Undercover (17 page)

She was taking an evening flight to Paris, and arriving early the next morning, and had the day to settle in before she started with Yael. She called the convent from the airport before she took off, and Mother Elizabeth reminded her how much they loved her and would be praying for her. She was grateful to know that they would. She had no idea what to expect from Yael, but Mother Elizabeth still thought it was a good idea, and Ariana trusted her judgment in all things. It was the parental guidance she no longer had, and still needed, especially after her experiences of the past year. The anniversary of the date of her kidnapping had been difficult, and she hadn't wanted to leave for Paris until after that. Now she was on her way.

The flight took off over the lights of New York and headed over Long Island, then north toward Boston. As they flew over Massachusetts on the way to Europe, she thought of her beloved nuns. She hadn't completely given up the idea of joining them one day, but yet again, she trusted Mother Elizabeth's advice, insisting that she belonged in the world. And now she felt very bold moving to Paris on her own. But it was just for a short time. She'd be back in a couple of months, she told herself, as she laid her head against the seat…she'd be home by April or May at the latest, in time for spring in the Berkshires, at St. Gertrude's. She couldn't imagine living anywhere else anymore, except with them. But now she was going to Paris, to drink café au lait and eat croissants, and meet a mysterious deprogrammer called Yael.

The flight landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport just after eight
A.M.
Ariana collected her two large suitcases. She'd had Sheila send her a few things from New York, but she didn't think she'd need much. She had brought a lot of warm sweaters and jeans, and a warm coat, but no summer clothes. She was planning to be finished with Paris then, and back in the Berkshires, or New York, where she had been thinking about getting a job. She wanted to work with kids, orphans maybe, or in a homeless shelter, something to do with the poor. Jorge's influence on her life was still strong.

She got a cab from the airport and gave the driver the address on Avenue Foch. She had been given the outer door code, and when she got there, the guardian looked annoyed as she handed Ariana the keys. The guardian had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and looked very French. Ariana introduced herself as the new tenant, and she didn't seem to care.
Welcome
to
France,
Ariana thought to herself, with a grin. But it felt like an adventure. She had taken French in college and spoke enough to get around. After almost a year in Argentina, her Spanish was better now, but she could manage in French and had had no trouble with the cab.

The neighborhood looked very respectable, and Avenue Foch more luxurious than she had expected, and it was as close to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élyseés as they'd said. It was a pleasant, central location in a good, residential neighborhood, which was what she had wanted. And the building was impeccable. It had a small elevator, which she took to the fourth floor, let herself into the apartment, and was pleased with how sunny it was, even on a cold, wintry day. And the apartment was warm.

Looking around, she remembered that she had promised to send the nuns photographs of everything, and postcards all the time. And she planned to do it soon, starting with the apartment. The bedroom was pretty, all done in pink chintzes with a narrow canopied bed. The living room looked a little tattered, as if most of the furniture came from the flea market, but it had charm. And the kitchen was tiny but adequate for what she needed, and the fridge was ridiculously small.

She set her bags down in the bedroom, and there was an antique armoire instead of a closet, but it was big enough for what she'd brought. And the bathroom had an enormous turn-of-the-century tub. She sank into it an hour later with a sigh of relief. It was hard to believe. She was in Paris. It was her first time living in a foreign country alone, and she felt very grown up. She was alone everywhere now, except with her beloved nuns. It frightened her sometimes to realize that with her father gone, she was on her own in the world. If anything happened to her, no one would know or care. Sheila might eventually realize she had disappeared, if she stopped writing checks and using her credit cards, but there was no one else. She hadn't seen any of her friends in New York since she got back. She felt too different from them now, and disconnected after everything that had happened in Buenos Aires. And her friends in Buenos Aires hadn't been in her life long enough for her to stay connected to them once she left. She was totally solitary, and it was daunting to the point of terrifying at times. She tried not to think about it, got out of the bath, and got dressed. She put on jeans and running shoes and a warm jacket, and went out for a walk. She walked down the Champs Élyseés all the way to the Place de la Concorde, and then managed to find the Place Vendôme, and then walked down Rue Royale to the Louvre and into the Tuileries Gardens, until she got back to the Place de la Concorde. She had brought a map, but she remembered enough of Paris from trips there with her parents to find her way around, at least in the best part of town. She had thought of going to the Hotel Ritz for a cup of tea. But she had last stayed there with her father, and it would make her miss him too much.

It was fun looking at the people and glancing into the shops as she walked along. And by the time she got back to her apartment three hours later, she was tired but happy. She went out again a little while later, to get something to eat, and found a shop that sold cooked chickens, French bread and cheese, and some fruit. She took it home and ate a very pleasant meal.

She thought of reading Jorge's letters that night, because she felt lonely in the apartment, but decided not to. Instead she put the box away, on the top shelf of the armoire. She went to bed with a book instead, and was sound asleep by ten o'clock. She woke up at seven the next morning, toasted a piece of the French bread she'd bought and ate some fruit, and by eight-thirty she was dressed. She thought of taking the metro but was afraid to get lost, so she took a cab to Yael's address instead. He was on Rue de Naples, in the Eighth Arrondissement. She had the outer door code, and found her way to a little house at the back of a courtyard. The door was painted red. She pressed the bell, and heard a dog bark.

And a moment later, a man was standing in the doorway with a rugged face and long hair. He was somewhere in his forties, stood ramrod straight, and smiled as he waved her in. But everything about his stature and demeanor told her he was tough, and suddenly she was scared. What if he was horrible to her or what he wanted her to do was too painful? For an instant, she wanted to turn and run, and then the old German shepherd he had next to him looked at her and wagged his tail. Even the dog looked scary to her at first.

“Hello, I'm Ariana Gregory,” she said politely, acting as if she'd come to visit a friend.

“Yael Le Floch,” he said, and waved her into a small living room with comfortable old furniture. It was the kind of room where you could spend late nights, drinking, smoking, and talking to friends. There was an ashtray on the coffee table, and he told her she could smoke. He didn't offer her anything to drink, and pointed to a chair where she should sit.

He waited a few minutes until she'd taken off her jacket, and then settled into a big comfortable armchair across from her. He waited another minute and then fixed her with his dark brown, almost black eyes. His hair was jet black, and despite the winter season, he had a tan. He looked like a man who spent a lot of time outdoors, and there were photographs of sailboats on the walls. It was obvious that he liked to sail.

He got straight to the point. “Why did you go to Argentina?” he asked her. There was no judgment in his voice, only the question, and his eyes never let her go for a second. Her instant reaction was to say that her father had made her do it, but she knew that wasn't fair, although she had done everything to talk him out of it at first, and even refused to go. But she couldn't let him go alone. So she had given up her job, broken up with her new boyfriend, and gone with him.

“My father was appointed ambassador, and he wanted me to go with him, so I went.” She left out the pertinent details.

“Did you want to go?” The relentless eyes kept their grip on hers. She had the feeling that he could see everything, straight into her soul, and you had to tell him the truth.

“No, I didn't. I'd just graduated from college a few months before. That was almost two years ago,” she said, situating it in time for him. “I had just gotten a job I liked. I was dating someone I was having fun with. I wanted to stay in New York.”

“Did you tell him that?” he asked, lighting a cigarette and watching her.

“Yes, I did.”

“And he made you go anyway?” He was trying to get a picture of their relationship. But she didn't want to malign her father, especially now. She had never blamed him for what had happened, and she didn't now.

“My mother had died a year before, and he didn't want to go alone. He wanted me to go with him, so I went. He'd been sick, and with my mother gone, he needed my help, and he said it would be fun for both of us. And it was, for a while. We were out at parties every night, and I met a lot of great people I wouldn't have met otherwise. And it was only going to be for three years.”

“That's a lot of time to give up at your age,” he commented. He had a heavy French accent, but his English was excellent, and he understood everything she said. “It must have felt like forever to you.”

“It did when we went, but I loved it after a few months. And he was right—it was an opportunity that would never come again.”

“An opportunity to be kidnapped and held hostage for three months? That would have been hard to give up for a job and a boyfriend in New York.” He said it drily, and she was shocked. “Have you gone back to work?” She shook her head. “Why not?”

“I think I want to do something different after everything that happened, like work for the poor. I'd been working for a fashion magazine, which seems kind of frivolous and pointless to me now.”

“Why? You don't like fashion anymore?” he asked innocently. He wanted to get inside her head and was doing a good job of it so far. He looked at the way she was dressed. She was wearing designer jeans, a simple but expensive sweater, and Balenciaga flats and bag. He wasn't fooled that fashion didn't matter to her anymore.

“I just think it's more important to do things for the poor,” she said with a look of determination.

“Who told you that?” He wanted to know who else was in her head, and before she could stop herself, she answered.

“Jorge.”

“And who is that?” he asked her gently, leaning slightly forward to put out his cigarette.

She hesitated before she answered. She knew that he must know the answer to the question, but he wanted to see what she said. “The leader of the group that kidnapped me.”

“Ah, yes. Rebels, I believe. Yes?” She nodded. “The champion of the poor, yet he asked for twenty million dollars ransom. Did you know he had accounts in Switzerland? Did he ever tell you that?” It was information they'd had from one of their informants since Jorge died. It was unsubstantiated but more than likely true.

“No, he didn't.” Her eyes looked sad as she said it. He had been so pure about his ideas, so emphatic about them, and so hostile to the rich.

“Do you really think he gave the money to the poor?” Yael asked her.

“I don't know. He said he did, and I believed him.”

“What else did he tell you?” He kept the questions coming at her at a rapid speed.

“That he loved me.” She was being honest with Yael. “I think he really did, whatever his politics were. We had an amazing connection. I've never known anyone like him.”

“And now? Do you miss him?” He had eyes and a voice that made her tell him everything, even when she didn't want to. He was mesmerizing, and she felt hypnotized. A little bit like Jorge in a strange way. But all Yael wanted from her was the truth.

“Every day,” she said, honest with him again. “I think about him all the time. Less than I used to, but I still do.” Yael didn't look surprised.

“Did he give you anything to take with you, some article of his clothing, some symbol that was important to him, anything he'd written?” She nodded.

“I have love letters from him, in a box he kept on his desk. He gave it to me…right before”—she could hardly force out the words and felt breathless as she did—“the night they raided the camp and rescued me…he gave me the box right before he died….There are some journals of his in it too. He wrote in them every night. I keep the love letters in that box. I put them in there when the camp caught fire in the raid.”

“Do you read the letters every day?” She shook her head.

“I used to. Now I just read them sometimes at night, when I miss him and I'm sad. I don't think I'll ever meet anyone like him again.”

“I hope not,” Yael said softly. He didn't say it, but he hated men like him who twisted other people's minds until they no longer knew who they were. “Do you read the journals too?”

“No. They're very ideological, and too esoteric for me. I looked at them a couple of times in the beginning. They're too political. I read the love letters, but not the journals, but I keep them too.”

“And where is the box now? Did you bring it to Paris?” She had taken it everywhere with her since the day he'd given it to her.

“It's in the armoire in my bedroom, on a high shelf.”

“And if someone took it from you, or you lost it, would you be upset?” She looked panicked as he said it, as though she were afraid he would demand that she give it to him, but he didn't. She couldn't have. But he knew better than that—it was the whole point of their work together, which had only just begun. He wanted to get the lay of the land first.

“Yes,” she said in a small voice in answer to his question. “I would.”

“Then that will be one of our goals. That one day, you no longer read his letters. You don't have to make up for his sins, by working with the poor, and doing what he told you to do. You owe him nothing. And if your father hadn't paid the ransom, he would have killed you.” Yael said it matter-of-factly, but Ariana didn't believe him.

“He protected me from the other men,” she said in his defense.

“Who do you think gave them their orders?” Yael said simply. “He was the leader of the group. He wanted you to believe he was rescuing you from them. It made you more dependent on him, as your only protector in his camp. That's part of what confused you about who he really was.” And then he asked her another question he already knew the answer to. “You were lovers?” She nodded, and then she went one better.

“I was pregnant with his child. I lost it the night of the raid.” She called it a raid and not a rescue, because that was still what it was to her, and it had been just as terrifying as the day she was kidnapped by Jorge's men. Even more so, because it was so efficiently carried out, among the flames and in the dark, and she had seen Jorge die as a result. And she didn't know who her rescuers were.

“All of those were devices to confuse you and turn you around. His protecting you in the camp. I assume he was the only one who fed you and gave you water, and released you from whatever bonds you wore or wherever they confined you.” She nodded, that was true. “Making love to you, telling you he loved you. And he got lucky if you got pregnant by him so quickly—that created an even greater bond to him. I know you don't believe me, but he didn't love you, Ariana. He used you. It was part of his plan, just like the ransom. He wanted your father's money and your mind, and he got both. He was a clever man. And one day, if you had stayed with him, he would have used you as part of his revolution against the establishment. He's still using you, if you want to work for the poor to please him, instead of following the career you enjoyed before. You owe him nothing. He would have killed you in an instant, if it served him better. You were more useful to him alive. And he's still controlling you with his letters now. I want you to promise me that you'll tell me each time you read them. I won't punish you or scold you, but knowing how often you read them, and when, will be part of our work together.”