Will reached over the seat to nudge me awake when we reached the outskirts of Nimes. I shook the sleep out of my eyes and told Will the last thing that had been on my mind when I drifted off. I was leaving the automatic with him, to hold for me. When we were in immediate danger, I had wanted it handy, but carrying a concealed weapon around Europe is just plain crazy. France isn’t the wild west; it isn’t even Tulsa, Oklahoma. The French take a dim view of people with unregistered guns. Possession could lead to a long stay in a small, steel room.

I unkinked painfully and crawled out of the back seat. Will and Raven got the packs while I went to the ticket window. The train station was nearly deserted at three in the morning. There were a few kids scattered around, sprawled in the corners or stretched out on top of sleeping bags with their heads pillowed on their packs, catching a free night of sleep while they waited – or pretended to wait – for their trains to come in. I bought two tickets to Valence, the two more from Avignon to Nice. I stuffed the second pair in my jeans and rejoined Will and Raven.

Raven reached out and I took her hand. Then she smiled oddly and took Will’s hand also. She said, “I want to apologize to both of you about today; yesterday, I mean. Sometimes I’m pretty much of a bitch, and I get jealous if I am ignored.”

Will smiled and said, “Who could ignore you?”

“You and Ian did.”

“We were just catching up on each other’s lives,” Will said.

“I know. That’s why I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean to play you against each other.”

I didn’t say anything. I was surveying the platform for anyone who looked suspicious. It seemed to me that there was a little truth in Raven’s apology, and a great deal more of deception, but this was no time to discuss it.

In the distance, the train was coming. It’s one burning eye lit up the night, and there was a slight trembling of the concrete platform. A slender man with close cropped gray hair, a rumpled business suit, and a newspaper stuffed under his arm came out of the station. He was followed by three kids who were struggling into their oversized packs and shaking the sleep from their eyes. The kids had been here before us. The man had not. He had come from the direction of the parking lot. He was probably a local businessman on his way to Lyon or Paris. Probably. But he could also have followed us here by automobile.

If you are going to be paranoid, it makes no sense to go half way. I smiled at Raven, and memorized the man’s face while looking past her shoulder.

The train came in with a whoosh that sent dry leaves and candy wrappers swirling about the platform. I caught Will’s hand and said, “Thanks.”

“Any time, Ian. You know that. But how do you keep falling into these things?”

“Just lucky, I guess.” I grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll miss you.”

“Keep Raven safe.”

“That is my first priority.” more tomorrow

My eyes were growing heavy. The pain was receding. I was going back to those long rides home from St. Cloud.

Then the scene changed to nightmare.

There had been one ride I had missed. I had stayed with friends that night so I wouldn’t miss an important baseball game. My parents and my sister Sharon had gone to St. Cloud to see a movie. Coming home, my father lost control of the car.  It plowed into a ditch and caught fire. Father had escaped, taking Sharon with him. My mother had never made it out.

That night had been the end of my childhood. My father had been driving drunk. Again. While the matter was still under investigation, he took his jeep and canoe and went north. To Canada, I suppose. We never saw him again.

Now that memory caught me unaware, sliding in on the moist Mediterranean wind. I was shaking and one sob broke out, almost like a hiccough. I cut it off. This was a pain I didn’t share with anyone; not even Raven; not even Will.

Raven looked back over the seat and said, “Are you all right?”

“Sure. I just hit my hand when I moved.”

She turned forward again. I stared out the back window at the anonymous car headlights, which might be enemies, probably were strangers, and certainly were not friends.

#          #          #

We drove through Martigues, the “Venice of France”. It was supposed to be a lovely village, but at 2 AM, who could tell. The flat sheen of Barre Lagoon was like a dull mirror in the moonlight off to the right. The opposite side was a modernistic nightmare of shipping and industrial silhouettes.

Will said, “Are you sure this is wise, or necessary? I feel like a fool.”

“Are you thinking about what you will tell your boss?”

“Well, yes; frankly, I am.”

“Tell him you put us both on the train for Paris, but I wasn’t willing to travel directly out of Marseille and insisted that you drive us to Nimes instead. Tell them that I was afraid Davis and his buddy would sneak on the train with us if we left from the St. Charles station. Every word will be true.”

The main line from Paris follows the valley of the Rhone southward to Avignon where it splits. One branch goes east through Marseille and on toward Italy. The other branch goes west through Nimes and on to Spain. We were crossing from one branch to the other before heading north.

“Where are you really going?”

“We haven’t discussed it. I have an immediate destination in mind, but I won’t tell you. Then you can say with a clear conscience that you don’t know.”

“Great! I’m sure they will understand your thinking if they ever hear the full story.”

I didn’t like the bitterness in Will’s voice, or the way he had so easily and quickly slipped into the habit of referring all decisions to his superiors. I said, “There is no reason for them to ever hear it.”

We passed through Arles, crossed the Rhone, and bored northwestward through the darkness. Raven was asleep and I was beginning to drift off. I pulled the clip, emptied the chamber, placed the loose cartridge back in the clip, replaced the clip, lowered the hammer and locked the safety. Then I slept. more tomorrow

Chapter Eleven

By the time Will came back, it was past midnight. There was a flight from Paris, with connections for New York and then San Francisco, leaving at one PM. “There is a train leaving for Paris in an hour,” Will added. “You could make it easily.”

I said to Raven, “It’s up to you, but either way, there is no turning back.”

She smiled. “I’m staying. I’m not finished with Europe yet, or with you.”

“What are you two talking about?”

I said I would explain in the car. Will carried my pack; Raven carried her own along with the cardboard box holding holster and ammunition. I walked with my arms crossed, ostentatiously carrying my injured hand across my chest so I could conceal my left hand and the .45. The gear went into the boot, Raven rode shotgun, and I squeezed into the back to watch behind us as Will pulled away.

“Where to?”

“The train station,” I said and explained what we had in mind. Will did not agree. He thought Raven should head home. He and Raven argued while I kept a watch out the back window.

Midweek and past midnight, Marseille was still alive. The drive up la Canebiere and Blvd. D’Athenes was a kaleidoscope of images; great trees black above the street lights, revelers, streetwalkers, and an occasional tourist looking nervous, Disneyesque, and out of place. A dangerous city at night, I had been told. It had certainly proved so for Raven and me, but I was unhappy to be leaving it before I had really had time to know it.

Kids with their backpacks were sprawled on their sleeping bags on the high steps outside Gare St. Charles as Will circled up to the parking lot. Raven and I waited in the car. Three other cars had rolled into the parking lot with us. I watched the two that had parked and worried about the one that had circled and exited again. It might have parked down below out of sight. I didn’t like being caught in the cramped back seat, but I could hardly lean up against the fender in the parking lot of a busy train station with a gun in my hand.

Eventually, Will came back with a handful of train schedules.  He pulled out and I watched to see if anyone was following. We soon had a half dozen new sets of headlights behind us. I gave up. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell one car from another. I used a flashlight to study the schedules while I devised a plan of action.

Will drove skillfully through the streets of Marseille. Soon we were out of the city and crossing the marshy delta of the Rhone. He headed down the shoreline road past la Couronne before heading up to Martigues and the Barre Lagoon. We had all four windows open, and the warm, moist, Mediterranean air swirled through the car. Raven and Will were silent. There was no sound but the wind, the motor humming, and the occasional swish of a passing car. I leaned against the right hand door and watched out the back and side windows with the automatic cradled in my lap. I might have been lulled to sleep if it had not been for the throbbing in my hand.

There is a feeling in a night drive that is like no other feeling. The sound of humming tires induces it; the warm heaviness of the air, the darkness beyond the car, and the tiny, friendly lights from the dash make it complete. It is a child’s feeling. Drivers catch the edge of it, but to know it fully you have to be in the back seat, insulated from responsibility. It is a form of time travel. It will send you back to those days when your rode home, half asleep, stretched out in the back seat while your parents conversation dwindled to a meaningless buzz and the thickness of the air was so palpable that it slid in and out of your throat like oil.

My eyes were growing heavy. The pain was receding. I was going back to those long rides home from St. Cloud.

Then the scene changed to nightmare. more tomorrow

It was a new idea for Raven. She asked the obvious questions.  “What makes you think they can’t trace me here in Europe. I can’t even go to the police for help anywhere but Spain or England because I don’t speak the languages. I would be more helpless than ever.”

“No. Take my word for it, because I’ve done it. Once you leave Marseille you can go anywhere in Europe without leaving a trail. Border crossings are no problem. They just look at your passport and hand it back to you. They don’t even attempt to record the millions of people who go from country to country every day. If you pay with cash, there is no record of where you have gone or what you have done. Stay away from the Holiday Inn. Live in youth hostels, small cheap hotels, or campgrounds, and you can go underground easily. I think it is the safest thing for you to do.”

She smiled slowly. “With you?”

“With me.”

“Ulterior motives?”

“Tons of them.”

“Then I’ll do it!”

#          #          #

My hand was beginning to throb. If Skinny had cut a little deeper, he would have severed all those tendons and I would be heading for a hospital and reconstructive surgery. It was not a pleasant thought.

I said, “You’ll have to pack for me,” and sent Raven forward.  Beyond the main cabin was the door to the W.C., and beyond that was the forecastle. Will and I had completed it with two pipe bunks, but we never slept there. It was packed full of personal gear and boxes of canned goods. Raven brought back the cardboard box marked camping.

“Get out both packs.” They were internal frame rucksacks, sturdy and small enough to squeeze overhead in a train or bus. In went two down sleeping bags stuffed inside rolled up Ensolite pads, a tent, two rain parkas, a spare pair of jeans, shirt, underwear, and socks for me, a packet of maps and guidebooks, a tiny packet with soap and razor, a coil of nylon line and packet of miniature clothespins, and two small towels.

When Raven had finished, the packs were still half empty. She said, “Is that all?”

“We need to buy you one more pair of jeans and shirt, and maybe replace those sandals with something more sturdy. Other than that, this is all we’ll be carrying.”

I had her slip into Will’s pack and adjusted the straps to her. Then I showed her how to remove the backrest above the port transom. There was a locked secret compartment; I gave her the combination and she pulled out a slim money belt.

“Raven,” I said as I zipped it open and counted the contents, “you have to understand the ground rules. I have three thousand dollars American. By hitchhiking, staying in youth hostels and campgrounds, and never eating in restaurants I had planned to stretch that over several months. A typical pair of tourists would go through it in less than a week. You have to be willing to do things my way or we will run out of money.”

“I can do that.”

“You say you can, but I saw what you paid for those clothes.”

“They were reasonably priced.”

“To you; by the standards you are used to. Not by the new standards you have to learn. For the next few weeks, you are going to deliberately become a street person. Are you ready for that?”

She thought about it. “I guess so. I have to be.”

“No, you don’t. You can fly home.”

” ‘Into the lion’s mouth.’ Quoting you.”

“I think you are safer with me. But if you go with me and can’t live like I live, you won’t be able to back out. There won’t be enough money to get home. You’ll have to go to another consulate, call home, and wait for money to be sent. If you are going to back out, it had better be now.”

She answered by leaning over and kissing me lightly on the lips. more tomorrow

“Ms. Cabral could move into the consulate.”
Raven shook her head. “Prison, you mean.”

“As you will. It is your life.”

I didn’t say anything else. Cummings argued for an immediate flight home. I couldn’t make up my mind if he thought that was better for Raven, or better for the consulate. Probably both. I had ideas of my own, but I didn’t plan to bring them up until later. Raven kept looking at me, as if for advice. I ignored her. Raven seemed hurt and Will looked troubled.

Eventually, as I had thought he would, Evan talked Raven into leaving immediately. I said, “Why don’t we do it this way. It’s nearly eleven. Will can take Evan home. Those two won’t be back tonight, and we can bolt the hatch. Will can call the airport at Paris for flight information, then come back and pick us up. Raven can probably be out of France by morning.”

“Money?”

“I’m bankrolled for a couple of months of hitchhiking around Europe. I’ll loan Raven the price of the ticket and she can wire my repayment as soon as she gets home.”

“That would work. Is that all right with you, Ms. Cabral?”

“Yes.” She didn’t sound enthusiastic.

After they were gone, I bolted the hatch and squeezed into the engine room. It was a tiny cubicle with an air cooled Petter engine and a forty gallon tank of diesel. By lying back against the engine, I could reach a combination padlock on a door set in the front bulkhead. It was our bonded stores locker. Many things are illegal in many places, but not always the same things. You can’t bring handguns into Canada or liquor into Egypt, so you need a place for port authorities to put them under seal until you leave. I pulled out a small cardboard box and relocked the door.

“Raven,” I said as I sat down on the transom, “I wasn’t straight with you while Evan was here. I wanted to talk to you in private instead.”

“All right.”

I fumbled my jackknife out with my left hand and slit the tape on the box. Inside was a .45 caliber Colt automatic, two fifty round boxes of ammunition, two spare clips, both full, and a holster. Raven’s eyes had gotten big again, so I explained, “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. I used this in the Army, and later when I worked as a guard, so I brought it along. I thought I might need it if I got posted someplace like Lebanon or Nicaragua.”

“It didn’t do you much good tonight.”

“That’s the trouble with handguns; they’re never there when you need them. Look, I don’t think going home to California is the best way out for you.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier.”

“I thought it best for Evan to think you were leaving. If you go back, you will be a sitting duck for an enemy you don’t know.”

“I know them.”

“You only know the henchmen, not whoever is behind them. Whoever hired them could hire someone else. Probably will, now that you know their faces. If you go back, you won’t know who to trust, but they will know where you are.”

“I can’t run forever.”

“No one said you should, but there is no reason you can’t run for a while. Let your father call on his FBI connections and use his clout as Senator. Let him find out who is behind these attacks. You stay out of it.”

“Where?”

“With me. Call your father. Tell him what happened, and tell him that you will stay in touch. Assume his phone is tapped and don’t tell him where you are. Call back once a week. When things are safe again, then you can go home.” more tomorrow

Chapter Ten

The American consulate in Marseille deals mostly with stranded sailors, lost passports, and with keeping track of seamen who are jailed for fighting, petty theft, or public drunkenness. There is no ambassador in residence – that is what makes the difference between a consulate and an embassy. No treaties are negotiated there and there is little espionage. Occasionally a tourist gets robbed and needs help getting more money from home, but excitement is not a normal state of affairs.

It must have been something of a break in the boredom for the staff to find that Raven’s attackers had followed her to Marseille and tried again.

I had left Raven under the protection of the fishermen while I went to a pay phone. I hid my sliced and quickly bandaged hand inside my shirt. The bloody rag would have brought police inquiries that my limited French could not have coped with. The duty officer was Malcolm Hamlin, called Maui. He called the consul, probably because a state senator’s daughter was involved, and then called Will and Evan Cummings.

Will and Evan showed up together in Will’s Renault, with a French doctor squeezed into the back seat. He took one look at the bloody bandage, shook his head, and went to work. It was an ugly wound, cutting clear across the back of my right hand. He told me to move my fingers. I could see the tendons working like little hard white snakes in an oozing pool of red. He led me to the sink and poured half a bottle of Betadine over the wound. Sweat popped out on my face and my legs got rubbery. Then he slipped on rubber gloves, took out some forceps, and broke open a prepackaged needle-and-thread.

Maybe medical customs are different in France and maybe he just forgot. Or thought I was tough. He didn’t use anesthetic. I sat chewing on my lip while he took three dozen neat little stitches.

Raven watched it all. She sat pale and stiff with one hand folded in her lap and the other holding my left one in a death grip. She looked scared and sickened, but she never turned away. I was proud of her.

The doctor stripped off his gloves and packed his gear. I could hear soft voices beyond the hatch conversing in French, and saw the vague silhouette of a uniformed figure on the deck. The doctor went up and the police came down. There were two of them. They sat on opposite transoms. Evan Cummings stood in the hatch to translate. There wasn’t room below for Will.

It took nearly an hour to satisfy them. I would not have wanted to tell that story without Will and Evan standing by for support. I don’t think they completely believed us, but they agreed to circulate a description of Davis and his partner.

After they left, Will joined us in the cabin. Evan said, “I have two questions, one major and one minor. The minor first:  how did those two know Raven had survived, and how did they know where she was? Who knew?”

Raven said, “I told my father and his secretary, but I didn’t swear anyone to secrecy. Chances are everyone in my father’s office knew in ten minutes, and one of them could easily have leaked it to the news media. Sacramento is like a little Washington; everybody knows everybody, and a favor today is an investment against tomorrow. Anyone wanting to get in good with the media would see this as juicy and harmless. They could leak it without feeling disloyal. Stan Atkinson probably read it on the six o’clock news.”

Evan shook his head, but did not voice his disappointment or disapproval. Appropriately diplomatic, as a foreign service officer should be. He said, “Question two – the big one. Wouldn’t you be safer if you got on the next plane for Sacramento?”

“Would she?” I asked. “If we can assume anything from what we know, it would be that the attack was ordered from there. She would be sticking her head back into the lion’s mouth.”

“The other alternative would be for Ms. Cabral to move into the consulate where she could have a Marine guard.”

Raven shook her head. “Prison, you mean.” more tomorrow