The Sixth Station (36 page)

If there ever was anyone who didn’t look like a threat to anyone but herself, it’s you right now!

It is about fifty-seven kilometers (just over thirty-five miles) between the towns of Montségur and Carcassonne, but they may as well be on different planets. One is the kind of ancient rural village you can only find in France, and the other is the kind of ancient walled city you can only find in France. One has no commerce, while inside the other behind those ancient walls are high-end designer boutiques, hotels, and Michelin-starred restaurants doing business in stone buildings that were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a city that was founded by the Romans in the first century.

As I approached, the site nearly left me breathless. Rising above the walls was a city that looked like something out of a medieval tale, with an intact castle, dozens of turrets, drawbridges and, yes, miles of walls rising above the landscape.

After following about six thousand signs pointing this way and that and ending up back where I started, I realized that all signs for
CITÉ
meant the city itself and not the hotel.

After several misses, I finally figured out how to get to the hotel parking “lot,” which was sort of a grassy knoll (I always wanted to use those words in a sentence that didn’t relate to the assassination of JFK), and parked the car as Pantera had directed at the foot of the wall.

An attendant came by and asked the name of my hotel and then called it into a walkie-talkie thing. Within minutes, a car came by to pick me up. There were no cars inside the walls except for the one or two delivering guests to hotels. Visitors and residents of the city all parked outside the walls in designated areas and walked in through the ancient drawbridge entrance.

The Hôtel de la Cité looked like a palace with giant arched, leaded-glass windows on a cobblestone street.

There were hundreds of shops, restaurants, bars, several cathedrals, and a basilica, and, yes, a fortified castle within the city walls. Think real-life Disney World minus the annoying furry characters.

The interior did not disappoint. Disappoint? It was overwhelming. I walked into a lovely lobby with a cozy library bar and fancy restaurant on the lobby level.

I approached the front desk, gave the name Alazais Roussel, and suddenly the staff was all over me like a bad smell—but in a good way for once.

Astonished to see I just had that one measly carry-on bag, the bellman nonetheless made a big deal of carrying it to my room and attempting unsuccessfully to wrest from me my red satchel with my iPad, Sadowski’s phone, and, oh, yeah, that same Gap scarf.

Did I say “room”? Think suite.

Thank God this isn’t on my tab.

It was huge, with a beamed ceiling and a giant king-size bed (probably had belonged to an actual king) covered in luxurious fabrics, with a carved mahogany headboard that reached to the ceiling. The floor was tiled, and the white marble fireplace had already been lit. Beyond that, a desk and several comfy velvet easy chairs in gray with a matching loveseat were set around a leather steamer trunk. It had high-speed everything, from Internet to an even-higher-speed Jacuzzi tub roughly the size of an Olympic pool.

The bellman (Pierre, of course) opened the curtains to reveal a huge terrace complete with red padded lounges and a table and chairs.

A little bit of heaven in the middle of my hellish life.

I tipped Pierre, who seemed reluctant to leave, and I had to say about fourteen hundred
mercis
before he got the hint.

What now? Wait and see what Pantera’s got up his sleeve? Right. Like hell I will.

I took out the tablet, sat down on the bed, and checked Sadowski’s voice mail, despite Donald’s plea to stay “off the grid.” Message from Dona: “This crazy thing happened. Randy Mohammed pulled me aside as we were leaving court.…”

If she’s already calling him “Randy,” God knows what she got out of him. The woman is irresistible to men.

“He said, ‘Tell Ms. Russo that Mr. ben Yusef says to “Go forth and trust the man who raised him.”’”

That was it.

I checked the e-mail. Nothing. I sent one off to Donald. “Image of Yusef Pantera anywhere over the last, say, forty years in any archives anywhere?”

I logged off and turned the TV on to CNN International. The anchor, Seema Ving, said, “Coming up, our lead story. They are calling it the miracle of Demiel ben Yusef. But is it a hoax?”

As they broke for commercial, they ran footage of riots around the world, all in the name of ben Yusef. The final image was of Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza. My old neighborhood looked like a war zone. So much for peaceful and orderly.

After a bunch of ads for investment companies and medicines that seemed to make you ride a bike in slow motion while waving backward, Ving was back with the lead story. And I nearly fell off the bed.

“After court closed for the day,” she reported, “an event occurred that many are calling a miracle. It involves the children who had been brought into court on the first day of the ben Yusef trial.”

Filmed footage of the children as they’d been wheeled into court that first day splashed across the screen. Even though I’d seen it in person, I needed to turn my head away for a moment—it was that horrific and heartbreaking, even on video. There was the little angel without a mouth and hard plastic skin where once a beautiful little girl had been; and the little boy with the beautiful face whose eyes were rolling in his head as he lolled in a wheelchair, clearly brain-damaged; the blind kids being led by mothers; the miniature motorized wheelchair with the five-year-old girl strapped in to keep her upright.

“These children,” Ving continued, “had been introduced on day one of the Demiel ben Yusef tribunal by the prosecution and identified as victims of the terror bombing of the Ingreja Matriz Church in Manaus, Brazil. The unforgettable sight of the children, whose injuries included third-degree burns, blindness, spinal-cord injuries, and massive brain damage, are, of course, now etched into the human consciousness around the world.

“But that all apparently changed yesterday after they were touched, so to speak, by Demiel ben Yusef. It began right after the courtroom disruption broke out, which caused Justice Bagayoko to unexpectedly call a halt to the day’s proceedings. The children had been sitting outside the courtroom in anticipation of being called as witnesses. UN security had not had a chance to move them to a different location before they hustled the defendant, Demiel ben Yusef, out of the courtroom. As they moved him out, he passed directly in front of the children.

“We are told that despite being shackled hand and foot, the accused terrorist was able to stop short and shout a brief prayer in a language not understood—and not recorded, since reporters are forbidden in that area of the United Nations. Sources also told CNN that, inexplicably, security cameras were also not working.

“However, later in the afternoon, at approximately five
P.M.
Eastern Standard Time, as the children were sitting in the United Nations dining hall for their evening meal, unnamed eyewitnesses say that first a blind boy, name and age unknown at this point, jumped up from his seat, claiming that he could see.

“Then the quadriplegic girl in the motorized wheelchair started to wiggle her arms and legs, then the brain-damaged children, who no longer had speech, began calling for their mothers, as each child in turn seemingly was made whole again.

“One eyewitness told CNN off the record that even the horribly burned child was restored to a perfect, unblemished state.

“At seven
P.M.
Chief Judge Fatoumata Bagayoko came out to address reporters regarding the incident.”

Footage of Bagayoko standing somewhere inside the United Nations, in a red wool suit and matching pillbox hat perched jauntily atop her braids, appeared on the screen as she addressed the reporters, who looked, if possible, even more rabid than they had on the first day. The judge was literally grinning from ear to ear.

“It is my great, great,
great
pleasure to confirm to you this day that I have indeed seen all of the smallest victims of the Ingreja Matriz Church bombings—yes, those very children who appeared before the court on the opening day of the trial.

“We all saw those children and the horrific damage inflicted upon each and every one. Well, I just saw those same children, and I am here, as God is my witness…”—she was openly fighting back tears now—“to tell you that the blind can see, the brain-damaged are now speaking at age-appropriate levels, the quadriplegic child, Laudenize Vasconcelos, is not just out of her wheelchair but joyously skipping about the room! And, yes, the burn victims are restored to perfection.”

The reporters started screaming for footage, but the chief judge responded by saying that until United Nations security, along with the officials from Brazil, had made a determination of the facts, and also to protect the privacy of the children, no footage or photos would be released.

Then, in true media-hound fashion, Bagayoko said, “And now it is my supreme privilege to go back and visit with
my
children!” With that, she waved and was rushed back inside by her adoring minions.

Ving came back on-screen and reported, “While we have no official video or photographs, this grainy image
was
leaked onto YouTube earlier today, the authenticity of which, I must remind you, has not been verified.”

The video showed a bunch of little children, wheelchairs in the background, running, laughing, jumping, yelling, and playing happily with each other.

“Calling the so-called miracle of Demiel ben Yusef a ruse, however, is the Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe of the worldwide Light of God Tabernacles.”

The video feed showed Bill Teddy in a wheelchair giving a press conference outside the UN. Raising his fist to the heavens, white hair nearly lighting up the air around him, Bill Teddy attempted to rise up, but plopped back down.

He must have forgotten how easily he rose up on opening day!

“What is being perpetrated upon the unsuspecting world is a lie, a scam, and a sham regarding the so-called
miracle,
” he declared, his grimace truly frightening. “These children can no more rise from their wheelchairs than I can.”

What?

“And if they could, it wouldn’t be because of the miraculous healing powers of a filthy radical desert rat who is the spawn of the devil himself! Such a thing can only be performed by Jesus Christ Almighty—and this, this, this filthy
terrorist scum
is evil incarnate!

“Demiel ben Yusef must be destroyed before he casts the devil down upon all of humanity,” he declared in a voice so booming, you’d never suspect, if you weren’t seeing it for yourself, that it was coming out of the mouth of a wheelchair-bound octogenarian.

Ving came back on with a panel of windbags who were listed as “experts,” including clerics, professors of divinity, and ACLU types. I turned it off and opened the bottle of French Bordeaux that was sitting in the large fruit-and-cheese basket in the room. I needed a big,
big
glass of wine.

It was then that I noticed the note on the basket:
“8:00 this evening in the bar downstairs. Y.”

I had just taken my first giant gulp when there was a knock on the door. I peeked through the peephole and saw it was that same bellman. He was carrying what looked like gift boxes.

I opened the door, and he said in perfectly accented English, “Madame, you have an admirer!” as he brought in four boxes with a small bouquet of exquisite lilies of the valley tied up in ribbons and enclosed in clear cellophane wrapping.

When he left I opened the first box. In it was a classic little black dress that looked like it might actually fit my American body. I didn’t need to look at the label to know it was vintage Chanel. The next box contained a pair of Prada spikes (in a size 37) and a Gucci evening bag.

The last box contained a red cashmere sweater, which was just about the right thing to go over these insanely expensive clothes. Tucked into the bottom of that box was a small gift bag containing a tiny, exquisite—did I mention tiny?—black lace La Perla thong.

Pantera. Pantera? He bought me this stuff? Does he think he’s going to get lucky because he shot our way out of Montségur? No. Sorry, buddy. I prefer my old-lady white cotton briefs, thank you very much.

But I must say, after wearing the same dirty clothes and banged-up boots for—was it a week yet?— the haute-couture duds did look pretty damned good.

You never wore an actual Chanel before. Shut up, idiot. Just stay in your room tonight. Yeah, but this is his town. He must know we’re safe enough to go out without being shot, grenaded, or exploded—right? Don’t meet him all tarted up in his blood-money rags. Are you insane? Order room service and eat like a pig—alone. No, you will
not
meet him. That’s settled. You’re taking a big, hot Jacuzzi.

Never had water felt that hot or good on my very, very sore muscles.

I dropped down and fell asleep on the wonderfully luxurious bed and didn’t wake until the fire had burned down to embers. It was 7:00
P.M
. I popped another couple of logs onto the fire.

Then two things happened for which I have no explanation. The first is that my stomach began fluttering around as though I was nervous or excited or something equally inappropriate in my circumstances.

The second is that I found myself taking the Chanel dress out of the box and slipping it on. Perfect fit. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it, and yes, I stepped into the very,
very
sheer black lace thong.
Why are you doing this?
The Prada heels followed. Expensive shoes are, I discovered, actually very comfortable. Or these were, at any rate.

I looked in the wall mirror.

Wow. Except for the ridiculous hair, you look pretty good. Near death, real death, and being chased internationally wears well. Wait a minute here. Do I look—please God!—thinner? Stop it and take the dress off. Right now.