stands lined up along the dock. He heard a yelp and glanced over to see a fisherman holding up a squirming octopus, waving it like a wet mop, and two old women giggling and backing away and then him slamming it down like pizza dough on a marble slab. Next to him a sea urchin vendor waved a sample and yelled at passersby, “Treize a la douzaine, Treize a la douzaine,” thirteen for twelve, a baker’s dozen.
As Gage passed three fishermen mending their nets near the corner, he spotted the grass meridian that split into halves the boulevard that bordered the east end of the port. Beyond it was central Marseilles: the financial district, museums, mosques, cathedrals, Arab markets, and elite chain stores.
Gage continued until he reached the spot where the broad La Canebiere, the city’s Champs-Elysees, dead- ended at the port. From there he could make out the front of the Bourse et Chambre de Commerce, the old Stock Exchange and Chamber of Commerce, where Abrams had met with the other central bankers before his planned meeting with Hennessy.
But instead of seeing the delivery trucks and commuters that were driving toward him, Gage imagined a line of limousines making a turn south.
Except one.
Abrams’s car had spun off the other way and had escaped into the Basket, a maze of streets and alleys that might have served the needs of the city a thousand years earlier, but now left it choked with traffic, and might have done so on that night. If the limousine had broken through to the other side, it would have then worked its way toward Belsunce, the North African section of the city, an area of old cafes, bars, and couscousaries where Abrams would have climbed out and entered a restaurant and found a back table at which to wait for Hennessy.
Perhaps it was as simple as that, Gage said to himself as he looked from intersection to intersection, from cafe to cafe, from storefront to storefront, scanning for the place where Hennessy might have stationed himself.
Maybe Hennessy missed the signal, or worse, maybe he caught it but got stuck in traffic, his one chance lost-and he just gave up, broken under the strain of failure and of events he couldn’t control.
Gage’s eyes drifted higher toward the rooftops of surrounding office and apartment buildings and church bell towers, all places from which Hennessy could’ve watched Or could have been watched.
Had Hennessy been followed? And by someone who grasped the meaning in his motions and understood what he was trying to accomplish? Maybe just a hired hand like Gilbert and Strubb. Go. Hunt. Fetch. Don’t think. Just do.
And what steps had Hennessy taken to lose them? Abandon his car, grab a taxi, then ditch it and grab another-steal another? Each moment the clock ticking down.
Gage’s ringing cell phone crashed into his thoughts. He recognized the number. He stared at the bright screen as he forced Hennessy’s confusion from his mind, and then answered.
“Bonjour,” Tabari said. “How are the legs?”
While Tabari had driven back to Marseilles, Gage had taken the trail a few miles farther before he returned to Cassis, searching for evidence of Hennessy’s activities before his death. Gage wasn’t convinced that the stolen car found at the trailhead was connected to Hennessy. Suicides don’t wipe away their fingerprints, but car thieves do.
He hoped that Tabari could get time away from work, for today’s trip was supposed to take them to where Hennessy’s rental car had been discovered by the police three days after his body.
“I’m ready for more,” Gage said. “When-”
“It won’t be me. The transport workers have a strike scheduled for this morning. Days off have been canceled and everyone has been assigned to riot duty.”
Gage remembered reading about the last one, a month earlier. Young North African and Arab teenagers had used the pretext of a battle between the strikers and the police as an excuse to ransack and torch a hundred shops.
“My uncle is on his way to pick you up. He had a couple of errands to run beforehand, but he should be near you in a minute or two.”
And that would mean that the inspection would be all show with no chance at all of tell.
Gage scanned the storefronts, then started walking toward a canopied restaurant on the bottom floor of a triangular-shaped building at the terminus of Rue de Republic.
“Have him pick me up in front of Cafe la Samaritaine,” Gage said.
“No problem,” Tabari said. “I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but I hope today you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”
Gage crossed the quay and sheltered himself under the cafe awning against the rising sun. From there he watched buses offloading office workers and listened to the distant wail of sirens. Two car honks from La Canebiere caught Gage’s attention a few minutes later. He looked over and spotted Benaroun waving from the driver’s window of his Citroen as he rolled to a stop along the near curb. Gage climbed in and Benaroun looped around the meridian and headed south, away from the chaos of the city and once again toward the turmoil that had been Hennessy’s last days.
CHAPTER 38
Ayi Zhao stared down at her rice bowl, too tired after thirty-six hours without sleep to lift her hands and manipulate her chopsticks. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“My son is nothing but a criminal,” she said, then looked up at Faith. “Do you have children?”
Faith shook her head.
“It’s better that way.”
Faith reached out and held Ayi Zhao’s hand. “But then you wouldn’t have such a wonderful grandson.”
“I know, and it’s a shame that he’s been so humiliated by his parents. I hope he’s finding comfort in his faith.” She shrugged. “I don’t understand it. Christianity seems so odd. I try to imagine heaven and hell, but I can’t see them except as distorted reflections of what is around me. And I can’t imagine Jesus as a god, only as a foreigner’s benevolent ancestor.”
Ayi Zhao paused for a moment and her eyes went vacant, then she shook her head as if to say that she’d somehow gone off course.
Faith released Ayi Zhao’s hand and pointed at her bowl. “You need to eat.”
Ayi Zhao reached for her chopsticks and managed them well enough to capture a sliver of green bean lying on top of her rice. Instead of eating it, she said, “It bothered me that Wo-li traveled so much and that he’d never tell me where he was going or where he went. It bothers me even more now that I know what he was doing.”
Knocking on the open storeroom door drew their attention to Old Cat, who walked in.
“We need to know whether Wo-li will do it,” Old Cat said, looking back and forth between them. He spread his arms. “People’s courts have now sprung up in Chongqing and across the border into Qinghai and into the Muslim areas of Xinjiang.”
Old Cat reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone, and then held it in his hand by the edges, as though it represented an unfamiliar form of magic.
Faith guessed from his manner that he’d never handled one before this day.
“They’re looking at us for guidance,” Old Cat said.
Ayi Zhao and Faith understood exactly what he meant by guidance: If Chengdu could find a nonviolent form of justice, the others might follow.
“Your grandson was persuasive,” Old Cat said, “and for that reason I was willing to let a judicial process take place, but we’ve reached a stalemate with Wo-li, and the army can attack at any moment-it’s time to act.”
Faith was certain that Old Cat didn’t expect Ayi Zhao to plead for the life of her son and daughter-in-law, and she didn’t.
“If you spare their lives,” Ayi Zhao said, “Wo-li will tell you everything.”
Old Cat cocked his head toward the door and pointed at his ear. Only then did they notice the background murmur of voices in the hallway and the chanting from outside of the building.
As the chanting rose into cheering, Old Cat said, “We’ve liberated a forced labor camp north of the city-”
