This time, I did not drop it. “Hello? Miranda? How are you?”
“Ah, no, sorry, it is not Miranda.” The voice was a man’s, accented in French. “This is Stefan Beauvoir. The archaeologist Miranda is helping. She wanted me to call you.”
My internal alarms began to shriek. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Miranda? Tell me.”
“The doctor says it is—merde, how do you say it? — the rupture of the appendicitis?”
“Miranda’s got a ruptured appendix?”
“Oui, yes, a ruptured appendix. She asked me to call and say, please, can you come?”
“Can I come? What, to France?”
“Oui. Please, can you come to France? To Avignon?” Ahveen-YOHN. I didn’t like the sound of it. “She is having the surgery now, and she will be very grateful if you can come.”
“Doesn’t she want someone from her family?”
“Ah, but it is not possible. I call her mother and her sister. Neither one has a passport. So she thinks next of you, and asks if you can please come quickly.”
“Of course. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll get on a plane this afternoon.”
“Bon, good. You can fly into Avignon, but the flights are better if you come to Lyon or Marseilles. Marseilles is one hour by car.”
Racing down the path and out the gate, I frantically flagged down the TBI chopper, which was quivering on its landing skids, transitioning toward flight. Stone took off his headset, scrambled out of the helicopter, and hurried over to me.
“Doc, is something wrong?”
“Can you guys give me a ride? I need to get someplace fast.”
“Where?”
“France.”
* * *
Sixty seconds later, we were airborne again, this time with me in the right front seat. “Does this thing have turbo?” I asked the pilot. By way of an answer, he rolled the helicopter into a 90-degree bank.
“Holy shit,” I heard Stone squawk from the back.
Skimming low across the river, the chopper hurtled toward Neyland Stadium. “I don’t know where you can land,” I said, scanning the vicinity of the stadium. “The parking lots all look pretty full.”
The pilot grinned. “I think I see a spot that might just be big enough.” Swooping low over the towering scoreboard, we plunged straight into the bowl of the stadium.
“Touchdown,” Stone deadpanned as we thumped into the south end zone.
* * *
My secretary scarcely glanced up as i dashed past her desk and into my office. “Peggy,” I called out, yanking down the zipper of the greasy, sooty jumpsuit. “I need you to do some airline research for me, please.” Yanking off my boots and the jumpsuit, I tossed them in a corner.
“For that conference in Seattle next month? I booked your tickets last week, remember? Nonrefundable.” Her typing hadn’t even slowed.
“Peggy, stop typing. Listen. I need to fly to France. Marseilles. Like, ten minutes ago.” On the other side of the doorway, her keyboard fell silent. “It’s Miranda,” I went on, pulling on the clothes I’d intended to wear to my meeting with the president. “Ruptured appendix. She’s going in for surgery right now.” Rummaging in my closet, I dug out my “go” bag, a duffel I kept packed and at the ready, and slung it over my shoulder.
“Oh, my Lord,” she gasped. “Poor thing.”
By then I was already headed for the staircase, my shirttail still untucked, my shoes and socks in one hand. “I’m off to the airport,” I yelled over my shoulder. “Call me once you book it.” As the steel fire door slammed shut behind me, I thought I heard her say something else, but by then I was halfway down the steps.
It wasn’t until the helicopter was lifting off from the goal line that I realized what she’d said. The realization came when I saw her dash onto the field, wildly waving her arms, clutching my laptop in one hand and a small blue booklet in the other: my passport.
Twenty-two minutes and thirty-three hundred dollars later, my passport in one hand and my bag in the other, I boarded a United flight for Dulles airport in Washington, D.C. From Dulles, Lufthansa would take me to Frankfurt, Germany, and finally to Marseilles, where Beauvoir had promised to pick me up.
By the time I boarded at Dulles, I felt sure Miranda was out of surgery, but my half-dozen phone calls got no answer or return message. The silence was terrifying.
As the aircraft climbed out of Washington and wheeled toward the Atlantic, the ten-thousand-foot chime sounded, reminding me of the church bell I’d heard tolling a few hours before. Please, I prayed, though I could not have said to whom or what I prayed. Please not for Miranda.
CHAPTER 2
Marseilles, France
The Present
The Customs agent didn’t bother to look up as he took my passport and reached for the inked stamp. “Is the purpose of your visit business or pleasure, Monsieur Brockton?” His flat tone suggested that he was already profoundly bored with me, even before I spoke.
I hesitated, uncertain how to respond. “Pleasure” didn’t seem to fit the urgent nature of the trip, but if I said “business,” that might open the door to more questions, or to the need for a work visa. “Uh, pleasure,” I finally said. He looked up with a frown, as if he disapproved of pleasure, or of my limited enthusiasm. Then, with a slight sniff, he whacked the stamp down onto the page and flipped my passport back onto the counter.
As I emerged through the glass doors of the international terminal into the outer lobby, I scanned the crowd, searching for the face of a French archaeologist who appeared to be searching for the face of an American anthropologist. What would a French archaeologist look like? Angular and arrogant, sporting a black beret, an unfiltered cigarette, and a pencil mustache? In my anxiety over Miranda, I hadn’t thought to ask Stefan how I’d recognize him, and he’d neither volunteered that information nor inquired about my own appearance.
I was midway through my second scan of the throng when, over the general din of foreign words and exotic accents, I heard a laugh — a familiar female laugh. My head snapped back to the right, to the cluster of faces I’d just rescanned, and there stood Miranda, arms spread wide, grinning broadly and shaking her head as if to say, “Unbelievable! You looked right past me! Twice!” I dropped my bag in astonishment; my hands flew to my chest, over my heart, as relief and happiness flooded me. Miranda was here, and she was all right. In fact, she looked better than all right, she looked fabulous: strong, healthy, excited, even radiant. What she did not look like was someone who’d just gotten out of emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Miranda ran to me and flung her arms around my neck. “Thank you, thank you, for dropping everything and racing over here. I am so glad to see you!” She squeezed me tightly.
“Be careful,” I said. “You’ll rip out your stitches. Doesn’t that hurt like hell? Why aren’t you still in a hospital bed? How can you look so good so soon after surgery?”
She laughed again, a musical, pealing laugh like carillon bells. “So many questions, so little time! I’m fine. Doesn’t hurt a bit. I don’t actually have stitches.” I pulled back and stared at her, more confused than ever. She laughed again. “You’re the victim of a slight deception. But don’t worry; it’s for a good cause, and you’ll be glad you came.” I shot her a glance — one loaded with questions and blame, which she clearly comprehended — but she just shook her head. “All will be revealed in the fullness of time. After we get to Avignon. Meanwhile, meet Stefan.” She turned toward the line of faces, and a slight, bookish-looking man, forty or so, stepped forward, limping slightly — not one of the French traits I’d imagined. I extended my hand, and he shook it weakly. “Stefan Beauvoir, Bill Brockton.” Suddenly Stefan took me by the shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks. I’d known that cheek kissing was a common French custom, but in my imagination only men and women greeted one another this way; I’d somehow overlooked the fact that men kissed other men. I preferred the American handshake. Strongly prefer
red the American handshake.
Stefan cast a dubious eye on the yellow L.L. Bean duffel I was carrying. “Where is the rest of your baggage?”
“This is it,” I said. “I didn’t have time to pack. Besides, I didn’t think I’d be staying long.” He shrugged and smiled. It was a slight, cryptic smile, as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s but a bit more coy, as if he enjoyed prolonging my suspense.
It was lucky my bag was small, because Stefan’s car — a Fiat Punto — was built for midgets. The engine was proportionately tiny, too. A few miles north of the airport, the car slowed to a crawl as the road angled up a narrow valley between rocky hills. When we finally topped out, we’d left the coastal plain for the rolling farmland of southern Provence.