The Same River Twice (41 page)

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Groot confided to Allegra. “I could easily have wrecked our boat.”

“What, you mean you did it just for the rush?”

Groot smiled. “That’s right. For the rush.”

The rest of the passage was smooth going. While Allegra napped in the aft hammock, Max leaned over the side, unable to resist filming the water. It had such variety of color and shimmer, as if it were itself a film or, perhaps, a sly commentary on the light that made film and everything else possible. Then, to his astonishment, an enormous fish—a carp, he thought—leapt from the water, thrashing furiously in the air before splashing back in again, just a few feet away. A sign, had he believed in such things. Anyway, he’d gotten it on camera.

He took a break, keeping Groot company at the helm.

The weeping willows and greenery lining the banks soon were replaced by an ugly sprawl of concrete yards, abandoned industrial parks, ad-hoc dumping grounds, and high-rise buildings with cheap office space. Then, quite suddenly, they were in Paris, passing under the first of the city’s
bridges. Rachel and Allegra emerged from the companionway with a pair of binoculars.

“They’re superpowerful,” Rachel was saying, “so you have to hold them very steady. But they’re especially good just before twilight, like now.”

The girls joined Groot and Max on the bridge, and, fitting her eyes to the instrument, Allegra began a slow survey of her surrounds. “Wow!” she said. “Unreal!”

No one spoke. They passed under the bridges in the appointed order: Grenelle, Bir-Hakeim, Iéna, Passarelle Debilly. When they reached the westernmost tip of Île de la Cité, Allegra inhaled sharply. “Dad?”

“What is it?”

“I can see Odile! She’s waiting for us on the quai! Right by the berth!”

“I guess she missed us,” said Max. “What else?”

“Her hair. She’s cut it very short. And she … I’m not sure. Here. You’d better look.” She handed him the binoculars and walked off, not waiting for a verdict.

It took Max some time to refocus the glasses and find her, but when he did he saw at once what Allegra meant. Odile had been crying—her eyes were rimmed with red—and she was attempting to light a cigarette: two things she almost never did and would certainly never admit to. As he watched, she gave up on the cigarette and, defeated by the river breeze, threw it pettishly to the ground. Max lowered the binoculars.

It was time to film.

THAT NIGHT, despite a double dose of sedatives washed down with brandy, Odile lay in bed sleepless, her mind churning. Again and again she looked at Max stretched out beside her in apparent peace and wondered if she shouldn’t tell him everything. No doubt he had guessed at her affair with Turner by now, but that—and perhaps he’d sensed this too—was hardly everything. Turner had said that if they didn’t produce Gabriella and Thierry for the Russians by Thursday, they’d be fucked. And Thursday it now was. She hoped with an urgency verging on prayer that Max had given up his idea of attending the auction that evening; probably he hadn’t been serious about it in the first place, but certainly nothing would induce her to accompany him now. Toward dawn, she fell into a thin sleep that gave her no peace.

Max had a backers’ meeting in Tours that day and left early in the car. Allegra set out shortly after, claiming that she was going to the Centre Pompidou to see the Brassaï show. When Odile was finally alone, she made sure her cell phone was off and set to work on Fatima’s wedding dress. A tightly cross-wrapped sheath of white taffeta with linen-mesh eyeholes distributed liberally across the bodice and hips, it was coming along, better than she’d envisioned it.

Shortly past two o’clock there arose outside a curiously wavering banshee wail. Although she’d never heard it before—in La Santé’s century and a half of existence only two escapes had occurred—she knew at once that it
must be the prison alarm. Not much later, she heard the dull, relentless thudding of a helicopter and she went outside to take a look.

At first there was nothing to see, the prison’s crises as shut off from the world as its inmates. The helicopter made a slow, banking circuit of the area, looking for escapees, she supposed, then moved into position over the central courtyard. From there, the copilot leaned out the open side of the chopper and, rather haphazardly, it seemed to Odile, dropped three tear-gas canisters in succession. Curious to see what this was meant to accomplish since the inmates were now surely under lockdown—unless they had taken over the prison completely, a virtual impossibility—Odile walked the length of the Arago side of the facility and turned left onto rue Messier just in time to see a stream of prison personnel, nonsecurity staff by the looks of them, emerge from the main entrance with handkerchiefs held over their faces. She couldn’t help but laugh—another triumph for French bureaucracy—and briefly wished Max was there to share her amusement. But then she saw something that stopped her cold.

Exiting the prison with the others, looking extremely annoyed, was a balding middle-aged man in a white lab coat and black slacks. In one hand he held a pair of black-framed eyeglasses, while with the other he rubbed his eyes and nose. Odile at once recognized him as the doctor whose picture the police had shown to Rachel—and, inadvertently, to Max’s camera—aboard the
Nachtvlinder
. She backed farther down the street, out of his sight, such as it was at the moment, and produced her cell phone, intending to call Turner. Before she could punch his number in, however, she saw he’d left eight messages that morning. She closed the phone without listening to them.

The man walked back and forth at some distance from the others, still rubbing his eyes and muttering to himself. Since he obviously wasn’t a prisoner, Odile, recalling what Eddie had said at last week’s dinner party, concluded that he was working in La Santé’s medical research program, the one involving prison volunteers. Why the police should be after him was a matter she was still considering when, not twenty feet ahead of her, a taxi pulled up and Thierry Colin got out, shoving money into the driver’s hand. He then made straight for the doctor, who appeared greatly relieved to see him. They embraced three times, in the Russian manner, and began conversing rapidly in French.

This is it!
Odile thought.
This is it
.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she transported herself to the spot where the two men stood talking and, offering no apology, broke immediately
into their exchange. “Hello, gentlemen. Thierry, I’ve been looking for you everywhere, and I’m hardly the only one. We have to talk. Immediately.”

Thierry stared at her, trying to decide what she knew, and Odile began to realize, under his gaze, just how much she actually might. He excused himself to his friend, walked a short distance with Odile, turned to her, and, with his arms folded across his chest, awaited her words. His recently shaved head and rimless spectacles made him seem to sparkle slightly, like a candy Easter chick.

“The police are after your doctor friend,” she began. “The Russians are after you and Gabriella both. Two days ago Turner was tortured by two Russian thugs who hoped he’d give you up, as he might have, had he known where you were. And then, of course, there’s the doctor over there, who I’m willing to bet is a Belarussian citizen.” She took a deep breath. “Should I go on?”

“No, that will do. Tell me what it is you want.”

“The bear and not the shit.”

Thierry looked bemused. “You ask a lot.”

She shrugged. “Yes, but as one no longer uninvolved in your side project, I’m obliged, you see, to make rash requests.”

Together they turned to look at the doctor, who’d shed his lab coat, unbuttoned his shirt, and was furiously scratching his chest, sides, and neck.

“The gas,” said Odile. “It’s a new compound, I’m told.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to like it much, does he?”

She thought for a moment. “Listen, Thierry. I live just two blocks away. Why don’t the three of us go there. Your friend can take a bath, and you and I can have a few words in private, a few rather
necessary
words, yes?”

He peered at her through his crystalline glasses, as though she represented something new to his experience, then consulted his watch. “I’ll tell him,” he said.

After a brief conversation, Thierry brought him over to Odile. “Odile Mével, Doctor Aleksandr Tregobov. Sasha, my friend and colleague Odile represents the same interests we do and would like to help us. We’ll go to her place, just around the corner. You can wash up.”

Looking vastly relieved, Tregobov shook her hand. “I am most grateful,” he said in heavily accented French. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, what little I can do.”

Walking to the apartment, Tregobov explained what had happened at
the prison. “Despite its reputation for filthiness and brutality, La Santé seems to me a very permissive facility, at least compared to institutions in my country.” He was sweating profusely and still seemed somewhat dazed. “For instance, when the inmates are allowed to walk for exercise, they can mingle as they wish instead of being forced to walk two by two, arms behind their backs, as in most prisons. In any case, today, after the exercise period, three men were said to be missing. Then a head count was taken, and no one seemed to be missing after all. After that, the gas. No one knows why. A kind of farce, you know, but very disruptive. I must get out of there.”

“You’re working in the research program?” asked Odile.

“Yes, but only because—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Thierry interrupted.

Odile punched in the code at the mews’ front gate. As they passed the anarchists’ door, she cast a surreptitious glance at the adjacent window, but no one seemed to be home and the computer screens were dark. Going on, she led Thierry and his friend into the apartment.

Then, once Tregobov had been provided with towel, washcloth, and dressing gown, his clothes had been thrown into the washing machine, he’d retired to the bathroom, and the bathtub faucet had begun to run, Odile brought Thierry into the living room, where he occupied the same spot on the sofa that Turner had half a lifetime ago. She remained standing.

“So,” she said, “you know a man named Kukushkin, a banker of sorts who perhaps has other talents as well?”

Thierry looked glum.

“That’s all right, I know you know him.” She began to pace, anger rising slowly in her like a taint of the blood. “Your cousin worked for Kukushkin,” she said. “You were working nights for Broch, paying off a gambling debt, if I’m not mistaken, maybe—is it possible?—by turning out counterfeit DVDs. Then the flag business presented itself—Turner’s pet project—and Broch recommended you as a reliable courier. Good, so off we go to Moscow, you and I. When you don’t return with me and the flags, Kukushkin has Broch killed for steering you in his direction, for vouching for your reliability.”

“Odile, Odile. Listen to me.”

“Yet even this—how to call it?—surrogate vengeance, this murder, fails to satisfy Kukushkin, since he certainly doesn’t call off his goons, who continue to threaten me and Turner in ways ever less attractive, because he thinks we know where you and Gabriella, once it comes to light that she’s your girlfriend, can be found. And why is that, you might ask. Forgive my
frankness, but neither of you seems to me particularly indispensable to the world at large, let alone to someone like Kukushkin. So what is it you have that he wants?” She stood over him. “Is it this doctor, whom no one but the police has asked about? Or is it something else? These silences, you see, they bother me very much. I want them filled. I want them explained once and for all.” She bent over at the waist and thrust her face forward until it was inches from his own. “So start talking.”

Thierry recoiled slightly but otherwise didn’t move.

In the bathroom, water continued to plunge into water.

It suddenly occurred to Odile that she’d be perfectly justified in making a quiet call from the other room and keeping her guests entertained until the Russians, stolid and stupid and tireless, arrived in their black sedan to take them away. But first she needed to hear what Thierry had to tell her. She wanted to be certain, even though she knew that certainty was the invention of a troubled mind. She wanted no regrets.

“Well,” Thierry said, settling back in the sofa, “I’ll explain what I can. But you must realize that the more you know, the more compromised you are and the more jeopardy you’re in.”

“Jeopardy! After the last few weeks, I’ll take my chances.”

“As you wish.” He sighed at her recklessness but went ahead. “When Turner was arranging for our passage through customs in Brest—on the way back, that is, with the flags—he called Kukushkin, whom he knows from various other contexts. The thing was done. Now, as it happens, Kukushkin had plans to go into business with our Dr. Tregobov, who is very brilliant, probably number one in his field, but also, as you pointed out, a Belarussian. This is most unfortunate because—”

“What field?” Odile interjected.

“Molecular biology. Anyway it’s most unfortunate because Belarus, as you know, is the last communist country in Europe and everything worth having, not to mention everything that isn’t, belongs in perpetuity to the state. In this case the property at issue is intellectual: Dr. Tregobov has made a groundbreaking discovery. Anywhere else in the world, the process he’s developed would not only guarantee him a Nobel Prize but also make him a very rich man. In Belarus it cost him his passport. The government supported his research, yes, but essentially by imprisoning him in his laboratory. They wanted to keep his discoveries—and the profits they’re bound to generate when the patents are approved—in state hands.”

Odile had resumed pacing. “So Kukushkin proposed to get him out of Belarus and go into partnership with him. Very enterprising. But what’s your role? You don’t play at their level.”

“Maybe I don’t, maybe I do. We’ll see. But when Kukushkin heard from Turner that I was going to Moscow via Brest, he called Sylvain to ask if I was dependable. He needed someone to drop something off in Brest for Dr. Tregobov and then, if everything went well, take him to Paris on the return trip. I got the job.”