The Prisoner's Wife (8 page)

“We'll talk,” he said to Shawn.

Through the window, Danielle watched the spy climb into a waiting vehicle. There were two men in the front seats. They did not look around.

“What kind of car is that?”

“Volvo,” Shawn said. “Swedish automaker. Now owned by Ford. If you were going to ask what color the car was, the answer's black. Wouldn't you think that's a coincidence?” He left on the restaurant table more cash than a New York tip.

He said, “I know I would.”

 

11

PARIS–LONDON EXPRESS, 22 MAY 2004

For a while, traveling through Normandy, when rail ran alongside road, Shawn saw from the TGV that even the fastest cars—the Astons and Ferraris—were left behind. In the train's dining car, sitting across from Shawn, Danielle rearranged misplaced cutlery and pointed out an empty wineglass to a passing waiter.

Shawn was used to choosing wine for women. “The merlot. Napa Valley merlot.”

“Absolument pas,”
Danielle told the waiter.
“Nous prendrons le vin de Cairanne.”
When the man set down menus and turned away, she said to Shawn, “You think, in France, we will drink this California
pissat d'âne?
”

For a while then, she was quiet, watching flat Norman fields unroll beside the train. He asked what she was thinking; saw that she was weighing her words.

“I was thinking about you. You say you were a soldier? A sniper?” He nodded. “I wonder why you left.”

“I can tell you.” He thought back. “Nineteen eighty-something, Special Ops, we're in Afghanistan. Hiding in a valley, waiting for dark. Had us a bunch of Stingers for the mujahideen.”

“Stingers?”

“Shoulder-mounted ground-to-air missile. Heat-seeking. So the muj could bring down Russian choppers. The gunships.”

She shook her head. “You gave these things to mujahideen? To the Taliban? The men you are fighting?”

“Weren't fighting them then. Later, we had to buy the damn things back—the Stingers.”

The waiter brought wine and let Danielle taste. She raised a finger; he poured.

“Anyway,” Shawn said, “we're in this little valley, old guy comes past, on the ridge—he's got this herd of goats. Lieutenant tells me, waste him. I say, sir, what do you mean? This guy's not fighting. He's old. Take a look. He's a goddamn goatherd. Lieutenant says, can't risk it. He'll tell the Reds we're here. Lieut takes my piece—sniper rifle, nice sight—blows the head off this old hajji. Lucky shot—guy never was that good with a gun. Anyway, end of story, I'm out. Disobeyed a direct order.”

“You were, what do you say? Unemployed?”

“Uh-huh. It was a bad time. Next year, my buddy Bob—the one you met—he gets me this intel gig. Which I needed. Paid the rent, paid off some debts. Didn't save my marriage.”

Danielle sat, thinking. When she looked directly at him, Shawn felt the same sexual shock he'd experienced when he'd first seen her, in the Parisian apartment.

“I was asking myself,” she said, after a time, “why I would agree to come with you. Why will I go to another country, with a man I hardly know? A man who takes cash to find my husband. How to say—a hired hand.” She sipped her wine. “Why would you do it? Take money for this? To find Darius?”

Shawn was thinking how to answer when the train dived into darkness, deep beneath the Channel.

“You want to know why I'd take money?” he asked, speaking against the blackness. “I'll tell you why. I need it. Right now, I'm out of work again. My wife had money, I have debts. I owe every son of a bitch out there. Him and his dog.”

“You said she died.”

He was quiet for a time.

Danielle said again, “Your wife—you said she has died?”

He said, “She did. I told you. Cancer. She left me a house. No money.”

She placed a hand over his. The first time she'd touched him.

“Bottom line,” he said. “I'm not proud. Can't afford to be. I work for anyone who pays.”

The waiter brought a basket of bread and a bowl of olive oil.

Danielle turned, looking out to the dark. “You could sell the house, no?”

He moved the basket of bread. “This basket—that's the house.” Inches away, he set down the bowl. “This—it's the churchyard. Little lane there, in between.” He pointed. “Here's where I live.” He moved his hand. “Here's where Martha's buried.”

The train was out of the tunnel now, running through a barbed-wire-and-concrete welcome to England.

“This woman, this Martha. You loved her?”

“Took me half my life to work it out,” Shawn said, “but sure. She was the one.”

After the waiter had taken their order, Danielle said, “Tell me. It has to be legal, this work? The work you will do if you are paid enough?”

Shawn paused. “I won't kill anyone, if that's what you mean.”

“But you have?”

“Have I killed? Weren't you listening? I was a sniper. I mean, damn, that's what you do.” He poured a second glass of wine. “Like I said, it was a long time ago. Different now.”

“Supposing I paid,” she said. “If I paid what you want? Would you work for me?”

“When I find your husband,” he told her, “I'll be out of contract. Then we can talk.”

“If you find Darius,” she said, “who knows if I will still wish to talk with you?”

Shawn raised his glass to her. “Not now,” he said, “but sometime, when we know each other better, you can tell me what you mean.”

“You mean, when you have got me into bed?”

“No,” Shawn said. “No. What makes you think that?” He sat back, holding his wine, watching her. “Believe me, that was not what I meant.”

 

12

WEST SUSSEX, ENGLAND, 22 MAY 2004

Escorting the prisoner's wife, Shawn left the Paris–London Eurostar at the Ashford station in Kent. Since they had come into Kent, Danielle had been silent, withdrawn, keeping her distance. When Shawn tried probing her past, her answers were so brief and dismissive that, after a time, he stopped trying.

In silence, each aware of the other, not touching, they went to find his car.

*   *   *

Still uneasy on English roads, Shawn drove back to Felbourne, through greenlit tunnels and tree-hung lanes. To the hamlet that was now his home.

As they crossed the county border from Kent to Sussex, Shawn glanced at his companion. She'd turned her head, brushing away what might have been tears.

He couldn't be sure.

“I begin to think,” she said, apropos of nothing, “I begin to think you may be right.”

“About what?”

“About Darius. Disappearing. I have left so many messages on his phone—”

“And?”

“And nothing.
Rien du tout.
No word. Now even the phone is dead.” She paused, watching light flicker through coppiced woodland to the left of the road. “If your people do have him—you think they will hurt him?”

Shawn wondered how much truth she could stand.

He said, “Possible. It happens.”

She was quiet, then said, “If they do? Your friend told me some die. Some prisoners die.”

It started to rain, just a little, then. A polite, English rain.

Shawn tried to find the right words. “What can I tell you? Believe me, no one's meant to die. Handbook says, detainee dies, we're doing it wrong. Body bags don't talk.”

“This should make me feel better?”

Now a light mist blew across the Five Ash valley. Shawn switched on the wipers. The car was Martha's, the little two-seater Mercedes—a toy for cash-rich, child-poor couples. The car had computer-controlled options Shawn had not yet mastered.

He accelerated down the Broyle, the route's only straight stretch: once a Roman road.

“If the prisoner,” she said, “if he is not a terrorist? If he has nothing to say?”

A rabbit dashed out of a clump of cow parsley, onto the road. Eyes wide, body quivering, it turned to run back the way it had come. Shawn braked and swung the car around it.

“Believe me, they all have something to say. Those places, black jails, you just want to stop whatever the hell's happening. That's why we use them. Waterboarding, they tell me—takes like ninety-some seconds before the guy talks. Bad feeling, being drowned. Trust me, they all talk.”

Danielle was looking out the car's window, not watching him. Shawn wondered if she was a woman he could live with. Physically, sure. The rest, who knew?

Always assuming she no longer had a husband. Part of his addiction recovery involved staying away from married women.

They were passing the open door of a busy smithy. Tell me, Shawn thought, in the twenty-first century, what kind of country still has working blacksmiths?

“Maybe it's lies, what they say. What the prisoners say.”

“No question,” he said. “That's a problem. Always. Maybe they're lying. Right after 9/11, we had what we called a high-value detainee. Al-Libi. After they waterboarded him, he talked like he was on the news. Helped start that little war in Eye-rack. Only trouble, the story was bullshit. Soup to nuts, fiction. Damn raghead, trying to stop what we did to him.”

“You still got the war.”

“We still got the war. Which, in a small way, we helped to start—me and Robert Hamilton Walters.” He glanced across at her. “This business, you kiss a lot of frogs. You know what? Most of them, they stay frogs.”

They were driving through villages where farm laborers' cottages stood for sale to city people. To commuters. They were the ones with money.

She was quiet again.

To break the silence, Shawn said, “Tell me something, Dani.”

She said, “Danielle.”

“Okay, Danielle. If I'm traveling with you, if we're going to find your man, I need to know some things. Like exactly where you met Osmani. What he was doing. Tell me the story.”

Now the day had cleared. Frost, though, still lay in hillside hollows; tree shadows lengthened on hoarfrost fields.

Her reflection hovered on the window glass, distracting him.

“Not a secret,” she said. “I had a commission.” Her voice had lost its life. She was either lying, he thought, or recalling something she wished to forget. “That's how it started. How I met Darius. This American came to me. He'd bought a van Gogh. An authenticated canvas. It was called
La Grenade.
You know? The fruit, red, a little bitter?”

“Pomegranate?”

“Exactly. Pomegranate. In French,
grenade
.”

“Like the explosive?”

“I suppose. This guy that bought the canvas, he asks me, is it right? Was it, in fact, van Gogh? He should have asked before he paid the money. I had a sense this one, this work—you know, it looked good, quite beautiful—but in truth I thought it was fake. Sometimes one gets that feeling. Though Vincent mentions such a canvas in his letters.”

“You told the buyer?”

“Of course. He was called Lamar Grant. A man from Atlanta.”

“Young?”

“He was older than me. Forty. Something like that. Good-looking, you would say, conservative, right wing, far too much money. Family money. Not enough to do in life. He thought he was smart. Smartest guy in the room, he called himself.” She laughed. “A babe magnet, too. To me, not at all magnetic.”

Unlike her.

“He didn't believe he'd bought a fake?”

“No. Not for a heartbeat. He told me, come on, you think that, so prove it.” She shrugged. “With van Gogh, you know, proof is hard. If you are faking, if you are professional, you can search around—you still buy nineteenth-century painters' canvas, if you wish. In Arles, even. And stretchers, the same age. We prove nothing from that. The age is right, it will check right; too recent to be wrong. The first time I went to Arles I even talked with Jeanne Calment. When she was a girl, in a shop there, she remembered serving him. Remembered serving Vincent.”

In his mind, Shawn did the math. Martha had talked of van Gogh.

“Come on,” he said. “Don't give me that. Even a peasant like me knows dates. This woman, she'd be, what, hundred fifteen? Give or take.”

“Give. When I met her, she was a hundred and twenty-one.”

He glanced at her face, in profile. “Jesus. That's a healthy life.”

“Smoked until she was ninety. All her life, drank wine.” She watched him watching her. “Then,” she said, “you know, with a canvas that might be a fake—you're not sure, of course, you're guessing—it's just a sense—you check the pigments. We know exactly what paints van Gogh used for each canvas. Most of the time he couldn't afford to buy colors, where he was, in the south; he had to write and ask his brother to buy. His brother Theo, in Paris. We have the letters—like I say, in one of them, he mentions
La Grenade.
He spells out the paints he would need. So, if the pigments are right, if the canvas is right, how do we prove a fake?”

“You lost me.”

“We check the provenance. We talk to the former owners—the ones who are meant to have had the canvas. The first I went to see was an old woman in Aix. They said she bought
La Grenade
—or her father, I think, had it—from a Nazi collection. Always doubtful, those so-called ex-Nazi works. The woman lived on the Cours Mirabeau. Such a beautiful avenue. I booked a room on the Cours; next day I was going to visit. I was getting ready for bed when Lamar—this guy who is paying me—he comes right in my room.”

“You had no clothes on?”

She made a gesture that could have been contemptuous or could have been rude.

“I had clothes on. He started pulling them off me. He drank too much, that man, did a lot of coke, but God, he was strong. I knew he was going to rape me. I had a vision of my father doing this thing. With my father, I don't know if it's true or if I imagined that. When I asked my mother she said of course it was all imagination, I was stupid, and anyway, she told me, it's nothing. Most girls, she said, most girls get raped.”