Anything Considered (23 page)

For the second time that morning, they walked through the church, stopped by the hiding place, went out by the back door, checked the street where Anna would be
waiting in the car. They left Poulesc and drove down to Simiane-la-Rotonde, to a little restaurant with a four-star view, for their first lunch as lovers. And, in the way of new lovers, made plans.

Italy was to be the first stop. They’d apply for replacement passports and lie low in style at the Villa d’Este. Once the passports had come through, they’d go to Switzerland, where they’d find a quiet little bank in which to deposit the money. And then … well, then they had the world.

Anna reached across the table and took Bennett’s sunglasses off. “That’s better. Now I can see your eyes. You know I have to go back to the States, don’t you? For a while, anyway. Will you come?”

Leaving Saint-Martin, with a vengeful Julian Poe a few miles up the road, wouldn’t be a problem. Leaving France would be harder. But being apart, Bennett realized, would be worse.

He pushed the carafe of wine aside and covered her hand with his. “Of course I’ll come.”

“Sure?”

“Just promise me one thing,” he said. “Don’t ever ask me to wear a baseball cap.”

They ordered coffee and pulled their chairs over to the stone wall at the edge of the terrace. Below them, the land fell away steeply, and then dipped and rolled toward the mountains of the Lubéron, fuzzy in the haze of afternoon heat. The countryside was a painting, a muted wash of colors framed in blue. With Anna’s head on his shoulder,
Bennett looked into the distance and pictured the future, and he liked what he saw.

——

They stopped on the road outside Poulesc. Bennett disappeared into the bushes, and came out a monk—a rotund monk, with a substantial girth supported by a leather belt. They had decided that a paper stomach would be lighter and cooler than a bundle of clothes, and the bunched-up pages of half a dozen copies of
Le Provençal
prickled against his skin. He eased his way into the passenger seat. Tense and silent, they drove slowly into town, stopping a few streets away from the church.

Bennett took a deep, nervous breath. “Wish me luck.” Anyone passing would have seen the unusual sight of a young woman kissing a man of the cloth firmly on the lips. With a final adjustment to his belt, Bennett pulled up his cowl and set off for the alley behind the church, hands clasped in front of him, head down, his paper belly rustling softly as he went.

The alley was in deep shadow as he turned into it, and he had to blink to accustom his eyes to the change from the sun’s glare. He reached the door to the church, looked quickly from left to right. Nobody. He turned the handle and pulled. Idiot. Doors open inward. He turned the handle and pushed. His stomach went into spasm. Someone had bolted the bloody thing since morning. He’d have to go in through the front.

Out in the main square, Gérard and his partner sat in the simmering heat of the car, the volume control of the receiver turned down, a low, steady signal coming from the homing device in the bag they had left in the church earlier. Gérard wished his partner would stop bitching about how hot he was. “You think it’s bad for us,” he said. “Imagine being that poor bastard, wrapped up in a blanket.” They watched as the portly figure of a monk hurried up the steps and into the church. “It’s enough to make anyone an atheist.” He looked at the blank, uncomprehending face next to him and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t wear yourself out thinking about it.”

——

Bennett stood at the end of the nave. In front of the altar, an old woman rose from her knees and went to light a candle. He waited. She turned, came down toward him, and nodded respectfully. “Father,” she said. Bennett had a moment of panic. What the hell was he supposed to say? He nodded back. “Bless you, my child, bless you.” She smiled her thanks. Wonderful what a uniform could do, he thought.

He ducked into the second of the side chapels and reached into the space behind a blackened reliquary. His fingertips touched nylon, and he let out a long, grateful breath. His hands were nervous and clumsy as he unbuckled his belt and substituted a million dollars for yesterday’s news, stuffing the bundles of newspaper out of
sight, where the bag had been. Forcing himself not to run, he went up the nave and out through the back door. Less than two minutes later, he was in the car, wired with adrenaline. He took Anna’s hand and placed it on the tightly packed bulge of his stomach. “How does it feel to be a millionaire?”

——

Gérard turned up the volume control on the receiver. The signal had faded. The case had been moved. He started the car, then winced as the whine of the signal suddenly increased. A white Peugeot came from a side street and drove across the square. As it drew away, the signal began to fade again. “
Putain!
There must be a back door.” He pulled out and went after the Peugeot, keeping his distance.

——

Bennett unbuckled his belt, letting the bag fall through his legs onto the floor of the car. He unzipped it, and started whistling softly as he stared at the bundles of hundred-dollar bills, more cash than he’d ever seen in his life. Anna was grinning, driving fast along the twisting road that led up into the hills and the safety of the monastery, tapping her fingers on the wheel in time with Bennett’s whistled version of “The Man Who Broke the Bank in Monte Carlo.” “We did it,” she said. “We goddamn well did it.”

Bennett turned his head to look through the rear window. Nothing but the shimmer of heat rising over emptiness. He felt the adrenaline rush subside and exhilaration take over. “I happen to know,” he said, his mouth close to Anna’s ear, “that in the Villa d’Este, they have enormous beds with linen sheets.”

“And room service?”

“
Endless
room service. Dinner in bed, tomorrow night. How does that sound? Better than a bunk?”

“Now he’s complaining. You spoiled rich guys are all the same.” She braked, and turned up the track that led to the monastery. “Personally, I thought we did OK in the bunk.”

——

Bennett left Anna counting the money while he got out of his habit and stood under the primitive shower, letting the chill of the water wash away the strain of the last couple of hours. This time tomorrow, they’d be out of France, away from Poe and Tuzzi, out of trouble. He dried himself and dressed and padded back to the cell, the flagstones smooth and cool beneath his bare feet.

Anna was still arranging piles of banknotes on one of the bunks, systematically checking each bundle to make sure that Poe hadn’t substituted cut paper. She looked up as Bennett came through the door. “So far, so good,” she said. “Isn’t that a pretty sight?” She rummaged in the bag for the last bundles, and then Bennett saw her smile change to a frown.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Did he forget to leave a tip?”

“There’s something here, in the corner.” She turned the bag inside out. “See? There.” They looked at the small patch of tightly stretched lining, and Bennett poked at it with his finger, feeling its shape. “It’s like a box.”

Anna fetched a nail file from her toilet kit and unpicked the stitching until she could rip the lining away. Taking out a black plastic oblong, she held it up to the light, her face grave. “I’ve seen something like this before, in Israel. Some guys used to carry them on patrol.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a short-range homing device.” She tossed it onto the bunk, on top of the money. “Jesus. It means Poe’s goons have been tracking us. They know where we are. And they’re not far away.”

BENNETT was the first to break the silence, hoping to find a glimpse of silver in the cloud. “It could be worse. At least Poe doesn’t know that we’ve found it. Also, he’s not going to do anything until we tell him where we’ve hidden the case. Otherwise, they’d have picked us up on the road.”

Anna looked unconvinced. “Maybe they’re just waiting until it gets dark. Then they grab us, take us somewhere quiet, and …” She shivered. “He’s a mean son of a bitch, believe me. He could make us tell him.”

Bennett thought of Shimo’s thumb puncturing the bamboo. He picked up the homing device and weighed it in his hand. “Supposing we smashed it?”

“If the signal stops, they’ll come looking. They’ll know we found it.”

As the evening began its slow fade into night, with the cell and the mood of its occupants turning increasingly gloomy, they went over their options, and found little to encourage them. Unless they left on foot, there was only one way out of the monastery: down the track to the
road. And somewhere down there, Poe’s men would be waiting.

“Look, we don’t actually know that,” said Bennett. “I mean, they might have missed us. What do you reckon the range of that thing is?”

“I’m not sure. Could be half a mile.”

“OK. So to keep us within range, they’ll have to be waiting on the road—if they followed us, and we’re not certain they did. So that’s what we need to know.” He stood up and ruffled Anna’s hair. “I’m going to go down and have a look. Pack the money in your bag. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Bennett, be careful.”

He put on his shoes, and what he hoped would pass for a confident smile. “I took a course in advanced stealth in the Boy Scouts. Won a prize for tiptoeing.”

He stood by the side of the cloisters, listening to the night, letting his eyes adjust. Coming from the main building behind him, he could hear Father Gilbert’s laughter, and the thud of an iron pot on the top of the stove. Ahead, the stony track was a pale smear between the inky smudges of bushes and trees. Better keep off the track. If Poe’s men decided to close in, that’s the way they’d come. He started to pick his way through the undergrowth in slow motion, placing one foot down, transferring his weight before moving the other, his arms stretched out in front of him, a wide-awake, apprehensive sleepwalker.

It took him ten minutes to reach a point where he overlooked the road, with its odor of warm tar and rubber.
Able to see nothing, hear nothing, he waited, hoping for a car to pass. Another ten minutes.

Finally, two yellow shafts in the sky, and the sound of an engine laboring up the hill. He knelt down, keeping his eyes on the approaching tunnel of light. And there it was, a split-second shining of glass as the oncoming headlights caught the windshield of the car that was backed off the road, half hidden between tall clumps of broom, no more than fifty yards away. He’d seen enough.

——

Anna heard his footsteps, and met him at the door of the cell with a hug of relief. “I was beginning to think you’d stood me up.”

“Somebody’s down there, parked off the road. Couldn’t miss us if we tried to get out, even without headlights.” He made a feeble attempt to be cheerful. “Feel like a walk?”

“Where to?”

“Italy.” He sat on the bunk, fingering the homing device.

Anna leaned over and took it from him. “Couldn’t we use this? You know, as a decoy.”

Bennett stared at it, nodding slowly. “Sure. We’ll give it to Father Gilbert and tell him to run like hell.”

Anna’s eyes opened wide, and she started to smile. “Bennett,” she said, pulling him to his feet, “sometimes you’re smarter than you think. Come on.”

——

Father Gilbert put down his glass. “Let me be sure I understand this, my dears,” he said. “You want me to take this empty bag and drive in a tractor across the fields—”

“Parallel to the road,” said Anna. “That’s very important.”

Father Gilbert frowned at her. “It may well be important, my child, but it’s very rough country, and in the dark … well, our tractors are old and rather fragile. I’d hate to damage one. So easily done, you see, among the rocks.” He paused to take more wine. “Savage, savage rocks. Why, only last year we lost something vital from a tractor’s lower regions, and that was only a few meters from the vineyard. Just out of interest,” he said, with a sly smile, “would this nocturnal mission that you’re suggesting have anything to do with the affair of the truffles?”

“Well … yes,” said Bennett. “In a way.”

“So I dare say that a considerable sum of money is involved.” The old monk gazed pensively into his wine. When he looked up, there was an acquisitive twinkle in his eye. “If you could see your way clear to helping the monastery …”

Bennett fielded the hint. “Absolutely.” He looked at Anna. “Be delighted to, wouldn’t we? What do you have in mind, Father?”

“Two new tractors?”

“One,” said Anna.

“A John Deere?”

“It’s a deal.”

A quarter of an hour later, with a wad of hundred-dollar bills safely under a flagstone beneath his bed, and the bag containing the homing device between his feet on the floor of the tractor, Father Gilbert set off. He was to follow, as closely as possible, the direction of the road below the monastery for two or three kilometers, and leave the bag under a bush before coming back.

As soon as he saw the tractor’s single dim headlight reach the far end of the vineyard, Bennett began to walk slowly down the track, Anna fifty yards behind him, driving almost blind in the darkened car, navigating by the white blur of Bennett’s shirt.

——

Gérard zipped up his fly and stretched before getting back behind the wheel. It had been a long, hot day, and it looked like he was beginning another long night in a string of long nights. His partner, head back and mouth gaping, was snoring at a level loud enough to drown the sound of anything less piercing than a siren. Gérard shook him awake, then leaned forward to the receiver. Was it his imagination, or was the signal getting weaker? He turned up the volume, cocked his head.
Merde
. It was definitely fading. So they couldn’t be coming down the track, and there were no roads leading anywhere else—at least, not on the map. They must be going across country, to pick up
the road farther along. Left or right? He’d soon know. He started the engine and pulled away to the right.

From the slight rise halfway down the track, Bennett saw headlights come on, move off down the road, and round a bend, following the general direction taken by Father Gilbert’s tractor. He ran back to join Anna in the car. They coasted down to the road, lights still off, and waited until the last of the other car’s glow had gone from the sky.