A World I Never Made (18 page)

“What is it?” he asked.

“I hear voices,” she whispered, putting her index finger to her lips.

One more step and Pat would be able to see over the crest of the arch to the remainder of the ascending path, all the way to the top of the cliff, to the area actually at the stone wall where he and Catherine had kissed last night. Stepping back and hugging the cliff wall, they strained to hear the sound of voices from above, but the wind had changed and they heard nothing but the screeching of the gulls. Their view to the top was blocked by the steeply rising leg of the arch that was also concealing them.

“I’ll poke my head up,” said Pat.

“No, someone may be coming down:”

“Yes. I’m not cowering here. It’s probably nothing:”

Paranoid, Pat drew the Beretta from his pocket, unlatched the safety, and held it to the side of his face as he gingerly mounted the next step, bringing the full remainder of the path to eye level. The path was empty, but up at the stone wall a large man in a hooded sweatshirt and some kind of fatigue pants—a massive man, taller and bulkier by far than Pat—was holding Daniel Peletier by his long white hair, gripping it firmly from behind so as to pull Daniel’s head sharply back. In his other hand he held a bunched up portion of the back of the old policeman’s pale blue flannel nightshirt, its tail flapping incongruously in the stiffening morning breeze. Behind them was another man, his forehead bandaged, in a hooded jacket and jeans, holding the muzzle of what looked to Pat like an automatic rifle to Uncle Daniel’s left temple. On the clearest, prettiest morning since he had arrived in France, Pat had no trouble seeing the white fields and dark orbs of the old man’s eyes, opened wide with fear, yes, but also with defiance and an unmistakable contempt.

Before Pat could do anything, before he could
think
of doing anything, the man holding Daniel lifted him up and threw him headlong over the stone wall. For Pat, all of eternity elapsed and all doubt he had ever had about good and evil vanished in the heartbreaking two seconds before Daniel—who had fed him meat and bread and wine, who had allowed him to sleep with his beloved niece in his beloved home—crashed into the jagged rocks below. He chanced one last look up and saw the big man leaning over the wall to get a better view of his handiwork and the smaller, bandaged one—his right hand hooding his eyes—scanning the coast first to the left and then beginning to swing to the right toward Pat. Ducking quickly down, Pat turned to Catherine, who had seen nothing, and looked her directly in the eye.

“You’re sure we could we get through?” he said, pointing to the far end of the small beach.

“Yes. The tide is not fully in. What is it, Patrick? Tell me:”

“And we could get up the cliff?”

“Yes, I told you, I know a path across the hills. But I’m not going until you tell me why. What did you see?”

Pat’s mind raced ahead, to escape, and back, to the last death he had caused, Lorrie’s, and the sorry life he had led since then. He knew that all he could do was soften the blow, and so he did.

“Your uncle is dead. Two Arabs just threw his body off the cliff. One of them was our friend from the park. We have to go. There may be ten of them up there. And they’ve seen your car. They’ll wait for us:”

Catherine shook her head rapidly, back and forth, back and forth several times, and then rushed forward to climb the path. Patrick, moving quickly, placed his large body in her way. She bounced off and then tried again, this time clawing at his chest and then his face. She continued to struggle as he wrapped his arms around her and pinned her against the cliff wall.

“Catherine, Catherine;” he said, whispering, his voice suddenly hoarse. ”Catherine. We can’t let them see us. There’s nothing we can do:” She continued to struggle for a moment or two, trying to free her arms, but Pat was too strong. Sobbing, the fight went out of her. He loosened his hold so that he could look at her. Her head was buried in his chest. When she raised it, he could see that her tears had stopped flowing, and that they had been replaced by a wild and fearsome look, a look that spoke of terrible pain, as if she were keening with her eyes, but also of something else, something that confused him at first, until looking deeper he saw what it was: revenge.

“We will circle back,” she said. “I know the landscape, the farms along the coast, the back roads:”

“Maybe,” Pat replied, “but first we have to get off this beach:”

They did get off the beach, and they did circle back, and thirty minutes later they were laying on their stomachs on a rocky knoll on the opposite side of the house. Some twenty feet directly below them, in a hollow next to a small stream that ran to the sea, was the smokehouse, now falling apart, built by the farm’s first owner a hundred and fifty years before. In the distance they could see Catherine’s Peugeot parked under and in between the two massive evergreens that stood to the right of the long gravel drive that led from the cliff road, as the locals called it, to the house. Another smaller evergreen stood on the near side of the drive, at the edge of the houses hardpan front yard. A black Citroën sedan was parked beneath it. Standing at the car’s rear were two bearded and scruffy-looking men—not the ones from the cliff—with AK-47s slung casually over their shoulders. Two more Arabs, both in their mid-twenties.

“Do you see another car?” Catherine asked. “Between the trees? Anywhere?”

“No. I think we’re dealing with four altogether.”

Catherine did not reply, but continued to scan the scene before them. They had given the house a wide berth on their route back, climbing the bluff near a small bay, crossing the cliff road and then scrambling inside the tree line of the ridge above it until they deemed it safe to recross the road and make their way back; the knoll above the smokehouse, because of the view it afforded, had been their destination from the beginning. They could go no farther, however, because beyond the smokehouse and the stream was a rocky scrim, wide open and treeless, that led directly to the house. The only thing in between was the lone pine tree with the Citroën parked under it—and the two mujahideen types standing at its rear.

“We can’t get closer until tonight,” Pat said, looking at his watch, which told him it was now all of seven AM. “That’s a long wait:”

“I will call them,” said Catherine.

“Call them?”

“Yes, I have my cell phone:”

“To say what?”

“I will leave a message for Uncle Daniel:”meet us at the smokehouse: They will hear it and come for us. We will kill them as they approach:”

“What if only two come?”

“The others will hear the shots. They will come to investigate:”

“No, they’ll assume we have been killed:”

“They want you alive, Patrick. They want you to lead them to Megan. Do you know where she is, by the way?”

Pat took his eyes off the two Arabs to look at Catherine. “Are you saying you don’t believe me? What was last night all about?”

“No, Patrick, my love, I am saying if you do know, they will force it out of you. Better to tell them and die a quick death than be tortured:”

“I don’t know, but they won’t believe me, so they’ll torture me, anyway.”

“We shall kill them first:”

“What if one of them picks up the phone?”

“I will blurt out my message, pretending that I assume whoever answers is Daniel:”

“Okay, make the call:”

Catherine dialed Daniel’s landline and waited for his recorded greeting to end. “Uncle, we are at the smokehouse. Please come to meet us. Someone in the village said you had visitors this morning. What visitors? I am worried. We will wait here for you:”

Catherine ended the call.“We will separate,” she said.“You to the right and me to the left. Find a spot behind a rock. Lay out your extra clips. When you hear me fire, you fire. Remember, aim low. Bonne chance, Patrick.”

“And to you, Catherine.”

They took up their positions and watched as the two gunmen near the car continued their casual chat. A few minutes later—a long few minutes later—another man, the one with the bandaged head, emerged from the house and said something to the gunmen. Then all three looked in the direction of the smokehouse and bandage-head pointed at it. As he did, Pat involuntarily squeezed harder on the handle of his Beretta, wondering if he had been spotted as he lay prone, peering discreetly around a large boulder. The gun now seemed too small and toylike to do any damage, and he rued the fact that he had not chosen one of the bigger weapons. He glanced over at Catherine and saw that she was intently watching the three men. She had taken off her heavy wool coat to lay on, the morning sun warm enough. She was probably oblivious to the weather, anyway. Pat’s heart ached suddenly at this sight and the simultaneous thought of losing her. She looked over at him then and raised and slightly shook a clenched fist.
They are coming. Be strong.

Pat nodded in response, and then looked back toward the house. The large man who had thrown Daniel Peletier to his death now appeared and said something to the other three. Then the two gunmen began walking slowly toward the smokehouse, first unslinging their rifles and carrying them at the ready. The other two moved to the other side of the car to watch.

Fuck,
Pat thought, looking over at Catherine, who turned to look at him, then simply pointed to the two men who were coming toward them. When, thirty seconds later, they got to a point about ten paces from the front of the smokehouse, Pat, watching with his Beretta pointed at them and his finger lightly on the trigger, heard two loud blasts from Catherine’s Magnum. He fired as well, emptying his clip in the direction of the two men. Both went down and lay there on the open scrim, their weapons under them. Then, to Pat’s amazement, Catherine scrambled down off the knoll toward the dead bodies. Reaching them in a flash, she kicked them over, grabbed their AK-47s and ran back, where she immediately dropped one rifle and began firing the other one in the direction of the men back at the car, who, rifleless, took cover behind it.

Pat hustled along the ground to Catherine and picked up the second rifle. He had never fired one but he would learn on the job.

“The safety’s off,” she said, “it reloads automatically. Aim at the car. I will circle around. Fire once every five seconds. The clip is full. Don’t put it on automatic-here:” She pointed to the lever on the side of the weapon. Then she took quick aim and fired off another burst at the Citroën. ”We must keep them pinned down:”

“No;” Pat said. ”I don’t like it. You’ll expose yourself. They’ll separate and trap you:”

“Yes.
They”re confused. I must do this now. We need a car, Patrick. We can’t walk out of here:”

They were lying prone at the top of the knoll, side by side, their rifles pointed at the Citroën below. As they talked, they looked straight ahead. Catherine, her rifle on its four-round shooting mode, fired off a burst. Pat followed suit, getting a quick lesson in the oddly delicate yet rock-solid feel of the famous Kalashnikov as it pushed back against his shoulder.

“I’ll go,” he said. “You’re a better shot. You can keep them pinned down. And if I can draw them out, you could actually hit one. That’s the whole point, no?”

“No, I’m going:”

Before Pat could answer, the large man, the body-tosser, emerged from the front of the Citroën in a mad low dash toward the house. Catherine and Pat fired simultaneously, and to Pat’s astonishment, the man went down, falling hard face forward onto the stone steps that led to the house’s wide front porch. Then their attention was diverted by the sound of the Citroën’s engine starting and the car’s tires screeching as it backed sharply away from them and headed down the driveway. They fired at it, but in an instant it was gone, out of sight behind the tree line, where the driver switched back toward the cliff road.

“I don’t think there are others,” said Catherine. “They would have come out to help. Let’s get to my car.”

They went cautiously, keeping low, but soon it was clear that there were no more terrorists about. Before getting into the Peugeot, Catherine and Pat stepped over to the large man whose body, shot in the chest and head, lay on its side half on the ground and half on the house’s stone steps.

“He threw the body;” Pat said.

“Are you sure Uncle was dead?”

“Yes, I could tell. He was dead already.”

Catherine did not respond. Toeing the body onto its back, she dug out the man’s ID from around his neck, then pulled his billfold out of his back pocket. It contained a thick wad of hundred euro notes and nothing else. On the belt of his fatigue pants was clipped a cell phone, which she took also. Her own cell phone she removed from the front pocket of her slacks and put into the glove box of the car. Then, returning to the body, she placed the muzzle of her AK-47 against the dead man’s crotch and calmly squeezed off a burst of four rounds. Where the crotch of the man’s fatigue pants had been, Pat could now see a ragged gaping hole. “He won’t be able to enjoy his virgins now,” she said, and then, leaning over, she spit on his face.