wall behind him. Perhaps they were his creations. Or they could have been stolen passports used as examples to construct the decoys. Many of the passports came from the United States.

After taking the photos, he jotted down Alexa’s true and false identifiers with poor penmanship on a dirty napkin. He tapped the photo to be used as the alias.

“What name for this?” Alexa scrunched her nose and mouth together as she quickly conspired a false identity. “Elizabeth.” She chose her grandmother’s name — the woman she idolized most. “Elizabeth Fuguay.” Fuguay seemed appropriate, as it was just a minor adjustment to the fugue state that fueled the false identity.

Vincent muttered something to himself while rummaging through the cash Alexa had given him. Much of the tension between the two of them had dissipated by this point. Vincent seemed too enthralled with his work to be annoyed by the
stupid American
in the room, and Alexa was fueled by too much adrenaline to concern herself with his former harshness. She was even brash enough to ask if he needed anything else from her. He let out a grunt and avoided her question. She chose a more deliberate approach.

“I will pay you the remainder of your fee when the passports are finished.” She paused. “When should I return?”

The Frenchman looked up at her as if he’d forgotten she was in the room altogether. He raised an eyebrow in a confused expression. “Thursday?”

Although taken aback by his confused air, she nodded in agreement. “I will be back Thursday afternoon. The passports will be ready then?”

Vincent moved his head up and down, grunted, and resumed his work. Alexa saw herself to the door.

She felt energized in a way she didn’t wholly understand. She found excitement in leaving her pain behind, embracing her romantic fantasy of fugue state, and moving toward a future in which her ideas made sense. She basked in her accomplishment and repressed the dark voice in her subconscious that whispered it was the veil of deceit that enticed her. Too giddy to walk, she skipped carelessly back toward her hotel.

CHAPTER 17

S
he skipped a few blocks when she realized she was both very far from her hotel and from her goal of killing Castro. She’d forgotten about obtaining the cyanide. That could possibly prove to be the biggest hurdle of all.

She had gone without her smartphone ever since the cab accident, and, given her desire to change her identity, she canceled the service. Alexa popped into an Internet café to borrow their search engine. She typed in the words
pharmacy
and
apothecary
and waited for the Internet to answer her questions. Her online search brought up a small French apothecary three short blocks away. She doubted whether the trip would prove fruitful.
They sell medicines, not poison. I doubt I can find cyanide. But maybe they sell the manufactured antidote kits I saw online.

She tried to invent a believable lie to establish her need to buy a cyanide remedy, but nothing she rehearsed seemed plausible. She considered turning around and quitting the plan altogether. But she was already so close, and she figured the worst thing that would happen is she would be rejected. If the situation became difficult, she figured she could fall back on American ignorance. She headed to the apothecary.

The store was combined with an even smaller stationary shop. She was greeted by a white-haired woman who looked to be about seventy with an upbeat “Bonjour!” in a high-pitched voice from behind a long granite counter. The jingle of the little silver bell tied to the front door echoed the pitch of her voice. The woman peered at Alexa through thick-lensed glasses that magnified her pupils out of proportion to her other facial features.

“
Parlez-vous Anglais
?” Alexa asked in her broken French, and waited patiently as the old woman nodded repeatedly.

Alexa wasn’t sure if the woman had heard her or not. She repeated the phrase louder and more clearly.

“Yes,” the woman responded abruptly as her head continued to bob ever so slightly.

Alexa took a deep breath and let the words flow slowly. “Do you have a cyanide remedy kit?” She tried to sound nonchalant. The woman held a crooked smile without response.
Perhaps the woman isn’t just hard of hearing — perhaps she isn’t all there.
Alexa guessed the bell on the door was an attempt to alert the old lady that a customer had entered to store, but it seemed more than a bell was needed to bring this woman back to reality.

“Cyanide?” the old woman said suddenly, and with an air of excitement.

“Well, yes,” she stated, without clearly knowing if the woman thought Alexa was asking for cyanide or the cyanide remedy kit. Either way, her answer was
yes
, so she went along.

The woman paused and raised her left index finger high in the air, like she had an idea. The wrinkled finger trembled. Then she turned and shuffled to the end of the counter and behind a curtain at the back of the apothecary, leaving Alexa standing alone.

Alexa glanced around the store. She looked at a shelf filled with tiny bottles of serums and eye creams. Next to this was a shelf filled with bags of clay powders used for facemasks. Plagued by a shelf filled with beauty products, she wondered if she were in the right place. Across the aisle she recognized anti-nausea concoctions and urinary tract infection remedies. The medical names were similar to the English derivatives even in French, due to their shared Latin roots. Another more risqué shelf contained French versions of the morning-after pill. As the minutes passed, Alexa became agitated. The white-haired woman peeked her head through the curtain.

“Cyanide?” she questioned again. Alexa nodded stiffly in frustration.

To her surprise, the woman returned with a handful of items, including a box that looked promising. She dumped the items onto the counter and separated them for Alexa to see. The box that caught Alexa’s attention was, in fact, a cyanide remedy kit. It was slightly discolored, as if it had sat on the shelf a long time. Alexa couldn’t figure out what was inside the unlabeled jar she saw. She pointed at it. “This one?”

“Arsenic,” the woman responded with a smile. Alexa felt a twinge of guilt and disgust run through her.
This woman seems to know I have sinister intentions.
She tried to think of a way to dismiss any murderous thoughts in this woman’s mind. She furrowed her brow at the woman and shook her head fervently.

“No. No. I don’t want arsenic — not at all.” She tried to think up a quick lie to cover her crazy request. “It’s a project I’m working on — an experiment, really. I’m a scientist. I am testing out a variety of cyanide remedies in order to determine the most effective and affordable remedy for cyanide poisoning.” Alexa paused, unsure of how much the woman understood. The woman grabbed the arsenic bottle and tucked it into her apron pocket, then pointed at two small boxes. “Also cyanide remedy,” she explained.

Alexa examined the smaller boxes. They contained vials of liquid sodium thiosulfate, which Alexa considered as a backup plan. The dose of sodium thiosulfate was twelve point five grams IV diluted, for a total of fifty milliliters in a twenty-five percent solution.

She also examined the larger box labeled
Cyanide Remedy Kit
. It contained the hydroxycobalamin she desired. The manufactured kit contained two vials of two point five grams of hydroxycobalamin to be administered intravenously. The smaller volume seemed more feasible.

The woman had not brought Alexa any cyanide pills. She looked up at the woman, and before she could speak, the old woman asked, “You need cyanide?”

Alexa smiled weakly. “Yes.”

The woman went to a stack of stationary on the counter and wrote a note on the pretty pink paper. She handed it to Alexa. She saw an address listed at the top, and a paragraph written in French on the bottom.

The address was in Barcelona, Spain. Instantly dismayed, her shoulders sagged heavily. Before Alexa could interject, the woman interrupted her thoughts.

“Go here. Elena, my friend, will help. The note will get you what you need.” The woman pointed to the address she had written. “Take the train.” Alexa digested the information. “Tomorrow. Take the train.” Her firm tone was convincing.
Maybe this will work.

Alexa sifted through the remnants of her cash to pay the lady. She purchased two different cyanide remedy kits and one of the clay facemasks. She watched the bundle of Euros in her purse dwindle. She would need to withdraw more money from her account soon. She planned to transfer money into a second account under her alias so she could spend money under the new identity. She would go to the bank after stopping by Vincent’s. The passport would be necessary to open the account under the new identity. After gathering her bags, she headed back to her hotel. She wanted to change clothes and go for a run before dusk fell.

A mere five miles into the run her left knee began to throb, and she decided to walk the last mile back to her hotel. She arrived just as the sun began to set.

Each time she ran down the Paris streets, she tried to find the French café she and Britt had entered the night of
levende lys
that lingered in her mind. Tonight was another failed attempt.

Following the run, she applied the clay mask to her face and plunged into a hot bath. She declined a night of dancing with Serge. She still had so much planning to do, and such a short time to accomplish it all. After the bath, she went back to her laptop, back to the FBI webpage. She needed some encouragement, and chose to read over Mohammed Ahmed’s crimes. She read until she cried, until the horror of it all became real to her. She paused on the reward page again. She put the computer aside and mixed a vodka soda to ease her nerves.

She lay on the bed and thought about the reward.
Is this a bad idea?
Should I call someone? Should I tell someone about my plans? Who can I call? Who would take me seriously?
Her mind drowned in a sea of questions and alcohol.

A name floated to the surface. Justin Hunter. Justin was a very old flame from college. They had parted on good terms and managed to keep in touch by pure coincidence. They had bumped into one another time and again in the last few years, always meeting in the most peculiar of places. She saw him once in an organic food store in Atlanta when he had just started working with the Navy Seals, and once more in the O’Hare airport on a layover just a year ago. It was on this layover that Justin admitted working with a branch of the FBI that dealt in international affairs. He gave her his card. She had saved his contact information on her laptop.

Alexa grabbed the hotel phone. Two o’clock in the morning in Paris meant seven o’clock in Washington D.C. With the cocktail in her hand, she figured she had just enough courage in her glass to dial his number. She called the number and waited for Justin to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Justin. It’s Alexa, Alexa DeBrow.”

“Alexa? Hey, girl. It’s been a while.”

“Yes, Justin. I know it has.”

“This is a surprise. I didn’t recognize the number. Are you in town or something? Are you looking to meet up? It’s not a good time for me.”

“Justin, I’m not in town. I need a favor. I need a name, a contact, really. Are you still working in the same place?”

“Uh, yeah, same place. Hey, Lex — I have a little girl now. She’s with her mom tonight. We’re, um — getting married soon.”

Alexa blushed.
Wow. Does he think this is a booty call?

“That’s great, Justin.” She tried her best to change the subject. “I’m really happy for you. Listen, I am kind of in a situation now. I need to talk to someone who can help. I’m thinking someone from the FBI can help me.”

“Um. Okay. I wasn’t expecting this. Hmm, what can I do?”

“I’ve run into someone. He’s a criminal, actually. I need to let someone know about it. Whom should I speak with?”

“Wow. That’s pretty heavy shit, Lex. Are you in trouble or something?” His tone changed abruptly.

“No. Not really. No trouble. I just know things, and I need to talk to someone.” Alexa had no intention of telling Justin the whole story. She just wanted to tell him enough to be sure he would get the appropriate contact for her. She waited on the line in suspense.

“Okay. Well, there is this guy I know. We’ve bowled together once or twice. The guy’s name is Charles MacDonald; he works for the state department in special investigations and foreign affairs. Cool guy. I just call him Charlie Mac. He can probably help.” Justin rattled off the number. “If you want, I can let him know you’re calling.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll try the number first thing in the morning. If I can’t get ahold of him, I’ll get back with you. Thanks, Justin.”

“Shit, Alexa. When I gave you that card, I was hoping to meet for drinks, or sex, or something. You know — before my kid came. I never thought you would need something like this. Does it have anything to do with that trial I saw on T.V. a few months back?”