The Sixth Station (38 page)

“Oh, no, really I am.” With that he put down his fork and picked mine up. He fed me a tiny bit of chicken, which I ate with deliberate slowness. Neither one of us misinterpreted what was going on.

“Sweet—no?”

“You sure you’re not trying to impress a girl?”

“Positive.”

Then a song I didn’t recognize came on, and I gave him an inquisitive look.

“Like I said, Paolo Nutini.”

Without saying another word, we got up again, and I fell into his arms. This time I completely relaxed into it, and as Paolo Nutini sang, “I just want you closer, is that alright? Baby let’s get closer, tonight. Oh baby, baby, baby tell me how can, how can this be wrong?” Pantera pulled away, looked at me for a long time, and then tipped my head back, leaned in, and kissed me.

Just like that, Yusef Pantera, the only person in the world who was more vigorously hunted than I, had kissed me.

We came back together and continued dancing.

When the song was over, we went back to the table and I smiled at him and said, “Well, we’ve come a long way since I tried to blow you up five days ago.”

He didn’t answer.

So what comes now? Do we fall into each other’s arms and go on the lam together like
Natural Born Killers
?

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“No, I love the smell. Reformed but not a reformer.”

He lit up a Gauloises and stared at me through the smoke, saying nothing for a long time. Somehow espresso and a chocolate soufflé were brought to the table.

You ate seventy-five thousand bad Danishes in a bag, and now you’ve got the world’s most exquisite-looking soufflé and can’t eat a bite. Well, at least the eating spree seems to have abated.

He took a few bites himself, but I said, “It looks wonderful, but really, I can’t eat another bite.”

He smiled, put some euros on the table, and we got up to leave. Outside it was still raining and the temperature seemed to have dropped quite a bit. The sweater didn’t help at all.

I automatically reached for my scarf and realized that I had only the little evening bag and that the scarf was back in my room.

“Cold?” he asked, putting his arm around me and opening the umbrella.

“Yes. I forgot that I don’t have my scarf with me.” I stopped short, almost causing us both to tumble.

“My scarf!” I kicked off the Prada spikes and started running.

Pantera took off after me. I rushed into the hotel, not even holding the door for him. I went around the corner to the little lift and pressed the button over and over impatiently. “Hurry up, goddammit!”

I grabbed Pantera by the hand and ran up the stairs instead and sprinted back to my room. Fumbling with the key card, I swiped it. It kept coming up red. No access.

“Shit! If someone’s broken in … I didn’t put my scarf in the wall safe!”

“Stay calm. Why is the scarf suddenly so important?” he asked, trying repeatedly to get the key card to work. Red. Red. Red.

“Don’t you understand? I wiped my mouth after the kiss! Demiel’s kiss. The scarf’s got his DNA on it!”

Pantera stepped back, stunned.
“Stercum!”

“Is that some magic word?”

“Latin. You don’t want to know. I’ll stand here. You go back down and get them to issue you a new card. Hopefully it just demagnetized by itself, and the scarf will be here. Don’t panic.”

I ran down the stairs, refusing to wait for the lift, and rushed to the front desk.

“My key card,” I practically screamed out at the two young women on duty. “It’s not working!” I realized that they’d seen me come in with Pantera, and God knows what the hell they were thinking.

“Yes, madame,” they managed to say without snarking. “It happens. Really, it is no problem.”

Whenever a foreigner says “no problem” it always means “huge problem.” Goddammit!

They handed me another key card, and I ran back up the stairs. I was shaking. Another break-in would mean there was no hope of getting the DNA. I’d already ruined one batch. This would be the end of it.

That’s why my apartment had been burglarized! The DNA!

The scarf with Demiel’s DNA was the only proof on earth that—what?—I didn’t know. But I did know it was
only
up to me to find out. Rooting out a story was in
my
DNA. Especially when my life was on the line.

I took the stairs two at a time, and when I ran down the hall I could see Pantera standing there, gun drawn. “It’s me,” I called out, fearing he’d shoot me by mistake. “Put it away!”

“I see that it is you; I’m not blind. Never tell me to put my gun away.”

“Jee-
sus.
”

Moron.

I fumbled with the new card key but couldn’t get it to work. Pantera took it from me and swiped it. His hands were not shaking as mine had been. Green!

We rushed into the suite, and I grabbed my red bag and started rummaging through it. The old scarf was still crushed up on the bottom, with bits of purse gunk, lint, and a few stray hairs on it, but otherwise intact.

“Banged up, but safe!”

He took it from me, handling it gently. “Do you have a cleaning bag in the room?”

I grabbed one from the closet, and he folded the scarf carefully inside the plastic bag and pulled the drawstring.

“You may have saved the world,” he said, almost seriously.

“Well, I don’t know about that.…”

“I do.” He put the bag down on a table and walked back toward me, stopping directly in front of me for a few seconds. We looked at each other and smiled.

“That was close,” I said as he put an arm around me and pulled me in to him, pressing his body against mine.

“Put your gun away,” I teased, and he threw his head back and laughed. “I hate it when a man tells me what I can’t say.”

“
Shhh …
Cala a boca,
” he said softly, in what sounded like, well, I have no idea, and leaned back and placed the gun on the nightstand with his free hand. “Good?”

“Good.”

He then put brought his “gun” hand up to my chin, tipped my face to his, and kissed me deeply.

“But, what about the…”

“Damate, shizuka ni shite,”
he laughed, and kissed me again as he pushed me back onto the bed. I didn’t resist but still couldn’t help saying, “I don’t know about…”

“Taci din gura,”
he whispered in my ear, kissing it, rolling on top of me and opening my mouth with his tongue. I responded by taking in his kiss and pulling him even tighter into me.

He pulled back slightly and studied my face like he’d never seen me, really seen me before, ran his hands through my crazy hair, and said,
“Dormi mecum?”

“Latin?”

“Latin,” he grinned in a smile so wide I could see the split between his front teeth.

“If that means what I think it means,” I whispered back, “then most definitely.”

“Baby…” was the only thing he whispered as he gently rolled me on top of him and unzipped my new-old Chanel dress, slid it off of me, and tossed it onto the floor.

Oh, baby is right.

34

I woke up at 7:30 and reached for him, but his side of the bed was empty. Not that he had a side, really, because last I remembered I had been falling asleep in his arms in the middle of the bed. We’d been so wrapped up in each other that there hadn’t been enough space to slip a piece of paper between us.

He must be in the bathroom.

I got up, wrapped the sheet around myself, and walked toward the bathroom. “Pantera, you in there?” I knocked. No answer. I knocked again. Hard.

“Pantera!” Nothing. I checked the sitting-room area. Nothing. Then panicked, I looked for the plastic bag with my scarf. It was not on the table where we’d left it. I searched the entire suite. Nothing. The scarf was gone, and so was he.

You’ve been had, lady!

At first I fumed. Then I got very scared.

The wall safe!

I rushed to it and opened it with my combination. I rummaged around. Passport. Diary. Wallet. Tablet. Everything was still there—except the missing piece of the biggest puzzle the world had ever known: the scarf holding the DNA of the man they claimed was the son—more precisely the clone—of Jesus himself. Or perhaps he was, as Bill Teddy Smythe had claimed, the son of Satan. And if so, I had just slept with the devil himself.

How had I been duped this way? I had been careless on a grand scale.

We didn’t even use a condom! Idiot! Calm down. At least you can’t get pregnant. Right. But what if he’s carrying some terrible disease? What were you thinking? Oh, right, you weren’t thinking!

I plopped back down on the bed and tried taking deep breaths to calm myself down. My hands were shaking. Was it fear, rage, or hurt? Rage. Definitely rage.

Jerk! You are smarter than this. Much smarter. Son. Of. A. Bitch! He will not outsmart you. He will
not.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the message light on the room phone blinking. I hadn’t heard it ring. Maybe Pantera had turned off the ringer? Why? I picked it up and hit the key for “voice mail.” Him. Two hours earlier.

“This isn’t what it seems.”

Yes it is.

“In fact, I am—hell—I can’t stop thinking about you. Really…” He hesitated.

“Really”—what?

“Don’t worry. I have the scarf. I am taking it right now for testing. I cannot, and will not, put you in further danger; you are safer without me now.”

Then: “Now I understand why it was necessary for them to implicate you in the murder. And why they had to assassinate Sadowski. He was, of course, well known to them—but they needed to get the FBI, CIA, Interpol, and whoever else they could get on board
officially
to hunt you using all their resources. Once they were involved, there wouldn’t have been a border crossing in the world you would have made it through after a day or two.

“They want the scarf and they need you dead.

“The Son of the Son picked
you
out of all the women in the world for a reason. You were where you needed to be
when
you needed to be there. That proved that you are the one.

“And now you are the only one who can stop them—with the absolute evidence that Demiel is God, not human.”

Not human. Does he mean the DNA will show he’s a clone? And?

“That scarf will tie back to the source blood. But make no mistake:
Everyone,
and I do mean
everyone,
is on their payroll.”

Whose payroll? Trust no one.

He continued—all business now: “I got a white scarf from a local shopkeeper who was kind enough to open up for me this morning.…”

When—at dawn?

“You’ll find it among the towels in the bathroom. I took the liberty of removing those stray hairs from your scarf. At least I hope they were yours—they were brown. I put them back in the bottom of your bag. Please put the new scarf back in your red satchel, and be sure to get lint and other bits from the bag on it. It must look used. And of course stick those few brown stray hairs on it as well.”

“Then, before you brush your teeth or have your coffee or anything, lick the scarf. Toss it under the bed, get your things, and leave. No need to check out. A friend will be waiting at the entrance—the one we used last night. He’ll take you to the airport at Toulouse. He’ll also have your ticket. Rome. Got it?”

Huh?

“Go to the restaurant Les Etoiles in the Atlante Garden Hotel on the Via Crescenzio. It’s near Saint Peter’s, and I’ll meet you there. Trust me on that. I’m not done with you yet. I may never be done with you.”

Whoa. You sure I should trust no one?

“My God, you are one helluva woman. Now, hit the number three on the keypad to erase this message.”

I smiled and did as instructed, and then checked my e-mail. Nothing. I turned on Sadowski’s phone. One text and one voice mail.

The text was from Donald. “Baby,” he began.

That’s the second “Baby” in two days. One more of these bad boys and for sure I’ll end up dead.

“You owe me. Here it is—a photo of the deadbeat dad known as Yusef Pantera. It’s a high school photo, or whatever they call it in Frog land. I can’t believe how good I am.”

I looked down at the attached photo. It was Pantera all right.

“It’s from someplace called C-a-r-c-a-s-s-o-n-n-e in France. It’s very old. The photo, I mean. Like forty years old or something, but it’s him. Got it through a connection, a Fed who went rogue. Don’t worry. He thinks I want to be the first shooter to break the photo of the man listed as ben Yusef’s father.

“Have I told you lately that I love you? I do.”

I stared at the photo circa 1975. Teens in France apparently didn’t look as disco moronic or metalhead as teens in the USA back then. It was definitely Pantera, and I got that funny feeling inside again.

How cute was he with that buzz cut? He must have looked like a freak compared to all the longhairs back then.

This was great. At least I knew I could trust him.

Trust no one.

Okay, more specifically, I knew he was who he said he was.

“I love you back, Donald,” I said out loud to no one. For the first time in a hell of a long time in what had been a hellishly long and overwrought relationship with my ex, I realized that I actually meant it. Truly, I did love Donald—but not in the way that I’d truly meant it before. Now I honestly felt that he was my friend, and I loved him for it.

Sorry, Donald. How you gonna keep her down on the farm after she’s been down in Carcassonne? I may never get over last night.

I was desperate to dish with Dona about the whole escape-and-sexcapade thing, like I would have done in the old days. Of course the old days were just a few days ago. I hit the voice-mail button.

“Dahling.” It was Dona, but she didn’t sound like she was ready to dish. In fact, she sounded frantic, and music was playing very loud in the background. Not good. An old Mafia trick to keep the Feds from hearing you on bugs.