Private Paris (Private 10)

I didn’t know what to do. They pulled out of their parking spot and up to a red traffic light. I went to the curb as if I meant to cross the street. I memorized the license plate but could tell little about the women because they had their visors down.

The light changed. The engine revved and the vehicle drifted forward. For an instant a streetlamp lit up the interior enough that I could see the shopping bags.

The driver must have slipped her foot off the clutch pedal because the Suzuki suddenly bucked. Several pieces of what looked like white gravel fell off the rear bumper into the gutter. The car caught gear and roared off.

Stepping down off the curb, I picked up a piece of the gravel and saw that it was actually a powdery blue color. I smelled it, tasted it, spit it out, and felt my suspicions become hard convictions.

Spinning around, I jumped out into the street in front of an oncoming maroon and black Citroën, waving my hands wildly. The old car skidded to a stop inches from my knees, and I could see that the elderly woman driving was wide-eyed and scared.

I came around, opened the door, and climbed in. She was hunched over and gray, easily in her late seventies, but she began to hit me backhand with her fist and scream, “Non! Non! Police! Police!”

“Je suis avec police!” I said, fending off the blows, trying to dig out my ID. “Privé Paris police. Suivez la voiture bleu là! Le Suzuki! C’est les defaceurs de l’Institut de France! AB-16. Vous comprenez?”

I was butchering the language, but she must have gotten the gist of what I was trying to say, because she stopped hitting me and looked down the street, where the Suzuki was making a U-turn to go east on the N3 highway, before crying in an angry voice, “Ah bon!”

Then she pegged the gas, popped the clutch, and we squealed out of there with the tires smoking.

Chapter 84

SHE SPOKE NO English and suffered badly from scoliosis, but that old lady was sharp as a tack and could have given Danica Patrick a run for her money.

Weaving in and out of traffic with deft shifting of the gears and an easy touch at the wheel, she Tokyo-drifted us through the U-turn, and quickly brought us to within two cars of the Suzuki in moderate traffic. She chattered almost nonstop, as if she hadn’t had a listener in a while, and even though I was definitely missing the nuances of her monologue, I learned that her name was Eloise La Bruyere. Madame La Bruyere was a retired librarian. She had learned to drive from her husband, who had been involved in rally car racing and was now deceased.

At seventy-nine, Madame La Bruyere lived alone and rather liked it that way. Her children—two sons and a daughter—did not visit enough. She had six grandchildren, one of whom had purple hair. Best of all, she took great pride in France and her culture, and therefore hated AB-16, which she knew all about from the newspapers.

“We have to fight them,” she declared more than once, shaking her bony fist. “France cannot be destroyed. We must throw them all out!”

When I finally got a word in edgewise, I managed to ask her if she had a cell phone, and she shook her head and muttered something dismissive about them that I didn’t get.

The Suzuki stayed on the N3 for five or six miles before taking the N370 north. Madame La Bruyere trailed them like a pro, keeping three, four, and sometimes five cars between us, and all the while fuming about the “Muslims and immigrants” out to destroy her

beloved country. Indeed, when she saw the two women get off at the Sevran exit and head east, Eloise went into a minor tirade about the area and the immigrants who lived there.

She drove us down the Boulevard de Stalingrad, past shabby shopping malls and drab clusters of high-rise public housing projects. Judging by the broken shop windows and charred cars along the route, Sevran had been a hub of violence the night before.

The people on the sidewalks seemed tense, in a hurry to be home and off the streets as armed French soldiers prepared for curfew. I thought about having Madame La Bruyere stop so I could tell one of the soldiers what was going on, but feared losing track of the two women.

The Suzuki took a left and headed north on a side street. We lost them several minutes later, when an ambulance blocked us from following them onto the narrow, windy Rue de Rougemont.

“Où sont-elles?” Madame La Bruyere kept saying, meaning, “Where are they?”

I was peering anxiously down every alley and side street and didn’t see the women anywhere. I feared we’d been spotted. A sinking sensation was drilling through my lower belly when the road bent hard left. Going around that tight curve, I got a good look down a lane that led to an old church.

The Muslim women had parked, back bumper facing the wall of the church. They were out of the vehicle, toting those heavy shopping bags, and heading from right to left and out of my vision.

For a beat I couldn’t remember the word for stop, but then sputtered, “Arrêtez! Arrêtez!”

Madame La Bruyere screeched the old Citroën to a stop. I kissed her on the cheek, jumped out of the car, and said, “Merci, madame!”

Chapter 85

Sevran, northeastern suburbs of Paris

7:10 p.m.

TEARING THE RED hoodie off so that I was again down to that white dress shirt, I ran down the lane into the churchyard, where several other cars were parked as well. The Suzuki was next to a closed green gate that blocked access to a larger parking lot and a brick building immediately north of the Saint Martin Church.

Two police cars were parked in that lot, along with two small white sedans. I could see a well-traveled route beyond them. A bus sighed, caught gear, and then roared past the mouth of the bigger parking lot.