Second Fiddle (21 page)

“What on earth?” I began.

“They can’t just arrest us,” Giselle muttered under her breath. “We haven’t done anything wrong. We have rights. Even in another country we have rights.”

“But they know our names,” I said. “How can they know our names?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Vivian gave Giselle’s hand a squeeze. “Wherever they take us, they have to let us call our parents, and Mom knows everybody. Seriously, everybody. And she
can speak French—diplomatic French and cussing French. Don’t you worry.”

But I did worry. Our parents knew. They must have figured out that we were in Paris alone. All our work to make sure they didn’t worry about us was for nothing. I took Vivi’s other hand and swallowed back the lump in my throat.

the American embassy they brought us up from the underground parking garage into a room with a long meeting table in the middle. There was a smaller table with some phones along one wall and a window that looked out on a tidy green park and a busy street beyond. Vivian insisted we should speak to the ambassador, but the policeman said, “That won’t be necessary,” and left.

We set our instruments and backpacks down in a corner. Giselle paced the length of the room. Vivi eyed the bank of phones.

“Umm, so I guess there was a tiny flaw in our brilliant plan,” I said, not looking at either of them.

“You mean the part of the plan where our parents find out anyway and involve whole police departments in foreign countries?” Giselle threw her hands up. “Yeah! That part needs a little work.”

Vivian collapsed in a chair, took off her glasses, and buried her face in her hands. “We’re doomed!”

I flopped down next to Vivi and kicked my heels against the chair legs. I couldn’t think of a single good idea. Not one.

“I’m going to be dishonorably discharged from my family!” Giselle muttered, still pacing.

“And Mom’s boss will find out and she’ll lose her job!”

All I could think of was my mom waiting for me and worrying. What was she going to say to Kyle and Tyler when I didn’t come home on the train?

We heard heavy footsteps in the hall. The door banged open.

“Jody!”

“Dad?” I stood up, my heart pounding so fast, I felt dizzy. “What are you doing here?”

My dad ran to me and scooped me up in a hug just like I was one of the little boys. He squeezed so hard, I could barely breathe. I could smell coffee and sweat.

“It’s okay, Dad. I’m fine.”

I could see Giselle’s dad, who was almost a foot taller than Giselle, holding her face in his hands. He looked like he was going to cry. Vivi’s mom was on the other side of them, hugging Vivi and stroking her hair. She looked just as suit-and-heels elegant as she had every other time I’d seen her, but this morning she looked hours beyond exhausted.

Dad pulled away and just looked at me. Before when I’d been in trouble, he’d always stomped out of the house and fixed the car first. After that I had to sit down and hear the list of twelve reasons why I’d made a terrible mistake and the
details of every flaw in the planning and execution of my mission. But I could tell he hadn’t thought of his list yet.

“What if I never found you?”

He whispered it—so much scarier than shouting.

“But, Daddy, I wasn’t lost. I was on my way home … this morning.…” How could I possibly explain?

He swallowed back anger. “What if I never found you?”

The door opened again. I turned to see a silver-haired policeman with a very small mustache and a whole lot of medals on his jacket walk into the room. A young policewoman who carried a tape recorder and notebook followed him.

“Bonjour, mes amis,”
he said briskly. “I see the beloved daughters are returned. How very fortunate.”

Dad switched to his soldier face right away, and General Johnson took three steps away from Giselle. Mrs. Armstrong tapped a manicured fingernail on Vivi’s chest and gave her one of those we’ll-get-back-to-this looks.

“You must be Mademoiselle Field?” the police chief said, turning to me.

“Yes, sir.”

He came to my side, shook my hand warmly, and said,
“Enchanté.”

I glanced over his shoulder at Vivi, who mouthed
“Merci, monsieur”
to me. I gave that a try. He smiled at me, and then turned to Giselle and Vivian and did the same.

The police chief walked to the head of the table and gestured for the policewoman to sit beside him.

“Good morning, everyone. Shall we sit down?” he said. “I’m sure we are all very interested to hear how three schoolgirls managed to hide for nearly twenty-four hours from the entire Gendarmerie Nationale, a detachment of military policemen, and the diligence of ordinary Parisians who saw your faces on every television station in this city last night with a substantial reward for notifying the police of your location.”

He paused while all three of us opened and shut our mouths several times without making any noise at all.

“I am prepared to be very entertained by your cleverness,” he said, looking at each of us intently with half a smile. He gestured to the chairs again. “Messieurs? Madame? Mesdemoiselles?” We all sat down.

“Twenty-four hours?” Vivi said. She looked at her watch. “That can’t possibly be right!” I could see her doing the math in her head.

“I don’t get it,” Giselle said. “We were supposed to come home today, and we
were
coming home. We had everything under control.”

General Johnson leaned forward in his chair. “You were supposed to be with Herr Müller. You were supposed to stay at the youth hostel we agreed on. You weren’t there!” His voice was headed straight for wrath-of-God territory.

“Mrs. Jorgenson called us,” my dad said. “You didn’t really think you could run away from the music competition and not have people care that you were gone, did you? Where did you go? Someone said he’d seen a man in a hat and gray T-shirt steal your money. Why didn’t you just call us? For heaven’s sake, Jody, I’m not a rich man, but I can afford to bring my own daughter home from Paris!”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” I said in a small voice. Not worrying them had seemed like a perfect reason yesterday.

“Who did you travel with?” Vivian’s mom asked calmly. “Someone signed you into the competition—a bald man of average height, the witnesses agree.” She looked at each of us in turn. “Where did you meet him?”

I squirmed in my seat, but Giselle and Vivian were staring right at me. I didn’t even know where to begin.

“Did he hurt you in any way?” Mrs. Armstrong went on. “If it would make it easier to talk about, I will insist the men leave and this policewoman will take your testimony.”

Vivi shuddered. “Mom! Eww! Of course not!”

Giselle folded her arms across her chest like she was the equal of any man who might cross her. “Hurt us? He was practically dead when we found him.”

“Testimony?” I gulped. “Did we break a law?”

“Do you realize we thought you might have been kidnapped?” my dad said.

“But, Dad,” I said, “why would anyone kidnap me?”

“Every military police unit in Europe has been on alert for the last eighteen hours looking for you,” General Johnson said. “We interrupted soccer coverage on TV and radio to report your absence. You’ve been the subject of searches by the police forces of Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.”

“It’s me, isn’t it?” Vivian said. “It’s because you’re—”

“An American diplomat? Yes,” Vivian’s mom said. “I know you hate the security team we have at the consulate, but extremists are growing bolder every year, and they don’t care who they hurt. I should have been sending you to your music lesson with a security person all along.”

“We were fine,” Giselle insisted. “Nobody tried to kidnap us.” She looked insulted at the very idea.

“I don’t even understand how you got here so fast,” Vivi said. “Did you drive all night long?”

“As you may have heard,” the police chief said with a sly smile, “the American army has airplanes. We in France have found this helpful many times.”

“You flew?” Giselle and I said together.

“A C-141,” Dad said. “Emergency flight.” He looked very grim. “We got in at six-thirty yesterday evening.”

“Yesterday,” I said. “You’ve been here since yesterday?” Pieces were falling into place: the American MPs walking along the Seine, the sirens headed for the Latin Quarter, the TV crews in front of the city hall.

“You took a C-141 for just the three of you?” Giselle asked, looking from my dad to hers in disbelief. “How? This isn’t army business.”

Dad told me once how much it cost to run one of those planes. It was thousands of dollars a flight.

“Just us and my aide,” General Johnson said. “And Mrs. Armstrong’s secretary and her press liaison and a representative of the German—”

“Yes, quite so,” the police chief barged in, which I bet didn’t happen to General Johnson all that often. “No bonbons for you girls, not one.” He looked at us quite sternly. “I mean that, now. As for annoying Belgium and Germany, that’s practically a national pastime. Well done! All that remains is to learn of your mysterious travel companion and the reason he brought you to Paris. Please. Enlighten us.” He smiled, leaned back in his chair, and gestured for me to speak. The policewoman slid the recorder to my side of the table and turned it on.

I looked across the table at our parents. Each one of them was quietly furious. My mouth went dry.

“His name was Arvo,” I began. “He was a Soviet soldier from East Berlin.”

“A Soviet? What on earth!” Dad demanded. “What were you doing in East Berlin?”

The police chief turned to him with a polite smile, but Dad knew a command look when he saw one.

“He was a translator,” I went on. “And he didn’t bring us to Paris. We brought him.”

I described how we went down to the river after our music class. I tried to concentrate on getting all the details right. When I got to the part about the attempted murder, Dad was ready to jump in again with questions, but the police chief held up a hand so he wouldn’t interrupt me. After I told the part about pulling Arvo out of the water and doing CPR, I had to take a little break because I’d almost forgotten how scary it was to see a person look so gray and cold and then be alive after all.

“We have all heard of this cruelty in the Soviet armed forces,” the police chief said while I was catching my breath. “There is a case in the German courts this month about whether a Soviet soldier is justified in his desertion. Such are the times.”

“You saved a man’s life,” the policewoman said quietly. “You must be very proud.” She turned to our parents. Whatever she saw in their faces, I bet it wasn’t pride.

I went on with my explanation from the first day we met Arvo. How we’d brought him food and clothes. I described how we’d decided that our trip to Paris for the music competition would be the perfect way to get him safely out of East Berlin and give us a chance to play together one last time. When I got to the part about staying at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, the police chief actually laughed.

“Whitman,” he said. “Do you realize we looked for you in every hotel and train station in this city? And you found shelter with the one man in Paris who has looked after Americans here for decades.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t think to look there,” Vivian’s mom said. “It’s five blocks north of the university.”

“Classic,” General Johnson said. “If you want to hide, the best place is usually right under the nose of the person you’re hiding from.”

“We weren’t hiding from you,” I said. “If we’d known you were here, we would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.”

“How could you not hear about the search when it was on every TV and radio station in Paris?” Dad asked.

“We were busy playing music, Dad, and bookstores don’t have TV.”

“And the end of the story?” the police chief said.

“Well, we played music on the street and earned enough money to get home,” I said, deciding that the news of Gypsy cafés and climbing in windows could wait for some other day or possibly never.

Silence followed. I didn’t even want to look at my dad. I glanced down the table instead. Giselle was slumped over and looked smaller than I’d ever seen her. Vivi had nibbled a spot on her lip to the point that it was bleeding.