“The little fucker has some fight in him,” the third man said, swearing in English with the ease of an American, if not the accent.
“Reggie warned us about that,” said the man who was worried that Christopher would swim for it, staring at him with a look of mild respect. The words stung. So Reggie was in on it, Christopher thought.
“Reggie says a lot of things,” the first man said. “Should we take the tape off of his mouth?”
“What if he screams?” the Doubting Thomas said.
“Who is going to hear him?” the one with the talent for English curse words asked. “If we take the tape off of your mouth, are you going to scream?” he said to Christopher. He was the biggest of the three men. Christopher guessed that he was the one who had grabbed his hands so firmly.
Christopher shook his head. He couldn’t see what good screaming would do. So the big one came back toward him and with one clean, fast tug, pulled the tape from Christopher’s face. It stung as all the hair on his face was pulled off with the tape. Christopher thought about lunging for the man. He thought about biting him, about tearing off a chunk of the man’s flesh with his teeth. But what good would that do? Hadn’t somebody recently said something about the futility of symbolic violence? Instead of attacking, Christopher took a deep breath. He appreciated his ability to still breathe deeply.
“What are you going to do with me?” Christopher asked his captors.
“We don’t know,” the man with the radio said, holding it up for Christopher to see, showing Christopher that his fate was in the hands of someone who wasn’t even with them.
“Who does know?” Christopher asked, fearing that he already knew the answer.
“What are we going to do with him?” Reggie asked Apsara as they pulled Jung-Su into their boat. Up to that point, Reggie had tried to stay out of the way. This wasn’t his place. He merely wanted to be on a boat to make sure that the job was really done.
“I don’t know,” Apsara answered him. “It’s not for me to decide. We’ll have to bring him back to the island. We’ll bring everybody back.” They’d found Galang’s body and the body of the women from his boat in the water. They’d pulled the third man from Galang’s boat out of the water alive and conscious. Someone would have to try to find the people that Galang had left behind in the water. Then they could all go return to the island—at least what was left of them anyway.
Forty-two
“Do you think that’s her?” Addy whispered to Evan. They had taken seats in a dark corner of the pub and from there were staring across the room at the diminutive dark-haired woman behind the bar. “Do you think that’s Maria? She looks too old be Maria.”
“It has to be her,” Evan whispered. It wasn’t any specific feature that convinced him that this was his best friend’s mother, though some of her features did remind Evan of Christopher. It was more the way she carried herself, like she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t walking on a tightrope over a bottomless pit. The small things gave it away, like the way she never relaxed her hands even when she thought no one was looking or the way her eyes darted around the room every few seconds to appraise her surroundings. Evan had seen those things in Christopher. Maria took out a rag and began to wipe down the bar. When someone came in that she recognized, she greeted the person with a bright smile but with dead eyes. Evan could see the pain in her eyes. The pain was the clincher. “That has to be Christopher’s mother,” he repeated, as much to himself as to Addy.
It had been five days since Addy and Evan left Florida. They stopped only the one time. Other than that, the only sleep either of them got was when they took turns napping in the car while the other person drove. They’d made it the nearly two thousand miles from Florida to Quebec City in a little more than two days. When they crossed the border into Canada, Evan hid in the trunk of the car under a blanket and their bags. They knew that he would never get across the border by showing his papers. He was a wanted man. He’d been labeled a terrorist after killing the cop in Los Angeles. His picture was still being blasted everywhere. They considered taking the safer route, having him hike across the border and meet up with Addy later, but they were afraid of how much time that would take. They hadn’t been given a deadline, only Reggie’s instructions to “find Maria and bring her to New York.” But everything was happening so quickly now that they couldn’t imagine wasting a full day minimum with Evan hiking through the woods, so instead, they hid him in the trunk. They purchased a black blanket. About five miles before the border, Addy pulled over and Evan climbed into the trunk. Addy covered him with the blanket and then replaced their bags. She managed to arrange the blanket and the bags so that even with the trunk wide open only the most discerning eye would have noticed the body hidden there.
As soon as Addy threw the thick black blanket over Evan, he stayed as still as he could. He knew that he was in no danger of being seen unless the car was stopped and somebody opened the trunk, which wasn’t likely. They had no reason to believe that the car that Addy’s old colleagues had given them along with Reggie’s orders was anything but clean. Even so, Evan was afraid that if he moved, he would upset the mirage that Addy had created on top of him to hide him. He was only in the trunk for a half hour, but it felt like ten times that long. It was quiet and dark and he tried not to move a single muscle. Only the rumbling of the car over the highway reminded him that he was conscious. Then he felt the slowing of the car as it came to a gentle stop at the border so that the border patrol could question Addy. Those five minutes were as close to death as Evan had ever felt. He was sure of it. He’d stood in front of bullets and raced through fire, but those moments didn’t make him think of death. They made him feel alive. The blank passivity, lying there, waiting—that was death. Luckily for Evan, Addy had all the right answers for the border patrol. Evan had known she would. Soon the car was moving again and Evan was alive again. Ten miles later, Addy pulled off to the side of the road and let Evan out of the trunk.
Addy and Evan’s initial destination was never in doubt. Reggie had told them where to go first. He’d told them that he’d been sending Maria letters at a P.O. box in Quebec City for years. He addressed them to Sophie Escolla. Addy could barely believe any of it. Addy wanted to ask Reggie so many questions, but Reggie wasn’t around to answer them. Reggie was with Christopher, somewhere, trying to raise an army. So Addy tabled her questions and she and Evan headed for Quebec City, looking for Sophie Escolla and hoping that Evan would recognize a woman that he’d never seen before.
“What should we do?” Addy asked, staring at the woman behind the bar and secretly hoping that this woman could be the hero for her that Christopher hadn’t been. “How can we be sure it’s her?”
Evan shifted in his seat, readying himself to stand up. “I’ll go talk to her. She’ll talk to me. I’ll tell her that I know Christopher.”
Addy put a hand on Evan’s arm. “You can’t go. She might recognize you from the TV reports. We might scare her away.” Evan stopped. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he scared her away. “I’ll go,” Addy said.
“What are you going to say?” Evan asked Addy before she stood up.
“I’m going to ask her if she wants to see her son again.”
It hadn’t been easy finding this woman that Evan and Addy thought might be Maria. Neither Evan nor Addy had ever been to Quebec City before. Neither had any idea what to expect. They definitely didn’t expect what they found—a tiny walled city, sitting high on the cliffs above a raging river, looking to the young rebels more like a giant medieval castle than a city. They soon learned that the part of the city that looked like a castle was now a luxury hotel. The rest of the city was so quaint and perfect that it made Evan and Addy uncomfortable. Seven years earlier, it had had the exact same impact on Maria. Now she came to the city only once a month, to pick up her mail. Evan and Addy didn’t know that, though. The city was their only le
ad, so they were going to stay until they had somewhere else to go.
It had taken Addy and Evan three days of wandering the city before they found another lead they could follow. After the initial excitement of arriving in the city wore off, Addy and Evan began to believe that their assignment wasn’t possible. All they had to go on was a fake name and Reggie’s description of what Maria looked like. They didn’t give up, though. Youth is nothing if not a panacea for the impossible. They split up. Evan stayed near the post office. He watched the people come and go. He hid from view and studied the faces of strangers. At the same time, Addy hit the streets. She went to the hotels, the bars, and the restaurants and asked everyone—everyone except those who gave off the scent of being part of the War—if they knew someone named Sophie Escolla. Evan and Addy would meet for dinner each night and then they would continue to prowl the city by moonlight, listening to conversations and praying for clues. The person who finally answered their prayers didn’t look like an angel. He was a burly biker sitting in one of the seedier bars Evan and Addy had found in the quaint city. He was drinking beer and complaining to the bartender. Most of his complaints were aimed at another bartender from some bar in some town in the middle of nowhere north of the city. “She’s a little thing,” the man said to the bartender, “but man, she’s got an attitude.”
“What happened?” the bartender asked, not really caring but knowing exactly when to pretend to care in order to maximize tips.
“I asked her what her name was. She says, ‘Sophie.’ I told her that I thought Sophie was a dog’s name.” The burly man laughed, shaking his head. “So she says to me, ‘I’ve had other names. You should know that I picked this name myself. And I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a dog.’ Then she walks to the end of the bar, lights a cigarette, and refuses to give me another drink. She sits there smoking her cigarette and not looking at me until I leave. She was a serious bitch.”
Addy and Evan were sitting at the bar a few stools down from their new angel. “Did you catch her last name?” Evan leaned in and asked the man.
“I didn’t catch anything after that.” The man laughed again. “Bitch wouldn’t say a word.”
“Where is this bar?” Evan asked the man and Addy memorized everything else that came out of the man’s mouth. The next morning Addy and Evan drove north through the country to the tiny town of Saint-Joachim.
All that searching led them to this moment. Addy stood up and started walking toward the bar. She eyed the woman standing behind it and tried to temper her excitement. She reminded herself what her excitement had cost her the last time. She remembered how giddy she had felt when she found out that the boy she saw walking through their compound was Christopher and what that had led to. This was different, though. Christopher was an aimless child. This was Maria. This was the woman who had already beaten the War once. It didn’t matter how small or personal that victory might have been. It was a victory. Great things come from small victories.
Addy reached the bar and sat down on one of the stools. It was afternoon and still light outside. The place was mostly empty. An older man sat at the bar also, about three stools down from Addy, nursing a tall beer. Two men, both probably around thirty years old, sat in one of the booths telling stories to each other in French and laughing obnoxiously loudly. Addy watched the bartender as she approached her to take her order. As the bartender came closer, Addy began to wonder again if this really was Maria. Would she even be able to tell? Evan might have known Christopher longer than she had, but she had spent a lot of time with Christopher too. She’d even kissed him once. Hadn’t she? Would she see Christopher in Maria’s face?
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked Addy in English, picking up their language preference from earlier, when Addy and Evan ordered their first drinks.
Addy lost her train of thought for a second. This woman didn’t look like Christopher. She’d come over to Addy and Evan’s booth to take their order when they first came in, but they had been too nervous to get a really clear look at her. Up close, Addy noticed how much smaller the bartender was than Christopher. She seemed almost frail in comparison to him. Christopher hadn’t been everything that Addy had hoped for, but he had always seemed formidable, even when he was afraid—sometimes even more when he was afraid. Then Addy looked into the woman’s eyes and she knew for certain that she had seen those eyes before. They were younger and some of the sadness was replaced by confusion, but she had seen them before. “We’re still okay with our drinks,” Addy said to the bartender, gesturing toward the two nearly full beers sitting in front of Evan and speaking quietly so the older man at the bar wouldn’t be able to listen in on their conversation. “I was wondering if you could answer a question for me.”
It was only a split second, but Addy could have sworn that she saw a look pass over the bartender’s face, a look of annoyance mixed with fear. Before responding, the bartender took a long look at the face of every person in the bar, hanging for a few extra beats on Evan’s face. A minute later, she turned back to Addy. “What’s the question?”
“What’s your name?” Addy asked in a tone that implied that depending on how the bartender answered this question, many other questions would follow. Maria was immediately suspicious. She hated questions.
“Sophie,” the bartender answered.
“Sophie Escolla?”
Maria paused for a moment. Then she turned toward the cash register and picked up a pack of cigarettes. She was confused. They’d never been this direct before. They’d been following her without a break for six years, and this was the first time one of them had come up to her and started asking questions. Maria pulled a cigarette out of the pack. “Yes,” she answered the young woman. Maria noted how much younger this one and her friend were than all the others. Her friend looked even younger than she did. He was probably about the same age as Christopher. Maria slipped the cigarette between her lips. “You’re American, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Addy replied.
“We don’t see a lot of Americans up this far. What brings you here?”
Since she asked, Addy figured she should just lay down her cards. She spoke in a hushed voice. “Reggie sent us to find you, Maria. He sent us to bring you back.”
Maria took the unlit cigarette out of her mouth. She felt like she’d been punched in the head. For a second, she could barely move, but then she collected herself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. This might be a trap or, even worse, the woman could be telling the truth. Either way, Maria didn’t want anything to do with her. “So, do you want another drink or do you want to go back to your table?”
Addy should have been more ready for Maria’s response than she was. For some reason, she had thought that all they would have to do was find Maria and their job would be done. They’d found Maria. Now what? Addy thought about going back to the table and letting Evan give it a try. That option was there, but Addy wasn’t ready for it yet. Instead, she leaned in toward Maria—who had somehow turned from a small, meek woman into a force of nature—and said in her most earnest and honest voice, “You can trust us, Maria. We’re on your side.”
It wasn’t the words that the young woman spoke that reached inside Maria and grabbed her. It was the desperation in her voice. Maria didn’t know if there were more things in her life that she wanted to forget or more things that she would do anything to remember. The desperation in Addy’s voice made Maria think of both. Suddenly she remembered standing in a dark alley with a knife pressed against her throat, trying to convince the man holding the knife that he could trust her. Maria was them once.
Addy watched as Maria scanned the room quickly again, checking to make sure that no one was watching her. Then she glanced out the window. Finally, she took a long, hard look at Evan. When she was done, Maria turned toward the cash register and grabbed her receipt book and a pen. She began to write something on th
e receipt book. Addy was certain that Maria was about to tally up their bill and send them on their way. Maria ripped off the top page and passed it to Addy. On the page, Maria had written the words “Who are you?” with the directness that Addy had initially feared.
Addy knew that this could be her only chance, so she took the pen from Maria and wrote under the question “Friends of Christopher.”
Maria read the words. Then she lifted her head. She stared at Evan for a long time again. Then she stared for just as long at Addy. It took all of Addy’s strength not to squirm beneath Maria’s gaze. Maria began to write something else on the pad. As she did, she said loudly, “It’s down the road a ways on the left. You can’t miss it. It’s the tallest building for miles.” Addy looked down at what Maria was writing. The note on the pad said, “Can’t talk here. Not safe. Come to my place after midnight tonight. Wait until all the lights are out. Come in through the back door, facing the woods. I’ll leave it open. Go through the door opposite the back door, into the basement. Make sure you’re not followed. Don’t turn on the lights.” She wrote her address at the bottom of the page. Then she tore the page from the pad and handed it to Addy as if she were passing her driving directions.
“Thank you,” Addy said sincerely, taking the paper from Maria’s hand. She was confused about how this tiny, nearly empty bar in the middle of nowhere could be dangerous. She wondered if everything that had happened to Maria had driven her mad. After all, Addy knew the legend. She knew that Maria had no genetic predisposition to paranoia. But Addy took the paper, walked back to Evan, and told him that they had to leave. Evan didn’t ask questions. He left money on the table for the beer and then stood up and followed Addy out of the bar. On the way out, Evan turned back and looked at Maria one last time. Maria was watching them. She watched them walk out the door. She would watch them through the window once they were outside. She would watch them get into their car. She would watch them drive away and hope that the people who were following her—the people who had been following her for the past six years—didn’t end up following the kids in that car too. Once Maria couldn’t see those kids anymore, she grabbed her pack of cigarettes, thought about lighting one, and then remembered the advice an old friend had given her eighteen years ago about trying to hide when you smelled like cigarettes. It was advice that she was suddenly going to need again. So instead of lighting a cigarette, Maria took the whole pack and threw it in the garbage.