Consuela stands up. Looks at him. Flatlines her voice. “You dreamed about Columbus having a dream?”
“Yes, I dreamed
She sighs. “And Beatriz is…?”
“Ah, yes. A delicate flower. The most amazing green eyes! She was my woman. She bore me a son.”
“Your woman, not your wife?”
“What is it with women and marriage? You think all your problems will be solved and your life complete if only you can marry. Isn’t that a bit delusional?”
“So you did not marry Beatriz.”
“We exchanged vows. We exchanged rings.”
“But you did not marry her.”
“No. It’s complicated.”
This perks Consuela’s ears. A woman and a child. This is a first. A woman, according to Dr. Fuentes, could be at the heart of his illness.
“But you loved her.”
“Of course I loved her. Don’t be so stupid. She was my woman.”
“What happened to her?”
“Beatriz? Nothing happened to her. She’s in Barcelona. She works as a barista. She doesn’t have to. She has a stipend. It was arranged.”
“I notice she doesn’t visit very often. She doesn’t visit at all.”
“Ah, yes, well, that can be explained by reminding you of the unique vagaries of all women. While I love Beatriz to this day, she was not my only love. No offense to you, Nurse Consuela, but this ability to love more than one woman is one of the traits of men that is not appreciated by most women.”
“You fooled around on her.”
He’s not sure how to answer her. He does not have the language to speak his heart about Beatriz.
“I’m not judging,” Consuela says. “I’m just interested.”
Columbus leans forward. Hands on his chin, elbows on his knees. He seems on the verge of saying something but then pulls back-just closes his eyes and sighs. “Look, there were days when I was daunted. I was depressed about this journey. I would wake up in the morning in a new town and yes, there were, sometimes, distractions.” He sighs. “Look, this is a brutal, ugly time. The Inquisition is running around accusing and burning people and saving us from ourselves. People are scared… I was scared most of the time.”
CHAPTER THREE
An Interpol yellow notice flashes on his screen and Emile Germain can’t recall what the hell the yellow alert means-not exactly.
It’s been a while. He has to look it up. Emile pulls a white binder from the shelf beside his desk and flips to the section that deals with alerts. Yellow, he recalls with the help of the binder, is to assist in locating missing persons, often minors, or to identify people who are unable to identify themselves. His computer beeps. A blue notice pops up attached to the same file. He scans down the open page to blue: to collect additional information about a person’s identity, location, or illegal activities in relation to a criminal matter.
Merde! Two alerts on one man. They have no idea if he’s a threat. There was no color code for a person of interest, but Emile could read between the lines: Interpol wanted this guy found.
The man, his assignment, was declared officially suspicious and off the grid in April. Under the circumstances, it’s understandable that one missing person was shunted down the priority list. The likelihood that he is dead is high. The trail went cold. His file was basically forgotten. The report says he had been seen by several unreliable witnesses, and then he was gone. A magic trick. A disappearing act. Spain is a vast country-forty million people. This was just one vanished man inside a chaos of people and landscapes.
Cold trails were Emile’s specialty. Hopeless cases were his forte. His ex-wife used to say it was because he could tap into the artistic side of his brain and make oblique connections.
Emile pushes his shoulders into the back of the chair and breathes deeply. The wooden chair was a gift from her. She’d found it in an antique shop with a cement Buddha head sitting on it. She was assured by the owner of the shop that the chair was well over a hundred years old and in excellent condition. She probably paid too much but she was in love, and the Buddha head had been there a long time. It had to be good karma to act as a platform for a Buddha, she said-to serve the Buddha in this way. This booga-booga side of his ex-wife was annoying as hell when they were together, but now Emile found he missed her booga-booga: the incense, the strings of tiny brass bells above the bed, soy milk in his Cheerios, the incessantly changing colors on the walls in their bedroom. She had taken most of this away when she left. Though she did leave a small, silver Buddha in the bathroom. And, of course, she’d left the chair.
Emile has the luxury of working out of his home, a penthouse in the heart of the Right Bank of Paris, the market district of rue Mont -orgueil. It’s a small flat but it’s rare to find an apartment with a private terrace and a view. From the roof, he can see Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur, and the Museum of Modern Art.
He was up for a glass of water, and on his way back to bed decided to check his e-mail. He was expecting the cases to begin arriving again and this mysterious person of interest was the first.
Somebody at headquarters in Lyon has attached a brief newspaper story about a baffled stranger in Valdepenas, south of Madrid -a man asking for directions. Police were called but the man was not found. He’d disappeared. The thing is, he kept asking for directions to different places: Sevilla, Granada, Tarifa, Marbella, and half a dozen other towns, cities, and villages. First he’d ask for food and then directions, always to someplace new. He was very courteous, always grateful. The good people of Valdepenas were worried about him.
Emile makes a little whistling sound. Well, that’s a long shot, he thinks. But at least it’s a place to start. Two years of being away, two years of therapy, and now he’s thrown right back into the mix.
Emile scrolls to the top of the file. Who the hell is this guy?
Sometimes the map will not do. The map will never be the territory. One must get out in the field in order to understand. While Emile can make telephone calls and send e-mails and look at maps from the comfort of his flat, it’s not the same as going out into the world and having a look-see. He’s never found anyone by just looking at a map. He’ll rent a car in Madrid, interview the people who may have seen this man, and follow any leads.
Soon he’ll be working the same hours he was logging before the incident. Admittedly, he was one of the busier agents. He was always trying to find someone. Even when he wasn’t on the job, he drifted easily to the missing people to whom he was assigned. He’d been away from work for a long time, and now the cases had already started arriving and his bosses in Lyon would be relying on his unique talents. Yes, he was going to get busy again.
“If I leave you clues, could you find me?” his wife had asked him before it went to pieces. “I want to be one of the people you find.”
Emile smiles. She does not.
Emile was baffled. What the hell did she want from me? he thinks.
She’d complained that he obsessed over his work. “These people you’re assigned to find-you make it so personal.”
“Focus. I focus,” Emile says to himself, trying to shake away the cobwebs of his past.
