Dying on the Vine (11 page)

She looked away, aware of her slip, but recovered fast.

“I didn't recognize the name—your accent. … He approached us some time ago about research on grapes. We didn't want to have anything to do with it. Are these questions anything to do with your article?” she demanded.

“Certainly,” I said before I had time to think whether they did or not. “Some vineyards believe in long-term development. Do they do it themselves, do they farm it out as a program … ?”

“I have a lot of work to do,” she said, pulling the files a little closer. “Can you find your own way?”

“Thanks. I will.”

I went through the other door, into the winery, leaving Miss Congeniality to her files. There was no one in sight. The sweet smell of fermenting grapes was powerful. Machinery buzzed softly and water was running somewhere. I walked past the rows of vats, their oaken exteriors sweating moisture. The floor was a little slippery and I trod carefully.

Farther along, I found what I was looking for. A rickety wooden desk had some papers on a clipboard, an operating manual, and a school-type exercise book. I glanced at the papers on the clipboard first. They were an hourly log of temperature readings and a record of sampling times. The manual was standard stuff and didn't appear to be much used. The exercise book was different, though—it showed grape varieties, weights, dates, and I was getting really interested when …

Sounds from above echoed through the cloying air—loud metallic clicks. I listened. It stopped then I heard what sounded like soft footsteps coming from the catwalk above the vats. I put the book back exactly as I had found it and stood without moving. Once more, I heard the footsteps—and while I didn't like the idea of going up myself, I liked even less the idea of a person who didn't want to be identified being above me.

I found a stairway. The metal rail was cold and clammy but I clung tightly with one hand as I climbed. One foot kicked a step and the vibrating hum sounded loud but probably wasn't. I kept on upward to the catwalk.

It seemed dizzyingly high now that I was up here. I recalled the old adage about never looking down—and promptly looked down. The catwalk ran the length of the building, branching off to run between the vats. A person could be hidden anywhere. I thought of calling out in case it was a worker engaged in the legitimate pursuit of his trade but then reflected that it was more their responsibility to challenge me as the interloper. I edged cautiously along the metal-grill flooring.

I passed two rows of vats. The lids were open to permit air to be ingested, and the contents bubbled gently. Clouds of sweet, fruity vapor swirled slowly and an insistent hiss indicated that fermentation was at a high level. A piece of cloth caught my eye. It was tied to the top of the rail and I went to inspect it. It was a scarf, once white and now stained with dark red. Wine stains, I told myself firmly … I was looking at it to determine why it was there when to my horror, it moved. …

It was too late by the time I realized that it was not only the scarf moving but the rail. Then I was moving with it as the result of a strong push in the middle of my back. My fall was like slow motion and there seemed to be ample time for the realization that the metallic sounds I had heard had been the removal of the locking pins from a detachable section of the rail.

The rail fell away and I fell after it.

The surface of dark liquid soared toward me and a thick warmth was all enveloping. …

S
AVING MYSELF FROM DROWNING
was pure physical reflex. My mind was moving just as frantically, first with recriminations. I was furious at myself, falling for a lure that even the most stupid of fish would have shaken its head at in disgust. Then Edouard Morel came to mind even though he was a man I had never met. I had mentally dismissed him as simply unaccounted for, but a more sinister answer now loomed. His wife considered him missing because she hadn't had contact with him for two weeks, but he might be dead also. He might be the secret ingredient in a red wine of the current vintage—just as I would be if I didn't get out of here.

The atmosphere just above the surface of the wine was choking. Alcohol has a lower specific gravity than water so as the grapes fermented and produced alcohol, the liquid went down in gravity, meaning that I sank deeper. It was the opposite of being in the Dead Sea—I was in the Red Sea.

The “cap” of grape skins floating on the surface looked solid—especially, to a drowning man—and I tried to lay my arms on top of it and get some support, but it let me sink, heedless of all the wine I had given support to through the years.

How ignominious! That was my main thought. Sent here on a wine investigation and I get drowned in a vat of red wine!

I thought about conserving my energy and floating with only my mouth above the wine. How long would it be before someone came by, though? Would I have to wait for a shift change?

I shouted for help a few times and then realized that English was the wrong language. I tried the French
Au secours
but I have always found it a silly expression and have not been able to believe that it ever brought a serious response. I tried to find a projection of some kind on the slimy wooden walls but there was not as much as a badly hammered nail.

The wine tasted awful. I wasn't deliberately drinking it, having other things on my mind, but sinking so low into it and still lower when I moved made it inevitable that I swallowed some. It was raw and vile. How could a drink taste so bad now and so good later? I hoped there would be a “later.”

Time passed and I passed out. At least, I supposed I did. It was probably the fumes. When I came back to hazy life, I was still floating. People walk in their sleep—can they swim in their sleep? I called out feebly, first in French, then in English. I didn't feel up to running through the languages of the numerous nationalities likely to be represented among the migrant workers.

I was dimly aware of voices but had no idea where they were coming from or what they were saying. One of them seemed to getting more urgent, more strident, and I was dimly conscious of something moving near my head. Through a stupor that was part intoxication and part panic, I could see bars that crystallized into the shape of a ladder and I reached for it. I hung on with one hand and was slowly heaved out of the red morass. Partway up, hands grabbed me and hoisted me clear.

Simone Ballard was furious. I think she blamed me for spoiling a couple of thousand liters of what might otherwise have turned out to be perfectly good wine. The invective with which she might have bombarded me was, however, mitigated by the presence of the gendarme, Aristide Pertois.

It was his face that I saw first as I was pulled out of the vat: the flat, black eyes behind the round spectacles, the bristly black mustache, and the perpetually raised eyebrows. There seemed to be a genuine query in them now, though, and it seemed to be What on earth are you doing in there? I was sitting in Simone's office in a shirt and pants several sizes too big for me and I still stank of raw, fermenting wine, but my head was clearing.

“I was just wandering around when I leaned on the rail; it gave way and I fell in.” Well, perhaps it wasn't
the
answer but it was
an
answer.

Aristide turned to Simone. He had been standing by the office door, saying nothing until now. “Don't you have safety checks on the rails and walkways?”

“Of course we do,” she snapped.

“Then how did—”

“I don't know.” Her manner was glacial.

“I'm sure the wine will be all right,” I said in a placatory voice. “In the days of
pigeage,
even several monks didn't spoil it.”

She regarded me in stony silence. Aristide rubbed his nose and said nothing. They both knew what I was referring to: In the Middle Ages, naked monks used to jump into the wine vats several times during the fermentation process to make sure that the skins mixed properly with the juice. The practice was known as
pigeage.
It was the only occasion throughout the year when the monks had anything approximating a bath and it was universally accepted that calls of nature were not demanding enough for the monks to climb out of the vat. There is still ribald speculation in the wine trade as to the effect on the quality of the wine.

“I was here to make a few more inquiries,” said Aristide in a neutral tone. “When I got out of the car, I heard a voice shouting for help. I ran inside at once and went to where I could hear splashing.”

The door opened and an arm reached in to place a clear plastic bag on the floor. It oozed red fluid inside and Simone glared at it, then at me.

“You'll want to get your clothes to the cleaners before they are ruined,” she said.

“Yes. I do.”

I glanced at Aristide. “Thanks,” I said.

He nodded and I headed for the door, carrying the sack in one hand and holding up the baggy pants, which were way too large for me, with the other. I tripped on one leg of the pants in an unintentional imitation of Buster Keaton.

No one laughed.

A
T THE LAUNDRY AND
dry cleaner's in Saint Symphorien, the Vietnamese girl promptly demanded payment in advance. She did a double take when I said I had fallen into a wine vat but she didn't ask what color wine.

Crossing the lobby of Le Relais du Moulin had been tricky but I managed it by close observation and fast footwork. One shower was insufficient and I had to take a second. A heavy dosage of cologne bestowed on me more “presence” than I would have wished and I realized that I would not be able to embark on any undercover missions until it had worn off. I got into the car and on to the highway.

A Porsche scorched past me and then a BMW with Swiss plates. The traffic thinned out as I got farther into the countryside and I was cruising placidly when I saw a terrifying sight.

Across the top of the windshield came drifting what looked like an enormous dragonfly. I had a chilly feeling that came from the memory of the horrifying creature that had flown over me in Colcroze—and dropped a murderous beehive. This one was very similar, then I was able to make out a framework of slim girders, a set of wheels, and a human figure seated in their midst.

It was an ultralight aircraft—“a flying bicycle” as some called it. The large wings were diagonally striped in red, white, and yellow, and I found some satisfaction in the fact that they were not green and brown as the other creature—well, aircraft—had been.

This one was low and dropping quickly. My first scare was that it was about to make some lethal attack on me, but that evaporated as it crossed my path and veered away. Nevertheless, I didn't take my eyes from it, being fortunate that there was no high-speed Teutonic traffic on this stretch.

The aircraft drifted lower and lower until it fell out of sight beyond a wooded hill. It was so low that it had to be landing. I slowed and turned into a well- used dirt road that wound into a pine forest.

So I hadn't been dreaming after all. I had seen a real aircraft in Colcroze—at least, a real ultralight aircraft. Moreover, the man flying it had dropped a crowded beehive on me, and as Colcroze was deserted and apparently had been that way for centuries, it was no accident.

This strongly suggested that being pushed into the wine vat had been no accident either. The inescapable conclusion was that someone here didn't like me. Perhaps there was more than one person who didn't like me—difficult as I found that to accept.

The pine forest opened up into a large field with some wooden buildings in one corner. A windsock flew over them and the air hummed with the sound of small engines. A large compressed-air tank with crumbling blue paint stood to one side, and sunk into the ground, a fuel container with a BP crest poked up nozzles and valves.

Six of the ultralight aircraft were dotted around the field. Men and women were near them. I stopped the car and watched. One man came out of one of the buildings, carrying a fuel can in his hand. He took it to one of the aircraft and emptied the can into it. Another man came out of the same building and I stared at him. He had his hands in the pockets of a leather jacket and he sauntered toward the same aircraft. I shaded my eyes against the sun to get a better look at him. I wasn't mistaken—it was Alex Suvarov, the golden-haired Russian I had met on Masterson's yacht,

I hadn't looked at his card when he had given it to me but I looked through my wallet, found the card and read the name.

Escadrille Demoiselle it said, and underneath it had the English translation—Dragonfly Squadron.

I had thought it near impossible when he had told me that one of the couriers in his service had brought a film script from Orange to Nice in an hour and a half. I had been thinking of a fast car, but with an ultralight aircraft it would be easy.

I examined the aircraft one by one. A machine was taxiing slowly and had red, white, and yellow bands in a diagonal pattern across the wings. That was the aircraft I had seen making its landing approach. One of the stationary machines had its propeller turning and accounted for another engine noise. Its wing was two shades of blue. Of the other four machines, two were different combinations of red and white and the third was silvery gray with black markings. It was the remaining machine that had already caught my eye, though. It had green and brown wings in an unmistakable and unforgettable pattern—it was the aircraft I had seen over the ghost village of Colcroze.

I drove to the buildings across the field and parked. I followed Alex Suvarov out to the ultralight that had just been fueled. It was one of the two with red and white markings. I passed the silvery gray machine where a man and a woman were engrossed in a discussion that involved downdrafts and wing loading factors. When I reached Suvarov, he was giving compass readings to the other man, who was apparently preparing to take off.

The man climbed into the bucket seat and fastened his seat belt. His hands moved on the controls and the engine growled louder. The ungainly aircraft moved forward, bumping a little over the grassy surface. Its pilot guided it past the other aircraft and I expected him to taxi to a runway to take off. Instead, he just accelerated the engine and the craft rolled forward, rising into the air like a released balloon.