City of Ice (56 page)

Wednesday, June 1, and Monday and Tuesday, July 11 and 12

She had gone home.

Julia returned to her family’s summer farm and the comforting care of her mother, who would come up on the weekends to wonder what was wrong with her and to cook weird, delicious meals. She was grateful for the care she had received from Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars—Julia had been portrayed by him in the media as an anonymous biker’s moll, released due to a lack of evidence.

“You fell in love with a Hell’s Angel?” her mother queried.

“Mummy. Don’t ask.”

“Was it really terrific? Did you get to ride on his Harley? You’re not into rough trade sex, are you, Jul, honey?”

“Mummy!”

The detective’s ploy was to lure as many of the bad guys as possible into believing that they’d made a mistake about her, that she had been one of them all along and not a mole. If he planted a doubt, they might forget about exacting revenge. It was also necessary for him to finesse his colleagues and the judiciary. He didn’t want her to be arrested for any part in the
whole business, for that would surely place her life in jeopardy.

The plan might not work. They could only hope.

Julia knew that the Czar understood that she had been a mole, for she had told him about Selwyn Norris when, horrified by what she’d seen and scared to death, she was no longer able to withstand his threats. In her mind, the plan could never work. The Czar knew that she had betrayed him, betrayed them all. But Émile Cinq-Mars continued to insist that she be patient. So she stayed alone on the farm during the week and tried to keep busy, puttered and did her best to grow things in the wild, neglected gardens.

One day a car came up the drive, and her heart was pounding with terror. She fled to the bushes, lay down on her belly, and watched. To her relief, Okinder Boyle stepped out of the car. She was delighted to see him, anyone from that world who was a friend. She took him into the house, served him a cup of tea, and gave him a cranberry muffin she had made herself. “Émile sent me,” he told her.

“What’s up?”

A police officer had been intercepted displaying a picture of her around the campus of McGill University, trying to ascertain her true identity.

“A cop?”

“Not a good one.”

“What does it mean?”

“The Czar is still after you, Julia. And if he’s after you, he’ll find out who you are, sooner or later. You’re not safe here anymore.”

She wept then, spontaneously and abruptly, and Boyle cradled her in his arms. After she pulled herself together, she asked him what she was supposed to do.

“Émile and me, we’ve come up with an idea.”

Julia was to travel to the island where he had been born and raised. A place sufficiently isolated that she’d
be safe, a place where she had no connection. She had to depart the family farm immediately, and leave no trace.

“My mother?”

“Call her now. Tell her you have to go. That you can’t tell her where. Give her no clues. Tell her that when it’s safe again you’ll be in touch.”

“When will it be safe?”

Boyle gritted his teeth. But when he spoke he was upbeat, positive. “Émile says that day will come. You have to hang on.”

“For what? What will change? What
can
change?”

“Émile says something will happen. He’s waiting for a sign. Everything will be different then.”

Boyle had relations on the island willing to provide a room and ask no questions. She’d be safe there, out of harm’s way. He’d drive her in his rental car, then return to the city himself.

“And where is this place?”

“The Bay of Fundy. Off the coast of northern Maine. South of Campobello Island, you know, where Roosevelt spent his summers? You’re going to a special place.”

On the island of Grand Manan, a road runs west from the town of North Head past woods and wildflower highland meadows to a lookout, then veers down to a rocky beach. In the evening tourists arrive to observe the sunset, the view scanning the bay across to the coast of Maine. At times during the summer Julia Murdick had spotted whales feeding offshore. The Whistle, as the lookout is known, named for the fog whistle that blew warning from this place years before a light station was erected instead, attracts island residents as well. As a local man had advised early in her visit, “This is how you tell the tourists from the locals. Tourists look across the water to watch the sun go down, locals look up the
road to see who’s coming down over the hill.” It’s a place where men and women talk and laugh and make jokes, a place that has provided her a welcome. People ask no pressing questions.

Most nights, Julia comes down for a beer or two, to partake in the banter, the stories of fishermen’s lives, tales from the past. It’s a happy place. As her host informed her, “People with nowhere to go are going to go somewhere.”

That made sense to her. She was like that, she had nowhere to go, and so she had gone somewhere. To the Whistle. This was a gentle place, a restorative place, that, despite its isolation, was somewhere.

She walked the island trails, strolled the rocky beaches. She went lobstering with men happy to show her how.

She hated her aloneness though.

Showed her tattoo to no one.

Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars had warned her, she mustn’t have it removed until her life was safe again. Doing so might invite discovery.

“When will that be?”

“The time will come,” he’d promised.

One morning, Okinder Boyle knocked upon the kitchen door of the house where she was staying. She gave him a big hug. He was beginning his vacation, and Julia was delighted for the company. Boyle was a feature writer now, no longer an underpaid junior columnist, with particular responsibility for crime. They had a lot to catch up on and the morning and the noon hour passed quickly.

He had something to show her. This was his island, his home, and he was proud of it. He launched a brother’s dory and took her onto Whale’s Cove, into the family weir. The weir was constructed with stout poles embedded in the bottom of the bay and bound together to form a heart shape. Nets were slung on the
poles, the leading edge taken into shore. As herring followed the tide into the cove, conning the shoreline, they veered into the net. The design kept the fish moving in the same direction, following the curves of the net, always missing the opening.

“So the exit remains wide open, but the fish are trapped?”

“That’s it. Their habit is to trace the shoreline. In the net, they swim along the edge, which guides them when it turns to the other side of the weir away from the opening. They repeat the same swimming pattern over and over again, a modified figure eight, until the fisherman comes along and ties up the net and calls for a seiner to empty his catch.”

She could understand that. She could see how fish might be trapped even when the exit was as large and inviting as had been the opening.

“Julia,” Boyle told her as they bobbed upon the water. “It’s over.”

“What is?” she asked.

“Look.”

From the backpack that he had brought along containing their lunch, he pulled out the front page of the
New York Post.
She gazed at the dead man in the cover photo and read the story inside. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “Somebody shot him, then somebody came along and cut off his shirt?” The dead man had been visiting a hospital in Baltimore.

“To expose his chest. You’re not going to recognize the face, not after the bullets. But you will notice the tattoo—the Eight-Pointed Star. And his surgical scar.”

Julia looked at the photograph again. The Czar was dead, his dreaded tattoo, a more elaborate example of her own, shining below his covered face.

“Why would anyone do that?” she insisted. “I don’t get it. Who would kill a man, then cut off the front of his shirt?”

“It’s his gift to you,” Boyle told her.

“What? Whose?”

“Your CIA guy. He wanted you to know.”

She was quiet.

Selwyn Norris had had the Russian assassinated. He’d instructed the assassin or assassins to cut the dead man’s shirt away to expose the Eight-Pointed Star for the tabloids. Selwyn had had him killed for his own reasons. He had revealed the tattoo so she would know that she was safe now. Or safer.

The killing was described as a gangland slaying. A settling of accounts. An episode in the war between rival drug lords. Julia Murdick knew better.

“You’re going to stay awhile?” she asked Boyle.

“Two weeks,” he said.

“I can use two more weeks here. I was wondering, after that, maybe you can drive me back to the city?”

“Be happy to. Your risk factor has gone way down, Julia. But you know, there are no guarantees,” he cautioned.

“Risk?” She smiled. “Tell me about it.”

He returned her smile, and did not disguise his admiration.

Boyle rowed the dory out of the weir before starting up the outboard again.

Seals swam off the starboard quarter. A guillemot, a black bird with white wing patches, one she’d learned to identify during her stay, bobbed in their wake. She watched it for a long time, a small bird swimming alone on a great sea.

As Bill Mathers drove onto the Cinq-Mars farm, his daughter was already shouting to the horses. They were greeted by Sandra Lowndes, who promptly scooped up the child and led her guests to the nearest paddock. Cinq-Mars emerged from the barn, dusting himself off.

“Donna! Bill! How are you?”

Greetings were effusive on this sunny afternoon, although Cinq-Mars noted that his partner seemed to prolong his opening smile an indefinite time. He finally sidled up to him while they watched the little girl ride an old gray gelding, her mother walking alongside to hold her up. “Why the smirk?”

“Have you detected a smirk, Émile?”

“The look doesn’t become you.”

The smirk expanded into a smile, and finally into a gentle, self-satisfied chuckle.

“All right,” an irritated Cinq-Mars inquired, “what canary did you swallow?”

“Surely you’ve heard about Baltimore.”

“I know about Baltimore,” Cinq-Mars told him. He’d been on vacation. “That’s nothing to smirk about. It’s a brutal business.”

More seriously, Mathers nodded. He was right, of course.

“I had a hand in it,” Cinq-Mars admitted.

“You?”

“I told them where to find him, who his doctor was.”

“You were right to do it, Émile. It’s better this way.”

“Is it?”

“Julia Murdick gets to stay alive. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It’s what I wanted,” Cinq-Mars agreed. He was watching the horses, his wife, the child. His dog, Sally, came running out from behind the barn and rolled in the dirt at his ankles.

“Last night,” the junior detective began, “I was watching TV.”

“Some people get to lead a life of leisure, I suppose,” Cinq-Mars murmured.

“Oh? You don’t watch the tube yourself?”

He shook his head, arched his eyebrows. “On occasion,” he allowed.

“PBS. Mystery! Do you know it? Last night it was Sherlock Holmes.”

“Holmes is a fine fellow. I admire him.”

“Do you?”

“Sure thing. Intellect over brawn.”

“But no cream puff. He’ll resort to drastic measures when called upon. Last night, for instance, Watson was surprised when Holmes took a pistol out of a drawer. He asked him, We go armed? And Holmes answered—but perhaps you can tell me how Holmes answered, Cinq-Mars.”

Émile Cinq-Mars put one foot up on a lower rail of the paddock fence, his eyes on their wives, the little girl, the horses. The summer had been warm, the grass beyond the fences tall in the breezes, although the land could use rain.

“It’s a gruesome business, Bill. Julia Murdick’s safe, we can hope. The Czar is dead, but another Russian will replace him, be sure of that. We’ve escalated the rules of engagement, contributed to the assassination of a criminal warlord. No charges. No trial. Merely summary death. Do you think the man’s replacement will show us any quarter for that?”

“He won’t think about us for the killing.”

“I suppose not. We’ll keep that hidden. We’ll add cowardice to our list of transgressions.”

“Émile, don’t.”

“What?”

“Beat yourself up.”

“Do you think I’d give my enemies the satisfaction? Bill, let me tell you what Holmes told Watson.”

“Please do.”

“ ‘Always,’ ” Cinq-Mars recited sternly, “ ‘carry a firearm east of Aldgate, Watson.’ That’s what he said. He’s right to say so. It’s a logic I try to follow.”

Bill Mathers was wearing his smirk again.

“All right,” Cinq-Mars said, disgusted. “Wipe that
look off your face. Nobody said you weren’t a good detective. This doesn’t prove it either, you just got lucky.”

Mathers stayed smiling.

Ducking down, Cinq-Mars put a leg, then his head and shoulders, between rails of the paddock fence. The rest of his body went through. Mathers chose to go over the top, and they strolled slowly toward the child and horses. “Holmes was a man who relied upon his intellect, his cunning, his powers of deduction. We should all be so lucky. He recognized that sometimes he had to step east of Aldgate—the tough part of London by the docks—and carry a firearm. For us, it’s more than that. We have to step east of Aldgate and make deals with criminals. Sanction murder. Run civilians undercover. If the truth be told, I started this by going after my source—Selwyn Norris—and ended up striking a bargain with the devil, leaving him unscathed. Tell me that’s right, Bill. Sure, it’s the best I could do under the circumstances, it saves that silly, brave young woman—I know that—but tell me it’s right. When Holmes advised Watson to always carry a firearm east of Aldgate, I could accept his logic. There’s no excuse for stupidity. At times you need a weapon. But this isn’t fiction. Now we need more than firepower. Now we need to engage the enemy with more than our wits and our resources. There are times when we had better be ruthless, when we have to work around the law, or the enemy will win.”