windows and breathed the Paris air. No other city in the world smelled quite like this one, she thought. And especially this time, because she was in Paris on a secret mission. It was better than the movies, because it was real.
She took a quick shower, dried her hair, then dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a pretty white V-neck light sweater and a pair of black flats that matched her shoulder bag. She hid her Elizabeth Swanson papers under the bed, then went out.
It was dinner time, and she was famished. She sat down at a sidewalk cafe a couple of blocks from her hotel, where she had a half-bottle of Chardonnay, a small salad, a cheese omelette with pommes frittes and a cafe” express afterwards.
She’d been on her own since college, first in New York, and for the past few months in Washington. But being here in Paris like this, was different. Vastly different.
The address of her father’s apartment was across the river near the ga res du Nord and de 1”Est, in what until recently had been a rough workingman’s neighborhood. But Paris was undergoing a renovation, and cruising past his building in a taxi Elizabeth could see why he liked this part of town. It was anonymous, with an easy egress from the city on the main Avenue Jean Jaures, plus the two railway stations. There was a small park across the. street from a pleasant looking cafe a half-block from his apartment.
She had the cabby cruise around the neighborhood, explaining that she wasn’t quite certain of the correct address, while she looked for signs that her father’s place was under surveillance: someone loitering across the street, a van with too many antennas parked on the street, the chance reflection of binocular lenses in a second story window. But if they were there, she couldn’t spot them, and she had the cabby drop her off in front of the cafe”.
Although the evening was starting to get cool, Elizabeth sat at an outside table where she had a coffee while she watched the neighborhood. Her father’s apartment was on the third floor front, and the windows were dark. She hadn’t expected to simply take a cab out to his apartment” knock on his door and find him at home. But seeing his darkened windows gave her a chill. She felt not so much on her own now, as she did alone, abandoned again like she’d been when she was a child.
She’d become spoiled over the past few years, having him a car-ride away when he lived outside Washington, or a telephone call away when he lived here. And she’d forgotten what it had been like without him for most of her childhood. She’d bounced from missing him so badly that she ached, to hating him so deeply that she dreamed once of shooting him in the head with a gun, then cutting off his arms and legs with a machete and using his parts to feed the sharks. The next morning she’d been so ashamed of her dream that she’d thrown up and managed to produce a fever so that her mother kept her home from school. She just couldn’t face her classmates, almost all of whom had both parents at home.
Later when she’d come to learn at least in general terms what her father did for a living, she’d become so proud that she couldn’t stop talking about him. Finally the school principal had called her mother in to ask her to stop Elizabeth’s fantastical stories. They frightened the other students, and some of the teachers and parents. At any rate if her father really was a spy, Elizabeth shouldn’t be so open about it. Her mother had been deeply embarrassed and for several months afterward Elizabeth was not allowed to speak her father’s name.
A half-block away the Rue La Fayette was busy, but on this side street only a few cars and few pedestrians moved. It was a week night and most French families were at home eating dinner and watching television. Some new plane trees had been planted along both sides of the street, ‘and although they were small, and their branches mostly bare, there were a few green buds on some of them. In ten or fifteen years this would be an extremely pleasant, and therefore expensive neighborhood.
Certain now that no one was watching her father’s apartment building, Elizabeth paid for her coffee, and made the first pass on foot, looking through the windows into the empty ground floor vestibule. She crossed the street at the corner, and returned. She had to wait for a taxi to pass before she could Cross back and she ducked inside the apartment building.
Her father’s name was listed on a white card on the mailbox for 3A, and for a few seconds she hoped that she was on a wild goose chase. A radio or television was playing somewhere within the building, and she heard a woman’s voice raised in what sounded like anger. A man barked a sharp reply, and the woman fell silent. She took the stairs at the back of the hall two at a time to the third floor where she held up for a full minute. This floor was quiet. No light shone from under either the front or rear apartment doors. Even the air smelled neutral, only a faint mustiness indicated the building was old. Again she hoped she was on a wild goose chase, and her father would come up the stairs behind her and be flabbergasted when he saw her standing in the darkness. But no one came up. She stepped out of the stairway to her father’s apartment, hesitated a second longer, then rang the bell.
The door to the opposite apartment behind her opened, and she turned, catching the impression of a bulky man in shirtsleeves standing there with a gun in his hand.
The thought that she’d made a dreadful mistake coming here flashed through her head like a bolt of lightning. Moving on instinct she charged into the stairway and raced downstairs without a sound. If she could make it outside she had a fair chance of losing herself in the night. Among her talents were the 220and 440yard dashes for which she’d won trophies in high school and college. One of her coaches had even suggested training for the Olympics, but she hadn’t been interested.
She reached the ground floor as the front door slammed open and several men in dark windbreakers barged into the narrow vestibule.
Turning, she started back up the stairs when the man from the third floor suddenly appeared, blocking the way.
Elizabeth turned again, this time into the muzzles of two very large pistols. She stopped and her entire body sagged.
“Shit,” she said.
The flashing blue lights of several police cars were gathered on the street, along with a growing number of onlookers.
“Give me your purse, Mademoiselle,” one of the gunmen said. “Je suis la fine de Monsieur Kirk McGarvey,” Elizabeth said, carefully handing her purse to the surprised plain clothes officer.
“What are you doing here, Mademoiselle McGarvey?” one of the other plain clothes officers asked. He was heavyset and very dark and dangerous looking.
“I came to see my father, naturally,” Elizabeth replied. “Is this how you treat all your visitors to France?”
The heavyset man searched her purse, and examined her passport. “Your father is not at home.”
“Evidently not.”
“Where is he?”
“I thought he was here.”
“Was he expecting you?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Now if that’s all, I’d like my purse and I’ll go.”
“I would like to ask you a few questions, if you’ll come downtown with us. With no trouble, please.”
“First I’d like to call my embassy.”
“In due time, Mademoiselle,” the heavyset man said. “If you cooperate we will not handcuff you.”
Elizabeth stepped up to him. He towered a full head over her, and he looked dangerous, more like a street thug than a cop. “What am I being charged with, and who the hell are you?”
“You’re being charged with nothing, yet As for my name, I am Colonel Guy de Galan.” He stepped aside for her. “Now, if you please, Mademoiselle?”
Elizabeth hesitated a moment longer. She still had twenty-four hours before Tom Lynch was expecting her. The French were looking for her father, but with luck they might buy her story and let her go, providing they did not find out what hotel she was staying at and search her room.
Out in the street several dozen people had gathered to watch what was going on. She searched the crowd for a familiar face, either her father’s or Tom Lynch’s whom she was sure she would recognize from the photographs she’d seen. But they were all strangers hoping to catch some interesting action. Getting in the back of Colonel Galan’s car she glanced up at her father’s apartment, a bitter taste in her mouth. In less than forty-eight hours working for Ryan she’d managed to get herself arrested. It wouldn’t look so good in her personnel file, but she didn’t think that the Deputy Director of Operations would be very surprised.
