A Walk Across the Sun (36 page)

“It's not far, sir,” the man replied.

They left the passage and crossed Boulevard de Strasbourg. The man stopped on the sidewalk and pointed down a second passage, covered with a canopy of glass.

“My friend is this way,” he said. “He comes to my restaurant all the time.” He stuck out his hand. “I am Ajit.”

Thomas shook the man's hand. “Thomas Clarke.”

Ajit led the way into the second arcade. They entered a shop advertising hand-woven rugs from Persia and Afghanistan. Ajit made his way to the back and peeked through a door that led to a storage area. He spoke a loud greeting in Hindi.

“He is hard of hearing,” Ajit said. “But he will come.”

“Who is he?” Thomas asked.

“He is Prabodhan-dada. He has lived here a long time.”

After a minute, an elderly man appeared, holding a calculator. He had salt-and-pepper hair and wore thick glasses. He greeted Ajit kindly and delivered Thomas a look that was at once open and quizzical.

“Prabodhan-dada,” Ajit said, using French so that Thomas could understand, “Mister Thomas is looking for a girl.”

The rug dealer tilted his head and blinked. When he didn't speak, Thomas took out Ahalya's photograph and handed it to him.

“She looks like this,” he said, pointing at Sita. “Though she is older now.”

The rug dealer ignored the photograph and focused on Thomas. He spoke in a quiet voice, but his words carried unmistakable authority.

“As you can see,” he said, “I am a tradesman. I sell rugs. Why do you think I would know her?”

“They are friends from the Sorbonne,” Ajit explained before Thomas could speak. “Mister Thomas hasn't seen her in some time.”

“Do you not have a telephone?” the rug dealer replied. “Or the Internet? Surely, a man educated at the Sorbonne would know how to contact a friend.”

“We lost touch,” Thomas said. “All I know is that she is in Paris.”

The rug dealer narrowed his eyes and thought about this. At last he seemed to relent. He drew the photograph close to his face and squinted at it through his glasses. He blinked a couple of times and then looked at Thomas again, less skeptical than curious.

“What if she does not want to see you?”

“Does that mean you know where she is?” Thomas asked.

The rug dealer stared at him for a long moment before nodding. “I have seen a girl who looks like this.”

As soon as the old man spoke the words, Thomas's hope took flight. “Is she nearby?” he inquired, trying to control his enthusiasm.

The rug dealer took another look at the photograph and waggled his head. He exchanged a few words with Ajit in Hindi and then vanished into the storage room.

Ajit spoke: “Prabodhan-dada says this girl is working at a restaurant in the Eighteenth. He asks that you not mention him.”

“Of course,” Thomas agreed. “How do I get there?”

Ajit gave him a beaming smile. “I will take you, Mister Thomas.”

Thomas followed Ajit to the Metro station at Château d'Eau. They bought tickets and hopped aboard the northbound train. At Barbès Rochechouart, Ajit stepped onto the platform and led Thomas through the disorienting swirl of the crowd. Exiting the station, Ajit walked east on Boulevard de la Chapelle and took a left up a narrow cobblestone lane. He headed for the glass facade of an Indian restaurant. The restaurant was closed, but Thomas could see a dark-skinned man sitting at a table at one of the booths.

Ajit asked Thomas for the photograph and knocked on the window. The man turned around, clearly irritated by the interruption. He stood and came to the door.

“Bonjour,”
Ajit said, preempting the man's question. He showed the man Sita's photograph, and the two of them held an animated conversation in Hindi. Eventually the man shook his head and closed the door.

“What did he say?” Thomas asked.

“He would not answer many questions,” Ajit said. “He was not friendly.”

“Did he say anything about the photograph?”

“He said the girl worked here once, but she is gone.”

Thomas took a sharp breath, feeling certain he was close. He studied the restaurant and then walked back down the cobbled lane to Boulevard de la Chapelle. Ajit followed without a word. On the corner was a tourist shop empty of customers. Thomas stepped inside and made his way to the cashier—a young woman with spiked hair and a spider tattoo on her neck. Thomas showed her Sita's picture and gestured toward the restaurant down the lane, explaining the situation in French.

The cashier shook her head, looking bored. “It is not the same girl.”

Thomas felt a surge of frustration. “How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“A man told me he saw her there,” Thomas argued. “He was pretty certain about it.”

The cashier put her hands on the counter and leaned toward him. “I don't care who told you what; it's not the same girl.” She paused and her face softened slightly. “Look, I'm an artist, okay? I sketch people in the park. This girl,” she said, pointing toward the picture, “has lighter skin than the girl who works at the restaurant. And the girl in the restaurant has a cleft chin, a wider forehead, and a mole beside her nose. I ate there not long ago. The food was awful, but I remember her well.”

The cashier's certainty struck at the heart of Thomas's confidence. “The man at the restaurant says she doesn't work there anymore,” he said. “He didn't want to talk about her. Any idea why that would be?”

The cashier smirked. “Oh, she still works there. I saw her this morning. She's probably illegal, like half the immigrants in this city.”

Thomas left the tourist shop, feeling depressed. The rug dealer's lead had seemed so promising. Then he remembered the old man's eyeglasses.
He didn't see her
, he thought to himself.
He saw a distortion of her
.

He stood on the corner and faced Ajit. “I appreciate all your help.”

Ajit saw his dejection and tried to cheer him up. “Do you like Indian cuisine, Mister Thomas?”

“Yes,” Thomas replied, trying to be gracious.

“My wife makes the best tandoori chicken in France. If you come to my restaurant, I will ask if she has seen your friend.”

“I'll think about it,” Thomas said, having no intention of doing so. He put out his hand to end the conversation, and Ajit shook it, looking crestfallen.

“Come to my restaurant,” Ajit said. “I promise you will not regret it.”

Thomas took the Metro back to the Fifth and strolled south along the wide promenade of Boulevard Saint-Michel. He entered the east gate of the Luxembourg Gardens just as the sun was descending toward the trees to the southwest. He walked across the plaza to the Luxembourg palace and took a seat near the fountain. Unless Julia's contact at the BRP came up with something, he was out of live options. He could pound the pavement for weeks, casing different neighborhoods in the city and accosting every Parisian with a pulse, but he would almost certainly come up empty. The odds of success were overwhelmingly against him.

When the sunlight faded into afterglow, he left the gardens by the side gate, heading for his hotel. His BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket.

“Hey, Julia,” he answered when he saw the number on the screen.

“Sorry for the delay,” she said. “Our friend at the BRP just spoke with an envoy at the French embassy in Mumbai. The envoy promised to contact the CBI tomorrow.”

Thomas took this in. “The wheels of justice grind slowly.”

“Apparently. Did you have any luck this afternoon?”

“None whatsoever,” he replied. He gave her a brief summary of meeting Ajit and chasing down the rug dealer's erroneous tip.

Julia sighed. “I keep thinking what a shame it is that the Bombay police let Navin go. If we had his uncle's name, I could do wonders on our computer system.”

“I don't doubt it,” Thomas replied.

After a moment, she asked, “Do you have any plans for the evening?

I know a fabulous Moroccan place on Isle St. Louis.”

Thomas was about to accept when he was struck by an idea. He recalled the advice of Jean-Pierre Léon:
“I'd ask women and children, especially South Asians.”
And Ajit's invitation:
“My wife makes the best tandoori chicken in France…. I will ask if she has seen your friend.”
He knew it was a shot in the dark, but it was better than waiting around for the BRP to produce a lead that might never come.

“I'd love to,” he said, “but right now I'm craving a little Indian food.”

Julia pondered this. “Does that mean you have a hunch?”

“I'd call it a wild guess. Don't get your hopes up.”

“All right, I'm game. Tell me where to meet you and when.”

Thomas smiled. “Eight o'clock at Porte St. Denis. We can walk from there.”

Chapter 20

Yield not to calamity, but face it boldly.
—V
IRGIL

Paris, France

After Uncle-ji and Aunti-ji left the flat with the travel documents, Tatiana returned to the sitting room. “Come,” she said to Sita. “Work to do.”

Sita followed her up the stairs to the library. Tatiana gave her the dust rag, and she spent two hours dusting books, her mind consumed by the morning meeting. Nothing made sense. When Navin had sold her to Uncle-ji, she had expected that she would work in the restaurant for a long time, perhaps years. But then Navin had showed up again and everything had changed. Uncle-ji had hidden her in the closet and handed her over to Vasily and Tatiana, and he and Vasily had made some sort of travel arrangement. She wished she had looked more closely at the airline tickets.

At midday Tatiana brought her a baguette sandwich. After she ate, Tatiana led her to Vasily's office on the third floor of the flat. Sita had cleaned the office twice in the past weeks, and each time it had made her skin crawl.

“Clean fast,” Tatiana said. “He come home in one hour.”

When Sita was alone, she took out her dust rag and went over the desk. She stared for a long moment at the flat-screen monitors, worrying that any vibration might jar them awake. She moved on to the circular window and the filing cabinet. She made quick work of these and looked around for something else to clean. She noticed that the closet door at the back of the room wasn't closed completely. She could see a pile of boxes through the crack along the doorframe. She hesitated, but her curiosity got the better of her.

She opened the door and stared at the boxes. They were banker's boxes, at least a dozen of them. She opened the top box and saw that it was full of paper. She extracted the top page. It was a bank statement for an account in Geneva, Switzerland. Vasily's name was not listed anywhere on the document. The statement was in French, but the figures didn't require translation. The balance in the account was over five million euros. Sita took a deep breath and pictured Natalia and Ivanna and the other girls. Whatever Vasily and Dmitri were up to, their business had made them very wealthy.

She replaced the account statement exactly as it had been and backed out of the closet. Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a small hook lodged in the wall beside the door jamb. On the hook was a ring with three keys. Sita looked around the room for a lock that would fit the keys, but she didn't see anything. Apart from the computer system and the desk and filing cabinet, the room was bare.

She thought about the layout of the house. The front door could be opened only by using a numerical keypad. She knew the six-digit code to the door because she had seen Dmitri enter it twice a day. The double doors to the street also had a keypad. The code was different, but she knew it, too. At first she had thought she might use the codes to escape, but the more she had considered it, the less attractive the idea had seemed. To slip out undetected would take sheer luck, and if she failed, she was certain the reprisals would be swift and severe.