Blue with Black Dots (The Caprice Trilogy Book 2) (33 page)

Chapter Eleven    Home

Georgia woke up.  She knew she was awake because she felt gravity.  Her ears were ringing but she could hear her direction, everything was telling her down.  Her head sunk into her chest.  Her wrists couldn’t support the weight of her hands so they dropped.  Her deep auburn hair hung down shielding her sight.  She could feel the shadow of her own hair blocking her vision.  Her eyes were still closed.  But her ears were open.  She heard mumbling in French.  She isolated the voices and began to count.  There were three voices, all male.  The sounds weren’t good.  They kept repeating the word
Madame
.  Hearing no female voices, Georgia imagined they were referring to her.  The voices were far away putting her in a separate room, alone.  She still hadn’t opened her eyes but she noticed something that she hadn’t picked up on before.  She knew she was sitting down, her feet could feel the floor and her butt could feel the chair.  But it was the first time she noticed the restraints.  Her ankles were shackled to the legs of the chair and her wrists were chained to the arms of the chair.  She realized why she hadn’t noticed the restraints before.  They didn’t feel like any other restraints she had on before.  It was known as a
pothole
, a situation that was trained for with unknown details.  Georgia had been strapped to a chair before, many times during training.  It was part of interrogation training.  All agents had to do.  The Peers had to do more of it.  In all, the Peers had to go through thirty-four interrogation protocols.  That meant Georgia had been tied to a chair and a table.  She had been tied with chains and even twined rope.  The protocols were designed to keep an agent’s mind focused, not to learn escape techniques.  Being tied up lost its shock value, if it wasn’t the first time.  An agent could keep going, keep thinking, remembering any details.  In the chance the agent came home alive, those details might be important. 

Georgia had been tied to a chair before but the restraints weren’t familiar.  They were metallic but smooth.  They weren’t standard handcuffs.  They didn’t cut into her skin.  She couldn’t see them but she knew there were no marks from the metal, only from the pressure.  They were tight.  She rolled her wrists in the restraints trying to
see
what they were.  She couldn’t decide, the metal cuffs were unidentified.  She raised her head feeling the weight of her head shift against gravity.  Her head felt heavy, even her hair.  She didn’t have a free hand to pass her hair from front to back.  She had to do it with the motion of her head.  It was uncomfortable.  Her head felt so heavy.  It didn’t want to move around.  She could feel most of her hair and most of it wasn’t in her way.  She decided to take in whatever there was to take in.  She opened her eyes.  There was a surprise, surprises.  The most obvious was the woman sitting in the chair six meters in front of her.  The woman sat in a chair that, at first glance, seemed identical to the same chair Georgia sat in minus the medieval shackles around Georgia’s wrists and ankles.  There was a round circular mahogany table, to the right of the chair.  A gold-plated
S.T. Dupont
cigarette case lay on the table next to its matching lighter.  The woman was mid-to-late forties.  It wasn’t her skin or hair texture that gave her away.  It was her hairdo, a Chignon.  The hairstyle had been popular in the 1940s with female factory workers as a way to keep long hair out of a day’s work.  It was also popular in the Golden Age of Hollywood.  To wear the Chignon, was to be familiar with the time when it was popular.  Georgia was too young to see herself wearing one, but the woman sitting in front of her was some twenty years older.  Her olive skin had few wrinkles, surprising given her habit.  She wedged an
S.T. Dupont
cigarette between her lips and brought the lighter to the end.  She asked the question before she lit the end.

              “Do you know why I’m sitting so far away from you?” asked the woman.

              “To be kind,” said Georgia, “To provide me with fresh air.”

              “It would be one way of thinking of it,” said the woman, “But I smoke only two more cigarettes a day than you, Georgia.  You’ll no doubt surpass me when you’re my age.”  Georgia’s thought process paused.  The woman knew her name and that she smoked.  The woman also knew how much she smoked.  That was intelligence. 
No
.  It was counter-intelligence.  Georgia was staring across at a seasoned professional, a spy.  She wasn’t just tied up; she was cornered.  Georgia’s name and smoking habits were the tip of the iceberg.  The only thing Georgia had going for her was that she was alive.  So they wanted her alive, usually a good start.

              “Why are you sitting so far away from me?” asked Georgia.

              “5.5 meters away,” said the woman, “Do you know the significance of that?”

              “I don’t,” said Georgia.

              “5.19 meters is the actual distance beyond which normal human breathing is in audible,” said the woman, “I’m a little bit further away than that.  Which means I’ve been here the whole time.”  The woman stopped talking and took time to let Georgia think whatever she wanted.

              “I’m surprised the CIA didn’t teach you that,” said the woman.

              “Maybe that’s why I’m tied to this chair,” said Georgia. 

              “Maybe,” said the woman, lighting her cigarette.

              “Who are you?” asked Georgia.

              “Simone Gagnon,” said the woman.

              “That’s not your real name,” said Georgia.

              “You’ll never know my real name,” said Simone, “I’m not even sure what it should be.”

              “How’s that possible?” asked Georgia.

              “I’ve lived a life,” said Simone.

              “Tell me a story,” said Georgia.

              “You expect to get intelligence like that?” asked Simone. 

              “I expect to stave off boredom like that,” said Georgia.

              “You’ve been tied to that chair some time,” said Simone, “I could imagine you getting bored.”

              Georgia looked around the room.  Nothing but the woman in the chair was from the twentieth century.  Everything from the floor to the furniture looked, at least, a hundred years back in time.

              “Where are we?” asked Georgia, the question was obvious.

              “Wine country, the Loire Valley,” said Simone, “You came to France of your own accord, but you’ll sample some of our culture at my behest.”

              “This is no interrogation chamber,” said Georgia, “I can see out the window.”

              “You’ll do more than that,” said Simone, “You’ll walk in the vineyard.  Cedric.”  One of the voices Georgia heard came into the room.  He was tall with broad shoulders.  He had to work for the French government.  Georgia remembered something her mother used to say. 
The biggest men in France work for the State
.  Cedric had the key to the iron-made shackles binding her hands and legs to the chair.  Cedric undid the shackles around Georgia’s ankles first.  He was surprisingly quick and gentle.  He unfastened her shackled hands and Georgia was free in a manner of speaking.  Cedric took a step back from Georgia and neatly looped the four pairs of shackles over his forearm like a trained butler.  Cedric obviously had an unusual skill.  He was experienced at shackling people.  Surely he worked for the French Government.  Surely it was off the record.  Georgia took a look at him when he stood up.  She recognized him.  He was the man from the hospital, whose face she could see in the window. Cedric left the room, shackles in hand.

•••

Simone was fashionable.  She began to pay more attention to her cigarette than to Georgia, as she turned her back and tugged on a thick rope.  The green wall-length drapes retreated to their corners as Simone opened the wood panel French doors behind them.  Georgia could see the rest of what she got a glimpse of, from the long slender window.  The rest was fresh air, sun and French grapevines.  The vineyard swallowed the countryside.  The grapevines growing on aged wood racks ran so far, you could get tired walking the length.  Simone stepped out on the back patio.  Georgia followed her.

              “Is this all one estate?” asked Georgia, stepping out into the sun.

              “All the same,” said Simone, walking and talking.

              “You’re French Intelligence,” said Georgia.

              “
Exactement
,” said Simone taking a puff of her cigarette.

              “Do you always take your captive foreign agents to such locations?” asked Georgia.

              “Like all things,” said Simone, “It depends on what we want them for.  But we’re French.  We haven’t fought with the Americans this century, that gives us reasons to trust each other doesn’t it?”

              “Reason enough,” said Georgia, “This house isn’t owned by the State is it?”

              “No it’s not,” said Simone, “Only a private individual would or could do all this.  Governments govern, there’s no governing nature.  You have to let it do.”  Simone walked over to inspect a bunch of grapes on the vine.

              “Come here, Georgia,” said Simone, “You see these.  What do you think?”

              “The color doesn’t look deep enough,” said Georgia.

              “My father always said to wait till the color on the grapes is the same as the earth,” said Simone, “So we wait.  The most useful strategy of all.”

              “For women,” said Georgia, “Not for men.

              “That’s true,” said Simone, “Men are always charging in and crossing the finish line too early.  That’s why I brought you out here.  I wanted to talk, woman to woman.  Don’t worry, the bushes aren’t bugged.”

              “I was checking,” said Georgia.

              “CIA,” said Simone.

              “You live here,” said Georgia.  Simone stopped in her tracks.  She pivoted to the left and looked straight at Georgia.

              “I grew up here,” said Simone, “Back when I was allowed to be a child.”

              “What is this place?” asked Georgia.

              “My family’s house,” said Simone, “It’s called
Chateau Constance
.”

              “Like you, that’s a name that’s been modified,” said Georgia.

              “You know, but do you know your history?” asked Simone.

              “It depends on what history,” said Georgia.

              “The history of this continent,” said Simone, “You were raised across the pond but your parents were here during the War.  You must have learned something.”

              “Everything I learned was second-hand,” said Georgia, “I haven’t even seen many of the places they talked about.”

              “I saw that war,” said Simone, “And I am its consequence.”

              “I want to know what happened to you,” said Georgia.

              “So do I,” said Simone, “This property belonged to my father back before the chaos; back when he was heavily favored.”

              “Heavily favored for what?” asked Georgia.  Simone turned and looked at Georgia again and smiled, then continued down the long row of grapevines.  Georgia noticed the terrain had started into an upward incline. 

              “He was heavily favored for everything,” said Simone, “He was in politics, good at it.  He had many friends vested in his survival at business.  My father and mother were both Sephardic Jews.  My family was originally Portuguese
Marranos
. That’s why the black hair and olive skin.  But my ancestors left Portugal during the Inquisition and moved here, the middle of France.  This Chateau has been in my family for some centuries, and for most of that time it was uninterrupted.”