Two Crosses (47 page)

David had decided his next step: he would give Jean-Claude the list of names—a false list, of course—for a steep price and a threat and a guarantee that he was the head of this operation and that Gabby and Ophélie had nothing to do with it. Somehow he would convince the madman. Somehow. If only Jean-Claude would show.

Forty-eight hours without sleep. David headed back to his own dingy hotel room for the night. Surely tomorrow he would find Jean-Claude.

Jean-Claude returned to Marseille in the middle of the night. As he entered the stairwell of his apartment building, a young woman dressed in a tight, low-cut black dress greeted him.

“Ooh là là, monsieur.”
She smiled, revealing a row of cracked teeth. Her strong perfume drifted up to entice Jean-Claude. “A stranger has been hanging around these parts looking for you. I’ve seen him waiting near your apartment. Do you care to know more,
monsieur
?”

“Of course,” Jean-Claude replied. He pulled the woman behind the steps, wrapping his arms around her waist. “Tell me everything.”

“You will pay?” She raised her eyebrows.

Jean-Claude removed a wad of bills from his leather sack and held them before her. “I will pay for everything you give me, lovely lady. Everything.”

She took the money and led him through an alleyway and across the street. “A tall young man, very handsome, with black hair, has been here two days now, watching your building. He has only just left.” Her eyes shone brightly. “Do you know this man?”

Jean-Claude threw back his head and laughed. “
Oh, oui!
Oui
, I know this man. Where is he now?”

The woman shrugged. “I’m sure I can find him for you, for a price.”

“Good. We’ll look for him later. Right now I need a place to spend the night. I won’t be going back to my apartment, you understand.” He touched her ear and played with the earring.

“I understand perfectly,
monsieur
. Follow me.”

Moustafa held the thin sheets of paper in his hand, reading carefully over the list of thirty-seven names and addresses. They were all there. And twenty-two families had been taken care of, one way or another, he thought grimly.

The rest needed to be contacted. He felt confident the pied-noir families would leave anyway, as soon as the war ended. They would flee to France and find shelter from Ali. They need only be warned.

But the harki families. He felt sick as he thought of his father, thrown out on the street like a piece of trash, his throat slit from ear to ear. Five harki families still needed to escape before the war ended. But what would they find in France? Only angry stares and hatred.

His thoughts turned to Anne-Marie. He would not let David Hoffmann have her. Not yet. Not until he lay dead like his father in some forgotten street of Algiers.
Until then, David Hoffmann, we will work together, but in our hearts, we will be enemies. It must be so.

Jean-Claude was not coming back to his apartment in Marseille, of that David was sure. But he was still in town. David had paid handsomely to get the information from the pretty little prostitute who hung around the neighborhood beside the Vieux Port. She promised, for more money, to lead him to Jean-Claude’s new hideout, once she discovered it.

David’s hotel room was cramped and filthy. An orange bedspread, torn and stained, covered a rotting mattress. He spread out his briefcase on the bed, took out a piece of stationery, and began writing.

My daughter. You must think your papa doesn’t care about you. But it’s not true. It’s only that you’re not safe until I find this bad man. Then I will come to you.

He wrote a little more, then twirled the pencil in his hand. How should he sign the note?
Sincerely, Your father
? No. That was terrible.
Your loving father
? Still too formal. He thought back to the letters from his father. Cold, distant, unfeeling.

What had he always wanted to hear? He knew it before the pen touched the paper. He wrote the words slowly, carefully, as if he were climbing into the pen and spilling himself out onto the sheet. He held up the letter to read it and smiled when he came to the signature.
I love you, Ophélie.
Papa.

The pansies in the courtyard tossed their heads impatiently in the wind, their petals folding in and out like coy maidens, reluctant to reveal their velvet faces. Gabriella studied the flowers from the basement doorway. The yellow and white pansies had flourished in the winter months, yet several of the dark-purple and amber flowers had died out.

“What makes some of them stronger than the others?” she questioned Mother Griolet, who had joined her. “You bought them at the same nursery, and we planted them at the same time.”

“It’s like that every year, Gabriella. The yellow and white pansies have what it takes to withstand the winter.”

Gabriella pulled a withered flower from the dirt and held out the roots and dried petals for Mother Griolet to observe. “This one didn’t make it.” She let the dead flower fall to the ground and gently took hold of Mother Griolet’s arm. “And I don’t know if I’ll make it either. I’m being eaten by jealousy, Mother Griolet,” she said. “I’m jealous that David loved Anne-Marie at one time. That he fathered her child. I know it’s far in the past, but I’m so jealous.”

The old nun sighed. “My dear child, I think you could use a good cup of hot chocolate. Come along.”

When the two women were settled in Mother Griolet’s den, cups of hot chocolate in hand, Gabriella continued.

“I’m … I’m jealous because he has every right to love her again. And he won’t love me because I’m too … too something. Religious, maybe. Or naive. And I know it’s for the best, I suppose, but it makes me furious, and now it just seems like God is punishing me for ever loving David Hoffmann.” Her words were gaining momentum, nearly rushing ahead of her thoughts.

“But really, I didn’t
mean
to care about him, and he’s the one who dragged me into this whole thing. And now he’s going to take Ophélie away from me—though of course she’s not even mine to keep. I just want to leave this whole mess.”

Mother Griolet leaned back on her worn couch and propped one leg on the coffee table. “It’s sounds as though you’re more angry than jealous. Angry at a lot of people. Maybe even God. Am I right?”

Gabriella fidgeted with her hair. “Probably,” she answered sulkily.

“Why do you think God is punishing you, Gabriella?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of discipline because in my mind I’m straying from the straight and narrow.”

“Do you think God is more interested in our circumstances or in what we learn from them?” the nun prodded.

Gabriella didn’t answer. She couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say and wondered why she felt such a need to reveal her thoughts to this old woman. But Mother Griolet didn’t seem to mind her silence.

“Years ago I loved a man.”

Gabriella perked up, startled at this revelation.

“He was a fine man. I met him here in Castelnau. I considered leaving my calling for him.”

She had closed her eyes, and Gabriella watched them flicker underneath the wrinkled skin. Suddenly the nun seemed very old and fragile. Gabriella almost spoke, to stop Mother Griolet from sharing something Gabriella had no right to hear. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out.

Mother Griolet seemed not to notice; her eyes were still closed. “But then the first war came along, and he left. Four months later I received word of his death. But you know, Gabriella, I never thought God was punishing me for some sin of loving a man. Nor did I think He caused this man’s death so that I wouldn’t leave my calling. God is bigger than our simplistic or most complicated reasoning. I could not box Him in.”

She paused, then said, “I learned many things, though. How much it hurts to love and how deep a soul can ache with missing another. How unfair life can be. I learned how to grieve, and I found God was there in a much deeper way than I’d ever known before. Of course I was angry and crushed. It was part of the grieving. But I’m not sorry for these painful lessons. I use them every day of my life.”

The old woman rubbed her eyes softly and opened them to look at Gabriella with her usual compassionate gaze. “You will be all right, my child,” she said. “You’ll see.”

David stood alone on the beach near Marseille. The dark sky was interrupted occasionally with brief flashes of lightning in the distance, and he realized that if he were a painter, this scene would be paradise. A tranquil tide touched his feet, but farther out in the Mediterranean tiny whitecaps rose and fell, dotting the sea like the stars above in the black sky.