Anything Considered (22 page)

For the rest of the afternoon, they shopped for churches, stopping at Banon and Simiane-la-Rotonde and Saint-Saturnin before turning up toward Mont Ventoux. While Bennett drove, Anna went from the guidebook to the map and back to the guidebook again, as she picked her way through dozens of chapels and abbeys, hospices and basilicas. Finally, she struck what she hoped was gold.

“Listen to this,” she said. “ ‘Notre Dame de Poulesc, overlooking the main square of a bustling market town.’ ” She shook her head. “Why do market towns always have to be bustling? Can’t they do anything else but bustle? Anyway, it sounds pretty good. Ready for the guided tour?” In a mock-professorial voice, she quoted from the book: “ ‘Saint Catherine was buried at Poulesc, and the rediscovery
of her body in the late twelfth century prompted the construction of the church. This became such a popular place of pilgrimage that it had to be greatly enlarged in the sixteenth century. The south portal, though stripped of its sculptures during the Revolution, is the most notable survival of the Romanesque structure, and the nave is thought by many to be one of the most eloquent interpretations of the Gothic style in Provence.’ ” Anna looked up from the book. “I hope you’re taking notes. It gets better.

“ ‘The nave has side chapels containing fine examples of seventeenth-century stained-glass work, and the relics of Saint Catherine are contained in the restored twelfth-century crypt.’ ” Anna closed the book. “So it’s big, it’s on the town square, and it has all these little alcoves along the side of the main building. Sounds good, doesn’t it? And we’re almost there. Stay on the D943, and we’ll hit Poulesc in about five miles. This is the one, Bennett, trust me.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “I did. Now look at the mess I’m in.”

“You’ll make a very cute monk, you know that? Except for one thing.”

“If you think I’m getting a tonsure, forget it.” Bennett glanced at Anna’s puzzled expression. “A haircut with a hole in the middle.”

“That’s OK. You’ll be wearing the hood. No, the problem is you’re too skinny. Monks are fat, right? Jolly, like Friar Tuck and Father Gilbert.” She looked at Bennett’s lanky body for a moment and then slapped her hand
on the dashboard, making him brake instinctively. “That’s it. Here’s what we’ll do—we’ll give you a stomach with a bunch of clothes. You unload those in the church and stick the money up there instead. You go in fat, you come out fat, nothing in your hands. How about that? Where would you be without me?”

Bennett’s eyebrows went up at the thought. “Oh, I don’t know—having a quiet, pleasant life in Monaco, driving a Mercedes, fighting off the girls, eating wonderful food, sleeping in a comfortable bed …”

She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. He felt her breath warm and soft against his ear. “Asshole.”

——

Poulesc sat placidly in the glow of early evening, a Provençal country town waiting for a postcard photographer. At one end of the square, a group of men in cloth caps and faded shirts cheated and argued and laughed over their
boules
game beneath the umbrella of shade cast by a row of plane trees. Anna and Bennett stopped to watch as the exchanges became more and more heated, the gestures more and more agitated.

“I thought this was a nice quiet game for nice quiet old men,” Anna said. “Look at those guys. They sound like they’re going to murder each other.”

“I’ve never seen it get to that. But it’s a savage game. Croquet’s the same. Players do hideous things to their opponents.” Bennett pointed to a man stepping up to the
mark that had been scratched in the gravel. “See the one in the green shirt? I think he’s going to bomb the other side.”

Green Shirt bent into a crouch; the hand holding the
boule
swung back once, twice, then threw. The steel sphere rose in a steep, high arc, glinting silver in the sun, before landing with a clack among the other
boules
, knocking one of them away from its position next to the small wooden target ball. Jubilation on one side, consternation on the other. The men scuttled up the court to assess the situation, to take measurements, to dispute.

“How long does this go on?” asked Anna.

“Hours. Days. Until it gets dark, or their wives come and drag them away.”

“It’s easy to have a good time down here doing nothing, isn’t it?”

“That’s not doing nothing. That’s living. It still goes on in the country.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have this quaint idea that there’s more to life than work and television.” Bennett shrugged. “I’m not saying they don’t have their problems—you can hear them moaning every day in the cafés about everything from the price of bread to the government’s nuclear policy—but they know how to enjoy themselves. They play their
boules
, they hunt, they laugh a lot, they’re addicted to conversation, they spend hours at the table.” He smiled, his eyes still on the game. “Who else but the French would have an orgasm over a sack of truffles?”

Anna looked at the smile on his face as he watched the
antics of the
boules
players, and she wondered what would happen between them when this enforced intimacy was over, when they could stop running. Would she go back to New York alone? Would he go back to his village? She didn’t want to think about it. She tucked a hand under his arm. “I hate to say this, but we’ve got a church to check out.”

Housewives crossed and recrossed the square, walking briskly between the butcher, the
épicerie
, and the baker as they made their selections for the evening meal. “See?” said Bennett. “They’re bustling, just like it says in the book.” Under the café awning, a young, dark waiter flirted with two blond girls with backpacks and German accents. Cars were parked everywhere, in the haphazard fashion of the Midi, cars half on the pavement, cars backed into impossibly small spaces, or cars simply left in the middle of the street, lights flashing, while their owners threw back a fast, belly-to-the-bar drink before going home. And on the west side, where it had been taking the last of the day’s sun for hundreds of years, was the church.

It was deserted, cavernous, shadowy—the perpetual twilit gloom, almost like part of the architecture, that seems to settle on religious institutions after a few centuries. Anna and Bennett made their way down the long nave, flanked by rows of empty pews, then split up to explore the small, even darker chapels off to each side. There were discreet hiding places everywhere—black nooks, forgotten corners, crannies behind massive stone buttresses where the dust had lain undisturbed for months,
maybe years. Bennett scribbled some notes in the margin of the guidebook and then walked toward the altar.

“Psssst.”

The hiss cut through the silence, an arrow of sound that made Bennett stop dead.

“Over here.”

Off in a corner, at the very back of the church, he saw the shape of a narrow, dark opening, a flash of white from Anna’s T-shirt. He made his way up the steps, behind the altar, and through a doorway barely the width of his shoulders.

“Bennett, this is
perfect
. Look.”

They were in a tiny, square room, with a table and chair against one wall, a row of ramshackle wooden coat hooks nailed to the other; it was a primitive dressing room, where the priest could change into his Sunday vestments. And, on the outside wall, the cause of Anna’s excitement: another door, which she had unbolted and left ajar. Bennett pushed it open. It gave onto an alley, running along the back of the church in either direction before connecting with streets that led into the square. It would allow him to enter the church unseen, and leave unseen. Yes, it was perfect.

They celebrated with a beer in the café, and on the way back to the monastery settled on a hiding place for the money. Tomorrow they would call Poe with instructions. They would pick up the million and head across the border to Italy. It would all go like clockwork.

——

Dinner with the monks was more than usually convivial, Father Gilbert having decided that the ’92 vintage was ready for serious and prolonged examination. The bottles came and went, each one, by common consent, even more agreeable than the last, and by the time Anna and Bennett excused themselves from the table, they were buzzing pleasantly from a combination of alcohol and optimism. On their way out, Bennett picked up the spare habit lent by Father Gilbert—not without raised eyebrows and an arch invitation to join the brotherhood on a permanent basis, young blood being so hard to come by—and they walked down the lavender-scented path to their cell.

Anna sat on the edge of her bunk, her eyes bright in the candlelight. “OK, young man. Let’s see what kind of a monk we can make of you.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

Bennett held the habit up against himself, feeling its heaviness. “Go ahead,” said Anna, “put it on. I need to see how much room we have to fill in the front.”

He undressed down to his shorts and shrugged his way into the thick, suffocating wool. It was like being in a tent made for one. He gathered a handful of material, held it away from his stomach, and turned so that Anna could see him in profile. “This year,” he said, “fitted cassocks are out. The fashion is for a looser, more casual look, topped
off by a hint of intrigue around the head.” He pulled the cowl forward until it covered most of his face. “How’s that?”

Anna smiled at the baggy, shapeless figure, now totally unrecognizable as Bennett. “I was right,” she said. “You are a cute monk. Now let’s fatten you up.”

She took jeans and T-shirts and a cotton sweater, and bundled them into a ball, which she stuffed, with some difficulty, down the neck of the habit. The ball settled at chest level. They looked at each other, two suddenly serious faces separated by Bennett’s new and pronounced bosom.

“I think it needs a little adjustment, Miss Hersh.” Bennett’s voice was husky.

“I know.” She knelt down, and looked up at him. “I’m going to have to ask you to lift your skirt.”

He tensed as her hands slid up to his chest. He felt her breath against his stomach, the tip of her tongue on his skin. A soft giggle, muffled by the folds of cloth. “It’s starting to get crowded down here.”

He curled his fingers in the short hair on the nape of her neck and gently pulled her to her feet. Smiling, flushed, she slipped the cowl back from his head.

“Bennett? Will you take that damn thing off?”

CAPTAIN Bonfils, scenting promotion, had lost no time in ransacking the computers. Polluce would be pleased. He closed the glass door of his office, and used his private line.

“Nothing much comes up about the girl,” Bonfils said. “Standard U.S. passport, entered the country four days ago through Nice, no criminal record. But we’ve had some luck with the Englishman.” He broke the filter off a cigarette and lit it before reading from the notes he’d made. “Bennett, Luciano. British citizen, French resident with a valid
carte de séjour
, files taxes describing himself as
profession libérale
, current address Saint-Martin-le-Vieux in the Vaucluse, drives a white ’93 Peugeot 205, registration number 29 SKN 84. Seems clean, no criminal record.”

Polluce grunted. “He has now.” It was ironic, he thought, that the highly developed French bureaucracy, so often his enemy—with its irritating, nosy insistence on knowing and recording every fragment of a man’s personal and business life—had become a temporary ally. At least now he’d have something encouraging to tell his colleagues
in Calvi. “It’s a start, Bonfils. It’s a useful start. Now what?”

“I’m doing the maximum, Monsieur Polluce. Details are being circulated already—photographs, everything. We have a good chance, as long as they haven’t left the country. I’ll call again as soon as anything comes up.”

“
Bon
. You’ve done well. I won’t forget.”

Bonfils put down the phone with a sense of satisfaction, but it was short-lived. His office door opened, and Moreau, holding a sheaf of papers, came in and stood in front of his desk, sucking the pipe that never seemed to leave his mouth. Moreau was his chief, a foreigner from the Charente, a stickler with a reputation for tiresome incorruptibility. There was no love lost between the two men. Moreau was aware that Bonfils had influential friends helping him up the ladder, and that his rank didn’t reflect his ability. This grated on Moreau, causing him to keep a close and critical eye on the Corsican. For his part, Bonfils hated Moreau’s guts almost as much as he wanted his job.

Moreau tossed the papers onto the desk. “I’m sure you have an explanation for all this”—he nodded at the bundle of printouts—“but I find myself puzzled. It seems that the department has suddenly given priority to an alleged robbery, without knowing what has been stolen. Not helpful, is it? How are the men supposed to know what they’re looking for? Sloppy work, Bonfils. Very sloppy.”

Moreau, as usual, was doing his best to make Bonfils feel guilty, or incompetent. Now the bastard was staring at him as if he’d been caught with his hands in the till. Bonfils
kept his voice flat. “We were tipped off about the couple. I’m waiting for a full description of the stolen goods.”

Moreau’s pipe made soft, wet sounds as he stared down at Bonfils. “So am I, Captain. So am I. See that it’s on my desk this afternoon, without fail.” He collected the papers and left, shaking his head as he went through the door.

Merde
. Bonfils decapitated another cigarette. If Polluce hadn’t told him, it was because Polluce didn’t want him to know. Which probably meant drugs. Suddenly, it was turning into a lousy morning. He pulled out the number of Polluce’s hotel, and picked up the phone.

——

A hundred miles away, Anna and Bennett were wedged together in a
cabine
in the Poulesc post office, giving each other moral support of a physical nature while they waited for the call to go through. Bennett removed his mouth from its lingering investigation of Anna’s neck as Poe’s voice came on the line.

The conversation was brief and cold and to the point. The money would be left in the church, following Bennett’s instructions, by five o’clock that afternoon. Once it had been safely retrieved, Poe would be told where he could pick up the case. It was all over in three minutes.