Undercover (16 page)

“What does he do?” she asked about the deprogrammer, frightened by the idea.

“You know, the usual,” Sam said lightly, “he cuts off your head, fills it with sawdust and apple juice, and sets your toenails on fire.” Her eyes flew open wide for an instant, and then she laughed and so did he. “Honestly, I'm not sure. I think he talks a lot, and he knows cults and political issues and the dynamics of being the prisoner of brilliant, twisted people, better than anyone in the world. The men and women we've sent there have come out of it in one piece, swearing that it saved their lives, especially the quality of their lives. It's not enough to just survive,” which she had, but barely more than that. She was still punishing herself.

And living like a Carmelite nun at her age was not his idea of a life for her. Even Mother Elizabeth knew that and was gently trying to prod her out of the nest, but Ariana didn't want to go home to her father's empty apartment. There was no one there but the help. And she didn't want to go back to work at the online fashion magazine where she'd worked before they went to Buenos Aires. She felt disconnected from the frivolous fashion world now. Her life and her mind had changed too much to pick up the threads of her old life. And she had trouble concentrating now on anything but simple tasks. She didn't feel ready to work, although she wanted a job in time. She just didn't know what. And even after his death, she felt she should do something Jorge would have approved of. She was no longer an innocent young girl fresh out of college. She had been brutalized by a master and traumatized to the edge of sanity.

She was sane now, and appeared whole, but Sam knew there was still a big piece of her missing. And he hoped she would find it with the deprogrammer in Paris. He thought it was her only hope of ever having a normal life again. She didn't realize how hampered she still was.

“Would you like me to help you check it out? I can call him and see what kind of time he has available. He does private work for us, and the French military, and he's been busy ever since Iraq. But I'm sure he'd make time for you. And our office of relocation can probably help you find a temporary place to stay.” He wanted to do everything he could to encourage her to take the leap and work with the deprogrammer who he was convinced could help her.

“I can do that for myself,” she said, looking pensive, and then glanced into Sam's eyes with fear. “It sounds scary. What if he makes it worse and brings it all back?” There were some things she didn't want to remember, like the kidnap itself and early days of her captivity.

“He's never done that before,” Sam reassured her. “None of our operatives ever said they felt worse.” He didn't tell her that they had never sent a civilian there before, only CIA agents who had been held hostage for long periods of time, sometimes years, but the dynamics were the same. “I've met him. He's a good guy. He was a political prisoner in Libya for eleven years, being tortured every day, and he managed to survive that. He seems whole and normal, he has a wife and four kids. Now he helps others get their lives back, and he's incredibly good at it, the best.”

“I have my life back,” she said seriously, as he glanced around the visiting room at St. Gertrude's and met her eyes again.

“No, you don't,” he said quietly. “I don't know whose life this is, but I don't think it's yours, Ariana. Don't you want your own? You're too young to give up now and live with ‘good enough,' hiding for the rest of your life, from yourself and everyone else. You deserve the best. You've been through enough pain. Why not let him try to help you?”

“I'll think about it.” She didn't sound convinced, and Sam felt as though his mission had failed when he left. Ariana told Mother Elizabeth about it that night.

“What a wonderful idea,” she said with her usual bright smile and knowing eyes, as though Ariana had just mentioned a shopping trip to New York or lunch with a friend.

“Do you think I need it?” Ariana asked, probing the wise old eyes.

“Possibly. Probably,” she corrected herself. “Now is the time to do everything you can to heal from what you went through, before it sets in cement with time. It's all still fresh. I'd love to keep you here with us forever, but I think you're destined for a bigger life. You need to free yourself of the past now so you can fulfill your destiny,” she said fairly. “You can always come back to us later if you make that choice. But you need to explore the world first.” Ariana had been rescued only eight months before, and she had needed these peaceful months to give her time for the wounds to close, but the scars were still there and were very raw. They probably always would be, but the deprogrammer might help them be less ugly, and less damaging in the end. “It can't hurt, Ariana. And it's not prison camp. If it's not right for you, you can stop.” Ariana hadn't thought of that. “Why not check it out? If it's good enough for agents in the CIA, who need to recover and go back to work at full strength, why wouldn't it be good enough for you? Sometimes you just have to jump in. You've been very brave about everything that happened. And you've had a good respite here and made great progress.” She no longer had the broken, ravaged look she'd had when she came in. “Now you need to finish the work.” And then the wise old nun said something that shocked Ariana. She didn't know that the mother superior knew. “You can't drag that tin box around for the rest of your life, with everything that's in it. It's too heavy to carry. Don't you think?” She smiled brightly at her, but her eyes went right to Ariana's heart. Ariana nodded and said nothing, but Mother Elizabeth had made her point.

Ariana thought about it for two days, and then called Sam in Washington. He was surprised to hear from her. She had never called him, since her release.

“Okay, I'll try it,” she said in a tense voice.

“Try what?” He sounded distracted and was concentrating on something else when she called. He had a number of difficult cases at the moment, but she was a priority for him.

“The deprogrammer in Paris. What's his name?” she said in a shaking voice.

“Yael Le Floch. He's from Brittany.” He had been a commando in the French Special Forces, but he didn't tell her that. It sounded too hardcore, which he was, but brilliant at what he did. And he knew that Ariana needed everything he had. “I think that's great,” he encouraged her. “I'll shoot him an e-mail right now.”

The response came back less than an hour later, although it was late in France.

“He can start with you in two weeks. He's just finishing a case now.” He tried to work with one person at a time, although he had people he had trained, who did the same work, but when the CIA sent him a case, he always handled it himself. He had a deep respect for them.

“How long does it take?” Ariana asked, sounding nervous.

“As long as it takes,” Sam said honestly. “That really depends on you, how open you are with him, and how fast it goes. I know from cases I've referred to him, it's hard to predict. It can be six weeks, or even a year. On average, my guess is probably a few months. But there are worse places to be than Paris while you work on your head. The other guy we use is on an army base in Mississippi. Something tells me you'll be happier in Paris with Yael.” She laughed at what he said.

“Yeah, I guess you're right. Okay.” She sighed deeply as though she were about to bungee-jump off a cliff and was praying the rope would hold. “Sign me up.” It was the bravest thing she'd ever done, but suddenly she wanted to do it, and she went to tell Mother Elizabeth as soon as she hung up.

“I'm so proud of you.” The mother superior beamed at her, as though she had just won the Nobel Prize. “I think it's going to be wonderful, and you'll be glad you did it. Send us a postcard from Paris. I haven't been since I was a little girl.”

“I'm going to miss you so much,” Ariana said, throwing her arms around her. She felt as though she were leaving home, and now this was the only home she had. Her father's old apartment in New York was just an empty shell. The soul had gone out of it for her, when her father died.

“This is so exciting!” the old nun said, clapping her hands with motherly pride. She announced to the other nuns at dinner that Ariana was going to Paris to take a special class. And the other nuns oohed and aahed and told her how lucky she was. Ariana didn't feel lucky—she felt scared and was trying not to show it. But once Mother Elizabeth made the announcement, Ariana felt she had to follow through. She contacted Sheila, one of her father's secretaries, who had stayed on to oversee the apartment and the remainder of the estate, and asked her to help her find an apartment in Paris. She said she didn't care where, just somewhere in a decent neighborhood and not too big. All she needed was one bedroom, a living room, and a small kitchen, since she didn't really cook or eat a lot and didn't know anyone there. She felt like she was going back to school. Sam had told her that the house where Yael worked was in the Eighth Arrondissement, which was a combination of business and residential, and kind of a bland neighborhood.

Sheila got back to her the next day. She had a listing from a real estate broker in Paris of both furnished and unfurnished apartments. Ariana chose furnished since she was hoping not to stay too long, more like the six weeks Sam had described. Sheila offered Ariana several choices, including a small house in the Seventh, an apartment on the Île St. Louis that the broker had admitted was charming but inconvenient, a student apartment in the Marais, and two furnished apartments in the Sixteenth, one with a bedroom, and the other a studio on the ground floor, which her father's secretary didn't think would be safe, and Ariana agreed. Safety was more important to her now, and a studio might be too small. The broker had said that the house in the Seventh looked very chic, but it was on the Left Bank, which was farther away from Yael, so it would be a bigger trek every day, and it was more space than she needed.

“It sounds like the one in the Sixteenth would be the best. It's on the top floor, is supposedly sunny, and is close to a park.” And all of the apartments were reasonably priced.

“Why don't you try that one?” Ariana said, with that breathtaking feeling that she was taking a huge leap of faith.

Sheila called her back an hour later. Everything was in place. She could have it for a year, with an option for a second year if she wanted, and with thirty days notice she could get out of it at any time. The owner of the apartment had moved to Holland and was keeping it as an investment. And everything was there, cooking utensils, linens. She could arrive with her suitcases and unpack. She didn't need a thing. “Oh,” the secretary added—she was as efficient for Ariana as she had been for her father. She was a pleasant woman although Ariana wasn't close to her. She wasn't warm and fuzzy, but she was good at what she did. “And you can smoke and have a dog.” Ariana laughed.

“I don't do either.”

“Well, you never know. Maybe you'll become very French, and start smoking French cigarettes and buy a dog.” Ariana had a sudden vision of herself with a French poodle with a fancy haircut, walking it with a Gauloise hanging out of her mouth. The image made her laugh.

“Thank you so much, Sheila. I really appreciate it.”

“The money will be wired today, by the way, and I'll set up a checking account for you in Paris, in case you need it. What are you doing over there, by the way?”

“I'm taking a class.” Sheila was happy to hear it. The months she had spent in a Carmelite monastery in the Berkshires sounded depressing for a girl of Ariana's age, but she had been through so much. Paris sounded a lot healthier, and she knew Ariana's father would have been pleased. He had always loved Paris, and had been there many times with Ariana and her mother.

“Will you need a car?” Sheila asked, thinking of everything, as she always did.

“No, I'll take the metro and cabs. I don't think I'll be there long, just a couple of months.”

“Well, bon voyage,” she said with a heavy American accent, “and have fun. Let me know if you need anything. Call anytime.” Ariana had had her book a flight on February 1. She was starting with Yael the day after she arrived. She didn't want to waste any time, so she could get it over with as fast as she could. She was still uneasy about what he would do to her. It sounded mysterious and scary. She wondered if he used hypnosis, and how much of what had happened he expected her to relive. She really didn't want to talk about the relationship with Jorge with him. It was tender and private, and she wanted to keep it to herself. Some things were not fair game, in her mind anyway. She didn't know whether Yael would agree.

The nuns all cried when she left St. Gertrude's and so did Ariana. Sister Paul had written her a poem and knitted her a scarf. It had lots of dropped stitches in it, and Ariana laughed as she put it on. It was pink.

“I never did really learn how to knit,” Sister Paul admitted, looking sheepish, and Ariana promised she'd wear it every day.

Mother Elizabeth had made her a small painting for her Paris apartment, of a bouquet of flowers. It was cheerful and bright, just like her. And she gave her a photograph of all the nuns, so she could remember how much they loved her, and she reminded her that she could come back anytime.

“Bring me back a beret!” dour Sister Marianne, who ran the kitchen, joked with her. She had come to love Ariana even though she had never seen anyone butcher a potato the way she did instead of peeling it. “I'll hang it on the kitchen wall. It'll give us a touch of class.” She smiled at Ariana and then gave her a big hug. “God bless you, child, take care. We'll be praying for you every day.” Tears were streaming down Ariana's cheeks as the car Sheila had hired for her drove her away. Ariana had had her father's car sent back to New York months before. She didn't need it there with the nuns. The car took her directly to JFK Airport in New York, where she was able to get a better flight than Boston. But she didn't go back to her father's apartment before she left. She knew it would make her too sad.