The Sixth Station (29 page)

Damn!

The two policemen checked something on their handheld devices and looked up again. They said something to the pilot and then bowed slightly. He did the same.

As we began to taxi out, I saw the two cops make the double sign of the cross.
Extraordinary.

27

The plane took off, and I poured myself half a tumbler of Jack Daniel’s and gulped it down like one of those drunks on the TV rehab shows who get hammered the minute they get sprung.

Next I attacked the cheese, bread, and everything else that was in the cabin bar. I was wolfing down food like a death-row inmate—which I figured I was five minutes away from becoming anyway.

I had no idea whether what I’d seen and experienced in the House of the Virgin had been a holograph, or whether I’d been drugged, had a vision, or all of the above.

I turned on the seat-back TV to BBC International and got the latest on the trial. The British correspondent was going over yesterday’s events prior to the start of the live courtroom feed. Mostly, the trial the day before, he explained, had been filled with delays while ben Yusef’s lawyers tried to figure out what to do with a defendant who refused to cooperate in his own defense.

The trial was commencing later than usual this day, so I got to watch the overhead shots of the UN area of Manhattan. (Would I ever be free to go back to my home?) The crowds seemed to have swelled from the first two days of the trial, if at all possible. The helicopter was shooting the FBI and police vans as they wended their way toward the UN.

When they finally arrived, the door to ben Yusef’s armored vehicle opened, and the cops and Secret Service personnel hopped out first. Then, shackled, the tiny man who was considered the most dangerous human on the planet, ben Yusef himself, exited as well. He squinted as he stood waiting to be moved inside to the makeshift courtroom, as though the sunlight was disturbing to his eyes. He scanned the riotous crowds behind the gates and the rows of reporters in front of him.

Turn away, don’t look at him.

I found it almost hard to watch the man. Not because of his alleged crimes, but because he had a sort of hypnotic way about him and I didn’t want to be drawn in again. Ridiculous, I know.

Terrorist, desert rat.

But there was that something stirring in me again. Was it pity? God help me—love? Or was it a weird uneasiness that my reporter-self couldn’t reconcile with my female-self? Something just seemed so wrong about the accusations and the man I was looking at.

Stop it! You saw all those kids in the courtroom the other day. Spinal-cord injuries, blindness, burns from head to foot. He’s a filthy murderer!

At that exact moment, ben Yusef turned and looked directly into the camera as though he’d heard my thoughts—the same way I’d heard that soldier’s thoughts in the house. I felt that he was looking directly at
me
through the screen—even though I was thousands of miles away, not to mention forty thousand feet in the air.

OK, you are losing it. Turn off the TV. No, leave it on. You must watch—it’s your job. Not any longer. Now it’s your life. You need to know everything about his life to save your own.

I felt like his eyes were boring into me—yet his face held the most loving expression I’d ever seen on a man. Actually his expression transcended gender—hell, it even transcended species. It wasn’t
human.

I could only compare his gaze to an expression on a face I’d only seen once before. On Lefty One Eye, our dog.

Lefty had shown it to me the night I picked up his shivering little self on the steps of the brownstone we lived in. I remember like it was yesterday how I carried him up the three flights to our walk-up, covered him in a blanket, and warmed up some milk for him. When Donald came home he found me curled up with Lefty on the bed, singing him to sleep. I explained his presence to Donald by kissing Lefty’s head and saying, “Lefty, this is your new dad.”

At that, Lefty gave me a doggy smile that was so filled with love, it too transcended species.
That
was the look. Peace, love, and, yes, an acknowledgment that I was the only one who could save him.

Even if you are innocent, I can’t save
you,
mister. I am too busy trying to save my own sorry ass.

With that thought in mind, I drifted off to sleep (probably the Jack), and the next thing I knew the copilot was shaking me gently awake. “Miss Roussel … we’re preparing for landing. Miss Roussel, wake up.”

I checked the time—four hours had passed—as we landed at a private airfield adjacent to the huge Barcelona Airport.

Now comes the hard part. Renting another car.

But that was actually the easy part. I rented a Smart car in no time using my bogus passport, license, and credit card.

The car was parked across the road in the huge—and very hot—rental car lot. It must have been eighty-five degrees, even though it was now nearing midnight.

If you’ve ever tried getting out of Barcelona Airport and onto a highway, you know that the whole roadway system there is designed to keep you from ever getting anywhere but back where you started.

After two solid hours of going around and around, I decided to call it a night and checked into one of those motel/hotel places near (I think!) the airport. I prepaid with cash.

I awoke at dawn, went down to the free continental breakfast, complete with horrible fatty ham hock that’s as common a sight at every breakfast place in Europe as the Danish-in-a-bag is at our cheap brown motels.

Skipping the ham hock and going straight for the carbs and coffee, I studied a map that I’d gotten from Europacar. I was not comfortable using the GPS (“It’s imperative that you keep deep undercover”), so I kept it off.

It seemed like it would be a fairly easy ride into France through a highway cut into the Midi-Pyrénées—approximately three and a half hours. Three hours until I’d hopefully be on my way to Mr. Pantera.

Well, if the “Y, Pan, Y” in Sadowski’s contact had really meant “Yusef Pantera,” that is. And if “Y, Pan, Y” was the right guy
and
he was alive, that is. And of course, and worse, if “Y, Pan, Y” was alive, it also meant that he had to be at least as good an operative as Maureen Wright-Lewis, which meant I’d never find him—unless he wanted to be found.

I deliberately decided not to attempt to call that number beforehand—thinking somehow that I’d take him by surprise by showing up in the same village. I mean, it can’t be that easy to run out of a walled city without being seen, right?

The “easy” three-and-a-half-hour ride somehow turned into over six. The map took me on every back road and through every idyllic (translation: speed limit zero) little Spanish town in the entire country.

After five hours on small (half dirt, half paved) roads and perilous one-lane, guardrail-free, endlessly curving slivers of road that hung on the edges of mountains shrouded in cloud, I slid down a mountain—clutching and downshifting the whole way—and finally hit flat land, and yet another unpaved street that looked like it was carved out of somebody’s back forty. And then there it was—a hand-painted wooden sign nailed to a tree. It simply read:
FRANCA
.

The border crossing between France and Spain looks like a driveway? What? This can’t be right!

But it was right. I’m sure I’m the only person who’s ever gone that crazy, circuitous route, so I figured at least I wasn’t being followed. I knew I’d entered France because the first little town I came to had signs only in French.

I’ll be damned!

I stopped for lunch at a small inn, mostly because it had a parking lot.

The inside was typical of the region—beamed ceiling, plaster walls, and big comfy fireplace—and I ordered a steaming plate of duck stew with black currants, which, if I was home, would have taken a thousand hours on the elliptical machine to undo.

It was, however, worth it, because it was maybe the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Not that I had much choice. By the look of the menu, ducks in this part of the world had about a one-in-a-thousand chance of surviving past duck puberty.

I ordered a bottle of Perrier, deciding to be very un-French and forgo the wine. I still had a long drive ahead of me and didn’t want to drive over the edge of one of these insane mountain roads.

As I was musing my lunch away, Sadowski’s phone jangled me out of my respite. The other customers at two other tables glared at me, stage-whispering something like,
“Doit être un Américain à utiliser leurs téléphones pendant le déjeuner!”

You only needed to be fluent in human to know that cell phones at a meal here were strictly for the uncivilized—or American—which to Europeans tend to be one and the same.

I made my
désolé
s as I jumped up and ran toward the door while trying to find the damned phone, which had slipped to the bottom of my red bag.

I found it. “Caller unknown.” Not good.

Risking it all for no real reason, I picked it up, hoping to God there was no one tracking me, despite what Sadowski had said.

“Alazais Roussel?”

Where have I heard that voice before?

“Who is asking?”

“My name is Pantera. I thought I’d make this easier and forgo the cat and mouse, yes?”

Holy good God!

“Well, okay, yes.” I was desperately trying to “make” that voice.

“We need to meet.”

I knew it would have been useless to ask him how he’d found me, so I just went with, “Okay, yes. Where and when? I’m heading toward Carcassonne now.”

“Meet me in Montségur in Languedoc.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The village of Montségur.”

“The town where the Cathars…”

“Précisément.”
His words actually sounded like they were made of honey.

This is one slick operator. Watch this guy—if he
is
this Pantera guy, that is.

“You should stay at the L’Oustal, a tiny little bed-and-breakfast run by a couple of friends of mine. You’ll be safe there, I assure you.”

“And who are you to assure me of anything, Mr. Pantera? Since I got caught up in this whole insane business with your
friends,
life, as you probably know, has been anything but safe for me—anywhere.”

“You don’t actually have a choice in the matter—if you want to meet me—which you do.”

That again.

“
Life on the run,
sans amis,
is a difficult life. I know.”

“And you propose to be my
ami
? Teach me the ropes of living on the run…”

“I will arrange for a room for you. The address, although the town is literally no more than one small street, is—”

“Wait. I need to write this down.” I dug out my reporter’s notebook and wrote down precisely what he said, spelling out very carefully, “L’Oustal, 46 rue du Village, Montségur, phone number: 05-61-02-80-70.”

“When you reach the end of the village—and really it is half a block long before you come to the mountain—cut a deep left and go up. On the right, you’ll see a sort of grass driveway with a gate. Oh, and a lot of dogs—friendly, I assure you. Open the gate yourself; don’t bother to honk; they won’t come out.

“But they will be expecting you. Park next to the welding shed.”

“Sounds charming.”

“It is,” he said, bringing me up short.

“Right.”

“I will meet you at seven thirty this evening at the Hotel Restaurant Costes in the town.”

“Shall I drive there?”

He laughed. “Only if you can’t walk fifty yards. There’s a restaurant and bar in the lobby. We have much to discuss.” He sounded like the male Maureen.

Well, he probably is the male Maureen—if Maureen had married a thirteen-year-old, that is.

It took another hour and a half to get to Montségur, following the signs as carefully as I could. Then, finally popping out of the foggy mist, I saw it: Montségur’s mountain, rising up like a vision.

I was so awestruck by its stark beauty that I stopped the car and took out the phone to take a picture. When I looked at the photo, I saw what wasn’t visible to the naked eye—unless you know
what
it is you are looking for: A large castlelike structure sat on the very top of the very steep, seemingly impenetrable mountain. It must have been, I figured, at least four thousand feet high.

How the hell did they ever build a castle on the top of that thing? In fact, how did they even get up that thing, let alone carry up building materials? Astonishing. Is that the very place where the Cathars had lived—and been burned alive? Plenty of time to find that out. Are you kidding? Live past the next couple of days and you’ll be lucky.

I got back in the car and drove on until I came to the village of Montségur. He was right; it was more like a street than a town. It didn’t have so much as a grocery store, although it did have a handcraft/souvenir shop and a museum that looked like a tiny one-room stone house.

Following his directions, I easily found the L’Oustal, which was exactly where he’d said it would be.

I parked next to the welding shed, which I recognized because there was a guy inside welding and sparks were dangerously flying everywhere in the wooden shed. I headed toward the stone and plaster house, climbing what seemed like a bad attempt at steps, which were made of uneven rocks set into a steep slope. A jolly French lady who didn’t speak a word of English came out of the old stone house, wiping her hands, I swear, on her apron. She somehow conveyed to me that
le coût de la chambre
(which was all of forty bucks) had been taken care of.

Generous, that Pantera.

We walked around the back of the house, up another ridiculously steep set of stairs, with cats sleeping on at least half of them, until we reached the top floor. She unhinged an old wooden door, and we walked past a beaded curtain and up another few interior steps. She opened the door to my room and, yes, it was charming. Complete with a sink across from the monk’s bed. She was quite proud to show me the tiny attached bathroom, since this was one of the only rooms equipped with its own
toilettes et salle de bain.