daughters and I were just walking on the beach where I’m afraid we saw two young men engaged in-I don’t really know how to put it-lewd behavior.”
Within seconds, hotel security guards appeared from the main lodge and discreetly headed down to the beach. Much as Charlie would have enjoyed staying to hear the contract agents’ protests, he knew that each second could make the difference between escaping or not.
19
The N5 to Fort-de-France wasn’t the crudely paved, single-lane road alongside sugarcane fields that Charlie expected, but a sleek and ultramodern highway with elevated ramps that wound around, across, and, occasionally, directly through mountainsides. Fortunately, Drummond had relieved the CIA man of his car keys while tying him up, because Charlie found driving the Peugeot challenge enough, particularly keeping up with the local traffic, blazing vehicles whose proportions, unlike the Peugeot’s, were suited to the snaking curves and narrow passageways between rock walls. To allow past a flaming orange Micra-an amalgam of a go-kart and a flying saucer-he swerved right, nearly shearing off Drummond’s door against a cliff that doubled as a retaining wall.
Finding Fort-de-France was also a problem. Although the highway wrapped around the western border of Fort-de-France, because of the dark night, the blinding LED billboards, and the giant outcroppings of rock that blocked the view, the precise location of the city wasn’t clear. Not until signs began popping up indicating that Charlie had already driven past it.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” he asked Drummond.
No response.
Drummond was balled up in the cramped front footwell, his usual countersurveillance position. Somehow he’d managed to fall asleep.
Probably a good idea, Charlie thought. Although there was no correlation between rest and episodes of lucidity, rest generally sharpened Drummond’s faculties.
Anyway, how hard could it be to find a large city?
Hoping to make his way to the opposite side of the N5 and head back toward Fort-de-France, Charlie shot onto what had to be an exit ramp. It spiraled into the empty parking lot of a dark six-story supermarket. He navigated a dozen rows of parking meters before reaching a ramp he felt sure would bring him back onto the opposite side of the highway. It dead-ended inexplicably behind an unlit warehouse.
A few moments later, after he had backtracked and found the right way onto the N5, a gap in the retaining wall finally yielded a view of a tight grid of well-lit, three- and four-story Belle Epoque buildings. It was so stunning, Charlie nearly missed the exit.
Descending the ramp, he spotted a road sign for Pointe Simon, the area to which Drummond had instructed him to go when they were still in Switzerland. During a series of left turns to check for surveillance, Charlie noted the street signs mounted on the walls of corner buildings. Dark blue plaques with white letters, exactly as in Paris. The streets themselves were packed with bustling boutiques, cafes, and bars. He cracked a window. The balmy air, wonderfully redolent of fresh pineapple, resonated with French banter and jazz.
More wonderful, no one was following them. At least not by car.
At rue Joseph Compere, the supposed location of the Laundromat, the city grew darker and quieter, the chic boutiques yielding to simple fish stores and produce markets with hand-painted signs. The urban thrum dwindled to a lone sax playing the blues, with traffic declining to one or two cars per block. Pedestrians included a handful of adventurous tourists and, mostly, locals returning home.
The odd television screen shimmered through lace curtains as well as holes in regular curtains. The dwellings themselves, almost all three-story apartment buildings, were either old and dilapidated or new constructions done on the cheap, with views not of the sparkling Baie des Flamands, a block away, but of a four-story, graffiti-covered municipal parking garage. In short, they were apartments where residents would depend on a self-serve Laundromat. The closest thing to a Laundromat Charlie saw, however, was a hairdresser.
He reached down and nudged his father awake. “Sorry, I need you to take a look.”
Drummond tried to shake away his sleepiness.
“Does this look familiar?” Charlie asked.
Drummond rose the fraction of an inch necessary to peer out his window. He smiled, as if in reminiscence.
“Familiar?” Charlie asked, meaning the question to be rhetorical.
“No. Should it be?”
“If for no other reason than we flew four thousand miles to go to a Laundromat here.”
“What Laundromat?”
“That’s a good question.”
“Thank you.”
“How about this, Dad? What if you were, say, a CIA operations officer working under nonofficial cover and you had a fake ten-kiloton atomic demolition munition concealed within a washing machine and you needed to hide it in an urban residential area. Where would you put it?”
“Plain sight.” Drummond’s mouth tightened, as if he were annoyed that Charlie would ask such a stupid question.
“Like where?”
“Is that why you were asking about a Laundromat?”
“Right.”
“For an operation of that magnitude, I might buy an existing Laundromat to use as a front, or open my own.”
“Where, ideally, would you locate it?”
“Easy. A place with access for a delivery truck.”
“Close to a parking garage?”
“Exactly.”
Charlie sped to the end of the one-way street, turned left on Boulevard Alfassa, took another left onto rue Francois Arago, then doubled back to the top of rue Joseph Compere, bringing the car to a stop at the municipal garage he’d noticed earlier.
Still no Laundromats in sight. Just a quartet of three-story apartment buildings painted in repeating pastel squares and adorned with enough architectural flourishes to prevent the residents from realizing that they lived in concrete boxes. The buildings were new, evidenced by the freshness of the paint and the clean stretch of cement fronting them-without any of the stains or ruts on the sidewalks that were everywhere else on rue Joseph Compere.
Charlie indicated the apartments with a sweeping gesture. “How much do you want to bet that the Laundromat used to be there?”
Drummond reacted as if he’d just swallowed vinegar.
Charlie spun in his seat. “What’s wrong?”
“Always with the betting,” Drummond grumbled, taking Charlie back to the years when the two of them still got together on major holidays, always at restaurants where they could eat in less than an hour, ideally with televised bowl games to minimize the time Drummond lectured on squandering one’s life on the horses.
A truck shaped like a baby’s shoe-and not much larger-whizzed past, snapping Charlie back to rue Joseph Compere.
“Well, you’ll be happy to know that I now wish I’d become an engineer at the Skunk Works,” he told Drummond. “If only because I’d be in Palmdale, California, instead of on this wild Laundromat chase, unsure if I’m going to live through the night.”
Drummond regarded him as if through a fog.
The bluesy saxophone drifting down the block offered a fitting sound track. The music emanated from a slender two-story hole-in-the-wall. Hand-painted on one of the smoky windows, in a feathery silver cursive, was “Chez Odelette.”
