At my elbow, a heavy American tourist with a Texas accent talked about triple compound expansion, and from the references he made it was clear that he owned a small steam engine of some kind. Whether it was the kind you put in a launch, or one of those silly live-steam trains that you see grown men riding around on top of, he didn’t say.

Technical conversations fascinate me, and dedicated enthusiasts fascinate me. Another time, I would have made an excuse to engage the man in conversation to learn more about these steamers I liked so well. But not today. Today was for solitude.

I went on to the upper deck. Since I was using the Senator’s money, I had bought a first class ticket. The view was the same as it had been from the second class section on the main deck. Gorgeous. Steep, grassy hillsides dotted with chalets, cattle grazing, and all reflected in the glassy perfection of the lake. In the distance off the bow, beyond Montreaux, the snow clad peaks of the true Alps were playing peek-a-boo among the clouds.

Eventually, I became aware that one of the other passengers was eyeing me. She was young and lovely, in a tight mini-dress and sandals. She had hair cut shorter than mine, very black and straight, and lashes too long to be real. Her companion was blonde and frilly with a habit of hiding her mouth when she talked. They were leaning against the rail, talking, and giving me covert looks.

I don’t know why girls do that. I would not call myself handsome. Not like Will is. I am just six feet, one ninety, broad where a man should be broad and narrow where a man should be narrow, but no one would ever put me on the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Field and Stream, maybe. Not that I mind the attention, but it confuses me. My first reaction is always to wonder if they are joking. Did I forget to zip something?

Normally, I like the attention, but today I had Raven on my mind. When the girl with the lashes finally sent me a smile that would have melted a statue, I shook my head and turned away. When I looked around later, she was gone.

So then, naturally, I found myself regretting the lost opportunity. Consistently inconsistent.

I wedged my pack against the seat, put my feet up on the rail, and made myself comfortable. Fifty-two hours. That was how long it had been since I woke up to find Raven gone. Fifty-two hours, and I was still in shock. I was walking through my life half awake. I was eating, sleeping, making conversation, making decisions, choosing logical courses of action, not falling overboard. But I was doing it all with my mind only half engaged.

I sighed. It was one of those sighs that starts in the back of your throat and shudders you all the way down to your feet. It was good that no one was sitting near; they would have called the paramedics. And then I chuckled. Pitiful. Pathetic. Too sad to live. You can only take yourself so seriously, and then all your actions turn into farce. more tomorrow

Chapter Eighteen

When I traveled in Europe after I got out of the Army, I was stretching out my money by camping and eating grocery store picnics. It was then that I discovered the oddly opposed set of feelings that establish the rhythm of living close to the ground. Whenever I set up camp, there was always a feeling of relief and belonging, like a little homecoming. Even if it was only for one night, the campsite became my home, my own personal piece of the Earth. For a person traveling far and fast, there was great comfort in falling asleep looking at the same walls every night, even if those walls were blue nylon.

But whenever I broke camp, there was an equally strong feeling of freedom. Once my tent and sleeping bag were stored in the pack, and everything I owned was on my back, there came a transcendent feeling that I was once again unfettered. I could go anywhere.

As I left the hotel the next morning, I had that feeling again. The comfort of well worn pack straps, the snug grip of well worn shoes, the solid weight of the pack, and the beckoning sun filled me with joy. Oddly, not a little of that joy came from leaving Susyn behind. She was delightful, but she was not Raven. And I needed time to be alone. Since Raven was thrown off the cruise ship, I had not had an hour of true solitude, and I was feeling the lack.

I took my time walking down to the steamer dock, enjoying the town. When I reached the lake, I still had an hour to wait. I walked around the marina, admiring the sailboats, then went down through the park to the water’s edge. It was too early for any of the street musicians to be out; Susyn would come by here in the afternoon asking her questions. Now there was only sunlight, deep blue water, green grass, and young lovers strolling about. And swans. Sometimes I think half of the charm of Europe is her swans. Now, in early summer, the cygnets were big and awkward, gray and ugly-cute, just like Hans Christian Andersen described them. I squatted at the edge of the lake, a hundred yards from the steamer pier, and held out my hand. A pair of waddling adolescents came up to beg, found me breadless, pecked at my boots, and wandered off looking for a better handout.

I watched the steamer come in, and went on board with the tourists. The rest of the tourists. When you live close to the ground there is a tendency to forget your real status and believe that you are more a part of the landscape than you actually are.

Most of these lake steamers were built around the turn of the century. Their lines speak of better days, or at least days with greater attention to style. They are long, lean side-wheelers, with massive steam engines on the main deck, huffing and wheezing in plain sight. I leaned on the brass rail to watch. Fine machinery is always fascinating, and this was kept polished and shining. At my elbow, a heavy American tourist with a Texas accent was explaining it all to his wife. She listened with polite disinterest, patting his arm from time to time. You could see that the words meant nothing to her, but she was happy to see him happy. more tomorrow

We need to move on, but we also need to stay here and look some more. It seems that we should split up.”

“I agree.”

“If I listed the places I to went yesterday, you could visit them again today. And tonight you could make the rounds where the street musicians congregate.”

“I could do that,” Susyn said, with merry mischief in her eyes. “Why are you being so reticent, General? Why no orders?”

“I’m trying to cut back.”

“Thank you, Ian.”

“If you stay here, I can go on to Montreaux and do the same thing there. If either of us finds anything significant, we can telephone. Montreaux is only about an hour away by train.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The waiter brought our food and moved away again. Susyn stretched mightily, and said, “I really needed that night’s sleep. I hardly slept at all on the train.”

“I did.”

“I know, I heard you!” She broke a piece of bread and buttered it. “This is all new to you isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Luxury. This hotel, breakfast on the terrace, that kind of thing. Not that this is really luxurious, but you seem to think it is.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Now don’t get embarrassed. You haven’t been tucking the tablecloth into your pants. You just don’t look comfortable.”

Life isn’t all one thing or another. My immediate attention had been spent on finding Raven, and thinking about what our time together had meant filled up the rest of my hours. But my other reactions were equally valid, however little I had been paying attention to them. I was uncomfortable, now that I thought about it.

Susyn was patient while I considered the matter. “I think,” I said, “that it is not so much a matter of discomfort as it is caution. I’m living well on Senator Cabral’s money, but if we find Raven tomorrow, I’ll be back on my own. This is the kind of life I would like to become accustomed to, but until I can pay my own way, I don’t want to get too used to it.”

“So if you don’t like being poor, why not get a job?”

“I am.” I explained that I was waiting to be posted to a consulate. Susyn was so easy to talk to and so comfortable to be with, that it was hard to remember that we knew nothing about each other. “But there is more to it than that. I like this, good food, good company, good scenery, but it’s froth, not beer. If we were walking along the quai de Belgique instead of sitting here, and eating a fresh loaf of bread instead of this meal, the sun would be as warm, the lake would be as blue, and you would be just as lovely.”

Susyn smiled like sunlight, squeezed my arm, and said, “You old charmer.”

*       *       *

In Paris, the Orsey museum is in a converted train station. There, in a room dedicated to the salon painters of the late nineteenth century, is a statue of a nude young girl or nymph. I don’t remember which, but it doesn’t matter; in sculpture, each is a metaphor for the other. She is slender, but fully formed; a girl just five minutes into womanhood. She is half kneeling, obviously just risen from her bath. She is holding her hair up with her hands. It falls through her fingers in strands so limp that even the stone looks wet. Her eyes look out at you from under a cascade of marble tresses with impish sensuality. The sculptor has caught the very essence of innocent awakening in her eyes and her grin. It’s the only statue I ever saw grin.

You could go to the Orsey forty times for the cost of last night’s suite. Money has little to do with living a rich life. more tomorrow

We wandered around Lausanne. There were no street musicians along quai de Belgique. There were plenty of tourists, but there was no single sight to concentrate them. In the area around the Cathedral, the Château Saint Maire, and along Place de la Palud and the Place St-François we found four guitarists, a flautist, a folk harpist, and an untidy group of Peruvian pan-pipers. Eric was not there.

I parked Susyn on a bench and went to work. It took time. These were the musicians’ prime hours. If I interrupted them with questions, it would make them resentful, so I had to wait around for one of them to take a break.

The flautist quit first, and I could see why. In the ten minutes I watched her, she got only a few francs in tips. I moved up to her as she was pulling her flute apart and putting it back in it’s case. She was like NORAD, all antennae and sensors, with a strong defensive perimeter. Even though Europe is kinder than America, a young woman traveling alone has to be cautious. I squatted down at a comfortable distance, just out of reach, like I would have with a frightened animal, and showed her Raven’s picture. She hadn’t seen her, or at least she made that claim.

“I’m looking for her for her father.”

The flautist shrugged. We had not exchanged names, and it did not seem likely that we would. I had to do something to penetrate her shield of suspicion, so I embellished the truth. A lot, actually. I said that she had fought with her father, but that her father had fallen ill, and had sent me to find her and tell her that all was forgiven. Perhaps it was not an inspired story. It only made her draw further into her shell.

A young couple down the street were closing up shop for the night, so I approached them. They, too, were shielded, but benignly, by their mutual involvement. He was a fairly good guitarist and she had sung with a small, sweet voice. From moment to moment, they found little ways to touch each other. They were so obviously in love that they shone like a lantern. I saw that the guitar case was well filled with coins. I wasn’t surprised. On a warm summer night, beneath the towering silhouette of the Cathedral, in Europe, the sweet sound of her voice and the sweeter radiance of their affection completed a seamless ambiance of romance. No wonder the passing tourists smiled a little more, held hands a little tighter, and tossed a coin into his guitar case as they passed.

The young guitarist told me that he had seen Eric and Raven at the small hotel where they were staying last night. They had come in late and had been turned away. Eric had asked the guitarist and his girlfriend if there were any other accommodations nearby, and had mentioned being enroute to Montreaux.

I spent the rest of the night asking questions, but that was the closest I got to a lead.

*       *       *

We slept well, in separate rooms. At nine the next morning, we had breakfast on the terrace again and outlined our plans. Susyn had picked up schedules for trains and lake steamers, which I studied briefly.

“We don’t know that they went to Montreaux,” I said, “but we do know that they came to Lausanne. We need to move on, but we also need to stay here and look some more. It seems that we should split up.” more tomorrow

Susyn had had the film developed, and the lab had reworked the photo of the three of us. Now I had a pocketful of grainy blowups of Raven and another batch of Eric. I took them around town. No one at the hostel had seen either of them. Likewise at the campgrounds at the edge of the city. I stopped at a bookstore and bought the three most popular English language European guidebooks, and set out to canvass all the hotels they recommended. At noon, I met Susyn to report no progress, then continued through the afternoon, finally ending up by circling the six block area around the train station looking into all the hotels there. By evening, I had found nothing.

Susyn had booked a suite of rooms. I met her in the hotel lobby and she took me out to dinner. I told her the story of my wasted day, and she told me about all the progress she hadn’t made.

“It doesn’t look good,” I said. “This was our best bet. We knew which city they were going to. From here, they could go east or west, to Montreaux or to Geneva. Or they could have gone in those directions and not stopped at either, which means they could be anywhere in Europe by now. They could take the train, or the lake steamers, or they could have rented a car, or hitchhiked.”

Susyn looked disgusted. “I thought you said you could find her.”

“I said I knew how and where to look. But even in that, I was wrong. I was thinking of the way we were traveling when we were together, to stretch out my money until the Senator called her back home. I hadn’t thought about her credit card. Money opens up her options completely; she could even have flown back to California by now.”

We were on a terrace overlooking Lac Léman. The service was good and the food was excellent, but it was all wasted on me.

Susyn finally said, “It isn’t your fault. Without you, I wouldn’t have known where to start. And we have to keep looking.”

“Of course we do. I never considered giving up.”

“I had your pack taken up to the suite.” She was trying to be civil, so I smiled and nodded. “The porter looked a bit askance.”

“I’ll bet he did. Did a tip soothe his sensibilities?”

“Yes. Nicely.”

“Good for him.”

“Come up and rest. We’ll try again in the morning.”

I shook my head. “You go rest. There is nothing else for you to do tonight, but I have to make the rounds where the tourists are taking their evening strolls. If Eric is in Luisanne, that’s where he should be, making a living.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Susyn looked good. The appreciation of feminine beauty is not dulled by a blighted romance; it is only made bittersweet. Despite my feelings for Raven, I wanted to take Susyn’s hand and bring a smile back to her face. And I felt guilty about it, but that guilt was sweetened by the faint taste of revenge. Tonight, I was vulnerable in ways I didn’t want to be vulnerable.

We argued, but I didn’t put up much of a fight. In the end, Susyn went with me. more tomorrow

Chapter Seventeen

I sent Susyn back to her hotel with instructions to find the quickest means of developing a roll of film. I had discovered two exposed rolls in my pocket the morning Raven left. I had been carrying them for her, and on one of them was the picture of Raven, Eric, and me in the cafe at Monmarte.

I went to the youth hostel. The hours of lockout were past, and the eating area that doubled as a lounge had filled up with kids and a few older travelers who looked like a cross between bird watchers and overage hippies. Except for the Americans, most of them were at least bilingual. Since I spoke English and German, and a hundred words of French, I managed to talk to everyone who had known Eric. As I had seen for myself, Eric was a shy one; but all of the girls remembered him.

I stayed for the obligatory spaghetti supper, then called Susyn. She met me at the gare, and we took the night train for Lausanne. Susyn had engaged a first class couchette, so we had privacy and bunk beds to sleep in. She found it crowded. I was used to sleeping sitting up in a day compartment, but I didn’t point that out to her.

Susyn had opened her suitcase and taken out a negligee before she realized that there was no bathroom in which to change. She caught my eye, and looked embarrassed for the first time. I said, “I’ll step outside. Will fifteen minutes be enough?”

She smiled, then added, “I’m not used to sleeping with a man – under these conditions.”

I said, “You’ve never been safer.”

I stood in the aisleway with the broad window down, smelling the damp air and mild pollution of the industrial section of Paris as we eased out toward the edge of the city, and thought about my last night with Raven.

*       *       *

We arrived in Lausanne about seven in the morning, after a lovely ride up the tree clad valleys of the foothills of the Alps. I managed a shave and a rag bath since I had no idea when I would see a shower again. I have no idea what Susyn did. Most of my mind had shut down. One small section was reserved for doing the little things that required my immediate attention, like shaving and not walking into walls. The the rest of my mind wrestled with the problem of my life and what, if anything, it meant to Raven.

In the station, I told Susyn that she should find out if there was a consulate, an American Express, or anything else she could think of which Raven might have visited. I would check out youth hostels, campgrounds, cheap hotels, and find out where a street musician would be likely to hang out.

Susyn said, “Yessir. Should I salute, or just go quietly about my business?”

She looked amused and angry at once. I said, “Sorry.”

“You sure are a bossy bastard.”

“I said I’m sorry. What do you want from me?”

“I want to know that you know that I’m not a helpless hanger-on. If you weren’t available, I’d be doing this on my own.”

I wanted to apologize properly and get things back on a friendly basis, but I couldn’t. My mind wanted to normalize relations; my hands wanted to slap her. Or maybe Raven. But Raven wasn’t here and Susyn was. In the end, I just grunted and told her where I would meet her later. more tomorrow

Susyn sipped, put her cup neatly back into its saucer and continued. “Up to that point, Raven was in no danger. But then the P.I. tried to extort another payment from Brock, and Brock stepped on him. To save his life, the P.I. claimed to have arranged to have copies of his report sent to Raven if anything happened to him.”

Susyn made a gesture of distaste. “Things had gone too far for that. Brock had him killed anyway. Then he went after Raven.”

“But she didn’t have any knowledge of any of this,” I said. “If she had known, she would have told me.”

“It doesn’t matter, Ian. Brock can’t take any chances. That is why I’m here. Senator Cabral sent me to bring Raven back. He has arranged a place of safety until his FBI friends can build an airtight case against Brock and arrest him.”

So that was it. Everything that had happened made sense now. If only I had called Will one day earlier, Raven would be sitting here with us, and by tomorrow she would be safely home.

Briefly, without the details of our love life, I told Susyn what had happened since we left Marseille, including the fact that Raven had apparently taken up with Eric.

She shook her head and said, “No, Ian, this just won’t do.”

“I’m afraid it will have to do. Anyway, Raven will call home again sooner or later, and get the same message you came here to give her. Meanwhile, she is lost somewhere in Europe. If I can’t find her, neither can those two who have been after us.”

“No, Ian, no. It isn’t just two thugs anymore. It isn’t like the cocaine trade. Brock doesn’t import, he exports; and he has called on all his European distributors. There must be a hundred people looking for Raven now, all over Europe. Sooner or later, one of them will see her.”

I put my finger gently on Susyn’s lips and said, “Don’t talk for a couple of minutes, OK?” Then I stared out into the street, seeing nothing, and thought furiously. It could work exactly that way. Europe is huge, but there would be no need to cover it all. Forget Eastern Europe. Forget any area given extensively to industry. Likewise, forget the purely farming country. Forget the small cities; there are too many of them. Forget Paris and London, where the whole city is a museum of history and culture. Pick the cities like Munich where the old town survives or has been rebuilt. Concentrate on the places every tourist sees. Send agents around with a picture of her and some plausible story – a young man looking for his missing lover; an old man looking for his missing daughter. Get a standard guidebook to Europe and go to the tourist information centers in the major tourist cities. Go to the youth hostels and the campgrounds.

Europe is huge, but tourist Europe is small.

The Europe of student wanderers is smaller still. The typical medium sized city has hundreds of hotels, but only one youth hostel, and one or two campgrounds. It could be done. It was the way I would chose, if I were to search for her.

Susyn said, “Well?”

“They could find her, so I have to find her first.”

“Good! I knew you would.”

“I’ll need money. I can’t worry about pinching pennies now.”

“Done.” She opened her purse and gave me a fistful of francs.  I counted them out and she made a note of the transaction. “If you need more, just ask.”

“How will I contact you? Will you be staying in Paris?”

“I am going with you.”

That was a new thought. I considered it briefly, then said, “Okay, with reservations.”

“Such as?”

“There are certain skills involved in living close to the ground, and a great deal of discomfort. Raven was just beginning to learn them. If I am to be effective in tracking Raven, I can’t take time to worry about you.

“I know where she went and who she went with, so we might have her back by tomorrow. Or she may stay one step ahead of us, and it might take weeks. If you want to come along, that’s fine, but don’t get in my way. Better still, we’ll split up the work and stay out of each other’s way. You go to the consulates, and the police, and American Express, and I’ll go to the hostels, campgrounds, and hangouts.”

“That will be great. I really appreciate this, and so will the Senator.”

I nodded politely, but I was thinking about Raven, not about the gratitude of strangers. I said, “Let’s get on with it.” more tomorrow