A Walk Across the Sun (40 page)

Sita sat on the bed for hours. She studied the room and hatched imaginary escape plots, all of which presumed extraordinary good fortune on her part and profound stupidity on the part of her captors. When she grew tired of this, she distracted herself with mind games. Occasionally, footsteps passed in the hallway and she heard the muffled sounds of speech.

In time, the footsteps grew more regular. She heard female voices speaking in a foreign tongue. Their accents were similar to Dmitri's, but she couldn't tell if the language was Russian. A man greeted the girls and barked an order. One of the girls began to plead with him. A scuffle ensued and something thumped against the door. The girl shrieked. The man shouted. Again the door thumped. Sita heard what sounded like nails scratching on wood. She drew her knees to her chin and her heartbeat increased.

The door opened and a young woman entered. She was blond and dressed in a V-neck top and miniskirt. Igor sauntered into the room behind her and looked crossly at Sita. She leaped off the bed and cowered in the corner behind the television set. The blond girl glanced at her and turned back toward Igor, her eyes wide and full of fear.

Igor barked another command. The girl shook her head. Igor grew impatient and threw her on the bed. When he unbuckled his belt, the girl began to cry. Sita looked away and shut her eyes, whispering a mantra she had learned as a child. The girl's suffering was too much for her to bear.

A few minutes later, Igor got up from the bed, breathing heavily. He pulled on his pants and left the room without a word. The girl lay on the thin mattress. Sita opened her eyes and regarded her still form. She worried that Igor had knocked her unconscious, but then the girl began to stir. She sat up and rearranged her clothes, her face expressionless. Igor returned for her, and the girl followed him out of the room without looking in Sita's direction.

At some point, music began and didn't stop for hours. The pulsing beat reverberated through the walls and rattled her brain. She lay down on the bed, exhausted from jet lag and anxiety. But the music made it impossible to sleep. She covered her ears and buried her head in the filthy sheets.

Sometime before dawn, the music stopped and she heard scuffing sounds in the hallway. The door opened a second time and Igor appeared again, dragging a different girl. The girl didn't protest when Igor pushed her against the wall. She did what he demanded without making a sound. Sita sealed her eyes and ears from the horror of it all. She wanted to bathe herself, to cleanse her soul of the stain of this place. Why was she here? What did they want from her? Was Igor trying to teach her a lesson by raping girls in front of her?

In time, Igor left and the girl went with him. Sita closed her eyes and once more tried to sleep. She was startled awake by the sound of the doorknob turning. Suddenly, Igor stood on the threshold again, alone this time. He glanced either way down the hall and entered the room, shutting the door behind him. He turned toward Sita, and his mouth stretched into a rictus that was part sneer and part smile. Sita backed into the corner and hugged her knees to her chest.

Igor advanced toward her slowly, his meaty hands hanging open at his sides. He knelt in front of her and began to loosen his belt.

“Alexi say I not touch you. Dietrich coming.” Igor unzipped his fly and reached into his pants. “Alexi not know if you touch me.”

Sita closed her eyes, unable to look at what he wanted to show her. Her teeth began to chatter. She felt him take her head in his hands and draw her toward him. He reeked of sweat and cheap alcohol.

“Open mouth,” he hissed.

“Please,” she whimpered, feeling a sudden urge to vomit. “Don't do this.”

“Open mouth,” he commanded again, increasing the pressure on her head.

Suddenly, the door burst open. Sita looked up as Alexi stormed into the room, his face dark with rage. Igor swiveled around and rushed to cover himself. Before Igor could get his hands free, Alexi drove his fist into Igor's jaw. Sita heard a sound like the snapping of a branch, and then Igor howled in pain. She watched in astonishment as Alexi hoisted Igor by the shoulders and hurled him against the wall. Stunned and bleeding from the lip, Igor crumpled to the floor and clutched at his face.

Alexi cracked his knuckles and winced slightly, looking at his hand. He turned to Sita and spoke as if the violence had meant nothing to him.

“Did he touch you?”

She shook her head. “He didn't hurt me.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“He touched my head,” she answered. “Nothing else.”

Alexi glanced at Igor as he struggled to stand. Igor braced himself against the door jamb, his jaw hanging slack, and then limped out of the room without looking at them.

“He will not touch you again,” Alexi said.

When Alexi left, Sita rested her head against the wall. She tried to take consolation in his promise, but she couldn't banish Igor's smell or the ominous threat of Dietrich. Sleep enticed her, toyed with her, but ultimately eluded her. The sights and sounds of human depravity were too much to forget.

Is this hell?
she wondered fleetingly.

If not, where is God?

Chapter 23

You do not have because you do not ask.
—T
HE
B
OOK OF
J
AMES

Paris, France

After the incident with the black Mercedes, Thomas accompanied Julia to Place de la Concorde and dropped her off in the lobby of the American Embassy. She promised to call as soon as she heard something from the BRP.

Thomas left the embassy feeling stir-crazy. He had done what Léon had considered miraculous—he had found a tip and turned it into a lead.

He had seen the woman, probably Navin's aunt, in the car. He had no idea where she had gone, but the Petrovich flat couldn't be empty. Some measure of truth lay beyond the double doors, something that could lead him to Sita. Yet the lead had to be processed and vetted by police bureaucrats. It was infuriating.

He wandered south across the vast Place de la Concorde, looking for a way to work off his irritation. He crossed the bridge over the Seine and walked west along the Left Bank. The clouds broke and the river sparkled in the sunlight.

He kept a brisk pace all the way to the Eiffel Tower. He skirted the mob of tourists huddled at the base of the massive landmark and made his way southeast along the broad Parc du Champ de Mars that extended from the tower to the sprawling complex of the École Militaire. He took a seat on a bench and watched the birds play in the turbulent wind.

After a few minutes, he took out his BlackBerry, thinking to call Priya. It was late afternoon in Bombay. She picked up on the second ring, sounding weary but happy to hear from him.

“How is Paris?” she asked.

“Magnifique,”
he said. “How is Bombay?”

“Getting hotter by the day. Is the search going well?”

He delivered a short version of the events of the past two days.

Priya was impressed. “You've been more successful than I expected.”

“Two steps forward, one step back. How is your father?”

Priya took a short breath. “He's still in Varanasi.”

“Well, give him my best when you see him.”

“I will.” Priya paused. “I'm proud of you, Thomas.”

Her encouragement gave him unexpected buoyancy.

“I meant what I told you. Bring Sita home.”

Thomas stood from the bench and walked along the edge of the grassy mall toward the Military Academy. At the intersection of Place Joffre and Avenue due Tourville, he headed east past the Hôtel des Invalides. He wandered through the idyllic streets of the Seventh and Sixth Arrondissements before stopping at a café and ordering a sandwich. He checked his BlackBerry regularly, thinking that Julia might have sent him an e-mail or a text message, but his inbox was empty.

After lunch, he walked east through the Luxembourg Gardens and up the hill along Rue Soufflot to the megalithic Pantheon. He paused beside the stone facade of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and scanned the names of the great scholars and intellectuals inscribed beneath the library's windows. Da Vinci, Erasmus, Newton, Bacon, Kepler, Lavoisier. As a student, the names had inspired him. Now they troubled him. They were visionaries one and all, risk takers who had challenged the status quo, often at great cost to themselves. A memory came to him then—Priya's words when he took the job at Clayton. “They will turn you into a mercenary,” she had said, “and you will lose your soul.” He didn't agree with her. But the philosophers and scientists, saints and sages, on the library's walls spoke with greater authority. How many of them, if they were alive, would have taken her side?

He turned and walked along the cobbled plaza toward the Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. He paused in front of the church, and Jean-Pierre Léon's question echoed in his mind:
“Are you a religious man, Mr. Clarke?”
For some reason the Frenchman's words nagged at him. He would never have considered asking heaven for help in his quest to find Sita. Yet the thought persisted, like a burr that would not let go.

An older couple left the church, and Thomas glanced inside before the heavy door swung closed. The sanctuary was vast, with gabled ceilings, vaulted archways, ornate pillars, and windows with elaborate tracery. He found himself drawn to the place. On a whim, he decided to look around.

The noises of the street disappeared as soon as the door to the church closed behind him. The silence of the sanctuary was unbroken. He walked slowly through the grand arcade on the fringes of the nave. Sunlight streamed through stained glass high above, and votive candles flickered in the shadows before icons of the saints. A sign beside them indicated that the cost of a candle was two euros. He hesitated, wrestling with doubt, but suddenly his objections seemed more reactive than reasonable. What could it hurt to pray?

He dropped a coin in the canister and picked up a candle, lighting the wick with an existing flame. He placed the votive at the bottom of the rack and walked to a chair at the edge of the nave. He made the sign of the cross as he had when he was a boy and knelt on the stone floor, bowing his head and placing his folded hands beneath his chin.

At first he thought to pray for luck, but the idea seemed sacrilegious. So he prayed for grace. It was a concept straight from the Catechism, heavy and musty and frayed like a folio in an ancient library, yet it carried a resonance he could not define. He spoke the words and then opened his eyes. The church was as it had been, as was the world. But for the first time since Mohini died, he felt a measure of peace.

He left the church for the cobblestones of Place Sainte-Geneviève. He checked his BlackBerry, but Julia had still not contacted him. He browsed in a used bookshop and bought a round of cheese at a
fromagerie
before returning to his hotel. He wanted to call her for an update, but he knew he shouldn't pester her.

The call came, at last, a few minutes before six.

“Hey, Thomas,” Julia said, “I'm sorry for the long silence. I was tied up in meetings all afternoon. I got your warrant.”

Thomas was amazed. “How'd you pull it off?”

“Some friendly persuasion and good bit of luck. We knew the BRP was watching the Petroviches, but we didn't know why. As it turns out, they've been operating an escort service and a porn site using girls from Eastern Europe. The BRP's wanted to nail them for over a year, but the evidence was too flimsy. Until now. One of the girls talked. They've been planning an operation for a week. My tip about Sita confirmed it. The BRP is going in tomorrow morning.”

Thomas was dumbfounded. Somehow Sita had stumbled into a war zone. “What are the chances that they'll let me tag along?”

Julia laughed. “Try zero. They don't let us come near their fieldwork, and even if they made an exception in this case, which they won't, they would never let you in. We're going to have to wait this one out on the sidelines.”

“Will they call you after it's over?”

“My guy promised to contact me. When that happens is anyone's guess. Sit tight.”